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“They can’t stop the signal, Mal. They can never stop the signal.” – Serenity

“The chair is against the wall.  The chair is against the wall.  John has a long mustache.  John has a long mustache.  It’s twelve o’clock, American.  Another day closer to victory, and for all of you out there on or behind the line, this is your song.”

Wednesday is the day when I write about economics.  Why Wednesday?  Because it’s my blog.

I’m going to start with something that might seem unrelated.  Hang on, this will make sense in a bit.  I’m a trained professional, you’re in good hands.  And my hands?  They smell of elderberries.  But not hamsters.  I’m not into that.

On Monday, I was experiencing the highest traffic this august blog has ever gotten.  People were coming here so fast I was worried that I wouldn’t have enough coffee cups and hand-tatted doilies.  More people than live in Modern Mayberry were coming here every hour or so.

Thousands of people!  Good Heavens!

In the middle of this, an extreme social faux pas.  It was like my cat had impregnated an English princess.

Again.

My little missive discussing exactly what I thought of Mr. Biden’s idea that his F-15’s and nuclear weapons beat up on our modern sporting lawyers and BUFFs like me went dark.  Gone.  Epstein didn’t kill himself, and neither did my blog.

If you were surprised Epstein killed himself, imagine how surprised he was.

Boom.  Gone.  For hours, the entire blog went was as dead as Hillary’s woo-hoo has been since, oh, wait, there’s a limit on Epstein jokes.

To be clear:  I don’t host this website on a computer built with chicken wire and parts from a 1996 Packard-Bell© tower I found in the recycling bin and some toner cartridges from a 2003 Hewlett-Packard™ laser printer and some used chest-hair grease.

Nope, I save that stuff for the heart-lung machine at the local hospital.  This website is hosted professionally.  I had a thought that it might get popular, so the hosting I got was the “So You Think You Might Be Drudge® Someday Sucker” package that guaranteed I’d be covered unless Bernie Sanders finally admitted he liked being a multi-millionaire.

The sum total of Internet bandwidth required to host this blog is tiny.  You can stuff the entire blog – every word and every image ever – into 30 megabytes.  Without compression.  Skip the bikini posts, and you’d be under 20 megs.

But why would you skip the bikinis?  No.  I didn’t skip the bikinis.  I used that to make them relevant for this post.  See?  John I. Wilder.  Super genius.

Why don’t Leftists wear bikinis to the beach?  I mean, I thought they had nothing to hide.

I digress. The post in question (Read it here) that was so popular had one image.  One.  That image is 59.5 kilobytes.  Plus 1400 and some odd words.  Call it 100 kB.  I can’t even get decent resolution on one bikini top with that.  C’mon.  You want a decent resolution, right?

There is no way that the blog was stressing the server.  There had been 25 days since the last software update.  Everything was nice and stable for tens of thousands of views over the weekend.

But then, when it was really getting going, as the view streamed upward like Joe Biden after a transfusion of young human blood?

The entire blog was as gone as George Floyd’s criminal record.

George Floyd’s real record at boxing is 4-3.  Sad we have to count his girlfriends.

When a visitor would come here, they got a message telling them that they should go somewhere else.  Maybe a site that would give them yoga lessons.  Or teach them how to hand-tat doilies.

As soon as I knew about it, I got to work.  I had to go back to an earlier version of the software, and then rebuild twice to get the links to come back.  It was about as dramatic as when Matthew Broderick told the computer not to start a nuclear war.  I had several coffees in the middle, but the school principal decided not to suspend me.

Maybe it was just a sheer coincidence that the time when I wrote my most popular post ever, days after it was increasing in popularity exponentially that it disappeared.

Sure.  That could happen.  And Epstein killed himself.

It had been 1200 days, and only one outage, and that was a technical thingy on a not at all exciting weekend.  I found out on Saturday morning and had it fixed in 20 minutes.

You do the math.  Maybe it was a sign?

Just any old sign.  This was actually the movie that led to The Mrs. and I being married.  Who knew Steve Martin saved Western Civilization?

Okay, this is the part where we do the right turn and end up in Albuquerque.  Hang with me.  There are airbags if you start feeling queasy.  Oh, I’m sorry, that’s not airbags.  There are airbags if you hit someone else with your car while you’re driving it.

That’s what airbags are.

I mean, I don’t think airbags help anyone if you throw your car at them.  But if someone makes you so mad you throw your car at them?  They had it coming.

So, if you get queasy I can’t help you.  And if you can throw your car at someone, I’m hiring.

Regardless, I promise it all will make sense in the end.

I’ve written quite a bit about the future.  The majority of my career is in the past, until I become the undisputed Leader of Earth.  I imagine that job will require at least some work after 5p.m.  Probably not on weekends, though.

I’ll have people for that.

Although I like to mentally live in that world, sadly, I have to confront reality.  Many of the posts I’ve written have talked about the virtuous aspects of economics.  Work hard.  Be honest.  Give more than you’re asked for.  Don’t cheat people.

Bet he never saw that coming.

Those are great pieces of advice, especially when you’re working in a place that’s built on merit.  In reality, though, if you’re working in a family business, you’ll never rise farther than the owner’s worst son.  Unless you marry the boss’s daughter.

Hey, it worked for Jared Kushner, right?

Regardless, there’s at least one aspect in the hundreds of posts I’ve been allowed to transmit into the ether that I’ve neglected mentioning until now:

If you work in a company that considers you a political heretic, your lifespan is limited.

I know that a common phrase on the Right is, “Get woke, go broke,” but that doesn’t seem to be the case.  Once you reach a certain size, there appears to be no limit to the number of people that the company can hire that do nothing to serve a customer.  There are legions of leeches that will just take complaints.  There are platoons of parasites that just exist to make sure rules (that don’t help anyone) are enforced.

This won’t change the value of the corporation.  At least not for years and years.

Look at Coca-Cola®.  They actively trained employees in active hatred of a specific race, but, hey, look at the stock prices!  They keep going up.

Look at Gillette™:

In 2019, when they actively tried to shame their target customers, men people who shave, their stock price was about $91.  In 2021, it’s now up to $135.

To be clear, I haven’t bought a single Gillette® product since 2019, and as few Procter and Gamble© (Gillette’s© parent company) products as I can.

Gillette™ got woke.  They’re not broke.  And neither is Coke©.

(I’ll stop before this becomes a Dr. Seuss post about Jeff the Bezos who tried to use our product searches to seize us.)

Whatchutalkinaboutwillis?

Why isn’t Procter and Gamble™ broke?  They make products that I had no idea that I was buying to support Woke until I looked them up while I was writing this post tonight.

Tide™.

Old Spice©.

Cascade®.

Admittedly I try not to wash my pants so the water doesn’t steal my masculine essence so we minimize Tide® use.

I think my three-day armpit smell is “pleasantly musky” which Old Spice © doesn’t like, and washing dishes is for cowards who don’t want to boost their immune system because of ptomaine.

Regardless, I have all that crap in my house right now.  I’m guessing that I spend about $100 a year on Proctor and Gamble’s® crap.

So, Gillette™ won, I guess.

But if I were to give advice to my kids?  Their money is not worth your soul.

If you looked at Google® in 2001, there wouldn’t have been a better place to work in the world.  Their motto was simple:  “Don’t be evil.”  In 2021?  Their motto is now, “leave no virtue standing.”  I would say their motto was, “bayonet the corpses” but that’s likely to be the motto of the Right in the not too distant future.

Here’s a new one:

Don’t work at a company that demands your soul.

Sure, if you agree with what they’re doing, it works.  If you like killing babies, by all means go work at Planned Murdermoms Parenthood©.  If you like censorship curated free speech, by all means, go work at Twitter® or FaceBorg™.  And if you believe that we’ve always been at war with Eastasia, Google© is your dream job.

I hear one Satanist’s soul weighed a pentagram.

And if you want to incite dweebs to incite violence, give them weapons, and then foil the crime?  Well how could you beat the FBI?  As long as we’re on government jobs, I hear the ATF is hiring . . .

In 2021, many companies (or gover1nmental agencies) demand your soul.

This is your choice.  If you pretend, there are only two outcomes.  They’ll end up firing you, or end up owning your soul.

Not a hard choice for me.  If you were 22 today I’d tell you – avoid the Leftists.  Avoid Leftist companies.  Avoid Leftist jobs.

As for me?

Wilderwealthywise?  I own the domain name.  I have the backed up files.  If they take me down?

I’m really down.  But I don’t worry.

Someone will replace me.  Next man up.  And there are millions of us.  One down, next up.

That’s why we’ll win.

“They can’t stop the signal, Mal. They can never stop the signal.”

“System of government categorized by extreme dictatorship. Seven across.” – Hot Fuzz

I bought an Antifa© alarm clock.  It just calls me names.  Talk about a rude awakening.

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.

May had (again) increased violence, but not as bad as it could have been as unseasonably cold weather kept other temperatures down.    Again, none of the violence that I could see originated from the Right.

I’m holding May at 9 out of 10.  That’s still two minutes to midnight.  Last month I said that “ July or August could take us to a 10” and the reason is becoming clearer, as hot weather and economic woes will be showing up on the street.

I currently put the total at (this is my best approximation, since no one tracks the death toll from rebellion-related violence) up to around 800 out of the 1,000 required for the international civil war definition.

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 – Two Years On – Violence And Censorship Update – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Inflation – 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 get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30 Eastern, free of charge.

Two Years On

I started this line of posting two years ago, and it was clear to me that the United States is Balkanizing around multiple worldviews.  You can’t read the headlines today without seeing it.

It’s getting worse, not better.  Trust me, I’d much rather have a post that says, “LOL, looks like it’s all good, this is the last issue.”

The seeds of this situation were planted decades ago.  Back in 1990 (according to Pew Research) we were mostly one nation.  Sure, there were people on the extremes of either end, but those people were mostly ignored.

I believe that after this term in office, Chuck should get another term.  In prison.

But when Pew looked at people in 2017, they found the Left has moved far to the political left, while the Right had only slightly moved.   The Balkanization exists because the Left has moved left.  That direction of drift by the Left is accelerating.

Right and Left have, since 1999 or so, completely given up on the idea of fiscal discipline.  It’s gone.  The spending has just sped up, and taxation is no longer related at all to the amount that the Federal government spends.  There are numerous problems with this, not the least of which is the off-balance way that growth is funneled to chosen winners.

What happens when you mix a population that doesn’t have the same conception of the fundamental function of government with massive numbers of unassimilated foreigners and throw in an economic dislocation?

Civil War.

The reaction to Trump brought about the current coalescence of the Left’s strands that have many fundamental reasons to hate each other, but skipped it for the purpose of hating even more.  Internally, they’ll eventually face a mass purity test, but for now they’re content to just spend their daily Two Minutes Hate on the Right.

Conditions are closer now to Civil War than at any point in my life.  The Civil War 2.0 Scale™ has moved from a 6 to a 9 in that time frame.  Billions in property damage have been done.  At least hundreds of people are now dead with untold thousands of injured due to this ideological conflict.

All in 24 months.

Violence And Censorship Update

This month is, again, mainly censorship.

Point 1.  Twitter® Is Unaware Of Irony

Twitter™ got kicked out of Nigeria.  Why?  Because they deleted a Tweet® from the President of Nigeria where he was threatening secessionists in his own country who might try to start a civil war.

Here was Twitter’s™ response

Wait, what?

It’s an essential human right for people to have Twitter™.  Huh.

Point 2.  Wuhan Fluhan

One of my big pet peeves about the press is when they turn news stories into editorials.  It reduces my trust in them to, well, zero.   Looks like they can’t even trust themselves as they go back to memoryhole their own inconvenient headlines:

Point 3.  Enemy Of The State

Homeland Security has now issued warning bulletins for:

• January 27 and “coming weeks” as they waited for violence from the Right,
• May 14 for “Right Wing Violence” and, now,
• Last week, for Right Wing violence against marchers at the Tulsa Riot Anniversary.

It turns out that Joe Biden wants to simply change the War on Terror laws to make them applicable to, well, everyone Joe doesn’t like.  You remember, those laws that were derided by the Left and Right as un-Constitutional, back when such things mattered to the Left?

How do we know who is on those lists?  Well, the CIA is spying on Americans.  Huh.  Thought that was illegal?  No matter.

Thankfully, someone is speaking out for the Right:

Glenn Greenwald has a lot more at this (LINK).  RTWT.

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 violence is down again in May.  Inner-city rioting continues and murder rates are up by double-digits, but nobody seems to care anymore.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable.  Instability increased this month, as expected.  I think June may calm down, but who knows what Congress will get up to this month.

Economic:

I expected this number to be less positive.  It’s not.  Inflation has yet to hit this measure.

Illegal Aliens:

This data is at record levels for every year I have data for.  Comments from the Left?  “There needs to be more.”

Inflation

“Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose” is more than a song lyric – it’s true.  Right now we’re seeing inflation everywhere.  Lumber.  Gasoline.  And . . . hamburgers.

All of the inflation stems from different things.  Wood, well, it’s demand and a limited supply of mills.  Gasoline?  Those prices are up based on capacity, too, but also on crude oil prices, which have gone back up to pre-COVID levels.

Hamburgers?  I just saw a fast-food double cheeseburger for $6.99.

Ouch!

Ranchers are making the same to less money than when beef was cheaper, so just like lumber, the big money is being made by the processors.

Not that any of that matters.  Inflation is corrosive – it’s really a stealth tax where a government prints more money and, well, to put it in the immortal words of AOC when she wants to pay for universal healthcare, “You just pay for it.”

Obviously, there are consequences, and those are rising prices.  Is there a limit?

No.  There is no limit.  The result, though, is generally catastrophic.  People in an inflationary economy don’t behave rationally, since they become tempted to purchase absolutely anything because their money is so worthless that they want to get it out of their hands as quickly as possible.  Why?

Because as worthless as it is today, tomorrow it will be worth even less.

This creates panic.  Mania.  Desperate people.  A situation ripe for changing out a government.  Or even a revolution.  In the 1970s, there was no revolution, but the government was changed out, decisively.  Twice.  But in the 1970s, the United States was the world leader in manufacturing.  In the 1970s, the United States was (relatively) culturally homogeneous.  In the 1970s, the difference between Right and Left was much, much smaller.

Now?  None of those are in play.  For a government to play with inflation now is like trying to catch falling daggers:  dangerous.  Revolution after revolution and war after war has been caused by the devastation created by bad economic conditions.

LINKS

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

CHATTER LEFT AND RIGHT

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/democracy-race-power/

https://theweek.com/articles/983063/threat-civil-war-didnt-end-trump-presidency

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/05/12/gop-civil-war-dont-bet-on-it-487192

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2021/05/14/its-not-a-civil-war-its-a-purge-492851

https://news.yahoo.com/civil-war-bad-business-095607030.html

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2021/05/31/pete-meijer-slams-gop-treacherous-snakes-salivating-civil-war/5286907001/

https://richmondobserver.com/opinion/item/12399-opinion-will-treason-mania-destroy-america.html

http://www.stlamerican.com/news/columnists/mike_jones/is-a-next-civil-war-in-our-future/article_4a634fd0-bb7a-11eb-afc8-ffafd746b7d5.html

 

SECESSION TALK

https://vtdigger.org/2021/05/31/edward-mcmahon-u-s-could-soon-cease-to-be-a-functioning-democracy/

https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/01/the-new-secession-crisis/

https://americanmind.org/salvo/red-lines/

https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/denton-county-republican-party-passes-resolution-supporting-hb-1359-the-texas-independence-referendum-act-12016219

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/their-own-private-idaho-5-oregon-counties-back-a-plan-to-secede/

https://www.thestate.com/news/nation-world/national/article251530708.html

https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/img2.png?itok=p10yKIFF

 

ONE, TWO, THREE, WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING FOR?

 

NYC : https://twitter.com/yuhline/status/1399502974272131078

Portland : https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1398986717047230467

Miami : https://twitter.com/ONLYinDADE/status/1399791879068192783

America: https://twitter.com/i/status/1399800643880108035

https://www.city-journal.org/critical-race-theory-portland-public-schools

https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/removing-the-bedrock-of-liberalism-826

 

1,000 KILLED THRESHOLD TO OFFICIALLY DECLARE CW? HOLD MY DOS EQUIS…

 

https://fox59.com/news/national-world/body-count-from-drug-cartel-wars-earns-mexican-cities-label-of-most-violent-in-the-world/

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/mexico-shares-grim-figures-on-disappeared-citizens/2202969

https://www.dw.com/en/dozens-fall-victim-to-mexicos-brutal-election-campaign/a-57694375

https://apnews.com/article/caribbean-mexico-police-f6ea7798ca3cc171ac13b3a5a6a6c266

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p1218-overdose-deaths-covid-19.html

Actual Johnny Carson Joke:

Carnac The Magnificent, holding envelope to his head to divine the contents:  “Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

Carnac The Magnificent, opening envelope and reading contents:  “Give three reasons you should name your baby Al.”

How do you determine love?  I mean, if you put your wife and your dog in the trunk of your car, who is happier to see you in two hours when you let them out?

Why do we do it?  I mean, I’m the funniest writer on the Internet, so I know why I do that.  But why do we do all of this?  You know, the life stuff?

Life is difficult.  It’s an uphill slog, and the ending (of the life part) is predetermined.  Yet we keep picking up one foot and putting it in front of the next.

Why?

Because it’s who we are.  It’s what we are.

We have lived in the most prosperous civilization that’s ever existed.  In most Western countries, we have many, many more people afflicted with diseases because of too many available calories, rather than too few.

That’s a rarity in human history.  In medieval France, peasants would essentially spend the whole winter in bed together, shivering, trying to minimize calorie loss in a simulation of hibernation.   Now?  It’s Cheetos®, PEZ™, elephant rides and pantyhose for everyone.  We are in a civilization characterized by excess.

That may not always be the case.

I wish they made pantyhose that don’t rip, because now everyone in the bank has seen my face.

I’ve read a book or two, and one that really hit me was A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.   It’s by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.  I think I come close to pronouncing his name correctly, which might make me sound pretentious.  But if you read Solzhenitsyn, it’s not pretentious at all.

A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is just that, a day in the life of a guy named John (Ivan means John).  This particular John is in prison.  Why?  He was captured by the Germans during World War II.  Anyone captured by the Germans who wasn’t suffering from life-threatening wounds was considered a traitor to the U.S.S.R.

Denisovich was not only in prison, he was in the GULAG.  It’s all capitalized because, like NATO, it’s an acronym.  In this case, GULAG is an acronym for a series of Russian words, Гла́вное Управле́ние Лагере́й that I imagine sounds like a cat choking on a hairball made of fiberglass and cheap vodka when pronounced correctly.

See, that’s not pretentious!

This particular book is very, very short.  Solzhenitsyn uses his language with economy, yet to me he creates a story that’s like a joke.  It’s not clear what he’s talking about until the very last page, and (for me) it hit me like a ton of bricks.  It’s like if M. Night Shyamalan wrote it with a particular twist.

You’ve already read Solzhenitsyn.  See?  You’re not pretentious.

I recommend it unreservedly.  I bought it at a garage sale, and I gave it to the foreman of a crew who was putting in cinder blocks.  That makes sense in an M. Night Shyamalan way, too, but you have to read the book.  Here’s one place I saw a copy (LINK).  I’d give you mine but I’d have to track down a retired bricklayer with a bad back.

The message I took away from this book is that life isn’t about grand moments.  And, as I mentioned some time ago, life isn’t about comfort, either.  Life is much more than that.  In the book, Denisovich takes outlandish pleasure at what we would consider bare minimums.

That gave me perspective.  Again, that’s not the insight grenade I took from the book, but it’s close.  When is the last time you really thought about the salad you were eating, savoring the crisp crunch of the lettuce, the tang of the Caesar dressing, and the hard, yet yielding texture of the Parmesan cheese?

Each and every bite is a taste no king or potentate could have had out of season.  I can have it every Tuesday.  Or Thursday.  Or any other day ending in y.

I know it was a bad joke.  Everyone romaine calm.

In many ways, I often overlook the luxury I’m surrounded by.  I can get a fresh tomato in the depths of winter, and when I bite into it feel the taste of a spring day erupt.  I’d add in red roses in winter, but The Mrs. knows where the rose bush grows if she wants a few.

Our world is filled with unimaginable convenience.  Our world is filled with unimaginable abilities to entertain and distract.  Like I said earlier:  our world is filled with excess, but it might not always be.

In Solzhenitsyn’s world, well, a luxury is an extra ration of rough bread made from poorly milled grain.  Solzhenitsyn knew what he was talking about:  he spent years in a GULAG for saying in a letter to a friend during the war that Stalin wore granny-panties.  Okay, it wasn’t that bad, but it was a mild criticism.

In a letter.

So, off to GULAG.

In the GULAG, Solzhenitsyn got cancer.  Ouch.  He survived.  And, when Nikita Khrushchev was leading the U.S.S.R., Solzhenitsyn actually got to publish some of his critical commentaries on communism.  Why?  Khrushchev wanted to remove every bit of the stain of Stalin from the U.S.S.R., so Solzhenitsyn was his guy.

The Soviets made the best bread in history – people would wait in lines for days for a single piece.

That didn’t last long.  In most cases, commies want to show the world (and their own citizens) that no one can escape.  Sadly for them, Solzhenitsyn was too famous to pop into prison, and too outspoken to leave among the citizens.  That sort of thing happens when you win the frigging Nobel Prize.

So?

They booted him.  Stripped him of his citizenship.  He lived in the United States until 1994.  Famously, he predicted the future of the United States in an address to Harvard® that he’d be lynched for today.

How cool was the address?  It contains these lines:

Even biology tells us that a high degree of habitual well-being is not advantageous to a living organism.  Today, well-being in the life of Western society has begun to take off its pernicious mask.

Read The Whole Thing: (LINK)

What irritates me the most is that on a long weekend when I was a kid, I probably could have gone, met the man, and bought him a beer.  If I could write just once the wisdom that Solzhenitsyn gave in just that one speech I could go to my end a happy man.

Was it a missed opportunity in not just getting in my car and driving to find him?  (I even had a copy of his book at that time.)  If I regretted things, I’d regret that I never did buy Solzhenitsyn a beer and gave Gorbachev a wedgie.

Okay, I’d like to give both of them wedgies.  Atomic wedgies.

Solzhenitsyn later moved back to Russia, his citizenship restored, and they gave him a nice house.  Spoiler alert:  he didn’t do it for the house.

He did it because, as he said in his speech to Harvard©:

If the world has not approached its end, it has reached a major watershed in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.  It will demand from us a spiritual blaze; we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life, where our physical nature will not be cursed, as in the Middle Ages, but even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon, as in the Modern Era.

The ascension is similar to climbing onto the next anthropological stage.  No one on Earth has any other way left but – upward.

This is why we do it.  This is why we put that one foot in front of the other.

“You only have power over people as long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything, he’s no longer in your power—he’s free again.” – Solzhenitsyn

It’s who we are.

It’s what we are.

Anybody need Doritos®?  Oh, and remember, Solzhenitsyn outlasted the Soviets.

“No, I quite approve of terror, arson, murder, any tool that serves the revolution.” – Nicholas and Alexandria

The Russian Revolution had big goals:  they aimed for the Tsars.

In last week’s post about the Woke Military driving out the obviously patriotic Lt. Colonel Lohmeier (Woke Military Kicking Out (More) Officers), I replied in the comments:

“I hope that they start recruiting from mental institutions, prisons, and inner-city Minneapolis.”

This was actually an attempt at a joke – it’s a riff on a line from Baseketball, the 1998 Zucker Brothers/Trey Parker/Matt Stone movie which is a staple around our house on Saturday nights.  The original line from the movie is:

Continued expansion diluted the talent pool, forcing owners to recruit heavily from prisons, mental institutions, and Texas.

When they film a post-apocalypse movie in Detroit, they have to use CGI to repair buildings.

I didn’t use Texas, because I like Texas and Texans, so I picked Minneapolis because I think it’s on its way to becoming a quaint “Detroit on the Mississippi” where the primary source of amusement is Thunderdome Friday nights.  Large Marge, a frequent commenter, called me on this quip (edits only in formatting):

A)  Military recruits from prison

I am a former Corrections Officer.
I worked at three penitentiaries . . . including a max.

Some of the most intelligent individuals are prisoners.  The most intelligent of them are organized and exceptionally efficient in the use of violence and intimidation.

Although better people than me might question their primary loyalties — gang/club? or Constitution? — I would expect them to continue to hone their adaptive skills in a military setting.

In fact, I would anticipate them quickly establishing a hierarchy and running the joint in no time… while eliminating slackers.  Anybody they cannot eliminate, they recruit.  No middle ground, no spectators.

Two of my ‘adopted’ sons are also Corrections Officers.  Both are Marines, one was a SEAL.  Intelligent, competitive, dedicated, observant.

Ask around, you may discover your assumptions to be the opposite of reality.
And assumptions can get somebody hurt.

B)  Military recruits from inner-city slums

Happens daily.  Pigment is no guarantee of inbred stupidity or ineffectiveness, however, it is a guarantee of tribal acceptance.

Anybody not in the tribe is prey:

If you are alone, they are five.

If you are five, they are a faceless two hundred in a spontaneous leaderless non-thinking swarm . . . they act, then disperse into nothingness.

Similar to recruits from prison, these folks are effective at violence and intimidation.
Just do not expect complex thought processes resulting in traditional long-term ‘White Collar’ crimes.
Complex planning is not required for crimes of opportunity.

C)  These A and B elements are not exclusive.

Expect cross-overs.

Flyers can ruin your afternoon.

Large Marge is, of course, right in every respect.

The first point is that the general attitude is that all of the Left is represented by the soy-boy weakness we see from the Left’s poster children.  It is not.

I love being around people like this.  I know that I can easily take their wallets and buy myself something nice with their parent’s money.

Leftism is about power, not rule of law.  What does that sound like?  It sounds like a gang hierarchy.  In truth, that describes the rise of most Leftist groups as they head for absolute power.

Need an example?  Joseph Stalin was a bank robber.  He was a kidnapper.  He ran extortion and protection rackets.  Undoubtedly he was a murderer before the Soviet Revolution ever began and he could update his rookie numbers into the big leagues.

Stalin was a thug.  When the Revolution started, he assumed a military command position and rose to prominence because:  he was ruthless and brutal.

Of course, the mincing idiots in the Alberta Young Communist League won’t be anything but grease between underneath the tank treads of the real Leftists.  If they were all that we faced?  The Revolution would be over as soon as the microwaves ran out of power to heat up the chicken tendies the Alberta Communist Party uses for food.

If you work at the prison library, it does have its prose and cons.

No, if the real Revolution starts, we’ll see the same here.  And the Left will recruit heavily from prisons.  How do we know this?  They’ve already started.

• California is planning on releasing 63,000 violent felons back onto the street.
• It is now a bigger crime to defend yourself in Leftist states than to rape or murder.
• Places like San Francisco have made shoplifting under $950 a “free pass” crime where there isn’t any punishment.

As I mentioned in the last Weather Report – the Chauvin trial wasn’t about Chauvin’s guilt – it was a planned political theater telling cops that the last thing they can do is attempt to arrest criminals.  Violent crime increase is the result.

Communist revolutions since the French Revolution have had the effect of bringing not the brightest and the smartest and the most virtuous to power, but the most bloodthirsty.  Stalin himself initiated purges to every possible threat to his authority for just this reason.

So, Large Marge is right on this point.  The people that the Left will put against America won’t be the weak that they put forward.  What they put forward will be determined by ruthlessness.  Say what you want about Stalin, but he wasn’t dumb.  And he wasn’t a nice cuddly grandpa – he left his own son to die in a POW camp during World War II rather than accept the offered trade for him.

Remember, Joe Stalin was great at carbon reduction.

The leadership of the Left will also be determined by another factor:  loyalty to the Cause.  One of the hallmarks of Leftism is promotion to leadership positions of people who would never have been able to reach a leadership position under the old regime.  A prostitute as commissar determining who of the town’s leaders gets shot for perceived past grievances?  Why not?

In fact, it has always been the practice to find those who have failed in life to promote to power in Leftist countries.  The idea is that competence is less valuable than loyalty, and those who owe everything in life to their devotion to the party are bound to be the most fanatical.

To me, it looks like the FBI office smells like cheap aftershave and burnt hair.

By the logic of the Left, Lt. Colonel Lohmeier had to be removed.  He was competent, but he wasn’t loyal, and never would be.  Why do that when there are dozens of Majors that you can promote who have seen the penalty for not being loyal?

On the Right, there is a desire for more incompetence in the forces that may be sent against the American people for the first time in over 155 years, but we may not get that.  The Majors that follow Lohmeier will likely be nearly as competent, but a whole lot more loyal.  That’s the official army.  Likewise, they’ll probably be working along with shock troops as bloodthirsty as the Leftists that performed atrocities in Paris in 1794, Russia between 1917 and 1933, China between 1949 and 1970, and Cambodia in the 1970s.

So, yeah.  My attempt at humor was just that, an attempt.  Large Marge is right.

This is a warning to all American people who love justice and the rule of law:  never, ever, underestimate your opposition.

(And, thank you, Large Marge, for catching my grammar errors so I can fix ‘em!)

“I mean, people should be envying us, you know.” – This Is Spinal Tap

A friend of mine has a really jealous wife.  She went through his calendar and wanted to know who May was.

In the second year of my career, I didn’t get a bonus.  I had gotten one the previous year, but by my second year I had done some great stuff, and managed to save the company quite a few dollars – as in several hundred thousand dollars.  Since I had gotten one the first year for, and I quote, “managing not to cause my computer to short out by drooling on it”, I was expecting even more money.

Nope.  Zero.  Nada.  Nil.  Empty set.  Biden’s brain.

Several of us at the company were all hired at the same time, and we compared notes.  Almost no one had gotten a bonus.  One person in the group did get one, but he wisely didn’t advertise it.  I think it was because he had good hair.  He still does.

Pavlov’s hair was really soft because he conditioned it.

Of course, I got together with another co-worker who also didn’t get a bonus, and we had (really) a pity-party.  It may or may not have involved more alcohol than it should have, as well as us complaining about a company that provided us more than enough money for a comfortable living, great benefits, and fun work.  It was exactly like two kids complaining that their parents were meanies.

One thing I’ve tried to do in my life is to understand when I’m mad, why I’m mad.  Was I being an idiot, or did I have a legitimate grievance?

In this case, I thought long and hard about it, and came to this conclusion:  I was securely and completely an idiot.  A self-absorbed one at that.  And just like a German sausage that’s been left out of the fridge overnight, I came to realize:  spoiled brats are the wurst.

Why?

Watching Willy Wonka makes me crave chocolate.  Perhaps I should avoid Breaking Bad.

I was angry because I wasn’t recognized as a special snowflake and given a pat on the head.  It was selfish.  Beyond that, it was silly.

From that point onward, I decided to have the following attitudes:

• If the place I work gives me something extra above my base salary for free, I’m going to take it and smile. It was more than I had before.  If you always expect zero, you’re rarely disappointed.
• If the place I work doesn’t give me something extra? Smile anyway.  Life is what it is, and being mad only upsets me, reduces my performance at work, and makes it less likely I’ll get something extra.
• Don’t worry at all about what someone else gets. It doesn’t matter.  At all.

Now, there is an argument about “fairness” but I’ve noted that fairness is entirely in the eye of the beholder.  It’s subjective, especially in an environment where raises and bonuses are based not as participation trophies, but as an actual reward for performance.

Yeah, her ears stick out and she has a list of previous boyfriends tattooed on her back.

In reality, every second I’ve worried about someone else’s situation is a second of my life that was as wasted as Kamala Harris sounds whenever she talks.  In fact, I’ve trained myself to not feel upset.  An example:  when I was in Texas, driving my (bought used) four-door mutant-ninja-turtle-green Taurus® and I saw a $120,000 Mercedes™ pull up alongside at a stop sign, I’d think:

• Nice car. Bet they haven’t paid it off.  I recall reading that something like 70% of people who own a Mercedes© bought them with a loan.  I assure you I owned my Taurus© free and clear.
• Okay, if they have paid their Mercedes® off, my Taurus™ was still far cheaper to insure.

I didn’t create these little mind games to elevate myself above them; that would be monstrous.  No, I created them to kill any momentary envy I might have.  I’ve been doing this for years now.  It’s almost second nature.

How has it worked?

World hunger and Mercedes® have a lot in common.  Princess Diana couldn’t stop either.

It’s worked really well.  Now, when I see successful people I don’t envy them a bit.  I try to learn more about them and how they got successful.  Success isn’t about a competition against other people, success is the result of being the best that I can be.  If I’m wallowing in self-pity or envy then there’s no way I can be the best that I can be, because I’d be spending too much time at Leftist protest marches.

I know that some groups advocate that “whatever you feel is natural, and you should totally go with it, dude.”  And that’s utter nonsense.  In most (not all – grief at the loss of a loved one comes to mind) cases I feel what I choose to feel.  That’s right.  I don’t have to feel whatever pops up into my brain.

I am responsible for my attitude.  I am responsible for how I feel.  These are not some alien being inhabiting my brain.  These are my choices.

I can feel envy.  I can feel self-pity.  And if I choose those feelings?  I’ll always, always be miserable.

Or I can reject those feelings, and feel pretty good about life.

Does that mean that I reject reality?

Certainly not.  But I have no idea about the context of most people’s lives.  To judge someone on a bonus, or a car?  Nope – it doesn’t make sense.

I judge people rationally.  By the size of their earlobes.

I spilled coffee on my keyboard.  Now there’s no escape.

And one bonus I got later was stock.  My boss apologized because they had authorized a certain number of shares, and the share price had gone down to $2 at the time he gave them to me.  It wasn’t a lot of money.

I said, “thank you,” and really meant it.

I later sold the stock at $40.

See?  Start with thankful.  Good things will follow, except for the hair.

I do miss that.