Category: Uncategorized

“It’s my pot pie!” – South Park

After you’ve killed the last vampire, I guess it’s you’ve got the final Count down.

5. Those who have an opposing ideology are considered evil.
6. People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology.  Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
7. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
8. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures.  Just in case.

As tempted as I am to move the clock because of the party-line impeachment inquiry vote, I’m going to hold at Stage 7 this month.  A more formal set of structure needs to be in place to get to Stage 8.

The French Civil War lasted a very long time.  Those guys just couldn’t win.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Violence and Censorship Update – Civil War II Goes Mainstream –– Updated Civil War II Index – Starvation (via Yer Ol’ Woodpile Report) – Links

Welcome to Issue Six 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 II, on the first Monday of every month.  Issue One is here (LINK), Issue Two is here (LINK), Issue Three is here (LINK), Issue Four is here (LINK) and Issue Five is here (LINK).

Violence and Censorship Update

Just once I’d like to come back and report that things were looking good for censorship, that, hey, life is getting better.  October 2019 was not that month.  In October, Twitter® made the announcement that they were not going to accept advertisements from political candidates anymore.  That’s good.  Last election I voted based on yard signs.  I think I voted for my realtor.

That sounds fairly even-handed.  But Twitter© engages in soft censorship as well, limited the reach of many tweets, most of them on the Right.  If asked, I’m sure the Twitter© would indicate, innocently, that “it was the algorithm” that was responsible.

That’s a pretty little lie fancy way of saying, “we don’t like your speech so we’re going to tune the computers to allow less of it.”

Also deleted this month was Red Ice, a 330,000 subscriber channel on YouTube®.  Since that was a main source of income (via sales) it hits the creators economically.  Paypal® banned “street artist” Sabo.  They’re hanging on to his money for six months They paid him after the bad publicity (LINK).  In the article, they have a link to a poster he was selling on (Regr)Etsy™?  Funny, not available on (Regr)Etsy© anymore.  It’s almost like he’s . . . censored.

Do not, for an instant, think that payment sites, video sites, and social media sites are anything but Leftist sites.  If you are on the Right, they want you to be silent.  If you won’t shut up, what condition do you think they want you in?

I love this video – it shows the real way that censorship works – when the ideas are censored, your mind replaces the censored material with something that was likely more exciting than the original material.  Censorship will backfire.  I too, love to BLEEP all day.

Civil War II Goes Mainstream

I heard once upon a time that couples who don’t divorce, don’t talk about divorce.  It’s as if the idea of the divorce wasn’t even allowed to enter the room.  The logic, I suppose, is that once you talk about divorce, it becomes one step closer to being real.  In that way, a divorce in New Mexico, a tornado in Oklahoma, and a civil war in the United States all have something in common – someone is losing a trailer home.

On more than one occasion this month Drudge® (yes, I know) has featured stories on the United States being near the outbreak of a Civil War.  Most of the articles really didn’t read the study; in it, it asked, on a scale of 1=peace and 10=war, where are we in the United States.  This is exactly the scale I developed in Issue One of the Weather Report.  I have us pegged at a 7.  So does the average respondent in the linked (LINK) survey.  I don’t know any social science jokes – I took chemistry instead.  And my chemistry jokes never got a reaction.

So, yeah.  7 out of 10 on the Civil War scale.  It’s not just you.  It’s not just me.  This poll shows that everyone feels we’re headed this way, and most people feel we’re about the same distance from crossing into chaos.  I hope it’s not chaotic like the Mexican Civil War where they ended up fighting Juan-on-Juan.

This month we are one year out from the 2020 presidential election.  I think if the Democrats had any confidence in one of their candidates beating Trump, there would be no official impeachment inquiry in the House – this is an emergency effort.  If you go back and read my previous posts, I was pretty skeptical that we’d see impeachment proceedings in 2019/2020.  But here we are, so take all of my predictions with a grain of salt.  There are several outcomes we can review at this point:

Senate Clears Trump, Trump Wins:  Probably the most likely scenario as of this writing, and also the most amusing.

Outcome:  I can foresee that one way where we tiptoe through this crisis without collapse is that Trump wins and somehow avoids the twin specters of public Balkanization (Left and Right) and economic downfall.  More likely?  Four more years of divided government, where Trump is thwarted at every turn by activist judges that hate (certain) laws being enforced with increasing deficit spending.  Expect increasing street violence.  Regardless:  Trump will be the Last President (Trump: The Last President?).

Senate Clears Trump, Trump Loses:  The second most likely scenario, although in this case I simply cannot see a Democratic candidate that won’t whither under the Twitter®fied gaze of Trump.  However, Silicon Valley® is doing everything it can to pull all of the oxygen it can away from Trump – it has deleted account after account of followers on the Right for comments that followers on the Left routinely get away with.

Outcome:  This emboldens the Left.  They think they have already won.  I would anticipate an attempt to immediately erase everything Trump did, up to and including stacking the Supreme Court.  Attempting to push too far, too fast tips the economy.  Things get spicy, quickly.

Elizabeth Warren would lose the election to a drawer full of socks.  I think she can taste defeat.

Senate Convicts Trump, Democrat Win in 2020:  The third most likely scenario.  Which democrat?  Elizabeth Warren?  Creepy Joe?

Outcome:  This also emboldens the Left, perhaps even more than Trump being acquitted.  In this they would have their dream of the last three years come true.  The Democratic party is already split, between the Legacy Left (think Biden, Pelosi) and the True Left (think AOC and the Teen Girl Squad).  This puts the True Left into control.  The True Left likes what’s going on in Venezuela and Cuba.  Gotta break a few eggs to get to the Worker’s Paradise, right comrade?

Senate Convicts Trump, Republican Win in 2020:  The least likely scenario of the four, and also the weirdest of the four.

Outcome:  The Republicans would be in disarray after a conviction.  In fact, I think in more ways than one, Trump has ripped apart the Republican party from within and exposed people like Mittens Romney as the “me too, but let’s wait a year” wing of the Democratic party.  I’d be surprised if Mittens isn’t writing articles titled, “The Conservative Case for Redistribution of the Means of Production to the Proletariat,” and, “Transgender Surgery for Minors – A True Conservative Value.”  The Left would be even more outraged that yet another election was stolen, and would push back even harder.

Are there other scenarios?  Sure – we are in a time where people think we’re 70% of the way to Civil War.  That could lead to things normally reserved for Third World countries where the President-for-life wears a fancy uniform with lots of medals.  Coups.  Military juntas.  Trump calling out tanks in the streets.  A ninth season of Game of Thrones.

Updated Civil War II Index

I’ve been teasing graphs for two months – here they are, with full bikini treatment.

Violence:

Up is bad.  Violence is up overall during the year.  I would have expected that it would have peaked in the summer, but, no.  It’s staying high.  I expect real riots in June and July of 2020.  Potentially there will be riots at both national conventions – the Republicans in North Carolina, the Democrats in Wisconsin.  I expect that the Republican National Convention in 2028 will be held in a Ramada Inn® in northwestern Montana.  The Democrats?  Probably a reinforced bunker in an undisclosed location.

Political Instability:

Up is bad.  Surprisingly, down a little from September, but still quite high.  Actual action on impeachment will increase this, especially if resolve fails in the Senate.

Economic:

Down is bad.  Weird things are going on in the economy.  Interest rates in many countries are negative(!), yet mortgage rates went up last month.  High interest rates in mortgages will lead to housing price declines.  And the last time that happened . . . .

Illegal Aliens:

Down is good, since (in theory) ICE is catching fewer aliens because there are fewer people trying to get in.  Trebuchets would get that number to zero in an afternoon.

Starvation (via Yer Ol’ Woodpile Report)

“As in all war, food would be weaponized in a Civil War II. We don’t have to go back to antiquity for examples, more recent events provide a long list . . . .”

Remus talks about this in issue 600 (LINK) and issue 601 (LINK) of Yer Ol’ Woodpile Report.  These would be good to read and share with friends.

History and cold calculation suggest food would be a weapon in a Civil War II, one of many, but of prime importance long term. Civil wars have long gestations, go kinetic suddenly and get complicated in a hurry. We have no firm knowledge what would set it off, who would be actively involved or how it would end. But the outlines are repeated well enough to guide our preparations.

The ruling class already treats middle America as this century’s Untermensch. Nothing is off the table in a civil war. Seizing the nation’s food would be an obvious move. Expect them to deploy troops to secure big ag and the necessary transportation facilities, destroy anyone who got in their way and terrorize potential troublemakers. But there’s a limit to even the deep state’s resources. Prudent survivalists in the far hills wouldn’t warrant their attention, they’d be more likely to trade shots with desperados than find themselves in a firefight with regular forces.

Food is the indispensable survival prep. At minimum this means a secure long-term stash of high calorie food sufficient to outlast the initial violence and privation without relying on resupply. Call it a year, maybe two.

The United States is one of the most spoiled blessed countries on Earth.  Calories here are cheap and abundant, and very few people in the United States have ever felt real hunger at all.  Starvation is such a non-problem that there is no statistics for people in the United States who have died of starvation.  The biggest complaints is that people live in “food deserts” where the only things they can get are processed foods, which make them fat.  More like “food desserts” than food deserts.

Are there hungry people in the United States?  Certainly.  Are there many starving people?  Certainly not.  Obesity in children is a far bigger problem.  Oops.  Was that insensitive?  Larger problem?

Beefcake!

Hunger is a potent weapon.  Food is, by any historical calculation, amazingly cheap now.  Stocking up 3,000 calories per day for a person for a year could be done for $500 – if you really like rice.  Flour is cheaper – $250 or so.  For a year.  It’s not a lot of variety, but it’s way better than starving.  Here’s a great website that breaks down food on the basis of how many calories you can buy for a dollar (LINK).  How much would you like to have if the trucks stopped coming to the local store?

Check out The Bison Prepper (LINK) for ideas on frugal prepping when dollars matter.  Time might be short.

Links

As always, please feel free to send me links or leave them in the comments!

Glenda on Globalism.

Adam on Multiculturalism.

A book suggestion from Montefrio at The Burning Platform.

From Mary Christine at The Burning Platform:  Frank and Fern.

From Vote Harder at The Burning Platform – 500 survival links.

A video from Mark at The Burning Platform.

An article from Mark at The Burning Platform on Lenin.

From Ricky:

Feels Like Civil War

America’s Domestic Viet Cong

Permanent Coup

“To a New Yorker like you, a Hero is some type of weird sandwich, not some nut who takes on three Tigers.” – Kelly’s Heroes

And the phasers won’t be set on “hug”.

I was surrounded.  There were four of them.  They were younger than me, and one of them looked faster.  Maybe.  But I still had the upper hand.

I knew their weaknesses.

The reason I knew my foes so well?  They were my kids:  The Boy, Pugsley, and Alia S., and backing them up was Wee, my grandson.

I’ll have to admit, it was fun.  There was lighthearted bantering all around, like when Alia mentioned to Pugsley that he should beware of stray currents, since he was grounded all the time.  Half of the comments were digs at me and my parenting style over the years – tales of early mornings, tales of me saying “it’s not good enough” and tales of me, in general, giving them a task and letting them figure out how to do it despite them building up Chernobyl-like levels of frustration.  Yup.  I’ve seen each of them melt down.

I enjoyed every second.  I enjoyed even more looking at them, and seeing that each one of them was highly competent in their own way.  I felt proud.

Much later, Alia S. went off to bed while several of us were still up.  Most notably, Wee was up.  Wee, being small, wanted to watch Spiderman©:  Into The Spider-Verse™.  I haven’t seen it, though I’ve heard it’s good.  In the way of the grade school set, Wee wanted to watch it for the second or third time…that day.

The great thing about being Grandpa is that they’re not your kids.  I gave him a bowl of ice cream and looked for a movie that I wanted him remember watching with Grandpa Wilder for the first time.  Star Trek®:  Wrath of Khan showed up on the suggestion list.  It had been years since I saw that movie.  My bet was that it was perfect for a “Saturday night at Grandpa’s” movie.

And at Christmas?  Why not the Wreath of Khan?

It was a perfect movie for Saturday night.  It was also stunningly free of the Leftist social messages that every movie seems to be pushing in 2019.  The Wrath of Khan was simply an attempt to make a good movie that engages the audience, where characters learn and grow, and where the good guy (Kirk™) is really a good guy.  The bad guy?  Yeah, he’s really bad, and it’s established quickly.  Khan® puts tiny mind-control armadillos into Chekov® and Captain Redshirt™ and laughs at their agony.

Khan™ really is a bad guy.

And the good guy displays virtue, and wins in the end.  Is the victory at a cost?  Certainly, but Kirk© knows that, and his character changes as a result of that cost.  I was stunned at how much better that movie was than most movies being put out today.

After finishing Wrath of Khan©, Netflix™ suggested Lord of the Rings:  The Two Towers®.  The Two Towers™ was always my favorite book in the Lord of the Rings® trilogy.  When I was a kid growing up, the middle school library didn’t have The Fellowship of the Ring™, so I picked up the worn paperback copy of The Two Towers®.  It was amazing.

It started in the middle of the action – no preamble, no explanation, and slowly I pieced together what the characters were and what their relationship was to each other.  When I finally got a copy of The Fellowship of the Ring©, I was a little bit disappointed.  It was good, but not really necessary for the story.

Wee was sleepy, and I hadn’t seen a three hour movie in a while, so I clicked on The Two Towers®.  I had watched it when it first came out, and I was wondering if I’d enjoy it.  I wasn’t disappointed.

I won’t get into the plot deeply, because Tolkien wrote backstories for his characters running for thousands of years.  But there is one sequence that I wanted to mention.  The king of Gondor had been slowly seduced (partially by magic) by his advisor, who was named Gríma Wormtongue.  With a name like that, how did the king not see betrayal coming?  Rule 2:  Never take a resume from a person named Wormtongue.  What’s Rule 1?  Never trust anyone who likes the band Flock of Sméagols.

Remember, Rohan is really a nation of immigrants.

Anyhow, due to his condition, the king wasn’t cognizant of his son dying, and that his kingdom was being overrun.  Who was overrunning the kingdom?  Orcs, under control of the bad guy, and humans that had been convinced that Rohan really belonged to them.

At the last minute, Gandalf the Just-In-Time shows up and wakes up the king from the magical spell possession (edit by JW, see comments), and kicks Wormtongue out of Rohan.  As the king prepares to defend his people, surrounded by an army of ten thousand, he says:

Where is the horse and the rider?  Where is the horn that was blowing?  They have passed like rain on the mountains, like wind in the meadow.  The days have gone down in the west, behind the hills, into shadow.

How did it come to this?

The Mrs. keeps muttering words like, “Hobbits”, and “Gandalf” and “Mordor” while she’s dreaming.  She keeps Tolkien in her sleep.

The line, “How did it come to this?” was the kicker.  A realization that he and his entire nation, their culture, their way of life, were in danger of being destroyed and this single battle was all that was between them and all they had ever known being snuffed out forever.

Not an original – found at “Know Your Meme”.

The Two Towers is certainly not a movie that could be made today.  It’s not the violence – there are many movies that are more violent that have been made.  It’s simple:  the subject matter is far too controversial.  Groups of good men fighting against evil, standing fast, holding the line.  Tolkien warned against using his stories as allegory for the modern world, but it’s difficult not to see parallels.

The Mrs. wasn’t there to watch the movies, but she had seen them before.  When I mentioned they were good in a way that today’s movies aren’t, she said, “Good guys are good guys because of what they do, not the color of their skin, their gender identity, or who they choose to sleep with.  They are good guys because of their actions, not the boxes they check.”

The Mrs. and I had discussed Friday’s post (How One Texas Court Case Defines The Future For A Seven Year Old . . . and The United States), and she had picked one line that I had discussed prior to writing it, “11 out of 12 jurors in the Lone Star state voted that a seven year old boy should be allowed to become a girl, is a sign not that society is collapsing, it’s a sign that society has collapsed.”

“That was the part I was wanting to hear about,” The Mrs. said.  “Why has society collapsed? Why did the jury vote that way?  Were they afraid?  Or, worse yet, did they actually believe that was an appropriate way to treat a seven-year-old boy?”

Collapse Cat is never wrong.  If only I would have sold that Sears® stock like he told me to . . .

I think it’s both.  In my county, Trump received nearly 90% of the vote.  But I noticed something strange – there were few signs supporting him in front lawns.  I had nine signs, as I recall.  Why nine?  Because I didn’t have ten.  Even in a deeply Right part of the country, there is some hesitation to show that allegiance in public.  Showing Leftist views?  Not a problem, even here in Modern Mayberry – in pride day everything is as rainbow as Lucky Charms®.

I think people are afraid to push back against a society where the media does everything it can to make people on the Right think they are alone, that they are a small number, weak, divided.  That’s not by accident.  Again, 90% of the county voted for Trump, but I saw only a few dozen Trump signs.  I did see one Obama/Biden sign even though they weren’t running, but I think those people just wanted to advertise they were gun free because they wanted Allstate® to buy them a new couch.

Sort of like this.  H/T Kenny

The deeper rot is the change in public opinion.  How many jurors really felt that it was a good idea to let a seven-year-old make choices like that?  I cannot think of a fact that would make me agree to that disposition.  We live in a country where, too often, parents leave teaching to the schools, especially on the crucial issue of values.

Today we are taught in our schools and in popular culture to value everything and everyone.  There are no bad guys, just misunderstood people.  9/11 wasn’t the fault of the people who brought the towers down, it was the fault of the United States.

That’s clearly wrong.  There are bad guys.  There is evil in this world.

And there is good.  I’ve seen it in the eyes of my children this weekend, when they roasted me in the basement.  Perhaps that really is the answer – have children, raise them well, and watch as your children come back to see you.

And make fun of you.  But that’s okay.  I loved every second of it.

“It means we’ll find allies on every side. Look at them, the poor wretches are just waiting for someone to lead them in revolt.” – Flash Gordon

When I was a bartender a ghost of a dog with a missing tail showed up after we closed.  I had to kick him out.  We didn’t re-tail spirits after hours.

From Issue Number One:

5. Those who have an opposing ideology are considered evil.
6. People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology.  Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
7. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
8. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures.  Just in case.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Violence and Censorship Update – Response to Z-Man –– Updated Civil War II Index – John Mark/Ramzpaul Interview – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to Issue Four of the Civil War II Weather Report.  These posts are a bit different than the other material at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War II, on the first Monday of every month.  Issue One is here (Civil War II Weather Report: Spicy Time Coming), Issue Two is here (Civil War Weather Report #2, Censorship, Stalin, and a Bunch of Links), Issue Three is here (Civil War Weather Report #3: Violence, China, and Lots of Links), and Issue Four is here (Civil War II Weather Report, Issue 4 – Violence, Censorship, and Beach Volleyball).

Violence and Censorship Update

Censorship and violence rhyme.  Okay, maybe they only rhyme in Urdu, and then only if you’ve been drinking, but when you get one, you generally get the other.  And now?  Ideas are being regularly censored.  Let’s look at one tiny example that I came up with off the top of my head:

I went to Google™ and typed in “google changing votes” and nine of the top ten results were all how that was a “false,” “bogus,” and “wrong” theory based on “Trump Cranking the Crazy to 11.”

Wow.  Certainly Google® is unbiased, right?  Well, just to check, I went to Bing©.  Yeah, I know that Bing™ is the ugly step-puppy of search engines, but what does it say when I type in “google changing votes”?  “Google and Big Tech bias hurts democracy.”  “How Google Could Rig the 2016 Election.”

My friend?  Hell, I’m not even sure that Zuckerberg is human.

Huh.  It’s almost like there’s a bias.  Censorship consists not only of stopping publishing, but in 2019, censorship includes showing people only the facts and ideas that are “safe” – you don’t have to cut off access to the content unless it’s really popular and spreading.  All you have to do is bury the content in the irrelevant, and stamp down on it so it never has the chance to become popular.

Response to Z-Man

There is a blogger (quite a bit more popular than yours truly) known as the Z-Man, who operates the Z-Blog.  He posts frequently, and posts on a variety of interesting content.  If you haven’t visited, I’d suggest you give him a try – he has unique views on a lot of subjects.  I’ll warn you:  he’s not as funny as I am, but then again who is?  Okay.  Steve Martin.  And Dave Berry.  And . . . I want to stop playing this game.

On September 18, the Z-Man published a post titled “Thoughts on Civil War.”  It’s here (LINK).  For a TL;DR, I’ll throw in his concluding paragraph:

When you start to puzzle through it, the probability of an old fashioned civil war is close to zero, while armed rebellion is in the single digits. Things will have to change a lot for the conditions to be right. On the other hand, a new type of rebellion, one suited for the age and the sorts of people unhappy with the system, is increasingly likely. Middle-class mom giving company passwords to rebel hackers is a likely scenario. The revolution of the future will be low-grade and mostly non-violent.

See?  Not a single joke in there.  I’m definitely funnier.

On the Right, we tend to quibble a bit about definitions of things.  One common one is what a modern civil war in the United States will look like.  It’s unlikely to involve cannon and massed men and horses unless the ghost of Confederate Major General James Ewell Brown Stuart picked a fight with the ghost of his father-in-law, Union Major General Philip St. George Cooke over who lost the remote and it spilled back over into Virginia again.

And you thought Thanksgiving at your house was tense.

Will there be armed conflict?  Earlier on in the post, Z-Man makes the points that there is no need for the Left to revolt.  They already own the institutions, so why would the Left revolt?  The biggest threat, he felt, was from white suburban dudes.  Those were precisely the people who are kept in debt, and absent a significant economic dislocation, they wouldn’t risk anything in today’s world.

That’s not really the case.  At the Bundy Ranch hundreds of people showed up to stop the Bureau of Land Management from taking Bundy’s cattle.  Was this something I loaded up the Wildermobile® and took the streets to help with?  Nope.

In retrospect we should not be surprised when things we make collapse.  Docks for instance, but they mainly fail due to pier pressure.

Hundreds of people did, however.  With rifles.  As I looked at the pictures, I was surprised to see not only young men, but women, too.  And even more so, there were older men.  I’d expect that some of the men in camo had never been in the service, but I’d expect that many were.  The fact that Bundy was able to round up this many people to quite literally put their lives on the line for his cattle was surprising to me.

What surprised me the most was the number of old dudes with white hair out there.  While it wasn’t “nothing but old guys” there were plenty of people who were taking social security but were slinging an AR or a six gun and weren’t afraid to die.  I’m sure that they’re happy they didn’t die because none of them were married to my ex-wife, but they had seen how the Federal Government dealt with women and children at Waco.  They weren’t dumb.  They knew what the stakes were.  And they still stood there in an act of open rebellion against the government – a position the Left would call treason, since the Left views people as serving government, hence rebellion against government is treason.  The Right views the government as serving people, and open warfare against the will of the people is treason.

Which explains why we’re in our current mess.

I absolutely think that Z-Man is right, and we’ll see people throwing “sand in the gears” at various places when the rebels get Mom’s password.  Last year at this time I was skeptical – an active Civil War II represented a stage that was important enough to talk about, yet such a departure from the past it seemed unlikely that we would we see it.  We been stable for a long time as a country.

I’m still not certain that we will see a Civil War, but as I trace the developments of the last year I have become convinced that, while not inevitable, Civil War II is likely, and likely to be messy and filled with atrocity.  I think that it’s likely enough that I decided to publish this monthly update, which provides a way for me to view over time the ratcheting up of anger in the country.

It’s not been pretty – escalating violence, and escalating rhetoric.  Don’t count on your neighbor saving you, however.  And don’t count on pulling your pocket copy of the Constitution stopping the Leftists like a crucifix to a vampire when they show up at 3AM to take your guns.  Heck, your pocket copy of the Constitution won’t even work at 2PM when they show up at your work to take you into custody after a few of the 3AM gun collection parties go poorly.  As is commonly quoted at Western Rifle Shooters Association (LINK), “Your Constitution won’t save you.”

I emailed a copy of the Constitution to a friend.  I was hoping the NSA would finally read it.

As we have seen from previous Leftist Singularities (Robespierre, Stalin, Mao, Mangos and A Future That Must Not Be), once a Leftist movement is started, the killing only ends when a leader, (Stalin or Mao, for instance) kill everyone to the left of them.  The Right has seen this, the Right understands this.

As I’ve stated since the start of the Weather Reports, the next step is establishing or taking over a governing structure.  While that may take several years, from what I’ve seen it’s coming.  When Federal power is overturned by a governmental structure, who overturns it?  Hint:  think marijuana.

Updated Civil War II Index

Economic:  +3.84 this month, +4.43 last month.  Plus is good.  Unemployment is slightly down – interest rates were slightly down, and the Dow was only slightly down.  I expect that October will be ugly in the markets, which will drag this down.  But I’ve been wrong before.

Political Instability:  -13% last month, -50% this month.  Boy, did I blow this prediction.  Here was my comment last month.  “As we get closer to the election, I would anticipate that political instability will continue to decrease as focus goes on to the candidates and away from tearing down the systems.”  Oops.  Every metric took a nosedive this month.  Every.  Single.  One.  A cynic would say that the Democrats can’t field a candidate that could beat Trump so they decided that they wanted to stage a coup in the open.

Interest in Violence:  +13% this month, compared to +8% last month.  This is a smaller increase than I expected.  A related metric showed a big peak after El Paso, dropping nearly immediately.

Illegal Aliens:  Down 28% last month to 64,000 (month over month).  That sounds great, but it’s still 50% higher than last year.  Maybe we need snakes and alligators?

Pretend I made a graph and this is it.

John Mark/RamZPaul Interview

John Mark made an appearance in the second edition of the Weather Report.  There was some commentary that his video was, umm, a tad unrealistic.  But he is thinking about the problems that we’re facing.  RamZPaul is like Cher or Meatloaf in that he’s a singer has one name.  He’s a pretty constant “vlogger” who produces frequent and fairly short six to ten minute videos.  But on the weekend?  Pull out the stops.  He has a program called “Happy Homelands” where he interviews people.  Recently, he had John Mark on.  The video is above.

The video clocks in at two hours, and is fairly interesting, although if you’re a constant reader of sites like mine, there will be a lot of overlap.  Rather than give a review, I thought I’d just share some of the ideas that I found interesting that were in the video or were inspired by the video.  Note – this video will disappear off of YouTube® after a while – RamZPaul will be pulling it down after a while because he won’t keep his content up too long – YouTube™ appears to periodically purge creators for videos they created years in the past even if those videos met the Terms of Service®.  Yup.  1984 was supposed to be a novel, not be part of the Google© Employee Handbook.

• Next step is creating a governance structure for the Right.   Governors?
• Focus of the Left is currently an Internet ban plus hate and idea police. They’ve won – they want to crack down.
• The problem with the Right is people wait for a permission slip to revolt – they want for the other guy to swing first, even when they are surrounded and outnumbered.
• Trump really surprised the Left. They thought they had finished history – that they would rule forever after Obama.  Trump proved the Silent Right and Libertarian Center existed.
• The Right has nowhere else to run to. The United States is it.  We can’t retreat.  If we lose the United States, it’s effectively over.
• Does John Mark take off his helmet when he showers?
• The Left has replaced class communism with race and gender communism.
• Related: the only commonality of race and gender based communists is they hate white capitalist guys more than they hate each other.  If the Left gets power, a strongman will be required.  Why?  I read an article today where a gay person was complaining that a bisexual shouldn’t be allowed in LGBTQWERTY+ “safe spaces” if they were currently in a heterosexual relationship.  Yeah, you can’t make this up.  The Constitution won’t save them either if American Lenin ever gets put in charge.

Pop Wilder says nobody shot at him during the war, but he was with people that were being shot at.  No, really, that’s what he told me, which is probably the ultimate Dad Joke.

If you’ve got a spare few hours and are interested in the topic, give the video a look.  Like with any link, the only person I agree with 100% . . . is me.  And sometimes I don’t even agree with me.  So there.

Links

Here are the links – please leave your nominations for next month in the comments below or toss me an email if you’re shy:

https://newrepublic.com/article/140948/bluexit-blue-states-exit-trump-red-america

From Tom Chittum (yes, that Tom Chittum) who notes – “watch the video” – it’s only five minutes, but if you thought I was pessimistic, wait until you see what the Pentagon thinks:

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-21/american-apocalypse-governments-plot-destabilize-nation-working

From Ricky:

Hedgeless Horseman at Zero Hedge is convinced there will be another Civil War.  Here is his latest missive dated today on the topic.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-09-17/civil-war-2-electric-boogaloo-deplorables-vs-socialists

From last spring:

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-22/pre-reading-war-america

I have found his various articles over the years about “introduction to rifle ownership” to be very interesting.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-30/well-regulated-militia-being-necessary-security-free-state

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-18/political-power-grows-out-barrel-gun-mao-tse-tung

Also from Ricky, variations on a theme:

https://www.revealnews.org/article/inside-hate-groups-on-facebook-police-officers-trade-racist-memes-conspiracy-theories-and-islamophobia/

https://www.revealnews.org/article/the-american-militia-movement-a-breeding-ground-for-hate-is-pulling-in-cops-on-facebook/

https://www.revealnews.org/article/american-cops-have-openly-engaged-in-islamophobia-on-facebook-with-no-penalties/

 

And also from Ricky:

http://www.unz.com/chopkins/trumpenstein-must-be-destroyed/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/09/30/after-trump-invokes-civil-war-people-twitter-mockingly-rush-sign-up/

https://www.foxnews.com/media/rush-limbaugh-america-is-in-the-middle-of-a-cold-civil-war

https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/civil-war-on/

“So you want to be real artists?  It’s okay, I can sell that angle.  But you two have to go all the way.  One of you has to lose an ear.” – Bob’s Burgers

If you’re a guy and you order White Claw® it comes with a sippy cup and Crayons™.

Names given to concepts in science are influenced by the time and place the names were given – for instance, instead of having properly dry and scientific names like the properties of an electron, the subatomic particle “quark” has flavors, which include terms like “strange” and “charmed.”  Those silly physicists from the 1960’s!  Everyone knows that flavor is just another word for emotion, which explains why I’ve been feeling ketchup all day.  I guess that works.  Hopefully we won’t let the hipsters in California even read about particle physics – soon enough they’ll want their bread to be gluon-free.

Isaac Newton died a virgin.  In honor of that, whenever I see a physicist I beat them up, take their money, and buy myself something nice.

A particularly flourishing time in science was the Victorian Era.  I think it was because people were rich and bored and had servants to do most everything.  It was about that time that real study in geology started.  I think that was because in England, sex had to be scheduled for every alternate Thursday, so it gave Victorian men a LOT of extra energy to work off by staring at rocks.  Me?  I think sex is like bicycling.  It’s all skimpy outfits, sweating, legs pumping, the uncomfortable silver helmet, my neighbors watching and sadly shaking their heads, and the police telling me to stop doing it on the sidewalk.

One concept I learned about in geology was the “angle of repose.”  With a name like that, it was certainly coined by some weak-jawed Victorian Era guy named something like “Earl of Pancake-Mountbatten de Saxe-Coburg” while looking at a pile of sand and thinking longingly about his “bicycling trip” scheduled for next Thursday, barring any inclement headaches.  But the concept of angle of repose was simple enough that even my drowsy freshman self quickly understood the concept while fighting to remain awake in Geology 101.  If you take something that’s granular, say sand, grain, gravel, or the ground bones of your enemies and put the grains in a pile, it will take form what you’re used to seeing – a pile.

Being within six feet of your wife in Victorian England was considered a public display of affection.

What our particular sex-starved Englishman noted was that the angle was, for a given material, always the same.  Dry sand has an angle of repose of about 34°.  Other materials have larger angles.  Flour has an angle as high as 45°, even larger in Germany.  Why?  The favorite game played in Germany requires a stiff flour.  The call the game “gluten tag.”

But dry sand never has a natural angle of 5°, and it never has an angle of 45°.  Can you get dry sand to go down to 5°?  Sure.  Shake it and it will flatten out.  But just pour it out and that natural angle will be there.

I remember reading as a kid that “nature has no straight lines,” which I dutifully nodded and agreed with until I took a look at the world around me – nature is filled with straight lines, and the slopes of the mountains around me were obvious rebuttals to that nonsense.  The angle of repose determines just how steep those slopes are.

But the really interesting part of the angle of repose (at least to me) is that it has real-world implications when it comes to things like, oh, avalanches.  You can imagine making a sand avalanche – drop sand slowly onto the top of the pile, grain by grain.  Each single grain will make the pile taller.  You can, by gently putting the sand down, exceed the angle of repose for a time.  The slope can become a little steeper than the magic angle.

What happens then?  One single grain of sand will hit the slope, and the internal friction of the pile won’t be able to hold the temporarily too-steep slope up anymore.  The result is inevitable:

An avalanche.  The slope collapses.

Avalanche humor – it’s snow joke.

Snow has an angle of repose, and slowly falling snow can, given wind and climate conditions, exceed the angle of repose.  For a while.  It was a constant joke on television when I was a kid that the absolute smallest noise in Idaho would make an avalanche happen in on a sitcom in Switzerland.  It’s not far off – an avalanche in snow or sand can happen because the energy stored in the slope above the angle of repose can be enormous.  The trigger to unleash that energy can be as small as a congressman’s conscience.

But only so much slope can be coaxed out of a pile of dry sand.  To really make the slope steep, you have to add in water.  I’m sure you’ve all seen sandcastles – the walls of the damp sand can even be vertical.  Through hard work and fighting to get the moisture content just right, amazing structures can be made.

Never accept a construction job in Egypt – they have a problem with pyramid schemes.

Our entire economy – strike that, our entire civilization is like that sand made into a pretty cool sand castle.  In our natural state, the Earth can carry about 4 million to 10 million people, or about as many who stopped liking Star Wars® last year.  That’s the maximum population the world can do with hunter-gatherers.  But, no, we decided we wanted beer, so we invented agriculture and built an entire civilization so we could have access to beer year-round (Beer, Technology, Beer, Tide Pods, Beer, Civilizational Stability, and Beer).

This one advance, agriculture, allowed civilization to start growing and soon enough the world could support 250 million people around 0 A.D.  Civilization and the discoveries that made it possible was a little bit of water added to the sand.  The slope could now be steeper – our sandcastle could now have walls.  Each individual discovery and great occurrence for society including the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, the invention of PEZ®, My Birth, and now the Information Age has made our sand castle ever more glorious.

I think it was Stephen Wright who said, “It’s a small world.  But I wouldn’t want to paint it.”

But we can look at our financial system as well.  Our innovations have allowed markets to form.  Certainly that allows the wealth in an expanding society to be allocated to best create growth.  The financial “innovation” has allowed the markets to reach the height where they are today – things like Rome, Britain, and Money: Why You Can’t Find Fine China after the Apocalypse, The Worst Economic Idea Since Socialism, Explained Using Bikini Girl Graphs, and Economic Bubbles, Knife Juggling Toddlers, and Sewer Clowns are the water holding up the sand castle as we build it ever higher – certainly steeper than markets alone would have allowed.

I’ll admit, I called the Market Top back in April (I think in a comment over at Lord Bison’s (LINK) place).  Oops.  The Dow is up 500 points since then.  So, yeah, I was wrong.  And I might be wrong about the upcoming difficulty I see with our sandcastle, and we might have set up our economy for everlasting prosperity, a growth that will last forever until we have a stunning galactic empire complete with thousands of bikini princesses, pantyhose, and White Claws® for everyone who wanted one.

But until then, I’ll keep looking up and seeing if I see sand starting to flake off the walls.

Originally, this was going to be a post solely about the economy – it’s Wednesday, so I try to hit economic stuff on Wednesday.  Instead, I got a bit philosophical and went further.  It’s an exercise in thinking about where we sit, and the deep future we face, which is a theme that runs through the blog.  I’ll have another one of these on Monday, so don’t forget to set your VCR to record.  Or you could hit the subscribe button up above to have these delivered every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 7:28AM Eastern (US) time.

“As you know, Bart, one day your permanent record will disqualify you from all but the hottest and noisiest jobs.” – The Simpsons

I have to remember that every time I talk to my wife, my conversation is being recorded for “training and quality” purposes.

In my younger days at school I actually heard teachers say, with great regularity, “That’s going to go on your permanent record.”

The teachers didn’t say that to me, of course.  I spent spare time in the classroom quietly reading the Bible.  Okay, that’s not true.  I was actually that kid in class that got away with everything.  But even though I wasn’t getting in trouble for things like taking blood samples in fifth grade for use in making slides for the class microscope (I got samples from about a dozen kids that all used the same needle).  And in kindergarten I think I spent more time in the principal’s office than in the classroom.

I actually deserved every minute I spent in the principal’s office.  Today?  I think they’d have tried to pump me so full of medications that my street value would have been about $6 million.

Nowadays they’d say I had ADD, but in reality I had a serious case of JAAD.  As in John’s An A____e Disorder.  Feel free to fill in the blank.  No points if you’re my ex-wife since she would claim she discovered this syndrome.

Even when I was fifth grade I knew that the “permanent records” threat was nonsense.  One thing that America used to be great at was losing records.  When I asked Pa Wilder how he did in high school, he just smiled and chuckled and said, “the school burned down, so those records are gone.”  He didn’t smell like gasoline, so I’m hoping he wasn’t the one who helped that fire along.

“Nice school you’ve got there.  Be a shame if my Permanent Record didn’t show all A’s.”

But even the courthouse in the county burned down while I was in elementary school.  I’m sure that they had some of the records stored elsewhere, because they were still able to charge property taxes.  But I assure you that some records were lost – this was a poor county, and if they were lucky they had microfilm stored offsite for property tax purposes.

The really, really nice thing about records was this:  they weren’t permanent.  Sure, we have cuneiform tablets from the time of the Sumerian emperor Sargon the Great dealing with taxes from Umalahook selling a goat to Brandon for a fraternity prank.  However, the great part about history is that most of it is forgotten.

Really, do you think that gouging the eyes out of a chocolate Easter bunny is grounds for a restraining order?  I’ll admit doing it with an ice pick was a little excessive.

There are gaps in history, where we don’t know the motivation of people, not popes, not kings, not Elon Musk.  The records for some years are so sparse that there’s actually one theory that 297 years were entirely made up and we’re actually living in the year 1722 (LINK).  And, no, I wouldn’t trade in your t-shirts and cargo pants for hose and a tricornered hat, yo.  The theory is that history was such a mess that, at some point, people just made up a bunch of years (between 614 A.D. and 911 A.D.).  I can see that all of Europe could have decided that it’s a much better idea to skip 300 some-odd years and go straight from lice and wooden mugs of grog to iPods™ and Pringles®.

“Early to bed, early to rise, is no way to get a blog post out on time, Wilder.” – Ben Franklin

Oh, sure, there are examples of records that are nearly permanent.  The Secret Vatican Archives (yes, they really call them that but it’s in Italian so it sounds fancier) have documents that date back to the 8^th century, although the 8^th century document is actually just a Post-It® note that Pope John VII (no relation) doodled pictures of cats on during a really long meeting when he was bored and ready for lunch and stupid Cardinal Vincenzo would not shut up about the lack of clean towels in the sauna.

Oh, my, what a difference one typo can make.

Forgetting is even, thankfully, enshrined in law.  The first time (that I can find) that the idea of statutes of limitations showed up was during, drumroll, the Roman era.  Statutes of limitations started out as simply the idea that, after a prescribed period of time, people can’t sue you for damages in civil court.  Added in English law in the 17^th century was the idea that even criminal cases couldn’t be brought after a certain time.

Why?  The logic was that after a certain time, evidence of the civil case or crimes couldn’t be reliably produced. This is a good thing.  The crime that you committed when you were 18 can’t hang over your head when you’re 48.  It’s done.  For most crimes, the statute of limitations has a lot of different durations based on the type of crime.  Most Federal felonies (in the United States) expire after five years, unless the crime is murder, terrorism resulting in murder, or anything Jeff Epstein ever did in which case there is no statute of limitations.  Which is also a good thing.  As an aside, I’m really shocked to hear that the jailers watching Epstein both committed suicide tomorrow.

But digital media has changed all of that – the courthouse or school burning down won’t destroy the D you got in high school algebra or the record of the DUI Mel Gibson was arrested for.  They’re backed up on multiple servers in California and Ohio.  Unless there’s an EMP, those records will last a long time in the United States.

“They can feel us up at the airport, but they will never take our freedom!  Oh, wait, I guess that’s totally taking away our freedom.”

Europe has put in place a law in 1995 establishing a “right to be forgotten.”  This law, more or less, says that if the information is no longer relevant, it should be removed from search engines.  Of course, publishing the truth is a zillion percent protected by the First Amendment, which is why people publishing books like the Anarchist Cookbook are legal.  They’re facts.  If you don’t commit a crime using those facts, you’ve done nothing wrong.

Likewise, if people in the United States get Google® results that show someone in Britain did something naughty in 1977, well, that person can’t complain since we seem to have written that pesky First Amendment as a direct result of people telling us what we can and cannot say.  Like a kindergarten-age John Wilder attempting to see how sharp a knife was on a classmate’s forearm, we Americans just don’t take direction very well.

I guess we’ll just have to live with that on our Permanent Record.

I guess I’ll just leave this here.

“I can promise you this will not silence your demons.  If you can’t control the violence, the violence controls you.” – Star Trek:  Voyager

I really didn’t expect to do this so soon – the clock moved closer to midnight.  Last month was 6.  Now we’re at a 7.  The scale is from the first issue (Civil War II Weather Report: Spicy Time Coming)

5. Those who have an opposing ideology are considered evil.
6. People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology.  Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
7. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
8. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures.  Just in case.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Violence Update – Forward Observer Video and Criticism – Logistics – Updated Civil War II Index – Who Benefits, Part II? – Chittum’s Book – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to Issue Three of the Civil War II Weather Report.  These posts are a bit different than the other posts here at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War II, on the first Monday of every month.  Issue One is here (Civil War II Weather Report: Spicy Time Coming) and Issue Two is here (Civil War Weather Report #2, Censorship, Stalin, and a Bunch of Links).

Please keep the comments, emails, and links coming in – they provide a way for all of us to get smarter, faster.  You can comment below, or send me an email at movingnorth@gmail.com.  If I get an email, I’ll assume you don’t want your name mentioned or to be directly quoted (except for links), and I’ll honor that unless you explicitly give permission to refer to you or to quote you.

Violence Update

Last month this was the Censorship Update, and even before the El Paso shooting I had selected violence the topic of this month.  I had this section written before the El Paso shooting this weekend and had to (obviously) re-write it.  Here’s what I had written:

Almost all of the violence started on the Left, and was perpetrated by the Left.  The biggest story was the beating of Andy Ngo, though there were multiple other attacks on display.  July and August are typically months where violence is running high – heat seems to make riots, though I’m not sure if that’s changed now that air conditioning is more prevalent.

The level of violence is rising.  I would follow Remus’ advice:

“Unless one side or the other sends death squads into my neighborhood, I shall observe my Most Excellent and Inviolable Rule One For Survival:  stay away from crowds.”

If you’re not (like me) waiting every Tuesday for the Woodpile Report® (LINK), shame on you.

Obviously, El Paso changes what I have to say.

El Paso is a narrative that will likely have legs in the media for months – this is the shooting the Left has been dreaming of – a shooter who isn’t gang related, a Person of Color, Moslem, or going after Republicans.  And the shooter wasn’t in Chicago where last weekend (7/29/19) 9 were killed and 39 were wounded in what is a more or less “normal” level of violence.  This shooter fulfills the Narrative of the Left in ways that previous shooters haven’t.

I had a discussion with several people about El Paso today.  They were less surprised than I was about the violence – they reminded me about all of the violence from the Left, including the shooter that tried to kill Republican congressmen and the now endemic violence against supporters of even the most mainstream members of the Right whenever they appear in Leftist strongholds.  From their perspective, this was a response – a predictable response to the pressure being placed on the Right.

Do I think the Manifesto is fake?  Probably not.  Do I think that this is a “false flag”?  Again, probably not.  I’ll leave room for both of those things.

What comes next?  That’s tough.  I’d expect more violence from the Left, both disorganized (isolated beatings – groups engaging in random interracial violence) and organized (Antifa®).  I don’t expect more (near term) from the Right, but I must make clear – I didn’t expect El Paso.

Will it escalate?  I spent several hours going through comments on primarily Leftist sites on the Internet today.  What I came away with was, more or less, that they feel entirely justified in increasing the level of violence and see no connection with their hospitalizing assaults and “chemical milk shakes” since they are morally justified.

The polarity increased this weekend.  And if this is the level of polarity and violence we have when the economy is “good” – beware.  A recession will lead levels of violence not seen in the United States since 1865.

Forward Observer Video and Criticism

Last month I presented and gave a critique of the John Mark video about Civil War II.  The primary focus of the Weather Report are the conditions that lead to war, not conduct of the war itself, but it seemed like a good idea to discuss the video – it was on topic, suggested by a reader, and had a huge number of hits.  The John Mark video presented what I thought was a too optimistic view of the outcome of Civil War II.

Aesop, (who you should be reading whenever he posts, or you’ll miss gems like this) and his monthly Ebola Update LINK) had some criticism of Mark’s video in the comments.  He included a link to Sam Culper’s Forward Observer series that was a response to John Mark.

I think Mr. Culper was just a wee bit angry when he started the videos.  The videos are very good, and if you have an interest in this subject, I suggest that you review them as well.  Mr. Culper knows his stuff.

One mild criticism is that he indicates that we won’t have a World War II-type war or a replay of Civil War I.  I think we can all agree that’s a given and he probably could have skipped that.  This will be far uglier and resemble the breakup of Yugoslavia or of the Beatles®.  It will be nasty, and I think Mr. Culper’s thought that the Right wouldn’t lay siege to Los Angeles or New York because it would wreck the financial system or disrupt the economy is not a concern that the Right will have.  If it gets to that point, it’s not war to take over an economy.  The Right won’t care.

In the third video, he mentions Sir John Glubb’s The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival, which I discussed back in ‘17 (End of Empires, PEZ, and Decadence).  Glubb’s observations remain relevant as the end of the American experiment comes closer and he’s right to bring him up.

Again, the Forward Observer videos are good.  Watch them – make your own conclusions.

The reason I don’t try to delve too far into the predictions of how the war will unfold is that will depend on the initial conditions.  As Culper frequently and appropriately notes in the video, predictions are hard.  As Yogi Berra specifies, “especially about the future.”

Wait until you hear about story hour.

But those initial conditions will end up determining both the course of the war, and the conclusion.  Beware:  Your opinion now will be (depending upon who wins) be held against you at the end.  In that case, it would be best for everyone if the Libertarians™ won, but I seem to note that they’re all off smoking weed and having deep conversations about Ayn Rand.

Updated Civil War II Index

Economic:  +10.42 last month, +1.78 this month.  Unemployment is slightly up – interest rates were slightly down, and the Dow was up.  If this is right, economic conditions are slowing.  While positive is good, this is less positive than last month.

Political Instability:  +10%.  This increase in instability is minor, compared to the drop (-46%) last month, and probably related to Mueller’s testimony.  I think the proximity to elections is actually having a calming effect.

Interest in Violence:  Up 8% this month, compared to 7% last month.  I expect the August numbers to skyrocket.

Illegal Aliens:  Down 38% last month to 104,000.  That sounds great, but last month was the highest ever at 144,000, and this month was the third highest ever.  So, down is good, but third highest is still bad.  For perspective, last year it was 43,000.  This is either sign of increased instability in the countries down South, or decreased fear of deportation.  There is no good news in this category.

Logistics

Last Weather Report I dropped a (more or less) throwaway line to the effect on the conduct of the war that:

The Left can be resupplied via air and ship.  “Emergency” supplies would head into coastal cities and sustain them forever, though Denver would fall soon enough.  Would Russia supply the heartland while the Chinese supplied the West Coast?

Rightly, Joe at Eaton Rapids Joe called me on it, and noted it on his blog that you should be reading, here (LINK).

One thing that is true is that it’s certainly not going to be possible to feed the entire United States externally during a war.  Feeding the Boston-New York-D.C. corridor which comprises over 20% of the United States population from external sources simply won’t happen, and I’m not sure if anyone in Europe will even try.

What will happen without Doritos®?  And salsa?

But Mexico or China could feed Los Angeles, if they wanted to.  I put pencil to paper and found, that to give everyone in Los Angeles 1700 calories a day it’s a really small number of 20’ shipping containers of rice – 600 or so.  And, yes, China is a food importer, why would they export food to the United States, and a few million people to feed isn’t even rounding error on their current food supply.

Water would be tougher.  To secure the port would require troops setting up a perimeter, but I’d think that when the residents of Los Angeles figured out the machine guns won’t be shooting over their heads anymore, they’d stay well back.

Distribution would be a mess.  But the food can make it to the city.  Similar numbers work for San Francisco.  If you read below, however, I don’t think any of that will happen.

Who Benefits, Part II?

But who benefits from a civil war in the United States?  Internally to the United States, it depends on who wins.  Externally, the list of potential winners is long.  I wrote about China last week (China – What’s the deal?) it occurred to me that China is currently working on building a system so they don’t need the United States at all – I’d expect them to focus on having alternate sources for everything that they depend on the United States for, including food.  The end of the United States as a global power would allow them to move from a regional power to the leading global power.

China couldn’t defeat us militarily.  But if we defeated ourselves?  Bonus, and Sun Tzu would nod in approval!

And we hope he didn’t ask him to wok the dog.

Civil War would allow Russia to increase influence in Europe, so this wouldn’t bother them much at all.  Europe?  Europe would lose their free army, but would gain the markets that the United States would leave.

Would there be a period of economic dislocation for all of those countries?  A period of economic depression?  Sure.  But there is the possibility that each of them would gain.

So, who would resupply those cities?  Maybe nobody.

Chittum’s Book

I originally thought I’d be reviewing Thomas W. Chittum’s book, Civil War Two (LINK) in this issue, but this update is long enough now.  Civil War Two came out in 1997, but his analysis is so accurate it’s like he wrote most of it last week.  I’ll review/summarize it starting no later than Monday, though it might take me more than one post to complete the review.

Links

The missing link discovered zero, but didn’t tell anyone because he thought it was nothing.

First up is from Practical Eschatology.  Docent (the proprietor there) has an interesting look at mass immigration.

Notes on how fragile our infrastructure really is from Andrew Miller.

From Mat Bracken, two of the best pieces on Civil War Two, here and here.

From Arthur Sido, on bugging out.

Concerned American correctly noted that Matt is an excellent writer.  Buy his books.

From Ricky and Zerohedge.

Also from Ricky, on another divide.

From an e-mail, for perspective – Civil War on the Western Border and Partisans (Missouri).

Please keep the links coming!

Boston-Washington corridor map by Bill Rankin — Citynoise (talk · contribs) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8293465

 

“The Moon Unit will be divided into two divisions:  Moon Unit Alpha and Moon Unit Zappa.” – Austin Powers:  The Spy Who Shagged Me

There’s always that one kid who won’t smile in the team picture.

I was at a garage sale the other day when I came across a small leather-bound journal in a box filled with Tupperware®.  Embossed on the worn cover was a now faded and flecked NASA logo that had once been a solid, shiny gold.  In the lower right-hand corner I noticed, so faded they were barely visible, two initials:  N.A.  I flipped through and saw page after page of journal entries in what I assumed to be Neil Armstrong’s printed writing.  I quickly paid the $2.50 price on the orange sticker on the book.

Here are the journal entries:

7/14/69, 21:00:00 GMT

Countdown begins.  I will admit to being a bit excited.  A rocket launch is never a routine event.  They’ve kept us busy though, re-practicing procedures, re-reviewing maps of the Sea of Tranquility, and, for Buzz Aldrin, eating meals consisting entirely of re-fried beans.  He says it’s for luck.  Michael Collins continues to be . . . Michael Collins.  I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him smile.  Or blink.

7/16/69, 07:22:15 GMT

Last shower, shave and breakfast.  Collins doesn’t eat anything, stares blankly ahead – I guess that’s the way he deals with stress.  Buzz had 16 cups of coffee – I counted them – and about thirty eggs.  “For luck.”

Fun fact:  your car insurance may cover you if you’ve got a rental, but generally not if you leave the United States.

7/16/69, 13:00:00 GMT

Ignition of the main engines, then 17 long seconds later, liftoff as the Saturn V slowly moves past the tower.  The first stage burns for three minutes, total, and then stage two kicks in after a brief lull, and burns for nearly six minutes.  Two minutes later, we’re in orbit.  All of this is exactly as planned, exactly as written down in the procedures.  Eleven minutes for Apollo 11 to enter orbit.  That’s got to be a good omen.

For the first time in the mission, we’ve got some time to kill.  I can’t stop smiling.  Collins continues to stare directly ahead.  “Mike, are you doing okay?”

He slowly turned his head towards me:  “All of my systems are operating at nominal levels.”  He then turned his head back towards the controls.

Does he blink?  I’m interrupted by groaning coming from Buzz.

“Oh, man, I’m hurting.  I didn’t think about the pressure differential.”  He’s holding his stomach.

The pressure inside the Apollo Command Module, Columbia, is only 5psi, or the pressure at the top of Mount Everest.  At sea level on Earth, the pressure is 15psi, or three times as much.  We don’t pass out, because the atmosphere is 100% oxygen.

Apparently the food that Buzz ate is causing him discomfort.  A minute later, Buzz sighs.

It smells horrible.  I said, “Oh, Buzz, how could you?”  My eyes are watering.  Eggs and beans.  The smell is nearly incapacitating.

Even Collins jumped in, “My nasal sensors detect a significant increase in organic gasses in the atmosphere.”

Collins was rechargeable, thankfully.

Mission Control:  “Apollo, are you alright up there?  We have just monitored a significant increase in methane in the cabin?  If this keeps up, your atmosphere will become explosive.  Do you have a situation?”

Buzz sighs again.

7/16/69, 16:16:16 GMT

Translunar injection burn started – that’s the boost that gets us to the Moon.  Six minutes later, we’re on the way.  Thankfully Buzz’s extravehicular emissions end about an hour later and the atmospheric scrubbers manage to keep the atmosphere safe until Buzz is finished.

7/16/69, 16:56:03 GMT

While we’re on the way, it’s time to dock with the Lunar Module.  It’s in that last stage that boosted us to the Moon.  Buzz then gets an idea.

“Hey, let’s change the name of the Lunar Module from Eagle to something else.  How about we name it something funny, like Soviets Suck?”

I’m against this.  “Buzz . . . we can’t do that.  NASA already has the t-shirts printed.”

Buzz continues, “Okay, let’s vote on it.  All in favor?”  Only Buzz raised his hand.

Collins added, still staring straight ahead:  “This violates mission parameters.”

7/17/69, 00:04:00 GMT

We go on television four times over the next two days.  Collins follows the NASA script exactly, word for word.  Aldrin brings up his new product, Aldrin’s Hair Care for Men®, along with Aldrin Cola© and Aldrin Paste™, which I believe to either be toothpaste or silverware polish.  I think it must be toothpaste because he says it’s perfect for astronauts – “it’s zero cavity.”  NASA has a private radio conversation with him after the first time he promotes his products.

The long distance rates shut that particular business down.

We can hear his side of the conversation:  “What are you going to do, send NASA police up here and put me in NASA jail?  Ha!”

It’s about this point that Buzz starts to try to read over my shoulder as I write in this journal.  He pretends he’s not looking when I catch him.

7/19/69, 17:27:47 GMT

Lunar orbit.  We’ll spend about a day here while we get ready to go down to the Moon.  I’m starting to get a little irritated with Aldrin.  First, there’s the humming.  He won’t stop humming the theme to the Wild, Wild West®.  Then, there’s his ear hair.  Doesn’t he know that it’s there?  It’s this one, long, 2 inch hair coming out of his ear.

If that wasn’t bad enough, I swear I hear a faint whirring, as if from small electric motors and gears from Collins during sleep period.  Maybe it’s the space ship.  I hope it’s the space ship.

7/20/69, 17:44:00 GMT

Lunar Module undocked.  When we said goodbye to Collins, Buzz made a joke, “Hey, don’t go out joyriding while we’re gone!”  Collins said, “No.  I will be in rest mode while you are gone to conserve supplies.”  Come to think of it, I haven’t seen Michael eat during the trip so far.

7/20/69, 20:17:39 GMT

The Soviets Suck Eagle has landed!  This is the first gravity we’ve had in days.  Aldrin immediately takes the opportunity to, umm, do things that are easier in gravity.  The Lunar Module doesn’t have a vent fan, but we will dump the atmosphere when it’s time for our EVA.  Which can’t come soon enough.

7/21/69, 02:56:15 GMT

First step on the Moon!  On one hand, it’s pretty exciting.  On the other, the responsibility is pretty big.  Buzz follows behind me after about twenty minutes.  He’s sulking – we rock-paper-scissored for the chance to go first, and he lost.  He always, and I mean always throws rock.  Speaking of which, it’s time to collect a few.

Heck, we can’t even do it since we’ve started using the metric system a little.    

7/21/69, 05:11:13 GMT

The walk on the Moon is complete.  We’re supposed to sleep, but we’re on the Moon.  Buzz tries to tell spooky stories, but I’ve heard the one about the hook on the spaceship door before.  He tries to make it scarier by thumping on the wall of the Soviets Suck Eagle.  I remind him that even though the wall is supposed to be tougher than a steel beer can, we left the duct tape on Columbia.

Thankfully we were AAA members.

We’re supposed to sleep.  Aldrin is laying down on the floor, and I’m propped up on the ascent engine cover.  Not really sleeping, neither is Buzz.  Finally Buzz stops humming the Wild Wild West® theme, only to start humming “In the Year 2525.”  This is not much better.

This was the number one song as Apollo 11 lifted off.  Even the Moon wasn’t far enough away to escape it.

“Neil, we need women astronauts.”

“Why, Buzz?”

“Those sandwiches aren’t going to make themselves.”

He’s not done.

“The next time I dump a girl, I know what I’m gonna say.”

“What, Buzz?”

“I need more space.”

Neither of us sleep at all that night, though I do come to the conclusion that there is no jurisdiction that I could be convicted in if I were to kill Buzz.

Yeah, I know.  I’m mad, too.

7/21/69, 17:54:00 GMT

Liftoff from the Moon!  Heading home.

“No, you’re upside down.”

7/21/69, 21:35:00 GMT

We’ve docked with the Columbia.  As we open the hatch we see that Michael Collins is in the same exact position that he was when we left.  It was as if he’d never moved.

“Welcome back, fellow humans.  Was your excursion enjoyable?”

Buzz responded, “It was like any spacewalk, Collins.  No pressure.  Get it?  No pressure!”

Collins stared blankly and then said, “I am not programmed to respond in that area.”

Getting back into the Columbia was pretty rough.  It smelled like swamp and wet dog, and that was after Buzz had already been gone a day.  Ugh.  Why did Aldrin choose so many space tacos and burritos for dinner?

7/22/69, 04:55:42 GMT

We fire our engine to return to Earth.  Two and a half days to home.  Did Aldrin really order refried beans with every meal?

If I my rice is too dry, do I put it in a bag of cellphones?

7/24/69, 16:50:35 GMT

Splashdown.  I never thought that smelling air would be so wonderful.  I couldn’t wait to open the hatch to the Columbia.  A deep breath with 100% less Aldrin.

7/24/69, 19:58:00 GMT

In quarantine – Collins, Aldrin and I are stuck here so we don’t start an epidemic of space pox.  I can certainly understand why we would want to quarantine aliens so they didn’t bring in epidemics of disease.

There was a two-drink minimum.

8/10/69, 20:00:00 GMT

Release from quarantine.  I’m outta here.  Maybe I shouldn’t share this journal, after all.  Perhaps it’s best if history remembers the official story . . . .

100% heroes.

Okay, yes, this was parody, or at least that’s what my law firm, Dewy, Cheatum and Howe suggests I say.  Outside of my supposition that Michael Collins is really a robot, none of this is true.  The Apollo astronauts represented the best of us in our nation at the time, men able to go into space, yet with enough humility to understand that their achievement was made possible by 400,000 other Americans working together to design everything from their underwear to the F-1 engines of the Saturn V to the food that they’d eat during the three weeks they spent in quarantine after returning to Earth.

An aside, they really did have problems with bad smells and space gas.  NASA even calculated to see if the gas would build up enough methane to cause the ship to explode.

“It could have imitated a million life-forms on a million planets. It could change into any one of them at any time. Now, it wants life-forms on Earth.” – The Thing

This bust is Seneca on one side, and on the other Socrates, all at a museum in Berlin.  Both guys are carved out of the same block of marble, which is kind of creepy and reminds me of The Thing.

Okay, it’s not creepy – it’s not like Joe Biden was involved.

“Think of those who not by fault of inconsistency but by lack of effort are too unstable to live as they wish, but only to live as they have begun.” – Seneca

What Seneca was saying was that you should strive, and you should persevere . . . but only up to a point.  Whereas you can start your career as a snake milker, there is no law that says you can’t finish your career as a Senior Kindle™ Evangelist.  It’s even easier to make that transition if you’re Jeff Bezos’ ex-brother in law.  It’s even easier than that if you have . . . special pictures of Jeff Bezos.

In the words of Winston Churchill, “Never give in, never, never, never, never, in nothing, great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.”  Even Churchill notes that at some point your life ceases being an inspiration for people to aspire to, and becomes a case study and example of ludicrous obsession.  Does that remind you *cough* of anyone *cough* Hillary *cough*?

I don’t know, maybe she lost because of an image thing?  Or was it because she was The Thing?

In your life, based on circumstance, you will find that a certain amount of flexibility is required.  Not necessarily “Soviet-bloc gymnast” level flexibility, but at the minimum “middle-aged, middle-school art teacher” flexibility.  The economy will change.  Jobs will change.  And as you age, your abilities will change.  This will make a career change not only likely, but inevitable for most people during their lives.

I’d prepared a bunch of my notes before I read the recent story in The Atlantic titled, “Your Professional Decline is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think.”  It’s worth a read, since it appears it was written by their one non-communist writer.  One great quote from the article is from Alex Dias Ribeiro, who is a retired Formula 1 race car driver:

“Unhappy is he who depends upon success to be happy.”

Alex retired from driving in 1979 at the age of 31, never having finished higher than second place in a major race.  I’d make fun of Alex, but he’s certainly done better than I have in Formula 1 racing, where I’m not really sure my butt would even fit into a Formula 1 race car.  But I totally am a better blogger.  What, he has 38,000 Facebook® followers and has devoted his life to being a humble Christian pastor?  Does he floss as often as I do?

He does?  Dangit.  He has perfect teeth.  At 70.  Crap.

Alex’s commentary and early retirement age are the point of the article:  some abilities decline with age.  As much as a forty-year-old man might identify as a twenty-year-old, he isn’t.  Alex understood that at 31 he was past his peak as a driver and has dealt with it with far greater humility and grace than, well, me.

What do you mean that bragging about your achievements when you were in high school is  after, well, 22?

I’m sure they’re all totally impressed that I knew all the lyrics to that brand-new Bon Jovi album, Slippery When Wet.

As anyone who is older than 25 knows, physical ability goes down with age.  This decline is not linear.  Think of physical ability as your hairline.  Ever see a seventy year old with a thicker head of hair than when they were forty?  I mean, unless it’s Joe Biden?  Nope.

He says that being around young people keeps him young.  I think he means young doctors?

My physical ability declines with age.  Shower drain clogs caused by my hair decline with age.  Does that mean everything is diminished as I age?  Nope.  I have a luxurious, flowing mane of ear and back hair.  Sadly, I can feel the wind blowing through my back hairs, and all it takes for me to feel that air flow is the breeze from a bathroom fan.  The good news is that I can now knit myself a sweater entirely made of myself.  Well, I could if I could knit.  And if I lived in California.  I think that they’d make me move out of the county if I did that kind of creepy “back hair sweater knitting” in Modern Mayberry.

The good news is one other thing happens as you age – mental abilities change.

When you’re young, you have a greater amount of “fluid intelligence.”  Fluid intelligence is the fuel for innovation.  It’s what makes a five year old with a screwdriver take apart a $300 digital camera (yes, that really happened, and I let him live).  Fluid intelligence is the cause of new theories, the skill to solve novel problems, the ability to unhook a bra with only one hand.  Fluid intelligence seems to peak at or just before the age of 30.

The article further references a couple of examples that illustrate the problem of declining fluid intelligence:  Back before computers and high-speed imaging, an umpire was an umpire and the only difference between one umpire and another umpire was how fat they were.  Now, Major League© umpires can be objectively and scientifically graded.  Did that fast ball catch the corner of the strike zone?  Was that curveball really just outside?  Unlike in 1950, this can be checked in 2019.

Statistics show the best home plate umpires are, on average, about 33 years old.  The worst home plate umpires average about 56 years old.  It may not be a coincidence that the mandatory retirement age for air traffic controllers is 56, which is an oddly specific number.  I guess fastballs over the plate at Yankee® Stadium are just another bit of air traffic.

You can trust them!  Communism will surely work this time!

Hang on, old people – don’t pack your bags and get ready to board the trains for the new “Sanders-Cortez Leisure Camps” just yet.  There’s another type of intelligence – crystallized intelligence.  This intelligence is based around taking the information that you know and combining it (plus new facts) to form a synthesized view of the world.  That’s a whole lot of syllables that just mean one simple old word:  wisdom.  The best news is that crystallized intelligence doesn’t decline until senility hits.  Wisdom is accessible until you’re drooling.

This explains why rockstars in their seventies play music they wrote when they were twenty or thirty.  Writing music requires fluid intelligence.  For example:  Aerosmith hasn’t written a new song since well before Steven Tyler started looking like your poorly aging lesbian aunt.

(S)he was lead-off hitter in the softball league that consisted entirely of stray cats that (s)he kept in the garage.  They did win the championship, which was a bouquet of catnip and chardonnay.

Signs of decreasing fluid intelligence:

• Your VCR clock is constantly blinking 12:00.
• Interruptions tend to make your mind wander . . . oh, look, a baby wolf.
• You still have a VCR.
• You have no idea why you came into the kitchen.
• You don’t really care that the VCR is constantly blinking 12:00 because the last time you tried to fix it you changed all the menus to Mandarin and had to wait for a 10 year-old to fix it.
• Why am I in the kitchen again? I swear, I had it figured out last time.
• You leave stickers on your laptop, because you’ll be getting a new one in the next eight years, so why bother?
• Was it ice? A beer?  Eggs?  No, I’d have to cook eggs.  Oh, that’s it!  I left ramen® in the microwave!

If your dream is to be a groundbreaking theoretical physicist in your sixties?  I’m sorry, it’s not going to happen.  But teachers, historians, and bloggers all rely on crystallized intelligence.  Innovation is not going to happen, but thinking deeply and combining new and old facts and ideas will happen.  It’s recognizing that you’ve seen the patterns in society before.  It is wisdom, which consists of rubbing your chin and saying . . . “What were you thinking when you decided to try create a musical comedy about the Ferguson riots?”

Wisdom is asking that one additional question before you bomb Iran.  It’s why the framers of the Constitution put a minimum age on being President – you have to have wisdom to do the job.  Honestly, at my current age I think the Constitutional minimum is too low.  Thirty five?  No.  I’d put the minimum at forty five, unless they had no idea who a Kardashian was.

My brother and I were talking about on the phone about a decade ago.  The organization he was working at had just hired a new Chief Financial Officer (CFO) for their billion-dollar organization.  The new CFO was 30.  My comment to my brother was, “Thirty?  Are they nuts?  He’s not ready.  He has the wisdom of a houseplant.  He has the insight of an ice cube.”

My brother’s comment:  “But John, he’s really smart.”

A year later that CFO had flamed out and had gone, umm, more than a little nuts and they had to fire him.  My brother related several friendly conversations he had with the CFO where the CFO sounded borderline paranoid-schizophrenic.  The CFO wasn’t really crazy, though.  The position had just been too much for him to handle mentally.  It had been unfair to put him in a position where he had such responsibility so young, with so little wisdom.

The focus of life is different after fluid intelligence drops – it has to be.  You won’t have a sixty year old winning many high school track meets, but you won’t have any decent life advice coming from little Benny Shapiro, either.

Something tells me Shapiro . . . is no Seneca.  Unless he grows an extra head.

Seneca bust photo:  Marcus Cyron [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)]

“Well, I don’t think it’s officially called bubble bath if the bubbles happen accidentally, but whatever, Shawn.” – Psych

I’ve heard that bubbles can get bigger forever, and that fingers never happen.

This is the latest reader request post – I don’t think I have another one in the hopper – if I missed one or if you have a topic you’d like to see, please hit me up either in the comments or via email at movingnorth@gmail.com, but remember that the NSA® is like Santa – they know who has been naughty and who has been nice.  Unlike Santa, however, the NSA™ is real.  Not sure about whether or not they jiggle like a bowl of Jell-O® when they laugh.  Guess it depends on how good the Federal wellness program is?

Lathechuck posted in the comments of a recent post (Cognitive Dissonance, Normalcy Bias, and Survival, with Wonder Woman, Bigfoot, Johnny Carson, Stalin, and a Bond Girl.) following gem – “Favorite topic to see explained: how mortgage payments are independent of interest rates.”

Housing is an emotional issue for most people.  It’s the reason that realtors say “it’s not a house, it’s a home,” and advise people selling houses to bake cookies so that fresh-baked cookie smell permeates the house and also suggests that you remove the corpses from the fridge prior to a showing.  Very few people want to open a fridge in a house they’re thinking about buying and see even a single severed head staring back at them, let alone three!  I think it’s the “not blinking” that puts people off?

I guess that’s what I get for buying Marilyn Manson’s old house.

Yeah, it’s odd when a picture of Marilyn Manson discussing Joe Biden touching him suddenly makes the post less creepy.

I’ve never seen people get more upset than being involved in a negotiation over the purchase of a house – it becomes personal, and ceases being a business transaction.  And when people take things personally, people get emotional.  When people get emotional, people get stupid.

“How could he say that about my home?”  Yeah, I know you raised your kids there/did the tile in the bathroom yourself/became a self-taught expert on shaving and tattooing baboon crotches.  Honestly, I don’t care as long as you take all the baboon hair with you.  The more I know about you, the less I like your house, because how will it ever become my house, especially if I’m still finding baboon hair in three years?

Our realtor advised us that, given that we have about several thousand pounds worth of books, our house would sell much better if we weren’t in it.  I would wager that we have the most comprehensive library in Upper Lower Midwestia on several topics (none of which involve tattooing baboons).  To be 100% honest – the Wilder family has never, not once, sold a house that we were living in.  We are far too odd, and the skeleton on the front porch seems to be a bit off-putting.  Real conversation we had once:

New neighbor, enthusiastically:  “Nice Halloween decorations!”

The Mrs.:  “Halloween?”

The Mrs. took this picture one day while I was at work when we lived in Houston.  The statue got broken by a dog after we moved to Modern Mayberry.  Response?  We have a new statue, but we keep it inside.  Yes. I have a bigfoot statue in my living room.  Who would buy a house from a family that had a bigfoot statue in their living?  Nobody.  You just can’t forget crap like that.

Realtors try to actually increase your anxiety with sales patter.  One technique that salespeople used on me when I was young was to magnify the importance of the decision way out of proportion.  “This will be the most important financial decision that you’ll ever make . . .”

That’s a lie.  The most important financial decision you’ll ever make is your choice of spouse – and the next most important financial decision is your choice of career.  The third most important financial decision you’ll make?  Paper or plastic.

As I got older, I wondered about why a salesman would try to inject a scary thought like that in the middle of a negotiation.  Shouldn’t they be trying to make me calm and happy with the decision?

No.

The sales process is entirely about emotional manipulation.  Salespeople are actively trained in creating mind-games to sway your emotions.  It’s what they do.  There are entire manuals on the Internet devoted to the process of managing the way a buyer feels through every step of the car buying process.  And salesmen go through it dozens of times a week.  The average buyer goes through it a few times a decade.  Who do you think is better at it?

I don’t know what the name of this emotion is, but I’ve felt it.  Also, this emotion goes well with a nice Chianti and some fava beans.  Plus?  I really enjoyed writing this caption.

Realtors do the same thing.  The incentive for the Realtor™ taking you from house to house while you tangle their seatbelts isn’t to put you into the best possible house for you at the best price.  Your Realtor© isn’t your friend, they’re a salesman.  Their incentive is to sell a house.

The incentive for the Realtor® listing a house for a client isn’t to get them the best possible price.  The incentive for the Realtor© to sell their house.  Quickly, if possible.

The buying realtor and selling realtor split a six percent commission.  So, if you have a house that you want to sell for $300,000 and the realtor can sell it more quickly for $250,000, they’ll try to get you to price it for $250,000.  Why?  A certain $7,500 now is preferable to maybe getting $9,000 later.  The extra $50,000 to them isn’t irrelevant, it’s an impediment to them getting a commission this month.

Other advice you’re given is that “interest rates are low, it’s the best time to buy.”  Based on history, interest rates today are very low – nearly a record low.  But how does that impact the price of a house?

You can see how serious that interest rates are by the expression on Candy’s face.  You certainly don’t want to be caught underwater on an expensive house, or without $1 bills when she’s pole dancing a bit later on the main stage.

Now for boring math:  If you bought a house for $250,000 at 4%, your monthly payment would be $1,194 (before taxes and insurance).  I hear the entire state of California laughing at that sales price, since most of them had to give up all of their spare organs like kidneys, nostrils, or eyes just to qualify for a down payment.  Guess I won’t mention that in Modern Mayberry you can get a 4,000 square foot (16,000,000 square meter) riverfront house on 3 acres for that amount of cash.  I’m not kidding.  It’s a nice house, nicer than mine.

Okay, we all agree that $250,000 for 4,000 square foot house sounds like a great deal, but what would your house payment be at 8% interest?  $1834.  Ouch!  That’s an extra $640 per month!  Outrageous!  Will Bernie Sanders save us?

See?  Communists can even make drinking suck.

No, because Bernie lives in fantasy land.  But for grins, let’s pretend that you bought that house at 4%.  Four years later, the interest rate pops back up to 8%.  Time to sell because your psycho soon-to-be ex-wife entered a less than honorable relationship with Johnny Depp.  Let’s assume that the average wage where your house is will support that $1,194 per month payment.  How much can you sell your house for at 8% to attract a buyer at that payment?

About $160,000.

That’s a net loss of $90,000.  If you absolutely had to sell the house, you’d be out that $90,000, and some people work a whole month and don’t make that much money!

Does the same principle apply when interest rates are going down?  Sure.  I had a house for sale when the interest rate dropped by 3% over a weekend.  Weird – I think the Federal Reserve ate a bunch of marijuana brownies and slept with the cast of Cats®.  I went from no lookers in a month to three full price offers in a single day, netting me a 50% profit on the house.  That might explain why the drop in interest rates from the late 1990’s (about 8%) to the 6%-ish number of the early 2000’s helped inflate the Housing Bubble that almost ate the economy.

If low interest rates raise home prices, high interest rates make house prices drop – it’s that simple.

But the story doesn’t end there.  Homeowners are generally voters, so lawmakers like to do things homeowners like.  Examples include:

• Making homes harder to build by putting in silly restrictions. San Francisco is a prime example of this strategy, having regulations that strictly prevent higher density development.  Lower supply?  Higher cost.
• Property tax caps. These insulate homeowners from market price increases at the expense of newer homeowners.
• Giving homeowners a free massage near election time.

Legislators realize that people who don’t want homes might want them and might one day be voters, so they have (in the past) put in place laws that:

• Prohibit lenders from not lending to people with bad credit. Certainly no consequences to that idea.
• Provide loans that are easier to qualify for with sketchy qualifications (FHA). As a recipient of two FHA loans, I guess I’m okay with the government guaranteeing massive amounts of money to people just out of their teens, because young people make the very best  Go Sanders 2020!  Am I right, fellow young people?

Listen to Mr. Pink when you have a decision to make – he’s such a young hep cat.  Tippecanoe and Tyler too!  Just noting, there aren’t many blogs making jokes about the election of 1840.  For that sort of cutting edge comedy, you’ve got to come here.

Politicians want housing prices to go only one way – up.  As prices go up, people who want to buy houses have a few choices:

• Suck it up and pay the big bucks,
• Commute from some distance just inside the orbit of Mars to get a lower price, which has the effect of raising prices in the new housing subdivision on Phobos,
• Rent, or
• Move to a city or state that doesn’t cost as much.

Believe it or not, there are places that don’t cost as much as California, with odd little names like “the People’s Republic of Washington” or “the Oregon Soviet People’s Collective” that you can move to.  Readers of this blog would be better advised to move to states that are not actively governed by Che Guevara’s Ouija® board.  Oddly, they are known as “red” states.

Actual Che quote:  “If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine.”  Looks like he was triggered before triggered was a thing.  But he did it ironically.

In Modern Mayberry, I’m thinking that Chateau Wilder has probably decreased in value by 10% to 20% since we bought it.  Yikes!  But the decade I’ve lived here, the total I’ve paid in mortgage payments plus an assumed 20% depreciation is less than three years in a one bedroom apartment in San Francisco.  Oh, the torture, having to live on five acres with a lake for a decade rather than three years in a one bedroom.  I feel so deprived.

I bought a house, not an investment.  If you’re trying to invest, the best buy will be a neighborhood that’s going to be popular in the future in an area where wages are going up, so you need a crystal ball and there’s still risk involved – but it is a great way to get rich quick.  Buying in a recession is great, especially if you know the future.  Many a small fortune has been made in real estate, and some of these small fortunes were initially large ones.

Selling is easier:  sell into low interest rates in high demand, high wage areas.  Also?  Avoid Detroit.

Yes, making fun of Detroit is like kicking a puppy.  In my defense it’s a really, really, ugly puppy.

Beware if you’re buying in a hot market at low interest rates and if you’re planning on selling quickly.  You just might get caught.  Not that we’ve seen that before.

“There is no promise you can make that I can trust.”  The Lord of the Rings:  The Two Towers

Anyone seen my hobbits?  I know I left them here.  Or maybe the name was similar?

Note:  I’ve had a tremendous number of emails since the Civil War post.  If I haven’t gotten back to you, I will shortly.  Thanks!!

On Friday and Saturday, The Mrs. and I took The Boy and Pugsley off to the nearby Big City for the weekend.  The Boy and Pugsley had a 10 hour class, split between two days.  That left The Mrs. and I to ride around the town.  The Mrs. and I had lived in Big City years ago, so Big City was familiar, even though 8 miles of what had been vacant farmland when we moved away had been converted to strip malls, chain restaurants, big box stores, and the rest of the standard commercial establishments that make up nearly every generic copy of Big City in the Midwest.  The farms had character.  Each was different.  This?  This was as featureless and bland as Bernie Sanders’ forehead covered in mayonnaise and Monkee’s® music.

We stopped at one fast food restaurant for a snack while we waited for the boys to finish class for the night.  We ate for a bit, and then I got up to get more iced tea.  I walked back to the table.

“Now that’s why I’m glad we don’t live here anymore!”  The Mrs. was furious.

Confused, I looked around, and back at the table.  Nothing seemed to be amiss.

“Okay, umm, why?”

“That little kid,” she gestured at a little blonde guy of about 10 who was busy running around the table near his parents, “just ran between your chair and the table.”    I had only slightly pushed my chair back in when I went to go get tea, but there was less than a foot between my chair and the table.

He also had a pretty cool boomerang that he kept throwing at me, but I never could quite catch it.

As far as indiscretions go, it wasn’t up there with armed robbery using a chicken as a weapon, but the point was made.  These parents were letting their kid run wild in a fast food restaurant.  We never saw that behavior in Modern Mayberry.  We’d figured out the “why” of that fairly soon after we moved there.

People here in Modern Mayberry don’t have the option of anonymity.  If I cut a person off in traffic, it might be the principle of the school.  If I am a jerk to a clerk at Wal-Mart®, we’ll hear about it, because the clerk knows someone I know.  Who?  I’m not sure.  But in a small town, there’s someone in common.

In Modern Mayberry?  You have a reputation.  Your family has a reputation.  People aren’t horribly nosy here, but word spreads.

When I was young, I liked the concept of libertarianism, enough to even join the Libertarian party and vote for people who had zero chance of being elected.  It wasn’t too bad – you could always see that you were one of the 10 or so votes the candidate got on election night.  The idea of Libertarianism is simple:  Go do (more or less) what you want.  Don’t hurt other people.  Enjoy.  Repeat.  Libertarianism is really just individualism on a large scale, but with more Star Wars® t-shirts and fewer showers.

I never had braces.  But I also never raced across a field to give a beat-down to the British.

The United States was (more or less) founded on this type of individualism, though I have no idea how Ben Franklin smelled, and I think he was a Star Trek© fan instead of Star Wars®.  Liberty was one of the few things that all of the members of the Constitutional Convention could agree upon – the folks from Massachusetts weren’t entirely sure about the folks from Georgia, and vice versa.  But if Massachusetts would promise to leave Georgia pretty much alone, Georgia figured they could at least try to make it work.

This lasted until 1860, but that’s another story.  Spoiler:  Massachusetts won’t take, “It’s not you, it’s me,” for an answer.

Thankfully, the American people also had a built-in safety valve – they could move West at any time their neighbor (or state!) annoyed them.  This added, especially in the Midwest and Mountain areas, a strong sense of, “Leave me alone, you’re not my supervisor.”  People would move into an areas with a weak government that couldn’t do much for them.  It also couldn’t ask much of them.

First two seasons of Archer were pretty good.  I wouldn’t go much past that.  Not for kids.

Individually was the norm, if I can get away with saying that, and the individuality was, like a hipster convention, nearly identical from one person to the next.  Generally, as long as behavior was circumscribed by the predominant values of the time, it was all good.  The values that were both required by and created by that streak of individualism were:

• Fair Play – that there were rules, and, generally we were all expected to abide by them. Sure, rich people got a better deal, but even they were not completely above the law.  I don’t care if you are my supervisor – you’re not cutting in line.
• Meritocracy – the best person generally got the job, generally got the promotion. Was there nepotism?  Was there political favoritism?    But those words still have negative connotations.  And when smart people get hired into a family business, they know that the goofy, entitled son will get the corner office before they do.  But if your kid has the highest GPA?  They’ll be valedictorian.
• Personal Restraint – Just because it’s illegal doesn’t make it moral. And just because you have the right, doesn’t require you to do it.  Either by guilt or by shame or by good common sense, Americans had generally shown the prudence to show restraint.
• Generally Accepted Norms – One of the lessons that I’ve shared with my kids is a simple one: where politeness fails, laws follow.  The one guy in the subdivision decides he wants to recreate Jurassic Park®-level vegetation in his front yard will mow because his wife doesn’t want to catch abuse from the other wives as they sacrifice puppies to Gorto or play cards or whatever women do when men aren’t around.
• Faith in Fellow Citizens – If your car breaks down on a lonely night in winter, it’s likely that the next person who passes by will stop and to help. The colder it is, the lonelier it is?  The more likely they are to stop.  They feel safe in stopping, because of the next point, an obligation to stop.
• Sense of Community – On Friday night, the local football stadium will be filled. People will know where you sit, and you’ll see familiar faces every game. You know the owner of the restaurant you go to every Friday.  The auto repair place knows the names of your kids, as does the barber and the dentist.  The superintendent of schools has sent you handwritten notes, at least one of them good.

Yes.  These are generalizations, and I could certainly generate examples of when we didn’t live up to these values in the United States in the past.  But these values are, generally, the rules that we have to all follow to make things work in a high trust society:  recognized property rights, independent courts, and faith in our elected officials.  You don’t trespass, because that’s old man Smith’s place.  Yeah, the judge likes to drink a bit too much on Friday, but he sentenced the robbery suspect to 10 years and didn’t charge the shopkeeper who shot him up.  And Sheriff Buford sends your kid a certificate, just for graduating high school.

Actually, we’re pretty welcoming, as long as you don’t send paratroopers first.

The result is that you get a society where people can work together, voluntarily.  Things like park boards and school boards and town councils and county supervisors are the most effective forms of government, and have the most impact on a typical person’s life.  The Sheriff is more important than people in Washington, because the Sheriff is actually accountable, and has to live with the people he’s protecting.  He also knows when not writing a ticket is the right answer.

However, when societies are built on nepotism, separatism, egos, immorality, or freeloading, that trust disappears.  The Sheriff won’t arrest a murderer because he’s a cousin.  Or of the same faith.  Or of the same race.  Cars are stolen with regularity, because everyone believes that anyone who is wealthy isn’t to be admired and emulated, but hated.  Why?  Because the only way to get ahead is to cheat.  And anyone who has more than you has cheated, right?

High trust societies produce wealth.  Polite children.  People who act honorably.  They have stable governments with an emphasis on rights for common men.  People pay their taxes, and act together.

Low trust societies are characterized by poor social trust.  High theft rates.  Low wealth.  Their governments are often stable, because they’re collective and totalitarian.  At least the election results aren’t in doubt.  How can you doubt an election where the winner gets 98% of the vote?

Is it ironic that someone who hated capitalism died on Black Friday?

The truth is that you can’t combine a low trust society and a high trust society.  The values of a low trust group in a high trust society will destroy the high trust society after time.  Why?  You can’t win a game of cards when everyone else is cheating.  You can’t have peace when another country has declared war on you.  In a war of values, the lowest common denominator wins.

Our car ate up the miles between Big City and home.  We finally crossed the last little creek and headed up the hill, past the farm that flooded every other spring, and heard the familiar crunch of gravel under our tires as I stopped near the mailbox.  The mailbox was open, and had probably been open since Saturday, but our mail was still there.

We were glad to get home.

Mall pic by Dj1997 [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]