Category: Valhalla

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: F-15 And Nukes Edition

“Computer, this is Captain James Kirk of the USS Enterprise. Begin 30-second countdown. Code zero-zero-zero-destruct-zero.” – Star Trek

When you kill the last Dracula clone?  That’s the final Count down.

  1. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
  2. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
  3. Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
  4. Open War.

June had (again) increased levels of violence over the norm, but it was down from last June when the George Floyd riots began the active operational phase of the Leftist Coup.    Again, none of the violence that I could see originated from the Right.  None.

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

I currently put the total at (this is my best approximation, since no one tracks the death toll from rebellion-related violence) hanging in at around 900 out of the 1,000 required for the international civil war definition.

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

In this issue:  Front Matter – Extremist Content – Violence And Censorship Update –– Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Demonizing America – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report.  These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month.  I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues.  Also, subscribe because you’ll join over 500 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30 Eastern, free of charge.

Extremist Content

It’s been a while since the person sworn in as President of the United States threatened his own people with violence.  Here’s what Mr. Biden said recently:

“Those who say the blood of patriots, you know, and all the stuff about how we’re gonna have to move against the government, if you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons.”

I wrote about that here (The Wilder Response To Mr. Biden), but more on that later.

After some research, this isn’t the first time that Mr. Biden has said something similar, though last time he described committing mass murder of Americans using American troops he avoided mentioning nuclear weapons.  He just stuck to Hellfire® missiles. I guess those are more humane, though I heard if I throw my shoes into hellfire, I could watch the soles burn.

I guess this might work.  I hear Pakistan uses Sikh-heating missiles.

To be clear, if any of the people writing on the Right had mentioned using weapons of mass destruction against either the Left or FedGov I imagine they would have gotten a meeting with the FBI in a small hot room in a distant state and the chance to see if Ted Kaczynski has written anything recently.

Thanks, I’m John Wilder, and welcome to my Ted Talk®. 

But Mr. Biden does it, it just makes the headlines for the afternoon.  This is not only the single most extreme thing that any sitting president has ever said, at least in my recollection.  The scary thing is the lack of reaction from the news media.  Had Trump mentioned one-way helicopter flights for Antifa®?

Imagine the collective panties in a bunch.

I ain’t got time to bleed.

Extremism, though, is the problem.  The Left has become unhinged in its quest to take over every element of life in the United States.  About the only thing left are 100,000,000 or so people who reject Leftism.  And all of those people have guns.  So many guns.  And they don’t want to sell them to the government – they couldn’t imagine selling them to organized crime.

I guess that makes us the extremists?

Violence And Censorship Update

The beatings and low-level constant riots in cities across the country continues.  The level of violence we face today would have been considered off the scale in 2000.  But today?  They are what we call “another Saturday night in Portland.”  How is everyone enjoying the new normal?

You want a civil war?  This is how you get a civil war.

Censorship is the main story in the Violence and Censorship Update.  The first story starts with:

Me.

Of the 1,569 some-odd days that this blog has been operational, it has gone down twice.  The first was because of (as near as I can tell) a botched update of the WordPress® version software.  It was down for just a few hours on a Saturday.  The post that was up wasn’t anything more or less controversial than usual.  It probably involved PEZ©.

Last week, however, I experienced an . . . unusual outage.  It was while this post (The Wilder Response To Mr. Biden) was up and running.  The entire site shut down just as one of the widest audiences that I’ve ever had was coming by to read that story.  After hours of wrangling and two botched solutions, the blog was back up and running.

Who was it?  I have a good friend who knows about such things, and he thought that it didn’t smell right.  Rather than a big government conspiracy, it was, he thought, more likely to be an amateur who didn’t like the message.  To be sure, the wheels of government are so large and we are all so tiny that any of us (any, up to and including Gates and Bezos) could be crushed by it and it wouldn’t even slow its spin.

So, a message?  A coincidence?  As people tell me, there are no coincidences.  Regardless, I write.

But if you’re on Facebook®, please note that the following is no coincidence:

I’d love to meet Zuckerberg.  He’s someone really is interested in my hobbies, political interests, job, spending habits, history, and friends.

Yup.  Facebook™ is now actively checking the people you interact with, and warning you if they Facebook© doesn’t like their opinion.  It is even offering you expert help.

Hurray!  That’s just what I need, support from a global corporation on what to think about the unapproved media I consume.  Thanks, guys!

I haven’t been on Facebook® in, well, a very long time.  But if you’re one of the people still going there, be happy that they’ll tell you what to think.

Updated Civil War II Index

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

Violence:

Up is more violent, and violence is down again in June.  Is it really down, or are we just used to seeing it?

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable.  Instability increased this month, as expected.  As I predicted last month, instability is down right now.  Unless there’s a crisis, I expect political instability to remain low until at least September.

Economic:

Inflation is finally beginning to hit this measure.  Right now we’re in a trap:  take measures to stop inflation, and you tank the economy.  Take measures to keep the economy going, you increase inflation.  Sounds like my first marriage.

Illegal Aliens:

This data is at record levels for every year I have data for.  I think it’s plateaued because the bus won’t take any more people over.  I guess Congress will authorize more money for busses?  Or maybe, just maybe, the Border Patrol is just letting them go on by because they know that their actions won’t change a thing?

Demonizing America

There is a complete effort by the Left to demonize traditional American values.  It starts with the flag:

If your basic idea of loving a country New York Times is to hate everything about it, you might want to rethink what loving a country means.

This particular article is by Sarah Maslin Nir.  “Ms.” Nir, who from her online photos appears to be transgender, is the writer.  “She” has had several other pieces of “journalism” published, where “she” has displayed a continual hate for the United States.

Sarah Maslin Nir comes into the bar.  The bartender says, “Why the long face?”

It’s okay if “Ms.” Nir wants to use her journalistic platform to go after the traditional values of the United States every single time she writes.  It has also become clear that the New York Times® will go after traditional values whenever they can.  The stories that the newspapers publish aren’t things that happen by mistake like my conception, they’re a choice like Jeff Epstein’s death.

And that choice is to demonize everything about the United States.  Another example?  Shockingly, it’s from the New York Times™.  Again.  It seems like they’re always behind this.  At what point can you declare a newspaper an enemy combatant?

To destroy a people without bloodshed, the first thing someone must do is destroy their connection to their past.  To vilify that which was good.  They even tried to vilify fireworks by pointing out the people with PTSD might be triggered.  As if they didn’t know July 4 was coming?

When would you do this?

On the most favored holiday of what you want to destroy.  For Americans, that would be July 4.  To win a civil war without fighting, you’d demoralize a people so they had no will to fight back.

You’ll never convince a patriot that the Constitution was a bad idea.  Sure, some of them think the bill of rights didn’t go far enough.  But most people raised with traditional American values won’t be convinced by the 1619 Project© or any of the drivel I’ve posted above.

So why do they do it?

Remember, for Leftists, Orwell is a “How To” and not a cautionary tale.

To create division.  To widen the gap.  To demoralize.  To destroy the people that made the United States great.

So, for a Leftist?  Tuesday.

LINKS

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

Fed Clowns To The Left Of Me…

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-us-never-been-as-divided-since-civil-war

https://slate.com/culture/2021/06/civil-war-documentary-peacock-juneteenth-history.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJoU520xQnU

 

Joker States To The Right…

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2021-06-24/us-civil-war-now-table-new-alliances-form

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article252170028.html

https://sanctuarycounties.com/2021/06/20/more-than-61-of-american-counties-are-now-second-amendment-sanctuaries/

 

Here I Am, Stuck In The Middle With You

https://www.alreporter.com/2021/06/11/mo-brooks-alabama-legislators-arent-real-republicans-another-civil-war-could-be-coming/

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/560681-trump-supporter-warns-cnn-reporter-of-civil-war-if-former-president-not

https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/april-may-june-2021/americas-next-insurgency/

https://www.valdostadailytimes.com/opinion/columns/elza-how-to-avoid-a-civil-war/article_371a2975-ed57-5170-aa14-3663ea375509.html

https://newrepublic.com/article/162637/third-reconstruction-second-civil-war

https://thebulwark.com/the-civil-war-they-seek/

 

Law And Order Breakdown, Orange Cards Bad Edition: GOOJF (Get Out Of Jail Free)

NYC: https://nypost.com/2021/06/20/hundreds-of-nyc-rioters-looters-have-charges-dropped/

DC: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/prosecutors-drop-many-rioting-charges-as-dozens-charged-in-dc-protests-appear-in-court/2020/06/01/b581d5d2-a38b-11ea-bb20-ebf0921f3bbd_story.html

Houston: https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/harris-county-district-attorney-dismisses-charges-protesters-george-floyd/285-0279e98b-0d54-49c1-90ff-07be2fb373ac

Denver: https://sentinelcolorado.com/orecent-headlines/adams-county-da-drops-all-charges-against-elijah-mcclain-protest-leaders/

Portland: https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/protests/multnomah-county-da-charges-10-people-for-protest-related-crimes/283-14b55c8f-d8a3-4576-b0b7-34d0d6518523

Seattle: https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/dozens-protesters-arrested-by-seattle-police-may-never-be-prosecuted/TQMXRMHYXBFZ5KZVTMEDU2S4IE/

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/beware-of-george-soros-trojan-horse-prosecutors/

https://ammo.com/articles/george-soros

 

Temps Rising In The Ongoing Cold ACLU Dem GOP Race War…

https://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/syndicated/cold-civil-war-division-multiracial-democracy-anti-democratic-minority/

https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/558433-the-aclus-civil-war-over-old-values-free-speech-only-for-the-woke

https://nypost.com/2021/06/08/get-ready-for-a-full-scale-democrat-civil-war/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/07/idaho-republicans-far-right-mask-mandates

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/identity-crisis-politics-race-wreck-america-charles-murray/

 

And Boiling Over on the Streets: Welcome To The Party, Pal…

https://twitter.com/pix11news/status/1405928349311057922?lang=en

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaucPPrYZJQ

https://twitter.com/lourdesubieta/status/1406738672909684736?lang=en

https://www.instagram.com/p/CQg7Vt6AVIy/

https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/the-grim-trade-off-of-blm-29d

 

Parting Shots…

https://www.theorganicprepper.com/north-korean-defector-us-similarities-insane/

https://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2021/06/the-systemic-risk-no-one-sees.html

https://www.theblaze.com/op-ed/ready-fearless-jason-whitlocks-letter-to-black-america-explaining-the-real-purpose-of-made-for-tv-racial-conflict

https://thebulwark.com/thucydides-on-partisanship-insurrection-and-the-risks-of-civil-war/

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/06/30/incremental_outrageousness_is_killing_america_146008.html

https://www.amazon.com/New-Civil-War-Exposing-Restoring/dp/1645438406

The Wilder Response To Mr. Biden

“It’s perfect. We traded one nuked civilization for another.” – Battlestar Galactica.

Bill Murray wasn’t cast as Thor by Marvel®.  They figured that no one likes an electricity Bill.

I had an utterly different post planned.  It was so funny that the laughing that it would induce would have caused your ribs to exit your body.  It was a post so funny, it was dangerous.  Comedy, as they say, is not always pretty.  I try to do those posts on Fridays.  Why?

I had a boss that gave sage advice:  never give your boss bad news on a Friday afternoon or a Monday morning.  I figure that people need a palate cleanser going into the weekend, and try to provide a bit of fun.  And this post that I had planned?  It would have been banned by the Geneva Convention as a Weapon of Mass Hilarity.

Sadly, that post might now be lost to history, since I have to replace it with this one.  Normally, my posts are created weeks in advance and focus tested against a cross-section of laboratory badgers who have no spleens.  Why no spleens?  They tell me that’s important, something about we don’t need no spleenin’ badgers.

But no, the Occupant-in-Chief decided to make the single most irresponsible statement ever made by someone who was sworn in as President since Richard Nixon said, “What’s the worst that they can do to me?”

I don’t want to be accused of taking Biden out of context (not that there’s much of a chance of that) but here’s his quote, to the most accurate degree I can find:

“Those who say the blood of patriots, you know, and all the stuff about how we’re gonna have to move against the government, if you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons.”

First, Biden is as articulate as a fourth-grader with fetal alcohol syndrome who’s just smoked a bowl of Hunter Biden’s crack.  And, yes, his Fraudulency has a son who smokes crack with hookers and takes videos of it.  This is a thing that really happens.  Of course, the response from the Left is to say Putin is corrupt.

Sorry.  I’ll try to stick to the topic.

Second, that’s also the same logic as a fourth-grader with an extra chromosome or three who’s just huffed a can of sparkly gold spray paint.  Abraham Lincoln made the obvious response fairly well:

“All the armies of Europe and Asia could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.”

Lincoln was wrong about a lot of things.  He was right about a lot of things, too.  He is correct about this:

“As a nation of free men, we will live forever or die by suicide.”

Joe Biden could have the armies of the united States get him a drink by force from any river in this land.  But Joe Biden and all the armies of the united States couldn’t hold the length of the Missouri or the Mississippi for a single day by force.

The armies of the united States number some 1.3 million men oh, wait people oh, wait, xim/xers.  Add in the Reserves?  Let’s round WAY UP and call it three million.  Total.

There are three million males in Missouri.  I pick Missouri only because they recently decided they’re going to tell the Feds to attempt to compact a very large object into a very small space when it comes to firearm laws.

Go, Missouri.

Not all of the three million males in Missouri would be on the side of freedom, since there are always some disgusting gelatinous slugs of humanity that will side with Evil over Truth.  But there are enough.  And don’t tell me that neighboring states wouldn’t flow in.

No, Mr. Biden.  The only one who needs F-15s and nuclear weapons for control is you, you disgusting pile of fake hair, fake teeth, Alzheimer’s degraded brain, who gets his only Father’s Day card encrusted in cocaine dust and whore DNA.

The united States governs only, let me make this clear, only by consent of the governed.  As citizens, we’re generally pretty good.  But we are horrible, horrible at taking instruction from tyrants.  It’s in our DNA.

No, literally.  This is not an exaggeration.  My family line came across an ocean to tame a continent.  That was their resume.  That was their job description as they rocked back and forth on little wooden boats in the midst of Atlantic storms.  We didn’t come here because we were weak.  We came here to fight and die and bleed and make this land our own.

We came here because we were strong.

We came here because we yearned for freedom.

Mr. Biden, your butt-sniffing and shoe-licking parents and your degenerate sons and personal weaknesses are abhorrent to every fiber of my body.  Mr. Biden, you are disgusting.  Mr. Biden, your forefathers were horrible.  Mr. Biden, you and your weaknesses represent everything wrong with this country, and everything that has led to where we are today.

How dare you threaten me?

  • To threaten me is to threaten Duncan MacWilder of the Clan MacWilder, who came here before this was a country.
  • It is to threaten Hans Wilder, who came here to leave tyrants behind in Europe before World War I.
  • It is to threaten my forefathers who died hewing a civilization out of this continent with their blood and sweat and toil and dead babies so lazy writers like me could exist.

The deal we made in 1776 is the same one we have today, Bucko.  We are here because we have certain inalienable rights.

Mr. Biden, you want to threaten me with jet fighters?  Mr. Biden, you want to threaten to use nuclear weapons against your own citizens?

We didn’t come here for that.  We didn’t die here for that.  We didn’t bury our sons and daughters on dusty plains and hills and hallows across this country, building it with our blood for that.

Reparations?  We paid for that in blood in places you have long forgotten, like Manassas Junction.  Everyone I’ve ever been able to research on any part of my family has been someone who made the united States better.

Every.

Single.

One.

We taught Eisenhower (really).  We built farms.  We built bridges 150 years ago that still exist today.  We built infrastructure that serves tens of millions of people – this is not an exaggeration.  We built railroads across mountains that mountain goats couldn’t cross.  We took trains up those mountains when the snow was 20 feet deep.  With our kids.

Just for fun.

We raised and nurtured children and taught them freedom.

Our blood is in this soil.  Our children are buried here as payment from sea to sea.

My blood is in this soil.  My forefathers weren’t evil.  They were Big Damn Heroes.  Odin and Thor and Jesus would be proud of them for their courage.

Did other people build this land as well?  Sure.  But Wilder blood is spread here from the Mayflower to today.

  • I can do no less than to tell you, Mr. Biden, what Duncan MacWilder would have said:
  • I can do no less than to tell you, Mr. Biden, what Patrick Henry would have said (distant relative, according to an aunt):
  • I can do no less than to tell you, Mr. Biden, what Hans Wilder would have said:

No.

And, to mark the first time I have ever used this word on this blog?  Each and every one of them would have added:

Fuck you, Mr. Biden.

Bring your jets.  Bring your nukes.  The only way you have to dislodge us off this continent we conquered with our blood and sweat and buried kin is to kill us all.  We will never give up.  We will never surrender.  This will not die with me.  Or my children.

You will never defeat us.  Never.  Our blood is here.  Here we make our stand.  We can go to no other country for freedom.  We can go no further to a distant frontier.  Despite what you will try to do with us, despite the injustices you will visit on us, we will win.  We will mock you, and your grave will be pulled up and your bones used by our children for their amusement.

We will smile, and nod.

We did not choose this.  We do not want this.

You spiked the ball too soon.  Maybe two generations into the future, they would go gentle onto that goodnight.

Too soon, Bucko.

Fuck you.

The Beauty Of The Red Pill

“Hey Samantha, don’t take the Red Pill!” – Grandma’s Boy

If my son wanted to be a fiction writer, I’d send him to college to study journalism.

Have you ever not asked a question because you already knew the answer, but were afraid to hear it?  I’m willing to bet we all have.  I try to leave occasional breadcrumbs here, especially during my Monday and Wednesday posts, but I’ve stopped short of leaving my posts in the forest near a witch’s house.  Besides, I hear Hillary has security guards.

The Truth is shocking.  Many times, the Truth isn’t pleasant.  I remember coming to one unpleasant Truth realization in college:  the college didn’t care if I did well or even if I graduated.

It hadn’t been like that in high school.  But in college?  I was just a number.  It sounds silly to me now, but back then it was quite a realization for me.  Gradually, more Truths started showing up in my life.  In many cases, I denied them as long as I could, but they eventually became inevitable.

They call this the Red Pill, after the scene in The Matrix where Keanu Reeves gets a job painting pills red.

Never let Morpheus do the cooking at a Matrix cast barbeque.  There’s a reason they call him Lawrence Fishburne.

Part of the problem with discovering Truth is that it can make you feel alone.  Much of our society is based on covering uncomfortable Truth with pretty little lies.  It has always been so, but in 2021 it’s at the very worst that it has been in the history of the United States.  People were censored a year ago for telling what are now the (generally) accepted theories about CoronaChan.

The Truth is that we still don’t know where it came from, but vary from any generally accepted truth about COVID on YouTube® and you’ll be censored.  Thankfully, YouTube™ is so committed to “truth” that they gave themselves an award for being so courageous about it.  Really – there isn’t even a punchline.

Here’s another Red Pill:  no one (and I mean no one) is coming to save you.  No one (and I mean no one) is responsible for your actions but you.  If you can’t save yourself, you’ll just have to depend on luck, which is a crappy strategy.  There is no secret cabal of government good guys like Qanon® used to put in his cryptic message board posts.  Q is not coming to save you.

I guess QANON was just another 4Chan teller.

Part of the problem with taking a Red Pill is that, once you’re finally awake and aware of how the world works, just like Ebola, you want to share it with people.  That’s a bad idea.

The unfortunately named Desiderius Erasmus Roterdamus made the silly quote, “In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,” and with the new Red Pill knowledge, you want to share it far and wide.

Sadly, Desiderius, the one-eyed man is not king.

As H.G. Wells wrote, the blind people can’t see what the one-eyed dude describes.  They think him mad, and if they have a chance they’ll tie him down and remove that silly eye that keeps giving him all of those wild notions and that awful practical joke of leaving the plunger in the toilet.  People will fight nearly to the death to keep a pretty lie alive, especially when the Truth is ugly.

I wrote a check to a charity for the blind, but I’m worried they’ll never see a penny of it.

But there is opportunity for an individual once the first real Red Pill hits.  Seeking Truth becomes a habit.  And you find that Truth exists in many, many more places than you might imagine.  When I go to find Truth, I know one place I can find it very quickly.

Truth is in the Iron.

I started lifting again this week for the first time since COVID raised its head.  I was stunned at how one of my standard lifts was half – HALF – what it had been 18 months ago.

That is Truth.  The Iron is Truth.

Was it at all pleasant to find my strength had dropped that far, that fast?

Of course not.

But it is True.

I gave up on lifting cases of Pepsi® for exercise, it was just soda pressing. 

I cannot hide from the Iron.  I cannot cheat the Iron.  The only things there in the weight room are the Iron, Gravity, and Me.  The only thing that changes in that equation is me.  I can’t blame the Iron.  I can’t blame Gravity.

The Red Pill?

No one will make me physically stronger but me.  And the only way I can do that is to wrestle against Gravity with the Iron.  And, unless I am quite ill, it will always work.

And here is the hope.  Here is where the Red Pill really begins to pay dividends.

I’m the one responsible for:

  • my physical state,
  • what I eat,
  • how I react,
  • what I say,
  • what I watch,
  • how I treat others,
  • my own Virtue,
  • who I am, and
  • where my life ends up.

I’m not responsible for who loves me.  I’m not responsible for how much they love me.  Those are the output.  If I control every bit of input in my life, what happens, happens.

There is nothing, and I mean nothing more wonderful than that realization.  It goes beyond winning and losing.  It goes beyond the opinions of others.

The downside, of course, is seeing all of the pretty little lies and all of the attempted manipulation.  Even worse:  the attempts to numb minds, to distract, and to pretend that the new lie doesn’t contradict the last lie.  The stunning thing to me is how many people will flitter from one contradictory opinion to another like butterflies in the Sun, with never a thought.

When I take responsibility for myself, I am a changed person.

I was born a male, I identify as a male, but according to Stouffer’s Frozen Lasagna®, I identify as a family of four.

That doesn’t mean the battle ever ends.  The first struggle is, always, against myself.  Why am I weaker?

I had weights at home, but didn’t lift.

Why?

Well, I could make any number of excuses, but none of them matter.  I didn’t lift.  That was it.  So, my choice is simple:  will I work to get better every week, or will I be complacent with where I am?

I asked the Iron a question.  It told me the Truth.

Now, my choice is how will I answer?

I have only one answer.  Sweat.

It’s never lonely when you’ve got Truth for a companion.

With The Left, Their First Enemy Is Truth

“I’ve heard the truth, Mulder. Now what I want are the answers.” – The X Files

My favorite conspiracy theory: everything is going to be okay.

One feature of the Soviet Union was the constant propaganda that was used against the Soviet citizens, they called it PTSD – Post-Tsarism Socialism Disorder. Of course, they used propaganda externally, but most of their efforts in controlling reality were focused internally. Everyone was expected to sing the praises of the government when they knew that they were nothing but lies. This wasn’t a bug, but a feature.

Imagine: being required to deny the very truth of a matter, just so one could continue to live in society. Imagine: having to parrot the lines of official government in order to maintain what little income you had to make it from day to day. It’s almost a bad as working at CNN®.

I often blog about Truth. I believe that there isn’t “your truth” and “my truth” but there is an objective, verifiable Truth in almost every case. Physics (except for some weird quantum events) demands it. For instance, if I put my left foot in a sock, no matter where in the universe it exists, the other sock becomes the right sock.

Bears don’t wear socks. They prefer bear foot.

But Leftism demands that you reject Truth. Leftism demands, on the most basic premise, that Truth be the very first thing sacrificed. Compliance with this is required on a daily basis. Otherwise? You weren’t Politically Correct. They even had Politically Correct comedians – no matter if they were funny or not you were supposed to laugh.

That’s the origin of the phrase Politically Correct: the Soviets. They’d use that to remind each other that truth belonged to the state. Truth that didn’t follow the state’s dictates? Politically Incorrect, and those people didn’t last very long.

Why was Political Correctness important?

Every day, citizens had to be reminded that they were controlled. Not only controlled, the citizens had to be humiliated. This is the course of history: conquerors had to remove the will to fight of the vanquished. How better than to break their will than to remind them every day of their humiliation?

Break the primacy of the family. Take children from the family and raise them with the values of the state. Let everyone know that, at any minute, they could be made an enemy of the state. It’s so bad in that the football team in D.C. had to change their name out of shame. Now they just go by “the Redskins” so their name is less offensive.

But Italians don’t like Jehovah’s Witnesses. It’s not religious. They just don’t like any witnesses.

But when the Soviets took over, that’s what the Soviets did. They lied. They encouraged children to betray their family. They came in the middle of the night with armed secret police to enforce arbitrary laws with (more or less) impunity.

Many Soviet citizens were fine with this. I (personally) can’t imagine why, but I think there’s some fraction of the population who has as their primary operating mode, “go along and get along.” They’d be fine with whoever was in charge, as long as they told them what to do. They’d rather lick a boot than complain about their entire culture being destroyed, value by value.

Guess who isn’t getting a new laptop for Christmas this year? Hunter Biden.

What are we seeing today?

A similar victory lap from the Left in the United States is taking place right now:

  • LGBTQRSTUV positivity. It’s June, which used to be known as, “June.” But now it’s known as Pride Month. Pride used to be a sin. Now? Pride has been used as an excuse to cram children too young to read as “Trans” kids.
  • An “election” that had more anomalies than Joe Biden’s latest Alzheimer’s test is demanded to be taken seriously. Why? That’s why.
  • “Laws” and a “border” that are, at best theoretical constructs. As in Alice in Wonderland, laws are what the rulers say they are. And laws can change from day to day, and person to person. Borders? We don’t need no steenking borders.
  • A definition of being “American” that includes all people living in the world right now, and probably any intergalactic beings as well, as long as they can be counted on to vote for the Leftist candidate. I’m sure the Arcturans need to be treated as refugees, too.
  • The primary prerequisite to being in the military isn’t that you’d have honor, duty, and service to country as goals. Can you put the current policy of the current administration at the top of your agenda?

Every day this is what people see. The news articles are filled with one humiliation after another.

The idea is simple. Values must be turned on their head, especially the most cherished ones. In our society, what has come to be regarded as the highest value is our children. Therefore, the values we had built up the most have to be destroyed.

When the Greeks sacked Troy, the children of the leader, Priam, were all killed. All of them. That’s what conquerors do to the conquered. One thing is certain in this world – not a trace of Priam’s DNA survives. The Greeks made sure of that. The Greeks devastated everything that was Troy, and left it a burning hulk that was lost to history except in the songs of the Greeks for thousands of years until a weird German found them while searching for the Indiana Jones set.

My body is like a temple. One that the Romans destroyed 2,500 years ago.

That’s what the winners do. They pull down the statues of those they beat. They eradicate their history, or make the losers out to be the bad guys. And, finally, they have the children of those they beat forget the faces of their fathers and emulate the values of the winners.

This century has been unusual, in that the Revolution has been (more or less) a bloodless one. The idea of actual warfare has been replace by the subversion of culture and the inversion of values.

I had hoped for a long time that the idea of a cultural swing back to the Right would show up. It has not. Trump was one attempt at such a swing, and the lasting value of his administration approaches, well, zero. “Cthulhu swims slowly, but he only swims Left.” Almost – not all – but almost all of the changes in values during my lifetime have been a ratchet, and a Leftward ratchet. *Click* – a Leftist point has been won.

No, we can’t turn that clock back, because, (for instance) Rowe Vs. Wade is now settled law. The ratchet has clicked. According to the Left, it simply can’t turn back.

If H.P. Lovecraft got rid of cable, would he sign up for Cthulhu?

But we have examples of societies that have explicitly rejected the Leftist ratchet by pulling so hard that the gears stripped, and have turned back. The best examples are Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. If you ever want to find people that hate Leftism, wander off to Poland or Hungary.

The reason that I’m not a pessimist is that we, humanity, have beaten the horrors of Leftism every time it has arisen. The battles haven’t been short, and they have numbered in decades of oppression and hundreds of millions of lives.

The propaganda is strong out there. It’s in television. It’s in the news media. It’s in the schools.

Don’t give up.

Keep the fire of Truth alive.

Blogger Versus Evil

Jack Burton:  “Great.  Walls are probably three feet thick, welded shut from the outside, and covered with brick by now.”

Wang Chi:  “Don’t give up, Jack.”

Jack Burton:  “Okay, I won’t Wang.  Let’s just chew our way out of here.” – Big Trouble in Little China

Never make a deal to buy a guitar from the Devil.  There are always strings attached.

The Exorcist is a feel-good movie.  Well, at least it is for me.

I wanted to watch it when I was an especially wee Wilder, but for whatever reason, Ma and Pa Wilder felt that exposing a first grader to that particular film would be considered a war crime.  I don’t remember how old I was when I finally saw it, but as I recall it was rented on a VHS tape.

By the time I’d seen it, I’d already been exposed to much more brutal horror:  Lovecraft, Stephen King, and Norman Lear sitcoms.  I’ll say this about reading horror – the things I conjured in my mind while tearing through the pages of The Stand were far scarier than anything I’d ever seen in a movie.

But I made a pretty bold statement:  The Exorcist is a feel-good movie, so I guess you’re gonna make me back it up.  Thankfully, I have that not only on my authority, but on the authority of the author of The Exorcist.  William Peter Blatty summed up the reason I like horror films with this very simple quote:

“My logic was simple:  if demons are real, why not angels? If angels are real, why not souls? And if souls are real, what about your own soul?”

Blatty even described The Exorcist as his ministry – it seems he’s religious.  Who would have expected that?

What don’t demons wear hairpieces?  Because there would be Hell toupee. 

Much of what we see in the world we explain through simple materialism.  But when I read novels where the demons are mere humans, well, (with the exception of Hannibal Lechter) I’m generally let down when the Scooby Doo® ending explains away the supernatural mystery at the heart of the story.  Mr. Blatty’s quote describes exactly why.

“If demons are real, why not angels.”

Now I know that several readers are atheists.  As I’ve pointed out before, this blog is sort-of a litmus test.  People that are the kind of atheist that just hates God will generally not opt-in to reading this blog for any length of time.  I have no idea why, but they just don’t.  Actual, rational atheists that don’t turn rabid when the supernatural is discussed don’t seem to mind.

Maybe they look at it like I look at the WWE®:  they can watch it and be amused, even though they’re certain it’s not real.  They especially like it when Hulk Hogan® hits me in the head with a chair.

Where did Randy “Macho Man” Savage™ work out?  The Slim-Jim©.

Regardless, I think most readers here share the same view of Evil (or even evil) in this world.  It’s visible in the raw naked lust for power that we have seen repeated again and again from the Left.  It’s also visible in their unbridled joy at the destruction of Truth, Beauty, and Society.

The Left revels in the Lie, the inversion of Truth, the inversion of Beauty:

  • Billions of dollars in damage in Minneapolis is a “peaceful protest” while a march on the Capitol is, according to President* Biden: “The worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”
  • They demand, using free speech, to restrict the free speech of those that offend them.
  • The Left demands you look at what is obviously a man, and claim it to be a woman.

It’s simple, really:  everything that’s Bad is presented as good.  And everything Good?  Well, it’s Bad.  How dare you think self-restraint and hard work is virtuous?

Sniff.  “Smells like fraud.”

Let’s look at how a simple Good thing like a married man and woman having a baby is turned on its head:

  • What about the woman’s career?
  • Why not live the childfree life?
  • Why have the baby at all?
  • There are too many people on the planet already.

The last argument is especially Evil, because when the propaganda works, the headlines then sing out:  “since we’re not having enough babies, we need to import multitudes to grow our economy.”  “Meet the New Americans.”

It’s fun to use this technique on Leftists.  I can recall a Twitter® exchange with a Leftist where I Tweeted™ that I opposed immigration to the United States on the grounds that people in the United States had the highest carbon footprint, so by bringing in more people into the United States they were destroying the planet.

Brain lock ensued when they couldn’t deal with the conflict between their two opposing beliefs.  It’s fun to come up with these couplets to invert the Evil right back at them, though, in the end, there is no conversion for a True Believer outside of a gentle helicopter ride.  They have given in to the Evil.  They’ll avoid the conversation.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle:  three ways to dispose of a dead Leftist.

It is especially difficult for parents of children:  what is innocent is sexualized.  A first-grade boy isn’t old enough to decide what he should eat on a regular basis – why would the world think that he should be turned into a she?

It’s all around us, every day.  It’s sold to us in media, it’s in the news, it’s everywhere.

And it’s attacking the Values of what we all know, deep inside ourselves, to be True and Good.  That which is Good, True and Beautiful hasn’t changed within the lifetime of mankind on this planet, but when you’re confronted with people trying to sell that which is a Lie as the Truth?

You can be sure those people are Evil.

Not to say that people on the Right are immune to that – far from it.  Eaton Rapids Joe has a great little story to that effect here (LINK).

To be clear, the ultimate aim of the propaganda of Evil is simple:  to make Good people feel despair.

Why despair?  Despair is the opposite of hope.  It is the opposite of Truth.  It is the opposite of Beauty.  Despair is Evil.

And when propaganda wins?  Evil wins.

H.P. Lovecraft was tormented by doubt all of his life.  Imagine if he hadn’t slept in despair bedroom.

But that’s not what happened in The Exorcist.  Father Karras, who had lingering doubts and was on the verge of Despair, conquered it.

Because he conquered Despair, Father Karras conquered Evil.

When you feel Despair, know that’s nothing more than Evil.  And you can conquer it, too.

Yeah, I told you that The Exorcist was a feel-good story.  And I was right.

———————————————

Extra Meme and Tagline, because I made one too many:

In other news, the 2024 election will be postponed until they find the results in Biden’s desk.

The Way The Constitution Dies

This is a repost, but one that has some meaning to me on the start of Memorial Day weekend.  Please, all of you be safe.

point4

Soldiers heading towards Omaha Beach.

When I was in grade school the teachers spoke of the Constitution with reverence.  As second graders, we listened as the teacher told the story of how it was written and the freedoms it guaranteed us and the responsibilities that it demanded of us.  My grade school teachers were all married women, and they loved America.  It was a small town, and the teachers had grown up in the area.  Some of them had taught their own children and their own grandchildren in the same school where the chalkboard dust, lead paint dust, water from lead-soldered pipes, and asbestos floor tiles soaked into my skin daily.  Even the early reader books were taped together with yellowing cellophane tape at the bindings, and most of the books had been printed decades before.  I got to See Spot Run like legions of boys before me, running my fingers over the same dog-eared pages that had been read for years, young mouths quietly sounding out the words.

And these boys before me, who had sat in the same desks, drew beginning math on the same blackboards, pulling chalk from the same worn, wooden tray that I did, got paddled in the same principal’s office that I did.  They had traveled the world to strange places that their teachers never named when they opened the geography books during the time they spent in second grade.  These were places with foreign names like Guadalcanal.  Bastogne.  Chosin Reservoir.  Da Nang.

One of these boys in particular, a blonde haired young Ranger, was barely eighteen when he was shot climbing the cliffs at Pointe Du Hoc on the sixth of June, 1944.  His sister was a friend of my father.  As a young boy that Ranger sat in that same room, learning the same math that I would later learn, though he was doing it decades before I was born.  He sat in that same classroom just a few short years before he was buried in Normandy in late spring at the age of 18.  No member of his family could afford to visit his grave until over fifty years had passed and his sister walked to his grave and touched its cold marble stone and ran her fingers over his name.  Despite that, the young Ranger isn’t lonely – he is surrounded by 9,387 of his comrades who died during the invasion of France.

point2

Rangers climbing Pointe du Hoc.

The teachers, those mothers, in the distant past had taught the children the value of patriotism.  The value of the Constitution.  The belief that freedom was a great gift from both God and our forefathers and was an idea and an ideal worth fighting for was taught to them in school and in church.  Those boys who traveled far wearing Army green, Navy blue, the camouflage of the Marines, and eventually Air Force blue were mainly the sons of farmers, used to hard work that started early in the morning and sometimes went too far into the night when the cows were calving.  The things that they were told that were true were God, freedom, family, and country and that you always had to work hard for these things, and sometimes you had to fight for them.  And sometimes die for them.

Even the cartoons as I was growing up were infused with patriotism:

Corny?  Yes.  

The school was torn down some time ago – I don’t know when.  A bond issue was finally passed, and a new school was built.  There aren’t many more students than when I went there, but there are new classrooms.  These new schools are gleaming with whiteboards and new furniture and new books, and from the pictures you can see that the kids look a lot like the kids from when I went there; but the connection with 100 years of history went when the building was torn down.

Change is inevitable, but the one thing that my teachers taught us was that the Constitution was a rock, something special, something that every American had shared for hundreds of years.  It was important, and it protected us, and protected our freedom.

I believed that, the way the boys that live forever on Pointe du Hoc did.

rangers

Ladders used to scale Pointe du Hoc.

Today, however, the population of the United States is at least 14% foreign born, but I’d bet that number undercounts illegal aliens.  Second generation Americans, people born here of immigrants, account for at least 10% of the population.  A quarter of the population of this country simply has no connection to anything American.  10% were born here, but were raised in a household that had little to no connection to anything American.

I was working in Houston on one particular job, often late into the night.  The cleaning crew came in after 8 PM, and I was often still there.  I’d taken Spanish in school, and would share a sentence or two with the very nice cleaning woman who came by.  She spoke no English.  One day I asked her, in Spanish, “Why don’t you learn English?”  I realized that this nice person would have no chance to move up, no way to take part in the economic miracle that is the United States without English.

“Es muy dificil.”  It’s too difficult.

The cleaning woman is very nice, but has no connection in any meaningful way to the United States.  I’m sure she’s had children by now as 21% of children in the United States have foreign-born mothers.  Her children likewise have had no part in building this country and have no reverence for the principles of its founding, or the sacrifices made along the way to create freedom.  This is similar to me if I moved to say, England, or Denmark.  I love England.  I love Denmark.  I’m ethnically related to those areas and admire both cultures.

If I moved to England I’d always be the Yankee.  Or Amerikansk in Denmark.  My kids, even if I had kids there, wouldn’t be English.  They wouldn’t be Danish.  They’d be the “kids of that American that lives here.”  Maybe if my kids were born there, and then worked hard to assimilate away from the American attitudes and culture of their parents, then they one day the kids they had would be considered English or Danish.  I’m an American, a product of American culture and no citizenship documents will ever change that.

25% of the people in the United States, however, simply aren’t American by any sort of rational criteria.  One out of four – an amazing number and a number that is going to grow based on current trends and census data, perhaps to one in three by 2060.  The United States has never had such high numbers of foreign born in history.

As these numbers grow, the electorate changes to an electorate that has no history of a representative democracy – most people coming to the United States are from places where elections are not free and fair, and in many cases the politicians from those countries are so corrupt to make Illinois look like a Boy Scout® camp.  These are also places where constitutions are meant not for the people, but for the state, and are changed out with stunning regularity, often accompanied by firing squads and atrocity.  They expect better here, but they also are ready-made for the politicians that promise them the world.

The political class, however, is excellent at creating and playing on resentment in new immigrants with no history of good government.  Division is the strength of these politicians.  “Why do these people have a say as to who is an American?”  “Abolish ICE.”  “You deserve free education, free healthcare, free housing, free food.”  “Living wage for all.”  “Common sense gun laws.”  Thankfully, native language broadcasting is available to all of these new residents and new citizens so that they can avoid assimilation into the culture.

These residents also don’t have teachers that teach that the United States is good, that the Constitution is a meaningful document – times have changed and that just isn’t the “woke” take.  They don’t get any of this from their family, either.  Their family simply doesn’t know anything about freedom and the Constitution in most cases, and probably wouldn’t care if they did.  It’s a document that foreigners put together – it is not part of their history at all.

point3

Pointe du Hoc, after it had been taken.

As I said, I had faith in the Constitution.  It was a great wall that both defined and constricted government, but in recent decades “rights” have been made up from layer after layer of interpretation that have nothing to do with the original text.  On the other hand, rights that are written about clearly in plain language are somehow interpreted to be so limited that they hardly exist at all.  But there are still some protections that exist, as long as there’s a majority of five to four.  Change that number?  Watch those liberties evaporate as Justices that admire the constitution of South Africa, the one that’s being interpreted to allow the theft of land, become a majority.

If we have politicians that actively create divisions between Americans with a heritage of limited government and an increasing number of people for whom the history of the United States means nothing, the Constitution won’t mean anything.  It will be a speed bump for those who have no connection to it and who have no love of it.  The Constitution in the hands of those who hate the limitations it puts on them will, in the long run, provide no safety at all as it is interpreted away, as the press revolts against it, and as the newly imported electorate ignores it.

And what meaning will the blonde Ranger of Pointe du Hoc have then?

Life Is A Struggle: That’s A Good Thing

“The closer you are to death, the more alive you feel. It’s a wonderful way to live. It’s the only way to drive.” – Rush

A computer once beat me at chess.  It lost at kickboxing, though.

The Mrs. and I have recently been playing chess.  It’s not a lot of chess, it’s mainly on Saturday nights when things are a bit slower.  I’ve been enjoying the games.  If I were to guess, before the last time we played, the games tilted slightly in my favor.

I think I’ve won about 30.  The Mrs. was still sitting at, well, zero wins.

30-0.

Don’t think poorly of her.  The Mrs. is going from a standing start.  At one point in college, I lived with eight other guys in a house, and nearly all of the time a chess game was going.  I could generally beat everyone in the house by the end of the school year.  It took a while for one guy, about four months.  First, he wiped the floor with me, then he and I traded games.  By the end of two semesters?

I usually won.  I have played a lot more chess than The Mrs.  I will say this, though, she’s smart as a whip, and when I give her position analysis and show her why she lost the game, she listens.

The Mrs. doesn’t listen like someone who wants to defend why they did what they did.  She listens with the ears of someone who wants to learn, who wants to get better.  There has been exactly zero ego in learning the game for her.

Did I mention that The Mrs. is competitive?  Really competitive?

Ever notice that Tom Cruise has a tooth perfectly centered under his nose, like it’s one-half tooth too far over?  Now you’ll never be able to unsee that.  You’re welcome.

The last time The Mrs. and I played chess, we played three games.  The first game, I crushed her.  By the start of the mid-game, I was up on pieces and position.  It was like a velociraptor in a room full of bacon-wrapped kittens covered in pudding.  Then the next game.  Again, by the mid-game, I was up.  I was toying with her king like a teacup poodle lords over a pork chop, getting ready for checkmate.

Then, she moved.

Then, I moved.  That’s the rule, right?

But my move made it so she had no legal moves left.  The Mrs. wasn’t in check, but couldn’t move.  I was winning, decisively.

But if she has no legal moves and her king isn’t in check?

It’s a draw.  The score was now 30-0-1.

My blunder, her draw.  The next game went, shall we say, a little differently.  The start went okay.  Then, in the mid-game?  She took control and by the beginning of the end-game?  I was breathing for air harder than Biden sniffing a teenager.  Which Biden?  Apparently any of them.

What mall did they get this picture taken at? 

Then?  I caught a break.  The Mrs. was up on pieces and position, but I found a way out.  I could keep her king in perpetual check.

The Mrs. moved, I moved, check.

The Mrs. moved, I moved, check.

The Mrs. moved, I moved, check.

Note:  I couldn’t win, but I could make the game as annoying as an 8-year-old asking, “Are we there yet?”

Thankfully, there’s a rule for that.  It’s called?

A draw.

We went from me constantly crushing her, to her lucking to a draw, to me grasping to find a way out of a game without a loss.

30-0-2.

Good for The Mrs.

And good for me.  Now I’m going to have to work to bring my A-game.  And Saturday nights just got better.

Why?

Would it be better if I could crush her in chess every evening like Oprah crushes couch cushions?  Of course not.

I told my barber to cut my hair like he would for Tom Cruise.  He made me sit on two phone books.

The best victories in life are going head to head with someone near your level in skill.  Going all out.  Pushing each other to be better.  I mean, I can beat up any number of third graders.  Honestly, I have no idea how many third graders I couldn’t beat up.

I could do it all day.  It’s really not a challenge.  Seriously, I could beat up lots of them.

But fourth graders?  I mean, I could be at least the third-best player on the fourth-grade soccer team.

Life is challenge.  Life is struggle.

And thank heavens for that.  Or thank Heaven for that?  (Stick with me – this isn’t a sermon.)

Speaking of Heaven, from the time I was just a little Wilder, I caused a *lot* of problems at church.  I distinctly recall that I colored a picture of Jesus with His skin being bright purple.  On purpose.

My only excuse is that I was five and had no glitter.

The Sunday school teacher came up to me and said, “Johnny, you know that Jesus wasn’t purple.”

I replied, “Well, please allow me to retort.  Jesus is God, right?  Well, if He wants to be purple, He can be purple.”

How can you argue with logic like that?  Even kindergartners score some points now and then.  I last saw my Sunday school teacher when I was thirty.  She was really thrilled to see me.  I think she was just happy I hadn’t started the Cult of the Glittery Purple Jesus.  And, yes, all of those things really happened.

But back to heaven, or in this case, Heaven.

When they described Heaven to me in Sunday school, I was as appalled and indignant as a precocious five-year-old can be.

Sunday school teacher, describing Heaven:  “You’re happy all the time.  Nothing bad ever happens.  You wake up and everything is fine.”

Five-year-old me thought:  “Well, that sucks.  It’s stupid.  That sounds boring.”  Even then, I was wise enough not to throw out a level-five heresy in the middle of Sunday school.  Jesus might turn me purple or something.  I’m certainly glad they didn’t teach me about Valhalla then, because that sounds much, much better than Heaven:  Wake up.  Fight and get soused and maybe die.  Wake up.  Repeat.

What did the Vikings call English villages?  Chopping centers.

Sure you teach little kids the things that you think they like.  But me as a little kid?  Peace was the last thing on my mind.  But I’m not alone.

When you look at the life of Jesus, He didn’t spend it sitting on fluffy pillows and eating Ding-Dongs®.  Nope.  If you think WWJD, remember, taking a whip and kicking vermin out of church is within the realm of permissible actions.

Jesus was clear in that:  life is the struggle.

  • Life is not about the easy way out.
  • Life is not about running out the clock in the 20 years until you retire.
  • Life is not about being nice.

If you played your life like a video game, your goal isn’t to have a pleasant but non-threatening experience.  You want to climb the mountain, fight for the fair maiden, and drink from the skull of your enemy.  I want The Mrs. to be kick-ass at chess, so when I win, it means something.

It meant something to The Mrs. when I had to force a draw to save my sorry (rare NSFW word coming) ass.

That, my friends, is life.  Life is the struggle.

And my bet at Heaven is that it’s more like this:

LEVEL ONE COMPLETE.

PREPARE FOR LEVEL TWO.

I started a job digging deeper and deeper holes – but that was boring on so many levels.

Yeah.  Let’s go.  Let’s live life.

Bring.

It.

On.

Take big bites.

Who is with me?

Culture Wars: The Boy Scouts And Hollywood, Including A Bikini Graph

“Envy the country that has heroes, huh?  I say pity the country that needs them.” – Reign of Fire

My book on the Nordic nations is really difficult to write.  I’m not sure I can Finnish.

There are institutions in this country that are fundamental in shaping it.  Two, in particular, helped define the 20th century in the United States of America:

  • Hollywood®
  • Boy Scouting

Both were a product of the American expansion between 1850 and 1940, and both were forged in the American West.

Boy Scouting?  American?

The official story is that Boy Scouts was brought to the United States from Great Britain.  In the immortal words of Jules, “Please allow me to retort”:  Sir Robert Baden-Powell was the guy who “officially” started Boy Scouting, but given his aristocratic upbringing, Baden-Powell’s idea of camping was spending an afternoon on the patio with only one servant and no ice for his gin.

The truth is much more American:  Baden-Powell based Scouting on Frederick Russell Burnham, who was born in Minnesota and crossed paths with outlaws and thieves as he learned the tricks from old cavalry scouts that served in the Indian Wars.  Once all the Indians were killed or in a reservation, Burnham got bored and hitched a ride to South Africa to kill and conquer that continent, too.

In South Africa, Burnham was eventually made Chief of Scouts of the British South African Army in one of the Boer Wars.  The Boer Wars were that time when the British found out that the Boers were sitting on the biggest gold strike in the world, and decided that all that was required was to get those pesky Boers off of all of that obviously British gold.  I first heard of Burnham while reading this amazing true story (LINK).  It’s long-ish, but amazing because it’s true.

Why do Scoutmasters wear that hat?  This guy.  This picture was taken after he was personally decorated by the King with the second-highest award given by Britain to soldiers, and given a permanent rank in the British Army.  Also given personally by the King.

Why do Boy Scouts wear neckerchiefs?  Because Burnham wore a neckerchief.  In Baden-Powell’s estimation, the goal of Boy Scouts was to turn boys into men like Burnham.

Scouting was built on just that American ideal – individual ruggedness and preparedness.  Baden-Powell said it very well, “A Scout is never taken by surprise; he knows exactly what to do when something unexpected happens.”

Scouting, in one quote that I read sometimes back, was based in the preparation of an ideal citizen – one that could contribute, one that could learn, and one that was not reliant on the government.  It created capable, rugged boys who in turn became capable, rugged men.

Scouting found very fertile ground in the United States.  Very soon there was a shortage of little old ladies to escort across the street, and they had to take shifts so the Boy Scouts could assist.

I kid.

But there are very few organizations (outside of churches) that have done as much good for the United States as the Boy Scouts.

Sadly, Boy Scouts is essentially dead.  The last decade killed it.

Well, you can’t say the Left isn’t good at something.

It had already been on life support.  The peak number of Boy Scouts was in the early 1970s at about five million boys.  To have a similar number today would mean that there would be ten million Scouts.  There aren’t.  I expect that the number (when it is announced later this month) will certainly be less than two million, and probably closer to one million than two.  The graph I put together (there are many conflicting sources, and I put this together using the most accurate numbers I could find, along with some guesswork and interpolation) shows that the number of Scouts is consistently declining.

I guess that nobody asked the Scouts what their opinion was.

This utter collapse in the number of Scouts is despite the tricks that the national leadership has employed to keep numbers up:  they added kindergarteners, the glue eating set, to a new program called Lions.  Since the name “Boy Scouts of America” wasn’t clear to them, they decided to add girls to the program and rebrand it as Scouts BSA® where BSA™ doesn’t stand for anything really.  It was all an effort to keep the numbers up.

I don’t have high hopes for the girls involved in Scouts BSA™.  One local Scouts BSA© leader took girls out camping.  One of them snuck a spare cell phone, called a boy with a car, and disappeared with him for a week.  Somehow, that didn’t make the local papers.

If you look at the graph, the Boy Scouts had been in trouble before.  In the 1980s they realized the program had deviated from what made it popular:  being rugged.  They reintroduced the old-school methods, and popularity surged.

In 2014, they admitted homosexuals as youth.  In 2015, they admitted open homosexuals as leaders.  In 2017, girls who think they are boys were allowed to join.  Deciding that none of that mattered anymore, in 2019 girls could become Boy Scouts Scouts BSA™ members.  At every point, the Left made the point:  it’s not enough.  Now they want atheists to be able to join.

The Boy Scouts® used to stand for something.  Scouts BSA™ stands as just the latest conquest by the Social Justice Warriors.  Note that commies throughout history have hated the Scouts.  Now that they own it, they can finally kill it.

This is just one story.  You can find attack after attack on the Boy Scouts from the Left since the Scouts were founded.  Why?  Boy Scouts until 2010 was the thing that scared Leftists the most:  strong individuals who were responsible for their own actions.

Hollywood© is a similar American story – rooted in the West.  About the time that Burnham was killing his way across South Africa and unwittingly starting a youth movement that would transform the 20th century, the movie industry cranked up in California.  Why?  Well, Edison owned patents, and California was a very long way away from Edison’s lab in New Jersey.  The bandits that Burnham knew in California didn’t disappear – they just turned into businessmen.

See?  I can do a transition!

Hollywood™ has been a similar success story, though with a few twists and turns.  For a large number of years, films coming out of Hollywood© mirrored (in many cases) the Rightist views of the American public.  In the height of the Vietnam War protests, John Wayne starred in The Green Berets.  Even as late as 2002, Disney® put out Reign of Fire, which was staunchly Right in attitude.

I’m not ashamed to say that I love movies.  There are those who say that’s silly, and you’re more than welcome to your opinion.  I see them as a way to thrill to bravery and watch as Good defeats Evil.  It is a myth-making process that can showcase the very best of what we, as humans, can be.

Duty.  Honor.  Tradition.  Cannons, pistols, and swords.  French people being shot.  How can you not love this movie?  Did I mention French people being shot?

Now, in Current Year, Hollywood™ has managed to mangle several amazing film franchises because they had to inject either gender or identity politics into the films, and not in a light way.  The latest Star Wars™ films?  Pretty bad, like eye-rollingly bad.  It wasn’t the effects, mind you.  Those were amazing.  It wasn’t the actors – Hollywood© is a consistently ruthless meritocracy of talent.

It was the stories.

Once upon a time, movies were fun.  Really fun.  Some, of course, still are.  But what happened to the funny teen comedy?  Well, comedy requires that someone is made fun of.  So?  Comedy is out.

No, today movies have to be “woke” and parrot the Social Justice Warrior line and teach an important moral.  It’s funny when that moral isn’t what China likes, so that Hollywood™ has to change their picture, or change posters to minimize black cast members so Chinese people will go to see the movie.

Hmmm, I wonder if BLM® approved of the poster change? Think they speak Chinese?

Perhaps the reason for the injection of the Leftism is the studio executives wanting to placate their talent or their audience?

It doesn’t matter.  It failed horribly.

Sure, it’s a Wilder Bikini Graph®.  I was so very not going to do a bikini graph for the Boy Scouts.

Just like in Boy Scouts, now that the Left has fully taken Hollywood®, the rot has set in, and it begins to decay.  People don’t want to tune in to see what Leftist fantasy has won this year’s Leftist award.

Neither one of these losses of the Left is a win for the Right.  The world was better when we had Boy Scouts.  The world was better when we had more movies with better heroes, and comedies that made fun of everyone.

Thankfully, I have a sea of old movies that I can watch.  Also, thankfully, something will come to replace the Boy Scouts in time.  Politics is downstream of Culture, and Boy Scouts and Hollywood® are part of a culture that no longer exists as it did for nearly 100 years.

That’s okay.  We will rebuild.  We will create institutions that will renew our culture.

Just like Burnham taught us:  we will never give up.  We will keep the flame alive, and fight when the odds are stacked against us.

Why?

Because we are so very pretty.  We are just too pretty for God to let Western Civilization die.

Equality: The god That Failed

“I’m sorry, Lisa, but giving everyone an equal part when they’re clearly not equal, is called what, class?” – The Simpsons

The kids said they wanted a cat for Christmas.  Normally we have ham, but I’m willing to give it a try.

In the early 2000’s I first came across the word, “meme” – and at that point, it didn’t mean just a funny picture of chubby cats lusting after cheeseburgers.  The original definition that I saw talked about a meme being an “idea fragment” that would travel virally through the consciousness of a group.  Essentially memes have a life based on transmitting themselves from mind to mind.

Examples of these simple mind viruses are all around us – we’ve been soaking in them since we were little.  We don’t notice them so much because they are a part of our culture.  What are some example memes out of the tens of thousands we’ve been exposed to?

  • Majority Rules
  • One Man, One Vote
  • One Nation, Indivisible
  • All Men Are Created Equal
  • Wilder Is The Funniest Living Human Political Writer

Each of those (except the last one, of course) is demonstrably false.

The majority only rules when the vote is counted fairly, and there have been plenty of minority rule situations because the majority didn’t have guns.  I’d say that the history of the world is the history of the majority not ruling.

One man, one vote?  Obviously, the creator of this idea had never been to Chicago, Milwaukie, Detroit, or Atlanta.  Most of those cities make the old Soviet Union look like Utah.

One nation, indivisible?  1860 proved that wasn’t the case.  Did it get undivisibled?  Well, yeah, but I’ve met plenty of people who are still sore about the War of Northern Aggression.  Sadly, all of them think that iced tea should have sugar in it.

OSHA inspectors only drink safe tea.

All Men Are Created Equal, though, is the meme that I wanted to write about in this post.  I know that what Jefferson and the committee were going for was that all people should have equal Natural Rights, and it probably tested well in focus groups.

And, I agree with the idea that all people should have the same rights, but even that is trivially shown to be false:  ask the people from three of the nations that have never visited this blog (North Korea, Cuba, and Iran) if that’s the case.  It’s also folly for Americans to fight to give those rights to other people around the world:  you don’t value anything that you don’t fight for yourself.

“All Men Are Created Equal” is a nice phrase, but believing it has caused more difficulty than any other meme for the people of the United States.  Why?

A conclusion this meme leads to is this:  if all people are equal, all groups are equal.  Again, all individuals should have the same rights, but why on Earth would we anticipate that all groups have equal abilities?  For example, the aboriginal peoples of Australia had been separated from the rest of humanity for 50,000 years.  Why would we expect them to have the same abilities as the Japanese?  Why would we expect that Native Americans would have the same abilities as Conquistadors from Spain since there were at least 30,000 years where they had nothing to do with each other?

Keep in mind, folks, it took less than a third of that time to make miniature poodles out of wolves.

How do you call a wolf with Stockholm Syndrome?  “Here, puppy dog!”

To be utterly clear:  I am not making the case that any particular group is better than another group.  There are people from every group on the planet that are nicer and better people than I am.  But why wouldn’t we expect them to be very different peoples?  I am personally so maladapted to life in the Outback that I would probably burst into flame and turn into a pile of dehydrated ash on day one.

But when I got off the airplane in Fairbanks at -30°F (-7m3), I have never felt more at home.  There was, for me, something inherently right about the taiga and the long dark nights that sang to my soul.  It resonated with me.  I wonder if having ancestors that were adapted to long, dark, cold winters had anything to do with that?

What did Vikings call English villages?  Chopping centers.

A second conclusion this meme leads to is:  if all people are equal, women are equal to men.

Well, they’re not.  In college, one of my friends was on the swim team.  He told me that pretty much every member of the men’s swim team could beat every world record held by women.  Every one.

But wade just a minute – our swim team was not good.  But yet, every one of them was better than the best woman swimmer that ever lived.  Yet, not a single member of the dude swim team could have a baby.

That is not equal, at all.

Men and women are different, have different skills, and have different abilities.  They are not, and never can be equal.  The difficulty that this leads to is that standards have been lowered so women can do physical things like “firefighter” or “soldier” without the concept that they simply cannot perform as well as a male.  But when it comes to “making babies” and “getting me a sammich” they knock it out of the park.

If one synchronized swimmer drowns, do they all have to drown?

The most common refrain is that “Well, the standards were too high to begin with.”  If the first defense is that we should have weaker and slower firefighters and soldiers to prove a political point, I’d assume that whoever made that argument wasn’t interested in saving lives or defending our nation.

“All men are created equal” also leads to a third conclusion:  if all people are equal, then all cultures must be equal.  Well, no, they aren’t.  At all.  Many cultures have produced wonderful things, yet in 2021 have utterly failed to produce first-world living standards for their people.

Hollywood® has done a wonderful job of marketing the ideas that:

  • The United States doesn’t have a culture.
  • Other cultures are heckin’ cute and valid.
  • Cultures in close contact and overlap don’t create any conflict.
  • Colonialism created conflict by drawing borders that put overlapping cultures in close contact.

Careful readers will note that points three and four just might contradict each other.

To dissect that the United States doesn’t (or didn’t) have a culture, well, fish really don’t know that they’re swimming in water.  When I look at the leader of China wearing a suit and tie that could have been tailored in New York or London, well, I realize that European culture is so very ubiquitous that cultures all over the planet have appropriated it.

That’s what Xi said.

That’s okay.  But it’s not okay to say that the United States doesn’t have a culture.

Are other cultures heckin’ cute and valid?  Sure.  But don’t assume that every culture produces the same results.  Does South American culture produce the same level of material prosperity?  No.

Can it produce happiness?  Sure.  I was in Santiago, Chile a while back.  The people there were happy, and were making out on a warm afternoon in the broad plaza that led to some large government building.  When I went out that night with some locals, the beer was cold, the dinner was wonderful, and everyone I saw was happy and safe.

Different.  Not equal.

I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to think of examples where overlapping cultures cause conflicts.  No fair in picking Canada where the English and French overlap, and after one huge argument in the comment section a while back, you can bet I’m not going to mention Ireland.

Oops, too late.

Again, I’m not saying that “not equal” means inferior.  It means not equal.  It means different.

But to have the idea that all men are created equal?  That’s the insanity.

A Brief Guide To Human Action – Which Leads To Human Freedom

“They say you’re a man of vision.  Is that true?” – Lonesome Dove

I’ll never forget Pa Wilder’s last words:  “Find a woman that holds you as tight as Nancy Pelosi holds a vodka bottle.”

(John Wilder note:  Please read this post all the way through because I think you’ll find this one of the most useful posts that I’ve put together.)

Ludwig Von Mises is was an economist.  His pronouns are dead/buried.  The sure sign of the best economists is that they’re dead, because then they can’t ask to be paid for being wrong all of the time.

One thing that Von Mises left us with was a book called Human Action.  Really, it wasn’t a book, it was him sitting at his typewriter and generating a 400-page doorstop like he was getting paid by the punctuation mark.  I read some of it back in my more libertarian days.  Dry doesn’t begin to describe it – after completing two hundred pages you become as desiccated as King Tut’s armpit.

Thankfully, the main ideas of Human Action are quite powerful and also pretty simple.  And, it won’t take me 400 pages to get to the point.  Von Mises created a model of human action where he states that each and every voluntary human action requires three things:

A Vision Of A Better State:  For example, me having a beer.  If it was Friday, I might consider that having a beer would be a better state than not having a beer.  In most cases, the vision is based not on cold, logical thought, but on emotion.

A Path To Get To A Better State:  It just so happens that there’s a beer in the fridge, so if I got my sorry butt off of the couch, I could walk over and get one.

A Belief That Action Will Really Lead To A Better State:  I really and honestly believe that I could walk to the fridge and get a beer, since I deactivated the trap door that leads to the alligator pit.

How many economists does it take to fix a lightbulb?  Don’t know, they’re still arguing over why the last one broke.

In my example, I started off with a Vision first.  That’s one way that action can occur, but not the only way.  The three necessary conditions can really come in any order.  I might have a pile of lumber and a saw and a hammer.  So, I have a Path.  I have Belief that I could build something out of wood since I’m okay at building stuff out of wood (just okay, not great).  After thinking about it, I decide to build a PEZ® dispenser sized for PEZ© the size of cinder blocks with an articulated carved Anne Coulter head so her jaw can open as wide as a python’s.  In this example, my Vision of a better state (and need for a really big spring) came last.

I’ve found when analyzing the actions I personally take, a truism:  if all three of the Human Action requirements are met – Vision, Path, and Belief – then my action is guaranteed.  Likewise, if even one of them is missing, nothing (and I mean nothing) happens.

This model is useful to use when people that you’re working with aren’t doing what you want them to.  Analyze the situation:  which of the three elements of the Human Action model are missing?

People in business have been using this model on you for as long as you have lived.  Think of a typical car commercial:

  • Vision: Buy a Mustang® so hot chicks in bikinis will like me and want to pat my bald head.  See!  They’re patting the bald head of that man on the commercial!
  • Path: Go to the dealer and buy one, they have tons of them.
  • Belief: Hey, zero percent financing and no credit check.  They’re giving the money away so I can buy one!

All commercials are based on manipulating these three simple elements.  Commercials are attempting to get us to take action – or to avoid taking an action.  Most are trying to get our money, but some are trying to convince us that Steven Tyler from Aerosmith© personally cares whether or not we drive drunk.

Steven Tyler just released two books.  One’s a cookbook, and the other’s an art book:  “Wok This Way” and “Doodles Like A Lady”

Manipulation is the key to this game.  Understanding when you watch a commercial how they’re trying to change our views allows us to be on guard against that manipulation.  And, as I noted before, it is a very rare commercial that wants to appeal to logic.

Emotional manipulation is where the money is at.  The advertisers want us to use their gasoline and love it because, um, it’s more gasoline-y than the competitors?  Because it has special molecules in the gasoline that make gravy in your pistons?  Regardless, look for the emotional manipulation – it will be there.

So, we’ve saved a few bucks because we’ve kept the advertisers out of our heads.  Hurrah!  But who else is using this model?

Well, Big Government, for one.  On January 6, 2021, all the Congresscritters had at least a bit of pee in their pants.  A group of relatively aimless protestors stopped off at the Capitol to share their opinions with their elected representatives.

I was on a witness stand at a trial in Alaska, and the lawyer asked me, “Where were you on the night of November to March?”

The group’s Vision was murky.  “Walk over and complain” might be a good description.  It was certainly more peaceful than most of the George Floyd riots (and more on them in a minute).  The Path was easy – it’s not even a very far walk from their rally to the Capitol Building.  Did they have Belief that their action would allow them to “walk over and complain”?

Sure.  So they did.

But that’s not what the Congress Swamp Rats saw.  They saw a group that, with a slightly different Vision could have easily started a movement that would have ousted our current government via a revolution.  As every reader here knows (and as every Congressional Parasite knows), the rank and file of the Right are the single largest army the world has ever seen.  Even if the Right was pitiful, it could take over forty (?) state governments in 24 hours.

We are truly governed only by our consent.  Seizing power in America would be trivial if people on the Right had a Vision, a Path, and Belief that didn’t include a government more intrusive than if Google® was a proctologist and more bloated than 1977 Elvis.

That’s exactly what happened when the Berlin Wall fell.  The people suddenly had a Vision:  sexy American girls in bikinis, CD players, and not having to drive crappy commie cars anymore.  They had a Path:  tear down that Wall.  Once they had Belief?  The Wall didn’t last an afternoon.

As another Floyd, Pink Floyd© tried to metaphorically tell us, The Wall is built in our mind, brick by brick.

Communism is the noble struggle of the proletariat to overcome the problems that are only caused by communism.

Anyone who thinks the “assault” weapon grab has anything to do with “mass shooting” has bought the emotional propaganda that Big Government (along with Big Business and Big Media) is selling.  Big Government wants the guns off of the street because they are the only real threat that Big Government sees to itself and the privileges that it has given itself.

That’s why the George Floyd riots were so important to Big Government.  What were the protesters protesting for?  More Big Government, more handouts, and more government control – this time not only of our rifles that are rarely used to shoot anyone (484 people a year in the United States for all rifles, compared to 1,476 for knives and other pointy things), but also our speech, our national heritage, and even our thoughts.

The BLM riots weren’t stopped because they’re everything Big Government wants.

I started carrying a pistol after a mugging attempt.  Now my muggings are more successful.

The biggest trick the Devil tries is to convince you he isn’t real.  The biggest trick that Big Government tries is to convince you that you have no power.  But if we have no power, why are there more troops in Washington D.C. than in Afghanistan?  Big Government has set the Right as the enemy.  I assure you, they are more afraid of the 80,000,000+ people on the Right than they are of the Chinese.

Now that you know their intentions, what else is Big Government, Big Media, and Big Business trying to make citizens feel?

Does this change your Vision, Path, and Belief?