Valhalla – Page 16 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

July 4, 2020

“The time for negotiation is past. The actions of the British army at Lexington and Concord speak plainly enough. If we wish to regain our natural-born rights as Englishmen then we must fight for them.” – John Adams

The FBI arrested my algebra teacher when I was in high school as he was teaching us about graphing. They said they were sure she was plotting something.

Boston, Massachusetts: 122 killed, 211 wounded in a daybreak raid by troops sent to confiscate privately owned weapons and ammunition. “Patriots” claim government troops fired first.

It has been reported that at dawn a group of self-styled “Patriots” engaged a heavily armed troops sent to confiscate guns and ammunition. These “Patriots” though initially outnumbered, stood by the side of the road, fully armed with modern assault weapons at the ready. The “Patriot” leader at the site, John Parker, claims to have been only standing there with the other “Patriots”. It has reported that Parker said, “Stand your ground. Don’t fire unless fired upon. But if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.”

According to Parker, the soldiers ordered the “Patriots” to leave, and he ordered his men to “disburse and go home,” but “the soldiers were yelling,” and there was confusion. There was a shot, fired, but both the “Patriots” and the spokesman for the troops claim the other side fired the first shot. Badly outnumbered at first, the “Patriots” were reinforced by the local members of their radical libertarian movement as the firefight wore on. House-to-house fighting was reported.

Sources to this blog have indicated that the “Patriots” had been tipped off to the troop movements and were aware the gun confiscation was coming. The troops were forced to withdraw under fire, although rescue from a larger detachment of troops from Boston was required for their safe evacuation.

Why did Paul Revere ride a horse on his midnight ride? Well, have you ever tried carrying one?

Although no weapons were found at either Lexington or Concord, authorities have indicated that persons of interest in this case are: Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and John Hancock. His Royal Majesty King George III had no comment, but Brigadier General Lord Percy, had this to say:

During the whole affair the Rebels attacked us in a very scattered, irregular manner, but with perseverance & resolution, nor did they ever dare to form into any regular body. Indeed, they knew too well what was proper, to do so. Whoever looks upon them as an irregular mob, will find himself much mistaken. They have men amongst them who know very well what they are about, having been employed as Rangers against the Indians & Canadians, & this country being much covered with wood, and hilly, is very advantageous for their method of fighting.

This is a statue of Captain John Parker, Patriot leader who led the Militia at the battle of Lexington. He died five months after the battle, of tuberculosis. Since you don’t know what I look like, you can assume I look exactly like a bald version of this.

A local lawyer, John Adams, viewed the battlefield the next day, “The die was cast. The Rubicon crossed.” Pressed by this blog for an explanation of these cryptic comments, he referred us to our previous post (American Caesar: Coming Soon To A Country Near You?).

The events listed above happened 245 years ago, except John Adams being snarky to me, yet somehow the concepts behind them are fresh in American life in 2020. The battles of Lexington and Concord, though small by today’s standards, produced the “shot heard ‘round the world” as the American Dream and American Identity were formed.

Lifted straight from Wikipedia, here’s a story from the battle that made me chuckle:

Against the advice of his Master of Ordnance, Percy had left Boston without spare ammunition for his men or for the two artillery pieces they brought with them, thinking the extra wagons would slow him down. Each man in Percy’s brigade had only 36 rounds, and each artillery piece was supplied with only a few rounds carried in side-boxes. After Percy had left the city, Gage directed two ammunition wagons guarded by one officer and thirteen men to follow. This convoy was intercepted by a small party of older, veteran militiamen still on the “alarm list,” who could not join their militia companies because they were well over 60 years of age. These men rose up in ambush and demanded the surrender of the wagons, but the regulars ignored them and drove their horses on. The old men opened fire, shot the lead horses, killed two sergeants, and wounded the officer. The British survivors ran, and six of them threw their weapons into a pond before they surrendered.

This soldier was old enough to experience both mustard gas and pepper spray. He’s well seasoned.

I’ve long thought that our new, modern form of Civil War will feature far more old folks than the past ones. Unlike the Civil War 1.0, Civil War 2.0 will be fought more like the Revolutionary War, with armed Militia on both sides. The little story above is (for me) confirmation that in America, being over 60 doesn’t mean “out of the fight.”

But this is about the Revolution, and I’ll write more about Civil War for Monday. The Battle of Lexington and Concord took place on April 19, 1775, and it wasn’t until over a year of fighting skirmishes that the Declaration of Independence was drafted.

Saying and doing are different. Sure, in 1776 we said we were independent and gave a list of reasons, but it took years of war to make it so. The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first steps in making it so, and setting the pattern for a nation that has spread more freedom and prosperity than any nation in the history of the world except for Great Britain.

What will be required to keep it free?

Time will tell.

Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals: Now For Use By The Right?

“I have a radical idea. The door swings both ways, we could reverse the polarity flow through the gate.” – Ghostbusters (1984)

I haven’t figured out how to publicly indicate that I’m against protesting.

I was talking with a friend a few weeks ago, and casually mentioned Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals as a playbook that had been used by the Left back when they controlled very few of the country’s power centers. Top Hollywood® stars like John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, and Frank Sinatra were openly patriotic – it was the norm. Politics is one reason I think Frank Sinatra would hate 2020, and the other would be whenever he started coughing he’d think he had Crooner Virus.

But the Leftist rot had already started long before the 1960s. It started in academia. Sure, that seemed safe. Let the Leftists work quietly where they had little money. It was thought the most important decision made was what the professor’s wife would wear to the faculty dinner and the most important rumors were about that new cannibal professor, Hannibal Lecturer. But once it took root, Leftism spread from the colleges and out into the streets.

Alinsky started his quest to organize in the 1940s in Chicago, and the Chicago Tribune described his legacy this way:

“Rubbing raw the sores of discontent may be jolly good fun for him, but we are unable to regard it as a contribution to social betterment. The country has enough problems of the insoluble sort as things are without working up new ones for no discernible purpose except Alinsky’s amusement.”

The Tribune was one of the few papers that were negative about Alinsky. By the time Rules for Radicals was published in 1971, the editorial departments of most newspapers had been taken over by Leftists that those “harmless” college professors had indoctrinated. Most newspapers applauded Alinsky by 1972 when they reviewed his book.

Professor Karen wants you to think for yourself, but will grade you based on her politics.

As I’ve documented in previous posts (some that include Stormtrooper® bikini shots and pictures of a lot of slave Princess Leia impersonators) You Are The Resistance, Plus? Lots of Star Wars Bikinis and American Civil War: Four Fates, From Freedom to Soviet Tyranny, the Left has taken control of the following sectors of life, not only in the United States, but also in most of the Western world:

The K-12 educational system.
Colleges and Universities.
Most Protestant religious organizations.
Most Catholic organizations.
The psychological establishment.
The American Medical Association.
All mainstream news media.
All mainstream entertainment media.
Most departments of the Federal government, absent the armed services.
The general officer corps of the armed services.
The courts.
Silicon Valley tech companies.
Many (but not all) Fortune® 500™ companies.

Professor Warren now explains why free speech doesn’t apply to you.

One of the methods the Left used to obtain power was the vigorous application of Alinsky’s Rules. Here they are – along with my annotations:

“Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.” – Most of the Leftist power is based on fear – fear of what they might do. That’s the reason the takeover of the media was so important to them – they use it to divide and minimize people on the Right so feel that they are as alone as a Joe Biden basement thought.
“Never go outside the expertise of your people.” – Which may explain the rioting and violence of the Left in the riots today. They’re not good at building things, but they sure can hit a plate glass window with a brick from thirty yards.
“Whenever possible go outside the expertise of the enemy.” – The idea of the riots is to go beyond every expertise. It has been decades since a president had to deal with riots across the country, and even then, they weren’t all at the same time.
“Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” – For instance, Christians must be made to live up to Christian principles – that’s the example Alinsky himself used.
“Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” – Saturday Night Live® used to make fun of politicians on the Right and Late night comedians used to make fun of the Right and Left. Now? Only the Right is mocked, and (for reasons I’ve explained before Why The Left Can’t Meme) even then, poorly.
“A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” – Whatever it is, it should give them emotional payoff – the people crying at the Trump protests early on were an example – they enjoyed feeling the pain and rage. And as we’ve learned in 2020, who doesn’t love riots?
“A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” – Sit ins? That’s so 1960’s. Burning down Wendy’s®? That’ll teach them to, um, exist.
“Keep the pressure on.” – Ideally, it should be one event followed by another – don’t give your target a chance to think straight
“The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” – Alinsky threatened to do things – all of the time. The word “threat” appears 38 times in Rules for Radicals. Often he would leak the threat of a plan, and never even have to do it as the opposition gave in to the threat alone.
“The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.” – Back to point 8 – think of things that can be kept up for a long, long time. Riots in the spring and summer nights can go on for months. In December in Minnesota? Not so much.
“If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside.” – A great example of this is how BLM has kept the narrative moving about police violence against blacks, when the truth is, statistically, that blacks are shot less often than their level of police involvement would indicate, and whites are shot more But push it long enough?
“The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” – The Left no longer does this – rather than have a constructive alternative, they want things like “removal of the systems of white supremacy” and “defunding of the police.”
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” – Nixon, Reagan, Bush I and Bush II and now Trump. It’s hilarious that they thought W. was the anti-Christ, and Romney was the Devil when they are now nearly saints of the Left.

Sometimes, you can hear the “Reeeeee” from here . . . .

But can the Right use the same playbook? Absolutely. And they are.

“Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.” – The Left is really afraid of the Right, and fear the most the Right creating a coalition in the same way the Left has. They will do anything to stop that. Sadly, we on the Right seem to be very, very picky on who is in the foxhole with us. A heretic on one point? The biggest power the Right has is in joining together.
“Never go outside the expertise of your people.” – Protesting violently isn’t in the Right’s DNA. We have jobs. Rioting isn’t in the Right’s expertise. Planning is. Communicating is. Through years of necessity, we’ve also learned to meet quietly.
“Whenever possible go outside the expertise of the enemy.” – Memes are a good example. The Left ceased to be funny in 2004, and ceased to any sense of humor around 2012, so using memetic warfare is nearly as unfair as playing Twister® with a colorblind super model.
“Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” – /pol/, the politically incorrect part of 4chan, did exactly that when they posted signs around Seattle telling the homeless that CHAZ would have free food for them. “No borders” and “sharing” were in rules for CHAZ, so, they ran out of food on day two. Plus? It was hilarious – point 5.
“Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” – This, in part, explains why I write some of the things I do. It was particularly satisfying the day I saw one of my memes being made fun of by Leftists on Reddit®. They don’t fight back unless you’re over the target.
“A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” – I love poking fun at the Left, because I know that it bothers them. I enjoy it. Other things I see people on the Right enjoying are planning and organizing and communicating and moving away from California.
“A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” – Expecting things to go back to “normal” isn’t working for the Right. You can come up with other examples of these – but in large part the playbook needs to be re-written.
“Keep the pressure on.” – The closest that the Right has come to doing this is The Donald himself and his use of Twitter® as a continual agency of chaos. He pokes. He prods. He shakes things up and looks for advantage. He’s had Democrats so tied up in nots they said that Haiti was a paradise.
“The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” – The Right hasn’t been very good at making threats or even having a cohesive plan.
“The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.” – Again, outside of Trump, there has been little pressure made on the Left, and next to no organized pressure on the mainstream Left. When has the idea of freedom of speech been used against the Left in an organized way on a college campus? This started with academia, and a good solution will leave college departments where the Leftists lurk defunded. Imagine a Grievance Studies professor having to look for a real job because they violated the campus speech code?
“If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside.” – Opposition to illegal immigration is just one issue of the Right that, if it were pushed is a winner. There are others.
“The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” – What is it that the Right wants? Do we know?
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” – Groundwork has been made with people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the rest of her Leftist group, but the Left is expert at this – Justice Cavanaugh is a textbook study, even though they lost.

But what do we want when we have a victory?

Long term, I’m not sure Alinsky’s rules will be enough for the Right as we wander towards Civil War 2.0, but they’re a start, and they’re certainly fun. As I mentioned above, it has lost institution after institution to the Left, and many of those without even a fight. None of this will be quickly won, and the Right must begin to think in decades, and also look to make common cause with people who aren’t exactly fitting some sort of mental ideal for the perfect person on the Right, since they don’t really exists.

Back to the fun.

The Funniest Post You’ll Read About Life and Death, Featuring Vikings.

“I understand. In death, a member of Project Mayhem has a name. His name is Robert Paulson.” – Fight Club

I don’t want to be killed by a large sneeze, though. I don’t want people saying I bit off more than I could achoo.

As a culture, at least in the developed West, fearful of death. We hide from it to a degree that I’m not sure most of us are aware of. How could we be aware? Like our browser history, we’ve spent so much time and effort hiding it from public view.

I noticed a pattern in my life. First, when I was young, we went to funerals. Those funerals were where we buried my grandparents. As I got older, I started going to a lot of weddings as friends tied the knot, and funerals dropped to nearly zero. But as I get older, I’m seeing more funerals again. Most recently, it was for The Mrs.’ grandfather. Her grandfather was a crew chief on B-17’s for the 8^th Army Air Force. He was buried in the same Army olive drab uniform that he’d worn in World War II.

Funerals are, and should be, a time for reflection. When I looked a little at the big picture, in modern America most people rarely see dead people unless it’s in a hospital bed or at a funeral. Sure, there are exceptions. Cops, soldiers, people in medicine, and morticians see them all of the time outside of those limited settings, but those people are a pretty small percentage of the population.

When I pass away, I don’t want a fancy funeral. One like this is fine.

I was half-watching a movie, perhaps in the 1990s, so I’m a little shy on details. The movie was set during the Great Depression, and the husband had died. The wife had prepared the body and it was sitting ON THE DINNER TABLE for people to come and see for the visitation. Okay, not sitting. But the husband’s corpse was stretched out where they ate their fried okra and possum sushi or whatever it was people ate during the Depression.

What the heck? “Surely they didn’t really do that,” I said. There was an older person in the room who had lived through the Depression. He corrected me. “Surely they did. Funeral parlors were for rich people. And what are you gonna do, put him on the floor?”

Wow. I guess the old saying of “dust bunnies don’t mix with the dead” is true.

Being a product of my time, I hadn’t really thought about that at all. Dead people? Call a professional. Very nice and tidy and nothing but a bill that you can pay by check or credit card.

But when you look back at life in the 1930s and before, I guess there was a reason that people had little graveyards on the farm: they were used to dealing with death and couldn’t pass the duties required by death to someone else. Who else was going to do it? You couldn’t hire it out like today. Our ancestors knew what we have now forgotten. Just as birth starts a life, death ends it. I heard a statistic from the CDC® that life has a nearly a 100% mortality rate.

I will say I’m in favor of the new congressional cheese support bill. Count me as pro-volone.

Close physical contact with our dead relatives used to be the norm, not the exception. For them, death was a part of life. My mother-in-law was doing genealogy of her family. For the most part, genealogy is not horribly interesting to me unless there’s a story. Just knowing that I had a great-great-great-great grandpa called Duncan McWilder back in 1788 doesn’t tell me a lot. Was he a scoundrel? Why did he hop the boat to America? Was it for better Internet?

I did jump on the Mormon database and at least someone thinks I am the great²⁹ grandson of Harald Hardrada, who had a notoriously bad day in 1066 A.D. when he forgot to put on his armor when going up against the English. At least Harald has a story. After one of Harald’s vacations in Bulgaria, he got the nickname “Bulger-burner,” which is probably a lot funnier of a nickname if you’re not from Bulgaria.

And I hear that dead Viking Scrabble® players go to Vowel-halla.

Okay, that was a digression. I’ll see if I can’t get off at the right exit this time. Anyway, my mother-in-law was doing genealogy. One particular male relative had three or four wives. Polygamy? No. His wives kept dying in childbirth or from some plague that we can fix with a shot or thinking that arsenic and lead were what made makeup good, or wearing asbestos corsets and radium jewelry. People were acquainted with death in a real and up-close manner in the Victorian era.

Sad clowns don’t wear arsenic makeup, they use frown-dation instead.

I think that as we isolate ourselves from death, we start to pretend that it doesn’t exist. In some cases, people like Ray Kurzweil are attempting to figure out how to stop aging and live forever. Failing that? Ray is planning on being frozen into a corpse-sicle for later defrosting and infinite life. My bet? People will be able to live longer, but they won’t be able to live forever, because testing immortality drugs takes forever. And everyone is doing it: a guy outside of Wal-Mart® was selling immortality supplements, and it looked like a scam, so I called the cops. They were aware – they arrested the guy last year, in 2000, in 1968, and even, they said, back as far as 1880.

Ray may be able to squeeze a few more years out, but I thing that physical immortality isn’t something that we’ll see. At least not in my lifetime. Sorry, but immortality jokes never get old.

Even though life is part of death, that doesn’t mean we have to like it. But we don’t have to fear it, either. Very few of us will get to choose the time and place of our death. But we have the choice as to what we are going to do tomorrow to make this a better world – to do things that matter.

If a Viking is reincarnated, is he Bjorn again?

Heck, if I was immortal, I’d probably never get around to doing things that matter, since there’s always another tomorrow.

Until there’s not.

Just like Harald Hardrada, there will be a time and place when we’ll die. But Harald was a smart Viking, and he knew he wouldn’t drown. He knew that you could lead a Norse to water, but you can’t make him sink.

So, get going. And don’t forget your armor.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report, Issue 12: Censorship and COVID-19

“You were going to bed hungry, scrounging for scraps. Your planet was on the brink of collapse. I’m the one who stopped that. You know what’s happened since then? The children born have known nothing but full bellies and clear skies. It’s a paradise.” – Avengers: Infinity War

After several years of looking, I found a book on Amazon® about how clocks work. It’s about time.

People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology. Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.

The clock didn’t move this month for the third month in a row. That’s good. But I see pressure building up quickly.

In this issue: Front Matter – Violence and Censorship Update – Steps On the Way to Revolt – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The Real Story: Economic Collapse – Links

Welcome to Issue 12 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. Here are the links to the previous issues: Issue One (LINK), Issue Two (LINK), Issue Three (LINK), Issue Four (LINK), Issue Five (LINK), Issue Six (LINK), Issue Seven (LINK), Issue Eight (LINK), Issue Nine (LINK), Issue Ten (LINK), and Issue Eleven (LINK).

Violence and Censorship Update

April was a big month for censorship. Like a toddler in a Toys’r’Us™, Facebook® and YouTube© decided this was the month to crack down on speech they didn’t agree with. And that speech was from the Left. Just kidding. It’s never a crackdown on the Left. Who did they go after?

Well, David Icke was shut down. I like listening to David Icke, because I sincerely think that he believes that shape-shifting reptilian aliens run the governments of the world. As in Queen Elizabeth II is a secret lizard lady. That is WWE© level of conspiracy, and it sure makes 40 minutes of treadmill time go faster listening to it. But now, he’s gone. His sin? Nothing to do with lizards. Nothing to do with the Queen. No, Mr. Icke committed the sin of breaking the party line on COVID-19.

When WHO makes David Icke look reasonable.

In fact, any YouTube® video that puts forward an opinion that differs from the World Health Organization (WHO) will be removed. Do it too often? Your channel is banned. For life.

I must admit that I am a sinner in committing heresy against the WHO. In May, 2019, I did a frighteningly good post (The Who, The WHO, Cavemen, Child Labor, and We Won’t Get Fooled Again) about their silliness in describing “Burnout” and “Gaming Disorder” as new plagues that were going to destroy mankind. To quote me at the time: “When a cell behaves like the WHO and most other government agencies do, it’s called cancer.” Yup, that’s probably enough for the YouTube® ban hammer.

But now it seems that having an opinion different than the WHO is enough to bring the full weight of Leftist censorship down. There were several doctors that disagreed with the WHO, and they were shut down, even though the WHO’s opinion on COVID-19 has been proven wrong again and again and again. And that is scary. The WHO (and the CDC, who I skewered in the post (The CDC, Raw Cookie Dough, and Sexy Theocracy)) have proven to be little more than government agencies that have lost their primary mission in a race to pander to news outlets to secure funding.

Facebook™ announced it was not only trying to get rid of COVID-19 “misinformation” by deleting posts, but also was actively censoring people trying to use it to organize “end the quarantine” events. That was chilling. You may or may not agree with these protests, but the idea of peacefully petitioning government is a clear right. Libertarians and (increasingly) Leftists will make the argument that “Facebook® is a private company and can do whatever they want. Nanner-nanner.”

But know them by their works. They want your data. They want to market you as a product. A compliant product for them to sell. And, it appears, snitch on you if you are a bad-thinker.

He only needed a sip. Zucculents are excellent at storing water and can thrive in areas with dry climate.

Likewise, the Unz Review (LINK) got kicked off of Facebook®. Ron Unz’s website is a hotbed of controversial thought that’s not afraid of challenging almost any opinion: I’ve read a lot there I disagree with. The owner of the site, Ron Unz, does not stand behind every article published – it would be impossible because many of them are 100% contradictory to each other. But, even though I disagree with a lot I’ve seen there, I’ve learned a lot there that I never would anywhere else. I’m surprised Unz lasted this long on Facebook™.

Where does this censorship take us? Nowhere good, since after the first censorship, taking down the next site becomes easier and easier. It’s for the public good, after all. Can’t have people thinking unapproved thoughts, right?

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 lead to the index. On illegal aliens, I’m just using government figures.

April was a difficult month for the economy, and that shows up in the graphs. I don’t think that May will be quite as bad, but I’ve been wrong before. I did, however, try to spend significant time on selection of the bikini pictures to accompany the graphs, since I want to at least reach the journalist integrity of the New York Times®.

Violence:

Up is more violent. Violence had been down because everyone is stuck in the basement. But now the end of quarantine is near, and people will become violent if it isn’t lifted soon. I expect big upticks in June, July and August. I think May will be fairly mellow, and might be the last mellow month for ages.

Enjoy it.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable. Instability is down – having the field reduced to two likely candidates for the November election helps calm people, plus people are advised not to make sudden moves around Joe Biden, since his predator instinct could kick in and he might give you a good sniffing. Instability will go up if Biden falters or starts drooling oatmeal during an interview.

Economic:

Down indicates worse economic conditions. The graph speaks for itself – I had to search through a LOT of bikini photographs to find one that fit with a plunge like we’ve seen. I expect April to be better. But not by a lot. I’ll likely change the basis of this one or add an entirely new one next month – this is an instantaneous graph to measure mood, and we should start to look at cumulative numbers to measure how screwed we are. Upside? One more bikini graph.

Illegal Aliens:

Down is good, in theory. This is a statistic showing border apprehensions by the Border Patrol. Down. Until Mexico’s economy collapses. Then what?

Economic Collapse – The Real Story

When I first started the weather report, one criticism was that we would never see Civil War 2.0 while things were good economically. And I admitted that this is true. As a people I can see limited acts of disobedience, but not outright insurrection while the economy is good. Full bellies and full bank accounts don’t lead to fighting in the streets.

The economy is in free fall. That’s not an overstatement. There has been no month as bad in the world economy as April, 2020, at least not in my life. Unless you’re in your 80’s or better, this is the worst economic month of your life, too. To find such a disaster in the United States, you’d have to go back to the 1930’s, at least.

The goat entrails have spoken! The cure is yet more debt and money printing!

As I’ve mentioned before, a strong economy could take this sort of shock. Our economy isn’t strong. Let’s take New York City. What does it produce? Debt, real estate sales, insurance companies, financial irregularity, the stock market, and national “journalism” that at best is as biased as a Kennedy mother bailing her kids out of jail. If New York City were to disappear tomorrow, the only thing from NYC the Wilder Family would miss is the television show Impractical Jokers®.

Yet New York City controls the money flows in the country. It also controls the bets made on wheat production and pork prices. NYC produces nothing, but acts as a tax on those that actually produce. In 1947, the proportion of the economy devoted to Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate (F.I.R.E.) was about 10%. In 2017, it was 20%. And we do need a certain percentage of our economy devoted to moving money around, but the point of our economy isn’t moving money, it’s making things and feeding people. Oh, and doing taxes.

Are we richer because of what comes from New York? Are we more stable? Does making another loan to a big corporation so they have enough debt on their books so a New York financier can’t buy them with their own money make us better off? Is it better because the dollars aren’t backed by anything other than a printing press?

Hey, that might make a good movie.

In that same time period, manufacturing dropped from 25% of the economy to 11%. Does that make us better off, when critical goods are made an ocean away? Does that make us more stable and able to weather a crisis?

As the economy collapses, it’s collapsing because it has been hollowed out for decades. I will say that studies show, before 1980, Democrats were strongly focused on keeping the manufacturing and construction industries strong, since the unions that dominated that sector were lock-step voters for the Democrats. But, when a shiny new toy of being paid by the big banks plus being able to bring in a whole new class of voters (legal immigrants and illegal aliens) got too big, the Democrats dumped manufacturing and construction.

This collapse has been decades in the making. It won’t be done quickly. And it just might provide the pain to slingshot us into Civil War 2.0.

Links

All are from Ricky this month . . . enjoy!

California to be a Republic Again (Zero Hedge) and (Bloomberg)?
The Lone Star Nation? (The Atlantic)
Of Two Minds: The American Divide
Michigan’s Civil War (NBC) and (CBS)
Raw Story: Soft Civil War
Rights are suspended: (Twitter), (Concord Monitor), (Military Times), (New Republic)
Leftists Congressmen move to begin attack on gun ownership (USA Today), (Ammoland)
And removing gun rights at the states (NPR)
Red Dawn, Revisited (Paste)
COVID-19 is a recruiting tool for the Far Right? (NBC), (VICE), (Medium), (The Grio), (Angrywhitemen)
Real time boogaloo data (Telegram)
Domestic terrorism??? (Memri), and (Raw Story)
Zerohedge: New Feudalism?
Yahoo: Lockdowns into 2021??
Civil Unrest: (Zerohedge), (Law Enforcement Today)
Food Banks: (Politico), (Time), (Zerohedge on National Guard at Food Banks)

How Dead Romans Can Help You Be Happy

Jack: (tapping on the walls) Two, three feet thick, I’ll bet. Probably welded shut from the outside and covered with brick by now.
Wang: Don’t give up, Jack.
Jack: Oh, okay, I won’t, Wang. Let’s just chew our way outta here.
-Big Trouble in Little China

I keep turning negatives into positives, which may explain why I can’t jump start a car.

I have, from time to time, been accused of being an optimist. I don’t really think I am. I am certain that I am going to die. I am certain that, of the things in life I have to face, the toughest ones are ahead of me, not behind. Gentle retirement in the world that we’ve made and are preparing to go through now?

Probably not.

I’ll argue that the strange things that we’ve seen so far aren’t even close to the strange things we will see in the days and weeks ahead. And the last six weeks our lives? Who would have expected that the state house in Michigan would be filled with armed protesters? Not me. Although some people have predicted the way that the next financial crisis would happen, I certainly didn’t see it happening because of a Chinese bat.

But what I’m not particularly good at is giving up. The real enemy of life isn’t death – the enemy of life is giving up because life isn’t what was planned. Seneca put it pretty well:

True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient. For he that is so wants nothing.

I wonder how long he had to sit still for this selfie?

One way to read Seneca’s quote would be to read it as justifying laying around smoking weed and eating PEZ® on the couch until you exhibited a gravitational field that could influence minor planets. I assure you, that’s not what Seneca meant. Seneca and most of the other Stoic philosophers that I’ve read were accomplished people in the real world, not professors at some East Coast liberal arts college. Seneca had worked and made himself one of the wealthiest men in ancient Rome. Marcus Aurelius was a Roman Emperor who daily wrote down notes to himself on humility and virtue and being of service. Marcus himself pours cold water on the idea that inactivity was the point of life:

So you were born to feel “nice”? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being?

So, giving up isn’t the point, and sitting around feeling “nice” isn’t the point, either. Despite all of this, there’s no reason not to stay in bed all day in your footed pajamas with a cup of hot cocoa, right Marcus?

At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work. I’m a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for, the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?

Nope, I guess that won’t work. I think there’s a chance that Marcus wrote this while out campaigning with his Legions against the Germans. In winter. After millions of Romans died in a plague that’s named after him, the Antonine Plague, his full name being Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. How bad was that particular plague? It’s estimated that one out of nine people in the Roman Empire died. Unless you’re a communist, having your own people die is considered a bad thing.

When the Romans counter-attacked, they always went for the German with the ax, hence the phrase: “We’ve got to get to the chopper.”

I probably would have given a good, long thought about staying in bed, too. But Marcus didn’t give up, he probably worked harder. Part of being a Stoic is to go out and give it your all. That’s what you’re supposed to do.

What you’re not allowed to do is get fixated either on success or failure. Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. There’s virtue in neither of these. There is, however, virtue in going out and doing your best, leaving nothing back, fully committing yourself to your cause.

None of us will escape death. All of us will fail. Suffering? Yeah, that’s going to happen, too. To all of that, I have a simple response:

So what?

All of those things will happen to every human that’s ever lived or ever will live. You’re not a special snowflake that the world revolves around. There is no particular way your life “should” turn out. Your life right now is mainly the sum of all of the choices you have made, both good and bad. Was there luck in there, both good and bad? Sure, but not as much as you might think.

You may have been sad, but you’ve never been Ronald McDonald™ in a McDonalds® crying and choking down fries sad.

And if you made bad choices that have led you to a present that you don’t care for? Deal with it. And even today on most days if you look around life might appear to be dark, but this very second you probably aren’t suffering. You have electricity. You have Internet. You probably have some sort of food in the house that you wouldn’t mind eating. And if you’re thinking of making a tuna sandwich, I’ll take one, too. You know, while you’re up.

I don’t imagine PJ Boy does a lot of quoting Seneca. Unless Mommy makes him.

Part of life is getting rid of excuses. Most of the time when we say, “I can’t” we mean “I don’t wanna try (I might fail).”

Others?

I’m too young, or too old, or just too darn pretty. It’s probably the pretty one, right?
I’m too busy. Good news! After the economic Coronacane passes through, we’ll probably all have time on our hands.
I don’t know how to do ______. Unless it’s differential equations. Then just do what the book says. Nobody really understands differential equations.
Skipping today won’t matter/I’ll start tomorrow. These two excuses are the same excuse, and they’re exactly the same one as Marcus Aurelius mentioned when he talked about being warm and toasty in bed instead of doing your job.

It’s today. What can you get done today?

What are you waiting for?

The Coming End of The United States

“Hello, I’m Dr. Bean. Apparently. And my job is to sit and look at paintings. So, what have I learned that I can say about this painting? Well, firstly, it’s really quite big, which is excellent, because If it were really small, you know, microscopic, then hardly anyone would be able to see it.” – Bean

If you look closely, you can see itsy-bitsy fur bikini women.

The death of the United States as we know it is near. COVID-19 isn’t the cause of it, despite being in the news nearly as much as a Kardashian. Coronavirus is, rather, a symptom. Like any organism, as soon as a nation is born it begins the process of growth and eventual death. This cycle is a common theme in history, and I’ve visited it before in posts here because I find it more fascinating than, say, beekeeping.

One post I wrote about the how empires have a natural cycle and end date is here (End of Empires, PEZ, and Decadence). That post contains information about Sir John Glubb’s paper called The Fate of Empires. You can also find Glubb’s original paper here (LINK), and you’ll be pleased to find it’s been translated from Glubb’s original fish language.

Which brings us to Thomas Cole. Mr. Cole was an American painter. I say “was” because he’s now dead. This is good, because otherwise he’d have to explain to his wife where the heck he’s been since 1848. Cole did a series of five paintings depicting Glubb’s paper between the years of 1833 and 1836, which was pretty amazing, since Glubb’s paper wasn’t published until 1976. Cole’s five paintings are collectively known as The Course of Empire.

The first of these paintings is called The Savage State. It’s the first picture up above. Cole wasn’t horribly inventive with names, and it’s rumored that he had a dog named “Dog” and a cat named “Cat” and subsisted entirely on a diet of unsalted boiled potatoes. His painting, The Savage State is just that, a savage land dominated by nature, which is also how The Mrs. describes my side of the bedroom. In his painting, you can see that the civilization matched the landscape – rudimentary and rough. It’s chaotic, but that describes a great deal of the prehistory of man. This period of history can last a very, very long time, and would have lasted even longer if humanity would have failed to invent shag carpet.

If you look closely, all these paintings are set in the same place, at different times. Cole even changed the time of day from morning in the first one to night in the final one. I guess this is what you had to settle for as an 1836 version of HD television.

The next painting in the series is The Pastoral State. Each of the paintings presents the same area, just at different stages in the development of the civilization. The land from the original painting has been tamed enough for farming and herding animals. The wild nature of The Savage State has been at least partially replaced by enough control of the land that a greater degree of specialization and start of civilization is possible.

At this stage in the civilizational cycle, there is generally a single dominant culture. If there are two competing cultures, they’ll fight. This explains the Spartans and the Athenians, the North versus the South, or my ex-wife and humans not possessed by Satan. Having a single culture breeds trust, and the uniformity of purpose required for this phase.

The theme of the pastoral state is expansion along the frontier, and is characterized by growth and optimism. It’s how it feels to be on the winning team. Religion is dominant, as are ideals that are higher than self – in Rome, public service was considered honorable. Plutarch wrote about Spartan mothers and their attitudes when their sons went into battle: “Another woman handed her son his shield, and exhorted him: ‘Son, either with this or on this.’”

Legend has it that at one point when Athens was fighting Sparta, that a Spartan, hidden by a hill, taunted the Athenians by yelling, “One Spartan can beat a thousand Athenians!” Enraged, the commander of the Athenians selected his thousand best men and sent them over the hill to kill the insolent Spartan. After fifteen minutes of battle sounds and screaming, a single Athenian, mortally wounded, limped to the top of the hill and yelled down to his general: “Don’t fall for it! It’s a trap! There are actually two of them.”

This state ends when there is no more expansion and frontier. At that point, someone always gets the bright idea that they want to make a buck. The pursuit of profit then replaces the pursuit of honor.

This is the most beautiful and intricate of the paintings. Of course, I had to meme all over it. And looking at the multitudes of people in the painting I had to wonder, “What would a decent three bedroom in the suburbs cost?”

After profits have been pursued for a time, the Empire then reaches the height of power. Cole depicted this phase in his painting The Consummation. Both as a military and economic entity, the Empire will never be better off than at this time, well, at least until it builds that Death Star®. It is here that the greatest works of arts and literature of the society will be created. While the society retains the myth of the expansion, the reality is that is no longer a concern.

Also at this point, intellectuals will start rejecting all of the values that allowed the society to be great, and replacing them with ideals that are often the direct opposite of those that led to success. Virtue is replaced by vanity. Honor and discipline will be mocked as the philosophy of a fool, and be derided as inferior to the values and beliefs of amorality, nihilism, materialism, and collectivism.

Not that I have an opinion, or anything.

Somewhere about this time, with the Empire ceasing to grow, powerful groups figure out that it’s much easier to steal wealth than create it. Politicians devise ways to maximize how much money and power their group can take from the others.

This is the Cole painting, The Destruction of Empire, I see most often out of this set. Perhaps it’s a sign of the time, or perhaps it’s a sign that everyone likes a good Viking raid? Okay. Not everyone. But remember that Roman soldiers are trained, but Vikings are Bjorn.

With the Empire past its peak, the wealth is used to create decadence. Focus is on material goods, and religion declines across the Empire. Since the focus is on wealth, the welfare state forms – Romans had bread and circuses, we have EBT and Netflix®. Historically, foreign peoples from across the Empire stream towards the original culture. Why? Again, the focus is on material goods and not a cohesive society. Why would a Greek want to leave Greece for Rome? I prefer to read books about Rome in Braille – it makes it feel like ancient history.

And as the focus grows on material goods, the originality of the goods disappears. Art becomes a cynical mechanism of control and a means to harvest cash. The remake of the original is remade or rebooted to once again drag the culture for profits. I heard that Hollywood was even going to remake a Muslim version of Footloose, but this time without the Bacon.

An example of that is Spain after the conquest of the New World. Spain found itself with immense wealth in gold. How much wealth? So much that the Spaniards decided that they didn’t want to do the day-to-day things in life, and drew workers in from all across Europe to Do The Jobs Spaniards Wouldn’t Do. So much gold flew into Europe that it changed the exchange rate and wrecked the market for gold. After a century of such luxury, the Spaniards ceased to be the conquistadors that boldly conquered a continent with grit and bravado and became a culture that complained when the Dutch help didn’t peel the grapes correctly.

As an example, in one park I found a cannon seized from a Spanish warship during the Spanish-American War. I looked at the engraving on the cannon – it was beautiful. But this cannon, taken from the Spanish in 1898, was actually forged in 1780 or so. The United States was using cannon that were state of the art and sophisticated, with more than a century of technological advances on the Spanish.

Heck, when a friend got at tattoo in Spain, I was shocked. It was really good. Why was I shocked that it was good? No one expects Spanish ink-precision.

The destruction of Empire can flow not only from battle, but also from a checkbook – a financial collapse can be nearly as devastating as a foreign army, as Spain proves. Regardless, when vigor is gone, pessimism prevails, and sacrifice for the common good to a trustworthy state disappears? Why would you want to be a hero, as all of the national myths and heroes are, one by one, destroyed to make way for the new myths of the intellectual class?

Destruction is just around the corner.

If you look closely at this picture, there are no people, only birds, which must mean that Cole felt that the birds would take over the Earth. This is my favorite, because it makes me feel better about how my yard looks.

Cole’s final painting in the series was the Desolation of Empire. The Empire is over. The drama is over. What remains are a scattered people and the ruins of a great civilization. It sounds bleak, but it doesn’t need to be.

The desolation of Empire isn’t the ending for every person in it, it’s just the ending of the golden age of the way things were. Imagine someone near the end of the Roman Empire, worried about what they saw going on around it. Would the Roman Empire collapse? Certainly. Would all of the people die as a part of this collapse? No. But the globalism of the day did.

And the Roman Empire, in its death, set the stage for a new series of cultures all around Europe – from the reuse of Caesar as “Czar” in Moscow to the United States, which consciously adopted many of the symbols of ancient Rome. What was the first name of the United States Army? Under its first commander, Major General “Mad” Anthony Wayne, it was known as Legion of the United States from 1792-1796.

This isn’t the end of the world, it’s just the end of what we have now, and the end of the United States as we knew her. It’s the beginning of something new as the old structures cease to serve us. There’s a common phrase that I can’t find the source of but that describes the cycle simply and well: “Hard times breed strong men. Strong men breed good times. Good times breed soft men. Soft men? They bring hard times.”

We are in for hard times. But don’t fear. This will make strong men, and, if they are strong enough, a new United States that deserves those strong men.

How I Learned To Love The End Of The World

“We estimate between two and four megatons. Everything within a 30 kilometer radius will be completely destroyed, including the three remaining reactors at Chernobyl.” – Chernobyl (HBO®)

Thankfully, everyone is equally hungry under communism. Bernie’s job is done.

I think I’ve always thought about what’s known today as “prepping” – even at a young age. When I was young, we lived deep in the mountains. How deep? The next closest kid anywhere near my age was ten miles away and probably 2,000’ lower in elevation and was actually a yeti that had moved there from Tibet to get away from the crowds. The nearest grocery store was twenty miles away. The nearest movie theater? Fifty miles.

When you live nearly so far from civilization that tourists try to pay you in beads and pantyhose, you have to think ahead. Ma Wilder did. Ma had designed the house with remoteness in mind. Her pantry was always full, and it was huge. She built in a pantry that consisted of one entire fifteen foot wall, floor to ceiling, a foot deep.

The pantry was always (and I mean always) stocked from floor to ceiling with canned goods. Freezer? Not one freezer. Two. And they were always packed to the brim with food. Well, with the exception of when Pa would let the inventory go down so there would be room to fit half a cow. Literally. He’d buy a “side of beef” which was half of a cow. Minus the hooves, of course.

Ma Wilder had also designed a root cellar that the contractor built. For those of you not in the know, a root cellar is a small building (8 foot by 8 foot by 8 foot) that is 90% buried to keep vegetables so they will neither sprout nor spoil. In order to do that, the cellar is dark and cool, like Nancy Pelosi’s heart. Ma Wilder kept hundreds of pounds of potatoes there. I should know – I was often the guy taking them down in fall and hauling them up in winter. And to be clear, we kept the potatoes in the cellar, since Nancy Pelosi’s heart isn’t big enough to hold a French fry.

Exercise? No, with COVID-19, it’s extra fries.

The house was designed to be heated in winter with firewood. Since electricity was incredibly expensive up there, Pa Wilder made gathering, cutting, splitting, and stacking firewood his summer hobby. As it was Pa’s summer hobby, it turned out to be my summer hobby, too. It was hard work, and paid poorly until it came time to hit the blocking sled for football when it paid off with massive thighs of steel.

There is no jean size for “massive thighs of steel.”

But it wasn’t just the remoteness that drove Ma Wilder to be prepared. First, I have to explain a little bit about the family. My parents were older than I was. Oh, sure, that’s normally the case, except in some places like Hollywood, but in my case my parents were a LOT older.

Why?

It turns out that I was adopted, despite the original story they told me of finding me as an infant in a crashed space capsule in a wolf den near the summit of Mount Olympus. In reality, Ma Wilder was my biological grandmother and not who hiked around Greece looking for wolf-raised space babies. Apparently, as a child the only super-power I had consisted of making my biological mother and father both disappear.

I blame the heat ray vision.

I made a website for orphans, but it doesn’t have a home page.

So, I was adopted. Since my parents were not only older than me, but also much older than even standard issue parents, they had hands-on experience with the Great Depression and World War II while they were young. Apparently, those were events that may been somewhat memorable.

I do remember sitting down in rocking chair in the kitchen while supper was cooking. After Pa Wilder had finished his chores for the day, he and Ma would sit down to talk about life, most often with a libation, as Pa Wilder called drinking. I believe it was mainly bourbon, but I can’t really say since they were quite poor hosts and never offered me any. Often, Ma and Pa discussed people I didn’t know. This was so boring it made me want to go to and stick forks in outlets to test breakers.

Especially when they talked about people, I was often admonished that “what we discuss stays within the family” though it was implied that that admonishment probably counted for every topic. I can see how it might be considered controversial how irritated that they were that the neighbor dog kept peeing in the snow by the back porch and they didn’t want me to tattle to the neighbors. Or how economic collapse might be a thing. Or how we might be headed towards nuclear war, and had Pa thought about buying dynamite so he could blow up the road leading to our house so we weren’t the victims of marauding, murdering gangs?

Yup. That was an actual conversation that Ma and Pa had. I think they only mentioned that idea once while I was in the room, but when your mother is calmly talking about having your father blow up bridges to save you from hordes of people (the parents of the kids you go to school with) ransacking your home after the Soviets gave America a “just thinking about you” bouquet of 10 megaton fireballs?

You tend to remember that sort of conversation when you’re 12.

I heard that after a nuclear war, there are high radiation levels, then only the politicians will be left.

Ma and Pa were acutely aware that all of their material prosperity could evaporate in an instant. Ma and Pa had both seen rich men laid low by the Great Depression, and Pa Wilder had fought in World War II. He had driven all through northern Europe, having been on Omaha at D-Day +3. I can’t even imagine what he had seen. Of course I asked him the obvious question, “Did any Germans shoot at ya, Pa?”

“No, son, they never shot at me,” he replied with all the coolness of a Steve McQueen, “but I was with a lot of people they were shooting at.”

I’m ashamed at how long it took me to figure out what he was really saying.

That’s not impressive, though. One of my friends had a grandpa that brought down 15 German planes during the war. Worst mechanic the Luftwaffe had.

I’m not sure that they ever mentioned the idea of nuclear Armageddon more than once or twice, but it doesn’t take long to make a kid connect the dots: “Oh, that’s why we have all the food. And all the guns. And the 500 gallons of gasoline. And the 250 gallons of diesel. And Ma’s amusing utter failure to raise vegetables in the backyard, repeated year after year.”

My parents were preppers before it even had a name beyond “being prudent.” It’s probably justifiable, especially on Ma Wilder’s part. She had seen her family make it through the Great Depression okay, but her family had also raised several children whose parents weren’t well off enough to feed them. I know that sounds crazy in the year 2020, but in the year 1930, sometimes parents couldn’t even figure out where to get enough money to feed a child.

I think those experiences were a driving force in Ma Wilder’s life. She saved aluminum TV dinner trays. She saved old clothes. She could sew (fairly well), make soap (that was more like a caustic chemical burn in a bar), knit (very well), or ferment wine (she gave me a sip and to 12 year old me it tasted of pepper, hate and despair). Back when she grew up, prepping wasn’t a hobby. Prepping was what everyone did.

As I mentioned, one factor that made all the preparation seem even more normal was being so far away from anything. Also, being so far away from everything meant I was pretty far away from the middle school. I was the last one on the bus route. That also meant I was the first one on, and the last one off. It gave me a lot of time alone on the bus to read – a lot.

All of this might explain why I developed a love of fiction that featured the end of the world when I was growing up. Lucifer’s Hammer, A Canticle for Leibowitz, Earth Abides, The Stand, On the Beach, The Postman, and I Am Legend were all novels that I read as I rode the green pleather seat on an endless loop back and forth to school. My classmates might have been looking at the trees and houses or talking to each other, but I was living in a world where everything had changed, all at once and strong men did what they could to rebuild. And without communists this time.

I think Baltimore jokes are just a riot!

My middle school’s library was filled with books that were older than me – many from the 1950’s with pages already becoming yellow and brittle with age. There were dozens of science fiction anthologies. Science fiction in the 1950’s was filled with the paranoia of a country that was just coming to grips with the concept of being able to destroy an entire planet and wrestling with the now obvious fragility of the human species. One of the short stories I remember was A Pail of Air, by Fritz Leiber. You can read it for free here (LINK). It’s worth it.

If you’re not a fan of apocalyptic stories, you might think that the attractive part about reading the end of the world was about death – and you’re wrong. Reading that literature was, for me, a celebration of life. In most of those books and stories the human race didn’t die out. To me, apocalyptic books weren’t about gloom, they were about hope. No matter what was thrown at humanity, we would find a way through.

I am unabashedly pro-human, and most fiction in the 1950’s was pro-human. Somewhere after that, we became a bit more self-loathing and reveled in the idea of our destruction. I can’t help but think that self-loathing started with Doogie Howser, M.D., but I might be wrong. Much of today’s literature isn’t fun, and isn’t optimistic. Sure, I see tough times ahead. But I feel quite strongly that we can make it through them.

Trust me. We will.

What, you don’t think I developed psychic powers on Mount Olympus?

The Lighter Side of the Apocalypse

â€œIt’s theÂ ApocalypseÂ all right. Â I always thought I’d have a hand in it.â€ – Futurama

I make apocalypse jokes like thereâ€™s no tomorrow.

Wednesdayâ€™s are normally a day to talk about wealth, and when youâ€™re prepping, what is wealth?Â Is it gold coins?Â Is it ammunition?Â Is it beer?Â Is it a paid off house?Â Is it a decadeâ€™s worth of PEZÂ®?

In many cases when I go to other websites that discuss either economic or social dislocation I see people arguing in the comments section about the way to prepare.Â In some cases, these arguments have even occurred here at this humble bastion of Internet civility and decorum.Â All of the people arguing are right.

No, that doesnâ€™t mean that John Wilder is out there awarding participation trophies for comments, far from it.Â The problem is one of definition.Â As Tolstoy said in Anna Kareninananana, â€œAll happyÂ familiesÂ are alike; eachÂ unhappy familyÂ isÂ unhappyÂ in its own way.â€Â Each of the stunningly attractive and freshly washed (and waxed!) geniuses that comments here has an IQ that would put Joe Biden to shame.Â Yet they disagree because theyâ€™re talking about different things â€“ each apocalypse is unique in its own way.

Protip:Â if youâ€™re a mortician, tie all of the corpses shoes together â€“ that way if we do have a zombie apocalypse, itâ€™ll be funny.

Therefore, Iâ€™ve decided itâ€™s important to talk about the W.I.L.D.E.R. Scale.Â Itâ€™s like the Richter Scale for earthquakes or the Fujita Scale for tornados or the Joe Biden Scale for Lying Dog Faced Pony Soldiers.Â But this one is better, because I came up with it.

Most importantly, what does W.I.L.D.E.R. stand for?Â Itâ€™s the:

Wilder Index of Life Disruption and Economic Ruination.

See?Â W.I.L.D.E.R.Â No, wait . . . W.I.L.D.E.R.â„¢Â There.Â That looks better.

The scale is broken up into a ten point scale, as described below.Â Why ten?Â Besides being my mental age, it also describes the number of fingers that I had before using a table saw.Â Itâ€™s also metric.Â So, all of you people who live in countries that havenâ€™t nuked Japan (excluding the Japanese) can have this one in metric.Â But you have to keep the soccer.

NOTE:Â This is not a comprehensive financial guide or preparedness guide.Â Depending on the W.I.L.D.E.R.â„¢Â level youâ€™re preparing for, this is only the barest bones of a start.Â

W.I.L.D.E.R.â„¢ Level 0:Â All Quiet

Everythingâ€™s fine.Â Life is good.Â Life is projected to be good â€“ you have a job, itâ€™s fairly secure and has good benefits and it pays the bills, mostly.Â Save money in your 401k, grill some burgers and watch the game.Â Go back to sleep.

W.I.L.D.E.R.â„¢ Level 1:Â Local Slowdown

What is it?

A W.I.L.D.E.R.â„¢ Level 1 is the lowest level of economic disruption â€“ local job loss, minor and non-chronic civil .Â Itâ€™s not great if youâ€™re caught up in it, but itâ€™s pretty mild.Â There may be widespread local job loss â€“ a factory was closed.Â Itâ€™s not pleasant for those caught up in it, but the underlying economy outside of that local area is sound â€“ you may have a longer commute, but you can get a job.

What to do?

Have savings.Â Have minimal debt.Â In many cases, youâ€™ll be able to keep doing what youâ€™ve been doing, but you might have a farther commute or reduced wages.Â The nice thing about a Level 1 is that if youâ€™re willing to move to a new city, chances are youâ€™ll find something.

W.I.L.D.E.R.â„¢ Level 2: Â Regional Slowdown

What is it?

One thing that was more common in the past in the United States was a regional level of economic slowdown.Â Entire areas would remain stagnant for periods at a time, sometimes years.Â In the case of New Mexico, no one really knew it was a state anyway, so weâ€™re not even sure if New Mexico has an economy.Â As we have been in the â€œBoom Everywhere, All the Timeâ€ mode for the last 20 years (with the exception of that pesky Great Recession), the economy of the United States seems to be far less regional, but more centered in larger cities.

But regional economic slowdowns do occur â€“ an example would be in the Oil Patch when the price of oil first goes up, and then collapses like my resistance to a steak on Friday night.Â The good news is that when the oil price collapses, you can buy a small child in Oklahoma for the price of a cheeseburger.Â Not a plain cheeseburger, but the fancy one with lettuce and tomato and onion.Â Oklahomans have standards.

What to do?

Have savings.Â Have minimal debt.Â Have a realistic budget and know the difference between whatâ€™s really required and whatâ€™s nice-to-have.Â Have a house that you can either sell or walk away from.Â Be prepared to change careers â€“ have an additional skill that people will pay you for if you have to change careers.Â Be prepared to sell a kidney â€“ grow an extra one or two if you can for a rainy day.

Philosoraptor.

W.I.L.D.E.R.â„¢ Level 3:Â National Recession

What is it?

Since World War II, most recessions have lasted, on average, a little less than a year.Â Recessions mean that, broadly, the economy is shrinking.Â Since the entire economic (and banking) system is based on continued expansion and growth, a recession typically kicks people out of work.Â During a national recession itâ€™s easier to drive drunk and text Shakespeare from memory while smoking weed than to get a raise.

Even though the economy â€œrecoversâ€ after a year or so, the failures and economic transitions that come from the recession linger in many lives for up to a decade â€“ careers at failed businesses may not be viable anywhere.Â If the entire factory is shipped to China, chances are slim that the Chinese will want to import people â€“ itâ€™s not like there are enough bats for everyone.

What to do?

If you are graduating from college, think twice.Â People who graduate during a recession and take a job during the recession typically earn less for their entire careers.Â Several of my friends went to graduate school instead of into the job market during a recession.Â It worked out well for one guy â€“ he became a dictator of a country in the Middle East.Â Heâ€™s generous, too.Â I heard that he last week at the bar he ordered shots for lots of his friends.

If you have a job â€“ do what you can to keep it.Â Pay down remaining debt, but understand what bankruptcy might mean if you donâ€™t have six months (or more) of cash to cover expenses.Â Stock weeks of spare food, if you can.Â If you canâ€™t, start making friends with neighborhood cats.

W.I.L.D.E.R.â„¢ Level 4:Â The Great Depression

What is it?

The Great Depression, and, to a lesser extent, the Great Recession of 2008-2009 and the Stagflation of the 1970â€™s fit here.Â These are much greater economic hits than a recession.Â They are nationwide, and may threaten the economic collapse.Â Expect extreme measures to get the economy working again, many of which will actually be counterproductive, but itâ€™s government, so you expect that.Â Banks will fail.Â Weird things will happen to the money supply.

What to do?

If you have spare cash, this is the time to pick up great bargains.Â As the Great Recession hit, the price of gold dropped significantly.Â People who had debt but too many toys had to sell them â€“ it was a great time to buy boats and cars and motorcycles and mistresses and admission for your kid at HarvardÂ®.Â Several stocks were selling at ridiculously low prices.

Why was this?Â Money had dried up, so there were bargains everywhere.Â Of course, I didnâ€™t have enough money then to buy anything.Â Except a house.Â Before the prices collapsed.Â (Spoiler â€“ I got out of that house okay.)

Again, having no debt and cash to cover expenses is key.Â Having a spouse who doesnâ€™t work (but could) is also key â€“ in a pinch, they can work, too, or you can sell their kidneys for buckets of wheat.

Diversify your banks.Â Diversify how you keep your money â€“ is one currency enough?Â Desperate people will be desperate.Â Be able to protect yourself and your family.

Hey, donâ€™t laugh â€“ I can almost buy two packs of gum in 2024 with the money in that picture.

W.I.L.D.E.R.â„¢ Level 5:Â National Collapse

What is it?

Governing structures cease to function in a meaningful way.Â This is also known as â€œTuesdayâ€ in most African nations.Â Weimar Germany, and the late Soviet Union are examples.Â They didnâ€™t collapse in the same way â€“ Weimar Germany collapsed in an explosion of hyperinflation.Â The Soviet Union collapse was the collapse of an entire economic system, and now nobody knew who got to take the cow to the dance on Saturday.

What to do?

When nations collapse, their currency collapses.Â This always happens.Â In surviving any of those collapses, a pocketful of gold was more helpful than a pocketful of paper.Â If the nation collapses, it can be difficult to predict the system that will replace it, but they generally are totalitarian strongmen who take over in the chaos after collapse.Â The Soviet Union was a happy departure â€“ as rough as it was on the former Soviet citizens, it could have been far worse.Â Chef Boyardee was originally chosen as Gorbachevâ€™s replacement, but they didnâ€™t like that he called his secret police the Gazpacho.

Six months of food isnâ€™t extravagant in a situation like this.Â Some means of protection are mandatory.Â Realize that changes could happen in a second, so plan.Â Have friends.

W.I.L.D.E.R.â„¢ Level 6:Â Civil War

What is it?

The American Civil War, the French Revolution, and the Balkans War are examples of civil wars.Â Civil wars are probably more vicious than any other type of conflict.Â When the Germans started fighting the French and English in World War I, they werenâ€™t really into it â€“ they even stopped the war for Christmas in 1914.Â But when the French finally snapped before the French Revolution?Â They were ready to throw down like a rabid epileptic cat in a strobe light store.

What to do?

Moveable assets like gold or foreign bank accounts, a second passport, and lots of lead are preferred.Â Be in a place (if you can) surrounded by like-minded people.Â It helps if youâ€™ve been there for years before trouble breaks out â€“ being an outsider during a civil war isnâ€™t preferred.Â Have food â€“ a year?Â Have weapons.Â Have a supply of necessary pharmaceuticals if you can.Â Be aware that your side might lose the war.Â What would that mean?Â Oh, and donâ€™t forget to floss.

W.I.L.D.E.R.â„¢ Level 7:Â International Collapse

What is it?

World War I and World War II are modern examples of this, but earlier examples include the fall of the Roman Empire and the late Bronze Age Collapse (~1200 B.C.) (LINK).Â These are collapses that take down multiple nations and re-write borders and history.Â They are cataclysmic, and are often followed by the mass movements of people, either as invading conquerors, or fleeing refugees, or in the 2010â€™s, fleeing conquerors and invading refugees.

Some things never change.Â Image:Â Lommes [CC BY-SA 4.0)]

What to do?

Be away from where the war is happening.Â That may be more difficult than it says on the label.Â All of the suggestions for Level 6 responses still fit, especially flossing, but finding a place not torn by conflict is exceedingly difficult.Â Events have the ability to move very, very, fast.Â If youâ€™re in continental Europe, learning German is probably a good idea.Â A year of food will likely not be enough.Â Lead is recommended.Â Gold may or may not help at all.Â If you think it wonâ€™t, Iâ€™ll watch it for you.

W.I.L.D.E.R.â„¢ Level 8:Â Regional Extinction

What is it?

Regional extinction last occurred when the population collapsed after the Europeans brought disease to the New World.Â Smallpox, measles, and high cholesterol (eventually) killed an estimated 90% of the pre-Columbus population through either disease or carryover effects.Â That amounted to, perhaps, 10% of the world population at the time.

What to do?

Donâ€™t eat bats.Â Donâ€™t welcome Spaniards.

I fell in love with a calendar.Â Together we had a lot of dates.

W.I.L.D.E.R.â„¢ Level 9:Â Continental or Multi-Continental Extinction

What is it?

This hasnâ€™t happened in recorded history.Â There are some scientists that theorize that the supervolcano Tomba that erupted 75,000 years ago nearly eliminated humanity.Â How close?Â Genetic evidence indicates that it might have been as low as 1,000 breeding pairs of humans.Â However, some people think those scientists are bunch of cotton headed ninny mugginses, and say that people were just fine â€“ the restriction in genetic variation shows up because some people were MUCH better at propagating their genes, if you know what I mean.Â Also?Â Asteroids arenâ€™t your friend.

What to do?Â

Be lucky.Â Wear clean underwear.Â You cannot save enough food for this contingency â€“ it may last years and the task will be nothing less than rebuilding civilization.Â Read Luciferâ€™s Hammer for a lighthearted look at life after a Level 9.

W.I.L.D.E.R.â„¢ Level 10:Â Planetary Extinction

What is it?

Game over, man.

What to do?

Save money in your 401k, grill some burgers and watch the game.Â Go back to sleep.

And thereâ€™s the W.I.L.D.E.R.â„¢ scale.Â Drop me an email or leave a comment if I missed something.

A Texas Church, Aesop, and the Future of Freedom

â€œI’m the plumber. Â I’m just hanging around in case something goes wrong with her pipes.Â (to audience) That’s the first time I’ve used that joke in twenty years.â€ â€“ Horsefeathers

â€œWhy a four-year-old child could understand this report.Â Run out and find me a four-year-old child. Â I can’t make head or tail out of it.â€

In a Texas church this weekend, the worst nightmare of the Left happened.Â The only thing that could have been worse for the Left would have been a video of Bernie Sanders spending his own money.Â A good guy with a gun (Jack Wilson) stopped a bad guy with a gun.Â Part of what made it bad for the Left:Â clear video evidence showed a good guy taking down a bad guy with a single shot.Â To make it even worse for the Left: Â the bad guy was a killer, shooting a pair of grandfatherly looking men in a room filled with grandma and grandpa types.

It was quick.Â From the time the bad guy pulled his gun to the time the bad guy ceasing to . . . be was five seconds.Â Five short seconds.Â This was, perhaps, a final blow for the Left.Â The idea that the police, who arrived very quickly (four minutes or less) should be the only ones with guns evaporated, especially since two church members were dead within three seconds.Â A very well-trained citizen saved lives â€“ how many weâ€™ll thankfully not know, since he acted.

Not a cop.Â A citizen.

Every Leftist commenter on the web that was trying to justify gun control in the wake of this tragedy couldnâ€™t do so without defending the shooter as being somehow justified in wanting to rob the church.Â The biggest problem in the eyes of the Left, perhaps, is that the churchgoers werenâ€™t sufficiently Christian enough to quietly line up to be shot.Â Texas is probably not the state for that.

What made the difference is that the good guy was able to ignore disbelief at the situation occurring right in front of him, and was able to react.Â How could Jack Wilson do this?Â He didnâ€™t know exactly what threat he was going to face.Â He didnâ€™t even know if there ever was even going to be a threat.Â But yet, he trained.Â Dare I say it?Â He was prepped.

Ok, Zoomer.Â (For the record, Iâ€™m neither.Â I just like stirring things up.)

Jack Wilson scanned the churchgoers.Â He was looking for data points.Â He saw them and acted.

This week, Aesop over at The Raconteur Report posted his 2019 Quincy Adams Wagstaff Lecture.Â Itâ€™s here (LINK).Â RTWT.Â As usual, Aesop writes excellent material â€“ not only to ponder upon, but to act upon.Â There are many wonderful points in it, and here is the opening:

Wherever you’re reading this, you’ve had unmistakable evidence that things aren’t going to go all rosy. Â Perhaps ever again. Â Perhaps just for a long dark winter of the soul, and/or of the entire civilization. There has been more than one Dark Age period in human history, and they will happen again. Â You may very well get to see this firsthand, and experience life amidst it. Â Howsoever long or briefly.

You’ve had a respite of some 37 months to get your metaphysical crap together in one bag, and use the time prudently.

If you’ve squandered that lead time, woe unto you.

This post made me think, which is dangerous.Â At least thatâ€™s what my therapist says.Â My therapist who says Iâ€™m â€œmentally creativeâ€ and â€œreality impaired.â€Â Thankfully, sheâ€™s imaginary, which really lowers her billing rate.Â But what that post made me think most about was:

Mindset.

This is what would happen if my imaginary therapist talked to The Mrs. Â Itâ€™s funnier if you read the whole thing in a pirate voice, really.

Aesop mentions mental readiness, and thatâ€™s key.Â The last 37 months have been, to put it mildly, an indication that we are headed towards a very uncertain future as the culture around us continues to polarize, as the monetary debt we face (all over the world) continues to mount, as soccer is still taken seriously as an international sport rather than a game for attention challenged three-year-olds, and as the international stability that was so hard won with the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War dissolves.

Iâ€™m not trying to sell you on any one future, on any one fate, unless thereâ€™s money in it.Â But I am trying to emphasize the start of your salvation:Â your mindset.Â If you believe that the world will continue in an unbroken, linear stream, I can assure you that youâ€™re wrong.Â Weâ€™ve had the precursor warnings of 9/11 and the Great Recession.Â If I am correct, this decade will bring tumult of a similar, if not greater magnitude.

Evacuate the women and children first!Â Then we can solve this in silence.

You should believe this, too.Â Not on a surface level.Â This is a mindset.Â Your daily decisions should take these future unknown and unknowable calamities into account.Â Why?

Because if Iâ€™m right, and youâ€™re prepared a week, a month, or five years before you need to be, you win.Â Also?Â Society wins, because the more people that are prepared, the better we come through the next crisis/shock.Â If we were all prepared, a hurricane could hit the shore and the stores would still be full.Â When we prepare, we manage to make sure there will be less stress on the system during an emergency.

The other way to help is with skills, and the longer the crisis, the more important those skills will be.Â And, no, your experience in saving the PrincessÂ® in Super Mario Brothersâ„¢ doesnâ€™t count.Â At least my therapist says it wonâ€™t.Â Real skills provide for a basic human need, like food.Â During the Great Depression, people gardened and farms werenâ€™t big factory affairs â€“ they were much smaller Mom and Pop style farms.Â Even though there was significant malnutrition, starvation deaths in the United States were minimal.

He said his New Yearâ€™s resolution was 1920×1080.

More evidence?

One of the biggest enemies of seeing reality is seeing the world you think should be, not the world as it really is.Â People look at AntifaÂ® rioting and think, â€œThey should be arrested.â€Â They arenâ€™t.Â What does that data point tell you?

The government of Virginia is threatening to take semi-automatic guns, dedicate a team to confiscating guns and the government should allow honest, law abiding citizens to exercise the right to self-protection.Â But the government wants to take it away and make honest people felons.Â What does that data point tell you?

Government debt today is at 106% of GDP.Â During the worst of the Great Depression, debt was less than 50% of the GDP.Â During the height of the Vietnam War?Â Debt was less than 40%.Â What does that data point tell you?

I canâ€™t promise the cause of the next crisis.Â But I can promise that itâ€™s coming.Â Cultivate the mindset.Â Itâ€™s the first step.

The key is to avoid despair even though you see the world as it really is.

â€œI, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. Â I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. Â I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.â€ â€“ Marcus Aurelius Groucho Marx

I have been accused of being too cheerful from time to time throughout my life.Â And I plead guilty â€“ with a smile on my face.Â Why?

First â€“ Iâ€™m naturally an optimist.Â I want to achieve the best, but I also know that thereâ€™s no fixed way the world should be.Â There is just the way that the world really is today.Â If I donâ€™t let myself get upset at the difference between an ideal and reality, I sleep a lot better.Â Does that mean Iâ€™m satisfied? Â No.Â I work with every fiber to change some things for the better, but I donâ€™t let it wreck my life like a pink-hatted blue-haired creature of fluid gender when confronted with a person who had to ask what their gender pronouns are.

The first two hours are rough.Â Caffeine is my best morning friend.

Second â€“ Life has been awesome for me.Â I can think of a LOT of times that I thought it was ruined.Â But each of those times resulted in a situation that was pretty good for me.Â Am I worth $30 million dollars?Â No.Â But thatâ€™s probably for the better.Â If I had that kind of scratch Iâ€™d probably make Elon Musk look like the model of public restraint.

Third â€“ Iâ€™ll admit, there was a time (about a year ago) where I got a little gloomy myself. But as I looked around me, I looked at what we have done.Â I realized that freedom has won here in the United States for hundreds of years against all odds.

There were 2.5 million people living in the 13 colonies in 1776.Â Thatâ€™s less than the population of Utah. Â In that 2.5 million we had a Washington, a Franklin, a Jefferson.Â Sure, Franklin in 1789 might have drank more than the state of Utah in 1989 all by himself, but there are men that are the equal to our founders, and they exist in every state.Â You know they exist, too.Â The tricorn hats and powdered wigs are a dead giveaway.

Always remember that there is a line.Â If you look at them standing along the church pews, scanning the congregation to keep them safe, they look nice.

Heck, they are nice.Â Until they cross the line.

Then they’re not nice.Â Then they become good men.

So, to gently change Groucho:Â The past we wish to cling to is dead. Â The present that we have is generally not so bad.Â And we have a future, even if we can only see it dimly now, even if its golden age is years or decades away.

Let us go and make it.

Freedom: Violence is the Answer

“A new age has begun, an age of freedom. And all will know that 300 Spartans gave their last breath to defend it.” – 300

One night I heard a noise on the deck. A raccoon was bringing me back a book that I had lost a few years ago. “It’s a miracle!” I said. “Not really,” said the raccoon, “your name was written on the inside cover.”

The dogs barked.

The dogs never bark, unless a Terminator® is here yet again looking for that stupid Sarah Conner. The dogs were safely in their crates for the night. I’ve spent thousands of hours (yes, thousands) downstairs writing hundreds of thousands of words at night after the family was safely asleep, and not one time ever (yes, ever) had our silly dogs ever barked.

As they barked, I heard something on the deck above. It sounded like a piece of deck furniture sliding. Yeah, sure, you say, there aren’t a lot of burglars that move furniture to announce their presence, especially not at 1 AM. You’re right.

But . . .

There is one thing that I do know – if there was an actual burglar upstairs, the consequences could get bad, and quickly. Nonviolent burglars try to rob you in the day when they think that nobody’s home. But a burglar that’s coming into your house when they know that someone is there?

They mean you harm.

Bad guys at night are actually looking forward to doing bad things. The sound of a shotgun ratcheting a shell into the chamber will scare the Schumer out of a daytime burglar, but it won’t deter an attacker at night. They’re looking for violence, and fully expecting to kill everyone in the house.

I blame violent video games, or maybe gluten or high fructose corn syrup, or worse yet, them playing video games about violent gluten while snorting high fructose corn syrup.

Regardless, I got up from the solitude of writing on my couch and got a pistol. Oh, sure, you may leave pistols lying about your palatial residences like we Wilders leave our PEZ® on the coffee tables for the crowned heads of state that come by to feel the perfect shapes of our skulls, but we keep ours out of the public areas. Mine are in places that I would normally sleep, like under the dining room table, in the hot tub, or behind the wheel of my car while driving to work.

Oh, yeah, I left one on the bridge!

So I went upstairs. I quietly opened my bedroom door and had to decide: the .45ACP or the 9mm? I chose the 9mm. Why? It was closest to the door, and all it required was a longish reach upwards. Could anyone else in the house reach it? Nope, but is a 9mm all that dangerous anyway? I mean, if a Pope can survive it, it can’t be that bad.

I pulled it out of its case as I walked towards the back door. As I got near the back door, I activated the best feature of the 9mm – the laser mounted right under its barrel, which I bought for $10 from Amazon®. The idea of the laser mounted on a pistol, for all three of my readers that never saw Terminator®, is to show the shooter right where the bullet is going to go. In my case, I turned it on because any actual person on the back deck, seeing a laser, would probably think twice about their “invading Wilder Manor” plan.

9mm – what I teach my daughters to shoot gnats with.

The dogs were still unsettled as I reached for the doorknob. As these dogs are really not dogs, but barking rats that have tails that wag when you call them a good boy, they’re really always unsettled. I turned on the outside lights and painted every piece of deck furniture with the laser.

Nothing, except for the overly ambitious spider that builds a web face-high across the back door every day. I didn’t really expect there to be anything, since I live in Modern Mayberry.

In checking the crime statistics to prepare for this post, I looked up Modern Mayberry. It shows up as being a crime-ridden area, since there actually was a murder here in 2016. It was, as I recall, a guy who killed his girlfriend (or vice versa) over infidelity. But random murders? Not here. Gang violence? Not here, since the closest thing we have to a gang is the pre-school soccer program. I hate those monsters.

I believe there are petty burglaries that occur here, but those are almost all during the daytime. Why?

Everyone here has guns. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. But I would estimate that at minimum, 10% of the households could be armed and lethal in 2 minutes or less. I would estimate that 50% could be armed in 10 minutes or less. And I would estimate that 80% would have a gun in their hands in 20 minutes or less, but by then you’re dead or the cops are here. However, if you are a criminal, this isn’t good.

Why?

Me. And my neighbor. When he moved in, he had no idea that he was living next to The John Wilder, but he showed me his latest toy – a nice AR tricked out with a green laser and a bunch of other bling. I have no doubt that he’d be happy to explain to the Sheriff why he perforated someone breaking into his house. That explains most of the residents of Modern Mayberry. And you can be certain that the District Attorney is one of us, too. He declined to prosecute a homeowner for emptying a magazine into a criminal that had shot the homeowner, even though the homeowner had shot the fleeing criminal in the back more than once.

Would this be a neighbor you prefer? Put me in the “yes” category.

The homeowner is a valued member of the Modern Mayberry community. The criminal? In jail. The criminal’s civil suit against the homeowner? Yeah. That was dismissed. Nobody could be found guilty of that here.

If you were to try to rob a house here at night, the next time you took a drink of water you’d look like a fountain. A fourteen-year-old kid trying to boost a bike at 3 in the afternoon? Probably not going to get shot. But that same kid at 3AM? You have as much chance of surviving the night as a Snickers® bar does at Rosie O’Donnell’s house.

And let me stress again: no one here has a problem with that.

But that’s not how it always was. It used to be that violence was the exclusive right of our rulers. And it was so not only for legal reasons, but for practical reasons.

Plus who knows how much for hair spray.

Let’s go back to the middle ages. Technology had advanced to the point where a knight in a full suit of armor was pretty much only going to be at risk from another knight, and they never fought except over who got the remote control at Knight School. Their armor was strong steel, and penetrating it was difficult. To a normal citizen serf of the day? A knight might as well have been a superhero – there was no reasonable way a normal citizen could hurt a knight.

What did it cost to outfit a knight and his horse? In the area of $500,000 to $3.5 million. The higher cost was probably due to the need to decorate it with the 15^th Century equivalent of Hello Kitty® stickers, but $500,000 was daunting. Even the armor of a “man at arms” was probably in the range of $20,000 or more, but one of those would be a poor competitor for a mounted knight.

Swords were huge, double-handed affairs. Why? To penetrate the armor of a knight you had to swing a heavy mass of steel at them.

Until.

Until the English longbow came to the front. The beauty of the English longbow is that, when fired all at once, a mass of them could penetrate all but the best armor of the day. At Agincourt, Henry V’s archers and knights took down 10,000 French, to (possibly) fewer than 500 English deaths. It is written on Henry V’s tombstone about conquering the French: “Look, Ma, no panzers!”

Oh, sorry. I’ll leave you to go back to smoking, Ma’am.

A longbow takes, in modern times, at least six weeks to learn to shoot well. A sword? Years.

The longbow made warfare more accessible to the common man. The result is well known – increased freedom for the common man. Before the king required Englishmen learn the longbow, a knight got pretty much what he wanted. After the longbow? A bit more difficult, because if the knight’s demand was too much? A group of men could make his demand as null and void as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s womb.

This levelling of force included fortresses. A tall castle with stone walls was impregnable short of a long siege, having been designed to resist stone thrown from catapults. But after cannon, castles were as done as Facebook® to a teenager after grandma started “Liking” their posts.

This trend continued. Soldiers shed armor, and the most potent weapons became affordable by even the most common man. By the time of the Revolution®, any American could hold in their hands the equivalent weapon of a British soldier. And not be trained in years like a swordsman, or in weeks like an archer, but in days. The investment in money went down, too – a good musket would cost about a month’s earnings for an American around the time of the Revolution™.

The Second Amendment wasn’t written about this – it was written about freedom.

People talk about democracy? In this way violence was democratized. Never in the history of mankind had a place been as free as America, but only part of it was philosophy – the rest was applied engineering. The Brown Bess was a British weapon, but it was the most common weapon used on both sides of the Revolution. Ordinary American citizens had the same weapon as the best armed British soldier. The result?

Tyranny lost. Arbitrary will could not be imposed upon free men. The Congress was stopped from legislating tyranny not only by the Constitution, but by the willingness of good men to accept the legislation.

This situation of increasing freedom kept going. “God created men. Sam Colt made them equal.” Any American could put 12 rounds in a pair of Colts® on his hips after the Civil War, plus another 15 in a Winchester™ in the scabbard on his saddle. Was the Old West© a killing field? Well, yes. In Dodge City, the murder rate at its peak was probably a little over twice what it is today in Baltimore today, but at least there wasn’t any rap music.

Where’s Selleck? This picture needs more Selleck.

Today, legal firearm ownership is through the roof. The weapons are of high quality: these firearms are nearly the same ability as firearms used commonly by the military. In many cases, a family home is better armed than the local police department – I’ve been to Modern Mayberry’s office and wouldn’t trade. We’re better prepared, too. It might take me three minutes to have an AR ready to go, but it would take our local police twenty minutes at least to mount an effective force to come “save” me. More than likely if I were unarmed, they’d just be there to photograph the bodies. Police aren’t the first responders. Police are second responders.

Prepared or not: you are the first responder.

In no case have I ever seen a cop do anything but get ready to fill out paperwork. The good news? You’re on your own.

There is no nation on Earth as armed as the United States. Modern Mayberry is a good example of that, where I’d expect 90% of citizens have more than one gun, and the cost of a decent firearm is $500 or less. Are we free here? Certainly. Do we fear our neighbors shooting us? Certainly not. I could toss a pistol on my hip and the biggest thing most people would worry about would be that I got to the counter at Burger King™ to order before them.

Ten drones hit the Saudi oil processing plants recently, taking out millions of barrels a day of the world’s oil production. Ten drones. And from what I can see, the drones cost a few thousand dollars each to make. Today, the parts and programming to make those drones isn’t hard to come by. Even the GPS tracking wouldn’t add much to the cost. The ability to destroy targets from hundreds of miles away is less expensive than a used car. A crappy used car.

Hey, he went on to drive the Pork Chop Express.

Millions of barrels of world oil production was taken down for less than the cost of a new Camaro®, and a new Camaro™ won’t even get you a date with the local meth tramp.

The implications on freedom of drone technology aren’t clear. I’d expect, however, that a government would have to take into account the fact that, at least in the United States, they govern a people that that wishes to be governed. This puts in place limits on government. The second the government wants to push the people too far, the calculus of violence will rapidly favor the people, and not the government.

Despite all of the nonsense-bragging from the left that a dozen people from flyover Red States aren’t equal to an aircraft carrier, I know who I’d pick. I’m not stupid, I’d pick both of them – I want the people and the aircraft carriers. But if I had to pick one, I’d pick the dozen people from flyover states. They won’t shoot down many F-35 fighters, but I’d be willing to bet if you asked any soldier if he’d rather fight Afghans or Red State Americans unleashed, he’d want to go up against the Afghans any day.

When a country’s leaders want to enforce tyranny, the first thing they do is to take away the weapons of the common man. After that, atrocity is the playbook. A free people, with arms, will not suffer tyranny.

Here is Vladimir Lenin’s order to his henchmen in about (I haven’t found the date) 1918:

“Comrades! The insurrection of five kulak districts should be pitilessly suppressed. The interests of the whole revolution require this because ‘the last decisive battle’ with the kulaks is now under way everywhere. An example must be demonstrated.

Hang (and make sure that the hanging takes place in full view of the people) no fewer than one hundred known landlords, rich men, bloodsuckers.
Publish their names.
Seize all their grain from them.
Designate hostages in accordance with yesterday’s telegram.

Do it in such a fashion that for hundreds of kilometers around the people might see, tremble, know, shout: “they are strangling, and will strangle to death, the bloodsucking kulaks”.

Telegraph receipt and implementation.

Yours, Lenin.

Find some truly hard people”

Would Lenin’s order work in Texas? Would that work in Kentucky? Would that work in Indiana? In Michigan? In Ohio?

No. Not in 2019.

The war on guns isn’t about keeping schools safe – that’s actually trivial to do without taking guns away. It’s trivial to do without Red Flag (Red Flag Laws, or, How To Repeal The Second Amendment Soviet-Style Without A Pesky Vote) laws.

I hear that Lenin’s ghost wants universal health care. But with rope.

The only thing taking guns away from Americans does is to make it easier for the Lenin Squad® in the House to take whatever they want. And if Americans are disarmed? They will take whatever they want.

In Modern Mayberry, it was likely a raccoon or an opossum on my deck. But if it wasn’t, the red dot of the laser playing across the forest near my house probably convinced the bad guys that this house certainly wasn’t worth ending their life for. More than likely it convinced a raccoon that a world-famous blogger was willing to fight him to the death for the rights to lick a cat food can clean.

He didn’t have to worry. A raccoon going after a cat food can isn’t what I worry about – even though it might scare the dogs.

But if it was a government raccoon? Hmmmm.