Valhalla – Page 17 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

The Modern World Part IV: What To Do?

“Would you say I have a plethora of piñatas?” – Three Amigos

He was also the first person to use CTRL-C.

So, I promised three blogs on the Modern World. They are here – The Modern World Part I: Health And Strippers, The Modern World Part II: Wages, Subscriptions, and Dating, and The Modern World Part III: You Exist To Be Farmed. As I sat preparing to do the blog tonight, I realized there was one more post to provide the capstone to the series, which I present in this post.

How do we deal with modernity outside of moving to a cabin in Montana?

Listen, despite the name, Ted made more than one bomb.

First, if you’re not healthy, get healthy. That’s actually horribly simple to do for most people.

Limit the amount of food that you eat – we’re provided with a plethora of food choices daily. Most of it I don’t need. As I’ve railed for years, most (not all!) people in the United States could go without food for two weeks with no ill effects, and many would find the experience a positive, not a negative. Here is some sound advice I’ve incorporated into my life: you can’t outrun your teeth. But I can outrun most Leftists – you can tell they like carbs.
Sure donuts (in metric, doughnuts) are good. Avoid them. Will one a week kill you? No. Will one a day? Maybe. Same with chips. I had a “snack size” bag of chips two weeks ago. Since I’ve been eating well, they made me feel queasy. Same with donuts. When your diet is good meat and real vegetables, donuts and that gooey cheese they serve with movie-theater nachos taste like . . . a chemical product. Which they are. Corollary: don’t let your teeth dig your grave. I wouldn’t want to ruin the gravedigger’s hole career.
Pick foods that are as close as possible to actual food. If you’re gonna have a chicken sandwich at McDonalds®, pick the one that’s made out of actual chicken rather than some sort of processed chicken stuff. A baked potato or French fries? Baked, thank you. Seriously, once I stopped eating crap, crap tasted like crap. If it has vegetable oil or a list of ingredients longer than, say, seven, once a week. At most. Heck, I even had a kid’s meal at McDonalds today. It sure made his parents mad.
The food pyramid is even poor geometry – heck, I read Pharaoh used slaves to build his. Bricks might have been easier? Regardless, real fats and meat (butter, a well-marbled ribeye) are good for you and make you feel full. Flour spikes your insulin and all the breads (except the ones I make from grinding the bones of door-to-door salesmen) are made from flour. Insulin tells your body to store fat. Do the math.
Get exercise. It’s good for you. If nothing else, walk. If you can’t walk, undulate like a snake on a baby oil-covered shower curtain. One thing I’ve seen in life – when a man stops walking, death isn’t far away. Keep moving. Even if your legs are weak, you can still do diddly-squats.
Avoid it, except, say, once a week. Maybe. I’ll have an entire post on that at some point.

The other day I said, “Alexa, turn on CNN®. I want to hear the news.” Alexa responded, “I’m sorry Lord John, you’ll have to pick one or the other.”

Second, feed your mind.

Feed your mind like you feed your body. Go to the source, and check everyone (even me!) and determine what isn’t Truth. Journalists are now being taught in journalism school (it’s like real school, but they use pictures and coloring books) that being an advocate for the globalist, Leftist viewpoint is the point of news reporting. Understand that virtually every news story you are reading today in mainstream media is written by a rich kid who wasn’t smart enough to go to law school and believes that lying to you is ethical, as long as it advances The Agenda and The Narrative. And sometimes they change The Agenda and The Narrative in less than a week. Don’t believe me? Ask Psaki about COVID.
The media lies. But I repeat myself. “Truth is the first casualty of war,” quoted Ethel Annakin-Skywalker in 1915 according to something I read on the Internet. Remember that “nurse” who told Congress of Iraqi soldiers tossing infants out when they took incubators from hospitals when Iraq invaded Kuwait? She was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. Look it up. Before you believe a single thing coming from Ukraine, look it up, and understand this: your emotion is the aim. Heck, I hear manipulating your emotions is all the rage.
Propaganda: even when you’re aware of propaganda, it’s effective.
Look for things that make you happy. When I go on the Internet, sometimes (when I’m in a growly mood) I look for things that will make me mad. There’s plenty. Twitter® is a sea of it. Most social media is a sea of it. That’s why (except for when writing for research purposes) I avoid it like the plague – remember, all work and no plague makes for an entirely different 13^th
For 95% of people, there is no reason you can’t be happy in this moment, right now. There are people in this world who have serious problems, but for the most part you’re really not one of them. Even if you are, why would you let those problems rob you from a moment of being happy? There is a time to grieve, a time to be sad. When you let it rule your life, you’re a victim. Stop it. Don’t make me come over there and make you.

I brought a grenade to a water balloon fight once. It did level the playing field.

Then, there’s marriage. These rules aren’t for 1970, (though they would have worked) but more for today – the world has moved on. It is far harder today to find a good match than it was even when I met The Mrs. two decades ago. If you’re happily married, ignore and skip to the next section.

If you’re not married, take care in picking your partner. A lot of care. A bad match will last just as long as a good one (if you have kids) and be amazingly costly. And never pick woman obsessed with Star Wars® – divorce is strong with this one.
Avoid dating apps. They’re really just casual sex apps. And never go casual. Get competitive.
If you’re a young dude (below 35), try to get a wife who is no older than 20-24 years old and marry for values and character. Why? Nothing good happens with a single woman in their mid to late 20s now.
If you’re a young woman, find a quality guy who has values and character, and stay a virgin until marriage.
If you’re a young person, especially a man, avoid marrying a spouse whose parents divorced when they were young (0-16). Understand their family and their values. Understand that the values on display with the parents are another clue to how your future spouse will be.
If you’re a man, don’t let your wife’s work interfere with raising the kids and keeping the house. Raising kids with decent values are more important than most luxuries.
And while we’re there about kids, understand this – the move to turn government schools into an indoctrination center has never been higher. Which values do you want your children to have? Yours? The governments?

But I hear it’s at a pretty low interest rate. Heck, I think we could refinance New Zealand to make the balloon payment.

What about economics?

Avoid debt to the extent possible. Never borrow to buy a car, unless it’s the only choice. Never buy a new car unless your net worth is over $1 million or a company you own is paying for it. Heck, I hear the best way to get back on your feet is to miss two car payments . . . .
I have one. I could pay it off in cash. Why could I pay it off? Because I never borrow to buy cars (since 1997). I hear Spongebob® isn’t paying his mortgage – his house is underwater.
Understand that luxury has multiple costs: first, there’s the cash that has to be paid every month. Second, there’s a moral cost. Just like a donut, occasional luxury won’t dull the character. But every month, and forever? It robs bank accounts and robs the most precious thing that any person controls – their time.
Video games are a luxury. If a person spends 20 hours a week playing video games, what else could have been done with their time? Imagine if Hemingway spent his spare time playing Grand Theft Auto instead of sitting under the Catalan Sun drinking wine from a bota and watching bullfights? GTA is a life stealer. And for Ernest, so was a shotgun.
Why live in a big city? The high housing cost? The crush of incessant humanity surrounding you? Oh, yeah, you can get Thai food at 3am.
Realize the dollar is going to die. The United States prints them, and then other people take them. When Jen P-saki said that this was “Putin’s Inflation” I asked the question: “When did Putin take control of our money supply and then started printing trillions of dollars?” If you salted away a bit of gold and silver (and lead, too) the best case is that you could give it to your kids when you pass on. The worst case? Well, between you and me, silver and gold might be the biggest bargains of the century in 2022 (I am NOT an investment advisor).
Realize that in the future, there is a high degree of probability that having “divergent” opinions to The Narrative will result in cutting people off from their money – it has already happened in Canada. You may not believe it, but it’s Tru-deau. How will you prepare for that?
You have a year’s worth of food, right? You buy a little extra each month and salt it away? It’s a lot easier to do when the shelves are full, and when shortages hit you’re not part of the problem – you’re part of the solution because you won’t be adding to the panic. It’s not hoarding if you bought it before the panic hits.

I heard he was sad later in life. He had a Kipling depression.

The Modern World thinks that this is a new scenario. It isn’t. Kipling wrote about this many, many years ago in The Gods of The Copybook Headings:

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Life Is Short, But It’s Funnier If You Read This

“So I really am important? How I feel when I’m drunk is correct?” – Futurama

When I went to the hospital and they were done with the surgery I asked if I could do the stitches. The doctor said, “Suture self.”

This past weekend The Mrs. was in the hospital. No, it wasn’t the ‘Rona (really) but instead it was scurvy. I told The Mrs. that she should have eaten that pineapple, but, no. She refused.

We didn’t intend to take her to the hospital, but the doctor sort-of insisted after running a batch of tests which included things that shoot radiation at her and other things that have rotating magnets. There was a lot of blood drawn, but even though I asked to do the parts that would cause The Mrs. pain myself, they declined.

The short version is that after several gallons of intravenous antibiotic, The Mrs. got a lot better. The doctor described the infection as guacamole. He said it was the technical term that medical professionals use to describe sickness, with the antibiotic that slowly scooped the guacamole out by a basket of tortilla chips. I hate technical talk like that, I mean, I don’t even like guacamole. I’m more of a salsa guy.

I guess I should have been tipped off when he told me the special was the chimichanga plate with refritos.

After about 36 hours, they booted The Mrs. out. She feels better, but is not quite at 100% as I write this. One virtue of having a sick relative is that it clears away a lot of the mundane things that we deal with daily. We are used to life being normal – get up when the alarm goes off, shower (every other week) get gallons of coffee, and deal with that five-minute commute to work. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Days turn into weeks, weeks turn into months, and months turn into late notices if I forget to pay the natural gas bill. All of this, of course, is accompanied by the theme song of the latest news and outrages that are taking place in Washington or points further away where they wear funny hats and have no idea how to properly make barbeque sauce, like Texas.

I like Texas, and I hear one of their neighbors is OK.

When events like The Mrs. being in the hospital intrude, everything that’s normal takes a back seat. Things that were important fade into the squabbling trivialities that they really are. The events of our lives that define them aren’t the minutes we drain into offices and cubicles, but rather the impact felt on our lives by others and the impact that we provide to the lives of others. At least that’s what it said on the Hallmark® card, but it was in a really fancy script.

The important moments in our lives are really that, moments. One problem I’ve noted in myself is that I tend to be able to be swallowed by the constant noise of the days turning into weeks. I turn my head down and find that another year has passed.

We also argued about how global warming wasn’t a threat, but that was anti-climactic.

What do I have to show for that year? How have I gotten better? What have I accomplished? Whose lives have I touched, I mean, within the limits of those restraining orders?

The soundtrack of our lives is often the things that we can impact only in the most negligible way, unless of course you’re the guy who makes sure that Biden doesn’t trade the nuclear codes for an extra pudding at dinner. But regardless of our roles on the local, state, or national stage, all of us can impact the lives of the individuals that are close to us.

Sometimes those efforts take years. Pugsley is growing into a fine young man, but we fought a titanic battle for years. Raising a boy can be like that, especially if he’s as stubborn as his father. And he is. We even have arguments over who is more stubborn.

You can’t argue with Pete Buttigieg. He’s not thinking straight.

On the other end of the spectrum, though, a chance comment might be the gentle stir of a butterfly’s wings. Just with a single word or phrase, you never know whose life you might change, either for better or worse. Even now, I can still remember that nice gentleman in the grocery store asking me, “Are you sure you need to buy a dozen doughnuts?”

Then there are those whose lives we touch who we never will meet. In my case, for writing P.J. O’Rourke was a big influence – he was prolific and funny and the grocery store clerk had no idea she was selling a really grown-up magazine when I handed over my cash for the latest issue of National Lampoon. There are other mentors that I have met only in books, whose lives and words have inspired and continue to inspire me today.

Day-to-day life can take me away from focusing on what is really important. There are times when I thought I was making a lot of progress, and instead I was just walking in big circles. Having a guidepost and a goal, even if (and perhaps especially) that goal can never, ever be met.

This was something I already knew, but that’s the insidious nature of the daily grind, it can make you forget those things that are important. There is a joy in losing self in action and work, but there is a danger, too – losing sight of the things that are the core of existence. It’s like going out to dinner and ordering something besides steak. I mean, if there’s steak on the menu, why do you need any other pages in the menu?

My crazy high school girlfriend is like that cheap grill I bought – they were both smoking hot and burned the house down.

As I said, The Mrs. is better, but not 100%. She’ll never run a marathon, but the last time I saw her run at all was in 2014, so I don’t think she’ll lose any sleep over that. One side effect of her no longer storing the guacamole, the doctor said, is that she might lose an inch or two in height over the next two months. I guess The Mrs. will have to learn how to be a little patient.

The Funniest Post You’ll Read Today About Ukraine And Impending Global War

“Now me, I’m overweight. My underwear has to be made specially at a factory in the Ukraine. They call me Daddy Round-Round. They send me a postcard every year.” – The Simpsons

Looks like the Democrats are changing focus! Haven’t they heard about the huge rolling ball that is the economy?

I had three posts planned that would couple the main themes I write about, and they were planned to start today. Meh. It’s okay, I can write about that topic anytime, and I have the feeling that what most people want to talk about is Russia. This will be shorter than most, because I have a collection of dank memes that will carry most of the narrative. I’ve tweaked one or two, but most are “as found” on the ‘net.

In Soviet Russia, Internet brings cat to you!

I will admit to being wrong about the invasion – I thought that Putin would get what he wanted without using actual force. Of course, being Russian, they typically use a chain, a tractor from Soviet Tractor Factory Collective No. 348, and an acetylene torch for wart removal, so I should have known. Subtle is not in the typical playbook. Some say the Russians play chess, but if they do, they use a shotgun.

Hello . . . Vindman.

I have some very strong feelings about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I don’t care. It’s not that I like the idea of a sovereign nation invading another one, but let’s face it: these are two countries that both use wrapping paper for money and have languages that sound like someone is strangling a duck. And? We have zero national interests in Ukraine.

Silly old bear. Everyone knows that, just like Piglet said, whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

I mean, unless Hunter is still taking tons of cash from them. That would certainly be a casus belli. Or a reason to scratch Putin’s belly. Wait, I just channeled Joe Biden. Who knew pants could be so wet, sticky, warm and uncomfortable?

If we don’t do something, Mexico might invade. Oh, wait . . . .

I am not alone in not caring. I saw an AP® poll that indicated only 26% of folks in the United States thought we should play a major role in the conflict. About half thought we should have an uncredited walk-on cameo, and the rest just wanted to be left alone to polish their ARs in private.

I just wanted to add some things to my shirt. Arts and crafts, really.

It’s the 26% that I find intriguing: this 26% is mainly, but not all, Leftists. I have no particular idea why Leftists hate Russia so much, but they really, really do. I think it goes back to the 2016 election, where they think that Russia tipped the election for Trump. It certainly had nothing to do with Hillary being as electable as the hind-end of a roadkill skunk.

I sure will be happy when they manage to un-Super Glue® his hands so he doesn’t have to sit like that. I think Trump left all those bottles of glue around the White House as a prank.

So, here are the dank memes that describe the week. They create their own narrative, sort of, but I’ll add in a word or two myself.

The First Rule of Leftism is You Don’t Deviate From The Narrative:

The Second Rule of Leftism is You Don’t Deviate From The Narrative:

The Leftists (and a Neocon) were out in force, setting up the New Narrative and letting you know exactly what they think about you:

Of course, I didn’t create this retort, but I thought it fit pretty well here:

An actual, frightening comment from a committed Lefty who knows the “Adults in Washington”:

And political opponents chimed in:

Then the even more schizoid side of the Left just had to chime in, letting us know what the real and important issues are:

And, when it’s time for lies, you know that the media will be there:

Of course, the US Armed Forces were there for a show of strength:

But of course, there is a war on, so sometimes navigational errors happen:

And India definitely wants in, sending their passenger jet alone into the no-fly war zone:

Leftists wonder why the Right isn’t on board:

Someone figured out that combat bridges are a thing and that Sam Hyde was with the Russians:

So, if this blows over, maybe I’ll just watch a movie this weekend:

War, You’re Soaking In It

“Fiddle-dee-dee! War, war, war, This war talk’s spoiling all the fun at every party this spring. I get so bored I could scream. Besides, there isn’t going to be any war.” – Gone With the Wind

For whatever reason, French players are in “spectator only” mode.

War. It’s one way we find out the difference between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin.

The traditional way that most people think about war involves troops and uniforms and guns and bombs. That’s why people are focused on Ukraine – it seems like a time when the world might once again see something like in the old war movies. Biden is especially wanting this, because it could distract the world from the economic and cultural ruin that’s spreading in the United States. How else do you explain the free crack pipe initiative?

As I’ve noted before, the United States has spent trillions of dollars to try to make the “old” form of war obsolete. As such, don’t expect the next war to look anything like the last wars. Just like civilization, technology, and economy have evolved, so have the methods of war.

The aim of war is still the same, however: to get your enemy to do something they would otherwise be unwilling to do, like watch The View. You don’t have to use tanks or bombs to do it. This was what the old Soviet Union planned to do with the United States – subvert it from within.

The Cold War really was a war. The United States attempted to subvert the Soviet citizens through exposing them to the wonders of capitalism. Plentiful food, for starters. Blue jeans. Rock and roll. The average citizens could see that something was really, really wrong in their society. At the end, people in the Eastern Bloc walked away from their governments. In some cases, they evicted the former leadership 7.62mm at a time.

The Romanians made sure there wasn’t a next season.

The Soviet subversion of the United States was similar. Just as the United States reviewed the cultural faults of the Soviets and exploited them, the Soviets looked at the problems in the United States and tried to undermine it using those problems.

And the undermining never stopped. If you looked at the institutions under control of the Left in the 1970s, there weren’t that many. The Left controlled:

Many Colleges and Universities.
The psychological establishment.
Lots of mainstream entertainment media.
Most mainstream news media.

This was, of course, the plan. Get the Leftist foothold in academia and use it to indoctrinate the next generation. The Left didn’t control the government schools at the time, because teachers work a long time, and most of the teachers in the 1970s graduated before the colleges fell.

Hippies refused Rolaids™, the last thing they wanted was an anti-acid.

That’s why this war was based on a “long march” through the institutions. Sadly, even though the Soviet Union dissolved, their plan was still in motion. Now, the following are mostly under the control of the Left:

The K-12 educational system.
Most Protestant religious organizations.
Most Catholic organizations.
The American Medical Association.
Most departments of the Federal government, absent the armed services.
The general officer corps of the armed services.
The courts.
Silicon Valley tech companies.
Most Fortune® 500™ companies.

Very quickly (within a decade, if nothing changes) the last institution will fall:

The junior officers and enlisted men of the armed services.

As I’ve discussed at length, part of the core of Leftism is hating the United States, the other is a pathological need to be a victim. That’s why Leftist entertainment media always portrays the good guys as “the resistance” – what are they resisting? The remnants of the United States. Why do the statues have to come down?

Al has a molar pulled: it was an inconvenient tooth.

The United States (as viewed from a common historical lens) cannot be allowed to have its mythology. That mythology must be replaced by the new narrative – a mythology based on victimhood and oppression. Even as they control the levers on every objective means of institutional power, they complain that the system is rigged against them.

Combined with that is the monetary policy of the United States which has been run with all of the discipline of a toddler in a room filled with chocolate birthday cakes. As the bill for this mismanagement comes due, the tensions in the country will skyrocket.

The only thing the Left doesn’t have, are (at least) 80 million Americans who want nothing to do with the brave globalist/socialist future that’s planned. I actually think the number will be substantially higher, because I think that when the center chooses sides, it will come down with the Right.

This situation is, of course, absolutely thrilling to China. When I think about how China must factor in the United States into their plans in, say, the year 2040? I think they assume that the United States will not be a factor on a global scale.

In the US, dogs are K-9. In China, they are E-10.

In addition to the Soviet plan coming to final fruition, the United States is amazingly vulnerable to other things we don’t traditionally think of as war. As mentioned above, we have an amazing mess in our monetary policy – and we have debt. Think inflation is high now? What happens when China starts dumping currency in the international market, and starts paying for oil with the Yuan?

Warfare in our current time starts to look like what someone did to the Iranians: drop in a virus that makes their centrifuges that they were using to process nuclear material break. Imagine the electrical grid being as reliable as Venezuela’s grid. Sure, it could be enemy action. But with current trends, it could also be our own ineptitude at running things in a world where hiring by merit seems to be a thing of the past.

What happens if every tenth financial transaction in our electronic payment system is “missed”? How many days until the payment infrastructure is shut down and the entire country is in chaos? What happens if Walmart™ experiences failure in the logistics and tracking system for the billions of dollars worth of goods that it handles? How many people does Walmart© feed?

Due to the current emergency, Walmart™ has announced that they’ll open a second register.

These are all warfare, and don’t require a single soldier or a panzer division. Moreover, this is exactly the type of warfare that has already been planned and prepared for in Moscow and Beijing.

I’d love to blame China, but the Chinese are mainly just looking out for the Chinese. If the United States is in the way, the Chinese are going to pick the Chinese every time. It’s self-interest.

And Biden and Putin? One is a church-going Christian who loves his nation, who wants to help his people, and wants to secure his border. The other is Joe Biden.

Hedonism Leads To Nihilism

“Shut up and pay attention to me, Bender. Look, I love life and its pleasures as much as anyone here, except perhaps you, Hedonism Bot. But we need to be shut off. Especially you, Hedonism Bot.” – Futurama

One thing I learned in high school – always date homeless girls. It doesn’t matter where you drop them off.

I know that lots of people had it rough in high school, that they felt that they didn’t fit in. They felt as awkward at Whoopi Goldberg at a bris.

Not me.

I’m not bragging, really, it was just how it worked out for me. I had a great time in class, a great time in athletics, had great friends from nearly every walk of life. Heck, I even had hair back then.

I was also really lucky with the ladies. Thankfully there were no small number of girls with daddy issues in town, a drive-in movie theater, and a pizza place. Of course the pizza was not entirely necessary for a seduction, but a guy gets hungry. Seducing girls burns up calories.

Let’s add in the last element of hedonism: beer.

There was a bar where if you had the $5 cover charge, you were of drinking age as long as you weren’t stupid enough to wear your letter jacket. I should know, because I got in when I was 16. I went in with my friend’s (who was of drinking age) license. He was four inches taller than me and was probably sixty pounds less than me. I wasn’t fat, he was just skinny enough to fit down the barrel of a 12 gauge and not touch the sides.

I dived off the stage at an Oktoberfest party. I went krautsurfing.

Yes. At 16 I thought it was a good idea to sneak into a bar holding the license of someone who resembled me only in the fact that they were another human male who had blonde hair and blue eyes and in only those ways. And that same person who barely resembled me was also walking in with me.

I had no idea what sort of ludicrous story I would tell them if they asked. “Oh, sorry, I thought I was another person?” No. “Oh, when I was at his place I accidentally put his license in my wallet and hid my own license?” Hmm. “I was fighting with my multiple personality disorder and physically split into two people?”

Thankfully, the place was nearly empty and the bouncer never asked me for an ID, just took my $5 and stamped my hand.

I saw a drunk caveman walk home once. It was a meanderthal.

Apparently, I made enough of an impression that night that they never once carded me, ever. After one night, I was a regular and knew most of the people that worked there by name. Not so amazingly, about half the people from my social circle made the same discovery, and on a random Friday night, it wasn’t unusual to see a dozen juniors and seniors in the place. Of course in 2022, the Safety Police would probably summarily execute the owner and the staff, but this was a kinder, gentler, drunker time.

It was life on easy mode. Plentiful girls with dubious morals. Cheap beer. Great success in nearly everything I tried. I’m not saying I peaked in high school, no. Heck, I’m not even sure that I’ve peaked yet. But it was easy.

One thing I did was try to connect emotionally with those frolicsome fräuleins of my hometown. That seemed (in many cases) like a lost cause. One night while sitting under the moonlight in the Wonderful Wildermobile, between hickie sessions, I looked up at the Moon and said to my girlfriend at the time, “It’s amazing to look up at that, and think how much smaller it is than the Sun. How much smaller the Earth is than the Sun. It’s a fantastic Universe we live in.”

Her response? “The Sun is larger than the Earth? No way!!!!”

Okay, our relationship was over pretty shortly after that comment. And that also changed me.

I bet my old girlfriend thinks Starbucks® is a currency that aliens use.

I had an epiphany. I was living a life of hedonism. And although I had a life of pleasure, there seemed to be a lack of meaning. I had everything that every guy on the football team could desire.

But I felt empty. Not dead inside, but empty. I felt that the things I was doing were, while extremely physically pleasing, were devoid of meaning. It was like being Hunter Biden without being a Biden, smoking crack (or meth), and getting money from anonymous donors for my retarded attempts at painting to try to influence my dad.

I’m betting that this is the first time Scotty and scotch were used to explain nihilism.

The feeling of empty was a tough one. It helped me see how someone can go from that feeling of empty in the face of pleasure to a feeling of nihilism. I looked up the definition of nihilism, and came up with more definitions than I had girlfriends in high school.

I’ll give this one, which I found after looking at a dozen (many contradictory) definitions on the Internet: “as the view that nothing we do, nothing we create, nothing we love, has any meaning or value whatsoever.” That is the one that mirrors the emptiness that I felt.

It is the inherent danger of a life that borders on the libertine. What matters if life is so easy?

Thankfully, I’m glad I caught that as early as I did. I can see easily of how falling down the rabbit hole of hedonism could lead to nihilism. As I got older, I realized that, whatever definition used, nihilism is the worst of philosophies, and the worst of the human condition.

Even though the Universe is large, and there have been countless years since the start, and, perhaps, countless years until the heat death of the Universe, we matter.

What happens in this world does matter. We have meaning. And fighting the good fight for Good over Evil does matter. Life and meaning are built not in the pleasure, but in the struggle to be better, to do more, to be more, and to add value because we were here. Those are the stories worth telling – they are the ones that will be sung around campfires in 100 years.

I hope Aaron Burr didn’t name his son Tim. It would have been awkward to look for him if he ever got lost in a forest.

Never give up, because what we do here matters. What you do here has value. Even as we stare at the vastness of a Universe that no one can comprehend, it matters that we are here. And it matters what we create.

And our love? It perhaps has the greatest value of all, though it is rarely found in the bottom of a glass of beer, unless there’s a live band.

Did I mention they had live bands at the bar?

Gold, Silver, And The End Of The World

“What do you know about gold, Moneypenny?” – Goldfinger

Why don’t pirates travel on mountain roads? S’curvy.

A reader writes: “. . . if you could explain to me the rationale behind buying gold or silver as a hedge against economic collapse, I would appreciate it.” I answered by sending him bikini graph after bikini graph, but yet he persisted in wanting to know an actual answer.

I don’t think anyone will complain that this one is a repeat . . . .

He had me cornered. I wrote to him (embellished for this post and clarified for readability):

Thank you for the question. I promise to answer, just as long as you give my dog bag safely. He may be old and one-eyed and have diabetes and alopecia . . . we call him, “Lucky.”

It’s good that he’s not a dinosaur – he’d probably be called an eyesaur.

I thought that I had already answered this question and looked for the post.

As I’ve got over 1,000 up, I couldn’t find it after I looked for about 22 seconds. Maybe I developed notes on it and never posted? Maybe I’m just lazy at searching. In the worst-case scenario, a previous version exists, and everyone just has to deal with this new, superior post.

The question is a subtle one. The first part of the answer is the degree of collapse. I’ll start out with this idea: how bad does it get?

Another Boring Wednesday: Would I rather have a ton of gold on a Wednesday morning than not? Of course. But I’d probably worry about George Clooney and his wisecracking band of thieves breaking into Stately Wilder Mansion.
Personal Economic Problems: Again, in a sequel, having that ton of gold is still great, but I still have that pesky George Clooney problem. In reality, gold is somewhat less liquid than cash, but having a bunch of it is still nice. Also, if you bought gold in 1990, you would have had zero profit on it until 2006. This was mainly due to sane economic policy and high-interest rates that tamed inflation.

Or is this why they were always after his Lucky Charms®?

Recession: What’s going on in the economy? If you look closely, silver and gold actually dropped in value at the start of the Great Recession in the 2000s. As people liquidated their “stuff” so they could still buy the G.I. Joe® with the Kung Fu™ grip for their kid at Christmas, the price actually dropped. For a while. Then the price jumped up when it became clear that the Fed® would print as much money as required to choke every person on the planet. In the fiat world, gold and silver are something I’d look to have.
Depression – 1930s Style: This is a hard analogy – back in the 1930s, the dollar was backed in gold, until FDR (press S to spit) stole the gold from the American people. Now? The dollar is nothing more than, to quote Aerosmith, “a lick and a promise.” (See below)
Weimar-Style Hyperinflation: I don’t think we’ll get here, until there’s a lack of faith in the dollar. Brandon is doing his best to make Jimmy Carter look like a master of economics, so, if hyperinflation hits? Gold is awesome, and you might be able to repay your mortgage with five or six pre-1965 silver quarters. So, yes, gold and silver make sense. A lot of sense.

In a Leftist world, everyone is a Billionaire. And also starving.

Country Collapse: What happens if the country ceases to be? It has happened again and again through history, especially with large “empire-like” countries that don’t have any sort of ethnic commonality. Japan will always be Japan because there are Japanese and it’s a nation, not a country. China, likewise. Without a functioning country, there is no nation to fall back on. This is where we add another precious metal: So, yes, gold and silver, but understand that it might be some time before it’s useful again.
International Collapse: Rome provides a powerful example here. In Great Britain, they’re constantly finding hordes of money – including silver money, and gold. Why? Because people stopped using it, and you can’t eat it. Did that last forever? Of course not, but 100 years is nearly long enough. Lead is nice here, too.

Who sang “Can’t Touch This” for Caesar? 1100 Hammer.

Civilizational Collapse: What happens if there’s no oil for the cars – anywhere? What happens if we don’t have phosphorus for fertilizer? Bad things. Gold and silver might be helpful, but lead is much better here. If the warlord wants your stuff and you can’t keep it from him, welcome to no longer having that stuff.
A Kamala Harris presidency: Looks pretty much like number 8, but with more makeup.
A Neutron Star Eating The Earth: I suggest investing in SpaceX®.

I think that we underestimate the likelihood of things getting really, really bad. To give an example, I once worked at the headquarters of a big company. They asked me to look at disaster recovery. I looked at all of the natural hazards that might hit the company. The most likely disaster would hit the headquarters once every three hundred years.

“Huh,” I said to my boss, foreshadowing future writing endeavors, “a new civil war is far more likely than that . . . I mean if the company lasts that long. Companies go out of business all the time.”

He was not amused. Corporations tend to not like actual reality to interfere in their projections. But, I maintain I was right. How many companies have ceased to exist – big companies – since 2000? I’ll leave that work to the reader. Enron®, anyone?

Country music and calculators are both produced by Texas instruments.

Listen, I don’t mean to sound paranoid, but banks are giving mortgages out at 3.3% and inflation is at 6%, which means that banks will lose money every year as long as inflation is a thing. How can they do this? Volume!

No, I’m kidding. The Fed® is giving them tons of money to lend cheaply to keep housing prices up. When mortgage rates go up? Then the housing bubble bursts. So, we could end up in Scenario 3., 5., or 6. very, very quickly.

Gold and silver (in my NON FINANCIAL ADVISOR) opinion are awesome in most scenarios. If it devolves past the point where order matters at all, then it comes down to weapons, political connections, preps, and sheer dumb luck. If nothing happens, then my kids will get to enjoy some shiny metals after I pass away.

What’s the best way to tune a bagpipe? A pitchfork.

I would, however, not want to put all of my eggs in any one basket. I will personally limit the amount of gold and silver I own to about 10% of my net worth. Why? Random number – not bad if things go well in the rest of the world and gold and silver don’t go up in value. If things go really south, it’s a decent enough hedge to act as a parachute as the plane goes down in flames.

So, that’s my answer: it depends. What do you think? What Scenario above is the most likely? What’s missing?

Ohhh, Lucky, come here, boy . . . oh, wait, he’s deaf, too . . . .

(Appended Graph)

The Winds Of War?

“I admire your ethics. But right now, a little violence might help.” – Star Trek: Enterprise

Is an inconsistency in a Cheech and Chong movie a pothole?

War in 2021 has much the same objective as war throughout human history – make the enemy do something that they otherwise wouldn’t do. It’s never been pretty. In the end, though, the old adage that violence doesn’t solve anything is wrong – ultimately violence solves quite a few things, as Heinlein notes in Starship Troopers:

“. . . I was heaping scorn on an inexcusably silly idea — a practice I shall always follow. Anyone who clings to the historically untrue — and thoroughly immoral — doctrine that `violence never settles anything’ I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms. . . .”

Our current military is ready to fight a war. It’s just that the war in question is World War II. Our armed forces absorbed the lessons of the Wehrmacht and now could totally defeat the Germans and the Japanese much more quickly than the first time. Even I got caught into that mindset when I displayed dismay that the bomber fleet of the United States was down to just over 100 bombers.

Okay, not that kind of bomber . . .

My mind was locked into old paradigms: 1,000 bomber raids. Those days are gone. There is no real reason to send slow, crewed planes on missions where a much faster missile can do the job. Big bomber raids are a thing that you only do against people who can’t shoot the bombers down which every significant near-peer enemy of the United States can.

And if you want to destroy a city? You use a nuke – if I had a nuke, I’d call it Dr. W. You know, W, M.D.?

Likewise, our aircraft carrier fleet is great when used against an enemy that can’t really fight back. Use them against Iraq? Sure. Use aircraft carriers against China?

Ummm, that’s probably silly, since if a carrier is within fighter range of China, it’s probably in Chinese missile range, too. American aircraft carriers are just targets preloaded with casualties.

Why am I writing about this today?

There are rumblings of war. Putin looking to take over part of Ukraine? China looking to take over Taiwan? An American senator talking about a first strike against Russia?

I know when I yawned in physics class it set off a chain reaction.

To the extent the United States isn’t involved in either of these conflicts, things probably remain nice and boring. If Putin wants the Donbas, I’m not sure that I care. I have no idea why he might want it, but it seems like a lot of Russians live there. I can certainly understand why he wants to keep the Crimean Peninsula, since that’s where he keeps his ships.

Again, I’m not sure that I care. At all.

Taiwan is a different situation. Its shore is as close as 81 miles to the Chinese mainland. For the people in Taiwan, this is unfortunate. From the standpoint of the United States – what, exactly would we do to help Taiwan if the Chinese invaded?

I don’t know.

I’m not sure that the United States could do anything. In report after report, the United States loses, and loses quickly when China attempts to take Taiwan every time we wargame the situation. Taiwan is 81 miles from China. Taiwan is 5,000 miles from Hawaii. To the extent that Taiwan isn’t prepared to defend itself, I’m pretty sure the United States has limited options in responding quickly.

I heard the Dalai Lama has a gambling problem. He loves Tibet.

Which brings us to the face of war in 2021. The Chinese have been thinking for a very long time about war with the United States. To be sure, I’m willing to bet some very, very smart people in the United States have been thinking about just the same thing, when they weren’t distracted by Afghanistan or Iraq.

This following is from the 1999 treatise “Unrestricted Warfare” by Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui. (LINK):

. . . if the attacking side secretly musters large amounts of capital without the enemy nation being aware of this at all and launches a sneak attack against its financial markets, then after causing a financial crisis, buries a computer virus and hacker detachment in the opponent’s computer system in 146 advance, while at the same time carrying out a network attack against the enemy so that the civilian electricity network, traffic dispatching network, financial transaction network, telephone communications network, and mass media network are completely paralyzed, this will cause the enemy nation to fall into social panic, street riots, and a political crisis. There is finally the forceful bearing down by the army, and military means are utilized in gradual stages until the enemy is forced to sign a dishonorable peace treaty. This admittedly does not attain to the domain spoken of by Sun Zi, wherein “the other army is subdued without fighting.”

The idea is simple – warfare encompasses absolutely every facet of the life of the enemy. Destabilize the government. Force their economy into chaos. Starve them. Own their communications systems. In other words, it’s just like a Biden presidency.

The hippies tried to get to Afghanistan – they heard that smoking weed there got you stoned to death.

None of this is really new – destruction of civilian cohesion is a tactic that’s been used again and again. At the end of World War I, the Allies kept a food blockade on Germany from 1914 until months after the November 1918 Armistice – the blockade lasted until July of 1919 to force Germany to sign the Treaty of Versailles. Over 100,000 German civilians died during the famine after the Armistice was signed.

The war envisioned by the Chinese (if it happens) won’t be the antiseptic thing that most civilians in the United States have dealt with since 9/11/2001. It will involve the systems around us failing. Imagine the utter loss of every modern convenience, including food being available and plentiful. Then imagine there is no information on when (or even if) the help is coming. Alone. No food. No power. In the dark.

That’s what unrestricted warfare looks like.

After going through Hurricane Ike (a small one, by destructiveness standards) it was enlightening to watch the systems go down. After four days, Home Despot® opened up, and was selling limited amounts. How limited? As I recall only 8 customers were allowed in the store at a time. Purchases were done, as I recall, with cash only. I went by to purchase a battery-operated fan, and was actually in and out fairly quickly – the Hurricane might have been a small one, virtually all services stopped.

Recovery was fairly quick because the damage was regional. All of the surrounding areas pitched in and within a week, most power was back on in the city. We had radio, so we were listening to the city come back to life in real-time.

I think when the astronauts saw this storm they said, “Houston, you have a problem.”

The interconnected, wired, and powered world has created an unparalleled ability to create wealth, to create comfort, and create convenience. But it has added a great degree of fragility. In 1919, if you had taken out the electricity to the United States, the result would have been inconvenient, but not fatal. Some water systems might have failed, and people would have had to switch back to candles. Abandoning the top floors of buildings that were inconvenient to reach except via elevator would be bad, but there would be no fundamental reason we couldn’t fix the systems: this failure would hurt, but not paralyze us.

Today, it creates a system where unrestricted warfare could result in a conflict that would be over in minutes, and end with a country so devastated that it might never be rebuilt.

So, have a happy Monday!

This post was inspired in part by email with a reader – I’ll let them bring it up if they so choose.

Rittenhouse Has Caused More Tears Than Old Yeller

“Ladies and gentleman, this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookie from the planet Kashyk. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about that. That does not make sense.” – South Park

I guess Kyle did have a salt rifle.

The reaction from the Left on the Rittenhouse verdict has been different than I expected – I expected a few riots, sure. Riots are the standard when dealing with Leftists. They want the world to burn, so why not start with a Starbucks®? Or, heck, almost any huge corporate entity. They seem to love it when Leftists burn down their buildings – they immediately respond by vowing to rebuild and then donating to the very groups that . . .

. . . just burned down their store.

But Kyle Rittenhouse bothered them, deeply.

Don’t recognize his two IMDB® credits. Probably wouldn’t be a good dinner guest.

I watched, while not the whole trial, a huge chunk of it. Just after the Prosecution was done, the Defense could have said, “The Defense rests,” and still won.

It was that clear-cut. I don’t know why it took the jury so long, perhaps they were just waiting around to see if they could get those Panera® sandwiches the judge promised them if they were still deliberating on Friday.

The Left, who has never seen a criminal atrocity so bad that they don’t want the criminal to go free, was fixated on this case. The media was on board, mainly. Large numbers of people thought had no real idea of the facts of the case, and some even thought that Rittenhouse had killed multiple black people for no reason other than that they were protesting.

So, what did they have to say? (Some language not safe for all audiences, and all memes today are as-found on the Internet.)

Umair Haque is a grifter, and a fairly successful grifter. Does he bring up valid issues? Certainly, from time to time. And, if his solution is commies leaving the United States? I will personally help buy tickets if they promise to never come back.

Ayanna apparently has a keyboard that doesn’t allow her to type a capital “W”. Also? She takes her love of Jean-Luc Picard a bit too far.

Does “Prince Jellyfish” describe his arm?

Possibly fake. But funny.

Take a breath and come up for some Umair, Umair.

If you had any doubts about who we are dealing with . . .

You can find plenty of salt for yourself on Twitter® or Reddit©. Might as well bid goodbye to the trial with some memes:

That explains everything! Why would a Wookiee, an 8-foot-tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor with a bunch of 2-foot-tall Ewoks? That does not make sense! But more important, you have to ask yourself: “What does this have to do with this case?” Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense! Look at me, I’m a lawyer defending a major record company, and I’m talkin’ about Chewbacca. Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense! None of this makes sense! And so you have to remember, when you’re in that jury room deliberating and conjugating the Emancipation Proclamation… does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests.

Okay, the real testimony was even worse than the South Park® quote above.

Why can’t Gaige point to Kyle?

Oh, yeah, that. The ol’ Spicey Bicep.

A moment of silence, please.

Huh, yeah, I wonder what would happen if they let clinically insane socialists out on the street?

And the only people that Kyle shot ended up being felons? What are the odds??

The prosecutor will probably never end up living this one down . . .

And, for of course people could see the next round of trouble coming:

The Mrs. really laughed at this one.

And then The Bee® stings.

Who knows what the future will bring?

Reminder that it might be time for Leftists to change their password . . .

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Are We There Yet? (Part II)

“Brandon, come on, let’s go . . . Brandon?” – Brightburn

Midnight?

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.
Open War.

I’ve bolded both 9. and 10. That’s the lead story.

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

In this issue: Front Matter – Making The Call, Part II? – Violence And Censorship Update – Models For The Future, It’s Personal – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – After Virginia – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report. These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month. I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues. Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 600 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

https://wilderwealthywise.com/civil-war-weather-report-previous-posts/

Making The Call, Part II?

Last month we spent time discussing whether or not the United States has met the international criteria for being in a civil war. The answer (in my opinion) is that we are close enough that it’s hard to tell. Some people are solidly on the “it’s already going” and some are not. One bit of criteria that was sent to me by a faithful reader – thank you 173d VietVet. Mike Shelby (Forward Observer) wrote up a short missive on this question (LINK) and came out on the “no” side.

That’s fair. He put forward some criteria, and I thought they’d be worth discussing this month. These four bullet points are direct quotes:

domestic military action (i.e., not just police)
government involvement as a belligerent (i.e., not just a tribal war between citizens)
capable fighting on both sides of the conflict (i.e., not just a genocide)
at least 1,000 combat-related deaths in a 12-month period (i.e., sustained fighting)

My responses are in bold:

domestic military action (i.e., not just police) – Have you seen the police recently? They have equipment that most world militaries would love to have. Heck, our police even have stuff we didn’t leave for the Taliban. To require military action seems irrelevant.
government involvement as a belligerent (i.e., not just a tribal war between citizens) – The trend in our current generation of warfare explicitly uses the citizen as a belligerent, if not the main belligerent. In my mind, it is more than enough that the government aids and abets citizens to kill others. This is indisputably happening right now.
capable fighting on both sides of the conflict (i.e., not just a genocide) – This is the best point of the bunch. The violence (at some point) must go both ways. Right now, it is observably one-sided, and is looks much more like a genocide.
at least 1,000 combat-related deaths in a 12-month period (i.e., sustained fighting) – Another valid point, but remember, in dirty wars, state sponsored combat looks like . . . crime. I do hope the violence level drops, but there is no sign of it now.

Again, I have nothing but respect for Mr. Shelby, but the reliance on his past military background provides an analysis lens that I do not share and he perhaps parses the terminology a bit more finely than I would. Thankfully, there’s room for both of us to be right.

If A is for apple and B is for banana, what is C for? Explosives.

I’m not going to (besides the notes above) belabor the point. I don’t care if the gun that shoots me belongs to a private from Louisiana or a cop or a Mexican cartel gunman. I’m still dead. And if the government is encouraging, it’s either genocide or, if the fighting goes both ways, it’s civil war.

There is more from Mr. Shelby a bit later in this edition of the Weather Report.

Violence And Censorship Update

Not a lot to add to violence this month.

Censorship, continues in full force. At the beginning of the month, Congress had a Facebook® “whistleblower” as the main witness at hearings where . . . she said the big problem with Facebook© is that they don’t censor nearly enough.

What does the “p” in Facebook© stand for? Privacy.

Yup. That was the story. But then it came out that that the “whistleblower” spent last October making sure that information that could damage Joe Biden was censored from Facebook™. She was on the team that made sure that information related to Hunter Biden’s laptop was suppressed.

I’m shocked, shocked that she was wanting yet more censorship from Facebook.

Applying for work at Facebook® is easy. They already have your details.

Since it’s November, I thought I’d remind everyone of a picture from last year. Consider it a stroll down memory-hole lane.

There was more fraud in the 2020 election than in a Thanksgiving Wilder Family Monopoly® game.

Again, if you want free and fair elections, it’s absolutely certain that you block windows so the public can’t view the vote counting in any way. Stalin said it well: “Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.”

Models For The Future – It’s Personal

I mentioned above that we’d see more from the Forward Observer, and here’s an excellent article where he discusses the model of the Irish Troubles as a model for potential future difficulties. You can read it here (LINK).

Similarly, Mary Christine put forward a fictional piece at The Burning Platform in 2019. Those set as a fiction, it describes how conflict escalated from the political to a guerilla war in Missouri during the Civil War. You can read it here (LINK).

A third model to think about would be the Second Boer War, where the British defeated the Boer Republics and forcefully integrated them into British South Africa. Like the other two, this conflict was based on guerilla tactics. To defeat them, the British finally just started putting Boer civilians (women and children) into concentration camps with all the expected brutality and tragedy that is implied by that. Tens of thousands of civilians died in the camps.

These models all have several things in common, but what strikes me is the utter brutality in each of them and the sometimes-targeted attacks on non-combatants. Conflict of this type is marked by tragedy in a way that lasts for generations – it becomes and remains personal.

Updated Civil War II Index

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

Violence:

Up is more violent, and our perception of violence is holding steady.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it ticked up this month again, mainly on inflation fears.

Economic:

Economic measures ticked upwards in October – despite my prediction that they’d drop.

Illegal Aliens:

This data was at record levels last three months, and this rate is 4x the rate from any previous year in the last four.

After Virginia

Virginia has scared the Left, badly. In their minds, Virginia had become a permanent Blue state – a Leftist outpost where statues could be taken down and Critical Race Theory could start along with hormone treatments for kindergartners.

Then they lost. Big time. And it wasn’t just a loss, it was a loss that was a psychological blow. Biden is in political free-fall, and is less popular than COVID-19.

The Left is realizing the hard truth: they won’t sweep into a victory, everywhere and forever. The comments section in Leftist areas?

Calling for a peaceful split. Previously, when winning, they wanted it all – they were sure they were going to win and establish a socialist paradise from sea to shining sea.

This was a sea change. They realize that the attitude of the Right is changing, and they realize that they’re managing to make Trump look good to the swing voters. Is a consensus building for a split?

Is this where we might beheaded?

LINKS

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

From Sea To Shining Sea

Brooklyn 1:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1NR_DWUeKI

Brooklyn 2: https://twitter.com/i/status/1454903434046578688

Lancaster PA: https://youtu.be/-Ch2q0Gw5Vg

Washington DC: https://twitter.com/i/status/1447913542674522117

Chicago 1: https://twitter.com/i/status/1445784277807890436

Chicago 2:https://twitter.com/i/status/1445483216475885576

Minneapolis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_6hA9PgICc

Mobile AL:https://twitter.com/BNONews/status/1449214856138305536

Berkeley Campus: https://youtu.be/dYB9-o5QklE

Army Boot Camp: https://twitter.com/i/status/1449910120364879880

Marine Field Exercise: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10159949/Royal-Marines-commandos-force-troops-humiliating-surrender-training-exercise.html

Bad Guys…Guns…Good Gals

https://alphanews.org/78-instances-of-fully-automatic-gunfire-in-minneapolis-so-far-this-year/

https://buchanan.org/blog/who-is-killing-10000-black-americans-every-year-158601

https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/past-tolls

https://www.kansascity.com/news/state/missouri/article255162407.html

https://www.wthr.com/article/news/local/more-women-especially-black-women-are-becoming-gun-owners-ownership-firearms/531-49622eec-5ac8-4793-ab89-cfa0213ebff4

https://www.thedailybeast.com/republican-winsome-sears-becomes-virginias-first-female-lieutenant-governor

Election Tidbits

https://twitter.com/GlennYoungkin/status/1448396312098050048

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/10/breaking-fulton-county-georgia-ordered-one-million-absentee-ballots-printer-days-2020-election-knowing-no-time-mail/

https://www.wtnh.com/news/politics/emails-released-to-news-8-show-a-flurry-of-confusion-over-mass-absentee-ballots-mailed-to-guilford-voters/

https://www.defendflorida.org/canvassing

https://sos.ga.gov/index.php/elections/secretary_raffensperger_calls_on_department_of_justice_to_investigate_allegations_of_fulton_county_shredding_applications

https://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/ap_news/gbi-chief-not-enough-evidence-to-pursue-gop-s-ballot-fraud-claim/article_edd11901-b7a1-524f-9815-6bedbdd4bc98.html

https://thenationalpulse.com/analysis/kline-zucks-bucks-were-illegal/

Secession – Thinking Nationally

https://link.medium.com/yNzD8Sxhzkb

https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/columnists/dan-rodricks/bs-md-rodricks-1010-civil-war-20211008-sy33rtzmind5vnsawrshjh2tw4-story.html

https://www.thedailybeast.com/he-saw-americas-crackup-coming-in-2011he-says-its-worse-now

https://alt-market.us/in-a-civil-war-the-authoritarian-left-would-be-easily-beaten-but-it-wont-end-there/

https://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/new-initiative-explores-deep-persistent-divides-between-biden-and-trump-voters/

https://www.salon.com/2021/10/09/a-new-confederacy-and-the-have-already-seceded/

Secession – Acting Locally

https://mises.org/wire/three-reasons-start-taking-secession-seriously

https://www.sanjoseinside.com/news/california-secede-one-group-got-a-key-approval-last-week-to-try/

https://www.axios.com/atlantas-whitest-neighborhood-may-secede-7ae8755d-d378-4aa1-8534-f90faf029356.html

https://dnyuz.com/2021/10/22/bye-maryland-lawmakers-in-3-counties-float-a-plan-to-secede-from-the-state/

https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-canada-health-public-health-idaho-0d2015c826bb01a2cd04b31254c870c5

https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2021/10/10/civil-war-trending-on-twitter-after-comment-made-by-trump-supporter/?sh=3c6d9b0b1853

https://www.laconiadailysun.com/news/state/lawmaker-wants-new-hampshire-to-declare-independence/article_d2717e73-5b7b-55b8-a8b3-aa7a45da9bf2.html

https://www.unionleader.com/news/politics/voters/should-the-2022-ballot-include-a-vote-on-new-hampshire-seceding-from-the-united-states/poll_fc16f69e-161c-11ec-8c39-b318093e8de3.html

https://www.amazon.com/Break-Up-Secession-Division-Imperfect-ebook/dp/B07X9PWSVG

https://www.amazon.com/American-Secession-Looming-National-Breakup-ebook/dp/B07N94RL11

Secession – Everybody Calm Down

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/10/no-were-not-more-divided-than-we-were-during-the-civil-war/

https://www.governing.com/now/is-america-in-a-cold-civil-war-not-at-all

https://www.sunjournal.com/2021/10/10/rich-lowry-national-divorce-is-a-poisonously-stupid-idea/

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/10/06/americans-national-divorse-theyre-wrong-515443

https://www.silive.com/news/2021/10/its-dangerous-for-pro-trumpers-or-anybody-else-to-want-to-secede-from-the-united-states-opinion.html

https://www.npr.org/2021/10/06/1043401926/russia-expert-fiona-hill-there-is-nothing-for-you-here

Secession – The Least Of Our Worries?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10154745/The-pace-China-moving-stunning-Americas-No-2-ranking-military-officer-said.html

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/moment-biden-casually-committed-ww3-over-taiwan-last-nights-town-hall

https://www.revolver.news/2021/10/secret-chinese-philosopher-lessons-for-america/

https://palladiummag.com/2021/10/11/the-triumph-and-terror-of-wang-huning/

https://dokumen.pub/america-against-america.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/the-new-meth/620174/

Change: Start Small

“I’m a man, but I can change. If I have to. I guess.” – The Red Green Show

It’s amazing to me how little people change. It’s the same process, but the clothes are just so tiny.

Change.

It’s inevitable. The only choice I have is whether change is intentional or whether it’s not intentional.

The reason for wanting to change varies, especially with the change. In most cases, it’s because something in my life isn’t working. My plan on only paying for power once every three months? Turns out the electric company isn’t good with that.

Or, if it is working, it’s awful. Ever have a job that is awful, that sucks your life out minute by minute and leaves it on a moist puddle on the floor? Yeah, me too. And that’s a sign for a change.

For whatever reason, the biggest difficulty most people have with change is starting it. Scott Adams of Dilbert® fame had this advice – even though it’s written as a quote I’m paraphrasing: “If you want to do something, just do the very smallest thing. If you have to move your hand move your finger. Your smallest finger. The smallest muscle in the smallest finger.”

People who speak more than one language are considered more attractive. Unless the language is Klingon.

It’s amazingly good advice. Once physical movement starts, even the smallest of movements, it’s easier for the chain to start. I have unconsciously done a variation of this technique for years. Whenever I have to clean a room, I pick a place. I almost always start with a corner.

It’s very, very easy to clean out one foot in either direction from a corner. Then, when the corner is perfect, I move a foot outward from the corner in both directions. And then further. And further. You might ask, “Well, how dirty does John Wilder let a room get that he has to start in a one-foot by one-foot section?”

I live with rodeo clowns. Okay, now that The Boy is in college, rodeo clown. Even though the chaos distortion field in our house is down to a single teenager-sized bubble, I’m still amazed that the door isn’t always open with tumbleweeds and vermin-like opossums and Leftists constantly drifting through.

So, yes, I start with a corner and build-out. It’s the easiest way. Plus, when the corner looks great it creates a contrast with the rest of the room. Then all I have to do is make the rest of the room look like the corner.

I never drink when I clean. I’m a dry cleaner.

So, starting with changing just one thing makes a lot of sense. Changing just one thing out of your life is easy. I mean, after O.J. Simpson stopped killing people, well, the world opened right up for him.

I’ll give a personal example. I generally avoid video games. I played them (from time to time) when I was younger. But then I saw an episode of a television show, Dream On.

The secretary, Toby, was horrible. She generally ignored her job, but on one episode, she spent the entire game playing a video game at work. It was a virtual supermarket.

She started as a bagboy. Ten minutes into the episode, she was yelling, “Clean up on aisle three!” and had been promoted to cashier. A while later, she was manager of the produce department.

The episode was nearly over, and then Toby had beat the game, “I did it! I’m the manager! Of,” long pause, voice falling, “a supermarket,” voice moving down to a whisper, and filling with despair, “that doesn’t exist.”

The most common occupation to put a person in the hospital? Paramedic.

That had a big impact on me. Winning a video game was, well, hollow. I gave them up (mostly) for years and years and years. Then I found one that hooked me. Yeah. Sure, when I conquered the world, I was conquering a world that didn’t exist but . . . the complexity. Good times.

But . . . it was taking six hours of my life a week. Honestly, life is wrapped so tight that those six hours are straight off the top – I’m swapping sleep for world conquest. So, I decided in September to stop. So far I’ve gained about fifty hours of my life back. Did I sleep during that time? Sure, some. But the change was significant.

And it was positive.

It wasn’t a big change, but it was a change. Will I play the game again? Sure I will. It’s really fun. But I’ll pick and choose when I’m going to give that sleep up.

So, starting a change is one thing.

The next? Keeping up with it. There has to be a reason. Mark Twain said it very well – “Willpower lasts about two weeks, and is soluble in alcohol.”

I hear Shania Twain named her child Choo Choo.

The biggest thing people worry about is failure. And it should be a big deal. But dealing with the consequences of failure? Get up and start again. Like Mark Twain also said, “Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it thousands of times.”

It’s okay, he eventually got down to smoking just a single cigar a day, but he noted, “it was the size of a crutch.” Plus? Every single day of his life, he got to be him. So, big cigars and being Mark Twain?

Sounds like a win to me.