Category: Valhalla

Economics Of War, 2024 Edition

“Well, it seems to me, sir, that God made me a fine instrument of warfare.” – Saving Private Ryan

I guess that there’s no thyme to tell all his stories.

War is one of the natural states of humanity.  Although we don’t have records back before when Grug was living in Switzerland before hot cocoa was invented, we do have Ötzi, a guy who died about 5,300 years ago.

What we can tell about Ötzi is that, first, he’s dead.  Secondly, we can tell that he was almost certainly murdered.  By who?  Don’t know, but it’s a pretty good bet that they guy who inflicted the wound died, too.  Unless he was killed by Keith Richards, who we should probably put on a space ship because only he could live long enough to travel to another star.

Why would I say that the murderer was dead (unless it was Keith Richards)?  The Yanomami people of the jungles of South America are as close as we have to “pre-civilization” people, and they killed themselves in at an astonishing rate.  About half of their men died in combat until fairly recently.

Do your part to keep him immortal.

The economics of the Yanomami violence are pretty simple – a bow, an arrow, a stone knife, and an enemy.  Heck, they don’t even have money, so I have no idea how they can get a rental car.

In one sense, we are the opposite of the Yanomami and Ötzi.  We have been fortunate enough to live in the Good Times, when the horror of nuclear weapons has thus far lowered the percentage of combat deaths since 1945 to what I think could be a historic low.  Why?

War is like football.  Everyone comes out of the huddle, and then lines up.  What the team on the offense is going to do?  Who knows.  It’s the job of the defense to respond and stop them, though using snipers is considered to be unsportsmanlike.  Creating surprise is now pretty difficult, especially surprise on a large scale.

My buddy said he made a voodoo doll of me.  I think he’s pulling my leg.

Let’s look at the Ukraine Conflict.

It started out as a grand, strategic move like a great World War II battle with tanks and bombs and planes.  That did surprise the West (me included) because it seemed so out of place given the safe world we live in – as /pol/ would say:  “nothing ever happens”.  The initial gains of the Russians were large, but by the time the Ukrainians got their feet under them, the Russians had a logistical snarl and found out that rubber tires rot if you just leave them in the garage for thirty or forty years.

Oops.

The war went from swooping strategy to what exists now: a series of mainly small-scale actions where when an infantry squad breaks through, it sometimes makes the news even though a gain of 500 yards is a big deal.  Why?  Because large troop concentrations are visible from space.  And anything visible from space is a target.  Neither side can effectively generate the schwerpunkt or focal point of forces required to break through and create a war of movement.

Are doctors who graduate online called Google® Docs?

Nope.  The latest development is that small squads of Russians are now using small, cheap ($2500 or less) dirt bikes to get to the opposing trenches fast, disposing of them as they storm the trenches.  This helps them avoid the ever-present drone swarms.  It’s like The Road Warrior, but with fewer shoulder pads.

And tank warfare?  For now, at least, it’s gone.  Just like bat is the “chicken of the cave” so is the tank now the “aircraft carrier of the land”.  They’re mainly just expensive targets, and a variety of cope cages, turtle shells, and electronic jamming have been field-innovated to try to protect them.

But when you lose a tank, you lose a pretty big investment.  Russia can only make (depending on your definition of tanks) about 1,500 a year, along with 3,000 other sorts of armored vehicles.  A big chunk of those tanks are modernized and rebuilt Soviet-era tanks.

A Russian T-90 tank costs about $4.5 million.  A drone with bomb costs less than a thousand dollars.  One economist estimated that the Russian tank losses alone was about an $11 billion dollar hit.

You do the math.

Remember when the Biden/Harris administration shot down the Chinese balloon?  At least they tried to stop some inflation.

Likewise, aircraft have had to stay well back because of surface to air missiles, of which the Russians produce a pretty good variety.  The Russians claim (heavy emphasis on the word claim) their radars can easily see the F-35 and F-22.  Claim.  An F-35 costs about $109,000,000 per aircraft.  An F-22 cannot be replaced – we lost the tooling.  Fun fact:  $109,000,000 in quarters would weigh five and a half million pounds, or the equivalent of the weight of pre-printed Biden ballots the Democrats had to dispose of discreetly after Joe dropped out.

As of January, 2024, we have 234 operational F-35s.  We have 187 F-22s.  And, yes, those babies can unleash a lot of havoc in short order, but missiles are cheap, and if it takes dozens to knock one of our fighters down, it’s dollars ahead.  And, let’s be clear:  they’re not always flying.  The US response to the Me-262 wasn’t to try to dogfight a German jet with a Yankee prop, nope, our aces hung around the German air bases and shot them as they had to land.

Is a boomerang their weapon of choice?

Every weapon has a weakness, and rarely can those weaknesses be overcome by papering them over with hundred-dollar bills.  But just as the object of making weapons has gotten bigger and bigger, our ability to fight a World War II style war has gone to zero.  One anecdote is that a captured German fighter pilot was bragging about shooting up a large quantity of American planes on the ground at an airbase.  Being at the airbase, the US officer took him outside and noted, “They’ve already been replaced.”

The German reportedly said, after a heavy sigh, “And that is why we are losing.”  That, and my great-grandfather, Johan von Wilder, who was responsible for downing five German fighters by himself.  Worst mechanic in the Luftwaffe.

The trend, though, is less $100 million fighters, but now seems to be looking towards large numbers of inexpensive, nearly disposable weapons that are cheap, lots of missiles that cost a few million bucks, and fewer “so expensive it’s silly” systems, except for those that give the really important part of the battle:  information – satellites and radar and the like.

But for all of that, the goal in war seems to have changed.  Rather than breaking stuff and killing people, the goal is more based on long-term fights whose goal is to cause the enemy to become unstable to topple their own leadership for someone more favorable.  I’m betting this is really a legacy of the Cold War.

I put my desk in the elevator.  I hope it takes my career to a whole new level.

I don’t think that we’re in any shape to fight an actual war against a determined opponent in a conventional sense for longer than a month or two, and wholly incapable of fighting in an area where we don’t have uncontested air dominance.  From an industrial standpoint, our ability to make more stuff isn’t serious:  outside of small arms and helmet and clothing, I’m not sure that there’s a weapons system that we could make without the help of overseas firms for critical items.

We just don’t make it here anymore, and building the basic industries to allow us to do so will take decades and trillions of dollars in capital invested.  I think we’ve reached the point where our primary weapon is financial.  There’s a precedent that situation can last a long time – the Byzantine Empire lasted in one form or another for over 1,000 years.

The Byzantine Empire had a gold stash that would make Scrooge McDuck® do whatever it is that ducks do when they’re happy, however.  We don’t.  Our wealth is based on paper and mathematics, and can move across borders in milliseconds (megafarads if you want an SI unit).

What would Ötzi’s people think about that?  I don’t really know.  I guess we’ll have to ask Keith Richards.

Are We In The Middle Of A Planned Revolution? Yes.

“Day 93 under the dome.  With necessities growing dangerously low, who knows what spark will set off this powder keg?” – The Simpsons Movie

I saw two men in matching outfits so I asked them if they were gay.  Turns out that doesn’t make the NYPD happy.

A phenomenon that has sweep the world in the early 21st century has been the “Color Revolution”.  This is characterized by a “grassroots” movement whose aim was theoretically to create a liberal Western democracy on the European model.  An example would be most Western European countries, with the exception of the Islamic Caliphate of France.

What methods were used in these “peaceful” revolutions?

  • Leadership by Non-Governmental Organizations Civil Disobedience
  • Civil Disorder/Disobedience/Protests
  • Total Lack of Chill
  • Use of the Internet to Organize
  • Heavy “Student” Participation

When I read that list, I see a single conclusion:  the CIA did it, sometimes with the help of George Soros.

Probably one of the first places that this method was used was the Soviet Union.  All of the “spontaneous” protests at the beginning were likely anything but spontaneous.  The wonderful part of this type of operation is that if it works, great, an enemy is off the board.  If it doesn’t?  Everyone involved can put on their “so sorry that happened to you, buddy” face while preparing for the next one.

To be fair, I don’t think that most of the people that were trying to get the Soviet Union to collapse thought it was going to work as well and as completely and as quickly as it did.  One minute, the Soviets were all “Viktor Drago” and the next they were all “Trotsky after meeting an icepick”.

What do you call a man with an ice pick in his head?  Anything you want – he clearly doesn’t control the security apparatus of the USSR.

But there is more at play here.  Ricky emailed me an article from 2014 that talked in depth about Color Revolutions and their mechanics by Andrew Korybko which inspired this post.  You can find that article here.

The Color Revolution Model: An Exposé of the Core Mechanics

When we look at a Color Revolution, it’s like looking at an iceberg:  you only see the bit above the water but miss entirely the part that’s going to cause James Cameron to make a billion dollars and inflict those stupid Avatar™ movies on us.  No, Color Revolutions are years in the making and start with:

Ideology:  In the Color Revolutions to date, all of them have been based on the attempt to create a Western-liberal style of government, hence my suggestion that this was the CIA attempting to export “freedom” to a group of people who have consistently and convincingly desired to not be free.  Sure, some Egyptians want to live in a Western-style democracy, but most of them don’t.  Hell, most of the Muslims that have moved to Western Europe don’t want, at all, a Western-style democracy.

They want Sharia law, they want a government based in Islam, and they want all the wealth that the Western-style liberal democracies seem to create.  They want to live in Cairo on the Thames, not the actual, crappy Cairo on the Nile.  Why did Egypt’s Color Revolution fail?  Why did Libya’s?  Why did Syria’s?

They didn’t want that Western liberal democracy ideology, they just wanted the stuff.

Telling a good joke about the French Revolution is all about the execution.

Cash:  As NASA astronaut Gus Grissom said in the movie The Right Stuff, “No bucks, no Buck Rodgers®.”  In a Color Revolution you could say, “No simoleons, no Napoleons”.  That’s as close as I can get unless I retcon Stalin’s first name to Moolah.

But money has to come from somewhere, and most of the people that make up these Color Revolutions are poor college students who live on ramen and despair.

Where did BLM get money?  According to the Claremont Institute (LINK), Microsoft® pledged $244,400,000 to Black Lives Matter.  Black Lives Matter is a Marxist organization pushing radical GloboLeftElite disruption.

Microsoft© is funding a Color Revolution

Against . . . you.

That’s a pickup line that could work for Boeing, too.

People:  There is always an inner circle of leaders of the Color Revolution, probably hand-picked by the funders.  The are willing and passionate about the Color Revolution, primarily because they see themselves as the ones who will get power after the event.  Because someone has to drink the Kool-Aid®, there are also followers.  Those are broken into two groups – the troops and the members of general public that are sympathetic to the revolutionaries.

Propaganda:  First, the message is crafted.  It is prepared in advance for the moment it will be communicated, and the People mobilized.  The propaganda may already be in place, sitting on websites prepared by and for the movement.  It may have been trained into the foot soldiers of the Color Revolution.  Regardless, the message gets out, and the goal is to get sympathy and support as the revolt proceeds.  In the United States, mainstream media is fully onboard with the GloboLeftistElite plans – would anyone be surprised to find out that ABC® gave Kamala the debate questions?  And answers?

I do think the debate about Mobius strips is a bit one-sided.

Spark:  Once all of the above are in place and ready to go, all that’s needed is a spark.  George Floyd, for instance was a spark.  It wasn’t George Floyd, it was that there was a video of a dying junkie that met the needs of the Color Revolution, which was already prepared and ready to go, complete with Ideology, Cash, People and Propaganda, complete with a complicit media to fan the fiery but non-violent flames.

Once these all came together, Floyd’s death was chosen and someone, somewhere, said, “Perfect.  Go.”  It doesn’t matter that Floyd was going to die due to the incredible amounts of drugs in his system.  All that mattered was what the video showed of his on-camera death.

Korybko suggested, back in 2014, that examples of these Sparks included (all of these are direct quotes):

  • A rigged election
  • The jailing of an opposition leader
  • The signing of (or failure to sign) a controversial piece of legislation
  • A government crackdown against the opposition or the imposition of martial law
  • Declaring or being involved in an unpopular war

Of the three Sparks that Korybko suggested, the top almost certainly happened in 2020, and the second and fourth are being implemented in some fashion against Trump and/or his supporters.  The list is, obviously, not exhaustive, and the event need never have happened in reality, as long as people can be convinced it happened.

After the event, the protests start.  And grow.  And spread.  In retrospect, it’s easy to see that the Floyd Protests were an attempted Color Revolution in the United States that was called off after the mechanisms to secure the 2020 election for Biden were in place, and, perhaps a warning of sorts to Biden that he’d best do what he was told if he could remember.

I was listening to a podcast tonight and Eric Weinstein noted that he had been assured that Biden does not have access to “the football” and that the United States is currently being run by a committee of the powerful.  The same committee, no doubt, that has put Kamala at the brink of power.  Note that Biden only dropped out after the (first) failed assassination of Trump.

Occupy Wall Street challenged the money powers of New York (not sure who was funding them, China?).  This was not to be allowed, so, to counter it, Trayvon Martin was used as a Spark, moving on to the “Gentle Giant” Michael Brown, and finally to George Floyd.

The fact that the clear self-defense shooting of Trayvon Martin was used to get the hippies and AntiFa® out of New York and have them start protesting for black people instead of against bankers.  I guess the bankers got scared, and hippies and AntiFa® have a short attention span, or their leaders just like money.  They had to have something to do, and since it’s always easy to stir up a racial fight, that’s what the bankers picked, because a class fight might have endangered actual bankers.

One stolen joke is a coincidence, two is a pattern.  Thirty is an Amy Schumer standup routine.

These movements aren’t popular, and aren’t spontaneous, though they’re staged to appear so.  They aren’t even permanent – most countries that have had a Color Revolution revert to their old styles of government with just a little bit of time and often a lot of chaos.  Egypt went from its military government to a very brief “democracy” and then right back to a military government because that’s what Egyptians seem to want.

This may sound as crazy as predicting the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, but the government of the United States is nearing collapse, and the Color Revolution technique, or something like it, is being employed against you and funded by people like Microsoft® to guide the fall into, they hope, a situation where bankers can frolic freely.

That’s the rub – the importation of the endless hordes of illegals, the economic devastation of inflation and the contrived energy and housing crises and continual cultural provocations are cracks, big ones, setting the stage for a major change.  And, again, each and every one of them is intentional, and it’s gone far enough that I still believe we’re entering the danger window in 2025, with the early to middle 2030s the most likely time when the final Spark hits.

Beyond the Spark?

It’s up to us.

The Debate

“Mr. Rooney, Ferris is home and he’s very ill.  I debated even leaving him.” – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Who won the presidential debate last night?  People who didn’t watch.

As my father said when the cows got into the marijuana, “Son, the steaks are high.”

That’s how I’d describe the Trump/Kamala debate.  Apparently, they’ve never met, so her charge that Trump put a wet finger in her ear and said “Wet Willie Brown” is certainly false.  One of the rules is that Kamala has a two-drink minimum.

I decided I’d just blog about the debate instead.  Since I’m going to get into the hot tub later with a cigar and maybe a scotch, today’s post will be, unfortunately, written while sober.

Notes:  I like the muted microphone idea.  It stops the debate for being a shouting match, though I wish they would give the candidates an array of condiments they could throw at each other.  Regardless, here is my (partially made up) transcript.

But she’d be happy to force you to take it.

My biggest hope?  That Trump says, “Be quiet or I’ll spank you, you disrespectful little turnip.”

Showtime!

Kamala walks to Don.  I think she would have peed on him to show dominance, but she couldn’t lift her leg up, or Hindu tradition prevents it.

First question:

Are people better off than four years ago?

Kamala:  “I understand the problem and I have no idea what to do about it.  I’m going to say absolutely nothing, but then attack Trump.”

Trump:  “No sales tax, other countries will pay for the wall, took billions and billions from Chi-nah.  We’ve had a terrible economy, worse than ever seen since ever.  We’ve had people stream into this country from mental institutions, and even Baltimore.”

Kamala:  “Worst epidemic, worst unemployment and personally burned the Constitution after farting on the Statue of Liberty.”

Trump:  “Cut taxes, make the greatest economy, ever, and then Kamala ate a baby.  Alive.  At Central Park.  I was there.”

Kamala:  “I’ve memorized a thing about the economy.  Here it is.”

Trump:  “She has no plan.  It’s four sentences – run spot run.”  I wish I had made that up, but that was Trump’s line, it’s hilarious.

You want to add tariffs, and that might cost more money.  Why do you hate America?

Trump:  “They kept my tariffs, because I made the best tariffs, and now people can’t afford bacon.”

Kamala:  “There was a trade deficit, and Trump sold chips to China, and the United States should win the race against China.”  It really didn’t say anything in the answer, but it was well said, much better than her normal word salad.

Trump:  “Taiwan sold chips to Chi-nah.  Immigration is bad.  She’s a Marxist.”  (Actually, one of Trump’s passionate answers, and pretty articulate and less hand-wavy than usual.

President Trump you were against abortion and then for abortion and why do you hate women?

Trump:  “Six Supreme Court justices got Roe v. Wade out of the states, and now states can make a decision and people can make a vote.  Ohio and Kansas were okay with killing kids.”

Kamala:  “Trump is a liar.  He’s the devil.  Women have to leave a state to kill a baby, and can’t even do it at their home state.  I might sign a bill making baby killing legal everywhere.”

Trump:  “Kamala’s a liar.  And stupid.  And incompetent at government.”

Kamala:  “Any woman should be able to kill any baby whenever.  Perhaps up until college.”  Kamala is making it personal, and looking at Trump as an accuser.  Trump doesn’t fall for this.

Trump:  “She’s a liar.  Everybody knows it.”

The microphones are not always turned off during the answers of the other candidate.

It’s hard to make a good abortion joke, but leave it to the Left.

Why did you let just a few illegal people in?

Kamala:  “I want to stop drugs from coming in.”  She starting to slur her words.  “Trump didn’t approve the bill and that’s because he hates you and you should go to his stupid rally.”

Trump:  “There’s no reason to go to her rallies.  People don’t leave my rallies.  People want to take their country back.  What they have done with allowing millions and millions into our country, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the pets.”  This has happened, but ABC News disagreed.

Kamala:  (first giggle) “Talk about extreme!  The very worst republicans love me.”  Kamala is actually effectively getting under Trump’s skin at this point.

Trump:  “I fired them.”

Perhaps he’s upset because that was Fang-Fang’s dinner?

How can you send all of these illegals back?

Trump:  “They allowed terrorists, drug dealers, criminals and Venezuelans in.  Their crime is down.  But they’re destroying the fabric of our country.” (no humor added on this comment)

Kamala:  (next giggle, more slurring) “This is rich!  Trump is a criminal and awful, and I have answers, I promise.”

Trump:  “It’s a political prosecution.”  Really good answer here.

Kamala:  “Trump would kill your children if he were back in the White House.”

Kamala, you flip flop, so please explain why you have such a good reason to flip flop?

Kamala:  “After I was against oil, I was for oil.  I want everyone to have houses, because that won’t increase inflation, but we’ll need to need to import labor to make them.  And this friend I had in high school who is totally not made up was sexually assaulted.  I want to help people not be mean like Trump.”

Trump:  “I am so very rich.  Fracking?  She’s been against fracking and the police (even Sting) and – I’m talking now – does that sound familiar? – and wants to turn do transgender surgery on illegal aliens.”

Transgender surgery for even alien-aliens, would be my bet.  But ALF as a woman?

Mr. President, why did you start an insurrection and why do you regret it?

Trump:  “Peacefully and patriotically.  You left that out.  When are the illegals going to be prosecuted?  When are the people who burned down Minneapolis going to be prosecuted?”

Mr. President, why don’t you say you regret this?

Trump:  “I didn’t do anything to regret.”

Kamala:  “I was at the Capitol.  The President wanted to desecrate the nation’s Capitol because he hates you and Donald Trump hates Jews.”  Trump does not take the bait to stare back at her, which people would take as threatening.

Trump:  “Why is she now doing anything on the border?  Biden can close the border, he’s not.”

Mr. President, why won’t you say you lost the election we stole fair and square?

Trump:  “The illegals are trying to vote.”  Kamala does not look remotely happy and ABC pulls away from the split screen.

Why does Donald Trump want to stop illegals from voting?

Kamala:  “Donald Trump should accept the fact that we stole the election fair and square.”

Trump:  “Victor Orban – why is the world blowing up?  The most respected and most feared president was Trump.  Kamala didn’t get a single vote.  She failed.”

Israel and Palestine aren’t getting along, tell us a made-up way that you’d solve it?

Kamala:  “War is bad.  We shouldn’t have one.  I really like Israel, though.”

Trump:  “It never would have started.  Russia wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine.  Kamala hates Israel.  But, Kamala also hates Arabs.  And probably hates kittens.”

Kamala:  “I love Israel.  Trump is weak and loves dictators.”

Trump:  “Putin endorses Kamala.”

Commercial Break – A commercial for feminine products.  Who knew women were filled with blue liquid?

Mr. President, you could solve Ukraine in 24 hours?

Trump:  “We’ve spent $250 billion in Ukraine because Biden won’t ask Europe.  I can call Putin and Zelinsky and settle it.  I’ll do a deal.  It would be a great deal.  We could have World War III.”

Kamala:  “You’re running against me.  Putin wants to take over all of the Starbucks™ in Europe.  No cappuccino for anyone.  And Poland.  You want to give up Poland.”

Trump:  “Quiet, please.  Putin would be sitting in Moscow, and don’t forget he has nuclear weapons.  Kamala was sent to negotiate peace, and three days later?  War.  She’s worse than Biden.  She is a horrible negotiator.”

Kamala:  “I’m going to say a lot of things about Trump, to avoid talking about how I failed negotiating in Ukraine.”

Trump:  “I got Europeans to pay for NATO.”

Kamala was a lot more prepared than she was the first time around.

Do you regret what happened in Afghanistan?

Kamala:  “We got out of Afghanistan.  Trump’s deal in Afghanistan was the worst.  Trump invited terrorists to Camp David, America’s most holy place.”

Trump:  “My agreement was good, the Afghanistan withdrawal was horrible.”

President Trump, why are you a racist?

Trump:  “I’m not.”

Kamala:  “He is.”

Trump:  “She’s horrible.”

Kamala:  “He’s horrible.”

Trump:  “She’s horrible.”

(Hosts utterly losing control)

President Trump, how are you going to fix healthcare?

Trump:  “I saved Obamacare, but it wasn’t great, but I’m trying to find a better one.””

Oh, wonderful Kamala, how can you say something about healthcare that conforms to the answer you memorized?

Kamala:  “I’m not going to take your guns.  And I know people who have been sick and we want Obamacare to get even better.  And healthcare is a right.”

Trump:  “Kamala wants everyone on government insurance.”

What would you do to stop climate change?

Kamala:  “Climate change is horrible and I have invested $1 trillion in clean energy with my donors and opened factories around the world.”

Trump:  “Kamala loves Chi-nha.  They’ve destroyed business and manufacturing, and Biden got paid off by China and Ukraine?  They are crooks.”

Commercial Break – Debate sponsored by Crazy Z’s Unpainted Ukraine, for the best in discount barely used weapons.

Closing Statements:

Kamala:  “We’re not going back to low prices.  I’ve never had a real job.  We need me as a president.”

Trump:  “Here are the wonderful things she’s going to do, but she hasn’t done it.  Why hasn’t she done it?  I can rebuild America.  I can make it better, faster.  I’ll call it the six-million-dollar country.”

Overall, Trump was Trump, and this was probably his best debate of all of them during three elections.    Kamala, however, didn’t look like the blithering idiot that she is, since it looks like they got her off the sauce long enough to do debate prep.

If you liked Trump, you still like Trump.  If you liked Kamala, you’re probably not a regular reader, but you probably still like Kamala and are relieved that she didn’t Biden-out with disjointed word salads.  I think Team Kamala will be happy enough with this performance that they’ll trot her out for a few very carefully scripted interviews.

There will not be another debate.

How will the normies take it?  Not a clear victory either way, and the undecided mainly don’t watch these things, so it’ll be decided by what news they hear between the “top hits of the 80s, and more” and what they’re paying for gasoline.

Or, by the people who count the votes in big cities in swing states.

Stay tuned, and I suggest spending election night at a mountaintop restaurant, where the steaks will be high.

The Drive To Kill The Constitution

“Hold your ground, hold your ground! Sons of Gondor, of Rohan, my brothers! I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!” – Return of the King

I had a sacred, flammable piece of wood once.  It was a match made in Heaven.

All memes “as found”

One of the places that people on the TradRight have made progress over my lifetime in actually increasing freedom is in the area of gun rights.  This is good, and has been aided by Federalist Society™ acting as an institution to bring justices to the Supreme Court whose goals aren’t to modernize the Constitution or to use it to end up being the opposite document that it was intended to be.

Of particular importance to the Constitution is the Bill of Rights.  The Bill of Rights wasn’t quite an afterthought, but a creation of the complaints from the Anti-Federalists that the new government had no prohibitions against what it couldn’t do.

The Federalists said, “Hey, don’t worry, dudes.  The Constitution is fine because there’s a very limited role for the federal government in the document.  Even if it wanted to, the federal government couldn’t take away your right to own guns.  Hell, you guys have private warships with cannons on them – how badass is that?”

The Federalists were worried that with a list of prohibitions against the federal government, then the only thing that would be considered as rights were the ones that they listed, and not the much broader list they took as self-evident.  The Federalists thought that there were just too many places the government shouldn’t be able to go to list them all.  The Anti-Federalists said, “No, man, here are our minimums.  And we’ll add one at the end, the 10th one, that says the states or the people get to keep that long list.”

The Anti-Federalists won the day.  They created a dozen amendments, of which ten were finally adopted as the Bill of Rights.  Obviously, keeping men away from power is harder than keeping Kamala Harris away from the Night Train®, and government grew into a colossus, much larger and with more powers than the framers ever intended.  And like the fat girl at the middle school dance, the 10th Amendment is the most ignored of all of them.

This was obvious even by the time of the Civil War.  I think, rightly, that the U.S. Civil War could be renamed the “War Against the States” because the central role of the States in the governance of the country was essentially dead at the end of the war.  It only required the passage of the 17th Amendment in 1912, removing the election of senators from the state legislatures and giving it to popular vote for a final gutting of the rights of the State.

Now the GloboLeft has assumed the reins, and with the states out of the way, the final push has come against the people.  Here’s the way that Aldous Huxley described it:

“By means of ever more effective methods of mind manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms:  elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest will remain.  The underlying substance will be a new kind of totalitarianism.  All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days.  Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial.  Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit.”

That’s where we are now.  Whereas the Constitution has been powerless to stop the creeping totalitarianism, the Federalist Society judges have been enough, equipped with just two parts of the Bill of Rights have kept totalitarianism from final victory.

If the GloboLeftElite see an obstacle, what do they do?  Get rid of it.  Thus, the idea is now being floated by the GloboLeftElite to ditch the Constitution.  The writer of the latest hit piece against what remains of the Constitution is Jennifer Szalai, who wrote, “The Constitution is Sacred.  Is It Also Dangerous?” in the New York Times®.

Ms. Szalai was born in another country (Canada) educated in Europe, and now, for whatever reason, seems to desire to talk about a country to which she clearly has little allegiance to.  The most laughable passage tries to skew the attempt to interpret the Constitution as it to what it plainly meant and was intended as “ideology” and noting that this prevents judges from “doing nice things”.

Szalai also notes that judges reading the Constitution and doing what it says frustrates what “the majority of people want”.  Apparently Szalai doesn’t know that’s exactly what it was designed to do:  to stop a majority of people, hot with passion, from trampling the rights of the individual.

Yeah, that was the plan.

Look at Australia, banning most weapons and putting ludicrous rules on the ones that remained legal.  Why?  Because they didn’t have the 2nd Amendment stopping a knee-jerk reaction to a mass shooting that seems really like it was a set up.  The only path to get all the guns removed from the hands of the people in the United States is to pass a Constitutional amendment, and even that probably won’t work for decades.

A case in point of bad law versus the Constitution:  after 9/11 the Patriot Act was passed to target “terrorists” even though it gives a government of colossal size powers that would have made King George envious and would have made George Washington reach for an AR-15.

Unless the GloboLeftElite could take over every method that people have to communicate with each other.  Outside of websites here and there and places like Gab®, there were very few places that people on the TradRight could get together to talk to each other.  Places like Gab™ were literally cut off from things like payment processors (Coinbase©, PayPal™ and many, many, many others).

The pesky 1st Amendment keeps the government from (overtly) clamping down on speech.  Unless they ask Mark Zuckerberg to do it for them and he agrees because having people think for themselves about COVID was too dangerous.  The press literally used those words – “thinking for yourself is too dangerous.”  Look at the constant drumbeat to give away our freedom:

It’s the communications they want, first.  As long as they can make us feel isolated and alone, the only person with dangerous opinions.  Then, finally, they can win.

Their goal is the removal of the freedoms we’ve cherished and slowly seen erode either through the cowardice of weak men or the avarice of greedy men or the schemes of bad men.

The only thing that stands in their way?  Us.

Change, Batman, Male Prostitutes, And Bears

“You were looking for a way to change your life.  You could not do this on your own.” – Fight Club

My Chinese friend gave me an iPad.  I just love homemade presents!

I can tell when I’m really ready for change.  I don’t think about it.  I don’t plan it.

I do it.  I become it.

Instantly.

How can I tell when I’m not ready to change?

I think about it.  I plan it.  I consider ideas like, “starting Monday, I’m going to . . . “

Then Monday comes around.  Meh.  There’s always next Monday.

Change is instantaneous, it’s a drag racer (I mean cars, not men in dresses that for some unspecified reason like to read to children) after the pedal has been pushed to the floor and the car is launched.  The desire to change?  That lingers and hangs around on the couch, eating curly fries and thinking about what it one day might do.

Shame on you if you haven’t heard of Fred Garvin, Male Prostitute, who offers professional hygiene, discretion, and animal gratification.

One of my friends when I was living in Alaska shared this story:

Wife:  “I’m leaving.”

Husband:  “What, what the hell?  You’re leaving me?”

Wife:  “No.  I’m leaving Alaska.  I’m moving.”

Husband:  “Why?  I thought that, while we had our ups and downs, our marriage is pretty good.”

Wife:  “No.  I’m not leaving you, I’m leaving Alaska.  It’s fine if you want to come, too.”

My friend (who I will call Tim since that’s his name) said that this was a constant pattern that he had seen.  Perfectly happy couple, and then one day, bam, the wife said she was outta there, done with Alaska except for the rearview mirror.  He said it generally happened about 20 years after the couple had moved to Alaska.  Sometimes 19 years.

Do mimes with invisible walls have obstacle illusions?

He had no idea why it happened, but it was frequent enough that he’d seen the pattern play out again and again.

Now that, my friends, is change.

Another example more relevant to me is biking.  I used to bike a lot, and I know from experience that the only thing that is as insufferable as a gay vegan-Democrat-Crossfit® enthusiast is a bicyclist.  But when I decided that I was going to use biking as an exercise to get into better shape (which worked) I went all in.  No, I didn’t buy the silly jersey or the clip on shoes or a bike that weighed .03 ounces (351 kiloPascals), but I did buy the gear I needed to be good enough to lose some weight.  Hell, I wasn’t racing, I wanted a heavy bike so I had to work my fat ass harder.

So, after 5,000 plus bike miles a year for two years, I found I lost approximately 10 pounds.

Why didn’t the bear go to college?  Because bears don’t go to college.

Hmmm, I guess I can’t ride my bike faster than my fork, but when I was on my bike, even though I was far from a world-record anything, I was training as hard as any world-class athlete.  Just not as long, and just without the talent that they had.  I mean, I was dedicated, but there was no way I was gonna cut my testicle off like Lance Armstrong.

But, again, the change was instantaneous.  Just as instantaneous as when I decided to stop biking because I noticed it was causing some damage to my body, and having a bad ankle wasn’t worth losing 10 pounds.

One day, bicyclist.

The next day?

Not.

So, change itself is instant.  And also predictable – it always has and always will require just three simple things, as Ludwig von Mises (who is dead) wrote:

A Vision of a Better State

A Path to Get to the Better State

A Belief That My Action Along the Path Will Get Me to the Better State

If you have Vision, Path, and Belief, you change.  If I don’t have them, even if I’m missing just one of them, I don’t change.  At all.  I just sit on my couch eating curly fries.

Anyone can want to change, in fact I’m sure we all want to change.  But until we get those three simple keys, we won’t.

When my youngest was five, The Mrs. and I asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he said, “Batman”.  Now he wonders why we won’t take him to the theater.

Why do people who have heart attacks sometimes become fitness devotees?  Because they now have A Vision of a Better State – not being dead next year.  They have A Path to Get to the Better State – exercise and eating right.  They now have A Belief That Their Action Along the Path Will Get Them to the Better State – their doctor told them, and now they’re paying attention.

That’s a rather extreme example, but it’s one that gets raised all the time.

I think the reasons that more people don’t make changes comes from a few simple reasons:

Despair:  They don’t believe that anything that they do can change the situation that they’re in so they don’t even dwell on a better state or look for a path.  They’ve given up.

Not Looking:  They simply won’t open their eyes to the possibility of something different, or feel guilt, and also can’t see a way, even if it’s abundantly clear to others.

Apathy:  They don’t care.  Curly fries are easy.  Work is hard.

Sometimes change is a conscious choice, but I’ll also admit that sometimes change is forced upon you like the Alaskan husband from Tim’s story above.

If you have something you want to change, change it.  You can’t make yourself younger, but you can make yourself stronger than you are today.  If you want more money, you can’t write yourself checks based on an IOU that you wrote to yourself (like the government does) but you can earn more or save more or both.  I guarantee it.

My grandfather once told me it was worth it to spend money on good stereo speakers.  That was sound advice.

Once I asked a friend (not Tim) to write a sentence of their choice as small as they could.  They did.  Then, I said, write it again, and make it smaller this time.

They did.  Generally, the power is within us to do amazing things, but we have to first believe.  You can choose change, or it can choose you.

But what you and I do with that?  It’s up to us.

Göbekli Tepi: How Beer Created Civilization

“You blow it tonight, girl, and it’s keggers with kids all next year.” – Heathers

There’s also a neolithic monument to Dad jokes:  Groanhenge.

FYI upfront:  very likely I’ll not have a post at all on Monday – travelling for pleasure and won’t be back until the wee hours Monday morning.

Göbekli Tepi is back in the news.  But first?  What the hell is a Göbekli Tepi?

Göbekli Tepi is a location in the southern part of Turkey, right near the place you put the onion in, and later discover you forgot to remove the plastic bag with the gizzards and cooked it, and decide, “meh, it probably won’t kill me,” carve it up, and serve it anyway without telling anyone.

Oh, wait, it’s the country Turkey not the tasty bird.  Göbekli Tepi is located right near the border with Syria, and is one of the most significant archeological sites.  Ever.

Why?  It’s made of huge stone structures, carved intricately and realistically, and showing more artistic skill than any post-modern artist.  That’s not saying much, but, there it is.

I once read a very moving story in Braille.  It was touching, really.

Original by Sue Fleckney – https://www.flickr.com/photos/96594331@N03/20385309880/, CC BY-SA 2.0, snarky comment by Wilder.

It’s old.  Very old.  9,500 B.C. old.

That’s a really long time to try to even imagine.  I’m not sure I can, since when compared to the lifespan of any human except your mother, it’s hard to conceive.  I’ll never be able to put it in terms anyone can wrap their brain around, but let me give an example:

We’re closer in time to Jesus than Jesus was to the building of the pyramids.  Göbekli Tepi is four times farther back in time than the construction of the pyramids was from the perspective of Jesus.  This was so far back in time that pottery had yet to be invented, but, strangely, Tupperware™ was already in wide use.

Tupperware™ even made a casket with a clear lid.  It was a failure, I don’t know why.  They had a great slogan:  Remains To Be Seen©.

Göbekli Tepi is old enough that it started being built around the time the very first evidence of agriculture shows up in the archeological record.  This is such an early settlement, that most evidence indicates that it was made by hunter-gatherers for use only occasionally, like the cabin in the woods that they visited only on Labor Day.  But why did they go there?

I know the answer.  Why would hunter-gatherers meet up at the dawn of history?

To party.

I’ve written about this before – there is evidence of grain and yeast in big stone vats at Göbekli Tepi.  This is evidence of the really simple answer to the question of why Göbekli Tepi was built – the guys got together, made beer, sang songs, told lies about the big aurochs that got away, farted, and got really, really drunk.  Want more evidence?  Over 7,000 grinding stones to mash the grain into something they could brew with.  7,000 seems like a lot, but they gathered there to party and get stoned for over a thousand years.

I go to the pool every day to try to get a swimmer’s body.  But no one ever drowns.

Once a year, probably, because that’s all the beer they had because they hadn’t developed agriculture.

That last part is new and is in a paper by Dr. Martin Sweatman (chemical engineer) out of the University of Edinburgh (LINK).  It turns out that a bunch of Scotsmen (I assume it involved grad students, having been an engineering grad student myself back in the day) noodled over the carvings and started counting.  Scotland is boring, so counting the number of times a “V” (apparently the only letter the Göbekli Tepi residents knew) showed up was the only other thing Sweatman’s team could think to do after they drank all the booze in the lab.

Adderall© is dangerous.  One of my friends took it, blacked out, and now he’s a grad student.

They found that there was a pretty cool pattern on the blocks (figure 12 on page 38 of the .pdf I linked above):

  • One repeating set of the letter V (both right side up and upside down) that was either 29 or 30 days (depending on how you count the V). A lunar month is really 29.5 days, so 29 or 30 sounds right.
  • 11 blocks, right under the 29 or 30 letter V. So, 29.5 times 11 (plus the original month above it) is . . . 354.
  • Then, 10 more of the V letters. That brings us to 364.
  • Finally, one more for the summer solstice (their guess), bringing us to 365.

My guess was that the last V?  That was party day – the ultimate pre-dawn of writing stuff down beer bash.  Since they only drank one weekend a year, I imagine these folks were the ultimate cheap date, sort of like a group of high school freshmen who had scored some near-beer.

I guess Cain was Abel. (meme as found)

And, by Crom Coors®, they invented mathematics, astronomy, sculpture carving, building craftsmanship, and agriculture in a short span of time.

To get more beer.

I’ll stand by that statement.

  • Once planting started, had stick around to harvest it.
  • So, we had to build a house.
  • Since others might want our beer, we had to defend the house.
  • We can’t do that alone, so we had to band together.
  • Growing grain is a lot of effort, so, for the first time in history, humans had a use for slave labor.
  • Work went from hunting and occasional fishing and gathering to back breaking farm labor.
  • This meant greater complexity, which fed greater returns, and now beer was available all year round.
  • We built cities, so we could support the beer industry, and had increased disease issues (COVID 8000 B.C., anyone?).
  • Then, we created a division of labor, started the development of technology, and invented the fridge (the first one was in Germany, used for beer making).
  • This led to the apex of civilization the 7-Eleven®, where one could buy beer, PEZ™ and pork rinds 24 hours a day, every day.

Society was created by and for beer drinkers.  I’m not even kidding.  People needed a reason to build all of this stuff, and men were the ones who did it.  Have you ever been around men?  We only do stuff for one of two reasons – one is beer, and you know what the other one is.  Okay, three reasons.  I forgot the PEZ®.

Wait until he tries to explain Netflix®. (meme as found)

In the end, Göbekli Tepi wasn’t destroyed.  It was carefully buried.  This, my friends, suggests a great reverence for the place.  It was like the ritual burial of the frat house after all the fraternity brothers had gotten married and had a real job.

Which was probably the case, they were now all farmers and soldiers and bureaucrats that ran the small cities so they could eventually build breweries, convenience stores and refrigerators.  They gradually forgot about the place.

Then we (modern humans) found it.  Now, the people who found it were very serious people who have grown only more serious over time at university cocktail parties in the woke modern world.  They can’t, for the life of them, figure out what this was, since they forget that this was a place built by and for men to party.

I think Dr. Sweatman is totally right (there’s more in his paper including a Time Lord™ and a possible record of a cataclysmic comet, you should RTWT)– the stone is a calendar.  And it’s counting the time until the next party.

It’s the countdown to beer day.  And who doesn’t like beer day?

If There Are Seven Basic Plots, Which One Is Yours?

“There’s no plot.  It just goes on like that for an hour.” – Videodrome

Why don’t they use thyme as medicine?  I hear I heals all wounds.

Last week’s post was about life as a three-act play.  It may or may not work, and, like all metaphors, it’s flawed and suspect.  Perhaps I should used something better, like a metaphive?

The Third Act

During the post, I also mentioned that a dude named Christopher Booker had written a book called The Seven Basic Plots.  In it, he broke down most everything we watch into, well, seven basic plots.  I guess he completely blew the suspense with the title.  These plots all follow the same three acts discussed last week, though this week I’m using “hero” more as a descriptor than “protagonist”.

But what are the plots?

Overcoming The Monster:  Destroying a great evil that threatens good.  Examples:  my divorce attorney from my first marriage, Star Wars®.

Rags to Riches:  Start out poor and drunk, get money, lose money, get more money plus the girl and a private helicopter.  Examples:  Sonny Bono, Brewster’s Millions.

The Quest:  The search for and attainment of a thing or place after being found worthy.  Examples:  losing my virginity, The Lord of the Rings.

What kind of magic to GloboLeft wizards use?  Soycery.

Voyage and Return:  A trip to an unfamiliar place, a learning experience, and a return as a changed hero.  Examples:  The Mrs. and I moving to Alaska and back, The Hobbit.

Rebirth:  External events happen, and force the hero to change for the better.  Examples:  I was adopted.  Duh.  Groundhog Day.

Comedy:  External things keep happening and pile up to the point that they get more and more confusing, but then sort themselves out in the end.  Examples:  My first marriage, any episode of Frasier.

Tragedy:  Bad things happen to good people because they let temptation spoil their virtue.  Examples:  Me giving up on a drug-addicted friend, Macbeth.

Yup.  Seven plots.

Whether or not you agree with them, all of them (with one exception that we’ll talk about in a bit) all have the same basic idea:  the hero goes out, does stuff, and grows.  That personal growth is what leads to ultimate victory in the climax of the story.  Sure, luck can play a part of the victory, but to have a really emotionally satisfactory end, the victory comes because the character has faced his past mistakes, worked, grown, and is now a better man.

Our new puppy can’t write a decent plot.  The only thing he can get out is ruff drafts.

This is a wonderful story and sings to our hearts:  who of us hasn’t lost?  Who of us hasn’t worked hard to get better, and then won in the end, even if it was just a small victory?

It is the personification of a story of virtue that we want to change to improve, to work to a higher goal, to pay the price in effort, and to win.  Who wouldn’t want their children to live that life?

An aside:  one of the (many) reasons modern movies suck is because, especially with victim-class characters and girl-bosses, they can never be shown in any sort of negative light.  Looking at the stupid movie that made me hate Star Wars™, The Girlboss Awakens©, the main character starts off as invincible, invulnerable, and never has to grow.  Why should she?  From the first moment she can pilot the Millenium Falcon© better than Han Solo®, fight better with a lightsaber™ than a man who has spent his entire life in perfecting that skill, and is way better at The Force© after hearing about it for the first time.

No struggle.  No growth – how could she need it?  She was born the BeSTeSt EvAR hero because she’s a girl.  This is of course, even though the character was written by people who would tell you that gender doesn’t exist and that you’re a bigot for not liking girls even though they don’t exist either.  Bigot.

Her next movie?  Fifty Shades of Rey.

It’s also the deprivation of that challenge that’s ruining our kids.  I had a conversation with a Zoomer the other day, and he noted that, yeah, they were a generation that lived on phones, didn’t have bullying, and were afraid of real challenges because they never had to face them.  Why are Zoomers on anxiety meds?  Because their parents protected them from the dragons and never let their kids work themselves out of a hole that they’d dug for themselves.

We need to let kids do heroic things, dammit!

Okay, I’ll step back away from that ledge, and end this aside.

Fun fact:  most coyotes, despite years of effort to teach them, cannot do simple calculus.

What was I talking about?  Oh, yeah, plots.  There’s one different plot.

Tragedy.  This plot shows how temptation lures in the innocent hero, corrupts him, and then causes his ultimate destruction.

This is also a story we want our children to know.  Regardless of intent, regardless of skill, there is a danger in allowing temptation to overcome virtue, allowing negative emotions to rule our lives.

Here’s a real-world example:  the firefighter who was murdered (Corey Comperatore, PBUH) at the Trump rally.  A tragedy?  Do you think he’d look back at his life and call it tragic?  A hero who died saving his family, who fathered children who love him and who was married to a wife who mourns him?

It’s not tragic.  It’s heroic.  There was no vanity, no anger, no petty emotion that led to his downfall.  He didn’t have a downfall.  He died a hero’s death.  Tragic?  Absolutely.  The plot of a tragedy?  No.

And, in this case, we find seeds of the important:  the plot of our lives, as long as we breathe, as long as we can change, isn’t set.  The ultimate destiny of whether we live as the hero on a quest or a villain who lived the plot of a tragedy rests with us.

Me?  I’m trying, very hard, to be a hero.  I can look back on my life and see places where I could have been more heroic, but also places where I’m damn proud of my actions and would do them again, no matter the outcome.  I can also see places where my weaknesses made me the villain in a tragedy or two.

But, as long as I’m breathing, I’m still attempting to be the hero.

You can, too.

The Third Act

“That’s why every magic trick has a third act.” – The Prestige

A man has to have a purpose in life.  All memes today are “as found”.

I’ve heard it said that there are only seven basic plots to stories, and that was the thesis of a book by the Christopher Booker.  Who would have thought a guy named Booker would write a book?  On the other hand, I’d hate to be the guy named Booker who didn’t write a book, unless my name was Dan-O.

Anyhow, we might look at those plots in a future post (maybe next Friday?) but now I want to talk about how most movies are made – they use a three act structure, and compare that to a human lifespan.

The First Act is the setup.  It introduces many of the characters and the situation.  You start by knowing absolutely nothing about what’s going on other than the title and maybe you might have seen a preview.  It’s the job of the storyteller to let you know what’s going on, while at the same time bringing drama and challenges into the life of the protagonist.

For most people, their first act may vary in details, but it’s the time of life from when they’re born until they complete their schooling and are “out in the world”.  Obviously, most of the ways that we reached adulthood are different, but most of them rhyme pretty well.  You may have had more or less adversity, you may have had more or less wealth, you might have been raised in the mountains or in the city, but those are just variations on a theme.

True story:  when I started my first website back in 2000, I was trying to figure out how to get it in search engines, so I did a search, at work, for “Submission Websites” when a bunch of fetish websites for a fetish I never even knew existed popped up.  Thankfully, the web controls were weak then.

Most people lose a grandparent, experience some tragedy, experience some conflict with parents, and almost everyone has to deal with the disturbing revelations of puberty and growing awareness of how small they are in comparison to the world.

Sure, some stories vary greatly, and I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to be raised in the 1930s Soviet Union, but I imagine most stories of those reading this are pretty similar through adulthood.  Not the same, but similar.

How do you ground someone from Gen Z?  Make them go outside and socialize with their friends.

That’s the end of the first act, and the first challenge for most people is finding their way and path in life.  That’s the second act.  In a movie, the protagonist has a problem introduced in the first act that they have to solve.  In a good movie, the protagonist has to grow in ability, skill, virtue, or some combination of the three to deal with the problem.  The second act transforms the protagonist into something more than what he was.

The Second Act of most lives consists of wrestling with careers and marriages and children for most people.  Some miss part of that triad, but most people deal with all three.

I tried this, and it actually works, but video games are more fun.

This is the time in life when marriages succeed or fail.  When careers go where you expected, or, more likely, veer off in wild tangents that 18-year-old you would never have expected.  And, children.  Anyone who has raised more than one knows that each one is different, and each one presents a different challenge in order to make them suitable to add value to the world.

Or not.  Sometimes, all of these things fail.  I guess that’s why they make comedies?  Regardless, it’s the time when people are busy trying to accomplish things, trying to solve problems, and trying to make a place in this world and contribute.

Say what you will about Vlad, but he took action when the stakes were high.

While similarity remains, there is much more variation in the Second Act for most people.  That’s where fortunes rise and fall, and that’s where heartbreak and setbacks are either overcome or we allow them to overcome us.

The final act is the Third Act.

In a film, it creates a climax.  All of the action, all of the plots, all of the tension built into the story is resolved, for good or bad.  It finishes the story, and resolves enough of the plot to satisfy the audience, and finally allows reflection by the protagonist on how they’ve changed, and understanding who they really are.

In a life, what does the Third Act look like?  Is it a gold watch at retirement, cruises, and sitting on the patio in a shade with a lemonade watching boats go by?

For me, I can’t see that.

I can’t imagine that being my Third Act.  I’ve consciously filled my life with struggle, with daring myself to improve and get better and see my worst times were when I was complacent and life was easy.  It may be that you’ve chosen differently, and I’m just messed up, but it does set up my Third Act.

Steve Jobs said he wanted to “kick a dent” in the Universe, and he certainly did.  Would smartphones have come without the iPhone®?  I do think so, but I think his overall legacy is a negative one.  Smartphones haven’t made humanity happier, for the most part.  Instead, they’ve created a false connection where people are still seeking real connections.

This would be a good third act.

I guess, if I were looking for a climax to my life, it would kicking a far different dent in the Universe, allowing people to see that we don’t have to live like this.  There is another way, and it’s better, and freer, and provides that hope of humanity becoming the flower of creation, rather than another weed.

I believe that with all of my heart, that there is another way.  I’d write a book about it, but my name isn’t booker.  Wait, maybe if it was a wild book?

The Book:

Is There Room For Anything But Materialism?

“Our great war is a spiritual war.” – Fight Club

Does a llama think the end of the world is called the Alpacalypse?

Generally, around holidays, I let my remaining seven strands of hair down and allow a post or two to deviate a bit from the normal categories.  Why?  Because we live in a world where often unusual ideas will eventually be found to be true, and I like to ask, from time to time, “What if?”

Enjoy!

Just as the pendulum of society has oscillated to the GloboLeft position (and, is oscillating back to the TradRight as we speak) there has been an oscillation of the way people think about the world.

Now, I would suggest, Western Civilization is at another peak:  peak materialism.  By materialism, I mean not that people are into material goods (even though they are) but that the entire focus is that there is a material explanation for everything, including why Kamala Harris exists.

Ever notice that Tom Cruise has one tooth in the middle of his face?  Now you’ll never be able to unsee it.

This isn’t a revelation to anyone in the West, since this is what we’ve been dealing with for the majority of our lives.  We have a mechanistic determinism that says that everything has an explanation, and that those explanations are all based in some sort of material, physical, phenomenon.

I used to play rugby, back in the day (prop) and our coach would, during practice, say “bad luck!” when someone goofed up.  My immediate thought was, no, that wasn’t bad luck, the player goofed up.  But was I right?

Well, if the world had taken a slightly different turn, the ball a different bounce, the opponent a different line, maybe the decision the player made would have been the right one.  Perhaps, then, there is a place for luck.

What’s the difference between a teabag and the American Rugby World Cup team?  The teabag stays in the cup longer.

And I do believe in luck.  Part of is because my life has been an extraordinarily lucky one.  And, no, not the “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity” definition, but “How is that stupid SOB so lucky?”

Okay, that’s a sample size of one, and the average scientist would say that’s just one data point, and not a series.  But, it’s not:  a series of improbable events in a single lifetime isn’t just one datapoint, it’s a series of them.

But what about actual studies that show phenomena that are far outside of the real of anything science can explain?

This one (LINK) shows that 90 experiments across 33 labs in 14 countries have shown that precognition exists.  What’s precognition?  That’s knowing the outcome of a future event, before the event occurs.

What kind of event?  Well, one study that I read used sensors on someone viewing a computer screen.  The screen would show random images, most of which were rather dull.  Occasionally, though, the screen would an emotionally charged picture – think nudity or an accident victim, meant to be a “shocking” picture.  The sensors recorded (in general) things like increased heartrate and increase blood pressure before the emotionally charged images showed up onscreen.

I went to a swimwear store and asked them if I could “Try on the bathing suit in the front window.”  They told me I’d have to use a changing room.

The subjects “knew” subconsciously that something was up and their bodies reacted.

Now, I can certainly come up with several ideas from quantum physics that might allow for this time-reversed phenomenon, you know, when effect happens before cause.  But people before, say 1900, would have just said that precognition was part of life – from the ancient Greeks to the prophecies of the Bible, precognition was just accepted as a part of reality – one that couldn’t be explained.

I’ve even had weird, precognitive dreams about odd events.  One time when I was in seventh grade, I awoke, laughing.  Why?  Because someone had stolen the lock off of my school locker, but left the valuable stuff inside.  I found it really humorous that someone would just steal the lock.

The next day?  After fourth period (the period immediately after I’d told my math teacher the humorous story) the lock was . . . gone.  My stuff?  There.

I can’t understand kids these days and their overwhelming Axe®-scents.

Certainly, it could be a coincidence.  But the odd perfection of the dream and the reality was jarring.  I’ve had other dreams that came true as well.  Most have been relatively boring things, and, certainly I’m not above calling them coincidences.

However, .gov, (in conjunction with the Stanford Research Institute) created a project for remote viewing – clairvoyance, where they created a program that produced (according to some sources) actionable information and according to at least one independent statistician were clearly 5-15% above random chance.

Those are just two examples of potential phenomena that exist outside of our ability to explain using purely material descriptions.  And, no, I’m not wedded to the idea that those phenomena exist, but that would certainly be the simplest explanation for several events in my life.  But, I am a committed Christian, so obviously I have the belief in things that have and always will be beyond the understanding of men.

And, again, before 1900 or so, the vast majority of people in all civilizations all over the world would have agreed that while there is the material plane of existence, but there is also the spiritual plane of existence, with as much (if not much more) relevance to our daily lives than the physical.

I like Chihuahuas, but not enough to eat a whole one.

One thing I’ve learned during my life, is to understand that there’s a lot that I’ll never understand, but that I do think that there is far, far more to our lives than just materialism.  Heck, if I had a dime for every time I thought about materialism, I could probably afford some Gucci™ socks.