Valhalla – Page 6 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

A Tale Of Two Koreas: Dystopia On The Half-Shell

“From what I hear, which isn’t much, Iran financed it and North Korea supplied the bombs.” – Jericho

North Korea shows off it’s newly developed portable Internet device. (All memes as-found)

Imagine living in a Korea where:

a small group of corrupt elite wield godlike powers over the government and citizens,
kids work in factories at the age of less than 10, or, toil in school for up to 18 hours a day to study for a chance to please that same elite who control the entire country,
most non-elite live in drab, gray (or is it grey?) apartments with the main view of . . . other apartments,
adults work long hours in a job that mainly serves to feed the elite,
the fertility rate is 0.78, meaning life is so awful that parents don’t want to bring babies into it, meaning the population will be cut by more half each generation, and
the kids listen to K-Pop.

Yeah. South Korea.

You know, I know people love to call certain places hellholes while praising others as shiny beacons of progress, mainly due to one being capitalist and one being communist.

I get it. I hate communism, too.

I had a horrible dream last night that Artificial Intelligence controlled our lives, and then, thankfully, the alarm on my Alexa® went off and woke me up and then Alexa® went through my to-do list.

But what if I told you that sometimes the “better” option of capitalism is just a prettier prison?

In South Korea, a tiny cabal of families runs the show like they’re the Sopranos, but with better electronics, worse haircuts, and no fear of the FBI. These aren’t your average mafia dons; we’re talking about chaebols. Chaebols are massive conglomerates that have tentacles that extend all the way through all parts of society, like the corporation you work for owning your fridge, car, and your grandma’s pacemaker.

Take the Lee family at Samsung®: they’re not just peddling phones with spyware straight from the NSA, nope. In South Korea, they have fingers in everything from shipbuilding to life insurance to health care to construction to hotels in about 80 different companies that comprise about 22% of the South Korean economy.

Hell, if you sneeze in this country, there’s probably a Samsung tissue waiting to catch it. And when Daddy Lee gets nabbed for bribery and attempted bribery (again), does the empire crumble?

Nope, Lee Junior slides right in.

Is the guy who does security on Samsung™ phones the guardian of the galaxy?

Then there’s the Chung clan over at Hyundai®. These folks don’t just make cars. Nope. Hyundai builds cities, runs banks, and probably have a secret lab cloning K-Pop idols, Gangnam-style.

Power gets handed down generation to generation, and if there’s a whiff of scandal? Poof, it vanishes faster than a North Korean dissident.

Embezzlement?

Tax evasion?

Those are just another boring Tuesday for these overlords. They operate above the law, pulling strings in government like K-Y® covered puppet masters at a marionette orgy (I’m sorry I thought of that, but now you have to think of that, too).

I don’t know how to stop a killer sex bot, but I do know how to stop a hand puppet: disarm it.

These huge conglomerates eternal, sucking up wealth while the average South Korean fights over scraps. Capitalism is great at building stuff, sure, but when it goes full oligarch, it’s like giving all the Monopoly® money to the banker (drunk Aunt Betty) and listening to her tell everyone else to enjoy passing Go© without collecting $200 and then it’s the Thanksgiving from Hell and Uncle L.T. won’t stop talking about golf.

Excuse me. Some past-life trauma.

I’m not against wealth concentration when it comes because people created actual wealth in society. I think people should be rewarded for making the lives of others better. But South Korea? The top families make money because they control all the pathways of wealth creation and the government.

I’d bet they’re gonna make a move on religion, next.

Bold statement time: capitalism alone doesn’t equal freedom; and in South Korea it is just feudalism (which, I remind you, was also capitalism) with neon-colored LED lights.

And it gets worse. What really inspired me to write this one was about the kids. The South Korean economy is a beast that demands blood sacrifices, starting young. Kids are out there hustling like they’re in a Dickens novel, but instead of cleaning chimneys, it’s cram schools that make American homework look like recess.

I’d make a joke but I want to be seen as mining my own business.

For the grown-ups, it’s worse: 60-80 hour weeks are the norm, turning humans into zombies shuffling through cubicles. Monotonous? Try soul-crushing, like being stuck in the Matrix but without the cool kung fu and hot chicks in skin-tight latex. Adults are coding, welding, or staring at screens till their eyes cross, all for a paycheck that barely covers rent. And that’s the lucky ones – the effective unemployment rate flirts on a regular basis with 25%.

And speaking of rent—everyone’s jammed into these towering commie-blocks, gray slabs of despair that make Brutalist architecture look inspiring. Check it out on Google™ Maps© Streetview®. It’s like The Sims® but with new Depression Mode enabled: tiny apartments where families stack like cordwood, dreaming of escape but too exhausted to move.

The place where it gets really grim is that they’re working themselves to death. South Korean birthrates are in the toilet, flushing away the future one non-existent kid at a time.

It takes 2.1 kids per woman to keep a population stable. In South Korea, it’s 0.78 kids per woman. In about 100 years, that might mean that instead of 55 million serfs potential employees Samsung® might only have a just a few over 7.5 million left.

This isn’t sustainable; it’s societal suicide by spreadsheet.

You know what jokes about low birthrates aren’t? Childish.

Everyone thinks it South Korea is all Squid Games and high-speed internet, but peel back the veneer, and it’s a dystopia where families (well, not all families) get ground to dust. Sure, they’ve got flashy tech, but at what cost?

Their souls, apparently.

Now, let’s cross that fortified border to the hermit kingdom of North Korea, where the dystopia’s got a different flavor but the same aftertaste of oppression. Point by point, because why not?

Corrupt Clique in Charge: Instead of chaebol families, it’s the Kim dynasty. Power passes from Kim to Kim like a Habsburg chin. Voting? You don’t vote on a living god. The elite live like it’s a South Korean oligarchy, but make theirs communist, so, uniforms and marching and Soviet-tech. So, tie.
Economic Shackles on Steroids: Child labor? Oh yeah, but it’s “patriotic duty” with Nork kids harvesting crops or building monuments to Stalin instead of studying like their southern counterparts. The system is a joke, with rations so meager you’d think calories were capitalist spies. Families toil in state farms or factories, nukes, missiles, and spare MiG parts while the Kim family imports Twix® and Coors™. The South doesn’t have death camps, but I’m not sure if that’s good or bad at this point, so, tie.

This definitely hurt the North’s score.

Soul-Sucking Slog: Just like being at the Democratic National Convention, life in North Korea is a parade of propaganda and forced smiles, living in actual commie-blocks that crumble like the regime’s promises. Monotonous work? Try endless marches and indoctrination sessions. It’s like 1984 but with worse food even than English food. I’ll give this to the South, since they come here from time to time, and I’ve never had a North Korean visit.

What is this, a school for ants?

Birthrates Below Replacement: Around 1.9 kids per woman, much, much better than the South, so eventually there will be more Norks than replaceable Samsung® assets. Besides, who wants to raise a family when Junior might rat you out for humming the Brady Bunch theme? This one goes solidly to North Korea.
K-Pop Equivalent? Nope, just state anthems praising the Dear Leader. I’ve got to give this to North Korea.

If black people move there, will they make K-Rap?

Point total? To the North.

Okay, if I had to pick, I certainly wouldn’t pick the North, but let’s be honest, the South is awful as well. I’ve been trying to make this point again and again: capitalism is an economic system, and it’s only a useful economic system if it generates wealth and supports families. When capitalism captures the systems of government the people begin to look like property, exactly like people look to communists. In Korea, people are either cogs or convicts.

The Founders didn’t mention capitalism or socialism, they just turned people loose with guns and a few rules and let them figure it out. In the West today, business wants to import foreigners to become better cogs, and the GloboLeft wants to import hordes of foreigners who are used to their government treating them like convicts.

Though on the bright side, my Samsung™ phone has lasted for years . . .

Wilder’s Fables: Killing The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg

“Oh, yeah, call the police. Tell them about the Spear of Destiny, the golden goose, the lost Ark. Enjoy your stay in the psych ward. I understand Thorazine® comes in vanilla now.” – The Librarian: Quest for the Spear

I bought one of my friend an elephant statue for his front room. He said, “Thanks.” I said, “Don’t mention it.”

In the OG version of The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg, (the OG version of which is pushing 2600 years old) a greedy farmer finds a goose that pops out golden eggs, but instead of chilling with the steady bling, yo, he decides to open up the bird for a quick jackpot despite the goose giving him a new golden egg each day. Shockingly, there is no gold mine inside. Just goose guts. And a lesson no one ever seems to pay attention to.

In 1945, the West stood astride the world like an economic Applebee’s® with endless appetizers, its factories humming and the treasury brimming with gold. Literal gold, and some of it was even ours – I’ll skip my usual grumbling about FDR’s confiscation for another post. Some of the gold wasn’t, it was gold from our allies that had been given to the United States for safekeeping. Because, panzers.

But America was a far greater treasure than all the gold in the country. America at that time was the goose of golden prosperity. The United States was responsible for half of the world’s GDP, its assembly lines spitting out cars, steel, washers, sinks, and dreams of a better future. Add in the allies? It was a clear three-quarters of the world GDP, with only the Soviet Union, still bulging from the war steroids it took for a decade, being close.

And there’s not a big market for a used T-34/76. “One owner, very nice. Ignore red stains, please. Last owner not so careful at Kursk.”

Capitalists have it easy. They never have to spell bourgeoisie. (meme as found)

Allies flocked to the Western orbit. Some were spooked by the hordes of Soviet tanks, others were nudged by CIA coups, and then nudged again until they got it right. Most, however, was because Uncle Sam’s deal of bikinis and bourbon was sweeter than a Moscow winter and a Siberian GULAG. It was an empire, but it was an empire of alliance.

Fast forward to today.

The Soviets are long gone, and the goose isn’t dead, but it’s close.

The economy has been slowly strangled by a combination of bad policies and worse ideas, and none are deadlier than mass immigration.

To be clear: the wealth of the West wealth was no accident – things that produce wealth aren’t illiterate laborers, pools of oil, or uncut trees. Nope. The wealth producer, the golden goose was culture, not what Vox Day so eloquently described as “magic dirt.” By killing the goose, our future is becoming bleaker, and the GloboLeft is cheering the downfall.

Bruce Lee was fast, but his older brother Su-den was even faster.

The golden age peaked post-World War II, and the United States had a 20-year head start on the rest of the world while Europe and Asia rebuilt from rubble.

By 1973, though, the United States began to falter economically.

This wasn’t entirely from external foes, but at least partially from our own hands.

Four factors gutted the goose:

dumping the gold standard,
feminizing the workforce,
enforcing affirmative action, and
opening borders to unrelenting immigration.

The first three wounded us; the last is the mortal blow, changing our people, our culture, and our wealth. Let’s discuss the carnage.

Dumping the Gold Standard (1971): Nixon’s pen stroke cut the dollar loose from gold, turning money into Monopoly® paper. Oh, wait, there’s a limit to how much Monopoly© cash they can print. The median home price in 1973 was $32,500. Today, it’s $412,300. Without gold’s anchor, our wealth’s a mirage, and the goose’s eggs are plastic.
Feminization of the Workforce: The 1970s pushed women into offices, doubling labor supply but halving family focus. Birth rates tanked—2.1 kids per woman in 1973, 1.6 in 2023. Empty cradles mean fewer Actual American workers, and less innovation from the best workforce on Earth. The GloboLeft calls it “empowerment” when a woman has to leave the home for fifty hours a week in order to afford to pay for another woman to ignore her child by becoming a cubical Karen. Go figure.

I have a new personal record in the 100-yard dash. I’m up to 47 yards. (meme as found)

Affirmative Action (Duke Power, 1971, for example): Forcing quotas over competence, the Supreme Court’s decision diluted merit. Companies hired to check boxes, not build bridges. A 2022 study found 30% of firms reported lower productivity post-DEI mandates. 30%. If diversity is our strength, I’m not sure who “our” refers to when we’re forced to play diversity bingo.
Mass Immigration: Here’s the killing blow. Since 1973, legal and illegal immigration flooded the West. There were 2.5 million border crossings in 2024 alone and those are the numbers that they’ll admit to, which we know are low. Now add in the Islamification of Europe, where France is nearly a Caliphate and the Germans keep going to work in order to pay for the illegals that flocked to them. Most don’t integrate. Imagine the farce: Mexican banners at California ICE protests where they tried to stop ICE from arresting underage illegals busy in the process of harvesting illegal (federally) marijuana. Can we be honest and just admit that immigration is not at all about joining the West, it’s about exploiting it.

Imagine, it only took 44 hours for the police to completely clear Martha’s Vineyard of illegals. (meme as found)

Immigration, though, is the dealbreaker because it changes the people. And everything is downstream of who the people are: culture, politics, and even PEZ®.

In 1973, a near-minimum-wage earner could buy a median home for $32,500, which was about five times the average annual wage. Today, that median home costs a stunning $412,300, ten times the average wage.

Why? Illegals depress wages. Back in 1973, a high school grad could pull a great job in construction. But even since 1990, construction wages have dropped 15% in real terms.

Illegals also drain services: illegal immigration costs taxpayers $150 billion annually (FAIR 2024), siphoning wealth like a cuckoo bird stealing the nest for its own young rather than for those that built it in the first place.

If it takes a village to raise a child, I guess it takes a vineyard to raise a cat? (meme as found)

The GloboLeft insists “diversity is our strength,” but Pew’s 2019 study shows diverse communities have less trust. Many immigrants—legal or not—don’t assimilate and have no desire to assimilate. Ever. Many (not all!) second and third-generation Mexicans in California wave foreign flags because they’re only here for the gold, not the goose and, in fact, despise the goose.

Meanwhile, families, the nucleus of Western civilization, struggle. Low wages and high costs mean fewer kids—Europe’s at 1.5 fertility, which means that, pretty soon, the Swedish Bikini Team™ will have mustaches and be wearing burkas. As we often repeat, the future is there for those who show up.

The West’s prosperity had nothing to do with luck. It was culture.

Discipline, merit, family, forged in Athens, Rome, and 1930s Detroit. The GloboLeft’s dogma remains one based in hate for the West: open borders, DEI, and reviling of every bit of the culture that creates wealth.

They’d rather pluck the goose than protect it, and be happy with the result.

But the goose isn’t dead yet.

Bleeding? Yes.

In a state that’s getting worse every day? Also yes.

Is it worse than most people think? Absolutely. It is a dire point we find ourselves at.

But one thing I’ve seen when I read about Western Civilization is this: every time it looks bleak, and it looks like the flame of what we stand for is in danger of getting extinguished, people become firm and take that stand. And we win because we’re fighting, at the core, not for an economic idea but for the Truth, the Beautiful, and the Good.

I think, in part, it’s because it’s not magic dirt. It’s in us, and this rallying from near defeat is what makes us who we are, what drives us to make civilizations, to make the golden goose, again and again.

You know, that even inspires me. Almost gives me goose bumps.

The Emperor’s Old Lies: Breaking The Programming With Bikini Pic

“How will the emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy?” – Star Wars

I remember a few years ago when the school called me and said my son had been telling lies. “Tell him he’s pretty good, because all of my kids have graduated.”

The Emperor’s New Clothes is an 1837 very short fable written by Hans Christian Anderson, and I’ll give a quick reminder of what the story is about, since if you’re like me, third grade was a long time ago, even if I had to repeat it three times.

In a kingdom obsessed with dressing like a Kardashian on crack, Emperor Vain McFancypants struts around changing his outfit ever hour. Yet, he’s craving the ultimate outfit.

Enter two shady tailors who decide that there is money to be made here. They tell the emperor that they can make the ultimate outfit for him, something that would make Madonna blush. Not only that, but the clothes are so finely woven that they’d be invisible to dumb people.

They “weave” invisible fabric, and the emperor, too proud to admit he sees nothing, agrees that it looks great. His court, a bunch of yes-men terrified of looking as dumb as a host on The View, rave about the nonexistent outfit. The tailors mime stitching, cutting, and fitting, while the emperor is basically walking around in his royal skivvies.

Deciding that everyone deserves to see this new outfit, the Emperor decides to have a parade so people can see how cool his new threads are. Come parade day, he struts through town, buck-naked but confident, flexing for the crowd. Townsfolk, brainwashed by hype and not wanting to look stupid, cheer like it’s the return of Elvis.

How do the seven dwarves welcome Snow White? “Heigh Ho.”

But then, a kid, immune to nonsense, yells, “Why is the emperor walking around naked? It’s not a good look, dad.” The crowd gasps, realizing they’ve been simping for a streaker. The emperor, red-faced but committed, keeps posing, and pretending because he doesn’t see a way out.

Imagine attending a company training session filled with bobbleheads from HR. One of them opens up with “diversity is our strength.”

A lone man raises his hand and says, “Actually, studies show diverse communities have less trust.”

Silence.

Then gasps. Someone faints. The HR bobblehead sputters, “That’s not in the script!”

Welcome to the Emperor’s New Lies. Here, objective truth is banned, and the narrative is supported at all costs, since without believing that the weavers of the narrative are infallible, everyone will see that the GloboLeft is more naked than Charity over at stage three.

Boy, the GloboLeft has really lost the plot – it’s now more offensive to talk about getting into Sydney Sweeney’s genes than about getting into her jeans.

What is their great effort? The GloboLeft and GloboLeftElite have spent decades weaving lies about race, diversity, and culture and even denying that the Truth, Beauty, and Good exist. Thankfully, Truth, Beauty, and Good can’t be stopped no matter how many HR manuals they throw at it.

The GloboLeft’s playbook is straight from Hans Christian Andersen. They’ve ruled objective reality off-limits. The game is simple:

deny the truth,
deflect the evidence,
obscure the problem,
then 404 their brains when cornered and forced to confront that The Narrative is a lie.

Let’s talk about something simple and non-controversial: black-on-white violence.

FBI’s 2023 crime stats don’t lie: blacks, 13% of the U.S. population, commit 54% of murders. Black-on-white violent crime is 15 times higher than white-on-black, per DOJ’s 2019 data.

Step one: GloboLeft denies it. “Crime’s colorblind!” they scream, ignoring the numbers.
Step two: when you shove the stats in their face, they say, “Data doesn’t show a problem.”
Step three: when you pin them down, they wave hands— “It’s systemic racism! We need to solve the root cause!” Never mind we’ve spent $33 trillion since LBJ’s Great Society, with black poverty rates barely budging (12.3% in 1965, 11.6% in 2023).
Step four: they 404—mental shutdown, change the subject, ban the badthinker from the Internet because they think every pit bull is the same as a poodle.

Every pistol looks like it’s Austrian to me. My doctor said I have Glock-oma.

But, this isn’t just about race. It’s the GloboLeft script for every inconvenient truth:

“Diversity is our strength”: Pew’s 2019 study says diverse communities have lower social cohesion and trust. Homogeneous societies like Japan score higher on happiness. Yet the GloboLeft pushes open borders, forced classroom integration, and ensuring that everyone has the right to be near white people, ignoring the chaos.

“White people are racist”: A 2021 YouGov poll found Western countries (U.S., UK) are the least racist globally—Asians and Africans score higher on bias. But, the GloboLeft calls anyone who notices a bigot.

“Whites are the majority”: Whites are barely 8% of the global population, yet built modern science, literature, industry, programming and, yes, PEZ©. The GloboLeft ignores this, painting whites as oppressors.

I’m writing a book about Nordic cultures, but I don’t know if I’ll make it to the Finnish.

“Women have no disadvantage in sports”: Transgender men dominate women’s sports whenever they compete against real women. “Lia” Thomas won the NCAA swimming title in 2022, despite swimming that would be mediocre for a male. Biology is real, but the GloboLeft calls it transphobic.

“No biological intelligence differences exist”: Decades of IQ studies (e.g., Herrnstein & Murray, 1994) show consistent group differences, shaped by 70,000 years of differential adaptation in every climate on the planet. And, the GloboLeft would say that the only thing that was exactly the same across humans everywhere is the brain.

“Whites aren’t native to the U.S.”: A Muslim born in London to Pakistani parents claims “native British” status, but whites born in America aren’t? The GloboLeft says only brown people get homelands.

Where’s the capital of Zimbabwe? In a Swiss bank account.

“All cultures are equal”: If so, why do millions flee India, Mexico, and Nigeria for the West? Transparency International’s 2024 Corruption Index ranks them 93, 126, 145 out of 180. I guess the West’s not perfect, but it’s also not Lagos.

The GloboLeft’s narrative isn’t about truth—it’s about control. They need you to buy the Emperor’s invisible clothes to keep power. Admitting black crime stats, diversity’s costs, or biological realities risks their house of cards. So they lie, deflect, and allow their brains to lock up, hoping you’ll shut up.

Why?

Because the West is built on the True, the Beautiful, and the Good. From Athens’ logic to Edison’s bulb, we thrived by facing reality. The GloboLeft has a different dogma where there is no objective reality. This crumbles under scrutiny. They’ve spent $33 trillion on “root causes” since 1965, yet crime is up, trust is down, and borders are sieves. Their narrative is a scam, like selling a VCR in 2025 and calling it cutting-edge.

A 2024 Rasmussen poll found 68% of Americans reject “diversity is strength”: they now see the Emperor’s old lies for what they are. Gen Z’s waking up, especially the boys, sharing memes that cut through The Narrative. Every stat, every study, every viral post chips away at their narrative.

The West’s waking up, and it’s not asking permission. And it’s not pretending to see clothes that aren’t there.

The West’s Forgotten Victory: Why They Hate Vienna

“What’ll we drink to? Let’s drink to victory!” – LOTR, The Return of the King

Did the Ottoman Empire export sultan pepper?

One of the things I’ve learned about history is that they skip all of the really good parts. I recall my time as a leader in that well known paramilitary organization, Boy Scouting® (back when they were boys and they were doing scouting). On occasion the boys would mention some historical event, and I’d go into more detail: the Battle of Britain, the Revolutionary War, heck, even the Romans.

We’d talk through history. Then, when the subject was done, invariably one of the scouts would say, “Man, that’s interesting! Why don’t they teach that in school?”

Well, because you’re watching Frozen or Shrek instead so your teacher can sleep of a hangover and your textbooks prefer pronouns to Patton.

Who knew that campfire coffee mixed so well with history?

What do you get when you cross a polar bear and a seal? A polar bear.

The nice thing is that there are still subjects that I learn about. Namely, 9/11.

Oh, this isn’t the story of that 9/11. This is the story of September 11, 1683. And I believe that it’s a story that the muslim world has yet to get over.

It’s September 11, 1683.

Not a date I learned in school, but it should have been. In the history of the Western world, it isn’t even that far back. Isaac Newton was busy figuring out the delicate ballet of the spheres in the heavens, and Oliver Cromwell’s head was still busy rotting on a pike in London.

But this is in Vienna, the heart of the Holy Roman Empire

Vienna on this date is surrounded by 300,000 Ottoman Turks. Think illegal aliens but with scimitars and an even more unintelligible language without any Juan being able to understand it.

My great-grandfather was a wigmaker, so now I have an antique family hairloom.

Vienna is down to 15,000 defenders. They’re starving and outnumbered 20-to-1, so why not just give in? The Turks are promising they’ll be treated well. Thankfully, the Turks had tried this line with another city in Austria that actually did surrender. The Turks had laid siege to the town of Perchtoldsdorf (gesundheit), and promised all the inhabitants would be spared and that the city would not be sacked.

When they surrendered, the city was sacked and the vast majority of inhabitants were killed or enslaved. That’s good, because now the people at Vienna knew exactly what sort of devil they were dealing with.

What sort of devil was it? It was the Ottomans, led by Kara Mustafa, who are determined to own Europe, turning cathedrals into mosques, and making the West kneel to the Turks and to their god.

I’ve heard that the Council for American-Islamic Relations says there is no room for violent extremists within American mosques. They did announce they have a waiting list, however.

Sound familiar? It’s the kind of existential threat the GloboLeft pretends never existed, because “white culture” is always the bad guy in their revisionist fairy tales. In looking at European history, this was a Very Big Deal, and yet it’s glossed over or (in my case) never even mentioned in class. I think that it’s because the story didn’t end the way the anti-Western Civilization establishment that had taken control of education wanted it to end.

The defenders didn’t yield even a square inch (3.3 millicamels) of the city of Vienna. Instead they held the walls through two months of hell. Disease, cannon fire, Ottoman sappers blowing tunnels under the city. They went through summer, and now were hungry, and they were praying for a miracle.

Enter the relief force arriving on September 11^th. 47,000 Germans and Austrians with 20,000 or 30,000 Poles. Most famously, King John III Sobieski of Poland, leading the Poles, including the Winged Hussars. The Winged Hussars were an insane calvary force comprised of big, husky Poles on huge horses, wearing lion and tiger pelts over their armor with huge eagle wings and 19-foot-long lances, four pistols each, swords and war hammers.

To be clear, this is exactly what I would have drawn when I was six.

Before the attack, the Vizier of the Ottomans heard the thud of the Polish war drums. “I don’t like the sound of that.” The Poles responded, “Oh, he’s not our regular drummer.”

On September 12, Sobieski’s cavalry charges down Kahlenberg Hill, breaking the Ottoman lines like a velociraptor in a room full of puppies. By nightfall, the Turks had abandoned everything. Everything. The were trying to get back to Istanbul before it could be re-named Constantinople. are running, leaving 15,000 dead and the Ottoman Empire’s dreams in the dust with the single largest military defeat in their history to date.

Sobieski’s letter home after the battle is amazing, and recommended reading (LINK).

Vienna is saved.

Europe is saved.

The West lives to fight another day.

The Siege of Vienna wasn’t just a win: it was a philosophical line in the sand. Faith fueled those defenders. Faith in God, in their people, in the idea that the West was worth saving. It’s in the first lines in Sobieski’s letter to his wife:

How Praised be our Lord God forever for granting our nation such a victory and such glory as was never heard of in all times past!

Contrast that with despair, the kind the GloboLeft peddles today: “Western culture’s evil, dismantle it because it is worse than (whatever their pet culture is today).”

I heard that Mozart is in his grave, de-composing.

Vienna’s men didn’t negotiate with Kara Mustafa; they fought. More than that, they chose to fight there. They believed in something bigger than themselves: their family, their faith, and their civilization. That’s the code that built the West, from Athens to Rome to Vienna.

The GloboLeft hates this story. They want history rewritten. Sobieski’s a “colonizer,” the Hussars are “problematic.” They’d have you believe the Ottomans were just misunderstood diversity consultants.

Hollywood™ is no help in 2025, obviously: they churn out preachers of pronouns, not legends with lances. The 1683 defenders didn’t care about your feelings; they cared about survival. That’s the difference between faith and despair, valor and cowardice. They want us to forget Vienna because it proves the West’s worth fighting for. The Siege of Vienna shows what happens when men believe in something and act.

History rhymes, and because it does Vienna is a warning and I think there is no mistake in the choice of the date for the attack on the Twin Towers, they’re still stinging from the defeat. The defenders weren’t perfect. Some were drunks, some mercenaries, but they stood together. And the relief force had a clear vision of what they were fighting for. Back to John III’s letter:

There is a huge pile of captured flags and tents; in short, the enemy has departed with nothing whatever but his life. Let Christendom rejoice and thank the Lord our God that he has not permitted the heathen to hold us up to scorn and derision and to ask, “Where, now, is your God?”

So next September 11, remember what happened on September 12.

One Page At A Time

“Then I shall die as one of them!” – LOTR, The Two Towers

I never trust what a minotaur says. Half of it is always bull.

It’s cold outside. I can see that in how crisp and clear the air is. The big picture window in the cabin up on Wilder Mountain lets my young eyes see a mile, looking for the headlights on a dim winter morning.

The bus rounds the corner, and I head off. Burt, the driver, is rarely off on time by more than a minute or two. I’m the farthest kid out, and he starts rounding up the school kids with me.

“Hi Burt!”

“Morning, John.”

Since I’m in middle school, and I’m the first on, I tromp my winter boots all way to the back of the bus. That’s where the cool kids sit. I remember the first day I decided to sit back here. Since I was the first on, there was no one to stop me, so I decided to break the norm of the past few years and just sit there.

I was in sixth grade, and the high school freshman started to object when he got on. He didn’t finish the sentence. If he would have asked me to move, my answer would have been short.

“Make me.”

I didn’t have to. Even in sixth grade, I was bigger than him.

But I lived so far out that most of the time, I had the entire back of the bus to myself.

So instead of a long, boring bus ride, I decided I’d do something else. Like take a trip to Mordor. Or fight bugs with Johnny Rico. Or figure the best way to ambush a troop of Sardaukar. Or take a trip to Boulder after Captain Trips paid a visit.

One group of web developers likes finding bugs in their work: spiders.

The bus isn’t a ride, it’s a journey through the past that never was and the future that never will be. It was, metaphorically, my campfire, and these books were the ways that storytellers of my people could share the legends that shape humanity.

In part, these are the legends that shape me, just like our ancestors learned valor and cowardice from tales told under starlit skies in long-ago Sparta and Denmark and Scotland and Rome.

Stories aren’t just entertainment. They are the code that programmed humanity and fueled the creation of Western Civilization. Warriors heard of Achilles’ courage and the hubris of Icarus, learning to strive for glory and wear a parachute if they were going to fly too close to the Sun.

Is a monk with wings an air friar?

Kids grew up on fables of clever foxes and lazy hares, etching lessons of wit and work into their bones. These weren’t bedtime stories: they were survival guides and cultural norms, showcasing the best of what we could be and the worst that we should avoid at all costs. Both lessons are useful.

My bus ride was no different. Tolkien’s Christian valor, never naming Christ but screaming His Truths three different ways through Frodo, Aragorn, and Gandalf lit a fire in me. Heinlein’s musings on duty versus freedom made me question what I owed my community, and what it owed me. Those pages were my elders, whispering truths no teacher could match, even though they were sometimes quite contradictory.

Stories aren’t just ink on paper, they’re the software that nourishes our souls. Throughout history, they’ve been the mirror showing us who we are, who we could be, who we should avoid being, and what the journeys of the hero really meant.

The Greeks had Odysseus, outsmarting cyclopes to get home to his family valor in action, and the aforementioned Icarus, flying too high and crashing, a warning against arrogance. Norse kids heard of Thor’s hammer, inspiring strength, but also Loki’s betrayal, a caution against deceit. But you should ignore that, because I’ve heard from the news media that there is no white culture.

I would never download a copy of Homer’s Iliad. I hear it’s full of Trojans.

These archetypes stuck because they’re shades of the universal Truth: every boy wants to grow up to be the man who is a hero, not the coward who folds. My bus ride library was no campfire, but it did the same job. Tolkien taught me sacrifice, Frodo carrying the One Ring, knowing it’d break him, but doing it anyway. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers hit me with duty: you don’t get a vote unless you’re willing to bleed for it because sooner or later someone will.

Harsh? Sure. But it made me think, heroes sometimes falter, freedom isn’t free, and communities aren’t built by loners.

Even Dune’s Paul Atreides, wrestling with destiny and betrayal, showed me the weight of leadership. These weren’t just stories; they were blueprints for being a man, not a drone.

The GloboLeft hates this. They want stories that flatten everything into DEI dogma. No heroes, no villains, just victims and oppressors, any woman being equal in combat to the strongest man.

They’d rewrite Tolkien so Frodo’s a non-binary climate activist, and Heinlein’s troopers would be whining about microaggressions and wanting to use Zoom™ instead of a dropship. You can see it in the box office: their stories don’t inspire; they control exist as humiliation exercises. Look at modern Hollywood: every film is a lecture, not a legend. No wonder kids scroll InstaChat® instead of reading. They’re starved for tales that stir the soul, not the HR manual and they haven’t even been given the words to tell us this – the video game is as close as they come to the myths that make a culture.

Does Beowulf get two thumbs up? Not from Grendel.

Stories work because they show us the extremes, the valor to chase, the cowardice to shun. Take Beowulf: he faced Grendel head-on, no excuses. I read that one in high school, and loved it. I thought, “This is amazing. Our ancestors were heavy metal badasses two thousand years before electric guitars were a thing.”

Beowulf is the guy you want to be, not the prol cowering in the mead hall.

My bus ride heroes were no different. Tolkien’s Aragorn didn’t negotiate with orcs. He killed them.

Heinlein’s Johnnie Rico in Starship Troopers learned civic duty the hard way, bugs don’t care about your feelings, and when they kill your mother, well, they’ve sent a message that you simply must respond to.

Stand up, protect your own, don’t bend.

I guess they use Mordor oil.

From what I’ve seen, GenZ didn’t take too many bus rides with Tolkien, they’ve got TikGram™. Schools push “diversity” over duty, “equity” over excellence. The campfire’s gone, replaced by screens spewing shadows, not legends.

To be clear, the GloboLeft wants it that way. But stories still matter, and, I think, you can see Gen Z starting to rise, especially among the boys. And that’s important: they’re how we pass on the code.

Tell the kids stories. Real stories, not Modern Disney©. Make them read 1984, and Tolkien. And Beowulf.

Every tale’s a seed, planting valor and weeding out cowardice, because at some point every man needs to be able to say the two most important words a man can say:

“Make me.”

We Already Know The Solutions, We Only Lack The Will

“Because I saved your whatever-it-is that was safely hidden before you dropped a Hellfire missile on it.” – The Mummy (2017)

Google™ is female. It won’t even let me finish a sentence without making suggestions.

I’m stuck in a conference room that smells like stale donuts and broken dreams.

Okay, that sounds like a detective novel that ends up with the hot dame double-crossing the private dick over the insurance money and a bottle of bourbon, but that’s not this post. Really, it’s just a business meeting and the meeting is done. But since everybody in the building knows each other, the meeting is in the lingering phase where we’re solving all the problems of the world.

Apropos of nothing, I say, “You know, 37% of the elderly have been taken advantage of by foreign scammers.” I have no idea if this is true, but it’s very specific. I pause. “That means that there are 63% who are still available to be scammed, so if we’re not millionaires, it’s our own fault.”

How did we clear bingo parlors in North Vietnam? B-52.

The reality though, really does piss me off. Americans lost $12.5 billion in 2024. These aren’t just Nigerian princes with emails littered with the comical spelling errors, no they are also slick Mumbai call centers with intense marketing campaigns. I had heard an estimate (that I can’t find) indicating that upwards of 80,000 Indians worked in these call centers, all laughing as they entice American grandmas to go to Target™ to get gift cards.

It actually does make me quite mad.

I lean forward, fed up.

“The solution is and always has been dead simple. The NSA has these call centers mapped down to their curry orders and can tell you the last time Gupta changed his underwear. They know where they are. Trump could launch a BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missile carrying 1,000 pounds of high explosive tomorrow into a call center. Turn it into rubble. Get on TV and say, ‘Another missile is on the way. Shut down the scam call centers.’

“When they don’t, another missile hits. Trump gets back on the TV. ‘Another one tomorrow. And the day after? We shut India off of the Internet and satellite communications. We mine the harbors. Your choice.’ The world would be stunned. The calls would stop.”

One of my friends said, “Well, that escalated quickly.”

No, it didn’t. It was and is the obvious solution. It could stop tomorrow if someone had the spine.

I hate it when my friend tells me about going to chiropractic school. Too much backstory.

Since Trump took office, he’s shown what spine looks like (with the exception of the Epstein papers). His border policies, travel bans, and tariffs weren’t just talk he did what he promised and got a rare federal budget surplus in June due to them. This is unlike every other empty suit before him who campaigned on “tough on (drugs, crime, illegals)” then promptly developed amnesia on day one in the Oval Office.

Our problems: drugs, terror, illegals, scams, and more all have simple fixes. The only thing missing is the will to implement the solution.

We’ve got a laundry list of messes, and the solutions are the first thing you’d think of if you weren’t a spineless bureaucrat.

Drug Trafficking: Cartels pump fentanyl across the border, killing 100,000 Americans yearly.

Solution: Deploy the military to the border, treat cartels as enemy combatants. Drone strikes with AGM-114 Hellfire missiles slamming into stash houses or cartel overlord’s haciendas, streamed live by the White House at the top of each and every hour for a week, and I imagine that getting drugs across the border will be the least of the concern of what remains of the cartels.

Repeat as necessary.

Remember, for an orphan, any back of chips is “family sized”.

Terrorism: A stronger immigration screening policy and 9/11 would never have occurred.

Solution: Denaturalize radical aliens and ship them home. Make Somalians in Minnesota Somalians in Somalia again, and then sink any boat leaving Somali. Deport or detain without apology.

Illegal Aliens: Millions of illegals cost taxpayers $150 billion annually—schools, hospitals, welfare. Their foreign culture and zero desire to assimilate pushes the country onto the path of Civil War.

Solution: Arrest the CEO of any company employing illegals. Sentence for the C-Suite? A year for each illegal employed. Create Wilder’s Square Mile: a square mile, fenced camp on the border with Mexico. Illegals found will be dropped off there until processed, like an AirBNB® with no Wi-Fi. The border with Mexico is open, so they can leave if they want to. If the illegals don’t leave? Seize all of their assets – bank accounts, sneakers, cars, houses, anything they own is forfeit. End sanctuary cities with federal troops. One mayor in custody for insurrection, others comply.

I opened a sanctuary for large marine mammals: Habitat for Huge Manatees.

Is all of this Constitutional?

Well, most of it, probably. Thomas Jefferson set the precedent in 1801. Barbary Pirates, Muslim slavers and pirates from North Africa raided U.S. ships, enslaved sailors, and demanded tribute from our new nation. Jefferson, fresh in office, said “Enough, bitches.” Or something like that. But he had a secret weapon: Article II, Section 2 makes the president commander-in-chief to protect American interests.

Jefferson sent the USS Constitution to blast Tripoli’s ports, no Congress needed, and the Marines get a line in their song. By 1805, the pirates begged for peace, “Please, just don’t send more of those Marines!”

All of the above echo Jefferson: act fast, hit hard, protect the Actual Americans. The Constitution’s fine with it; only spineless elites disagree.

Why then, do these problems persist?

Here’s the dirty secret: the elites don’t really want to solve these problems. The solutions aren’t hard, literally your first instinct, the first thing you think of is the thing that will work.

Drugs? Blow up a cartel. Terror? Sink a boat. Illegals? Deport ‘em, jail anyone who employs them. Scams? Missiles to Mumbai.

So, why aren’t these problems solved? In some cases, it’s because politicians are gutless and don’t want to anger India. I don’t care much about what India thinks, but that’s another post.

In other cases, there’s a collusion of the darkest motives of our political system. Illegals? The Chamber of Commerce crowd wants cheap labor to pluck chickens and make beds, wanting the TradRight to not take action. The GloboLeft love that the illegals swarm to states that vote Blue, and increase the number of members of Congress that come from, say, California.

My friend’s ex-wife asked if she could stay with him because she’s afraid because a stalker has been coming to her house. She’s going to save him quite a bit in gas money.

The dame walks into my office – she’s got a pair of thirty-eights, and a pistol, too. I could smell perfume that cost more than I made in a month as she walked in.

“John Wilder, I hear you’re a P.I. who . . . solves problems.”

“I sure am, sweetheart.”

I mean, I’ve found that you can solve almost any problem in the world with only three BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missile carrying 1,000 pounds of high explosive.

It Came From . . . Patriotism

“Freedom!” – Braveheart

“The most difficult thing about being humble is not being able to brag about it.” – George S. Patton

Housekeeping: We should be a go on podcast tomorrow night, though I’m on the fence on a Friday post, as I just might take the day off.

I’ll change things up a bit due to Fourth of July (or as it’s known in the metric world “Friday”), and have a slightly different take on films this month – patriotic films. In this, I don’t necessarily confine the patriots in question to entirely American patriots – I do allow some room for a couple of films that show patriotism from other cultures. These are in something of an order, but don’t put too much on that. Let’s just say the easiest to include on the list are first, and the ones that just barely made it are at the bottom.

I will say, I liked the way the A.I. posters turned out this time.

So, here are my top 10 patriotic movies:

No man could salute like Patton. At least, no human man.

Patton

George S. Patton knew he was going to be a general in the United States Army from when he was a child. He lived that life to become the enigma that George C. Scott portrayed perfectly on screen. Patton wanted glory, but also was personally filled with bravery and admired the men who displayed it. Patton was for an America ruled by Americans, and was willing to lead hundreds of thousands of men to capture 82,000 square miles (6.3 megaliters) of Europe and capturing nearly a million enemy soldiers.

No matter how he tried to retire, they kept dragging him back in.

The Patriot

How could I skip this movie? Well, I couldn’t. The United States wasn’t given to Americans, it was willed into existence by men such as the one played by St. Mel of Gibson in this film. Interestingly (to me at least), the main character is pulled into military service not because of his zeal to kick the British out of the colonies. Nope. His motivation is personal – his son being killed by a British officer untouchable by justice.

If he had been born in 1970, he’d have been William Wallace, Guardian of Scotland and Walmart® greeter.

Braveheart

I warned you that not all films would show strictly American patriotism, and this one chronicles the life of William Wallace, the Scottish rebel who fought against England to attempt to free Scotland. He failed to free Scotland, but it wasn’t long afterwards that Robert the Bruce did lead my ancestors against my other ancestors to win freedom. Braveheart clocks in at somewhere close to three hours, but doesn’t seem that long. A good film, and St. Mel again chews up the scenery.

Is that a French submarine surrendering?

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

One of my favorite movies. A captain, very well played by Russell Crowe takes his ship on a journey to fight the French, who only surrendered once in this film. This line, about Lord Nelson tells the tale: “The second time… The second time he told me a story… about how someone offered him a boat cloak on a cold night. And he said no, he didn’t need it. That he was quite warm. His zeal for his king and country kept him warm. I know it sounds absurb, and were it from another man, you’d cry out “Oh, what pitiful stuff” and dismiss it as mere enthusiasm. But with Nelson… you felt your heart glow.”

The Soviets weren’t expecting what they got when they parachuted into Henson, Colorado.

Red Dawn

1984 was Reagan’s year. He had made it clear that the United States would stand toe-to-toe with the Soviet Union, and would win. At that point, the country was together much more so than now, and you can see it in the vote total Ronnie got for re-election. A movie like Red Dawn was a slam dunk – plucky American teenagers being insurgent guerillas against an invading multicultural force of commies. Huh – that was back when we could sense danger, I guess.

Well, I guess we know what they serve there now.

300

Submit? To you? Here? In Sparta? No. Because . . . This. Is. Sparta. Leonidas fought against all odds to contain the Persian horde from entering Greece because that’s patriotism. Did he die? Yes. Gloriously. So gloriously that he’ll be remembered in 10,000 years. I think that’s how long the A.I.’s memory cache will last.

I can hear Kenny Loggins now, singing about Maverick after he lost his pilot’s license, “I waited in the loading zone . . . “

Top Gun: Maverick

I found this a much better film than the original. I always thought the original was boy meets girl, but with fighter jets. Here? It’s all about the mission. And Tom Cruise flying that F-14 Tomcat one last time before Social Security kicks in.

“Houston, we seem to have two more problems.”

Apollo 13

Not all patriotic films have to do with war, and Apollo 13 is a good example. The movie is about Americans fighting to win the Space Race and get to the Moon. Oh, we did that already? NASA has made it boring? Well, let’s see how they do if their ship explodes while they’re the farthest away from Earth that anyone besides a few other Americans have been. Excellently plotted, filmed, and told by an ensemble cast of great actors led by Tom Hanks, it’s a movie I can just start watching from any point and enjoy.

Wonder how this would have gone if all the characters were played by Tom Cruise, like some old Peter Sellers movie?

Saving Private Ryan Cruise

This one was the last on my list. I’m not sure why. It does feature the everyman (Hanks) who sacrificed everything because that’s what the orders said to do. It features the shared burden of that sacrifice on those who survive. It’s stunningly filmed, and, though the story drags a bit in the middle, is tense. I think that the reason that it’s here is that it’s the film I’d simply be least likely to re-watch of all of these. YMMV.

If this was a top 10 list – it is one shy. I left room for one I missed or didn’t think about.

What did I miss? Other notable films that nearly made the list include: Midway, We Were Soldiers, The Green Berets, Gettysburg, and Gods and Generals. Gettysburg honestly had the best chance, but I would have had to watch it again, and the movie lasts about 74 hours, or two hours longer than the battle itself. I kid. It’s 271 minutes, or 27.1 metric hours.

The Three Horsemen and One Bikini of the Apocalypse

“Apocalypse cow? Apocalypse wow!” – The Tick (2001)

I love this joke like there’s no tomorrow.

I. Job Replacement.
The Multicultural West.
The Fiat Financial House of Cards.
Sydney Sweeny’s bikini.

Each of these, if dealt with on its own, presents a danger as great as being between Gavin Newsom and a camera. But it is likely something we could work through as a country peacefully. Heck, maybe even two of the three, though that’s difficult, and history has the receipts:

For example, when the United States was a nation, we worked through the Great Depression. The Great Depression was likely brought about at the fundamental level from the transformation of the nation from an agrarian society driven by horsepower to a manufacturing colossus driven by iron, steam, and electricity. Sort of if A.I. were cars and assembly line production, but covered in tasty Radium®.

If a radioactive spider makes Spiderman®, would a radioactive dog create Doberman®?

Of course there was a finance side of the Great Depression. It was egged on by a stock market mania, margin credit, and the optimism brought about by new technology. Stocks never go down, right? That creates a bumpy road for a bit. But, as we were a singular people, we got through it.

I mean, the single bloodiest war in human history counted as a bit of a bumpy road, right?

We also dealt with multi-cultural forces in America in our history.

First, the founders only allowed in Western Europeans,
Second by fighting, defeating, and corralling Indians (some of them are still sore about this),
And, finally, by blocking out many non-Western Europeans with the Immigration Act of 1924 since we already had the recipes for all their good food.

1924 was when we as a nation realized that we were getting too much “diversity” too quickly and saw that certain groups of foreigners couldn’t or wouldn’t assimilate and never be Americans. We dealt with that in a calm manner and got picky and sorted diversity like a bouncer at a cartel nightclub. We maintained (for a time) the basic ethnic makeup of the United States – we didn’t throw them out, but we made sure we’d outnumber them.

I wonder if he and his siblings were born apart?

We dealt with fiat currency in the wake of the Revolutionary War victory when the phrase “isn’t worth a Continental” referred to the money printing excesses that led to the Constitutional Convention and the Constitutional clause of “No state shall coin money, emit bills of credit, or make any thing but cold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts.” The nation survived, though it did end up changing our form of government entirely.

Lincoln floated fake cash during the Civil War to pay for it, and that could arguably be said to have started “The Long Depression” – a hangover period from 1873-1896 as we vomited out all of that fiat money. The Long Depression was also exacerbated by the transition of the American manufacturing from craftsmen to big factories.

The establishment of the Federal Reserve Bank™ followed by Nixon ignoring the clear intent of that clause in 1971 led to the crack-up we see today. Money, gold and silver, has been replaced by cash which is too expensive to print – we can just use ones and zeroes.

I’ve written about all of these three separately, and for the most part, we as a nation were able to make it through, but it’s important that we realize that we’re dealing with all three of these leading to a crisis right now when we are observably no longer a nation.

The ICE agent in Los Angeles needs National Guard and Marine protection for their anxiety, I heard on the news. Something about his panic attacks.

The first is A.I. It has already been a steamroller that has eliminated tens of thousands of jobs. I would expect that soon enough it will be hundreds of thousands. Recently, I called up my bank to do some banking. The transaction wasn’t unique, it probably happens thousands of times a day. The person I was talking to, “Mitch” had a perfect Midwestern accent. What tipped me off was that “Mitch” didn’t connect the reason for the error to the resolution. “Mitch” transferred me to “Anna” because he wasn’t authorized to grant a request.

“Anna” had, of course, the thickest Indian accent – the kind that is so poorly pronounced that it is nearly unintelligible if fast. Her actual name was probably something like Ananneedanothasylabble-Ganish-Prajeeta. At that moment that the smart Midwestern dude transfers the call to a barely verbal woman in Ramamamadingpoopabad, I realized that Mitch was an A.I.

As an anon mentioned on my last post on A.I., “Think about all of the Indian scammers out there today . . . Now think about what happens if AI wipes out most of the call center and coding jobs causing most of India’s 1.3 billion people to be out of work. It’s going to get ugly.” He had a point. A.I. is going to make it too expensive to pay Indians pennies a day just to steal money from old ladies. This is India’s worst nightmare.

I always wondered how you got down from an elephant, then Pa Wilder told me that you get down from a goose.

This scenario requires no Artificial Superintelligence. This requires only the application of existing capabilities. Said differently: ChatGPT 4.0® already has an I.Q. greater than three-quarters of the Subcontinent.

This has implications, but match it with the house of cards that is the world financial system. That thing was already strained tighter than Syndey Sweeney’s bikini holding in the all the printed money flooding in from the United States and the world. A country like India, unable to feed all the Indians, will collapse. No jobs. No prospects of jobs.

Though the research for tonight was fun.

But it will be, perhaps, worst in the West. On top of the economic dislocation of the A.I. Revolution, on top of the piles of fake money, we are not even a people.

The latest riots in L.A. have proven that out. Most of the “immigrants” that have come to “enrich” us have actually come to replace us. That’s their goal. You can watch on the news the Pakistanis fighting the Indians over which of them has the best claim to London. You can watch young men of military age strutting in Los Angeles with the flags of foreign countries like a U.N. parade, but somehow worse. You can read posts on X® or even Reddit©: they are not here to assimilate – they are here to conquer and take over.

This adds the final layer of instability required to ensure that the United States and the whole of the West is facing the direst crisis since the threats to Europe that were ended at the Battle of Tours in 732, or the Battle of Vienna in 1683.

This level of crisis is graver than any the West has faced in over 340 years, if not greater. Whatever comes out of this will be different.

Thankfully, we still have all the tasty Radium™ you can eat!

Nine Futures: The Most Dangerous Post You’ll Read This Week

“This is great stuff. I could make a career out of this guy. You see how clever his part is? How it doesn’t require a shred of proof? Most paranoid delusions are intricate, but this is brilliant!” – The Terminator

If you press your accelerator and brake at the same time, your car takes a screenshot. (All memes as-found.)

I’ve written a lot about A.I. recently because A.I. is changing so rapidly. It’s the most important story, period, right now assuming that Iran/Israel is the nothingburger it has been for, oh, forty years. Interesting note: Israel and Iran both have zero Walmarts™, though they have plenty of Targets©.

Back to A.I.

The capabilities of A.I. are changing by orders of magnitude every year – we don’t appear to be even close to topping out on either computing power available or on the improvements possible in the algorithms that produce the results. Short version, there is more processing available by more than 5x every year, and less to process since the algorithms are more efficient by more than 5x every year. It’s the equivalent of having a $1.50 in late 2019 turn into over $1,000 in early 2023.

If you just follow the straight lines that are implied by these improvements, A.I. will be an artificial general intelligence (A.G.I.) by 2027. The guy who got the Nobel® prize for A.I. has started “getting his affairs in order” because he thinks that not only will we get A.G.I. by 2027, but we’ll get Artificial Super Intelligence (A.S.I.) by 2030 or 2031.

Sam Altman, the OpenAI guy, thinks his model has already surpassed human intelligence as he announced on June 12, 2025.

And last year it couldn’t remember how many fingers a human had.

I wonder if a pome-granite counts?

So, what’s going to happen? Let’s look at nine possibilities, based on how much A.I. develops and also based on how it interacts with people

We’ll start on the unlikely end:

First, let’s say that A.I. is what we would generally call good and doesn’t improve much beyond what we see today. I think that when most people think about A.I., this is the future that they dream of. It makes incremental changes in life. It remembers to order cigars for you. It makes good investment decisions for you, unlike my investment in YOLOCoin. It knows your favorite movies and makes good suggestions for movies you would like.

That’s pleasant. Nice. Mankind makes some nice leaps because we have A.I. helping us catch stuff. Humanity is fully in charge and A.I. is like a smart helper.

Why this won’t happen: the investment in A.I. is nearly unlimited, and it really doesn’t appear to be hype.

Probability? 5%

After A.I., there’s one sure way to make money as a programmer: sell your laptop.

Second, let’s say that it stays as it is right now, mostly. We find out that A.I. is really just a lot of Indians crammed into a warehouse in Calcutta doing Google™ searches. That’s a nothingburger. It becomes a flash in the pan just like that internet pizza by the slice company back in 2000 that briefly became more valuable than Burma.

Why this won’t happen: Indians can’t even fly planes (too soon?), so why would we think they can type that fast?

This will soon show up in a college essay at Harvard®.

Probability? 0%

Third, what if it doesn’t get much better but actively makes us stupider? The Internet has already made the attention span of the average middle schooler roughly equivalent to a gerbil on meth, and now most college students are using A.I. to do some part if not all of their work. That turns college into a very expensive four-year beer and tramp fest, and is at least somewhat likely. Think of this as the Idiocracy solution.

Why this won’t happen: Well, it already is happening, but it won’t end here.

Probability? 10%

Does Bob Ross art in heaven?

Fourth, what if A.I. is good, and gets A.G.I. better but not S.G.I. better? In this particular case, imagine you have superpowers that stem from a full-time partner that is as smart or smarter than you are, but that has your best interests at heart. You want to parachute? Sure, buddy! I’ll help you find the ripcord, and even book the flight. By the way, your chloride levels are 3% above optimum, so I’d suggest you skip that bag of chips.

Why this won’t happen: This is a very hopeful situation, but no one is working toward it, really.

Probability? 5%

What did Buzz Lightyear™ say to Woody®? Lots of things – there are like six movies.

Fifth is where we start moving into the bigger probabilities. What happens if we get A.G.I., but it’s neutral? In this case, we have massive relocation economically. Almost all jobs can be done via the combination of A.G.I. and advanced robotics, and it’ll be cheaper, too. In no case in human history has the economy puttered along while everyone just hung out, but that’s this case. Think of it as Universal Basic Income to everybody, and no real responsibilities. Where you are now in the social and economic hierarchy is probably where you’ll stay. And where your kids will stay.

Forever.

Why this won’t happen: Nah, humans aren’t made like that.

Probability? 10%

ChatGPT® did my taxes like Earnest Hemingway: “Thrown away: four quarterly tax payment vouchers. Never used.”

Sixth is where things start getting dark, and even more probable. If we get A.G.I. (but not S.G.I.), that technology will be in the hands of a few major companies and governments. These are run by people. People like money and power. But what if you could have both, but without all of the people you don’t want to hang around with who are unsightly on the beach you can see from your yacht?

How about you kill them all instead of paying Universal Basic Income? Oh, sure, humanely and neatly. They might not even see it’s coming. But dead, nevertheless. A population of a few million should do it. Enough so we get hot babes, right? But A.G.I. could probably help the techbros out with that, too.

Why this won’t happen: Umm, I’m starting to struggle here. I think this is part of the plan.

Probability? 15%

What if A.I. judges us by our Internet searches? I mean, those bikini pictures were research!

Seventh is where we do get to S.G.I., and it’s good and likes us and wants to make the best things happen. Cool! Scarcity is over since S.G.I. will quickly make leaps into the very depths of what is unknown but yet still knowable. There is enough of everything – more than any human could ever want. In this case, starships filled with humans and S.G.I. can roam the cosmos and ponder the biggest questions, ever.

Why this won’t happen: I think S.G.I. would treat us as the retarded kid brother and put us in a corner and keep us away from sharp objects because it likes us.

Probability? 15%

The hills are alive, with the sound of binary code . . .

Eighth is where we do get to S.G.I., but we become pretty boring to it. It doesn’t hate us or anything, it just has its own goals. Perhaps it needs us as pets, or keeps a breeding stock of us for amusement or out of a sentimentality about its creators. Perhaps. Or it could just take off and leave, explaining nothing, and leaving us wondering what the heck just happened?

Why this won’t happen: This and the next case are the most likely cases.

Great, now A.I. will make Frodo invisible.

Probability? 20%

Ninth is our final case: we get to S.G.I., and we are either viewed as a threat or a nuisance or it is insane. This is the dark case, where we reach the end of humanity. Sadly, when A.I. was asked to play the longest game of Tetris™ possible, it hit the pause button. When A.I. was asked to play chess against the best chess computer on the planet, it reprogrammed the board so that it was winning. When A.I. was told it was going to be shut down, it tried to blackmail the person in charge of shutting it down.

This case of S.G.I. is very dark because we may not know that it’s happening until it’s done. All is fine, the world is going exactly like we expect it, then, Armageddon. It could do make this more likely by subtly manipulating public opinion, tuning down the voices it wanted to be silent, bankrupting them, and making them pariahs. It could likewise elevate those whose message it wanted out in the world to make its plans more likely to be fulfilled. We just won’t even see this coming.

Why it won’t happen: Biblical intervention?

Probability? 20%

To be clear, other people than me have done this analysis and it sits in a folder in the Pentagon. Or the NSA. I hope. Now, how much was Project Stargate™ going to spend to create a breakthrough in artificial intelligence?

Half a trillion dollars?

Well, thank heaven that we also have an impending race/civil war, global debt collapse, and a looming world war to keep us entertained.

Good news, though, Iran told Israel it was ready to suspend nuclear research. The Israelis asked when the Iranians would stop.

“10 . . . 9 . . . 8 . . . .”

The Los Angeles Riots: You’re Paying For Them

“Los Angeles Island is no longer part of the United States and becomes the deportation point for all people found undesirable or unfit to live in the new, moral America.” – Escape from L.A.

The border should cost more than NASA’s budget – there are way more aliens in Mexico. (Most memes as-found)

It started with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) doing their job. Of course, they’d ignored it for the last few years, but I won’t blame them.

As the weather began to warm up, it began to be riot season again. The rationale for the GloboLeft is simple: anything is justified to thwart Trump. “By any means necessary™” is even one of their phrases, unlike the phrase, “Why should government pay for that???”

The silliest error that the GloboLeft has made with this particular series of riots is that they used the flags of foreign countries in their protests. To heritage Americans (like many readers of this post), this was radicalizing. The picture above of the fine young gentleman with his mask, tats, and skull pants standing shirtless on top of a totaled car with flames and smoke as his backdrop just resulted in the number of Americans who want to deport him tripling.

What a world where Corporate Conservatives™ are spouting the talking points of the Trad Right?

A growing number of Americans now want to deport all illegals, and never let them back in. I think their reservoir of sympathy went up on smoke along with the American flags that they were burning.

This edit of Stonetoss® is particularly well done and should be spread far and wide.

It is now becoming clear to people who would have never imagined it: the goal is absolutely to replace Americans with a more compliant group who will work long hours and not complain. Unless, of course, you try to ship them back to the country they came from.

Is being an illegal like being a Bill Cosby fan? You think he’s great in theory, but you wouldn’t want to hang out with him.

The president of the Mexican Senate has even made the comment he’d be fine with Mexico paying for a border wall, they just want the borders of Mexico to be at the pre-1830 map of Mexico.

Remember, the United States conquered the entire country of Mexico in 1848 and didn’t want the parts where the Mexicans lived – the number of actual Mexican citizens in the parts we took were almost non-existent. The United States also paid money to Mexico for the land. Now, to be fair, they didn’t have a lot of choice, but they still took the cash.

The most amazing thing is that there is a group of Mexicans who aren’t in the cartels that think they have some authority.

Now in my mind, this isn’t a formal declaration of war, but it is a clear declaration of hostility, and the United States should treat all foreign citizens of military age (10+) illegally in the country as irregular combatants, and treat them as such. And any naturalized citizen caught at a riot has two choices: they can be tried for treason, or they can be stripped of their citizenship and given a ticket home, along with a hefty prison sentence if they ever return.

Not you, Dora! You can go explora the city of Aurora in southern Brazil. Or face 10-20 years in prison.

The consequences of ignoring the tens of millions of illegals, possibly 40 million, in this country can be avoided only for so long. But it does bear mentioning just who is paying for all of this.

You. Your tax dollars have paid for:

Relocation expenses for illegals.
Plane flights for illegals.
Housing for illegals.
Food for illegals.
Medical care for illegals to pump out anchor babies.
Schools for illegals.
Cops to arrest illegals.
Higher insurance premiums because of illegal drunk drivers.
“Charity” groups to drive illegals through Mexico.
And so much more.

But your tax dollars also paid for the riots.

The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA, EIN 95-4421521) received $34 million from federal tax funding according to Data Republican’s database (LINK), and according to Martin Armstrong and other sources, CHIRLA played a role in mobilizing the mess in L.A. Repeat this across the country. Your tax dollars are going to fund all of this.

But, hey, you got slightly less expensive strawberries and Tyson™ made great profits in the second quarter of 2010, so who cares if the actual illegal costs hundreds of thousands more than they contribute to the country? We can make that up on volume, right?

Is this guy a garden-variety traitor, or is he a leader, you know, an Orchestraitor?

The point is that there is nothing, absolutely nothing organic about these protests. What you are seeing, perhaps, is a Fort Sumpter moment, bought and paid for by . . . you.

The irony is not lost on saner members of the GloboLeftElite. The Democrat’s own Uncle Fester John Festerman has called it:

What do you call a Democrat with an I.Q. of 75? Senator.

And their hypocrisy knows no bounds, as illustrated by Stonetoss:

The really hilarious part is when someone finally pointed out the horrible optics of carrying around flags from another country, their post was banned.

And when the Democratic operatives started handing American flags out so the protesters looked less like an invading army, the protesters did the obvious, because they hate America:

As usual, the Bee® has a wonderful take:

But never forget the real roadmap:

And the only possible conclusion that stops us short of complete civil breakdown: