Category: Wealth

Money In 2021? (Explained With One Bikini)

“Well, Saddam owed us money.” – Arrested Development

What does Superman® dry off with?  A Tow-El.

Money.

What is it?

Really, the truth is money is anything we accept as having value that we can trade for something else.  Cigarettes have been used for money.  Cowrie shells were used in China for money nearly 4,000 years ago.  Booze has often been used for money.

I read an article back in 2013 that bottles of Tide® were being used to trade for drugs in New York City, so you know that there are plenty of insane.  Heck, I hear the Germans are even raising money online through Krautfunding.

Ideally, money has some sort of scarcity attached to it.

Gold has a historic role as money.  You can cut it up into very, very tiny pieces, and you have lots of tiny pieces of gold.  It hasn’t changed – you can melt it back into a single bar again, having lost nothing.  You cut up a dollar bill into very tiny pieces?  You have a pile of gerbil cage fluff.

Gold is nice.  So is silver.

But, like anything, there are problems.

I found a little gold once while prospecting – it was a minor success.

Well, generally always the same problem.  Government.

I’ve mentioned Rome before, because it’s a great illustration of what happens when government designs money.

At the beginning, Roman silver coins were, well, actually silver.  The problem with silver coins is that you can’t make silver show up out of thin air.  Oh, wait, if you’re a government, you can.  The Imperial Romans managed to maintain enough restraint that their silver coins were over 90% silver for a little over 150 years after Empire.

Proving once again I definitely deserve the Nobel Prize™ in Economics for my discovery of Bikininomics©.

After that, the percentage of silver in the coins declined rather quickly.

So did the Roman Empire.

Interestingly, where it took Rome 150 years, it took the United States 142 years for the same thing to happen:  from 1792 (when the Coinage Act was passed) to 1934 (when Roosevelt confiscated United States silver and gold).  History may not repeat, but it sure does rhyme.

Sure, there were silver coins produced after 1934, but silver coins were (largely) discontinued as United States currency in 1965.  (*There were exceptions for dollar and half dollar coins in selected years.  That ended in 1976.)

As soon as the non-silver coins were minted, the silver coins began to disappear from circulation.  Gresham’s Law states the simple fact:  bad money (non-silver coins) drives out good money (silver coins).

But it’s had an impact on people’s thought processes as well:  they have (largely) stopped thinking about gold and silver as money.  Want proof?

Yup.  When Mark Dice offered people either a King Size® Hershey’s™ chocolate bar or a 10 ounce silver bar, everyone chose the candy bar.  As bad money replaced good, people stopped even thinking about silver as money.

The money supply today is fiat money.  I’ve written about that before – it means that our money is entirely made up.  No silver backing, no gold backing, the only backing is the faith of the people who accept it.  Oh, and several thousand nuclear weapons, if you’re talking about the United States dollar.

The next step from that are the cryptocurrencies.

Those are entirely a mathematical concept, though Ricky has noted in comments that this mathematical construct can cost upwards of a million dollars in power a day.  Bitcoin is currently at $33,000.  Four days ago?  $40,257.

Used with permission.

Is Bitcoin a bubble?  Will it go to zero?  Will I go to $500,000?

Honestly, I have no idea.  I would have bet against it going to $40,000.

The scary part of today is just that uncertainty.

  • Gold has (generally) held its value over time, performing far better than the dollar since the Federal Reserve© came into being.
  • Gold hasn’t performed as well as stocks over the same period – creative people added more value than a motionless metal.
  • Stocks are today at a valuation that is (by my reckoning) insane. They can stay that way longer than I can bet against them.
  • Bitcoin? Who can say?  I think its primary role right now is to indicate bubble tops.
  • Bonds? Who wants to buy bonds at nearly zero interest rates?

This is probably one of the more difficult times to invest in my lifetime – risks are very high, but returns don’t seem to have kept up.

First role of 2021?  Don’t talk about 2020.

We seem to be, everywhere I look, near to a breaking point in our systems – economic, political, and social.  Who knows, maybe we’ll be back at cowrie shell money by 2030.

But I think I’d prefer the booze, since I don’t smoke and, well, if you have booze do you really need clean clothes?

Bikini Economics, The Money Supply, And Dinner With Gandhi

“It’s a growth economy, Gus. We’ve already made like, 500 rupee.” – Psych

The economy is so bad, Facebook® just laid off 50 Congressmen.

I was flittering across the Internet the other day and I came across a disturbing image.  I mean, who wants to even think about Barack Obama wearing just a feather boa and covered in gerbils?  See if I ever go to the New York Times® website again.

But, if I may, I think I found an even more disturbing image – a graph of M1.  What is M1?  M1 is the narrowest definition of money:  it’s the cash in your cushions, it’s the cash in your pocket.  It’s the cash in your checking account.  Nearly anything you can go out and spend right now and not owe anyone for:  that defines M1.

M1 is not, however, credit cards.  And it’s not savings accounts or the stock market or savings bonds.  It’s ready, hot cash.

And the M1 graph has spiked.  Spiked as in going up from just under $4 trillion last year at this time to nearly $6.6 trillion right at this moment – a growth of $2.6 trillion dollars – in one year.  That’s a huge change, since it took sixteen years to grow from $1.4 trillion to $4 trillion, and those sixteen years contained the biggest recession the United States had seen since the Great Depression.

So, here, take a look.  Since it’s Christmas time, I tried to get the most festive pictures I could find, even though technically one of them isn’t a bikini.  Oh, sure, you feel like complaining, but what about me?  I’m the one who has to flit through literally hundreds of bikini photos to find the best ones to properly illustrate economic principles while being festive.

This is the longer view, which shows M1 since 1975.

This is a close up of more recent M1 behavior.  I made the last little bit on the graph thicker and orange because it was hard to see.

It certainly looks scary.  The graph, not the bikini.  Look at the graph.

What’s going to happen?

I’m not certain.  I originally wrote, “I have no idea” but what has happened historically when a country prints 65% extra cash in one year?

I have an idea of what happens there, and it really is scary.  After World War I, the German economy was pretty well wrecked, plus they had to put down a communist revolution.  I’m not getting into the details (mainly because it’s boring) but the Germans just started printing money as fast as they could.

And by printing as fast as they could the printing presses were the problem.  Thankfully, they managed to double money production – by only printing on one side of the currency.

That’s AOC-level super-genius thinking.

A ewe in a swimsuit just drove up in an Italian sports car.  It was a lamb bikini.

Within six years what had cost 1 Mark cost 1 trillion Marks.  And all because they printed money.  I write on a regular basis about the world changing around us, and this is a great example.  In 1914 everyone had been happy with their new-fangled electric lights, and in 1924 you had to pay 4 trillion Marks for a newspaper, but even then the news was the wurst.

The good news is that the Germans could pay off their mortgage with cheap money, right?

No.

While their money melted away in a blizzard of banknotes, their debt was (eventually) tied back to the new currency that replaced the inflated mess.  As an example, mortgages were revalued at 25 billion (yes, billion) times their value in the inflated currency.

Surely they did the same thing with depositors, right?

Of course not.  In some cases bonds were revalued, but only at a tenth of the value of the mortgages.  As always, there were winners and losers, and, as always, most people aren’t in the club that allows them to make out like bandits while the economy collapses around them.

My crack research staff uncovered that Adams never said that even though it sometimes is attributed to him.  It took a Google® search and one result.  Arduous.

As I write this, a $2.3 trillion dollar spending plan was just passed by Congress.  Nearly a trillion dollars of that is going directly to people, many of whom badly need the cash.  Trump wants to hold out to double it, since as we’ve seen, what’s another trillion?

The rest of the bill is packed with nearly six thousand pages of “stuff”.  Since it’s well known that most Congresscritters can’t spell or type, who wrote those six thousand pages, filled with things like making unauthorized downloads of movies a felony, $30 million to set up the Martin Luther King, Jr./Mohandas Gandhi Scholarly Exchange Fund.

Sounds like CoronaBux for Leftists complaining about how awful the United States treats the hordes of people that keep trying to sneak in?  Probably.  I could go on and on about the rest of the money we’re shooting like water out of a Super Soaker™, but I won’t.  The point is, since we’re in a budget deficit already, this is just printing more money.

Okay, this one might have been a bit made up.  And Gandhi was notorious for being able to put back six or seven bacon cheeseburgers at a sitting.

Not all of this money will go directly into cash.  But some of it will be quickly recycled back into the United States as cash:  we lend Egypt a billion or so to buy guns and jet fighters and bombs, and that money goes, partially, to the salaries of the Americans who make the stuff.

And from there right into that M1 graph.

The one thing I know is that vast amounts of money sloshing around within our economy have consequences.  Right now, some of those consequences are being held in check – a steak today costs about the same as a steak last year.  Gasoline costs less than gasoline did last year.

Why?  Most commodity prices that I’ve tracked are still declining, and have been for nearly a decade as the Everything Bubble that followed the Housing Bubble funnels investments into ever-lower returns.

As I’ve said before – we will have inflation.  But we will have deflation first.  And when it whips back into inflation?

Well, thankfully, I’ll have a graph for that . . . .

Money In 2021: What’s Next?

“I picked a hell of a day to quit drinking.” – (Randy Quaid) Independence Day

When the aliens finally decided to invade Earth, they started with Poland – didn’t want to ignore local customs.

2020 has been . . . unexpected.

If anyone would have submitted it as a draft for a screenplay, Hollywood would have rejected it since it was too farfetched.  Unless Randy Quaid was in it, flying a biplane to attack aliens.  Then it would have made perfect sense.  Oh, wait, a high ranking Israeli says we’re already in negotiations with the aliens?

Never mind.

That being said, 2020 is (thankfully) nearly over.  That gives us a chance to look forward to 2021.  Keep in mind that no one said that 2021 would be better . . . we just seem to hope it will be better.  It certainly is time, however, to look forward.

I know that whatever things we think 2021 will bring, the actual events of 2021 will be crazier than that.  Regardless of who is inaugurated on January 20, 2021, what are some of the things that we can look forward to?

Here are some of my guesses:

Congress and whatever President we have will keep spending as fast as they can.  Taxes may or may not be raised, but they certainly won’t match the increased spending.  Obama nearly doubled the national debt – he took the United States from $11 trillion in hock to $20 trillion.  Right now, after four years of Trump, we’re at $27 trillion or so in money owed.  This is completely on track to take the national debt to at least $36 trillion in the next four years, which is a little more than I have the last time I checked around the couch cushions.  But I did find out where all the spoons were going.

And to think I’d blamed Pugsley.

The Presidents of the United States must all be Irish – during their terms the debts are Dublin.

But $36 trillion in debt?  That’s certainly gonna leave a mark.  Like Oprah’s dressmaker learned after Oprah demanded Spandex®, you can only distort an economy so far and so long before there are consequences, and I expect that this is near the breaking point for ours.  Thankfully, when Oprah’s dress finally went, the injuries to her crew were covered by worker’s comp.

Of course, I’ve been wrong before.  I would have thought this level of debt was poisonous.  If it was, it’s at least been a slow poison.  The system is so broken that interest rates are low, in some places less than zero.  For now.

Is that enough of a bright side?

The biggest consequences of the money printing will first show up in third world nations with relatively weak economies.  The big consequences of COVID-19 have shown up here already in the damage to the economy of the United States.

In a globally connected world, however, the consequences of United States monetary policy don’t show up in the United States first – they show up first in economies where people don’t make much money.  The “Arab Spring” that led to revolutions across North Africa and the Middle East were a direct consequence of the United States spending money like . . . well . . . Democrats in charge of the presidency and the legislature.  The Syrian Civil War is a direct consequence of the Federal Reserve’s® response to the Housing Bubble.

If you watch an Apple® store get robbed, does that make you an iWitness®?

Don’t tell me that bad lending habits don’t have consequences.  When you see riots in the streets of Cairo or Mumbai or Carcosa, you know that the big consequences from the money printing have hit the world.

Once that happens, be prepared for inflation showing up at home.

Poverty rates will greatly increase in the United States, at least in the first half of 2021.  Sure, there have been billions spent on COVID-19 relief.  Almost all of it has gone into the pockets of big business.  People on the streets?  Not so much.  In some places, businesses are locked down.  In others?  Businesses are going, but limping along due to the consequences of previous lockdowns.

I heard Bernie likes to fight poverty – every weekend he goes out and slugs homeless people.

When businesses can’t afford to pay people, poverty is the result.  The average American had only small amounts of savings – by one measure I found, nearly 70% of Americans have less than $1,000 in savings, which is only enough for a minor emergency.  After that, who can say?

The economy is in the process of fundamental change, and the middle class will significantly decrease in the next year.  What has been conserved after the Coronavirus Collapse®?  Big business has done great.  Mom and Pop restaurants?  Horrible.  Modern Mayberry’s main business district got hollowed out long ago by Wal-Mart® – as did most business districts across the Midwest.

All of the small businesses are struggling – imagine owning a theater that hasn’t shown a movie in nine months.  The local theater was even broken into during lockdown – thieves stole $7,000 in merchandise – two small sodas, some Mike and Ikes® and a medium popcorn.

The transfer of economic power from small business to large has been going on for years.  The space for a small business to compete is getting smaller and smaller.  One local shop did 90%+ of its business in online sales.  Amazon® made one small change to the way that affiliates were paid and deleted the business in three months.

That business is now gone, but Jeff Bezos now has a net worth of over $200 billion – which we can all agree is an expensive net.

I got my degree in kids’ medicine online, too.  You can call me a Wikipediatrician. 

And the people going into poverty?  They won’t exactly be customers of restaurants – eating out will become (if it hasn’t already for them) an easily avoided expense.  People will actually learn to cook again.  Which doesn’t help Mom and Pop.

China will be very close to surpassing the United States as the largest economy in the world in actual GDP.  China’s economy grew last year, while the United States contracted.  Even though China has a lot more people, this still translates into political power on the world stage.  Everyone has been predicting that China will collapse for, oh, 25 years.  Instead?  China has grown relentlessly.  Sure, there are structural weaknesses, but it’s hard to bet against that kind of economic inertia.

Why didn’t Chinese factories close during the pandemic?  Kids don’t catch COVID-19.

How does this impact the average person who isn’t Chinese?

Well the good news is that if you like dollars, they’ll still be useful.  But as other countries, like China, grow relatively stronger, the dollar grows relatively less powerful.  Especially if the United States mains determined to keep printing them as fast as it can.

I’ll toss it over to you, now.  Outside of Randy Quaid in destroying the alien mothership, what do you expect to see in 2021?

Luck And (Sort Of) $20

“What’s this, then? ‘Romanes eunt domus’? People called Romanes, they go, the house?” – The Life of Brian

When Clint was taking pottery class, before he put his ceramics into the oven, he’d snarl:  “Go ahead, bake my clay.”

I went on a long-ish walk today.  Walking is fun, gets me outdoors, and allows me to feel the wind on my scalp.  Not that being bald is bad – when I was younger I used to play chess with bald old men at my hometown’s park.  It’s really hard to find 32 of them all at once, though.

I went on the same walk yesterday.  The thought came to my mind, hey, I’m going to find a $20 bill when I go walking soon.

And today?  As I had just finished 1.56 miles (still heading out) I looked in the ditch by the side of the country road.  Could it be?  Was it?

It was.

No, not another Bud Light® can.  It was my $20 dollar bill!  I’m not making any of this up.  Here’s a picture.

I got home and found that someone ripped the center pages out of my dictionary.  It went from bad to worse.

Now it’s not the worst thing I’ve found inert, piled in the weeds next to a crumpled Bud Light™ can – that would be the Ex.  But it wasn’t exactly a full $20 bill, either.

I sent a picture of it to my friend.  “Looks like you’ve got about $9.50 there, John.”

Yup.  It is a real $20 bill.  Just not a complete $20 bill.  And since you need to have 51% of a piece of paper currency to trade it in – it’s not $9.50, it’s $0.00, although I’m sure that in Pennsylvania (or Wisconsin, or Georgia or…), my 45% of a $20 dollar bill would magically transform at 3AM into a full 55%.

So, was I lucky?

Yup, I was.

Why would I deprive an Uber driver of a chance to take part in a marathon?

Although we talk about all of the right things to do with your money (or bullets, or gold, or PEZ®) one thing you have to factor in is luck.

Pa Wilder, generally, did it all the “right way” – saved money, owned his home free and clear for years, bought his cars with cash, and stayed out of debt.  About 25 years after he retired, he was broke – he had spent most of his savings, so my brother John (yes, my brother’s name really is John, too) kicked in and helped Pa along.  Pa didn’t spend it all on pantyhose and elephant rides – generally, he just lived a very quiet life.

Then there was relative “B”.  They went from one cash shortage to another for almost their entire lives – not because of any sort of fault – they were frugal and worked hard.  In one particular cash crunch, they ended up having to sell cattle to pay an emergency bill.  Then, one day, a group of geologists came on to their land just as they’re ready to retire.  The oil company drilled a few wells and started sending them checks.

How much were all those checks worth?

Enough to allow them to get a bulldozer to push over the house they were living in.  Honestly, they didn’t need a bulldozer since the only thing holding the house together were mice holding hands with termites.

I enjoy testing microphone/speaker combinations.  Have any feedback for me?

And enough was left over to build an entirely new house.

It was . . . luck.

As humans, we plan.  We can’t help it.  And we observe patterns:  not getting married until you’re ready, finishing school, not getting divorced, saving money, being thrifty, and investing are things that generally lead to financial stability.

Choice of career is also important – there are few composers of 17th and 18th century-style music that are wealthy.  But for those composers that are?  If it ain’t baroque, don’t fix it.

But we should all take a step back and understand that the future isn’t based entirely on skill – it’s also based on luck.  And, yes, I know what you’re saying – the same thing I normally think – quoting Seneca (the dead Roman):  “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

I try to live my life by those words.

But there’s still just plain luck.

Did Romans kept fit by doing Pontius Pilates?

I am normally that lucky guy.  Seriously – I started writing down a list of incredibly good luck that I’ve had in my life.  It was a very long list.  If I took a hard look at the list, sure, some of it happened because I was clever enough, or fast enough, or strong enough, or just so very pretty – too damn pretty to die, some might say.

But some of those coincidences that happened to me were none of that.  The opportunities were so amazingly rare, and yet, there I was.  It’s not just me who has observed this.  A good friend once described me like this:  “John, if you were walking down the street and fell down into a pile of gum, you’d come back up with a $100 bill stuck to your forehead.”

Part of luck, however, is just understanding that some days are your day – nothing can go wrong.  And other days?  Nothing will go right, even if you’ve prepared wonderfully and meticulously.

Yes, I believe that Seneca is right, and you prepare as hard as you can for those days and seize the ever-loving snot out of those days.  So when it’s my day?  I try to push my luck as far and as fast as I can.  The Romans had this one sniffed out, too:  Fortis Fortuna adiuvat.  Fortune favors the bold.

What kind of aspirin do fortune-tellers take?  Medium strength.

When it’s not my day?  I just slooooooow down.

What I really have seen is that people who are in great moods have . . . the best luck.  Those same people often find opportunities where others don’t see them.

Maybe I’m just an optimist.  I think great things are going to happen to me, so, they do.  When I was out walking on the deck when it was raining and one foot slipped and I did the splits?  The kind of splits that you feel some muscle in your left leg streeeeeeeetch, and then feel that same muscle “give” because I haven’t bent like that since I was in high school?

Not lucky?  Right?

I can’t be sure.  Stretching my leg like a pretty, pretty ballerina sure fired me up to get walking to build that muscle back up.  And it’s working just after a few days.  And I found this neat $20 bill.

Or at least part of one.

Weird, huh?

Black Friday 2021

“Who buys an umbrella anyway? You can get them for free at the coffee shop in those metal cans.” – Seinfeld

I never understood why people got attacked by sharks.  Can’t they hear the music?

Black Friday is easy to make fun of, but I won’t (so much) this year.  As other people go nuts over shopping, I get to sleep in on a Friday morning and not go shopping.  It’s a win-win:  other people get to do what they want to do, and I don’t have to join them.

I can see the appeal – the idea of, perhaps, getting a deep discount on something they wanted to buy anyway is attractive.  And economizing by not wasting money is a very good thing, especially if you’re able to afford something that you normally couldn’t buy.  By not participating, though, I save 100% in every store.

I have no idea how well the sales figures will be on Black Friday, 2020.  I expect that the economy is significantly weaker than people imagine.  Multiple shutdowns for Coronavirus seem to have taken a major toll on the economy, so I’m not sure how many people are going to want to spend extra for new cooking gadgets.   I know that there’s a mask mandate in most places, but please be aware:  around here they expect you to wear pants, too.

If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and flies like a duck, it’s probably a government surveillance drone.

Many retailers, including our local shopping choice, Wal-Mart®, were closed on Thanksgiving.

As we all know – if there’s a buck in it, stores will stay open.  That is, after all, why they’re in business.  Someone did the math and figured out that it wouldn’t make sense to be open on Thanksgiving this year. That should tell you a lot about where the economy is.

The real economy.

The idea that the Dow-Jones® Industrial Average (DJIA) just hit a record 30,000 should also tell you something – the economy has split.  FaceBook® is doing so well that they’re still hiring Congressmen.  As several astute readers here have noted – the DJIA seems to be entirely disconnected from the reality of the actual economy most people have to work in, even though once upon a time there really was a connection.

But there is a connection between Black Friday and Christmas.  Several people I know complete all of their Christmas shopping either on Black Friday or Cyber Monday.  Businesses count on this behavior to make a profit for the year, although big businesses (Amazon®, Wal-Mart©, etc.) have already had a great year.

If you used your COVID stimulus check to buy baby chickens, did you get your money for nothing and your chicks for free?

The Mrs. and I no longer get very excited about Christmas presents – we’re fortunate that we have most of our needs met and the best gifts are the small ones that require some thought, like when The Mrs. bought me that book on anti-gravity.  I just couldn’t put it down!

The Boy seems generally content, and when I ask him what he wants, the answer is generally, “I’ll think about it.”  Pugsley still has a list.

Well, not a list.  A dozen lists.  He emailed me the first one.  Of course, knowing him, I entirely ignored the list.  Never even opened it.

Why?

Because there was a new and entirely different list the next day.  And a new one the day after that.  Finally, he seemed settled.

I named my iPad® Titanic, so when it was updating it said, “Titanic is syncing.”

“I want an iPad®.”

“Why don’t you take my old one?  I never use it.  Enjoy.”  It had originally been given to me by a Chinese friend – I do love homemade presents.

“Wait, what?”  After complaining that it was the 2015 model, he finally accepted that making do with an old iPad® and something else for Christmas was actually a pretty good deal.  Honestly, I think he’ll remember that more than getting a new iPad™.

Like I said, our family is in a good place, but we know that not everyone is.  I expect that there will be a lot less spent on gifts this Christmas.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing.  The best parts of healthy relationships aren’t material.  Long after a gift has worn out or been lost, the benefits of a real relationship remain.

If Schrödinger’s cat went on a crime spree, would he be wanted dead and alive?

I expect that the recession is far from over.  I also think that we’ve moved from a period of relative plenty into something . . . new.

New doesn’t mean bad.  New means different.

And if that meant that Black Friday stopped being a materialist holiday?

We might all be better off.

Time, Treasure, and Talent: Three Gifts To Be Thankful For

“We paid him in gratitude and life lessons.” – Psych

But it’s what we got. 

The other day I went to McDonalds®.  This is not a usual thing, because the McDonalds® in Modern Mayberry is run and staffed by people who (really) once gave me a bare McMuffin™ instead of the Sausage McMuffin™ with Egg© that I had asked for.  Some of the folks who work there (not all of them) couldn’t spell dog if you spotted them a “d” and a “g”.

I ended up going there because The Mrs. asked if I wanted to have lunch with her and one of her relatives.  I was intended to get the food.   When I asked what she wanted, she said, “Surprise me.”   Since I like spending time with The Mrs., I agreed.  Since we never went to McDonalds™, I figured that would surprise her.

The Mrs. said to meet at noon.  Immediately the calculations went off in my mind:

  • It will take me fifteen minutes to get to McDonalds®.
  • It will take 10 minutes in the drive-through at McDonalds™. In Modern Mayberry, McDonalds© isn’t fast food, it’s convenient food (at least when they get the order right).
  • It’s another 10 minutes to the relative’s house.

To be on time, I’d have to leave home 35 minutes before lunch.  Simple.  And, as it turned out, my timing was exactly (nearly to the minute) correct.  But my biggest revelation of the trip was this:  to feed three people a warm lunch from the drive-through cost $23.74and took 20 extra minutes from my life.

I bought lunch for the three of us (again, with me eating light) and I did the math – with the cost of my lunch deducted, each of them could have had a one pound ribeye steak and side dishes if we cooked it ourselves I and could have done that in 20 minutes or less.

Oh, sure, you say, who would want a one pound ribeye steak when one could have a box of ten lukewarm chicken McNuggets®?

Well, me.

Well, I guess McDonalds® has a pretty sophisticated social media group.

And that brought me to today’s thought.  It’s the week of Thanksgiving and I already hit gratitude, but I’m going to drive that psych-out home with this post, too.

Gratitude is being grateful for the gifts that you are given.  That implies that you use those gifts wisely.  The biggest gift is the only one that we all get right out of the box when we are born:

Time.

Time.  It’s been a subject that has fascinated me since I discovered that there are irreversible processes.  You can’t unbreak a glass.  You can’t uncrash a car.  And you can’t undo intentionally leaking all the ink from 20 or so pens on an oak hardwood floor under your bed and drawing pictures of horses when you are three.

My parents were really chapped about that last one.  Oh, they weren’t happy about the car, either.

Each of us only has so much time.  It’s both a blessing and a curse that (most of us) don’t know how much time that is.  It’s a blessing because we can face life unafraid without knowing our fate.  It’s a curse because we might waste our Time.

Literally the first item in my search for the term “time”.  I could have picked another term, but ain’t nobody got time for that.

Waste of anything we have is a failure to show gratitude.  We are each given our measure of Time.  To waste it?  You are wasting everything that your life is made of, and what you could achieve.  To be clear – your achievement isn’t for you, it’s for the future of mankind.  What are you doing with those precious moments that you have to make the future of mankind better?

Or, at least you could use your time to get on the cover of The Rolling Stone.

Even if you aren’t religious (to be clear, I am), this duty is simple – what are you doing to make the world better?

Don’t waste your Time.

The second thing that you can waste is your Treasure.  Good heavens – when I looked at the prices I paid for lukewarm McNuggets® compared to the cost of a home grilled steak dinner, it was embarrassing.  Seriously – the cost of a Quarterpounder® with Cheese™ and a medium fries was the cost of a ribeye steak.

I’m not saying that I’m only going to eat ramen noodles warmed by the heat of my thighs rubbing against each other as I spend quality time on an elliptical trainer.  Nope.  Besides, that’s much messier than keeping the ramen duct-taped under my armpits.

You really don’t want to know where I warm the pâté.

But each one of the people reading this (I’m hoping that Bezos and Musk don’t read this) have a limited amount of money.  What you do with it really matters.  Ma Wilder (who was my adopted mother) didn’t deal well with waste – to her, a wasted drop of gravy was an affront against all that was good.

And Ma Wilder was right.

“What’s the most expensive food in the world?  Food you buy and then don’t eat.” – John Wilder

But that’s also why we don’t make candles in summer – we have to pay for the heat to melt the wax and then to get the heat out of the house again.  I love having candles in the basement, but most of the year I can’t have them – who lights a candle when the air conditioning is on?

That’s the most expensive light in the world.

I’m sure someone else has said that the most expensive food in the world is the food you buy and don’t eat, since it is the most basic idea in the world.  But I haven’t seen it before, so I’ll take it until some bright commenter (Ricky?) notes that the Internet says that some French monk said it in 457 A.D.

(And, no, that won’t bother me a bit.)

But I guess that’s maybe why the French eat snails?

Well, he’s no Pinochet.  He didn’t have helicopters.

But wasting your money is wasting your time, and wasting your life.  I’m not sure about many of you, but my inheritance was the time and love I got from my parents and family.  Oh, and a box of rocks (this is true, I’ll save it for a future post, maybe).  But the Treasure you have represents potential.

There was a story I read once, I’m going from memory, and it went (more or less) like this:

A group of monks asked a Chinese Emperor for more robes.  The Emperor asked:

“What will you do with the old robes?”
“We will turn them into sheets for our beds.”
“And your old sheets?”
“We will turn them into rags to clean the floor.”
“And your old rags?”
“We will incorporate them into the bricks that make up our monastery.”

Do not waste your Treasure:  exhaust it.

The final thing you should have gratitude for?

Your Talent.

I am really grateful for each of the Talents that I have.  But, like Time and Treasure, wasting Talent is, well, wrong.  Just like Time (mostly) and Treasure (at least partially), most of the Talents you have weren’t earned, but given at birth.

What do you do with your Talents?  That’s where it gets interesting.

I have used many of my Talents during the years, and only a few of them are on display in this blog.  After all, you can’t see how shiny my scalp is over the Internet.  NASA uses it as a beacon to guide spacecraft back from orbit.

Wasting Talent is probably the worst, even more than wasting Time and Treasure.  Time is determined in many cases by forces beyond our control.  Treasure?  Treasure is fleeting.  Elon Musk made $100 billion dollars this year.  And it can evaporate as quickly as it rained.

But Talent is the most inborn of the traits, and in my opinion, the most tragic thing anyone can waste.  I can’t gain the Talent of Eddie Van Halen even if I devoted my entire life to playing the guitar.  If I spent the next decade studying the guitar, or trying to sing?  People would pay me for those talents.

Pay me not to use them.

Well, I never bought any Princess Leia CDs.

I’ll explain:  one time we went to church and I was too hoarse to sing.  The Mrs. said after that service, “I never knew how beautiful that music could be.”  This is a true story.  I guess that if people can have Talents, I can have an anti-talent, too.

In the end, I have to be grateful for the Talents that I have, and grateful for the Talents I can use.  Can I be filled with pride for them?  Nope.

So, as I sit here typing – my goal is this:

To use every Talent I have, for every minute left in my life, as much as I can.  Why?

Because a Talent is a gift.  And if I use it well, for the benefit of me and those around me in a positive way?

That is Virtue.  And that is a goal all of us can share in:  living the most virtuous lives we can.  Think of your Time, Treasure, and Talent as ways to become virtuous, because they are the greatest and, perhaps, only gifts you will ever have.

Also, don’t look up Rule 34.

So, to sum up:  I’m grateful for the Time given me, the Treasure I have earned, and the Talent I was given at birth.  These are three of the things in my life I’m most grateful for.

I’m also thankful for the Hot Mustard Sauce® from McDonalds™ on lukewarm McNuggets©.  That still tastes pretty good.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Fight Club: A Dystopia We Can Learn From?

“Fight for us.  And regain your honor.” – The Lord of the Rings:  The Return of the King

What’s a robot’s favorite Mexican food?  Silicon carne.

When I was a kid growing up, I read 1984 by George Orwell.  This was the grim version, as opposed to the much funnier version by Mel Brooks.  It had a profound effect on my worldview, as books often do when you read them in 7th grade.  In it, a globalist group of communists fought each other continuously, while subjugating the entirety of the human race.  Hmmm, wait, that sounds familiar?

1984 was a bleak book.  I’m not sure who I talked about it with, outside of writing the chicken scrawl of a report in schoolboy block letters and handing it to my really hot 7th grade English teacher.  Since my reading scores were, well, advanced, she just let me read what I wanted to read while the rest of the class all read the same book.  It felt nice being a special pretty pony.

I followed 1984 with Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.  I think my teacher suggested it.  Whereas 1984 was a dystopia built on the subjugation of a boot eternally stomping on a human face, Brave New World was a dystopia built on frivolity.

I fell into a vat of chemicals once.  My quick reaction nearly killed me.

Frivolity was where the masses were, more or less, endlessly drugged and entertained and so that their opinions never had a chance to develop, or impaired at birth so they could never think.  The tyranny in Brave New World was the tyranny of a vapid public who never thought beyond the most recent mindless and sexual encounter (strongly encouraged by the state) and the latest movie.

Oh, wait, that sounds familiar too.

Yet another dystopia is the movie (and book) Fight Club.  Fight Club is a 1999 movie based on a 1996 novel that (mostly) tracks the movie.  It is a creation of the 1990s, but, to quote the most excellent YouTube® movie reviewer, The Critical Drinker (LINK, some PG-13 language), it is very relevant to today’s world.  If you haven’t watched this 21-year-old movie and are interested, I suggest you watch The Critical Drinker’s review afterward – he includes spoilers.  I’ll warn you – the R rating was earned, and there are some very dark moments to the movie.

There won’t be any spoilers here – what I have to say doesn’t require me to spoil the film.

Tyler Durden told me handcrafted soap is the best.  No lye.

To really get Fight Club?  You have to watch it at least twice.  It is a thoughtful movie.  Does it have detractors on the Right?  Sure.  It’s R-rated.  Some have called it nihilistic (I disagree) and there are other complaints which I won’t go into here.  Regardless, I won’t beat myself up for going against the grain of other folks who didn’t like the movie.

Very few movies are perfect, but this one is very, very good.

I first watched Fight Club in 2012 or so.  It made over $100 million at the box office, so at least someone talked about Fight Club.  When I finally watched it (which was no fewer than three basement furniture re-arrangements ago) I was stunned.  How stunned?  It’s the only movie that has its own tag on this blog.

Vegan Club?  Everyone talks about Vegan Club.

The constant, pervasive theme of this movie is that the systems of globalism have created boxes for men that make them less than men.  Here’s Tyler Durden (one of the movie characters):

“We’re consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don’t concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.”

This is a simple translation.  A large proportion of the citizens of the United States define themselves by:

  • How much and what kind of furniture do they have?
  • How nice is their apartment?
  • How well can they write reports in a soul-killing job where large corporations seek to avoid liability in a cold, systematic way?  Does that kill their soul?
  • How can they avoid deviating from the norm to wear the right tie to the meeting?

These things are death to the soul.  As the character Tyler Durden explains:

“You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your (deleted by J.W.) khakis. You’re the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.”

I saw a robbery in an Apple® store once.  I was an iWitness©.

Marcus Aurelius and Seneca nod in approval.  They’d follow up:  you are your virtue.

And you, dear reader, are not your money or your clothes.  In many ways we are conditioned by society to believe that those are the things that define us.  We are not.  And if you believe that, you’re not alone.  Tyler describes the twilight of the soul brought about by a life dedicated to consumerism and status.  Live for the material world, and you’ll be swallowed by the material world.  You can never achieve enough, because someone always has more, does something better.

With that philosophy?  Money becomes the god that men seek:

“Damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy (stuff) we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War is a spiritual war.  Our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”

I saw a meme (didn’t save it, don’t have the author but I’d love to credit them) that I (sort of) reproduce below:

Michigan is going to ban car sales based on popular Internet videos – the governor wants to stop car-owner-virus.

This meme gets me.  It’s the essence of Fight Club.  We’re a species that is, more or less, programmed to achieve.  For who?  For our group.  It’s why the NFL® is popular today.  Okay, that’s why the NFL™ was popular until they showed us that we’re really not part of their group at all.

We run races for a reason.  We play basketball.  We wrestle.  We have swim races.  Well, you guys have swim races.  I was in a 100-yard swim race in sixth grade and placed 11 out of 12.  I wasn’t dead last because some poor kid got the cramps.  My 11th place finish wasn’t close.  I think they ended up timing me with a calendar and an abacus.

Regardless, we compete.

Why?

It’s wired into us.  Competition partially defines us.  And the stakes have to be real.  There is, of course, a religious aspect as well.  A man has to serve a higher power.  It’s not just competing for today.  There is a bigger game, and there are bigger stakes.  That’s what makes it worth playing the game.  Life is more than consumption and procreation.

Q:  Why did the Libertarian cross the road?  A:  TAXATION IS THEFT!!!  

But men who can run a race fairly and lose with grace are men.  They don’t have to like losing – no man does.  But loss is a forge that makes us stronger, gives us incentives.  Thomas Sowell (I think?) once said that if he were designing a car for safety, he’d put a Bowie knife pointed at the driver in the center of the steering wheel, not an airbag.

Incentives matter.

Now?  We insulate children from the Great Game.  Lose?  That’s okay, you tried.

No, it’s really not.  I lost the swim meet because I suck at swimming and am only slightly better than a car at swimming.  Slightly.

Did I cry?  No.

Antifa protestors – never have to take time off from work.

Did I focus my energy on something where I could be as good as nearly anyone in the state?

Yes.

Swimming was pointless.  Telling me that it was okay was worse than pointless.  It was a lie.

Back to Tyler:

JACK, in voiceover:  On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

CLERK:  Please… don’t…

TYLER DURDEN: Give me your wallet.

Tyler pulls out the driver’s license.

TYLER:  Raymond K. Hessel. 1320 SE Benning, apartment A.  A small, cramped basement apartment.

RAYMOND:  How’d you know?

TYLER:  They give basement apartments letters instead of numbers.  Raymond, you’re going to die.  Is this a picture of Mom and Dad?

RAYMOND:  Yes.

TYLER:  Your mom and dad will have to call kindly doctor so-and-so to dig up your dental records, because there won’t be much left of your face.

RAYMOND:  Please, God, no!                            

JACK: Tyler…

TYLER:  An expired community college student ID card.  What did you used to study, Raymond K. Hessel?

RAYMOND:  S-S-Stuff.

TYLER:  “Stuff.”  Were the mid-terms hard?  I asked you what you studied.

JACK:  Tell him!

RAYMOND:  Biology, mostly.

TYLER:  Why?

RAYMOND:  I… I don’t know…

TYLER:  What did you want to be, Raymond K. Hessel?

Tyler cocks the .357 magnum Colt© Python™ pointed at Raymond’s head.

TYLER:  The question, Raymond, was “what did you want to be?”

JACK:  Answer him!

RAYMOND:  A veterinarian!

TYLER:  Animals.

RAYMOND:  Yeah … animals and s-s-s —

TYLER:  Stuff.  That means you have to get more schooling.

RAYMOND:  Too much school.

TYLER:  Would you rather be dead?

RAYMOND:  No, please, no, God, no!

Tyler uncocks the gun, lowers it.

TYLER:  I’m keeping your license.  I know where you live.  I’m going to check on you.  If you aren’t back in school and on your way to being a veterinarian in six weeks, you will be dead.  Get the hell out of here.

JACK:  I feel sick.

TYLER:  Imagine how he feels.

Tyler brings the gun to his own head, pulls the trigger — click.  It’s empty.

JACK:  I don’t care, that was horrible.

TYLER:  Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of Raymond K. Hessell’s life.  His breakfast will taste better than any meal he has ever eaten.

How many people would love to have Tyler come into their lives and make them live their dreams?  How many people struggle through life, because they can’t take the next step?

You’re not too old.  If you’re breathing, you can make a mark on this world.  You’re not too poor.

My limiting factor is my imagination.  I realize that – it’s probably yours as well.

Regardless of the dystopias of 1984 and Brave New World, Fight Club shows a dystopia where we can win.  How do we win?

By understanding that our lives are in a precarious balance, just like Raymond K. Hessell.  And the first step to living life?  It’s letting go.  Achieving.

I learned to swim when I was very young.  My dad taught me.  I thought I’d never get out of that bag. 

And if you lose at swimming?  Try again.  Or try a new game.

At the end of Fight Club, men prove themselves to be stronger and larger than the dehumanizing systems that they serve.  It’s your choice.  How will your breakfast taste tomorrow?

Also:

Avoid the clam chowder.

 

 

Unrelated:

Steve is a blogger who is a FOW (Friend of Wilder).  Unlike me, he’s talented.  Because of the idiots who run his state, you’re lucky he has time to create something like this for you.  Do it.  No, I don’t get paid.  Steve does.  He’s Our Guy.

Do it.  Here’s the LINK.  There is just enough time for Christmas.

The Four Best Stocks For After The Death Of The Last Human On Earth

“You kids change partners more than square dancers.” – That 70’s Show

Marie Antoinette should have known the time was right for a revolution in France – she had a Coup Coup clock.

Okay, the title is clickbait.  We all know the Four Best Stocks For After The Death Of The Last Human On Earth are Rock, Paper, and Scissors.  Oops.  I think the real answer is Rock, Rock, and Rock.  I mean, who is going to make the paper and the scissors?

Oh, wait, I said four.

Add Google®, I guess.

One constant theme of this blog since I started writing it is that I want to convince everyone I can that tomorrow may not look like today.  I think this is important, because too often we start to think that our lives of today are the lives that people will live forever.

Why?

That’s the way we’re wired, to think that tomorrow will look like today.  It’s complacency.

Dozens of my ancestors lived as kings, having all the food they wanted and the choice of the peasant maidens in the dozen miles (metric conversion of one deciliter) around the mud hovel they lived in.  It may sound dreary, but it’s still better than Netflix®.

Genghis Khan is far better known than his brother, Gingivitis Khan.  

My ancestors lived every day of their life just like that, until they died at age 32 after they got a nasty infection because they were sharpening their bronze and flint nosehair trimmer, and accidentally conquered China.  That seems to keep happening.  I blame . . . well, all the people that conquered China.

For 100,000 years our brains, as wrinkly and wonderful as they are, grew up in a world where yesterday was mostly like today, and today is mostly like tomorrow.  Except for you people who have wonderful smooth brains.  I think I have some Bernie Sanders™ coloring books for you.

There’s a danger to thinking that tomorrow will be just like today.

Let’s pretend you’re a turkey on a farm.  There’s a nice farmer that feeds you every day.  What a nice guy!  You keep gaining weight, and getting bigger.

What a nice farmer!  Farmers must love turkeys.

Then, one November near Thanksgiving the impossible happens:  the farmer fires the turkey due to the COVID-19 outbreak and his turkey 401k drops 90% and his turkey wife tells him that . . . all those eggs?  Not his.

That turkey has found a fate worse than being roasted at 350°F for three hours (6.02×1023 Watts for six fortnights).  Turkey alimony.

The point remains:  life changes in an instant, never to return to the way things were.

I shot my first turkey this year.  Scared everyone in the meat aisle, and now I’m banned from Wal-Mart.

Here’s another one (I’ve used this example before):  I’m quite sure that there was a British guy at the dock watching as the last Roman Legion left Britain in 407 A.D.  What was he thinking?

“The Romans have been in Britain since 43 A.D.  They’ll be back.  Why wouldn’t they?”

It’s nearly a 100% chance that was exactly what he was thinking.  Our hypothetical British dude had never lived a single day when Roman troops weren’t controlling Britain.  They have to come back, right?

Well, not really.

There are reasons that hordes of Roman coins are found buried in Britain.

When Rome was strong, a Denarius (Roman coin) contained about $4.00 worth of silver at today’s prices.  As Rome continued, successive Caesars trading in Rome’s military might, reduced the amount of precious metals in the Denarius until it hardly contained a whiff of silver.

I hear there are extraterrestrials living in Rome – someone said that there were Italiens there.

Then one November near Thanksgiving, the impossible happens:  the guy in Britain gets fired and the Roman 401k drops 90% and his British wife tells him that Joe Biden (who was only 35 in 407 A.D.) was elected.  The worst part?

Joe Biden is carrying the British woman’s baby.

Our Roman’s world collapses.  Everything that he knew changes overnight.

When archeologists go digging in old British trash piles, they find something interesting.  The trash at the bottom of the pile (when Rome left) contains really cool broken plates.  Archeologists love plates.

Why?

Because angry wives break them all the time, so they make it easy to date a culture by the number of wives that go crazy and start throwing plates.  Apparently, the number of mad wives that throw plates is a scientific constant like the speed of light, so trash pickers archeologists can date the change in a culture based on broken plates.

The archeologists determined this:  the broken dishes at the time the last Roman Legions pulled out of Britain were awesome.  They were great dishes.  And everyone had them.  It turns out that dishes in the Roman Empire were mass-produced in southern France and shipped everywhere in the Roman Empire.  Southern France was the Wal-Mart® of quality dishware.

You can plainly see that Indiana Jones’ least favorite band is the Rolling Stones.

Then archeologists looked at dishes that were 100 years later in the trash pile.  They knew this particular trash pile was a king’s trash.  The dishes in the king’s trash were something that a kind parent would have congratulated a mildly retarded child for because the mildly retarded child tried really hard.

But these Roman plates weren’t widely available – only a king could afford them.

History happens one day at a time.  People lived it, the hard way.  Let me give you some examples that might add some perspective:

  • A French girl born at the start of the French Revolution would have been 26 and had multiple children when Napoleon finally lost at Waterloo.
  • A German girl born at the end of World War I would have been 27 and had multiple children before the end of World War II.
  • An American girl born at the end of the Clinton administration already has 43 earrings, sixteen tattoos, and herpes.

What I’m trying to explain that there are two types of changes the first one is fast, really fast, like the turkey’s bad November day.  The second type seems fast only when viewed from 200 years in the future.  Remember, love can last for a lifetime, but herpes is forever.

In my estimation (for what it’s worth) we are in an atmosphere where both types of change will happen.  We will have sudden changes, like the turkey, or like Marie Antoinette. These will be changes we cannot go back from.  If you burn a receipt from Arby’s©, there’s no going back to get those curly fries if they shorted you.

We all burn our receipts from Arby’s™ as soon as we get home, right?  Otherwise The Man would know how much we like Horsey Sauce®, and you where that leads:

Tyranny.

I digress.

But I will* note that I had a conversation with a friend over a year ago.  He and I were talking about investing and other things.  During this conversation, I had an epiphany.  Where was my money?  Mainly in a single bank (this has now changed).

Where does the Federal Reserve hide its economic failures?  In debasement.

My question to my friend then was this:  “How much of your money is diversified?”

His response was, “Well, it’s in mutual funds, and in a wide variety of stocks and bonds.  So it’s diversified.”

I followed up:  “No, I mean how much of all of that is in dollars?”

There was a long pause.  “All of it.”

I guess this post is mainly to point out that just like we don’t buy things in 2020 with a pocketful Roman coins, and we don’t buy things with French Francs from before their Revolution, and we can’t buy things with Soviet Rubles, how long will we be able to buy things with Dollars?

Just asking.

I’m not even suggesting any particular path, though I will disclose that if everything goes well, my kids might inherit some silver and gold when The Mrs. and I pass on.  Like any turkey, I know one thing:  tomorrow generally looks like today.

Until it doesn’t.

*Standard I’m Not A Financial Wizard Blah Blah Blah And If You Listen To Me For Financial Advice You’re Insane Differently Mental Disclaimer.

The Archbishop, Trump, And The Coming Great Reset

“Jahr null. Year zero. An experiment. A reset. A new America.” – The Man in the High Castle

I hear that Noah kept his bees in the Ark hives.

I first became aware of “The Great Reset” last week.  There are quite a few YouTube® videos about it, but one of the more unusual mentions was in a letter to President Trump from a retired Catholic clergyman.  This particular clergyman is Archbishop Carlo Viganò.  I don’t know what the difference is between an Archbishop and a Bishop, but I suspect it has to do with a better quality of footwear.

Anyway, Archbishop Viganò wrote the following in the letter:

A global plan called the Great Reset is underway. Its architect is a global élite that wants to subdue all of humanity, imposing coercive measures with which to drastically limit individual freedoms and those of entire populations. In several nations this plan has already been approved and financed; in others it is still in an early stage. Behind the world leaders who are the accomplices and executors of this infernal project, there are unscrupulous characters who finance the World Economic Forum and Event 201, promoting their agenda.

The purpose of the Great Reset is the imposition of a health dictatorship aiming at the imposition of liberticidal measures, hidden behind tempting promises of ensuring a universal income and cancelling individual debt. The price of these concessions from the International Monetary Fund will be the renunciation of private property and adherence to a program of vaccination against Covid-19 and Covid-21 promoted by Bill Gates with the collaboration of the main pharmaceutical groups. Beyond the enormous economic interests that motivate the promoters of the Great Reset, the imposition of the vaccination will be accompanied by the requirement of a health passport and a digital ID, with the consequent contact tracing of the population of the entire world. Those who do not accept these measures will be confined in detention camps or placed under house arrest, and all their assets will be confiscated.

You can read the whole letter here (LINK).

Okay, the story the Archbishop was sharing seemed like an Infowars® segment, but with less tinfoil.  What was up?

I hear that Alex Jones’ wife left him because she said he was paranoid.  Alex was okay with that – he said he’d rather live alone than live with a government clone.

Well, it is stuff that’s directly out of an Infowars™ segment:  as I dug into the Archbishop’s clues, it was exactly correct.  The World Economic Forum©, which runs that annual Davos conference in Switzerland where 3,000 of the elite of the business world, academia, Hollywood, and the press get together to discuss how awesome they are for sacrificing themselves by flying their private  jets to visit a Swiss resort.

Alex Jones regularly says they’re up to no good when they meet at Davos.  Not everything is a conspiracy:  I’m certain that Alcoa® and Planters™ will never be allowed to merge, since everyone is afraid of the AlumaNutty.

I will say this about Switzerland – their flag is a big plus.

I know the Leftists complain about the 1%, but this is the 0.00004%.  The amazing thing?  The 0.00004% agree nearly entirely with Antifa’s® agenda.  Here’s what the Great Reset entails, as showcased in articles on the World Economic Forum©’s own website (LINK):

  • “We must build entirely new foundations for our economic and social systems.” The Davos folks describing freedom:  “Be free.  No!  No, not like that.”
  • “In fact, one silver lining of the pandemic is that it has shown how quickly we can make radical changes to our lifestyles.” I’d like to point out that some things didn’t change at all:  WNBA games have always been empty.
  • “. . . will require stronger and more effective governments . . . .” I’m against both of those things.  If we have strong government, I really hope it’s Three Stooges®-level incompetent.
  • “ . . . governments should implement long-overdue reforms that promote more equitable outcomes.” Remember – equality is we all have the same chance.  Equitable means we all get the same outcome.  Except, of course, for the 0.00004%.

Not mine.  Why doesn’t everyone just buy a ticket?

There are three main points that the World Economic Forum© is currently selling as the Great Reset:

  • International coordination on almost everything is the first component. If you thought we had too much globalization already?  Get ready for armies of international bureaucrats to write legislation and regulation that no one is accountable for.
  • “The second component of a Great Reset agenda would ensure that investments advance shared goals, such as equality and sustainability.” Who shares these goals?  Well, at least the 0.00004% do, and they know best, right?  Especially when they spend your money.
  • Finally, they want to “harness the innovations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to support the public good, especially by addressing health and social challenges.” The Fourth Industrial Revolution is Davos-speak for the post-Internet acceleration in information technology and the way that it interacts with the physical world.

But the World Economic Forum dives deeper.  One of the more chilling aspects is that they no longer want individuals to own, well, anything.  You can read the article here (LINK), right off of the World Economic Forum’s© website.  I did a little digging, and found the author was a member of Danish parliament, but prior to that?  She had spent 8 years getting a Masters in theology, became a part-time theology teacher, and then was in parliament.  Sound like a blonde version of AOC?

I you can’t tell socialists jokes – not everyone will get it.  Photo by Johannes Jansson/norden.org, CC BY 2.5 dk

Everything that Archbishop Viganò suggests is an aim of the Great Reset is plainly on the World Economic Forum© website, with the exception for the Archbishop’s claim that that people would be put into camps if they didn’t comply by being vaccinated and chipped.  That, in my mind, makes sense.  It’s not normally something that a country advertises, “Hey come for the free stuff, stay for the concentration camps.”  Or, “Virginia, it’s for Lovers of Barbed Wire.”

I hear the socialist student got top Marx in school.

My review of the Great Reset is simple:

It’s the same hokum that the Left has been selling since before the French Revolution.  The Left promises they will make people into new men and they will share the prosperity with everyone.  But those in control will then ask the question – how many people do we need, really?  The answer is a simple one, and it’s always the same:  fewer than we have now.

In reality, the 0.00004% never even start to share.  The 0.00004% will make life easy and free.  All you have to give up?  All of your freedom.  Hmm, I can get the Devil to grant my wish in exchange for my soul, and I don’t even have to go down to the Crossroads?

Which is why an Archbishop might write a letter in the first place . . . .

Victim? No. You Have A Choice.

“We all have it coming, kid.” – Unforgiven

There’s a serial killer who is strangling victims with t-shirts and he keeps using smaller and smaller sizes of shirt.  Police say he’s still at large.

There comes a point in everyone’s life where they look at Carrie Fisher and say, “I ran out of gas.  I got a flat tire.  I didn’t have change for cab fare.  I lost my tux at the cleaners.  I locked my keys in the car.  An old friend came in from out of town.  Someone stole my car.  There was an earthquake!  A terrible flood!  Locusts!  It wasn’t my fault!”

That might even be true:  100% true.  A meteor might have fallen on your house, and you might have unknowingly chosen the slightly cheaper “meteor-exempt” policy from Allstate®, and the Helping Hands™ people would then be justified in giving you the Flying Fragment Finger™.

Everyone on Earth could legitimately claim to be a victim at this point.  This, my friends, is the biggest trap in the world.

Why?

It’s against everything that is virtuous and good.  Victimhood is the poison that destroys lives and civilizations with all of the wanton carelessness of a feminist wine aunt trying to “find herself” on a booze cruise through the Caribbean.

When alcohol says to you, “You can dance,” this is what it means.

Victimhood says there is something wrong with the situation.  Let me clarify something:  there isn’t anything wrong with any situation.  Reality is real.  The situation is the situation.  The first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club.

Fairness is a lie.  Expecting things to be different because we want them to be is, perhaps, the most insidious poison that we dose ourselves with on a regular basis.  And that is the basis of being a victim.

Being a victim is like being in a prison, but it’s a prison that is especially strong.  Why?  Victims willingly build their own prison.

What is the essence of victimhood?

  • Like France, a victim is at the mercy of outside forces.
  • Like Sweden, a victim takes no responsibility for their current position.
  • Like Mongo, victim merely pawn in game of life.
  • Like the Italian Army, victims are weak.

Why do people choose to be victims?

Well, I said they are weak.  But they use that same weakness to control others around them.

“I can’t do this.  Can you help me?”

Never play chess with an Islamic terrorist – it’s always “pawn to C4.”

Victims are horrible to be around.  They’re constantly complaining, but take no action to make their lives better.  Honestly, they don’t want their lives to be better, since they’ve begun to use their victimhood as a weird superpower – as if Superman® won because Lex Luthor™ got embarrassed from beating him up.

Victims don’t expect anything from themselves, so they can’t fail.  The world is against them, so why even try?  They have a world where everyone is responsible for everything.

Except for them.

Like I said at the beginning of this piece, the corollary is that sometimes we really didn’t have anything to do with the fate that happened to us.  It just happened.

So?

Just like there have been times when I haven’t had money, but I’ve never been poor, there are times when the breaks didn’t go my way, but I try never to be the victim.

See, this man may be broke, but he’s not poor. 

The stunning truth that many people go through life is that, even when the meteor hits their house they still don’t have to give up control.  There’s no real reason to be a victim.

  • Cold? Good!  You can make it through that, and won’t that make the hot coffee taste great?
  • Tired? Wonderful!  You can rest later, and sleep like a king.
  • Hungry? Excellent!  The next meal may be the best you’ve ever tasted.
  • Someone make fun of you? Fantastic!  An opportunity to get better and get tougher.

When I was in high school, Ma Wilder had a stroke.

Now, say what you want about Ma Wilder, but that woman had a willpower streak as deep and wide as the Grand Canyon.  This might explain some of our epic fights when neither one of us would back down.  Sometimes our fights would last for days, until the voice of reason, Pa Wilder, intervened.

Strangely, I think Ma Wilder would have liked Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down.”

Pa wasn’t interested so much in justice as in watching Monday Night Football® in peace, and knew that a fight between a determined third grader and his 50+ year old wife (I’m adopted, but within the family – Ma Wilder was my biological grandma) would interfere.

Anyway we Wilders don’t do anything small.  Ma’s stroke was a big one, which paralyzed half of her body.  It left her in a wheelchair, an eloquent woman cut down and left unable to speak except for “yes” and, more often, “no.”

But the one thing her stroke didn’t impact was her will.

One day she wanted a Coke®.  She wheeled over to me with the Coke™ in her one good hand.  I loosened the top of the Coke© bottle so it was finger-tight but left it on for her to finish.

Pa Wilder was a little bit mad.  “John, take that off for her.”

Ma Wilder jumped in.  “No!”  She took it from me, wheeled over to the table, unscrewed the top with one hand, and poured herself her drink.  As much as that woman could do for herself, she was resolved to do for herself.

The opposite of victimhood is:

  • Strength
  • Will
  • Determination
  • Perseverance
  • Purpose

Okay, maybe it won’t regrow your hair.

Fortune may determine your circumstance.  You determine how you act and what you make of your circumstance.

And, win or lose?

It really was a fair fight.  Honestly, we really do all have it coming.