Category: Weimerica

Less Is More, Plus Camping Fashion Models

“The things you own end up owning you.” – Fight Club

The world spins on its axis.  That really makes my day.

I used to be a Scoutmaster®.  That was in the time before Scouting™ became fully woke, attempting to appease those who only wanted to kill it.  I get it, I get it, those dollars were sexy and the BSA© was a little drunk and just couldn’t say no.

Still, if the BSA™ did it for the money, it’s pretty clear what that makes them.

I digress.

I think Scouting® had been a very valuable program.  I know that the scouts in the troop I was the Scoutmaster© for turned out pretty well.

The secret, as far as I could tell, was to allow the scouts to run the program.  I mean, it was called “Boy Scouts™” and not “Adult Scouts©”.  The program wasn’t set up for the comfort of old men with checkbooks and a La-Z-Boy© at home.

I’m an armchair psychologist.  Just yesterday I diagnosed my recliner with schizophrenia.

The first thing that I did when I became Scoutmaster© was to immediately stop the sharing of food between adults and boys.  I had noticed that whenever dinner depended on what the kids cooked, the adults got involved because they didn’t want to eat awful food or crap.

Not on my watch.

The boys would plan their meals, cook their food, and clean up without adult intervention.  This led to more than one tragic crime against the culinary arts, but I and the other adults always ate pretty well.  The big lesson for me was that if I let them alone, they’d eventually figure it out.  And if they burned dinner, they could go without or move to the next day’s lunch.

No one starved, but they got better and better at preparing and cooking.

Me?  I got better and better at planning.

Don’t talk to me about fashion, it’ll just go in one year and out the other.

My first BSA© camping trip out was some 20 years after my teenage backpacking days on Wilder Mountain.  I read the manual, and it said “be prepared” so my first loadout camping was approximately 300 pounds of gear, most of which was entirely unused for the weekend.

After four years and the BSA© abandoning all pretense at being Morally Straight, I packed for my last campout with the troop.  My loadout?

A sleeping bag, cot, tent, toothbrush, lamp, folding chair, and book.  Maybe there were a few other items, like extra socks.  If it had been summer I would have taken bug spray.

I don’t often have international fashion models in my house, but when I do they manifest directly out of the bathroom counter.

The difference in the amount of kit was based on two thoughts:  first, I’m going to a campground for a weekend, not attempting a solo summit of K2.  Second, being away from the everyday luxuries of life was the point of camping.  Over the years, I had determined that I could do without almost anything for a weekend camping trip.

Almost anything.  I’m quite fond of air.

That was also one of the purposes for the boys involved in the program.  They needed to learn that they could plan and execute a trip, and do without televisions and cell phones and fluffy mattresses and mayonnaise and soda pop for a weekend.  That was one of the more enjoyable parts of the job, really, watching kids doing without and building competence and self-determination in a world that wants to make them helpless and dependent.

Sure, watching them fail again and again was hilarious, but failure was the point.  And doing without was the point.  And coming from a world of plenty, the boys loved the chance to make real decisions, take action, and live with the consequences.

In our current world, I think that we have created a dystopia where whatever isn’t mandatory is prohibited, and the idea of a kid going without a Friday meal because they burned it will make people seethe with anger.

If being a 23 year old Irish swimwear model has taught me anything, it’s that catfishing is surprisingly easy online.

Going to bed with a meagre supper is a consequence of bad skill, and the next time the boys took better care of their cooking so it wasn’t carbonized.  To tell the truth, the carbonized noodles looked more edible than the chicken tartare.  I mean, it was tartare on the inside, but blowtorched on the outside like it had spent an afternoon in Vulcan’s forge.

I still shudder at that thought, but, hey, I didn’t have to eat it.  But in the future . . . ?

It may be that we will soon enter a time where the nation as a whole becomes much poorer than it is today.  Poorer means less material wealth, and fewer . . . things.  To be fair, the things I need the most don’t cost all that much in the first place.  Books are inexpensive, and I have about 20 feet worth of books that I have planned to read.  Poorer lands will have fewer dinner courses.

Economists have told us that we are much wealthier now than we were in the 1950s or 1980s.  Okay.  But I certainly don’t think that the average person is happier now despite being able to communicate with virtually everyone on the planet in an instant.

I hear that the iPhone’s® battery is called Apple© Juice™.

When I grew up, when the phone rang, we ran to it so we could answer it to see who might be on the other end of the line.  As phone calls were expensive then, it was rare to get someone wanting to sell me something, so almost every call was someone reaching out, not something to avoid.

In the end, what makes us better is our competence, and what weakens us is being dependent upon luxury.

Except booze.  Apparently neither the BSA© nor I turn that down.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report, Force Assessment

“That way management can assess who’s valuable and who’s expendable.  It’s just business.” – American Beauty

There’s a new urban reality show where judges free inmates who like fishing, called “Off the Hook”.

  1. Those who have an opposing ideology are considered evil.
  2. People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology.  Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
  3. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
  4. Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
  5. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
  6. Open War.

Volume VIII, Issue 4

Most memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”.  I have maintained the Clock O’Doom at 9., but given the lower numbers on the indexes and the lower number of violence and censorship events, will likely lower the level next month if violence stays low.  Beware: the number can climb quickly.

My advice remains.  Avoid crowds.  Get out of cities.  Now.  A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Chinese Assessment, Civil War 2.0  – Violence and Censorship Update – Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report.  These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month.  I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues.  Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 920 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at or before 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Chinese Assessment, Civil War 2.0 

This is a longer piece.  Obviously, I don’t have a friend in the PLA’s Institute of War Studies who sent this to me (THANK YOU SO MUCH CHANG!) but I do have a large number of readers from the People’s Republic of China, so here’s a shout out to you guys!

Part of being in the United States is that we’re invested in the outcome of a potential future Civil War in a big way.  The Chinese?  They’re interested.  So, I tried to come up with what a somewhat neutral third party would say about Civil War 2.0.  I do know this about militaries, they have plans for everything, so I know that China has a document based on a future American Civil War, so I thought, Wilder, what if you wrote one from China’s perspective?  Here’s my attempt.  It’s dry.  Only one joke.

People’s Liberation Army
Institute of War Studies
For:  General Staff/Theater Strategic Research Cell
INTERNAL DRAFT – NOT FOR RELEASE

Subject:  Possible forms of large-scale internal armed conflict in the United States; relative combat potential; implications for our strategy
Character:  Contingency estimate and outcome review.  This is not a strategic directive.
Constraints:  No actual names of U.S. persons.  No executable strike list against the U.S. homeland.

  1. Mission and Purpose of the Estimate

This estimate reviews four questions:

  1. If the United States enters a large internal conflict between an inland nationalist, armed civil-society coalition and an urban–institutional–transnational coalition, what is the balance of war potential?
  2. On what time scale could the conflict unfold, and how cities and logistics could fail?
  3. How would outside states recognize, hedge, or feed both sides?
  4. What window and what risk does this create for our main strategic direction: Taiwan, the Western Pacific, energy and grain routes, and dollar clearing?

An American internal war is not two field armies advancing on a front, instead it is the splitting of a state machine.  From our viewpoint, the decisive prizes are fragments of nuclear command authority, which government foreign nations will still treat as a government that can sign contracts and that can keep ports and bulk food moving.  A rapid national reunification by either coalition is usually worse for us than a long dual-authority stalemate that cripples external power projection.

  1. Situation and planning assumptions

Assumption A.  The trigger is domestic:  a disputed transfer of power, a federal–state armed standoff, a nationwide attempt to confiscate arms or starve ammunition supply that states refuse, or a systematic civil-liberties crackdown that produces organized nullification.

Assumption B.  The active-duty force does not split cleanly along electoral maps.  State National Guard, some reserve components, veterans, and local law enforcement will show regional tilt.

Assumption C.  In the opening period, intercity trucking and regional electric service are interrupted for days and possibly weeks.  This follows from just-in-time urban design and capitalist logistics.  It does not require a precision sabotage campaign to create failure.

Assumption D.  We do not seek American territory. The task is window management, risk hedging, and competitive shaping.

The United States has on the order of 340 million people. Partisan identification is close. Cities hold population and a majority of output. The interior holds land, calories, and most onshore hydrocarbons. That is the base conflict map.

  1. Identification of the Two Coalitions
Label Center of Gravity Geographic Weight
Red Force, the state-rights /traditional Americans Rural and small-town population, a majority of veterans by affiliation, higher personal firearms density, many state executives and county law officers in the interior Heartland, Plains, Mountain West, much of the South and Appalachia, growing Sun Belt interiors
Blue Force, urban/ institutional/ globalist Dense metros, universities, much of media, ports, hospitals, finance, a large share of the federal civilian apparatus Coastal and Great Lakes cores, a few deep-blue states, the diplomatic and dollar-clearing nodes

 

  1. Relative Combat Potential

4.1 Numbers

Blue Force has the larger share of people and of high-value economic output in compact space. Red Force has the larger share of land and of counties that produce food and fuel.  Raw headcount favors Blue. Staying power on territory favors Red.

4.2 Age and Manpower Quality

Younger urban cohorts lean toward Blue, especially young women. Older cohorts and a large share of military-age males with weapons experience lean toward Red. Red Force’s core is older. Blue Force’s demographic is younger and has no experience with hardship, especially in field conditions.

4.3 Means

The largest force asymmetry is distributed firearms and veteran skill on the Red side.  This is counterbalanced by the institutional, financial, medical, and information infrastructure on the Blue side.

Personal gun ownership is on the order of twice as common in the general voter on the Red side as in the Blue aligned voters.  A key factor is the he national stock of firearms is measured in the hundreds of millions.  However, active-duty United States military services remain the only formation that can move at continental scale with aviation, logistics, and nuclear custody.  Their loyalty is the war’s hinge but it is not sure that they will follow either coalition.

4.4 Cohesion

Red Force coheres around land, faith networks, veterans’ organizations, and distrust of coastal institutions.  It fractures around personalities and between libertarian, populist, and traditional-conservative currents.

Blue Force coheres through bureaucracies, universities, city governments, and remaining national media.  It fractures among socialists, corporate liberals, and identity factions the moment scarcity arrives.

4.5 Command

No single chain exists at the start.

  • Governors command Guard forces until a federalization fight is won or lost.
  • Active-duty officers swear to a constitution, not a faction.
  • Blue Force has more practice running large organizations and talking to foreign ministries.
  • Red Force has more small-unit and land skill and more of the interior’s elected law officers.

Expected command picture:  federated, messy, multiple “capitals,” local strongmen.

4.6 Public Order

Urbanization predicts recorded violent crime better than party label. Dense Blue cores will face faster public-order failure when lights and food stop.  Rural Red areas will face their own disorder:  freelancers, score-settling, and local bosses.  Neither coalition is “the professional army” and neither is “the mob.” Both will generate both, though Red coordination structures are likely more resilient to the certain outages of power and information and less prone to the civil violence commonly seen among blacks.

  1. Environment: terrain, logistics, systems

5.1 Terrain

Continental distances, the Rockies, the Appalachians, the Mississippi system, deserts, and northern winter all punish long supply lines.  The countryside is hard to occupy.  The city is impossible to live in without electricity and trucks.

5.2 Food and fuel

California leads agricultural production on a per dollar basis, but most food (grain, oilseeds, cattle, hogs) is produced in the Midwest and in the Plains.  Metros run on continuous inbound trucks.  Retail inventories of food in large cities are measured in days.  Western and southwestern cities are more exposed to food-supply shock than Midwestern and northeastern cities.

Onshore oil and gas are concentrated in Texas, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Wyoming, and similar interior producers.  Coastal Blue states are large consumers and are generally net energy importers.

5.3 Power

The bulk power system consists of three grids Eastern, Western, ERCOT.  Texas is nearly an electrical island.  Peak imports into California have already been source of unreliably during long durations of elevated temperatures.  Urban counties show higher outage burden than rural counties in recent published studies.  When bulk power fails, water pumps, sewage, hospitals, elevators, and card payments fail behind it.

5.4 Chokepoints of national significance

Interstate junctions, rail hubs, river locks, pipelines, a small number of container ports, and a small number of food-distribution counties. Blue Force lives at the receiving end of these systems. Red Force lives nearer many of the producing nodes.

  1. Urban System Under Multi-Day to Multi-Week Loss of Power and Food Shipments

Planning assumption: inbound freight and bulk power are unreliable for days and possibly weeks. This is enough to break modern metros.

“Collapse” means loss of municipal control and mass uninhabitability.

“Hold” means some authority, a port or river, nearby production, or milder climate keeps a fraction of the population in place.

6.1 Blue-aligned cores most likely to collapse first

  • Desert metros (Las Vegas type; Phoenix type).  No local water or calories at metro scale.
  • Hyper-dense coastal islands (New York type).  Four to five days of point-of-sale food in official city studies; extensive use of bridges and tunnels; and apartments that need electricity for water.
  • Inner Bay Area type.  Peninsula geography, little staple production, dependence on Central Valley corridors and imported peak power.
  • Los Angeles basin type.  Conditionally fragile.  Nearby valleys can feed it only if corridors and pumps still work.  Population scale and imported water make simultaneous failure catastrophic.
  • South Florida strip type.  Peninsula, heat, storms, imported food.
  • Boston or New England type.  Winter energy tightness and thin local staples.
  • Federal district core.  Political value high, local calories near zero. Survival depends on neighboring state authorities.
  • Hawaii. On the order of nine-tenths of food imported. Sealift and air cargo stop, stores empty in days.

6.2  Blue-aligned cores that may hold

  • Chicago type. The country’s central food and freight node beside Illinois–Iowa production.  Lake water still needs treatment and pumps. If farms still sell into the city, it lasts. If the farms withhold, it becomes New York.
  • Twin Cities type. Grain and protein nearby; winter without gasoline is the killer.
  • Sacramento type. Sits in the Valley rather than at the end of a long hose.
  • Willamette/Portland type. Actual nearby mixed farming.
  • San Diego type. Naval and port footprint; milder climate than desert metros; survival rises if naval authority keeps the harbor working and Los Angeles out.
  • Philadelphia–Baltimore type. Mid-Atlantic farms and ports; less isolated than Manhattan, yet in the midst of collapse already.
  • Great Lakes rust-belt cores. Poor social baseline, better food geography than the Southwest.
  • Atlanta type and other blue city halls inside mixed or red states. Resilience is political: the surrounding state may provision the tax base or quarantine the enclave.
  • Front Range type. Some nearby production; long truck bridge; water is the weakness.

None of these are self-sufficient if the regional truck and grid system is actually down. A collapsed city is not automatically captured by Red Force, it may simply cease to be a city.

  1. Victory Objectives

Neither coalition can cheaply occupy the other’s core terrain.

A Red Force win looks like: enough territory and calories to deny Blue a working national government; surviving state machines; a settlement, partition, or “restored constitution” that Red Force recognizes.  Occupying hostile coastal megacities would consume Red Force.

A Blue Force win looks like: retention of federal forms, the dollar, ports, and foreign recognition; isolation of interior resistance.  Occupying the interior against a dispersed armed population would consume Blue Force.

Most likely military-political outcome: multiple authorities, a humanitarian disaster, a poorer and less sovereign United States.

  1. External Actors

Outside countries will not “join a side” as in a treaty war.  They will protect their interests and choose to deal with the winner that best serves their national interests.

8.1 China’s Preferred Outcome

A United States that can no longer concentrate power in the Western Pacific, while still buying our goods and servicing dollar assets until a substitute currency system is in place.

  • A fast Red Faction victory is dangerous if the survivor is coherent, energy-rich, hostile over Taiwan and technology, and still willing to use export controls and naval power.  It is less dangerous if that survivor withdraws from Asia.
  • A fast Blue Faction victory is dangerous if it restores a working Pentagon, alliances, and export-control regimes and insists on maintaining its cultural hegemony.
  • A long stalemate is the best of the bad outcomes:  while markets seize, naval fleets argue over which orders are legitimate.  During this period, Taiwan is isolated and external military force projection become impossible for the United States.

Therefore, the rational course for China is dual-track:  public language of stability and non-interference.  But we will fund either side with covert information, finance, and selected commodities to prevent a short decisive win.  We engage in recognition of whoever holds the UN seat, but will continue to provide enough life support to the other fragment to keep the split active.  We buy soy, pork, and energy from the interior and sell finished goods into coastal metros.

A famine that kills our suppliers and a coastal crash that kills our consumers are both to be avoided.  The best condition would be a managed paralysis.

8.2  Goals of Countries Hostile to the United States

Russia/Iran/Best Korea:  Aligned with China in wanting a weaker United States, and longer term Russia has designs on Alaska.

8.3 Neighbors of the United States

Mexico will prefer a Blue Force victory due to a need for an outlet for their excess population and as a source of funding.

Canada is more tightly bound to the United States since they are wired into the electrical grid, and export automobiles, grain and energy.  A non-functional United States is an existential Canadian problem, though a potential Chinese foothold on the continent.

8.4 U.S. allies

Pacific:  Japan, ROK, Taiwan, Australia, and New Zealand

They ask one question:  is there still a navy and a nuclear deterrent that will appear in the Pacific?  They will follow continuing command authority.  Their only win is for Red Force to win decisively and keep the fleet intact.  A Blue Force that holds ports but loses interior fuel and manpower looks will provide no support.  They have little ability to influence the events of a civil war in the United States.

European Union and the United Kingdom.

There is a cultural affinity with Blue Force.  They are in terror of Red Force abandoning NATO; and feel equal terror of a collapsed America.  They have little ability to influence the events of a civil war in the United States.

  1. Wild Cards
    Urban gangs and border cartels.
    Winter, hurricanes, western fire and drought.
    Nuclear and strategic-asset custody.
    Dollar collapse.
    A disease event on top of disorder.
  2. Implications for Our Strategy

10.1 The window

A United States arguing over which fragment owns the Pacific fleet is a United States that cannot run a two-theater war.  That is the operational meaning of this contingency for the first island chain.  As cracks open, we should have plans in place to take advantage of the advantage this will give us.

10.2 Risks to us

  • Financial contagion that destroys our reserve portfolio and export demand.
  • Loss of U.S. soy, pork, and energy shipments if interior authorities stop exporting or if ports freeze.
  • A surviving American fragment that is poorer, angrier, less legally constrained, and considering expansion.
  • Allied emergency coordination that freezes the map against us (United States bases stay manned by European allies).  This is unlikely.

10.3 Recommended posture for study

  1. Treat prolonged dual authority as the outcome to shape toward.
  2. Prepare recognition and trade channels for more than one U.S. fragment (ports, grain houses, energy terminals) without early exclusive commitment unless that commitment comes with extraordinary opportunity.
  3. Insulation of our own grain, energy, and payment exposure to a dollar seizure or a Gulf–Pacific simultaneous crisis.  Continue to build stockpiles of critical minerals and commodities.
  1. Estimate in One Paragraph

Red Force is stronger in distributed arms, veterans, land, food, and hydrocarbons.

Blue Force is stronger in people, money, ports, formal institutions, and the existing alliance-and-dollar network.

Neither can cheaply occupy the other’s core.  Desert and hyper-dense coastal Blue metros fail first when power and trucks stop.  Blue Midwest lake-and-rail metros fail later.

Outside powers will not crown a winner if they are thinking clearly.  Our interest is a United States that cannot concentrate, not a United States that has been replaced by a single hostile survivor.

Violence and Censorship:

War was declared on Spain, yet they’re not fighting back:

Ireland . . . excellent!

England, however, hates itself and is censoring it’s national symbol:

Never forget, the GloboLeftElite hates you.

Misery Index

The new Trump administration is shown in red.  Results continue to be much better than Biden’s misery.

But all those data center jobs?

Updated Civil War II Index

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

Violence:

Violence indicators are way down.  Too hot for all that?

Political Instability:

Down is more stable, and it went down again this month to a near-record low.

Economic:

The economy ticked up slightly last month but I’m concerned.

Illegal Aliens:

Still the near lowest level since the Weather Report started, but remember who they are.

LINKS

The links are again done by Ricky this month.  Thanks, Ricky!

BAD GUYS

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/inflection-point-arrives-dsas-unofficial-america-hating-communist-mascot
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/the-dsa-is-using-coffee-with-comrades-and-socialist-softball-to-convert-the-curious-ffcbcc65
https://nypost.com/2026/08/15/us-news/socialist-ny-lawmaker-emily-gallagher-says-shoplifters-have-a-biological-need-to-steal/
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/democratic-socialists-openly-call-erasure-constitutional-government
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/inflection-point-arrives-dsas-unofficial-america-hating-communist-mascot
https://twitter.com/i/status/2042031825887936702
https://modernity.news/2026/09/05/copycat-clancy-horror/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2026/08/09/mexican-influencers-murdered-live-streams/

GOOD GUYS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYSaeU5qC70
https://x.com/FoxNews/status/2096564604646068341

ONE GUY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpWxamM96bg&t=31s
https://cowboystatedaily.com/2026/08/26/trans-protestor-has-self-defense-hearing-over-drawing-gun-in-laramie-street/

BODY COUNT

https://www.dailymail.com/health/article-16044311/massachusetts-governor-maura-healey-abortion-law.html
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-how-the-american-population-map-will-shift-by-2050/
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2026-08-12_09-25-50.png?itok=Ogu-3AuJ
https://archive.ph/LaP2e

VOTE COUNT

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XgSnP_KD_CU
https://www.michigannewssource.com/2026/08/michigan-sheriff-receives-whistleblower-allegation-state-software-automatically-registering-noncitizens-to-vote/
https://www.themidwesterner.news/2026/08/citizen-only-voting-initiative-faces-monday-canvassers-vote-after-staff-recommends-rejecting-petition/
https://ballotpedia.org/When_states_can_begin_processing_and_counting_absentee/mail-in_ballots,_2022

CIVIL WAR

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1984801376
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/amanpour-and-company/video/a-second-civil-war-and-the-country-fractured-in-two-thats-the-imagined-future-in-author-kurt-andersens-new-novel-xexbrf/
https://www.axios.com/2026/08/30/socialists-fight-aoc-2028
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/gop-plot-to-sabotage-jd-vance-2028-prospects
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/10/style/america-is-atomizing.html?unlocked_article_code=1.4VA.1iQ7.eLCo7EZHLM8d&smid=url-share
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/socialist-leader-says-quiet-part-out-loud-affordability-pitch-masks-guerrilla-class-war
https://modernity.news/2026/08/09/uk-intelligence-warns-of-civil-war-plot-against-migrants-convenient-demonisation/
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/18/magazine/national-blackout-power-electricity-outage.html?unlocked_article_code=1.6VA.oPoZ.in0JSEQwfHWI&smid=url-share

Tinder© Tramps, InstaThots®, And The Attention Sump In Your Pocket

“I’m bored!  I’m bored and I’m getting eaten by mosquitos.  I’m being eaten.  And I’m bored as well.” – The Grand Tour

I got a free iPhone© and a free iPad® today!  Pistols are magic!

I had my previous cell phone for nine years: from August of 2017 to August of 2026.  That’s a good run.  I bought a fairly nice one back in the day, and took good care of it.

I lie.  Somehow the screen cracked in November, 2020, so I had to make sure it stayed dry.  The old phone did its duty.  I would still be using it, but it’s full, and there are a number of faults going on that make me think that it is time.

On the advice of Pugsley, I swapped over from the Mao People’s Phone© (Android™) to the Fascist Fisher-Price™ phone (Apple©).  I know, it sounds nuts.

What a difference 10 years has made in technology!  Steve Jobs once said that he wanted the iPhone© to feel so sexy that people would be tempted to lick it.  This 17th version is a tightly integrated piece of technology.  I mean, I haven’t licked it, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not WiFi-curious as to what licking it would feel like.

I used to live on Mars®, but decided that was way too much chocolate.

Civilization has been on a downward slide since, oh, whenever they started welfare and started encouraging poor stupid people to make more poor stupid people by paying them to be poor and stupid.  Incentives matter.  Welfare was bad, but the iPhone© really took societal collapse from “Hiroshima” to “full Tsar Bomba”.  Never go full Tsar Bomba.

The iPhone© is the problem.  It allowed interaction on a scale never before seen, and was the platform that empowered Tinder© tramps to seek out Chad to be used for a night and InstaThots® to feed their narcissism.  That was bad enough, but it also became the attention sump, turning every waking moment into a distraction.

Distraction and dopamine hits are what the iPhone® was built to deliver.  I’ve only had mine a week, but a friend indicates that it is also an amazing device for having Apple® to sink their fangs into my credit card and suck as hard as I’ll let them.  They monetize everything.

Like?

Location.  How fast I drive.  The number of steps I take in a day (not enough) and how steady my gait is (very).

Someone stole all the fruit from my farm in Georgia, that leaves me peachless.

The last two are maybe going to be a net benefit for me, as I can certainly see myself always wanting to be above average, so soon enough I’ll be walking 100,000 steps a day.  Well, me and Jason Arday.

Too soon?

The phone is designed to distract, designed to turn every bit of life into a consumption event.  With a dizzying array of apps pre-built in, it’s almost intoxicating flipping through the pages of things I could be doing right this second instead of . . . wait, why did I pick the phone up in the first place?  Oh, yeah, got distracted.  Oh, a notification!  The Mrs. let the dogs out!

How does Jeff Foxworthy kill werewolves?  With a silver mullet.

The first time I went to Las Vegas the sounds and sights were overwhelming after a few hours.  I think that’s the point, but that was also in a world mainly free of the Internet back in 1997.

It may seem like a super-power, but it is a pretty useless superpower, like having the ability to retract my fingernails or hair back into my body.

What is nice, though, is that it tracks and graphs which apps I’m using and when I’m using them, and the option to tell the phone to remind me, “Wilder, time to shut this damn thing down and go to bed”.

That has actually been a positive for me.  I shut down the distraction device, pick up a book, and read.  I’d already gotten through a novel or non-fiction book every other week since the start of the year (last two:  C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy, Sweterlitsch’s The Gone World, current:  Hawkins’ The Library at Mount Char), but the other alternative is to be bored.

I read a biography of JFK.  The end was mind blowing.

I avoid brooding and regret since they are a horrible ways to program yourself to think, and a trap that should be avoided.

Besides, boredom is useful.

Boredom is that innate spark in humans, that makes us feel uncomfortable in sitting in a warm, dark room, well fed, with low effort.  Boredom pushes us to create, to learn, to invent.  The first person to figure out a bow-drill or decided that stacking rocks in a pyramid shape might be cool or that being the first guy to make it to the South Pole was a good thing.

Boredom is also why some animals die or refuse to mate in captivity.  Our full-on stimulation world might be part of the reason that mating seems to be no longer as important to many of the young in 2026.

HR was upset with my urine sample.  Apparently they only want them when they request them.

People aren’t meant to be continually distracted.  We are supposed to be bored sometimes because for at least tens of thousands of years that was our default programming.  Boredom forces us to change.

A society based on waiting for someone else to distract us is madness.  Like licking an iPhone©.

Yay!  More microplastics in my testicles!  That’s nuts!

Liberty Without a People, a Border, or a Moral Center Is Just a Corridor

“I’m definitely a libertarian.  Consenting adults want what they want, and if I’m not supplying it, they will get it somewhere else.” – Breaking Bad

So, I checked out an Ayn Rand book at a public library . . .

To give context to what follows, I was a Libertarian.  Yes, a capital “L” version, which is what this post is about.  I had the card and everything, and this was back when I had to use MS-DOS® to get anything done.  C:/DOS.  C:/DOS run.  Run DOS Run!

It was also before Libertarianism became rabidly open border and I was always more of a nationalist than a libertarian, so there’s that.  I have since realized that libertarianism is a road only to globalism, socialism, and gay communism in 2026.  Honestly, libertarianism in the United States doesn’t work for any date past, say the 1880s or so.

Let me elaborate.  I’ll start by being fair and noting that not every libertarian believes the same exact things, because the difference between a libertarian wedding and a libertarian funeral is one less opinion.

First, let’s explore the concept of the basic unit of society.  As I’ve mentioned before, the basic unit, the atom of society is the family, not the individual.  Individuals don’t reproduce unless they’re lower forms of life like paramecium, which only accounts for bankers and Hollywood© executives, and most politicians.  Last I checked, only a man and a woman can reproduce.

A friend ordered a bride from Eastern Europe.  Sadly for him, the Czech is still in the mail.

Libertarianism, like communism, is based on freedom and the removal of constraints.  What constraints?  Well, family, religion, tradition, ancestors, culture, border, community, and hierarchy.  The first thing the reds did when they took over Spain was burn the churches, kill the nuns, and abolish marriage.

Let me assure you, Francisco Franco was far too kind to these people when he won.

Libertarianism, like communism and globalism, depends on Homo Economicus.

What’s a person?  Well, one Homo Economicus is very much like another.  So much so, that they have the same desires, the same wants, the same potential, the same value.  In extremes of this viewpoint, they even have the same intellectual potential.  Don’t know if you’ve noticed it, but smart kids very, very rarely come from dumb parents.  Idiocracy was right in that respect.

I knew one person who was so dumb they tried to drown themselves on a pool table.

Is it any wonder that rabid Libertarians and Communists both want open borders and free trade?

The problem is that ripping out family, religion, tradition, ancestors, culture, border, community, and hierarchy removes all of the intermediate steps that prevent communism or GloboLeftism from even existing.  If you view your nation as something given to you on loan by your ancestors to bequeath to your kids, well, that’s an entirely different mindset than “Let’s go shopping at Wal-Mart© or let in infinity foreigners for cheap strawberries”.

These institutions and traditions, and, yes, collective beliefs that Libertarianism wants to remove are the real anti-communist and anti-globalist technology.

Where Libertarianism is strongest is against the state as a monopolist of violence and against price controls.  To be clear, when the firearm was invented, the state monopoly of violence disappeared, and they knew it.  The idea of how governments should be configured was in play.

And this occurred in Europe.  Why Europe?  Because European nations typically had a dominant state religion, a national people, a single language, borders, and some with ancestors going back thousands of years in the same plot of land.  These people had all of that in common, and could therefore ask the question of, “how should we set up a government?”

Europe refuses to put caps on new immigrants.  I thought the French had an excess of berets?

As an example, if the Founding Fathers had consisted of Somalians, Indians, and Nigerians, they would have just spent their time in tribal warfare against each other.  No, the Founding Fathers were mainly Welsh, Irish, Scottish, and English.  Franklin was pretty sure the Germans were suspect.  The United States wasn’t conceived for moslims.  Nope.  It was conceived for a predominantly white, Christian, moral people with low time-preference, trust, honesty, deferred gratification, and a shared sense of ownership of the nation as a whole.

And Libertarianism was okay for that group.  Don’t like the rules in Pennsylvania?  Move west to Ohio.  Don’t like the rules in Ohio?  Move west to Utah.  I mean, move there if you’re Mormon.

This might have continued to work okay, but we ran out of land, and we started importing people from cultures that atomized the nation.  And slavery.  That was a stupid idea.  Guys, always pick your own cotton.  And your own strawberries.  And write your own programs.

Soon enough, we had “the oppressed” and “the marginalized” which are fodder for a client class for socialists.  Add in the Libertarian desire to remove every cultural constraint as an “illegitimate barrier to trade” and you get, well, chaos.  Honestly, you get India after you’ve spent down the cultural inheritance of what was formerly a nation.

What’s orange and sounds like a parrot?  A carrot.

Free trade doesn’t mean free to trade anything, it means trade free from coercion.  Libertarians spend forever and a day criticizing closed borders, tariffs, vice laws, industrial policy, and cultural constraints that have made it into law.

But HR?  The credentialization of every job?  Payment processors excluding people based on politics?  Universities spewing out carbon-copy socialists?  Social media where people aren’t even allowed to utter the phrase “Great Replacement”?  NGOs?  Asset managers?

Everything a company does is fine.  That’s free trade.

No!

Marxism 1.0 wanted the party to own everything.  Now, GloboLeftism is fine with private ownership.  The companies and the media do the heavy lifting and shift coercion into forms that don’t look exactly like the “State” that Libertarians love to hate.

Libertarianism fails because it calls collective self-defense “collectivism” when America is being assailed by collectives of Indians and Mexicans and moslems and other groups that all have a collective strategy to protect themselves at the expense of the rest of society.  If you try to get a job in certain sectors of the economy, if you don’t speak Spanish, aren’t a Brahmin, don’t bow to Allah, or don’t go to synagogue, well, you’re never going to get that job.  They’ll pick people more like them.

When a strip club shuts down for the night does the sign say, “Sorry, we’re clothed”?

Markets really are the main engines of prosperity, but random, chaotic markets aren’t the predictor of economic success, it’s the people.  In Sweden, all adopted (non-European) foreign children perform well below the norm on IQ tests.  Except the Koreans.

Go figure.  People make a difference.  I’d rather live in socialist all-Dane Denmark than in multicultural Johannesburg.

Libertarianism fails because it cannot generate or defend the particular social order that limited government requires.  Full stop.  The Founding Fathers didn’t spring forth from a Libertarian Eden.  Nope.  They were forged in plain-old British values.

Liberty without a people, a border, and a moral center is a corridor, and corridors get occupied by whoever shows up, and whoever owns the institutions.  Limited government isn’t a software package that works on any computer, it is very particular on what platforms it works.

So, don’t treat it like a software program and skip to the end and hit, “I agree.”

The Passing Of The American Empire?

“Our planet was once a powerful empire, peaceful and just.” – Transformers

One of the brothers fell down the stairs at the Empire State Building.  I guess that’s Wong on so many levels.

The United States sits at the center of the largest empire the world has ever seen.  Certainly, that empire is now slipping.  But let’s review my first assertion.

Is the United States an empire?  I mean, I was expecting more trumpets and purple robes.

Yes, it is.  The definition of an empire is that it cuts across most fields of human life for vast groups of diverse people, having authority over them, economic control, and cultural influence.

Yes, we’ve got that.  The United States is the inheritor of the mantle of the leading partner in Western Civilization.  Before us was Great Britain, paving the way and making it easier for us.

How can we be sure that we’re still in an empire?

English is spoken everywhere.  Sure, thank the Brits, but the reason they kept speaking it is because it is, by far, the most widely used language in the world.  If I got off a plane in Lanzhou or Lillehammer, I could get by without knowing any local languages and rely entirely on English to get me by.  Sadly, English is no longer spoken in London or Los Angeles, and my Arabic and Spanish could use some work, so I’d be out of luck there.

So, language.

Sign language can be very handy.

What about centralized authority and governance?  Trump is certainly showing that, although the United States pretended to not be the big cheese because France hates that, it really was the big cheese all along.  There’s nothing that Europe can do alone to remotely influence the United States.  Nor can Japan.  In fact, all those hundreds of United States military bases around the world?  Yeah, if a country has one of those, it’s an American client.  At one point we had more than 850 bases in 90 countries.

That’s an empire.

Also, economically.  In Rome you could use the denarius (not Daenerys, who was a hot chick with dragons and not a coin, according to Google©) to buy almost anything you wanted anywhere in the empire.  In the world today, you can use a dollar anywhere they take money and not shrunken heads, and also in some places you can trade dollars for shrunken heads.

I was really effective when I worked for the suicide hotline.  100% of my callers never needed to call back.

Finally, cultural and ideological leadership.  Why did they have a “no kings” protest in Canada, where they have a king?  Why did they have BLM® marches in places in Europe where there are no blacks?  Why did Botswana legalize gayness in 2019?  Why is every little tinpot dictator called a “President” instead of a “Prime Minister”?  I mean, if I were a tinpot dictator I’d call myself, “Sovereign Lord and King John Wilder the First, Flayer of Men, Defender of the Faith, Scourge of India, and Former Costco™ Member”.

You always have to throw in something silly.  I mean, I’ve never even been to Costco®.

Rome proved at the Teutoberg Forest that you don’t need to win every battle to remain an empire.  You can suffer astonishing defeats and go, “Well, that stung,” and keep on with the empire.  I mean, Rome never really went after the Germans with the intent to subjugate them after that battle.  The Germans, however . . .

I once won a large rock, paper, scissors bet.  I made money hand over fist.

But, of course, Rome didn’t face the technological evolution of warfare to the extent we’ve seen in the last 20 years, which greatly levels the playing field between the United States and other countries.  The great advantage the Romans had was their empire to draw men from, and their mastery of transport engineering and logistics which could quickly, as measured in 100A.D., put 10,000 men where their enemy wanted them least.

Spain, however, did experience technical obsolescence in its final humiliation of empire.  In 1898, the United States was a rising power.  The United States wasn’t quite ready to challenge Great Britain in 1898, but it did see Spain.  What did Spain have?  Oh, overseas colonies, colonies that could help the United States grow in the natural direction of the country:  the Pacific.  Sure, it came with a short-term rental of Cuba and a long-term lease on Puerto Rico, but the real prize for the United States was Guam and the Philippines, which still looks like it has one too many of the letter “p” in it.

This addition got the United States a leg up in the last part of aligning non-Western nations and established a firm gateway to Asia and military base for projection of force throughout the Pacific.  We were, in fact, willing to fight an 11-year war against the Filipinos and develop the M1911 in .45ACP to kill drugged out Filipino guerrillas, because a .38 just wasn’t enough.

I digress.

The reason the United States utterly defeated Spain in less than four months was it had an intense technological and logistical lead in every facet of warfare.  The numbers speak for themselves:  4,119 American casualties versus somewhere near 56,500 dead Spanish.  Oh, and the Spanish ships were still sporting cannon over a century old.

My friend’s dad was in a union.  Every story began, “Once upon a time and a half . . . “

Spain was dead as an empire, only waiting for someone to knock it over, take its stuff, and buy something nice for themselves.  That was the United States.  By the time of the Spanish-American War, the United States fighting Spain was the geopolitical version of a velociraptor taking on a kitten.  The only way the kitten survives is if the velociraptor gets all the kibble.

Where are we now?

Are we Rome?  Are we Spain?

Both analogies are suspect, since I don’t trust either Italians or Spaniards.  Too much wine in both countries, and I know how I am after one too many bottles of pinot:  I’m in a lot of economic trouble, personal danger, and I can’t remember my past.

Is the United States, like Rome, just taking another L that won’t matter because we’re still the empire?  No, I think we’re not.  I think we’re beyond the peak of American hegemony, which probably happened on August 15, 1987 while I was throwing a kegger.  Woo!

I had a French duck, but you can’ardly tell.

Is the United States, like Spain, passing?  Again, no, I don’t think so.  We are seeing that some of our main weapons date to designs of nearly 70 years of age.  I’m looking at you, B-52.  The reason is that the bomber is dead to anyone who isn’t living in mud huts, and we realize that.  The B-52 would have been awesome in 1945 but now is just a target.

And we realize that.  I think we’ve realized that with our aircraft carriers as well, and now understand that wars in a time where satellites can provide real-time targeting make big ships filled with thousands of sailors liabilities rather than assets.

Remember this:  no matter what happens, we still irritate the hell out of France.  We’ll always have that.

Companies Hate You

“Hello, can we have your liver?” – The Meaning of Life

On weekends sometimes I drink water, you know, to keep my liver guessing.

In 2018, a Goldman-Sachs© researcher asked the question:  “Is curing patients a sustainable business model?”  This was in relation to what should be considered great news, a company coming up with a one-shot cure for hepatitis C that was over 90% effective.

Where is the profit in making people better?  As someone who depends on my precious liver to take abuse like a housewife in Egypt every Friday and Saturday night, I’m all in favor of things that keep them healthy.  But it doesn’t make sense to Goldman™, because they’d much rather have me be an income stream forever than solve my problem.

This is an example of a world where the Libertarian ideals fall apart, precisely because they presume the lowest common denominator when it comes to morality in society.  There are many flaws with Libertarianism, and this, along with optional personal bodily hygiene intervention are two big ones.  I mean, it isn’t a violation of the non-aggression principle to request they replace the mustard-coated shirt, is it?

A friend of mine stole a lightbulb once.  He said it was because he was in a really dark place.

Let’s look at other places where the free market falls apart.  What about Tinder™?  What happens if Tinder© brings together a guy and a girl and they fall in love and get married and stay married for the rest of their lives?

Tinder® loses two customers.  Forever.  It is not in the algorithm’s interest to make people happy.  It’s in the algorithm’s interest to get two people to meet and not like each other.  Wait, better yet, to like each other superficially enough that they hook up and then both feel hollow and empty inside, driving them to find someone a little closer to what they want.

Yes.  That’s what Tinder© would like best in the whole world.  Unhappy people swiping on their product, generating revenue.  It’s sad, especially because a 9 or 10 guy will break down on a dry-spell Friday night and swipe on a 4 woman, bang her, and now she thinks that she’s worthy of a 9 or 10.  So, she stays on Tinder™ waiting on Prince Chad to sweep her off her feet instead of out of her panties.

Tinder™ is profitable, though, so there’s that.  Match Group©, which owns nine other dating apps, made about $3.5 billion in revenue.  They didn’t make that much money because people got married and abandoned them.  They get rich because of psychological manipulation and the destruction of fertility.

He was sad, he said she was matadorable.

Also in this group with Tinder©?  Social media that feeds your outrage.  I’ve written about quite a bit, and won’t retract a syllable.  While we’re on software, Tinder© is freemium, but there’s worse.  There’s SaaS.

SaaS SuckS.

What’s SaaS?  “Software as a Service”.  Remember the “you won’t own anything, and you’ll love it” soy-face guy with an expression of, “I hope my wife’s boyfriend likes this chai latte I made him”?  Yeah, that’s where this fits in.

I bought Microsoft© Office™ a decade ago.  I had to re-buy three years ago when I bought a new computer.  Couldn’t find that pesky key.  Yes, I know there are free alternatives, but it was worth it to me.

Anyway, I bought it for $149.99.  It costs $99.99 a year.  I’ve already made back almost $150.00.  Well, $150.00 if you round up because pennies in 2026 are as common as black Cambridge© professors that can read.  What Microsoft® really wants, though, is for me to be a customer forever, paying each month, like a little software child that shows up for its allowance and then runs off to the shareholder meeting.

How often do airplanes crash?  Most of them, just once.

And, to do this, they’re willing to sacrifice and continually make the software worse with teams of Indians hired to, well, I guess be Indian and dispose of their trash in National Parks.  How will they pay those H-1Bs in their eternal quest to make your software worse?  With your monthly payments.

It’s not just Microsoft©, but many other software companies like Adobe® are out there, sniffing around your credit card.

But there was a time when at least some people realized they could get rich by being good.  Crazy idea, that.  An example?

Henry Ford famously raised the daily wages of his workers, doubling them while cutting the hours worked each day from 9 hours to 8 hours.  To be fair, his desire wasn’t entirely due to altruism.  He had to hire about 50,000 people a year to keep 14,000 making cars.  In reality, doubling wages ended up lowering Ford’s© cost and doubling his profits.

There was a catch.  To qualify for the full wage increase, you had to be a married man properly supporting your family, or a man over the age of 22 who could prove they were thrifty.  Your wife couldn’t work.  She had to stay home.

I accidently glued myself to my autobiography.  It’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

What a monster!  Ford wanted to make sure that his company produced quality American families based on quality American values.  Of course, he got sued.

Today?  It’s a race for the bottom wage by companies that don’t see the United States as their home, just a profit center or division.  And, it has spread.  Universities are now attempting to hire H-1B volleyball coaches making less than $50,000 a year.  Why?  Because no American understands volleyball?

No.  Because they can get someone cheaper.  The idea is that jobs in Missouri should have wages based on Mogadishu or Mumbai.  Jobs in Nevada should compete with Nairobi or Nigerian wage levels.  As pointed out in the last post, when men don’t get raises, women don’t make babies.

It’s a simple way to replace a people, but only after you’ve made them poor.  Medicine should make people feel better, and a cured patient, is better than one on a perpetual prescription.  Unless you’re Goldman-Sachs©.

I just found out I’m colorblind.  Boy, that came out of the orange!

Them?  They want my liver to stop working.  Not entirely, just enough that I have to pay them every month to keep it going, while using crappy software, surrounded by unmarried Gen Zers who can’t get jobs because they’re not from Punjab.

Libertarianism might not be dead, but it’s dying since the only people foolish enough to buy it can’t afford the mortgage on their liver.

Know Your Enemy

“I am not a number. I am a free man!” – The Prisoner

The GloboLeft and the GloboLeftElite are not tied to the countries they live in.

Instead, they are tied to their class.  A professor from Boulder can glide into a conference in London or Paris or D.C. and feel exactly the same:  the same polite applause, the same correct opinions, the same network of people who went to the same schools, read the same journals, and never once had to fix a carburetor.

The nice hotel room, the brandy, and the bacon-wrapped shrimp taste identical whether the view is of the Flatirons, the Thames, or Islamabad on the Seine.  These people deal almost exclusively with other members of their class.

Our daughters have to be sacrificed.

That is who they are loyal to.  They are largely unelected yet have an outsize impact on your life, like Anthony Fauci or the CEO of Disney®.  And it’s also elites in virtually every facet of life.

An example:  the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

In 2024 their financials showed $180.4 million, 81.8 percent of their operating revenue, came from government contracts and grants tied to illegals and refugees.   Why are we inundated with illegals?  You’re paying to be inundated with illegals.  The illegals and refugees stream across the border in unending numbers because we paid for them to come here.

For the Catholic hierarchy the calculation is simple:  mOaR Catholics, regardless of where they come from or what they believe outside of their first Holy Communion.  Now, I don’t want to be a killjoy to the bishops, but St. Thomas Aquinas would beg to differ.  Aquinas actually cared about the common good of a particular people in a particular place.

The modern bishops appear to care more about the grant pipeline.

When your funds allow hordes of illegals and other foreigners to finally show up, their very presence funds the GloboLeft again.  More students who don’t speak English equals more jobs for predominantly GloboLeftist teachers and interpreters.  More violence in schools from poorly adjusted foreigners equals more jobs for counselors, social workers, speech therapists, and cops.

The entire apparatus expands.

The GloboLeft does not merely tolerate the invasion; it metastasizes it into salaries, pensions, and moral superiority.

I remember a conversation with a perfectly credentialed GloboLeftist who looked me in the eye and said, with complete sincerity, “Well, if we don’t have them (illegals) here, the cost of strawberries will go up!”

Yes, yes they will.  And the job of picking them will go to an American.  Without the influx of illegals it could be one of those heavily-credentialed parasites who have burrowed into the system and now find actual labor beneath them.  The strawberries will still get picked.

Let’s see the response . . . .

It is not only the obvious GloboLeftElite.  Recently Senator John Curtis of Utah, “Republican” Senator John Curtis got body-slammed in the comments on X® because he wants to import more foreigners through a state-sponsored visa scheme complete with a quiet pathway for long-term illegals.

Republicans won’t vote to stop it.  Many of them are already in the club, or they desperately want the membership card.

I guess no one in Utah is smart enough to run a hotel desk.

The bacon-wrapped shrimp is excellent, have you tried it?  Do you really think John Curtis will ever vote to send them home?

This is the deliberate dismantling of the old labor market filled with independently minded people who can still remember a nation that was not an open-air hotel for the world’s surplus population.  Those people sound dangerous, they sound like they may not support the government.

The people don’t support the government?  Easy solution: import different people.  To make it stick, let’s also pull heritage Americans out of the middle class.  People in the middle class have pesky opinions, spare time, and haven’t been worn down so they still have enough energy to make trouble.

If they were desperately poor, they’d complain less.  Heck, why stop there?  If you want a civilization to disappear, the easiest method is to pay their women more money.  They will happily take the lazy-girl jobs, postpone children indefinitely, and die surrounded by boxes of Chardonnay and pristine, unused wombs, ending family lines.

(h/t Vox Day LINK)

They also, on purpose, fail to go after certain criminals.  Those Flock© cameras blanketing the suburbs are not primarily aimed at inner-city gang members, cartel drug dealers, or illegals.  Those crimes are useful to the GloboLeftElite.  The cameras exist to track and punish the middle class.

Don’t believe me?  In Great Britain, murderers routinely receive lighter sentences than people who publish mean tweets.  When’s the last time a black murderer was charged with a “hate” crime?

This is policy.

The GloboLeftElite need the middle class to comply, and they need the anarchy from below to justify their own continued existence as managers of the chaos.  The violent and the non-productive are their power base and their enforcers while the middle class represent the last pool of money they haven’t sucked up.  After they’ve done that, they’re desperate to replace you.

How desperate are they?  They will import people from countries whose average I.Q. would make a decent room temperature if you happened to be wearing a sweater. This is the root of the competency crisis you see every day:  airplanes that crash, ships that smash bridges, and schools that don’t teach.

They do not care.  It does not impact their lives one bit.  The conference circuit continues.  The brandy is still poured.  The bacon-wrapped shrimp is still tasty.

The GloboLeftElite are not traitors to their countries in the old sense.  They simply no longer have countries.  They have a class, a set of hotels, and an endless supply of other people’s children to feed into the machine.

A machine that runs on shrimp, apparently.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report, Urban Versus Rural Edition

“Your predecessor assumed that rural policing was easy.” – Hot Fuzz

There’s a new urban reality show where judges free inmates who like fishing, called “Off the Hook”.

  1. Those who have an opposing ideology are considered evil.
  2. People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology.  Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
  3. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
  4. Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
  5. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
  6. Open War.

Volume VIII, Issue 3

Most memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”.  I have maintained the Clock O’Doom at 9., given the open support of assassination and criminality by the GloboLeft and the increase in violence as well as direct interference with ICE and the insertion of the military into law enforcement.  Beware: the number can climb quickly.

My advice remains.  Avoid crowds.  Get out of cities.  Now.  A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Rural Versus Urban:  Who Wins, And Why  – Violence and Censorship Update – Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report.  These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month.  I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues.  Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 820 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at or before 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Rural Versus Urban:  Who Wins, And Why

In July I watched some summary videos on the Chinese Civil War, especially the 1945-1949 period as well as the Russian Civil War which lasted between 1917 and 1922.  It was interesting, because these wars followed completely different strategies.

Let’s start with the Russians.  The Soviet strength was in the cities.  The rural population was, while drunk, mainly anti-communist.  The Soviet strategy was simple:  stay in the cities with the large recruitable population, maintain control of the railway transportation network, and when Moscow must munch mutton, they’d take the train to Tombov and steal several sheep.

Long, protracted conflicts end up being resource wars.  Cities provided the Russians with munition factories and lots of young men without jobs that could be conscripted to fight for the Soviets.

In Russia, the Soviets won using the cities.  Commies like the Soviets, which they swear would have worked out better if only Stalin were still alive.

I hear Stalin’s favorite vegetable was a Soviet onion.

China was the opposite.  For almost the entire war, the Nationalists owned the cities and most of the rural area.  But after World War II was done, Mao got serious and used the rural area as his base.  The commies in China spent a lot of time on propaganda in rural areas, even having plays to make the rural folks pro-Mao since they didn’t have TikTok© to make them love commies.

The biggest stroke of genius, though, was in giving their newly-recruited peasant soldiers land.  Chinese agricultural land had been mainly owned by a large landowners, and this gave their soldiers skin in the game, and also the belief that they would be executed if Mao lost.  The cosmopolitan Chinese Nationalists lost to the rural communists because the rural commies thought they were fighting for their lives.

What can we takeaway from all of this?

First, I think that with the nationalist/conservative/rural versus GloboLeft/urban split, the resources of electricity, food, and even water in some cases are fully in the hands of the rural block.  Stocks of food are no longer kept in cities as they were in the past.  The Siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian war lasted four months before they had to shoot the zoo animals to eat them.

The Germans threw bread at the French during the siege.  They called it gluten-tag.

Today’s cities have about three days of food in them in the stores, and three days in the individual homes.  So, inside a week, people would get hungry.  Not starve, but get hungry unless they got sea and air lifts of food inbound.  Given the levels of self-control of certain segments of the population, well, how long before cites go full Alferd Packer?  Since they’d be surrounded by millions of residents with more weapons and ammo than all the militaries of the world, combined, they could be easily contained.

Cities also suffer from tHeiR GreaTeST StrENTh:  Diversity®.  Why would Somalians fight for Minneapolis or Minnesota?  If their cushy scam life was threatened, they’d just leave.  Or fight against the rest of the people in town to take it over.  Same with Dearborn, Michigan.  Think those moslems would fight side by side with blacks from Detroit?  And the GloboLeft Feminista© and TranBrigades® would fold as soon as the air conditioning went off.

But this is a “national” civil war that had sufficient coordination to make a national or largely national confrontation happen.

What about local wars?  Most of the trigger-pullers in the armed forces are rural.  In a regional or state-based conflict, like Texas declaring independence, how many will break training?  The 101st Airborne was certainly fine fixing bayonets against high school students to force integration, so will they follow orders against Americans?  In the hypothetical case of Texas leaving, probably so, but it’s far from certain.

What do cities control?  Well, money.  They could shut down the banks.  Since this is imaginary, I’d imagine the disruption would be huge, but manageable at some level since the grain is still in the silos in at the railyard.  Of course, leadership, communications, and cohesion across a regional or national level is crucial.

The biggest threats that the GloboLeft present is either on a short term or a long term.  In a short term, a coup of the systems by the rising Democratic Socialists is becoming a real threat, especially since they’d immediately co-op the existing government systems and promise that things would return to “normal”, but their definition of “normal” would require a lot of executions.

The other threat is the long march through our institutions that’s been ongoing for years.  In this case, any kinetic civil war is just a mop-up of an already occupied area, which is why stopping that long march is imperative.

Violence and Censorship:

What didn’t they tell you about that black woman surrounded by Patriot Front members?

If you don’t like Flock, the media is selling that you’re a flocking terrorist:

Against PRIDE marches?  Fort Worth PD would like to arrest you:

And then block you:

I’m glad Bondi is gondi, especially because she bought the hate speech meme:

Moslems are child rapists, and it’s your fault:

Wipe your phone when wheels touch down, people.

Misery Index

The new Trump administration is shown in red.  Results continue to be much better than Biden’s misery.

Back to an upward trend, though.  Kids can’t afford houses:

But at least they can get Cheetos®.

Updated Civil War II Index

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

Violence:

Violence indicators are down.  Too hot for all that?

Political Instability:

Down is more stable, and it went down this month.

Economic:

The economy ticked down slightly last month, and there are headwinds.

Illegal Aliens:

Still the near lowest level since the Weather Report started, no thanks to women.

LINKS

The links are again done by Ricky this month.  Thanks, Ricky!

BAD GUYS
https://www.nationalreview.com/2026/07/the-dsa-wants-to-abolish-america/
https://x.com/canarymission/status/2073885328109085043
https://x.com/BillSmi72331024/status/2073694924717867490
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/HOGqYcJXwAA4WPv-1.png
https://www.city-journal.org/article/teen-takeovers-streets-us-cities-looting

GOOD GUY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ee7VNcc1PQ

ONE GUY
https://x.com/nicksortor/status/2083709213792977086
https://nypost.com/2026/08/02/us-news/hero-armed-citizen-opened-fire-on-idaho-in-n-out-gunman-during-deadly-shooting/

BODY COUNT
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/deaths-now-outnumber-births-17-us-states
https://archive.ph/BeLhx
https://www.statista.com/chart/20183/us-population-growth-shares-births-immigration/
https://www.kellyservices.com/insights/new-batch-of-college-graduates-faces-an-increasingly-shaky-job-market
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/labor_force_chart_annotated-800x.jpg
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/image-1-800×288.jpg
https://x.com/DeepBlueCrypto/status/2039454816707969158/photo/1

VOTE COUNT
https://www.fvap.gov/guide/appendix/state-elections
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/07/we-finally-have-evidence-after-examining-155000-absentee/
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/21/thousands-of-non-citizens-registered-to-vote-in-nj-due-to-software-error-governor-says-01006373
https://www.themidwesterner.news/2026/07/250000-noncitizens-found-on-voter-rolls-in-four-states-as-jocelyn-benson-refuses-to-share-data/
https://www.westernjournal.com/mamdani-election-bombshell-fraudulent-votes-cast-margin-mamdanis-victory-says-election-auditor/
https://apnews.com/article/california-primary-rejected-mail-ballots-voting-2291684fe4544cab2301f8965abc8f79
https://amgreatness.com/2026/07/28/the-state-of-american-elections-for-the-left-the-worse-the-better/
https://www.vanityfair.com/story/midterm-hijack-plan

CIVIL WAR
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2026/06/10/beyond-red-vs-blue-the-political-typology/
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/28/magazine/heritage-foundation-trump-republicans.html?unlocked_article_code=1.1FA.eGuT.I6EiteSM-ryC&smid=url-share
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-and-john-thune-throw-gop-into-full-blown-civil-war/
https://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/2026/07/a-minnesota-secession-its-not-as-impossible-as-you-might-think/
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/nx-s1-5879397
https://nypost.com/2026/06/15/us-news/californias-newest-congressman-plots-massive-secession-of-rural-areas-to-form-new-state-serious/
https://modernity.news/2026/07/16/what-is-this-really-about-uk-government-announces-mass-stockpile-order-wargames/

They Broke The Deal: The Economics Of Loyalty And Patriotism

“Because we live here!” – Red Dawn

And it’s no accident.

Over the past few decades, studies are showing something unusual happening:  people aren’t willing to fight for their country anymore, especially in the West.  Back when I was a kid watching Red Dawn, I couldn’t see myself not fighting for my nation if it was in need, and I was far from alone.

What changed?

Well, I think the deal that I had has been broken so completely that they simply don’t see a country worth fighting for anymore.  At all.  Why?  Because the economics and culture I grew up in have evaporated, been swallowed in a sea of foreigners, or been the subject of a leveraged buyout.

Let me explain.

When I was a kid, sure, there were ups and downs in the country’s economy, but getting a job was easy.  I had one at the age of 14.  Now, the “J-1” visa seeks to import kids to take the paper delivery jobs and other jobs American kids can no longer do.  Like what?  Like mowing.  If I wanted to mow the lawn for the local Exxon® station and I was 14, would they hire me?

Hell no!  Child labor laws and corporate policies would dictate that I was child labor.  I didn’t have a $2 million liability policy.  I didn’t have an OSHA-approved health and safety plan.  Oh, and mowing is too dangerous for 14-year-old kids anyway according to every state.

And where is my W-9 and my banking information?  Corporations have the same sense of humor as the DMV.

We see cities back down after health authorities or zoning authorities crack down on kids running lemonade stands.  We chuckle, but the health inspector isn’t laughing, he’s got a clipboard and a pension.  It’s reality.  Every regulation is stacked against them, and when they get to be 18, it gets worse.

Now, farmers and ranchers want to hire illegals.  Sure, they did it when I was a kid, too, but it was harder to get them, so they had to pay local kids to buck bales, too.  Now you have Senators trying to replace Americans because Americans want too darn much money.  The TradNationalist values of “what is good for America” have been replaced with, “Why shouldn’t Americans in America compete in a global race to the bottom for labor cost?”

Youth today are getting ads to finance a pizza order at 21% interest.  But we need to import more illegals.

When your senator doesn’t represent you at all.

Houses?  Houses went from a shelter you could build yourself to an investment asset class suitable for Blackrock®.  Because of that, houses have to comply with about 15,000 pages of building codes.  Oh, and the builder will hire illegals to build it, too.

Housing is at the least affordable in the history of the United States, and of course the “Conservative” politicians want to import more people to build more houses.

Huh?  Every housing problem in the United States is downstream of immigration and investment bankers, and the immigration the investment bankers demand.

But hey, what 18-year-old doesn’t want to sign up to fight for Blackrock’s™ investment return or the building inspector, or infinity foreigners?  Yes.  Timmy from Athens, Georgia should be proud to sign up to die so Ganesh from Mumbai can use his fraudulent diploma to take a do-nothing job at Microsoft© that he got from his uncle Vivek.

And if he has kids?  What then?  I went to school in a 90% white school with 80% kids that were from intact families.  Today in order to avoid diversity and be around parents with traditional values a new Timmy would have to shell out for a private school tuition.

It’s worse than that, though because it’s now corrosive on every phase of their lives.  What pension do kids today expect?  The good ones have been hollowed out.  Back before the floodgates to the world opened, companies put pensions in place so that they could compete for scarce American labor.  As immigration, both legal and illegal, increased the reason to have pensions disappeared.  Now it’s “invest your own money in a 401k, and, hey, good luck with that.”

And Social Security?  Why would Ganesh want to pay for Timmy’s retirement?

Beyond that, children in the West are taught that they are the evil products of slavers and colonizers and misogynists and that Western Culture is inferior to the quaint cannibalistic ways of New Guinea.  Why, then, would they think of themselves as anything but evil?

Why would Timmy fight for a country that is evil?

And why fight for a country that doesn’t look like you, at all?  Pakistanis are (86%) willing to fight and die for Pakistan.  People in the UK aren’t (33%) willing to fight and die because they wouldn’t be fighting for the traditional English peoples, but for the Pakistanis in the UK.

This graph is not an accident.

The constant import of people turns a nation of people who have the same heritage into a country of mixed peoples.  Oh, and the people are randomly plucked from the gene pool of the entire world, including especially the shallow end of the gene pool.

The teeming cesspit of India (76%) and the perennially unemployed Armenians (96%) are much more willing to fight than the United States (41%) because India is filled with Indians, Armenia is filled with Armenians, and in America, at least 29% of the people in the country are illegal, on visas, or are first or second generation immigrants with little tie to the country.

Going back to a bacon and egg breakfast and comparing it to our nation:  immigrants are the chicken, they’re involved and can fly back home anytime.  Americans?  They’re the pig, they’re committed.

They have no place left to go.

India, Pakistan, and Armenia are all giving their youth a better deal than American kids have, and more of a stake in their nation.  Even China, “repressive” China, likes Chinese people better than the Western governments like their citizens.  China is interested in the Chinese, whereas the governments of the West, no matter how loudly and how often their citizens tell them they don’t want immigrants, simply will not stop importing them.

Yes, 1.5 million a year is slow walking it.

If having immigrant Indians and Mexicans was something that would help their country, wouldn’t China be importing them?

I’ll note that when the connection that a citizen gets from the government wanes, that’s where civil wars and revolutions start.  If the government isn’t worth dying for, it’s not long until the people decide the government has to die.

As it stands now, though, we now have a country (not a nation) that the youth don’t feel is worth fighting for.  Unless we can convince Timmy he should be enthusiastic about dying for his loyalty to the DMV.

If You Can’t Spot The Sucker At The Table . . . .

“No, this sucker’s electrical, but I need a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity I need.” – Back to the Future Ouch, I guess eclipse jokes can be dark. I’ve heard the phrase “If you can’t spot the sucker in the first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker,” … Continue reading “If You Can’t Spot The Sucker At The Table . . . .”

“No, this sucker’s electrical, but I need a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity I need.” – Back to the Future

Ouch, I guess eclipse jokes can be dark.

I’ve heard the phrase “If you can’t spot the sucker in the first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker,” many times in my life.

Mostly, after I’ve realized I was the sucker.

Recently, I’ve been watching the markets the same way I watch a late-night poker game at a kitchen table. The cards are the same for everyone. The rules are printed right there. And yet, somehow, the same faces keep walking away with the chips.

Let’s start with three recent examples that should make people who actually save, invest, and try to play by the rules say . . . huh.

Is 2,000 pounds of Korean money a Won ton?

Let’s start with South Korea’s leveraged massacre, 2026 edition.

Normal guys in South Korea were betting on the right side of the trade. I mean, they were on the right side of the trade before the South Korean market began hemorrhaging cash this week as China starts to look pretty strong in the chip-making business. But before that massacre, retail traders (they call them “ants”) piled into brand-new single-stock 2x leveraged ETFs tied to Samsung™ and other Korean tech firms who were benefiting from the A.I. bubble.

The bet is simple. If Samsung© goes up 10%, your ETF goes up 20%. Get on the right side of the trade, and double the profits that all of the suckers are making.

By law, the products rebalance every single day by a public formula: sell more when the stock drops, buy more when it rises. Sophisticated trading desks know the formula, know the size of the flows, and know when they hit: near the market close. These firms essentially buy the stock beforehand, and scalp the 2x part of the trade.

But if the stock declines, the automated selling amplifies the decline. Hundreds of thousands of accounts of small guys saw their accounts evaporate. The “little guys” who thought they were investors discovered they were only “market liquidity” that got liquidated. I imagine it’s even worse this week as their market is imploding.

I wonder after the first tsunami hit Japan if they had lots of different names for it, you know, a title wave.

Let’s move next to the microsecond arms race.

Investment firms pay serious money to put their servers inside the same data center as the exchange matching engines. Why? The firms can see slower orders coming, cancel their quotes, reprice, or step in front. They legally front-run purchases, getting a bit of the action, like me getting in the cheeseburger line in front of Rosie O’Donnell, buying all the burgers, and then making her pay twice the price to me because you know she wants one.

But instead of burgers, my pension and my 401k are the funding source and the burgers. Or they buy the burgers. I forget. Just thinking about Rosie eating is unsettling.

I once installed a trampoline on Aerosmith’s tour bus. Now everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon.

Next? A.I. bets: Pensions and 401ks are literally soaking in it.

Nobody actually requires pension funds to buy speculative A.I. bets. But when the benchmark rate that the fund is trying to replicate is the S&P 500©, over half of that index is now A.I. Private credit and datacenter infrastructure funds are sold as “diversifiers.” The Aptly Named Larry Fink has been open about it and I’ve written about him before: a big chunk of the A.I. build-out is coming from “your savings accounts and pension accounts.”

If, or more likely when, the power plants never get built or the market discovers that no one really wants to pay a lot for A.I., the little guys eat it. We’ve seen this movie with mortgage-backed securities in 2008, but after 20 years, who isn’t up for a sequel? And don’t mention Star Wars®.

Those three are current “legal” scams.

There are larger, longer-running and still legal versions that hit responsible investors. Here are a few.

Steal a man’s wallet and he’ll be broke for a day. Teach him to play drums and he’ll be broke for the rest of his life.

Payment for order flow.
My “commission-free” IRA firm sells my orders to the big market makers.

They see the flow first. Every time I click “buy,” someone is being paid to take the other side with better data than I will ever have.

Index and ETF reconstitution.
The rules for what goes into the big indexes are public. Active money buys the adds and sells the deletes before the passive funds are forced to do it on the effective date. If you own index funds (and most of us do, in 401ks and IRAs), you are systematically buying high and selling low on the reconstitution days. The front-runners collect the spread.

Private-equity leveraged buyouts.
A PE firm buys a solvent company, and loads it with debt. This is what happened to Toys’r’Us©. And Sears™. And RadioShack©. And TWA®.

And I could keep going.

They then extract fees and dividends, cut costs, and exit leaving like a vampire leaves a dried husk before the Sun comes up. The workers get fired. The store sits empty, as what was once a business becomes a blight. If my pension was invested in those funds, I’m also funding the vampire extraction while the downside lands on the real economy.

Glass coffins? Schrödinger was not a fan.

Institutional money vacuuming up single-family homes.
Large capital pools decided residential real estate was an asset class. They bought the inventory that used to go to . . . families. Prices and rents rise. I already owned, so I was insulated. But the kids?

Too-big-to-fail.
When the “systemically important” institutions get into trouble, they will be bailed out. I’m betting that OpenAI™ is working to get as big as it can as soon as it can so it can sink its tentacles into the economy deep enough that if it fails it brings the whole house down and then they will have to bail Sam Altman out so he can keep his mansions, cars, and bunker. Hey, I guess it’s just a business model.

Even though he won, he could tell there was no future in it.

I guess I can stop pretending the game is neutral, because I could go on and on and on with more examples. To the big players, the Elons, Altmans, the Finks, we’re just liquidity and our retirement account is being used as their stack of chips.

The cards are the same.

The edge is not.

Don’t be the sucker.