Weimerica – Page 9 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

The Funniest (And Most Enlightening Book Review You’ll Read This Year) End Times by Peter Turchin, Part 1

“The end time has come, not in flame, but in mist!” – The Mist

I once had shoes that had Velcro® closures. I mean, why knot?

I recently completed the book End Times by Peter Turchin. I have recently done a review of How Civil Wars Start by Barbara F. Walter (not that Barbara Walter, some other commie bimbo), and by comparison Ms. Walter’s book is a badly drawn crayon sketch of Donald Trump by a mildly developmentally disabled child who was born of the copulation of two stoned Leftists and raised on a diet of Trotsky and lead paint chips.

Her book was bad. Turchin, who I imagine is also Left-leaning, was (mainly) able to keep his political opinions out of the book, and produce something useful and as even-handed as he could make it, what with having to go to fancy university parties with the Leftist intelligentsia who are globalist and communist at the same time, because, reasons.

Going back in time, Turchin predicted in the early ‘teens (2010, I believe) that the decade beyond 2020 was going to be rough. This was based on an actual computational model, where he took various social factors, smashed them into a computer, and cranked out a slip of paper that said, “Beyond Here, There Be Dragons.” To be fair, his model seems to have some predictive capacity, though I have yet to find a place to tinker with it, but I’ll bet Ricky can track it down if anyone can. A .pdf that has a flavor of the model is here (LINK).

The XXX Files are a completely different subject.

His description of the model starts with one of the things that leads to collapse: Elite Overproduction. In this context, you pretty much know who the elite are. Donald Trump is one, and so are the Clintons, and the Obamas, and thousands of other wealthy, socially connected people who have political power. Per Turchin, only 9 presidents of the United States weren’t 1%ers, and before 1850, all of the presidents were elite and wealthy types and probably had exceptional hats, since they didn’t have other cool things to buy back then.

Turchin breaks down political power into four types:

Coercion – Do it or else. Leftists love this. Think AntiFa® or the “new” Army.
Wealth – Let’s face it, rich dudes rarely do jail time, and where exactly is Epstein’s client list and why can’t you see it?
Bureaucracy – You own the organization that provide services or do stuff – think the IRS or the DMV.
Ideology – This includes CNN® and Harvard™.

Where do psychics shop? The Seers® catalog.

In Turchin’s view, there are specialists at each level of political power. The big problem for people is when these folks are present in too large of a quantity and get bored and have to do something else. In 2016, we had a billionaire (Trump) running against someone worth in excess of $120 million (Hilldabeast). In no way was this usual, but later, billionaire Michael Bloomberg jumped into the race. Why? Bored, I guess. Most billionaires let other people do their fighting for them – like George Soros or Emperor Palpatine. But I repeat myself.

The key problem is that there are more elite people who want power than there are available chairs. That’s always the case to a certain extent, but with tens of thousands of Harvard© and Stanford™ and Dartmouth® grads fighting for elite positions in every facet of the coercion, wealth, bureaucratic, or ideological elite, well, this starts to drive instability, per Turchin. Per me, there seem to be a lot of people who have no connection whatsoever with anyone but themselves and their elite cocoon of friends with the same ideas and no-fat decaf pumpkin-spice lattes.

Turchin later goes on to talk about how the British killing off tons of French nobility during battles around 1400 to 1450 actually helped France to have a much more stable political period because there everybody had stuff to do other than try to overthrow the king or kill their brother or eat snails and smoke cigarettes while wearing berets and carrying baguettes of bread everywhere.

I once saw a baguette in a cage. I guess it was bread in captivity.

Yes, in the coming years at least half of the elite will either die or cease to be elite and have to drive Yugos® or Ford Escorts™ while working at JCPenney’s©.

There just aren’t enough chairs in the inner circle to go around.

So, we’ve got too many elites, which is one of Turchin’s factors that lead to societal breakdown. What else leads to problems? Turchin calls the next one, “Popular Immiseration” – bluntly, when life sucks for the common person. Another term for this is Bidenomics. Economic power of workers is disappearing, wages are going backwards when it comes to purchasing power, and jobs are more uncertain and awful.

To be fair to Biden, this was the trend even before he was selected, and was really the feeling that ushered in Trump. Trump was and is a reaction to the crapfest that the economy has turned into, and is more or less predictable. In 1956 Trump would have been a joke candidate, in 2000 Trump was a joke candidate, but by 2016 Trump was taken seriously because, to a large proportion of Americans, life is slowly becoming more miserable, daily. The needed someone, anyone, to listen to them and stop the nonsense that the Left (and, to be fair, the Chamber of Commerce Right) is shoving down their throats. Mittens Romney was just the same as the Left in his goals, he just used a different phrase to get there.

The last thing the American people wanted was ¡Jeb! To give an example from another period in American history that was in crisis, Abraham Lincoln was another joke candidate that fell into a period where he could be elected.

I guess Mary Todd Lincoln said to Abe that day, “Would it kill you to take me to a play once in a while?”

Turchin discusses Lincoln’s election not in terms of slavery, but in terms of economic misery combined with lots of rich dudes. Turchin adds in that the failing financial health of a country adds to this, lowering the legitimacy of the state.

These factors, Turchin notes, in every case that they’ve covered, always reach a breaking point within 200 years or so. This is in line with Strauss and Howe in The Fourth Turning and the theories of the unfortunately named Sir John Glubb:

End of Empires, PEZ, and Decadence

It’s here that the Turchin takes a bit of time to discuss the nature of the American Empire, circa 2023. American power, he notes, isn’t based on religion. It likewise isn’t based on a militaristic history – although we’ve elected generals as president, the power of the American Empire is and always has been commerce. We sent trade ships in the 1800s across the world. Genghis Khan didn’t create his empire with trade, he created it with the sword and the horse and by having sex with half of the women in Asia. While the English used liberal amounts of gunpowder creating their empire, “I say, old chap, what are those Boer people doing sitting on our gold and diamonds?”, they were a commerce-based empire as well.

Me? I was upset when I got a pack of sticky playing cards for Christmas – I found them difficult to deal with.

I’d agree with Turchin – American power has been economic and, like the British before us, created an economic empire. The wealth from that economic empire thus created the ability for us to have really cool tanks and planes and aircraft carriers and nuclear weapons. No bucks? No Buck Rodgers.

Since it has been economics that created the empire, it’s economics that fuels it today: America is built on economics, and the biggest controllers of that are . . . rich people. As much as I’m in favor of capitalism (which is a lot) I can see that a system where the rich people get to make the rules is gonna suck for everyone else.

Turchin calls this the “Wealth Pump” – it’s the idea that the rules are set up not for the common citizen, but for the really rich dudes. What are some of the components of this Wealth Pump?

Keeping a surplus of workers so that wages are lower. Unrestricted illegal (and legal) immigration? It’s perfect to keep wages down.
What happens when we are need other workers than the illegals? Let’s cut all trade barriers so that a programmer in the United States has to compete with a programmer in Bangladesh. There won’t be any consequences from that, right?
Larger companies that have greater pull – Steve Jobs said, before he died, obviously, that he couldn’t make Apple® again – there were too many barriers in place. Many don’t realize that large number of “consumer” or “environmental” regulations are actually welcomed by large businesses – they’re a barrier to entry and competition.

This is what the Wealth Pump looks like.

That the impact of the Wealth Pump is misery is a given. While (once upon a time) I was a libertarian, I’ve since moved on from that, as they’ve moved farther in support of this wealth pump. Freedom doesn’t come with mere economic freedom, and it doesn’t come from only from freedom from government coercion. Does it, in the end, matter if it is a group of elites in government or a group of elites at Google™ is the one censoring you to preserve the wealth pump?

Thus ends the first part of this review. More to come. I’m not sure if it will be one or two more posts, but we’ll get through it.

I’m a trained professional. Unlike paint-chip-eating Barbara F. Walter.

(FYI, when I get this finished I’m posting a link to it at Turchin’s blog. He’s got a better book contract, but I’ve got more readers.)

Think Movies Suck Now? You’re Right.

“Freedom costs a buck-oh-five.” – Team America: World Police

I’ve lost to a computer at chess, but never at kickboxing.

I write about movies (and books) sometimes because they are important – very important. They are a part of the myths and backstory that defines a people and a country. Part of this entertainment is (often) a reflection of who we think we are, or who we aspire to be – those are the characters and stories that endure and grow over time.

Comedies certainly have their place, as well. Comedies can be rooted to universal truths that are (more or less) unchanging with time, think greed, yappy women, and farting. Yes. The oldest recorded joke in history that we have yet discovered is a (not very good) fart joke.

Why can’t you make fun of Steve Jobs dying? It’s not PC.

Part of comedy, especially movie comedy, is the unexpected. For that to happen, most of the time someone is the object of the joke – the person who is being made fun of. In comedy in the 1970s, that person was almost always a white male, and almost always was the father and was almost always on the Right.

Why?

Feminism. Comedy of the 1970s and onward was almost always written from the Leftist perspective. Think Archie Bunker, who ended up being popular in spite of them trying to make him a buffoon. Who had the first flush of the terlit on television? Archie. To make fun of white men who were on the Right.

Another tip: don’t use the toilet brush as a microphone when you sing in the shower.

Heck, when I was in junior high and wondering why the only funny things were Leftist (I was on the Right, even then). Then I read P.J. O’Rourke, and understood that it was more than possible, it was far, far funnier than Leftist humor ever imagined it could be.

The Right is funnier because the Right has Truth on its side.

For a long time, movies have been propaganda of one type or another. Top Gun? There’s a reason that the Navy spent millions to help make the movie – they approved the script.

There have been wild cards – people who make fun of everyone and everything – think Airplane. One that really pushed the boundaries was Team America: World Police. South Park used to be funny, back when the stories were about the kids. When the stories started to be about the adults? Less funny.

But Team America: World Police was something else. It made fun of jingoistic movies while at the same time gutting hard-Left, virtue signaling idiot actors like Sean Penn, Janeane Garofalo, Alec Baldwin, Michael Moore, Danny Glover, and Tim Robbins. They were all part of the Film Actors Guild, or F.A.G.

Yes. They went there. They also made fun of AIDS and homosexuals. And Moslems. And movies like Top Gun. The rumors are that the studio approved it because it was so politically incorrect, and might be cheap because it was made with puppets instead of actors.

I’m glad COVID didn’t come from a Chinese bear. Then we’d have had a pandademic.

Needless to say, making a movie that makes fun of any protected group is no longer allowed. Why are comedies dead? Because it gets really old, really fast, when the only person you can make fun of is the same person who buys all the movie tickets: heterosexual white Christian men who have XY chromosomes. You know, “literally Hitler”.

Comedy is now unfunny, mostly. Please feel free to leave exceptions in the comments. And movies as a whole are borderline unwatchable. Part of the collapse of the box office (and small theaters) was COVID. The other part is that movies suck.

The reason that movies suck is that they’re now just blatant propaganda, start to finish. The latest Marvel® movie, The Marvels™ is a commercial failure, and a box office flop. The studio is blaming the usual suspects: the actor’s strike, superhero fatigue, white supremacy, anti-feminism.

That’s easy.

Harder to face is that their stupid movie sucks.

This was even in his speeches . . . remember him saying, “Let me be clear”?

Why does it suck? It’s about women that don’t need no man. Oh, and couples who have kids don’t want to spend money to have their kids watch Gay Buzz Lightyear™ and ask questions about why Buzz© has two mommies. That’s it.

Who is the primary consumer of superhero movies? White men. Who is the primary consumer of movies for children? People capable of making children, which, for every year in the history of mankind before 2020, were known as “men” and “women”.

Yes, white men like to look at attractive women in skintight costumes, but only the most Leftist is willing to sit and watch a movie that makes fun of them and marginalizes them.

Why does Marvel© (and Disney™) lose money? Because they forgot who buys the tickets.

Men.

I’ve gotten to the point that, unless I’ve heard about a movie, if it was made in the last four years, it’s a hard pass, even if it looks interesting. The movies started going south in, say, 2018. My take is that was a reaction to Trump. It so triggered nearly everyone who writes or acts in a movie that all they wanted to do was attack a relatively Centrist guy who just happened to be President.

What do your get if you take an entire human digestive tract and lay it out on a football field? Arrested.

The reaction led to . . . crap. Every Leftist simply had to get their message out that trans was the new normal and white men were awful and stupid and that NASA stuff on the Moon was a fluke. Oh, they tried to take credit for that, too. Because white guys, you know, can’t do math.

I also noticed it with books. I was a lifelong reader of science fiction – I loved the ideas. Then, around 2010, I started to notice that the books in Barnes and Noble® mainly . . . sucked. I thought it was me. I thought I was old and jaded. But, nope, I read some of the old stuff and it was still great.

Science fiction was destroyed by The Narrative, too. The people who picked the books that made it to the shelves only picked Leftist crap filled with weak people who hated themselves and hated everything True, Beautiful, and Good. In this breakup, it wasn’t me, it was them.

They came for comics and killed them. They came for books and killed them. Lastly, they came for movies, and killed them. Every book and every movie has a message, and most are propaganda of some sort or another, for good or bad. Propaganda to get kids to brush their teeth? That’s good.

But propaganda to turn them into self-loathing transexuals? That’s 100% against the True, the Beautiful, and the Good.

This was the 2022 “woman” of the year. Guess guys do everything better.

Watch what goes into your mind. Watch what goes into the minds of your children. Help them to aspire to be noble and virtuous and strong. Help them to understand that jokes about yappy, farting women have been funny for 4,000 years, and will be funny for as long as women fart.

There are still good books out there. There are still good movies, though they are uncommon, since the rot is very, very deep. But freedom?

It still costs a buck-o-five.

Two Types Of Society. There Is Proof We Have A Choice.

“There are two types of people in this world: people who like Neil Diamond, and people who don’t.” – What About Bob

A man threatened me with a coffee cup and stole my wallet. I guess I got mugged.

There are two types of cultures. One of them looks a bit like this:

I was walking in Silver Dollar City® more than a decade ago. It was spring, and Silver Dollar City™ was an amusement park where we could take the kids and visit attractions, and even though they weren’t even teenagers, there were plenty of rides for them.

As we were walking through the park, a young blonde man of 18 or so ran up behind me. It wasn’t a sprint, but the easy strides of a high school football player in top shape – like Michelle Obama, the kid looked like a linebacker. “Sir, sir!”

I turned around. “Yeah, how can I help you?”

“You dropped this.”

What did Mike Tyson say to Vincent van Gogh? “Are you gonna eat that?” (meme as found)

The kid handed me two $20 bills. This is unusual, since normally I have to at least pull up my shirt for anyone to give me $40 so I’ll put the shirt back down.

I stuttered, “Th-thank you!” I felt in my pocket, and, sure enough there were two twenties that must have followed my hand out of the pocket like a structured thought sneaking out of Joe Biden’s head.

The blonde kid smiled, waved, and ran off before I could even offer him a fiver for his honesty. And, thinking about it, he might have been offended if I offered him money. I know I’ve turned cash down before for similar acts of honesty or help.

You don’t do it for the reward. You don’t do it for the glory. You don’t do it for the free shrimp and talcum powder. You do it because it’s the right thing to do. Period.

That’s one type of society.

This type of society functions pretty well. The prices (back then) at Silver Dollar City™ were much lower than at other attractions of a similar nature that I’d been to. The park itself was clean and tidy, and every local business was polite. Did they want our dollars? Sure they did, but they were great about wanting to come by them honestly. They wanted to earn my money.

That’s the way that Modern Mayberry is, mostly.

Sheriff Taylor retired to a farm, so he could see Barn every day.

But San Francisco? Wow.

I haven’t been there in almost a decade, but the pictures I’ve seen recently show a city that’s not in decline. It’s in free-fall. In Modern Mayberry I always lock my car doors because it’s a habit from living in big cities. In San Francisco? People don’t lock their cars.

People don’t lock their car doors (and many leave their trunks open) so prospective thieves can see that there’s nothing to steal without breaking the windows of the cars to rummage around themselves. The people have surrendered to the criminals.

Porch pirates are everywhere in SF, and steal whatever they can. People live on the streets in tents, and often defecate and do drugs in public, because, why not?

San Francisco is also leading the nation in stores disappearing or locking up all of their items. Why? Because mobs loot the stores, in broad daylight. If the thief is caught, they’re immediately released. The only solution for a store that wants to be in business is to sell you the item, go get it from a locked room, and then give it to you after you’ve already paid.

Want to watch Mad Max: Fury Road in the most realistic way possible? Go to San Francisco.

Lefties, I’m sure, have plenty of theories for why San Francisco is like this. White privilege. Institutional racism. Failure to provide mental health services. Lack of reparations. It’s Wednesday. Spin a wheel and pick an excuse. But every one of them is a lie. And I can prove it.

How?

Go look at the streets today where President Xi of China will be when he travels San Francisco. The homeless are gone. Crime is gone. The streets aren’t covered in poop and needles and Disney™ products.

If the city of San Francisco can do that for Xi, it means that they can do it. Even Governor Gavin “Plastic Man” Newsom said the quiet part out loud:

“I know folks say, ‘Oh, they’re just cleaning up this place because all those fancy leaders are coming into town.’ That’s because it’s true.”

A poll was taken by California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office which asked whether people who live in California think Illegal immigration is a serious problem. 29% of respondents answered: “Yes, It is a serious problem. 71% of respondents answered: “No es una problema seriosa.”

Guess he wants to impress people that don’t live there.

San Francisco doesn’t have to be like it is.

The only reason that San Francisco is a horrifying dump is because people want it to be a horrifying dump. As I’ve said before, the solution is obvious (We Already Know The Solutions). Criminals need to value the gain they make from a crime less than they fear the penalty for when they get caught. That’s it. The equation is simple.

We know exactly what we need to do to solve almost any problem. And, as is on display right now, the Powers in San Francisco know exactly what solution is required to solve this problem. But they don’t, or at least limit the solution to times when world dignitaries visit – the effort for just common people is too much.

I wouldn’t worry about it. It was a he said/Xi said situation.

Why, exactly do they allow a kleptocracy to fester in California?

They don’t like guns. Guns have been the great equalizer
They will ruthlessly target and destroy common citizens who defend themselves or their property because in their minds only the State should be able to wield force to protect itself.
There is no punishment of the criminals, because they’re a favored voting group.

Probably the biggest reason is this:

They want the people to be scared. They want the people to feel helpless, as if there’s nothing they can do and they don’t care how much money it costs you. They want to use this to get just a little more power.

That’s it. The reason for the kleptonomics on the street is because it serves those who could fix the problem.

Me? I’ll take Silver Dollar City© and Modern Mayberry any day.

Does It Seem Like Everything Is Falling Apart? It Is.

“Don’t come apart on me, Frank.” – Scrooged

What makes a good tongue-twister? That’s not easy to say.

The story of the 20^th century was one of things coming together.

Part of it was based on technology – the world shrank as successive technologies made communications, typically mass communications, easier and quicker. The world went from letters carried over land to telegrams to telephones and then radio and television. Information that previously took weeks to get out, could now go out to millions nearly immediately so we could all know how tough Meghan Markle had it last weekend.

With this communication, the model was simple: one to many. One person could have their ideas spread out to literally everyone. In the Soviet Union, radio versions of Stalin’s speeches could be broadcast instantaneously to every person with a radio in the Soviet Union, though those radios were powered by large industrial tractors produced in Tractor Collective Number 323 that weighed 17 metric tons.

With the advent of this communication, it became feasible to run an actual empire, in real time. Things started clumping together because the span of control allowed it, and the size of empire was useful. The Soviets started collecting satellite states like they were Hallmark© Christmas ornaments, and so did the NATO nations.

What does the blue in a communist flag stand for? Food.

Europe itself clumped together into the EU, which, oddly, was exactly the plan of an Austrian art-school reject. Up until the 1990s, clumping together was all the rage. There was strength in being together, and it was also strength in the titanic war without weapons between two competing ideologies: Western Capitalism versus Eastern European and Asian Collectivist Communism.

Some have said (and I would have argued, incorrectly, in the past) that technology is neutral. It is not. Technology absolutely changes the equation between the types of governments that can exist. Take, for example, weapons:

To be really good with a sword takes a lot of practice. I assume this because I watched a lot of movies where people learn to be good swordsmen and people always seem to get older in the montage. Beyond that, the suit of armor that a knight had to have was really, really expensive? How expensive? More than “hot dog at an NFL® game” expensive, it was completely unaffordable unless you had a manor and a bunch of dudes growing stuff for you. And, if you had it, those dudes couldn’t really do anything to you when you were out and about.

Which Knight was chosen to build the Round Table? Sir Cumference.

Freedom, in this case, belonged to those who had armor. That equation changed over time, and it’s a real reason I like firearms. I can go in a store and buy a close copy (or in some cases much better stuff) than the United States Army gives to the rank-and-file soldier. Remember, “military grade” is the code word for the cheapest stuff that they could buy that might do the job.

Anyway, as long as millions of Americans are as well armed as the average infantry soldier in our army, we are free. Round us up and try to put us in concentration camps like they did in Australia during the recent pandemic? Not going to happen because, well, all the guns. It doesn’t even take a montage to learn how to use a firearm.

Mao may have been ugly and smelled bad, but he knew something very true: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Why does the Left want to take away guns? Because they want power, and as long as you have weapons that equal theirs, they cannot make you do whatever it is that they want.

Robespierre, Trotsky, and Mao walk into a bar. There are no survivors.

But that’s a digression. Technology allowed the flourishing of really large empires, mainly due to information management and that “one to many” communication model. Being together in these combinations allowed two sides to fight each other.

Until they didn’t.

The biggest failure of Soviet-style communism wasn’t the socialist part, but the collectivist part. Capitalism in the West simply out produced them, but the collectivist mindset wasn’t really “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” That sounds spiffy, but in reality it became, “From each according to how little work they could get away with, to each according to how much they could milk the system for.”

I asked A.I. to make the workers lazy. Boom, the cell phones show up.

This collapsed. I think it was a coincidence that it was just as the Internet began to flourish, but the Internet has changed the entire way that communication can flow. The old model was “from one to many” while the new model is “from many to many”. Not everyone has an equal voice, but ideas now flow freely.

This is what puts the panties of Those Who Are In Power into a wad – they have lost control of the Narrative. It’s also going to be the story of the 21^st century: the time when things dissolve.

We’ve seen it start with Brexit. Brexit would never have happened under the previous mode where the only options were the options from TPTB. In this case, the people rose up, and said no. Of course, in the case of Great Britain, TPTB decided to keep the unending flow of illegals headed there, because the last thing they want to reward were people from Great Britain deciding their own destiny.

I wonder if Departugul will be next? Or will it be Polend?

It’s too late to put the genie back into the bottle, however. We see strains on NATO where vastly divergent incentives have weakened that alliance, and I see similar strains on the EU right now, where countries like Poland and Hungary are being ostracized for not wanting to become minorities in their own lands.

Likewise, we see the pressures of division putting strains on the United States. Every reader here is a part of that, since you regularly partake in ideas that are not approved by those who would have you live in pods and eat bugs and give up your arms. For the greater good, you know.

The story of the 20^th century was of coming together. Our story, right now, is of things coming apart.

Snapshots Of The Economic Collapse

“I’m the source of all your misery? Who closed the store to play hockey? Who closed the store to go to a wake?” – Clerks

I found a store that only sells donuts, bagels, and macaroni. It’s called Hole Foods.

Misery is a state of being includes suffering, but suffering is short. Misery is like suffering crossed with my ex-wife talking about my faults: it goes on and on and never seems to stop.

Misery is OJ.

OJ is up. And you don’t need to be worried about your throat being sliced open followed by a weird car chase, because in this case it’s not Orenthal James, it’s Orange Juice. Since 2020, OJ has gone up in price by 315%, while Orenthal James probably hasn’t killed anyone in that time period. Here’s the graph:

What’s the difference between O.J. Simpson and the movie Caddyshack? One had a Bronco pursuit and the other one had a Chevy Chase.

It’s not like there’s a shortage of OJ, because if there was, I’d expect to see a shortage of vodka, too, and there’s no shortage of vodka, I mean, not that I’d know. But when orange juice is headed through the moon, I expect to look around and see Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd swapping a dollar on a bet.

I suppose that orange juice isn’t required for living, but you have to live somewhere. I was talking to an acquaintance the other day, and he mentioned his kid had graduated from college and had a job in a major metropolitan area – not one that’s known for being expensive, mind you. The apartment building is probably in a sketchier neighborhood because he mentioned it was gated. The rent? $1,700 a month. For a fresh college grad and his spouse.

How many ants to fill an apartment? Ten ants.

Ouch! They’re probably not saving a lot of money, fresh college grads, at that level. Is it any wonder that the birth rate for folks who contribute to the economy is down? Who has money to have a baby when you have to cough up $1,700 a month, before utilities, to live in a neighborhood that requires walls and gates to be safe? I guess that’s where the vodka comes in . . . vodka: overriding good judgement in child bearing since 1405.

The impact of rent has been bad, but housing prices have done the youth of our country no favor, either. It has long been my thought that people shouldn’t make themselves poor by buying a house, and, yet, they do, with the exception of Joe Biden, who has made buying the White House pretty lucrative.

Not my meme, but you can tell it’s classy by the “FF” in “PROFFIT”. At least he’s doing well in this economy . . .

It seems like the market is rigged to extract the maximum amount of money out of the people consuming housing, especially when compared with the 1950s when a single manufacturing income could afford a decent home for a family. I can’t imagine a rent of $1,700 as a new college grad – that’s more than I’m paying right now on my existing mortgage. I know that $1,700 sounds like Heaven to those of you living on the coasts, but this is a mid-tier southwestern town.

Houses have gotten worse. In August, the average asking price in the United States was $445,000. Due to inflation and interest rates, the average price that a purchaser could afford was $356,000. This is an obvious recipe for deflation in housing prices in any other economy. But in 2023?

How do Millennials fireproof their home? By never owning one.

And, yet, there’s a housing shortage. How could that be?

Could it be that millions and millions of people have hopped the border since 2000? The minimum is 6,300,000 since Biden became Resident. Minimum. It’s likely that the number is much higher, and it’s nearly certain that tens of millions of illegals have poured across the border since 2000. Want cheap housing? You’re competing against people who often don’t pay taxes, live many families to a dwelling, and, when finally given the opportunity, will vote far Left to elect people who want us to eat the bugs and live in the pods.

In any previous world, we have the makings of an economic catastrophe:

Unlimited labor,
Massive cash printing,
Mass illegal immigration into crowded cities,
Bidens,
Housing shortages, and
Skyrocketing food prices.

What’s happening is that the things that are required to live, food and shelter, are becoming very, very expensive. The blame is mainly left at the feet of the United States’ government and the Federal Reserve Bank®, but there’s more to go around. McDonald’s© is selling a Big Mac® meal around Modern Mayberry for about $9. That’s ludicrous for what you get in both quality and quantity, but that’s what it costs. On the East Coast, it’s $16. Here at the locally owned butcher shop, a very, very good ribeye from a local cow is $12.95 a pound. Take your pick: meat® on a bun™ or juicy, delicious steak?

YMMV, but for me that’s an easy choice.

My doctor suggested I eat at Burger King®. I know, technically, he said, “no more McDonald’s®”, but I know what he meant.

But what about McDonald’s©? Surely they must be having a McAwful™ day to have to raise prices that high. Nah. Their stock price is doing fine and they’re making lots of money – they beat the profit that Wall Street thought they were going to make. McDonald’s® isn’t hit by inflation – they can just (at least until now) make everyone else pay. That probably won’t last, but it sure is miserable for many now.

To summarize, the things that are required to live are going up. The misery created by the current bad set of choices by bankers and elected officials is real, and getting worse by the day. So, tonight, let’s put all of our worries aside and enjoy a television show about a bunch of hot people who are rich and successful!

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report, Violence Is On The Menu

“I don’t like violence, Tom. I’m a businessman.” – The Godfather

People say violence is never an option, but when I’m in a room with a Kardashian, well, let’s just say it’s option number one.

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

Volume V, Issue 6

All memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”.

This is a moving situation, and things are changing quickly. The 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 – New Achievement Unlocked: Acceptable Violence – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Are We At War? Revisited – 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 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

New Achievement Unlocked: Violence Acceptable

One of the hallmarks of the countdown to Civil War 2.0 has always been: Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology. We’ve debated about where to put it, but it’s been there since the very start of the countdown/index. This month a Constant Reader sent me a link to American Partisan where the article discussed exactly that (LINK).

When a high government official formerly in charge of extrajudicial executions calls for the extrajudicial execution of an elected official to a national body, you might live in a banana republic.

31% of Trump supporters and 24% of Biden supporters indicated that democracy is no longer viable.
41% of Biden supporters and 38% of Trump supporters thought it was acceptable to use violence to stop their opponents.

Yes, I know that technically we’re not a democracy anyway because the Founding Fathers felt that was little more than mob rule, but it looks like a huge chunk of people are flat done with the idea of voting with ballots and are ready to start voting with fists, clubs, and bullets.

Except against women. Or people who identify as women. Or Leftists. But I repeat myself.

This, sadly, is something that many have expected as the government loses the legitimacy that it enjoyed during most of the history of the country, with only 16% (according to Pew®) trusting the government to do way is right most of the time.

As I’ve mentioned before, some of the best advice I’ve ever heard about divorce was, “If you don’t want a divorce, don’t talk about one.” Here, large numbers of the population are currently contemplating divorce, and contemplating not using a lawyer to get what they want, since 41% of Trump supporters and 30% of Biden supporters are in favor of secession based on political lines.

Although there is a flaw in the Leftist strategy.

Even when I started this blog, that seemed unlikely. Although the maps show Red states and Blue states, the reality is that in 2016, many of them were purple – a roughly equal mixture of both.

Now we see that people really are moving from one state to another for purely political reasons. If you’re on the Right, why live in a state that will criminalize you because you own guns? If you’re on the Left, why live in a state that won’t let you kill all the babies you want to kill?

Violence and Censorship Update

Hillary Clinton, that bastion of common sense and moderation, noted this month that people who supported Donald Trump need to be “formally deprogrammed”. If you think the Left is up for a truce and to forgive, that would be a mistake.

Proving that a Leftist is as loyal as a scorpion, well, read the note below.

But, good news for her! She can update her Tinder® profile.

In a further example that we are at an 8. on the steps to Civil War 2.0 (list above, more story below) Portland has stopped trying to look good for a date, and is now at the stage that they’re eating frosting straight from the plastic container with a spoon. The cops have given up.

The EU wants Elon Musk to censor comments on X®. The only problem? Like taking a woman to a restaurant, the want Elon to figure what they want him to censor without telling him.

Regardless of how you feel about, well, anyone, the First Amendment exists. Except for certain subjects as the former governor of Mumbai points out below:

And Ron’s not far behind:

Lastly, Canadians seem to enjoy a few freedoms. At least today:

Biden’s Misery Index

Let’s take a look to see how we’ve done this month . . . .

Yup, up again. Looks like Biden is going for the record. Who says he never gets anything done? I hear he was even on hand to thank one of his financial supporters.

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 is up again, again slightly – I was expecting more during a long, hot summer. I’m guessing that people don’t even notice it anymore. Think San Fran will be paying for cops anytime soon?

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, up. I expect December to be a time when this starts to head upward, significantly, because, bears.

Economic:

Economic numbers are swinging back down again this month, and a bit more in October – I expected more. Well, we’ll see. Maybe there will be a miracle?

Illegal Aliens:

The biggest number, ever, in the history of the country, an unending flood. Read Enoch Powell’s speech.

Are We At War? Revisited

Last month’s Weather Report topic was a simple question: Are we at war? The reason for this is that a Constant Reader said I was obviously stoned, because the war was obviously already going.

Another Constant Reader responded to this response as noted above that I was stoned for thinking we were closer to war than they did, and I thought it was a more than fair assertion that deserved a response: “Not 8. Not anywhere close to that.”

Well, as to point 6., where people are avoiding the other side, this is an ongoing process I noted that began years ago. I have several friends that have specifically decided to move away from Leftist hotbeds for exactly that reason. My own brother, John Wilder, is currently behind enemy lines in the Reddest area of a very blue state. He’ll be moving before too long to a very, very Red State where he is no longer considered to be an extremist.

He does, however, have a great lawn.

Next, to point 7. If anyone doesn’t think that organized violence is occurring regularly, they need to revisit their news sources. Cities, even in Red States, are being run not by cops, not by commissions, and not by mayors. Those cities are being run by district attorneys that are not prosecuting criminals and are sanctioning the violence. It’s bad enough that it’s normalized – the group protests, riots, and mob thefts that are occurring with the tacit approval of the “justice” system takes us to an 8. Reminder, this Civil War won’t have masses of armed troops to inflict the damage, especially at the start.

To get from 8. to 10. could happen in as little as two weeks – imagine another blatantly stolen election in 2024 . . . that might be the spark. As shown in the first story, polls indicate that a growing number of people no longer want peace at all costs, and the peace that flows from the barrel of a gun would be quite acceptable.

It’s odd when the Muppet® doesn’t have the silliest hair.

Are we at an 8.? I think so. It doesn’t get to a 10. until the Right starts to fight back. I do appreciate the feedback, since this is a work in progress, and it also nudges me to explain what the heck my reasoning is. YMMV.

The fact that two readers with valid points make the opposite argument makes me think I’m close to the right answer. We are very, very near.

LINKS

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

BAD GUYS

https://twitter.com/i/status/1718365747414761547

https://twitter.com/i/status/1720452778508595253

https://twitter.com/i/status/1718594209450480043

https://twitter.com/i/status/1719551215858798957

https://twitter.com/i/status/1715239983911452861

https://twitter.com/i/status/1715236903853691077

https://twitter.com/i/status/1714199598871228535

GOOD GUY?

https://twitter.com/i/status/1716945256804200575

ONE GUY

https://twitter.com/UR_Ninja/status/1716227124275626374

BODY COUNT

https://citizenfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/biden-state-illegals.jpg

https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_9d841124-7449-11ee-af4a-af115ad29337.html

https://twitter.com/i/status/1707919466154082771

https://twitter.com/Jeanne2999432/status/1719039832633041054?t=Nd5Phexy5Xh6W1OcG6-yIw&s=19

https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/axis.JPG?itok=tZ4zVVGS
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/texas/article-12663663/Venezuelas-worst-gangsters-criminals-cross-border-carrying-orders-dictator-Maduro.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12699675/US-border-China-migrants-caravan.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12666301/Migrants-NYC-costing-taxpayer-5BN.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12484069/US-deaths-mortality-richest-countries.html

https://tnc.news/2023/10/26/assisted-suicide-in-canada-2022-1/

https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/4289645-bring-back-the-draft-a-divisive-battle-may-loom-over-any-major-war/

VOTE COUNT

https://citizenfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/emerald-fraud.jpeg

http://onlyinbridgeport.com/wordpress/watch-video-captures-gomes-supporters-absentee-ballot-dumping/

https://thefederalist.com/2023/10/05/10-ways-democrats-are-already-rigging-the-2024-election/

https://www.emerald.tv/p/georgias-election-officials-are-getting

https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fthefederalist.com%2F2023%2F10%2F31%2Franked-choice-voting-is-the-monster-under-the-bed-of-american-elections%2F

https://thefga.org/research/ranked-choice-voting-partisan-plot-to-disrupt-elections/

CIVIL WAR

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12589871/mexico-cartel-texas-invasion-border-war-todd-bensman.html

https://www.newsweek.com/democrat-civil-war-reaching-boiling-point-1840367

https://news.yahoo.com/large-portion-americans-doubt-democracy-160659069.html

https://jonathanturley.org/2023/10/23/americas-crisis-of-faith-new-poll-reveals-more-americans-are-rejecting-the-constitution-and-embracing-violence/

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2023-10-12/civil-war-5-4-3-2

https://www.governing.com/context/what-would-a-national-divorce-look-like

How The Left Is Changing Society, And How To Fight: Part II

“You know, in certain older civilized cultures, when men failed as entirely as you have, they would throw themselves on their swords.” – Serenity

What do you call a two dead parrots? Pollygons.

This is part two of the series on social structures and control.

Most (stress on “most”) Western Nations adopted a modified version of a new social order between 1776 and 1920. It looked like this:

Absent or Figurehead Monarch: The idea of absolute rule by King melted away, and was essentially done in the first world by 1920. I mean, we dudes all still dream about it, but it’s gone.
Government Bureaucrats: The core of government power now flowed into an unelected bureaucracy that was, more or less, immune to election. When governed by a Constitution, this was good. When governed by avarice, not so much. Thankfully, most of the bureaucrats in the twentieth century were governed by bad eyesight and a to close the window for lunch, if the DMV is any clue.
Elected Leadership: The idea that elected leaders subject to the will of the people would be the ones to run the government was a noble one. Sadly, we started electing at least some dirtbags from the start.
Military Leaders: A professional military, generally subservient to the civilian leaders but still with cool uniforms.
Clergy: A strong church presence, though unofficial, was still the backbone of the country’s morality. Some priests even became lawyers, or what we would call a father-in-law.
Constitution: At least in the United States, the Constitution was the basis of civic religion for the majority of the people. In other countries, there were other things, like Great Britain and the King or Queen or Meghan Markle. It was a basis for the foundation of the nation (or, country).
Big Business: In the twentieth century, big business (including big banking) finally grew to the point that it was able to be a primary force in society, providing products and jobs for the voters, donations for the leadership class, and, apparently, lots of fedoras.
Middle Class: This was the engine of prosperity – working to build the economy. For a large part of the twentieth century government policy was focused on increasing this segment, since they were the spark plugs that both worked the line for GM® as well as ran the plants.
Lower Class: The big goal of most first world nations was to shrink this class, through education and sometimes direct payments. Making them productive, it was felt, would be a win for civilization as a whole.

Although not optimum, this version of civilization was built on a solid structure that focused on the atom: the family. It tried to take feedback from voters, protect their rights, and create wealth and happiness for most. It was an example of what happens when the people and the economy and the government more or less agree on virtue as the basis of society.

If honesty is a virtue, why doesn’t anyone want to hear the truth?

Yes, there were flaws. But compared to today?

The flaws were miniscule. It actually worked very, very well. For a while. But what was happening when the Left was in charge? Well, you got a very, very different structure.

That’s not the power structure of most modern-day dictatorships. That power structure assumes a Dear Leader, secret police, no church, a frightened military, and everyone else shoved into the frightened peasant class. The culture there has nothing to do with any traditions, has nothing to do with religion, has nothing to do with trust (trust no one is the motto in lands with a secret police) and has nothing to do with Truth, Virtue or Beauty, since those are viciously stamped down if they conflict with the will of Dear Leader.

Dear Leader: The top was an individual. Certainly, there were committees, but the basis was an individual. Lenin. Mao. Kim. The government didn’t revolve around them: they were the government.
Secret Police: Dear Leader can’t be everywhere, all the time, so the next best thing was a hated and feared secret police. Is it better to be hated or feared? If you are Dear Leader, you want both. You want the people to fear the secret police, but you also want the people to hate the secret police so that they could never govern.
Scared, Weak Military: Dear Leader needs a military, but they need to be scared of being replaced or killed.
Scared, Weak Bureaucrats: If the guys with tanks are scared, what hope do they have?
Scared, Weak Everyone Else: If the guys who assign Boris his Commieflat are scared, what hope does Boris have?

What size soda does Kim order? A supreme liter.

The atom of a dictatorship isn’t a family, it’s an individual. The goal of a dictatorship is weak families and no middle class. The goal is to create distrust and to have parents not trust their children, nor spouses trust each other. One of the first actions of the commie Spanish Republic was to make abortion legal, and eliminate marriages because they wanted to “make women equal”.

The reality was the Spanish commies wanted to destroy family ties so that the state was the unquestioned leader. This creates a different kind of stability – one based on constant fear and no trust. I wonder if that sounds familiar to anyone?

We are watching most of the Western World morphing from their old structure into the structures that Dear Leader would love.

Uniparty: Most of the Democrat mainstream and Republican mainstream have the same “values”, with only a variation or two. The Republicans acted like the neighborhood dog that finally caught the car when the Supreme Court revoked the absolute right of women to kill babies “because it’s Tuesday” and had no real plans. Abortion was a fundraiser, not a real issue to them.
Converged Bureaucrats: Bureaucrats in the FedGov are now out only for themselves and the bureaucracy they serve. The ATF doesn’t care if you have guns, really. The ATF just wants to have funding and to be able to shoot the family dog on Tuesdays.
Incipient Police State: Don’t think we have a police state that hands out unfair punishments? Type “January 6” into a search engine sometime . . .
A Vanishing Clergy: Church used to be an important touchstone – in the 1950s some banks wouldn’t give a mortgage if the pastor of your church didn’t speak favorably about your character. Extreme? Probably not – it kept a place in the community for virtue. The goal of the Left is that they have the monopoly on defining virtue. Hey, Live, Laugh, Love, right?
A Captive Press: When was the last time anyone in the Mainstream Media actually tried to challenge The Narrative? Oh, yeah, Tucker Carlson.
Twisted Constitution: The Constitution of the United States was written on plain language so the common citizen could understand it. Now? Emanations and penumbras and twisting of “thou shalt not” into “thou shalt” has made Constitutional law like a game of limbo – how low can you go? That the Civil Rights Act is now more important than actual Constitutional protections is all you need to know.
Subservient Military: Obama spent a lot of time and effort clearing out high-level officers in the military that weren’t on the Left. Notice that none of the top brass pushed back against the vaxx mandate?
Big Business: Big business has always had inordinate power due to their size and the amount of money they control (this includes big banks). During the last 40 years big business has dominated and destroyed most profitable small business niches. This results in a . . .
Much Smaller Middle Class: The middle class is smaller and poorer than at any time in my life. This is getting ready (over the next two years) to get much worse.
Everyone else: This is the goal – that 80% plus of the population are stuck, working paycheck to paycheck, unable to accumulate wealth, and having their saved money inflated away.

The values of this brave new world aren’t anchored by any sort of church. Values in 2023 move around every day at the whim of the Left. It’s all coordinated, too. Whatever value that they want is pushed through channels to the public, often with movies and television shows backing it up using emotionally laden content to transmit the message. Remember those “very special episodes”? Yup, all of them were propaganda.

But he was such a good boy. Never hurt anyone.

They had left the Internet and alternative media alone. Probably, it was left for a safety valve and because most Normies get their news and opinions from Mainstream sources. In reality, especially in the aftermath of Trump being meme’d into office in 2016, the hammer has started to come down. Information wants to be free, but the Left has taken the Dear Leader approach to information.

Ever notice that comment segments on news stories went from “nearly every news story has one” to “Comment section? What’s that?” in a span of just a few years? The problem was that people in the comment section were making too much sense. The people in the comment section were exposing the lies in the news stories. They had to be dealt with.

Websites like mine have been “detuned” from the search algorithms. This makes it harder for normies to find places that have unapproved ideas. YouTube® has veered into censorship, having kicked podcasts off the air for simply arguing against the vaxx or agreeing with the very real possibility that the 2020 elections were hijacked.

My computer started to cuss after the processor got too hot. I had to install a heat censor.

But not all is lost. Elon Musk has made “Community Notes” a thing. They’re a way to point out the Lies of the Left and those that hate Truth, Beauty, Steak, Families, and Nations.

This is how they’re targeting us, and how they have targeted us over decades. The wonderful part is that we have Truth, Beauty, Steak, Families and the power of Nations on our side. And people are waking up – 30% to 40% of all voters (not just those on the Right) believe the 2020 election was illegitimate. This is despite widespread censorship of this idea.

Keep spreading the Truth. Practice virtue and push your church (if you have one) to be more virtuous, rather than another Leftist conquest. Starve Big Business, when you can. Buying from local farmers gives them more money and keeps the money away from people who hate you.

If your misery is caused by paranoia, I can tell you you’re not alone.

We can’t wait until plate tectonics splits California off into an island, and the good news is that we won’t have to. As I’ve said before, we will win.

We are inevitable.

How The Left Is Changing Society, And How To Fight: Part I

“Looks like civilization finally caught up with us.” – Firefly

The invention of the shovel was groundbreaking, but everyone was blown away by the invention of the fan.

This is part one of a two-part series, it just got too big. Part two is written and I’ll post on Wednesday.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how and why the wheels are coming off of our civilization. Why? I don’t know – I’ve been worried about it since I was a wee Wilder and became concerned that plate tectonics wouldn’t split California off soon enough.

We see evidence of the collapse all the time but sometimes have a hard time putting our fingers on exactly what is driving it all from a structural standpoint. That’s why I’m here to help. Don’t worry. I’m a trained professional.

The social structure of stable societies isn’t an accident. When people were wandering around in nomadic tribes, I’m not sure exactly how things went down, but I do know that once civilization started taking root (so we could have beer, really, link below), the basic unit of civilization was set as the family in any sort of civilization that produces wealth, has reasonable freedoms, exhibits virtue (Truth, Beauty, Steak) and has any sort of stability.

Beer, Technology, Beer, Tide Pods, Beer, Civilizational Stability, and Beer

Think of a mom, dad, and kids. In a stable society, that’s essentially the atom. Often in the West we’re inundated with the idea of individual rights, and those do exist, but the biggest failing of those rights (in my opinion, and I’m right) is where those rights contradict the stability of the family. Atoms are at their most stable when all of the parts are in place – an atom missing electrons is an ion, and I could explain using hydroxide ions, but that’s pretty basic. And let’s not even get started on isotopes.

Why was 6 afraid? Because she could be discovered by the crew of the Battlestar Galactica at any time. And you thought I was going to say, “because seven ate nine.”

Divorce, for instance, is bad for family stability. Duh. Making divorce easy is thus attacking the core of the structure of civilization. Those on the Left who hate society are always attacking the family, and what better way to shatter it than divorce. Oh, wait, there’s birth control and abortion.

While a man and a woman, married (to each other) constitutes a family, that family is truly completed by children. We’re humans, but we’re also animals – there is an innate drive to reproduce and have offspring and then yell inappropriately at little league games. There has to be something strong about the need to reproduce, because babies are so objectionable and worthless. Really. I mean, I’ve never even seen a toddler I couldn’t trounce in wrestling.

So, the atom of society isn’t the individual – it’s the family. Families, not video games or pantyhose, are why civilization exists – it exists because of us, and it also exists for us. If a civilization doesn’t have children, it ceases to exist.

Once I found out that my pizza was burnt, my beer was frozen, and my wife was pregnant. I guess I’m just not good at taking things out in time.

This has some pretty significant implications, since so much of policy (especially Leftist, but the Right is not clean in this, either) is now actively hostile to the family. Examples:

Housing Prices: Leftists import hordes of illegals to increase prices and demand, and also make so many rules that building a house is more expensive.
Taxes: Leftists want to punish high earners (but not wealthy folks, there’s a difference) to keep the wife in the workforce to keep her from having kids.
Divorce Law: Divorce should be as easy as possible, there should be no requirement for fault (which would make cheaters guilty), there should be no consequences to the woman (who initiate the vast majority of divorce) except for fun and prizes.
Custody Law: Children should be part of the fun and prizes for divorce, and used to incentivize divorce for women through child support.
Alimony: Let’s make the man pay, even if the woman initiated divorce.
Propaganda that Women Must Work: This is deep, and is put into the heads of women that they are somehow “less than” if they aren’t working making PowerPoints®.
Propaganda that Women Must Have It All®: This one is the YOLO tag, making women feel unsuccessful if they don’t party away their youth and fertility with many, many men.

There’s more, of course, and I could probably write another 10,000 words about how society is actively hostile to the family and the very concept of parental authority. But you see it every day. You’re swimming in it – starting all the way back to inept fathers being the butt of jokes in sitcoms, and the “single mom don’t need no man” trope that started back in the 1970s.

In the 1980s lots of kids had single moms. Now some even have two.

So, that’s one part of the attack. But society isn’t made up of just random families wandering around – instead, there’s a structure to civilization, just like there’s a structure to, say, a beer bottle or the underwire in a bra. One such structure is kinship. Japanese people are all, on a basic level, related to each other and share the same culture.

This basic “being related to each other” is what distinguishes a nation (nation having the Latin root of natio, meaning “birth, origin, race of people, tribe) from a country. A country is just some random folks living in the same place, like New York City. A nation is a group of people who are all much more closely related, like Modern Mayberry, where if you moved here 15 years ago, you’re still one of those newcomers.

Since The Mrs. has kin here going back into the 1880s, she’s covered, but they’re always going to think I’m a bit sketchy.

Why was the mushroom the life of the party? Because he was giving away cocaine.

But kinship should not be underrated. When you look at the happiest country surveys, at the top are nations that have a disproportionate amount of people that are closely related, genetically. You trust your family more, and you’re less likely to cheat them, except at Thanksgiving while playing Monopoly®. Because of that, countries that are all of one nationality can be higher trust with lower corruption, if they aren’t tribal (looking at you, India and Pakistan and all of Africa).

Want to break up a country? After you’re done with the family, aim for disruption of the nation by introducing unlike people that have virtually nothing in common with the native stock in huge numbers. There’s a reason that nations of generally related people exist: it’s more stable.

If you wake up being chased by a lion while on a horse, and next to you is a giraffe and a hippo, what do you do? Get off the carousel and check into rehab.

Beyond the general nature of the family, there is an importance to the structure of society itself. One of the more stable structures of society in history was the feudal model. It consisted of several different classes of people:

Monarchy: Generally, the overall boss (when strong), who kept the whole thing in check. Needed: strong neck muscles to hold a big crown.
Lesser Nobles: Lieutenants, who administered smaller areas of varying size to keep those running. Needed: ability to bow.
Clergy: Served as an overall legitimacy, and also a diplomatic corps between nations. Needed:
Merchants: Made sure people had fish. Needed:
Professionals: I’m tossing artisan and guild member in here who had mad skills making stuff that society needed. And bankers. Needed: fluffy shirts.
Peasants: Someone has to milk the bull. Needed:

Each of these units played a part, and the power varied from place to place, and time to time. One of the most amusing things is when there were too many nobles, so kings would have to come up with wars to kill them off, because no one likes tons of bored yappy nobles around. Just ask Meghan Markle when King Charles ships her off to fight Argentina. Singlehandedly.

Sometimes the nobles were stronger than the king, thus the Magna Carta. Sometimes the clergy was stronger than the king, thus Cromwell. Sometimes the king was stronger than the clergy, thus the Avignon papacy. Even peasants got into the mix, with Wat Tyler’s Rebellion in England making King Richard II put on his brown pants.

Why do dairy cattle have hooves? Because they lactose.

Each part of the society could (and did) cause difficulty if the power that they shared got too far out of control. The Merchants and Professional classes were mainly in a support role, but they provided administrative and logistical support for everyone, and the bankers especially definitely led to many, many shenanigans.

Thus endeth ye olde parte the first.

Bikinis, Garbage Loans, And Fishy Finance

“A 30-year mortgage at Michael’s age essentially means that he’s buying a coffin. Now, if I were buying my coffin, I would get one with thicker walls.” – The Office

Most garbage workers don’t get official training. They pick it up as they go along.

The Big Solution to the Great Recession was printing lots of money. I would have (back then) thought that it would have hit the economy all at once. In reality, what the Federal Reserve® and the Treasury did was send all that money they printed off to the banks.

The banks didn’t lend it. They kept it on the books, and in fact many of them redeposited their free money with the Fed™. In reality, the Fed© was scared about was the entire system locking up. It was pretty bad in 2009 – basic chemicals that were necessary (say, sulfuric acid) for a basic, functioning economy just stopped production.

No one knew who had money, or who would have money. As one friend of mine noted at the time, “When the tide goes out, you finally see who isn’t wearing swimming trunks.”

My office above a bank, my assets over tens of millions of dollars.

The inflation stayed “within target” for the Fed™, flipping up and down around 2% during the decade following. Again, with all of the money printed, I expected it to be more, and I still don’t trust the official government figures on inflation since that would be like trusting a used-car salesman on that gently used 1995 Ford Taurus© with only 350,000 miles on it.

COVID was the final straw, though. People produced less stuff, so there was a lower supply. The government printed a lot more money and then gave it to everyone, who most definitely didn’t save it, and in fact bid prices up on everything. Making nothing and buying everything?

Inflation. Or my ex-wife.

Inflation finally triggered interest rates to go up. That posed a problem for the banks. Let’s take me: I have a small mortgage left on Stately Wilder Manor. I’m in no hurry to pay it off because I can get a CD for 5.5%, but my mortgage is only 4%.

How did Metallica stop people from pirating their music? They started releasing garbage.

My mortgage is worth less to the banks now than I owe on it – if I were another bank, they’d sell it to me for less than I owe. That’s a problem for banks that have exposure to mortgages and didn’t sell them off or hedge them.

It’s not just mortgages – Silicon Valley Bank® decided to invest in lots of long-term bonds and such because inflation had been so low. Buy a corporate bond yielding 4%, pay depositors 1%, and profit!

But when interest rates started heading upward, the same sort of math as with the bank that owns my mortgage applies – what used to be worth $100 is now only worth, say, $80. Oops. When the people who put hundreds of millions of dollars into the bank, money that wasn’t insured, find out?

Bank funs. Er, bank runs.

And it’s gone . . .

How bad was it? Of the $172 billion deposited at the bank, only 11% was covered by deposit insurance. I imagine that there were quite a few tense billionaires like Oprah worried that she’d have to get a job at the McDonald’s® drive through, and how could she resist those perfectly salty fries?

Since billionaires were in danger, the FDIC immediately said, “Rules? Who needs those. All money is safe in Bartertown!”

My initial expectation is that we’d see more bank failures right around now as interest rates increased and the piles of garbage on the balance sheets of the banks started to rot. Instead? Banks are still (I believe) happily lending money borrowed by the Fed™.

How do they do it? They manage to do it by having the Fed© allow them to mark their assets to what they paid for them, not what they’re worth. So, they’re lying. I’m fairly certain the Fed™ is buying this stuff to get it off the balance sheets of the banks and lending them more money whenever they don’t have enough caviar.

Does the Sturgeon General recommend caviar?

The rot, though, is still there – it’s only a matter of who pays for the rot. Debt always gets paid, the old saying goes, either by the borrower or by the lender. I do know of two local businesses that are going bankrupt. Their debt is what drove the bankruptcy. My guess is that, combined, they have a debt of a million and a half dollars (or so). Who will pay it? In the end, the lender will.

I think that might be at least part of the big jump in debt that the United States owes. As interest rates go up, Uncle Sam is acting like a raccoon and jumping straight into the trash can to eat the garbage loans and bonds that the banks had to throw out because they were stinking up the fridge. Here’s proof:

England doesn’t have a kidney bank, but it does have a Liverpool.

Eventually, printing lots and lots of money is like a magic trick the magician does one too many times and everyone sees how it works. Will it work this time?

Unrelated, frequent commenter Ray notes this Give Send Go. I’ll let him explain more. GiveSendGo – Loco Needs Divorce from Prostate: The Leader in Freedom Fundraising.

Globalism, Computer Chips, And Breast Implants

“Bart, the Internet is more than a global pornography network.” – The Simpsons

Biden shooting the Chinese Spy Balloon® is the only thing he’s done to fight inflation so far.

It’s all about the chain.

A global supply chain has some attributes. Just like money is freely (in most cases) able to cross borders, in a global system labor can cross borders as well, without ever having to leave home. People in (spins wheel) Bangladesh work for $0.0010 an hour sewing soccer balls? If they’re as productive (per dollar) as having a machine and skilled operator in the United States do it, the work went to Bangladesh.

This is (if you’re in Bangladesh) probably a good thing since your alternative was farming spider webs or whatever it is that people in Bangladesh eat. In theory, it’s good for the company that sells soccer balls, since they can (not saying they will, but they can) price them lower, and still produce a profit. It also would appeal to the women who play soccer while their husbands are in the kitchen doing the dishes in Europe.

Why did the Italian join Tinder®? He was provalonely.

But what it doesn’t do is help the highly-skilled guy who used to make them in a non-spider web eating country. In fact, over time the knowledge of all the little tricks that are necessary to make soccer balls cheaply and effectively are lost as they’re transported to Bangladesh.

This might not be such a big deal when it comes to soccer balls, because you can (in a pinch) use the heads of your enemies for one, which would make soccer my favorite sport, ever. But when it comes to things like computer chips, well, that’s a different story. I believe it was the head of the Economic Advisors of George H.W. Bush’s White House who made the comment that he didn’t care if Americans were making potato chips or computer chips as long as they had a job. Oddly, G.H.W. Bush hadn’t had had a job for decades, so, why not?

The question even I don’t know the answer to: is this my last inflation joke?

Bush’s advisor was wrong. While Americans were making potato chips, places like Taiwan Semiconductor were making computer chips. Likewise, they were learning how to make them. Knowing what’s on a computer chip is nice, but it doesn’t tell me about all the of the steps required to make structures that are so very small that we’re near the limit of shrinking chips because the of the size of the silicon atom itself. Yeah. It’s that complicated. But, hey, we have Ruffles® instead of knowing how to do that.

Making chips of such precision took literally decades of investment, billions of dollars in research, and replicating it is very, very hard, unless you’re China and steal the secrets while putting “your people” in sensitive positions in corporations that do the work. Oh, did I just describe every industry?

No, there’s an absolute advantage to making computer chips over potato chips. Building computer chips takes knowledge but it also builds knowledge, some of which can result in additional, new businesses that make use of the technologies developed in building computer chips. Imagine, a PEZ® dispenser a billionth of an inch (40 Newtons) tall! This was what the Soviets dreamed of!

Speaking of names, because of inflation, Dollar Tree® will soon be calling itself Tree Dollar®.

It’s not just the high technology parts that go into nearly every appliance, car, and weapons system that is used in the United States, it also applies to commodities like sweet, sweet oil. It also applies to rare-earth minerals, which China (currently) leads the world in production.

But rare-earth minerals aren’t all that rare – we have them in the United States, but don’t have active mines and refining processes. Why? It’s expensive to mine here (labor costs) and it’s expensive to mine here (environmental compliance costs). So, it’s cheaper to ship the mining off to China and just let them do the dirty work since they (at least in the past) don’t seem to care about losing a few million people to escalators, building collapse, explosions, or whatever other dystopian nightmare you can imagine.

How does a mollusk hide from predators? Clamoflage.

The downside of this global civilization is that it’s pretty tightly wound. In most cases, companies don’t like to stockpile “stuff” so they have it delivered just when it’s needed and don’t have a big supply sitting in a warehouse. When writing for a post a few years ago, I wanted to know how much grain was sitting in the silos near Modern Mayberry (which is near the silos that produced the grain).

The answer surprised me – the silos were nearly always one-half to two-thirds full. Whoever is making the bread doesn’t want the wheat until they’re ready for it – they certainly don’t store it on site until it’s much closer to becoming a loaf.

COVID exposed the supply chain, and the panic response of the public. Toilet paper was in short supply not because there wasn’t enough toilet paper, but rather because there wasn’t enough toilet paper capacity to produce 1,000 roles for every person today.

If I had a $0.05 for every bread joke I’ve told, I’d have a pun per nickel.

As warfare hits Ukraine and Israel (and maybe the wider Middle East) and as tensions rachet with China over the status of Taiwan, which just happens to lead the world in computer chip manufacturing, we’ll soon see if the globalism that we’ve faced is as fatal to the fate of nations as it was to so many million middle-class jobs in the United States. When we (by default) import Bangladeshi labor along with the millions of illegal aliens that we destroy, we (by default, eventually) import the Bangladeshi lifestyle.

Pardon me, I need to research how to cook spider webs.