Civil War 2.0 Weather Report, Issue 12: Censorship and COVID-19

“You were going to bed hungry, scrounging for scraps. Your planet was on the brink of collapse. I’m the one who stopped that. You know what’s happened since then? The children born have known nothing but full bellies and clear skies. It’s a paradise.” – Avengers: Infinity War

After several years of looking, I found a book on Amazon® about how clocks work.  It’s about time.

6. People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology.  Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
7. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
8. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures.  Just in case.
9. Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.

The clock didn’t move this month for the third month in a row.  That’s good.  But I see pressure building up quickly.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Violence and Censorship Update – Steps On the Way to Revolt – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The Real Story: Economic Collapse – Links

Welcome to Issue 12 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.  Here are the links to the previous issues:  Issue One (LINK), Issue Two (LINK), Issue Three (LINK), Issue Four (LINK), Issue Five (LINK), Issue Six (LINK), Issue Seven (LINK), Issue Eight (LINK), Issue Nine (LINK), Issue Ten (LINK), and Issue Eleven (LINK).

Violence and Censorship Update

April was a big month for censorship.  Like a toddler in a Toys’r’Us™, Facebook® and YouTube© decided this was the month to crack down on speech they didn’t agree with.  And that speech was from the Left.  Just kidding.  It’s never a crackdown on the Left.  Who did they go after?

Well, David Icke was shut down.  I like listening to David Icke, because I sincerely think that he believes that shape-shifting reptilian aliens run the governments of the world.  As in Queen Elizabeth II is a secret lizard lady.  That is WWE© level of conspiracy, and it sure makes 40 minutes of treadmill time go faster listening to it.  But now, he’s gone.  His sin?  Nothing to do with lizards.  Nothing to do with the Queen.  No, Mr. Icke committed the sin of breaking the party line on COVID-19.

When WHO makes David Icke look reasonable.

In fact, any YouTube® video that puts forward an opinion that differs from the World Health Organization (WHO) will be removed.  Do it too often?  Your channel is banned.  For life.

I must admit that I am a sinner in committing heresy against the WHO.  In May, 2019, I did a frighteningly good post (The Who, The WHO, Cavemen, Child Labor, and We Won’t Get Fooled Again) about their silliness in describing “Burnout” and “Gaming Disorder” as new plagues that were going to destroy mankind.  To quote me at the time:  “When a cell behaves like the WHO and most other government agencies do, it’s called cancer.”  Yup, that’s probably enough for the YouTube® ban hammer.

But now it seems that having an opinion different than the WHO is enough to bring the full weight of Leftist censorship down.  There were several doctors that disagreed with the WHO, and they were shut down, even though the WHO’s opinion on COVID-19 has been proven wrong again and again and again.  And that is scary.  The WHO (and the CDC, who I skewered in the post (The CDC, Raw Cookie Dough, and Sexy Theocracy)) have proven to be little more than government agencies that have lost their primary mission in a race to pander to news outlets to secure funding.

Facebook™ announced it was not only trying to get rid of COVID-19 “misinformation” by deleting posts, but also was actively censoring people trying to use it to organize “end the quarantine” events.  That was chilling.  You may or may not agree with these protests, but the idea of peacefully petitioning government is a clear right.  Libertarians and (increasingly) Leftists will make the argument that “Facebook® is a private company and can do whatever they want.  Nanner-nanner.”

But know them by their works.  They want your data.  They want to market you as a product.  A compliant product for them to sell.  And, it appears, snitch on you if you are a bad-thinker.

He only needed a sip.  Zucculents are excellent at storing water and can thrive in areas with dry climate.

Likewise, the Unz Review (LINK) got kicked off of Facebook®.  Ron Unz’s website is a hotbed of controversial thought that’s not afraid of challenging almost any opinion:  I’ve read a lot there I disagree with.  The owner of the site, Ron Unz, does not stand behind every article published – it would be impossible because many of them are 100% contradictory to each other.  But, even though I disagree with a lot I’ve seen there, I’ve learned a lot there that I never would anywhere else.  I’m surprised Unz lasted this long on Facebook™.

Where does this censorship take us?  Nowhere good, since after the first censorship, taking down the next site becomes easier and easier.  It’s for the public good, after all.  Can’t have people thinking unapproved thoughts, right?

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 lead to the index.  On illegal aliens, I’m just using government figures.

April was a difficult month for the economy, and that shows up in the graphs.  I don’t think that May will be quite as bad, but I’ve been wrong before.  I did, however, try to spend significant time on selection of the bikini pictures to accompany the graphs, since I want to at least reach the journalist integrity of the New York Times®.

Violence:

Up is more violent.  Violence had been down because everyone is stuck in the basement.  But now the end of quarantine is near, and people will become violent if it isn’t lifted soon.  I expect big upticks in June, July and August.  I think May will be fairly mellow, and might be the last mellow month for ages.

Enjoy it.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable.  Instability is down – having the field reduced to two likely candidates for the November election helps calm people, plus people are advised not to make sudden moves around Joe Biden, since his predator instinct could kick in and he might give you a good sniffing.  Instability will go up if Biden falters or starts drooling oatmeal during an interview.

Economic:

Down indicates worse economic conditions.  The graph speaks for itself – I had to search through a LOT of bikini photographs to find one that fit with a plunge like we’ve seen.  I expect April to be better.  But not by a lot.  I’ll likely change the basis of this one or add an entirely new one next month – this is an instantaneous graph to measure mood, and we should start to look at cumulative numbers to measure how screwed we are.  Upside?  One more bikini graph.

Illegal Aliens:

Down is good, in theory.  This is a statistic showing border apprehensions by the Border Patrol.  Down.  Until Mexico’s economy collapses. Then what?

Economic Collapse – The Real Story

When I first started the weather report, one criticism was that we would never see Civil War 2.0 while things were good economically.  And I admitted that this is true.  As a people I can see limited acts of disobedience, but not outright insurrection while the economy is good.  Full bellies and full bank accounts don’t lead to fighting in the streets.

The economy is in free fall.  That’s not an overstatement.  There has been no month as bad in the world economy as April, 2020, at least not in my life.  Unless you’re in your 80’s or better, this is the worst economic month of your life, too.  To find such a disaster in the United States, you’d have to go back to the 1930’s, at least.

The goat entrails have spoken!  The cure is yet more debt and money printing!

As I’ve mentioned before, a strong economy could take this sort of shock.  Our economy isn’t strong.  Let’s take New York City.  What does it produce?  Debt, real estate sales, insurance companies, financial irregularity, the stock market, and national “journalism” that at best is as biased as a Kennedy mother bailing her kids out of jail.  If New York City were to disappear tomorrow, the only thing from NYC the Wilder Family would miss is the television show Impractical Jokers®.

Yet New York City controls the money flows in the country.  It also controls the bets made on wheat production and pork prices.  NYC produces nothing, but acts as a tax on those that actually produce.  In 1947, the proportion of the economy devoted to Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate (F.I.R.E.) was about 10%.  In 2017, it was 20%.  And we do need a certain percentage of our economy devoted to moving money around, but the point of our economy isn’t moving money, it’s making things and feeding people.  Oh, and doing taxes.

Are we richer because of what comes from New York?  Are we more stable?  Does making another loan to a big corporation so they have enough debt on their books so a New York financier can’t buy them with their own money make us better off?  Is it better because the dollars aren’t backed by anything other than a printing press?

Hey, that might make a good movie.

In that same time period, manufacturing dropped from 25% of the economy to 11%.  Does that make us better off, when critical goods are made an ocean away?  Does that make us more stable and able to weather a crisis?

As the economy collapses, it’s collapsing because it has been hollowed out for decades.  I will say that studies show, before 1980, Democrats were strongly focused on keeping the manufacturing and construction industries strong, since the unions that dominated that sector were lock-step voters for the Democrats.  But, when a shiny new toy of being paid by the big banks plus being able to bring in a whole new class of voters (legal immigrants and illegal aliens) got too big, the Democrats dumped manufacturing and construction.

This collapse has been decades in the making.  It won’t be done quickly.  And it just might provide the pain to slingshot us into Civil War 2.0.

Links

All are from Ricky this month . . .  enjoy!

• California to be a Republic Again (Zero Hedge) and (Bloomberg)?
  
• The Lone Star Nation?  (The Atlantic)
• Of Two Minds:  The American Divide
• Michigan’s Civil War (NBC) and (CBS)
• Raw Story:  Soft Civil War
• Rights are suspended:  (Twitter), (Concord Monitor), (Military Times), (New Republic)
• Leftists Congressmen move to begin attack on gun ownership (USA Today), (Ammoland)
• And removing gun rights at the states (NPR)
• Red Dawn, Revisited (Paste)
• COVID-19 is a recruiting tool for the Far Right?  (NBC), (VICE), (Medium), (The Grio), (Angrywhitemen)
• Real time boogaloo data (Telegram)
• Domestic terrorism???  (Memri), and (Raw Story)
• Zerohedge:  New Feudalism?
• Yahoo:  Lockdowns into 2021??
• Civil Unrest: (Zerohedge), (Law Enforcement Today)
• Food Banks:  (Politico), (Time), (Zerohedge on National Guard at Food Banks)