Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

The Bridge on the River Kwai Moment

“We can teach these barbarians a lesson in Western methods and efficiency that will put them to shame. We’ll show them what the British soldier is capable of doing.” – The Bridge on the River Kwai

Air combat in the Pacific as taught by public schools in 2019.

The Mrs. and I were discussing politics, and she tossed out an interesting question:

The Mrs.: “Is the Left going to have a Bridge on the River Kwai moment?”

I thought that was a great question, but it requires some backstory.

It was a condition of my proposal to The Miss that if she wanted to become The Mrs., that she’d have to watch several movies that dripped with toxic masculinity and testosterone. Patton, Zulu, The Man Who Would Be King, and any movie involving Clint Eastwood were required watching (among others).

The Mrs. said she’d seen most of the Eastwood movies already. The Mrs. hadn’t seen Hang ‘em High, so we watched that in the hotel on our honeymoon. Most of it. Okay, parts of it.

Okay, I promise these will make sense in a few paragraphs.

The Bridge on the River Kwai was included in that list of “must watch” movies. I decided to re-watch it last week after I started to write this post. I wrangled Pugsley into watching it with me. Pugsley’s a teen now, and the movie is a pretty powerful one that he’d never seen. As the movie opened to the scene of dense jungle, Pugsley asked, “What’s this (movie) about?”

John Wilder: “Well, it’s about a World War II prisoner of war camp . . .”

Pugsley: “No, you mean Vietnam.” He gestured at the jungle. Vietnam occurred 50 years ago. World War II was 75 years ago. To a teen? It’s all ancient history. Heck, Star Wars™ debuted 32 years after World War II ended. It’s now been 42 years since Star Wars© came out. Star Wars® is closer in time to World War II than we are to the opening night of Star Wars™. Feeling old?

John Wilder: “You do realize that we fought in the Pacific as well as in Europe in World War II?”

Pugsley: “Oh.” He looked doubtful, like he thought my mind was slipping, but let it pass.

To a teen in 2019, WWII is as far in the past as a world without flight was when I was a teen. Growing up I knew all about the kill ratio of the Phantom F-4 vs. the MiG in Vietnam, but next to nothing about World War I aviation other than Germans pilots apparently ate a lot of pizza:

Notice that he’s smoking. I’m sure that’s what killed him – I’ve been told those cigarettes are dangerous!

The Bridge on the River Kwai is a 1957 movie about Vietnam World War II. In it, a group of mainly British prisoners of war are in a camp in the Burmese jungle. As in real life, these soldiers were being forced by the Japanese to build a railroad so that the Japanese could have better logistics resupplying their troops in Burma.

The movie focuses around a particular bridge that needs to be completed in order to finish the railroad on time. Never since the pyramids were built has civil engineering been so exciting and sexy: piling depths, soil bearing capacity, number of cubic yards of dirt moved, surveying . . . riveting! Okay, no rivets since they were making the bridge out of wood.

In the opening scene a British colonel marches in to camp with his officers and soldiers, after being ordered to surrender in Singapore. The Japanese colonel and the British colonel engage in a battle of will. Since the actor playing the British colonel is the same actor that played Obi Wan Kenobi™ in Star Wars®, obviously not long into the movie the Japanese colonel’s will is crushed.

Colonel Kenobi: “These aren’t the troops you’re looking for.” Photoshop credit: The Boy.

Soon, the British colonel is directing his men to perform higher quotas of work than the Japanese had set for them. In order to show the Japanese how Englishmen act, Colonel Kenobi demands that his men not sabotage the bridge, but do proper, quality work. Not long after Colonel Kenobi arrives, an American barely escapes. The actor that played the American wasn’t in Star Wars©, so I have no idea if he could use the force.

Arriving at a rear base in India, the American is encouraged to join a commando group that will destroy the bridge over the Kwai. And, by encouraged I mean not “volunteered” but “voluntold.” My kids are voluntold about a lot of things, but I have never sent them to blow up a Japanese bridge in Burma. Maybe next summer, since they haven’t successfully completed mowing my lawn yet this summer. Baby steps.

The commandos, including the American who wasn’t in Star Wars© make it to the bridge and plant explosives. In order to add a ticking clock – they are going to blow up the bridge just as a trainload of high-ranking Japanese officials are using the train to go to the Japanese Death Star®.

See, I told you they would make sense.

As the train is approaching, Colonel Kenobi sees the electrical cord hooked up to the bridge – the other part is hooked to a Looney Tunes®-style detonator that is out of sight. Oops. Colonel Kenobi and the Japanese colonel go to investigate. When the colonels get close to the detonator, a young commando kills the Japanese colonel. Colonel Kenobi then yells for help. To the Japanese troops.

***SPOILER ALERT ON A 62 YEAR OLD MOVIE***

After the young commando is killed by the Japanese, who have much better aim than Stormtroopers™, the American, who is across the river, attempts to swim and detonate the explosives. The American is shot, but as the American is dying, Colonel Kenobi recognizes him as the escaped prisoner from earlier in the movie. Colonel Kenobi is jolted back, and looks at the bodies of the two officers that are on the same side as he is that died because of his actions . . . his actions to save “his” bridge.

Oops.

In a moment of clarity, he says the four most important words of the movie: “What have I done?”

This is the payoff for the whole movie. And it’s worth it – the only thing missing is a coyote chasing a road runner with a detonator that old . . .

That is The Bridge on the River Kwai moment, when the Colonel realized that, stuck in following procedure, in sticking to rules, and in demonstrating what a proper man he was, he got people on his own side killed. Plus, he built a really great bridge for the Japanese. Colonel Kenobi had been in service to his enemy.

Thankfully, as he was dying, he fell on the detonator, blowing up the bridge right on time.

It’s a shame that they changed this line, since it would have been a great reminder to people vacationing to remember to take their swimsuits. Such an emotional impact and such practical advice!

Victor Davis Hanson (always a good read) describes the end result of politics in California, once the most prosperous state in any union (LINK):

What caused this lunacy?

A polarity of importing massive poverty from south of the border while pandering to those who control unprecedented wealth in Silicon Valley, Hollywood, the tourism industry, and the marquee universities. Massive green regulations and boutique zoning, soaring taxes, increasing crime, identity politics and tribalism, and radical one-party progressive government were force multipliers. It is common to blame California Republicans for their own demise. They have much to account for, but in some sense, the state simply deported conservative voters and imported their left-wing replacements

Where California goes, America generally follows.

When presidential candidates on the Left:

actively support giving healthcare to those in the country illegally,
make it impossible to secure the border,
make it impossible to quickly and safely deport those who are here illegally, and
support requiring American citizens to pay for all of this,

I wonder if they will ever have their Bridge on the River Kwai moment.

This particular kamikaze plane flew six missions.

When those “Conservatives” support:

unlimited globalism to export American technology and know-how,
importation of cheap labor versus using American labor via H-1B visas,
following every rule of etiquette set by the Left (that the Left doesn’t follow), and
rolling back each of our freedoms, but just a little slower than the left wants to.

I wonder if they will ever have their Bridge on the River Kwai moment. Did John McCain, on his deathbed, think, “What have I done?” I don’t think so.

How much of the foundation of this country has to crumble before Left and “Conservatives” realize what they’ve done to undermine the United States, which may be the last, best hope of Western Civilization? Do they care, or will they sell the country for two or six more years in power?

Never mind all that, an Eastwood movie is on. Haven’t seen Hang ‘em High or The Unforgiven in a while.

Inspiration, Attitude, and Funeral Jokes

“I’m simply seeking to inspire mankind to all that is intended.” – Constantine

See the lengths I will go to in order to deliver top-quality humor three times a week?

Sometimes you find treasures in odd places. Back in 2007, I was working a nightmare job. The days were hectic, filled with emergency after emergency, wailing, and general disarray. And then I had to commute to work. Okay, home life was generally pretty good, but work really was a nightmare. One positive thing I did, though, was clip and print things that I found to be inspiring. No, not a lot of clippings like I’d finally found the missing connection between the Rothschild family and why there are no purple M&M’s®. No, when I found these quotes there were just a few – maybe less than a dozen.

Here’s one of the quotes I found in the clippings:

“If you have a guy with all the survival training in the world who has a negative attitude and a guy who doesn’t have a clue but has a positive attitude, I guarantee you that the guy with a positive attitude is coming out of the woods alive. Simple as that.” – Gordon Smith, Retired Green Beret Command Sergeant Major

Training, preparation, skill and Ruffles® are all wonderful things. I recommend them all, especially if they are cheddar-flavored. The quote above, however, exactly mirrors my own feelings and experience. Stated bluntly:

Attitude matters.

I don’t have that tie, though, and haven’t worn one regularly since ‘08.

I’m a long time reader of Scott Adams dating back into the mid-1990’s. He’s most famous for Dilbert, but he has written books and blogged for decades about everything from management to life skills to persuasion. Daily, Scott Adams writes his goals 15 times (LINK). Why 15? I don’t know. But Adams has reported that it produces amazing results for him, and he’s lived a pretty amazing life. It might also have something to do with him being a genius who works really hard and tries lots of things. Nah. He must be a beneficiary of the structural capitalist patriarchy and the reason people love Dilbert is only due to white privilege. That explains everything, if you’re in Congress.

How the goal writing produces results is probably unimportant – in my opinion the most likely idea is that if you’re focused on a goal, you’ll notice connections, clues or opportunities that would normally pass you by. The focus on the goal, the attitude that you can achieve something great changes the way you look at every aspect of your day. I know that when I believe I can succeed, I seem to keep finding ways to actually make it happen.

It might seem that it’s magic, writing down what you want 15 times a day and having coincidences show up that lead you to your goal. But, perhaps, the magic is just in you – seeing farther and deeper than you normally would is the magic. Having a goal changes you. Having the attitude that you can achieve your goal changes you so you can see the path more clearly.

As Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can, or think you can’t, you’re right.”

I guess it wasn’t just college papers Creepy Joe plagiarized . . .

We’ve all been around negative people. I’ve had to work with them. I’ve had to manage them, and once I even had to work for one – he was my first supervisor after I graduated college. There was nothing that was good that ever happened to or around him. He’d had a leg injury and was now stuck at a desk job when he really, really hated desk jobs. Enter: happy, enthusiastic, wisecracking, young college graduate (still with hair at that time). I think he wanted to tie me up in a burlap sack weighted down with stones and toss me in the pond behind the office. Frankly, I can see why.

This clip is super short, and from the Clint Eastwood movie Kelly’s Heroes. Haven’t seen Kelly’s Heroes? You have your weekend assignment – it’s from back when movies were fun and not remakes.

Negative People:

Exhaust me.
Don’t accomplish much.
Take the last cup of coffee without making more.
Tend to make themselves a victim of whatever happened to them.
Infect the entire team with negativity and sometimes herpes.
Seem to get energy from talking about their pain and how the world is unfair to them.
Shoot down bad ideas. And good ideas. Any ideas, really.
Find a dark cloud in every silver lining.

I had a professor in college who had one piece of advice for me: “Keep smiling, John.” I took his advice. For most of my life, I’ve kept smiling. Even on bad days at work, I’ve kept a good attitude because most of the time, circumstances don’t care if you’re mad at them. The circumstances continue to exist just the same.

Not everyone agrees with me. On one particular job I actually received feedback that I was too cheerful. I guess being a mortician isn’t a job for everyone.

Okay, I’ve never worked as a mortician, but one of my bosses really did tell me I was too cheerful. But if I could be a mortician that hired Terminators®? I wouldn’t call that a dead-end job.

In most things in life I expect good outcomes, and generally I get them. That’s not unique to me. Throughout the history of humanity most times and most days have been good. Has there been war as long as we can look back into history? Yes. We’ve been fighting each other even before we were fully human. I imagine, though, we’ve been telling each other fart jokes for just as long. The human race has watched sunsets over the Arctic, the Serengeti, and the Atlantic and had pretty good days. An iPhone® isn’t required, but without an endless stream of Disney® live-action remakes, is life really worth living?

Nah, I like making them.

I won’t say that on my worst day there was a bright spot. The worst day of my life just sucked from 2pm until I finally fell asleep in bed. Honestly, it wasn’t much better the next day, but there were a few bright spots showed up. And more the next. And every day since then has been better than that day.

I mentioned magic above, and magic also happens on my worst days. Every one of my very bad days was the start of the time when my life started to get better, and it seemed the worse it was, the better it would eventually be. My best times have come from my worst times. One example was my divorce. The reality is that no matter how bad the marriage was, divorce is difficult. But as difficult as it was, it was the start of the next phase in my life, my marriage to The Mrs.

The longer, and the deeper the dark night of the soul, the bigger the positive that’s eventually come out of it for me.

If I ever were to get involved with the funeral industry, I’d tie the shoelaces of the deceased together in the coffin. That way if we ever had a zombie apocalypse, it would be hilarious. See, I even made zombies cheerful.

I spend time thinking about the future, and about dark possibilities not so much because I’m a gloomy guy sitting in the basement – but because it’s fun. However, in thinking about those possibilities I am prepared, at least a little more, for the uncertainty of the future. I’m cheerful, but I can see reality and know that there is danger ahead.

As I read the news I see a specter of a dark foe bent on creating a world that few of us want to see, one built out of fear and control. It’s even scarier because that foe wants you and I to think that it’s winning, so we will give up and it can win by default. Don’t. As long as people long for freedom, as long as we have each other and a dream of a better day where mankind keeps reaching for the stars, we have light. But in this time of seeming darkness, even a small light burns brightly.

If I were to give advice this Friday it’s this: be of good cheer. Be a spark in the darkness to help others. Understand that, until the last moment of your life, you have the ability to change the world for the better, to help create that better future for all of us.

Or, failing that, there’s always Ruffles®, Netflix©, beer and the couch.

The Funniest Post You’ll Ever Read About 401k’s.

“When I turned 14, I took fiduciary responsibility for my mother’s 401K. We discussed it over Italian food. I had my first espresso, it kept me up all night. I fell asleep at dawn for five minutes and had a stress dream about the house burning down. Pretty good birthday.” – American Dad

The ear bud is playing a tape that says – in/out, in/out, so she doesn’t forget to breathe.

I was driving with The Boy back to Stately Wilder Manor on the way back from a fast food restaurant where he had consumed 3,000 calories out of his 10,000 daily calorie requirement. That’s one thing I miss – I was the same when I was his age, but now if I look sideways at a bag of Ruffles® the button on my jeans has a high chance of becoming a weapon outlawed in California due to velocity alone. Soon enough there’ll be a waiting period for Chips Ahoy™.

Out of nowhere, The Boy asked, “Why on Earth would anyone have a 401K?”

I’m used to random questions by The Boy at any point in any conversation. In the middle of discussing the economics of a thorium-based fusion reactor, he’ll pipe up and ask, “Do you think fish ever get tired of eating seafood? Oh, and what if we fed tuna mayonnaise, would that skip a step?” Bonus points if you can identify the two movies those questions came from without using the Internet. As The Boy is getting ready to go off to college, I suppose it makes sense.

First you get the khakis, then you get the job, then you get the girl, then the mortgage, then the divorce because your wife doesn’t agree that PCs are better than Apple© products and then you retire bitter and alone. So you might need a 401k.

See, The Boy gets the “thinking too far ahead” thing from me.

Admit it – this wasn’t just me.

I realized that it would be a fair topic for a Wednesday post, and probably a moderately fun one, too. If you have a 401k, or are retired, I know that you’re thinking, “Why would I want to read about a 401k, anyway?” Because it will be funny. I promise – I’m a trained Professional Humorist and Certified Duck Yodeler. You’re professional when people pay you to stop doing something, right?

401k’s aren’t taught in school, probably because no one would be listening, which still doesn’t explain why they have Band. The advantage of being 16 is that you are immortal, and your entire lifetime is spread out before you. A 401k? Might as well spend time teaching about the best types of denture adhesive or why candy bars don’t cost a dime anymore.

But you’re not 16 anymore, at least not according to your FBI profile, so I can keep discussing 401ks without your mind wandering. At least too much.

There are basically three types of retirement plans:

Have Very Wealthy Parents
Be a Part of a Defined Benefit Plan
Contribute to a Defined Contribution Plan

I prefer the first option, as should you. Sadly, my parents were only of the “comfortably well off” sort rather than “mind numbingly” wealthy. They selfishly managed to spend all of their money on themselves doing things that they liked. All they left me with was years of love, encouragement, good advice, help with a college education, wonderful memories, and times just tough enough to build the character I needed. They were awful.

Okay if your parents were losers like mine, you have to pay attention to the other options:

A Defined Benefit plan is something that, if you’re working in the United States, you’re already in. Social Security is such a plan. You contribute 7.5% of your income, which is matched with another 7.5% by your employer. Then, Congress spends it on worthless programs meant only to enrich the people that vote for them and on bacon-wrapped shrimp. Because who doesn’t like bacon-wrapped shrimp?

Thankfully, eventually if you live to age 107, you’ll receive enough money back from Social Security to subsist entirely on a diet of dog food and sawdust you gather from nearby construction sites. And the dry dog food, not the wet – what do you think we are, the Bill Gates’ family?

Other examples of Defined Benefit plans are pensions and stealing office supplies from your employer. I would discuss pensions, but unless you work for the government, pensions are as relevant as discussing attacks by a roving band of tyrannosaurus rex – it’s not going to happen in your lifetime. If you work for the government, pensions are a never ending fountain of chocolate-covered strawberries that I also get to pay for.

The reason pensions became as rare as decent Stephen King novels after he quit cocaine and were phased out by most businesses is that the 401k, a Defined Contribution plan, appeared in the 1980’s. With a 401k, a business can safely contribute just once to the employee, and then forget about them forever, making them even more disposable. Eventually they’ll figure out how to make employees “single use” like a Keurig® coffee brewer but they’ll have to worry about the hole they’ll need to pop into your head – oh, wait, that’s Facebook®. The biggest advantage for a business is if the employee decides to invest all of their 401k money in pantyhose and elephant rides it doesn’t matter to the business. Once they match your contribution, they’re done.

But having a 401k is a choice, and I have one. Why?

First and foremost, my employer matches my contributions. I contribute 6% of my pay, and my employer contributes 3% on top of my current salary. In my case, it’s like a 3% pay raise. And these are pre-tax dollars. Every dollar I put in my 401k lowers the amount of taxes that I have to pay right now, plus I get a free 50% of what I save invested. I like that.

Okay, mine are paid off. I paid them off in 2013 – I paid payments ahead, but I kept a balance until December 2012 was over, just in case the Mayans were right. That’s one way to stick it to the man.

When I invest in the various funds that my employer has to offer, then the amounts in my account grow tax free until I begin to pull money out. At that point, I then have to pay taxes on the money I take out of the account for The Mrs. so she can selfishly spend it on insulin.

But there are downsides or risks to having a 401k as well.

There are a limited number of plans. What if I really want to invest in dirigible manufacturers instead of Apple®? I’m sure dirigibles are coming back this year – rumor has it they’re going up.
A 401k is another way for Wall Street to monetize your life, which will probably be the focus of next Wednesday’s post. And we know Wall Street has your best interests at heart, right?
What will future tax rates be? When I begin to take money I believe that I won’t be paying as high a tax rate as today. But I could be wrong. I’ve just been itching to pay for health care for illegal aliens, so, there’s no telling.
A 401k is easy for government to confiscate: it would take exactly one law and some politicians have even discussed the idea. Why should those that save their money be entitled to any of it? Selfish, like my parents.
What will the market performance be? For my lifetime, the market has gone up and down, like Oprah©’s weight. But it’s mainly stayed up. Also like Oprah®’s weight. Or dirigibles, which are kind of Oprah™ shaped.
What will inflation be? Will we become Zimbabwe with a nuclear arsenal and a better navy?
Perhaps one of the scariest comments I’ve seen with respect from this came from Arthur Sido (LINK) (I’m paraphrasing): “Your money will become worthless while benefits to those on welfare will increase.” Well, I guess that’s one good way to achieve the goals of communism!

I love it when Communists prove that it works this time.

But when I look at all of the risks above, I realize that I’m exposed to them already unless I completely invest in the three precious metals – gold, silver, and lead.

My 401k doesn’t seem to accept .223 or 7.62 as a valid investment.

One other advantage of the 401k is that it adds a significant amount of financial stability. Most 401k plans allow you to borrow against them. Financial advisors don’t like this, because they’d much rather you pay interest to a bank with headquarters in New York rather than yourself. Also, sometimes you can’t add more money to a 401k after you’ve borrowed money against it.

A loan against my 401k has been useful to me on one particular occasion. After my first wife She Who Will Not Be Named moved out she handed me a grocery sack filled with bills. She then handed me a checkbook. “I have no idea how much money is in the account.” And then she walked out.

My loan from my 401k paid for the late payments. Barely. That experience allowed me to be able to answer this important question:

Why are divorces expensive? They’re worth it.

I shouldn’t complain, my divorce was better than most. I just wish she hadn’t gotten my hair in the settlement.

The downside of a 401k loan is that you have to pay it back immediately if you leave that job. If not? The money becomes taxable that year – plus a 10% penalty tax is added on.

Now The Boy wonders if he can feed the 10% penalty to fish. Go figure.

I am not a financial advisor. I am a silly blogger that writes on the Internet. If you use my advice, you certainly get what’s coming to you, which may include being impacted by an asteroid, eaten by a sasquatch, or financial ruin. So there.

Making Leftists Radical: Compassion, Internet Cats, and Feminists With No Sense of Humor

“It’s mercy, compassion, and forgiveness I lack. Not rationality.” – Kill Bill, Volume 1

That’s awake, not “woke.”

Here’s a fable:

There was a little girl going to school in Japan. Near her place in the classroom there was a cocoon that the teacher had brought in to illustrate the life cycle of the butterfly, and it was hanging right next to her every day. For a whole week, nothing had happened, but then she noticed the cocoon shaking. She could see that the caterpillar had completed its transformation.

What bothered the girl so very much was that the butterfly was struggling to get out of the cocoon. Finally, exhausting all of the patience that a seven year old has, she helped the butterfly by ever so gently tearing open the cocoon so it could get free.

To her surprise, rather than flying, the butterfly fell out of the cocoon and onto the floor of the school room. She gasped.

The teacher walked over and looked at the butterfly helplessly writhing on the floor. It was clear the butterfly would never be able to fly.

“Did you help the butterfly out of the cocoon?”

The little girl, through eyes that were filling with tears, nodded.

The teacher explained, “It is only through struggling to get out of the cocoon that the butterfly gets enough strength to fly.”

This is one of my favorite stories. I can’t recall where I originally heard or read it.

I’d often tell that story to people that reported to me when they were facing a particularly difficult time at work. I’m sure it just made some of them mad – they wanted me to solve their problems. I refused, perhaps giving them hints on places they should look to find the answer.

One of my goals was to get the work done for the company, sure. But I also wanted to take the time to get the person developed – for me that was a moral imperative. My biggest goal was that everyone who reported to me became a more capable person – and I knew that didn’t happen without the struggle. Oh sure, I could have told Ted where the fire extinguisher was, but that would have deprived him of the struggle to find it. And one of his eyebrows finally did grow back.

That’s how I mostly have used the story, to show the importance of struggle. But there’s another and perhaps more central moral to this story:

misplaced compassion kills.

The Mrs. recently found an article that really, for me, answered the question about why the Left is turning so radical, so quickly. The article is by Zach Goldberg, and you can find it here (LINK), although he takes the data in a different direction than I do for his article. Goldberg has an interesting Twitter® feed (LINK) as well. The graphs in this post are mostly from either the article or his Twitter© feed.

It’s always nice when ¡Science!® is able to provide an insight on the problems of the world. I started with the story about compassion. When psychologists do studies of Leftists, they find that Leftists score higher in compassion than the norm – a lot higher. Well, some Leftists.

Karl Marx had only a very short career as a clown at children’s parties. After he was fired, he insisted that true children’s parties had never been tried.

Does that mean that people on the Right don’t care? Not at all. The data shows that people on the Right give more to charity and also volunteer more hours, so it’s clear that people on the Right care. But they don’t get all mushy and aren’t dominated by their feelings.

It turns out there are differences as well among Leftists based on race. One major bias that almost all people from all time have had is in-group preference. You like your family more than your brother’s family. You like your cousin better than you like your neighbor. You like people in your town more than people who live in the next town over – that’s why Friday night high school football games are so big in small towns.

This makes sense at almost every point in history – it’s rare for you to be living in France and think “Wow, that German flag flying the Eiffel Tower is such a neat thing to see.” In-group bias is normal. It’s why Americans rooted for team U.S.A. in the Women’s World Cup® even though soccer is a vastly inferior game to tic-tac-toe.

Thankfully I’ve reached the “Dad’s asleep in the recliner” stage when the Monopoly® board comes out.

White leftists, however, have somehow become biased against . . . white people. It’s like being born a guy and not liking that you were born a guy . . . oh. Nevermind.

As you can see, there is exactly one group that detests itself and prefers other groups.

But this isn’t the norm. And this isn’t how the Left has been for years. Data shows quite nicely that they didn’t used to be this way – as late as 2010, 20% of white Leftists thought that increasing border security was a good idea. 2018? Less than 5%.

It’s clear the Left has become more radical and the Right has (more or less) remained the same.

Republicans have stayed pretty steady on the border. Not so with white liberals.

What happened in 2010?

Twitter® and Facebook©.

Who would have thought that Leftist extremism starts with Grandma posting cat memes on Facebook®?

The user bases of these social networks took off in 2010. There is one thing that social networks want – your attention. They best way to get that attention? Show you content that creates an emotional response. Cats and babies are great – they make people laugh and go “aww.” But to a Leftist, to keep their attention – show them things that create outrage by violating their sense of compassion.

I hear her next initiative will be to forgive all the Electoral College student loan debt.

The Twitter®, Facebook©, and YouTube™ video suggestion algorithms have become the Democrat® brand. Social media is a particularly useful programming device. These algorithms are used every day to pull the Left farther Left. Why does this impact white Leftists in particular? They spend more time on social media than the rest of the Left. But they’re enough – white leftists are about 25% of the electorate. And they do have money. And they hate the Right.

Through this lens, the reasons for the bans become clear – even though the algorithm mutes voices on the Right, the most effective voices must be silenced. Arguments counter to the narrative have to be stopped. As has recently become quite clear – the Left owns social media and will clear out clear, articulate voices on the Right given any excuse. The chance is too great that these voices will interfere with the programming. An example:

Portlandia is funny, and there are more bookstore clips that are even funnier – this was just the most “safe for work” one I could find.

Portlandia was a series on IFC® for 8 seasons. It mocked (fairly gently) the Leftist culture of Portland. It’s certain that the stars and most of the writers of the show are of the Left. But the things that the show made fun of can no longer be made fun of. Feminism was often the butt of good-natured jokes, but the feminist bookstore that several skits were shot in broke ties with the show after they decided they didn’t want to be made fun of – at all. What had been funny even to the Left in 2010 was by 2016 unacceptable. Feminism could no longer be a laughing matter, nor could any other Leftist narrative.

In 2019, Portland has lost its sense of humor and replaced it with outrage. Antifa regularly assembles a mob of hundreds to shut down any speech it disagrees with through violence. Their compassion drives them to shed blood, but it doesn’t stop there. This same compassion compels the Left to want to give every illegal alien free health care, and a quick pathway to citizenship. In turn, that drives the 144,000 illegals to want to come here – and that was just in June of 2019. That’s a 10,000 person Caravan every other day.

All of this is caused by misplaced compassion, programmed by social media via algorithms. Certainly it’s all a coincidence, right? It’s not like large corporations owned and run by Leftists would have a political motive, right?

Wilder Travels, From Girdwood to Whittier

“What’s that? Crying? There’s no crying in baseball driving to Anchorage.” A League of Their Own

So, after traveling hours and hours and hours with an infant (Pugsley), a soon to be five-year-old (The Boy), and a stereotypically male husband, I imagine that The Mrs. wanted to gouge out her eyes with a spoon, because it’s dull, and would hurt more. But, she got the biggest bonus yet. She got to continue driving farther south than Anchorage. I know that most things (including all of the past, current, and future members of Van Halen) are farther south than Anchorage, but Anchorage might as well be Dixie if you live in Fairbanks.

We got to go to Girdwood, Alaska.

Just the name sounds uncomfortable. Gird. Like girth. Gird. Like girdle. Makes me think of William Shatner. Who’da thunk it was a pretty and nice town?

But, we couldn’t see any of that. We got there at about 8:30. After driving through some of the most beautiful scenery imaginable, yet just dark enough that my camera would have produced pictures of what you might think were whales mating in some deep Pacific trench where fish don’t have eyes.

But we got a bonus.

The New Boy decided he was hungry in Anchorage, and the decision was
a. feed him then and there or,
b. push on to the hotel.
The Mrs. made the call: push on. And we lived with a crying baby for the duration of our trip to the hotel. A crying baby really didn’t stress me out. I’m a man, and a dad. That gives me a selective deafness that would allow me to sleep through a jet landing on our house, if it came ten minutes before my alarm for work went off. Crying babies don’t bother me. The fact that The Mrs. was stressed did.

When The Mrs. ain’t happy, nobody’s happy. (I counted up the negatives, and I think I got that right). We got to the hotel, and The New Boy promptly decided that all people around him who were capable of holding a bottle to his mouth were either dead or incapacitated by avian flu, and became quiet as a mouse.

Now, you may be saying – “How dare you not feed a hungry baby? That could be bad or something.”

You haven’t seen this baby. He’s huge. Not any fatter than a usual baby – he won’t be featured in a paper anytime, but he gains about a pound a week. He eats about sixteen quarts of formula a day, and we’re thinking of moving him up to ribeye steak flown in directly from some Japanese farm where they have a string quartet that serenades the cows as they feed them beer and massage them, because that would be cheaper than the baby formula. He gained a pound in a week – 1/18th of his current mass – at four months’ age. He may be big enough when fully grown to look down on Hulk Hogan. So, don’t worry ’bout The New Boy.

And, drive the Seward Highway when you can. Wow. Pretty, even in dusk.

A buddy of mine suggested that we go and visit the Alyeska Prince Hotel (no relation to Artist Formerly Known as Prince Hotel). The Alyeska Prince Hotel (pictured above, I know it looks like a Stephen King novel hotel, but not a single person tried to disembowel me that night) caters to rich tourists that fought in the Spanish-American War and decided to cruise to Anchorage in the summer. In the winter, it caters to rich dotcom billionaires who want to go ‘boarding in a state where weed is almost legal. But in the weeks between 24 hour days and fresh powder, the Alyeska Prince is a bargain. If you have an Alaska driver’s license, where they give a steep discount.

We got there. The Mrs. was again demanding that her now-tenuous relationship with the food chain be restored. I found a thriving convenience store in Old Girdwood (which I think most of just slid right into the ocean when the ’64 Earthquake hit) that had sandwiches. And wine.

I bought some wine because I thought that might cap off a relatively stressful last leg of our trip. When I got back to the hotel, The Mrs. was working on putting The New Boy to bed.

About the Alyeska Prince: The hotel is nice. Head of State nice. In fact, when I was lurking in the parking lot, several vehicles with Alaska Legislature plates were hogging spaces. I waited for one state senator to move his ass out of the space so I could shimmy in. The beds were like sleeping on clouds, and customer service was great, even though I asked for two doubles, and they initially put us in a single king. I love The Boy, but I’m not going to spend the night with his pointy elbows and knees pointed at me.

The wine was good. The Mrs. was too exhausted to have any, so, in the interests of economy, I threw myself on her share. And went blissfully to sleep. Little did I know that the President of Taiwan was lurking, waiting to disrupt not this post, but probably the next one after this, or maybe the one after that.

Next: To Whittier and Beyond

“Remember, attraction is a three-way street. Or is it a one-way tunnel?” – Married, With Children

Girdwood is a nice, pretty, cozy town. The picture that I took of the hotel (last post) was taken in the morning. I also took the picture above. There’s a tram that’s built into the hotel, and a restaurant at the top of the tram. The idea is that the Alyeska Prince is a place where you can almost go skiing without going outside, except for the sliding down the mountain part. One day the super wealthy will solve that problem, too. Maybe have folks ski for them.

If it hadn’t been so overcast with such low clouds, I think I would have popped out the money to scoot up the mountain on the tram. As it was, I think the view would have resembled being in a bag full of cotton balls. If you’re wondering how I might know what that looks like, remember, I had an older brother.

So, we headed out of the Alyeska Prince and into Girdwood. Many of the streets were named after other ski resorts, such as Aspen, Vail, and Davos. I stopped at a restaurant that appeared fully functional and staffed, and was informed that they were yet to open. Not a problem – but I’m not waiting a half an hour just to order a burger. Not with a Hungry Boy and The Mrs. also feeling a bit peckish. We headed down to the same strip-mall that has the State Patrol, a gas station, and a liquor store and hit the diner there.

Note: it sounds like The Mrs. is always bugging me about going somewhere to eat. Not the case. I pretty much starve the family when we drive. Also, restaurants are also a good place to make observations about Alaskans, when and where they herd together. It is the watering hole, where gazelle and lion both fill up before clocking in.

It was The Boy’s birthday – five years, and still he refuses to learn calculus. We stopped and had perhaps the friendliest waitress we’ve had in years. She focused on The Boy, and treated him like royalty on his birthday. It didn’t hurt that her birthday was two days before The Boy’s birthday. The Boy had a cinnamon roll the size of his head.

The diner was nice – it was the kind of place that tobacco-chewing hunters were in peaceful co-existence with dredlocked euro-eco-tourist types. The graffiti in the bathroom referenced “The Family Guy,” and the guy exiting the single-stall mens’ room indicated, “You might want to wait a bit before you go in there – wheew-ee, dunno what I ate.”

The valley that you enter as you head to Portage Lake and Portage Glacier has the steep sides that you’d expect in a land carved by glaciers periodically over geologic-type time scales. What surprised me, however, were the constant waterfalls. They were like veins of silver etching down the sides of the mountains, and they were everywhere. These are fed by the glaciers in the mountains above the valley. They made me think of restrooms.

It was nearly time to head to Whittier. Driving to Whittier, there’s only one road that leads in. It leads through the Anton Anderson Tunnel, which is the longest tunnel that’s a part of a road in North America. Anton Anderson was the engineer who built the tunnel during WWII, working for the army. This particular tunnel was designed for trains, and is still used by them. I believe it’s owned by the Alaska Railroad, and hence not a publicly owned road. The nice thing is that I don’t think the railroad police could give a real ticket that you should you violate traffic regulations – maybe you’d just get a railroad ticket. Then you could use your railroad ticket to go somewhere nice.

The tunnel is one-way, and you pay to drive it, $12 for the round-trip. Cars and trucks are staged and, in best railroad fashion, the road is scheduled – you go east for this hour, west for the next hour. As we entered the tunnel we had no idea what we would see on the other side. In a truly serious note, what we saw could not have been odder.

Next: Whittier
After that: The President of Taiwan and Me (I think that’s how it will work out).

Things to Do in ~~Denver~~ Whittier When You’re Dead

Whittier, Whittier.

What can you say about Whittier?

I’ll start with the bumper sticker, “Whittier: A quaint drinking village with a fishing problem.”

(above – proof of fishing village status)

Then the comments:

My Friend Brian: “What’d you do this weekend, John?”
John Wilder: “Went to Whittier.”
Brian: “Did you see the Wh-idiots?”

That may sum it up.

Whittier is a former Army supply base. Whittier has some advantages for this – it’s a deep water port that’s ice-free year round, and is a major supply location for Anchorage. Ships dock regularly and drop off stuff that gets on a train and goes to Anchorage.

All that may be nice, but you have to be just a bit off to live here. Really. Right now, everyone lives in the old Army barracks – essentially in one building. All 172 people. I did see one address that showed a PO Box number above five hundred . . . but I figure the first digit is the floor of the old army barracks that they live in, so if your PO box number were 788, you’d live in room 88 on floor 7.

All of the rooms are condos, so, the bright spot is that there is someplace in Alaska that condos make sense. Which would be one location. Whittier. I asked what the winters were like – the answer was that winters in Whittier are hellish, but the special kind of frozen hell reserved for people from the tropics who did something really, really bad.

Folks in Whittier live with constant wind, and in the winter it gets up to 100mph shooting up the fjord that they live in. Add that to a temperature of -29°F, plus the town getting no direct sunlight (no, not above the Arctic Circle, just high mountains surround the place) from November to February. Then, add in 25 feet of average snowfall, plus being within a hundred miles or so of the fault that has produced the largest earthquake ever recorded, and you see what I mean about having to be off to live there. Whittier is the edge of the world.

(above – more of Whittier – the long white building is where they used to practice Army stuff, but is now essentially abandoned, except for some killer freeze-tag games)

We were there in mid-September, and the touristy businesses were mostly closed. Whittier is shutting down for the winter (and, it snowed up in Fairbanks last week, so, winter is getting closer).

(above – the harbor at Whittier – beautiful, but, it’s in Whittier)

As if all of the above weren’t enough, Whittier is also hard to get out of. The Mrs., The Boy, The New Boy and I did most things that a tourist can do in Whittier without a boat, and decided it was time to go back toward Anchorage. We drove back to the tunnel. It was 1:04 PM. The big lighted sign above the tunnel said, “NEXT TRAFFIC RELEASE 2:00 PM.” So, we went back toward the same six open stores, kicked around, took a few more photos, and generally sat in the car until 1:45. I was not going to be late and become stuck in Whittier for however much longer until the next traffic release – I was going to be there early. I mean, the lady in the shop that sold Fudge had been nice but we were ready to leave Whittier by now.

(above – the old fuel depot at Whittier, with a looming glacier in the background, just sitting there looming)

So, back through the tunnel we went. A fairly large noise was evident when we went through, and The Boy said, “Monsters!”

I explained that those were actually ventilation fans – “air fans” I called them, and he asked why they had “Hair fans.”

I explained that those weren’t hair fans, they were air fans.

He paused a minute. “Then what are hair fans?”

Sometimes my life is an Abbot and Costello routine.

Next: Proof that the President of Taiwan is Stalking Me

From Fairbanks to Girdwood, Wilder Style

Note: Three posts a year at the beginning of July, I toss in an old trip from my earlier blog. This is the first of those three. It dates back to 2005.

“Hey, buddy, how you doin’? Pizzaland, huh? Yeah, that’s lots of fun. I just called to tell you that you burned my frickin’ house down!” – Aqua Teen Hunger Force

It was time for our trip south. The Mrs. had been agitating for some time to get the heck out of Fairbanks for a while. We had originally thought to go earlier in the year, but decided we’d better not when we looked at how much a hotel cost in Anchorage – it was denominated in healthy kidneys. In mid-September however, hotel rates drop by half or better, so, we rationalized this would be a good time to head out. Because I’m cheap and want to keep at least one kidney.

In theory, the purpose of the trip was to get The Boy birthday presents in at a place that doesn’t sell groceries as well. Living in Fairbanks is like living on an island – you drive the same roads day after day, seeing the same sites. There is a sense of isolation up here, sort of like being trapped in an elevator with Carrot Top. It must be worse in the villages that are unconnected by road to the rest of Alaska, maybe like being stuck in an elevator with a Carrot Top, but Carrot Top just finished a marathon after eating a LOT of spicy food.

Anyway, we saw the mountain pictured above on the way down south. It’s called Rainbow Ridge, according to the Rand-McNally. Another picture of Rainbow Ridge is below.

We drove right past Paxson, which, as far as I can see consists solely of a gas station/cafe/hotel contained in a single building and an airport. At this point, The Mrs. indicates that in some fashion she’d like to be part of the food chain, preferably at the top. Paxson, though, is pretty far from a place where you can get a hot meal, and rule one of traveling in a Wilder car is once you’ve past it when you’re driving, it no longer exists. We kept going south.

We passed a blue highway sign with a plate, knife and fork. The Mrs. indicated through a weary series of near-starvation gasps that she thought that there might be food there. I slowed.

“Do you want to stop?”

No answer. I think she did try to answer. Maybe the hunger had made her weak. So, we went on. Because I’m a guy, and driving is what we do.

The Mrs. thought that this might be a good time to conserve her energy by sleeping so that her body did not consume itself. Then the chorus started from the backseat weasels:

First, The Boy: Making car sounds.

Then, The New Boy: Crying.

But they never were making noise at the same time – it was as if an invisible pendulum slowly and inevitably moved back and forth, and when it was pointing at one of The Boys, it was their turn to make enough noise so that The Mrs. could not sleep. As we passed Dick Lake, I really wanted to stop and take a picture. Why? Because deep in my heart I’m still eight, and a sign that says Dick Lake.

I did miss one Alaska site to see due to The Mrs. catching some sleep – we drove right past where HAARP (High Altitude Atmospheric Research Program):

Controls the weather,
Controls the minds of mankind, or
Conducts research into the atmosphere

You choose.

(2019 J.W.: HAARP was a research program where they shot radio waves at the atmosphere for decades to . . . I don’t know, beat the Soviets at shooting radio waves at the atmosphere. I believe it was mostly shut down after the Air Force decided that shooting radio waves at the atmosphere was not as fun as watching Netflix®.)

We finally reached Glennallen. We stopped for lunch at an establishment that I believe was called the Glennallen Roadhouse. Ours was the only car, but they were open.

It’s far past tourist season, and the fifty or so tables in the restaurant were as empty as the logical portion of Susan Sarandon’s brain. We picked a table and ordered. For being the only people there, the waiter exchanged no witty banter, nor was he very good at keeping my coffee cup full. We got some gas at the local station, and a plethora of signs indicated things we shouldn’t do. Most of them were things that you wouldn’t do, anyway, if you have manners, I mean, who cleans salmon in the Ladies’ Room? The Men’s Room, sure. But not the Ladies’ Room. Putting up a sign listing fifty things you don’t want your customers to do just makes you look unfriendly. Don’t put up a sign. If someone does something truly rude, challenge them to a duel. Anyway, the signs cemented our thought of Glennallen as an unfriendly place. But, then we found out why.

Every house that we saw in Glennallen was firmly rooted in permafrost. Which is to say, it is not rooted at all. When you put a house above permafrost, the permafrost will melt. This isn’t global warming, it’s local warming – houses put off heat, silly. When the permafrost melts, your foundation will be useless. All of the new construction that we saw going on in Glennallen consisted of new houses being built on discrete pedestals. On theses pedestals were screw-jacks so when part of the permafrost under your house melts, you go under your house and adjust the jacks, and, ta-da, your house is level again.

All of this doesn’t help if you own the house above. It is for sale. No bank will loan money on a house with such gross structural damage, but, if you did successfully purchase a house like the one above anyway, the realtor gives you a gas can and complementary five gallons of gas: for the insurance fire.

Perhaps that’s why the residents of Glennallen are so angry – the price of starting an insurance fire has gone up since the price of oil is up.

Perhaps the other thing that irritates them is that they live right next to an active volcano.

Mt. Wrangell is visible from Glennallen, and has been heating up since the 1964 earthquake. So, you live on icy muck, and there’s a volcano for your backyard. We couldn’t see Mt. Wrangell from the road, it was too cloudy that day.

But there was more ahead – things that would shock us to the very core of our existence. Okay, that’s a lie. Actually it was just a pretty drive was next.

________________________________________________________

Chapter 2

Peasant: “Who are you?” King Arthur: “Your King.” Peasant: “I didn’t vote for you.” King Arthur: “You don’t vote for kings.” – M. Python

So, we headed back west from Glennallen. The permafrost, as shown by the prevailing taiga, still surrounded us. The road likewise showed the effects of the permafrost, maintaining the consistency of Fruit by the Foot® thrown over piles of spare change. Which is, I believe, standard road construction technique in Alaska.

The mountain above was visible for about the first twenty minutes out of Glennallen. It looked like it had been sprinkled in gold – with the sunlight, as far as I could see in the panorama before me, shining only on its slopes.

The rest of the trip took us up and down through winding roads. The Glenn Highway is on the north side of a large valley, and never dips down. The north side of this valley consists of the Talkeetna Mountains. The south has the Chugach Mountains. The Chugach Mountains were the epicenter of the 1964 earthquake, a 9.2 earthquake. Besides containing more force than Madonna’s breath after a garlic-laden dinner, this earthquake lasted five minutes. Five minutes isn’t long when you’re watching the season finale of Battlestar Galactica, but it’s forever if you’re being shaken around like a tiny chew toy by a frenzied teacup poodle. These mountains and the pretty things we have in Alaska don’t come free – we gotta pay with the earthquakes and volcanoes from time to time.

The Chugach are also covered in glaciers like a pile of fries are covered in ketchup. We passed three major glaciers, and the last of them, the Matanuska, is shown below. I pulled off the side of the road on what looked like a rough trail to get this picture. I could see the campers and 4×4’s of moose hunters beyond, so I figured the road would work for me. The road narrowed alarmingly, with the passenger side dropping off about eight feet. I soon saw that the road that looked like it headed to the parking lot below (as we continued to climb) was really a trail for four-wheeled ATV’s. I imagined it starting to go in directions that my 4×4 could not follow. Fortunately, the trail leveled off widened out and I could see a way to get back out. This is not to say, however, that The Mrs. was entirely pleased with this lack of planning on my part. But angels do follow foolish husbands or at least one did that day.

After a few more hours, we finally ended up in Palmer. Palmer is nestled between mountains and looks like it was conceived in a dream. One thing The Boy immediately noticed is that the McDonald’s sign was about three feet off of the ground, as were many of the signs on newer businesses. I figured it must be a new ordinance, to preserve the beauty of Palmer.

This is in contrast to Fairbanks. Recently, the Fairbanks-North Star Borough (remember, we don’t have counties up here) tried to pass an ordinance that would allow them to enforce existing ordinances. I know that sounds silly, but though there may be ordinances on the books, there’s only one employee that has that theoretical power for a borough of about 90,000 people. If the lawyer for the borough gets around to it, he might send you a nasty letter, telling you please, please, fence that junkyard that is your front yard. If you don’t? He may send you another stern letter.

So it’s simple and logical that the borough would pass an ordinance that would allow them to enforce their ordinances, right?
Maybe in Fort Wayne. Maybe in Palmer. Not Fairbanks.

The residents of the borough did me proud. To quote one resident, “We came to Alaska to get away from this!” According to the News-Miner, there was a near riot. The Assembly rejected the ordinance.

There are damn few places you have the freedom from silly regulations of local government, telling you what you can and can’t do on your own land. This is (mostly) one of them.

Amen.

Next: The Hotel and The President of Taiwan.

Civil War Weather Report #2, Censorship, Stalin, and a Bunch of Links

â€œHave you any idea how successfulÂ censorshipÂ is on TV? Don’t know the answer? Hmm. Successful, isn’t it?â€ â€“ Max Headroom

11:45pm â€“ fifteen minutes to midnight.Â Yes, itâ€™s subjective, and itâ€™s based on the countdown, published last month (Civil War II Weather Report: Spicy Time Coming).Â Weâ€™re still at CivCon 6 – People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology.Â Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.

In this issue:Â Front Matter â€“ Censorship Updateâ€“ John Markâ€™s Video and Criticism â€“ Updated Civil War II Index â€“ Who Benefits? â€“ Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the second issue of the Civil War II Weather Report.Â These posts will be a bit different than the other posts here at Wilder Wealthy and Wise â€“ they will consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War II.Â My intent is to update these on the first Monday of every month.

John Wilkes Paintbooth (Idea via user Miles Long at The Burning Platform)

There has been a pretty significant interest in Civil War II â€“ it has generated more emails to me than any other topic Iâ€™ve written about, with a great number of links to relevant information that youâ€™ll see below.Â Itâ€™s also resulted in about a dozen book suggestions, and Iâ€™ve bought or downloaded every one of your suggestions.Â I havenâ€™t had time to read even 10% of the books yet, but I can tell the suggestions are rock solid.Â Thank you.Â Please feel free to contribute more suggestions of links or books either in the comments below or directly to me at movingnorth@gmail.com â€“ I wonâ€™t use your name (from e-mails) unless explicitly given permission, and I wonâ€™t directly quote your email unless explicitly given permission, but I may quote my answers in a way that doesnâ€™t violate your privacy.

Censorship Update

Why is censorship an issue in Civil War II?Â Censorship is a measure of how those in power (either political or economic) fear an idea and how polarized they have become.Â Most censorship in the past had been based on the sexual content of the book or movie.Â Now itâ€™s based on ideas that are dangerous.Â Which ideas?Â Depends on the day.

I know it says â€œUpdateâ€ but this is really the first version, so technically the first â€œupdateâ€ will be next month.Â There has been more censorship in the United States in the past year than at any point in my adult life.Â This level of censorship is more frightening than anything Iâ€™ve ever seen, except for the latest Democratic presidential debates.

YouTubeÂ© is the real star of censorship in June.Â Comedian/journalist Steven Crowder has been a long-time YouTubeÂ® broadcaster who is generally on the mainstream â€œRightâ€ side of the political world.Â He likes guns.Â Doesnâ€™t like abortion.Â He is not extreme in any real sense of the word.Â But as a comedian, one of the things he does regularly is mock people.Â Which people?Â Everyone.Â I wonâ€™t go into the details (you can look it up) but a group of Leftists decided Crowder should be banned from YouTubeâ„¢ since he made a lispy-Leftist journalist who is an ethnic and sexual minority feel bad.

YouTubeÂ© responded to this contrived moral outrage by making it so Crowder couldnâ€™t get money from YouTubeÂ® ads â€“ oddly this increased Crowderâ€™s income as thousands of people bought merchandise directly from Crowderâ€™s company.

End of story?Â No.

Soon enough, YouTubeâ„¢ will consist of nothing more than makeup videos, BuzzfeedÂ®, and whatever else the New York TimesÂ© says is okay.

Forty other channels were either banned, demonetized, or had videos deleted.Â I wonâ€™t go so far as to say that these channels are all mainstream like Steven Crowder, they arenâ€™t.Â But I am not aware of any content that called for violence or did anything more than spread â€œdangerous ideas.â€Â In a crowning bit of irony, YouTubeÂ® censored a video where a Googleâ„¢ (owner of YouTubeâ„¢) executive talked about how GoogleÂ© wouldnâ€™t allow another â€œTrump situation.â€Â This was presumably via using their ability to manipulate what search results people see when they use Googleâ„¢.

TwitterÂ® had also purged significant figures on the Right, most prominent among them James Woods, who has since given up on the platform after multiple bans despite having over 2,000,000 followers.

Letâ€™s take Amazon, who in 2010 said that â€œAmazon does not support or promote hatred or criminal acts, however, we do support the right of every individual to make their own purchasing decisions.â€Â This was a fairly absolute position, especially since Amazon was defending selling a pro-pedophilia book.

Not so much now.Â Amazon has now banned dozens of books, and created entire categories of products that cannot be sold.Â Â You canâ€™t get a Confederate flag t-shirt from Amazon, but you can certainly get a Stalin shirt.Â This is despite the fact that Stalin killed (In the World Murder Olympics, Communists Take Gold and Silver!) more people in one year â€“ 3.9 million â€“ than the total number of slaves in the United States in 1850 â€“ 3 million.Â Sure, it sucked to be a slave.Â But it was certainly worse to be a slave to communism that was starved to death.

With apologies to Arthur (LINK), whose tagline I mangled for this one.

I tried to come up with a list of censored things, but even the censored things seem to be mainly censored.Â Orwell would be proud.

John Markâ€™s Civil War 2 Video and Criticism

This video was suggested by several of you, including Shinmen Takezo who suggests you listen to all of John Markâ€™s videos.Â Iâ€™ve seen this one, and plan to watch the others when I have a spare minute.

I think Mr. Mark is spot on with commentary that Trump is the last Republican president that will be elected.Â I wrote about this back in November of 2018(Trump: The Last President?).Â It has a click-bait-y title, which might explain why it went viral and got over 120,000 pageviews on Zero HedgeÂ©.

John Mark reviews an article purportedly written by a â€œRed Teamâ€ (bad guy) member of a war game where the Right revolts against the government and the Left.Â My response is in italics, or braille if you donâ€™t clean your screen very often.

First Vulnerability:Â The electrical grid is dispersed and easy to take down into most cities because it is impossible to guard.Â The front wonâ€™t be against just the Right, it will also be against their own (Leftist) cities.

I agree.Â The United States is built as a free society, and so is all of our infrastructure.Â It is devastatingly vulnerable.Â In one of the links below, youâ€™ll see how a $0.02 match took down a $20,000,000 bridge.Â And that was on accident.

Second Vulnerability:Â 30% will revolt.Â Most on the Right have guns.Â There are 400 million guns, 8 trillion bullets in the United States â€“ most in the hand of the Right.Â Ten million strongly on the Right.Â Tanks and airplanes donâ€™t matter as much as the Left thinks. Â Â There might be 2 million in the United States military, and over 60% voted for the Right.Â There are 20 million former military.

Total would be about 2 million available forces for revolutionary suppression (including civilian police), if the active military did not revolt.

I agree.Â The people, especially former military, on the Right can do whatever they want.Â Tanks and airplanes didnâ€™t win World War II on the Eastern Front â€“ the winning weapon was the mortar and the rifle â€“ anti-personnel weapons.Â The Soviets also accomplished it only by throwing millions of bodies into combat.Â Bodies that will be tough for the Left to get outside of conscription.

I think thereâ€™s an Uber joke in here somewhere.

Third Vulnerability:Â The Left lives in consuming cities, the Right lives in the land that produces food and stuff.Â The concentrated cities of the Left produce a lot of porn and girls with daddy-issues, but not much food.

I agree.Â They are vulnerable, though the porn and Facebookâ„¢ drought might be tough on some.

Where do I disagree?Â

The Ultra-Violent and Nukes.

Sure, we know the StarbucksÂ® Socialists and Latte Lenins wonâ€™t fight.Â Why wouldnâ€™t the government take MS-13 and arm them and turn them loose to â€œmake examplesâ€ of small downs, one after another?Â If they were losing, they would certainly do that.Â And they could scrape together a pilot and a nuke or two to take down a rebel capital city.Â If they were losing, they would.Â Â Â Â

The Right could make a reasonable partisan force, especially when you look that probably 50% to 75% of the military would defect and train people on the Right, bringing along a nice batch of weapons (think grenades, C4, etcetera) to the farm to teach the rest of the football team.Â I donâ€™t think Jed would need to teach the boys to shoot, and I think theyâ€™d learn to use that mortar and grenade launcher that he â€œliberatedâ€ from the Marines very quickly. Â

Logistics and Geography

The Left can be resupplied via air and ship.Â â€œEmergencyâ€ supplies would head into coastal cities and sustain them forever, though Denver would fall soon enough.Â Would Russia supply the heartland while the Chinese supplied the West Coast?Â I have no idea â€“ I think theyâ€™d do what.Â Regardless, France would soon surrender.

Also, I think there would be a nearly immediate media clamp down.Â Â The media supports the Left, no matter what.Â They would parrot the Leftist line until the studios were taken from them by force.

I think that this is far too optimistic, but I also think the odds are lower the more time passes.

Civil War Index:

Hereâ€™s the state for this month.

Economic:Â +10.42.Â Unemployment is the same â€“ interest rates took a huge drop, and the Dow was (slightly) up.Â Increasing economic is good.

Political Instability:Â -46%.Â I think that the start of the debates and the poor poll numbers of â€œany democratic candidateâ€ against Trump has calmed the Left politically by a lot.Â Lower instability is good.

Censorship:Â Originally this was going to be a candidate index.Â Sadly, thereâ€™s no data.Â How scary is it that you canâ€™t find good data on censorship?

Interest in Violence:Â Up 7% this month.Â Not horrible, but not good.

Illegal Aliens:Â Up 24% last month to 144,000.Â 144,000 is more than have been deported since Trump got into office.Â This shows increasing instability south of the border, or lower fear of deportation.Â Both are bad.

Eventually these will be graphs, but a graph with one point is . . . boring.Â Maybe in August.

Quote From a Failed Candidate to be The One:Â â€œIs the Red Pill gluten free?Â Also, is it vegan?â€

One measure I thought was pretty good was from Anonymousse over at The Burning Platform:Â â€œOne good metric may be the spread between political poll projections and reality/results. Iâ€™m thinking that gauges just how â€œfreeâ€ people feel about saying versus what they do. Something Iâ€™ve noticed widening over the years.â€

Iâ€™d like to do this one, but the data points are just too far apart.Â This would be useful information over the course of a decade, but wonâ€™t be much use monthly.Â I think Anonymousse is right â€“ people donâ€™t feel good about sharing if theyâ€™re going to vote for an â€œunpopularâ€ candidate on the Right, severely skewing the polls.

What do I mean by unpopular?

We were on vacation two years ago, and decided to stop at a national monument.Â We got out.Â The plates on our car are from a very red state – my county went 85% for Trump.Â As we got out of the car to stretch our legs and see the monument, we spied a guy birdwatching.Â He put his binoculars on our car.Â He was about 150 feet away.

Birdwatch Bill, yelling:Â “Who’d you vote for?”

John Wilder, being sassy, yelling back:Â “Starts with a T!”

Birdwatch Bill, muffled:Â “Ashshof.”

John Wilder:Â “What?”

Birdwatch Bill, with anger, yelling:Â “You heard me, A****le.”Â It rhymes with tadpole.

I was stunned, I mean, I donâ€™t deny being a tadpole, but I didnâ€™t think you could see it from 150 feet away.Â The Mrs. was in theÂ bathroom, and I’m thankful that she didn’t hear him, since she would have broken him like a twig – she handles my light work.

After saying that, Birdwatch Bill scurried and jumped in his car, and sped off.

After hearing that story, The Mrs. was adamant that we not move to that state, even when I had a job offer there, even though I think sheâ€™d like to hear Birdwatch Billâ€™s yelp as she gave him a nuclear wedgie.

Who Benefits?

Whenever I see something that doesnâ€™t make sense, I try to understand what could possibly be causing it.Â When conditions are better for minority racial and ethnic groups than ever in the history of the country, and the agitation increases, I have to ask, who benefits?Â When the push for segregation comes from, not the Right but the Left, I ask, who benefits?

When I see us moving on a seemingly certain path towards war, I have to ask, who benefits?Â Probably more on this in a future post.

Links From Readers:

Obviously I only stand by 100% of my own writing.Â Here is some interesting stuff sent in by readers.Â Feel free to take some of the burden off of Ricky, and send me more.Â And if you send it in an email, please let me know if I may credit you.

See, a chain link photo in the â€œLinksâ€ page.Â Iâ€™m witty that way.

Thomas Chittumâ€™s Civil War TwoÂ – Iâ€™m not finished with this one yet, but very interesting.Â A 178 page .pdf file â€“ this was listed by “Mark” at The Burning Platform.

Photos of Bosnia during and after their civil war from â€œMygirlâ€¦maybeâ€ over at The Burning Platform.

Update on the State of Jefferson vs. New California from user â€œMartelâ€™s Hammerâ€ at The Burning Platform.

Who is behind Antifa?, via AC at The Burning Platform.

From Ricky:

Pentagon prepping for civil unrest?

Review of the risk of civil unrest (presentation).

Peter Turchin predicts violence in 2020.

France and Social Unrest â€“ Tied to Loss of Family and Religion

Perhaps my favorite link from Ricky â€“ the Partisan Conflict Index â€“ worth watching.Â

Brazos reminds us that there is precedence for using the troops against American civilians.Â

User â€œMN Steelâ€ reminds us that the damage a single match can do.

From my E-mail:

First is a blog I often read, Metallicman on what liberals have in store for conservatives.Â Not pretty.Â

And more from Ricky!

This one from an Australian perspective.

NY Magazine â€“ wondering if it isnâ€™t time to split up.Â My add (from HBOÂ®) was for the series Divorce.Â Hmmm.

From the Federalist, again about â€œdivorceâ€ of the United States.

From other emails . . .

A great article from Mary Christine over at The Burning Platform, looking at Kansas and Missouri during the Civil War and how partisans will form â€“ will Civil War Two look more like the personal fights along the Kansas and Missouri borders?

Charity, The Terminator, and Flat Tires

“What kind of cruel charity charges orphans $500 to eat dinner?” – News Radio

The Mrs. seems rather narrow-minded about certain donations.

Before Pop Wilder passed away, I would go to visit him on a regular basis. After graduating from college, almost all of my trips and time off from work (when we didn’t stay home) was spent visiting Pop at our ancestral homeland in the mountains around Zorro Falls. I called the trips to go visit Pop “Obili-cations” because I felt obligated to go to see him on my vacations. Sure, I had a choice on how to spend those 10 days of vacation a year, but I also knew that the number of hours I’d ever get to spend with him were like the collective I.Q. of Congress: finite and rapidly shrinking.

To me, these trips were important. I figured* that I had spent over 99% of the hours I’d ever spend with Pop already. I had 1% or less of those hours left. These hours were precious and few. Given that perspective, I didn’t really mind spending every vacation day going to see him up at Zorro Falls. Now that I’m a father, I’m very glad I made those trips since it now gives me the excuse to guilt my own children into doing the same thing.

While we visited, I’d often go to church with Pop on Sunday mornings. Pop had lived within thirty miles of Zorro Falls his entire life. This church we’d go to was the same small church where we went when I was a child. It was the same church where, as a five year old, I had colored Jesus’ face bright purple during Sunday School one Sunday morning.

Sunday School Teacher, leaning to look at my coloring page: “Johnny, you know that Jesus wasn’t really purple, right?”

Young Johnny Wilder: “He’s God. He can be any color he wants to be.” I never even bothered to look up at her. I was busy coloring the Apostle Matthew’s skin in silver, having finished with Jesus. It was only years later that I realized that Matthew had been a Terminator™ sent back from the future to stop Jesus from giving birth to John Conner®. Now, at last, the Bible made sense!

Sunday School Teacher had no response to my stunningly brilliant “purple Jesus” logic, but did tell Ma Wilder. Ma Wilder got years of mileage out of that story, though I wish she wouldn’t have told it to the guys on my wrestling team.

But back to the story: I was on an obli-cation, and I met Pop at his place and went to the church with him. We sat down in the pew right up front since Pop claimed that the artillery during his European vacation in the 1940’s hadn’t been particularly good for his hearing. Sissy.

The Pastor began his sermon. Now, I always really liked that Pastor – he had been friends with the family for years. He had officiated at Ma Wilder’s funeral. The topic of his sermon that day was charity.

I am a strong believer in charity. I think that there are few things that are better for the human soul than giving freely of one’s time or money to help another worthy person. Maybe Ruffles® or Ding-Dongs© are close, but they’re still not quite as good as charity.

I look back on my life and feel really good about the times I was able to help someone. I recall stopping at a convenience store while travelling for business. I was looking for a book store, because I’d just finished the novel I was reading. The clerk told me that, “This is Chicago, nearest book store is . . . twenty miles that way, at the mall.” He then did something unusual. He looked me in the eye, and pointed at a tiny redhead, maybe 19, standing by a car in the rain, very out of place in the mean streets of south Chicago. “She needs your help, man.”

Unlike a vegan, I can change a flat tire.

Her tire was flat. She was trying to go to meet her fiancé at the airport. He was coming home from Iraq that night.

“Can you help me?”

I changed her tire in the rain. She didn’t have an umbrella, but she did have a poster board that she held over me while I changed the tire. As I tightened up the last lug nut, I stood up. “Okay, you’re good to go.”

“How much do I owe you?”

“No, ma’am. That’s not why I did it. Go see your fiancé.”

I still feel good when I tell that story. And I’m not telling it to brag – any person reading this blog could have and would have done the same – I’m no more virtuous than any of you. But I am happy that I was there that night, to help that young girl get to the gate and throw her arms around her man as he came back from combat. The act of charity probably helped me more than it helped her – I know I remember it, but I’d bet she doesn’t. The fairy tale ended with her at the gate. The supporting characters (me, for instance) were lost in the arms of her man, details that won’t make the final version of the story she has told her children.

Which is how it should be.

Anyway, I agreed with the pastor when talked about charity. Helping people is good. But then the pastor continued, “And let us pray that Congress will act to give money to these poor people.”

He lost me right there.

Is it just me or does Jesus look a lot like Bruce Springsteen? I guess he is The Boss, after all.

I know that it’s probably a sin to be really, really pissed off in church, but there I was, in the second row, angry. And it’s probably a double-secret sin to be really, really pissed off at the Pastor. Thankfully, the church had just had a new roof installed so I was shielded from immediate lightning strikes from on high. And, if I’m being honest with you Internet, if a “stray” lightning bolt was going to hit me, it would have hit me far sooner than that day – being irritated with a Pastor is probably pretty low on my list of sinful behavior. Thankfully, Christianity has forgiveness embedded into it, because I certainly need it.

But why did I get so angry at the nice Pastor? Charity, when done by an individual is enriching. It helps both parties. It helps me. It helps tiny redheads with flat tires. It is an act that transcends – a willing gift to someone who will never be able to repay the gift to the giver.

Charity, when done by the government breeds resentment on those taxed. If they don’t want to participate in this charity, men with guns will come and take them to prison. Government forced charity breeds resentment of that very charity.

Billions, trillions? Doesn’t matter. It’s just other people’s money.

Government charity also breeds resentment by the recipient. Why didn’t they get more free stuff? It leads to bad incentives – why work when you’d lose the government benefits? The final straw is it destroys the dignity and independence of those that receive it. And if the program is set up poorly, it actually provides a disincentive for people to get or remain married. Government charity is certainly worse on the recipient than on the (unwilling) giver even though both of them come to hate the systems.

True charity makes two winners, government charity just manages to create anger and division. Government charity is the epitome of a program designed by Democrats – it takes a great goal (we all like the concept of charity) and turns it into a bureaucratic mess enforceable only through coercion and penalty.

If it stopped there with just that mess, it might be survivable.

Government has now opened these incentives to any person who can cross our border. Get across, and get free healthcare. Free food. Free housing. Need a cell phone? A ticket to Des Moines? We can help. Approximately four billion people would like to live in the United States because their countries suck. They can’t get nearly as much free stuff, and they’ve heard of the economic miracle of the United States.

Charity is like working – it’s great when other people do it!

This version of “charity” has created a group of millions of angry, unwilling donors, while at the same time creating millions of resentful, angry recipients. Thankfully, there is no reason we can’t have a billion resentful, angry recipients living in the United States tomorrow.

Sounds like another successful government program. Yay!

*By my spreadsheet, I had spent half the time I was ever going to spend with Pop Wilder by the age of eight. By the time I went off to college, I had spent about 94% of the hours I would ever spend with Pop. If I had moved back to the same town, or gone into the family business of firewood polishing together, obviously that would have been a different story. I’m only trying to note that these hours with family are precious, and are gone much faster than you might imagine. Feel free to use this to make your children feel guilty.

For your coloring enjoyment. Or colouring in Canada, eh.

Seneca, The Thing, Changing Careers, and Little Ben Shapiro

“It could have imitated a million life-forms on a million planets. It could change into any one of them at any time. Now, it wants life-forms on Earth.” – The Thing

This bust is Seneca on one side, and on the other Socrates, all at a museum in Berlin. Both guys are carved out of the same block of marble, which is kind of creepy and reminds me of The Thing.

Okay, it’s not creepy – it’s not like Joe Biden was involved.

“Think of those who not by fault of inconsistency but by lack of effort are too unstable to live as they wish, but only to live as they have begun.” – Seneca

What Seneca was saying was that you should strive, and you should persevere . . . but only up to a point. Whereas you can start your career as a snake milker, there is no law that says you can’t finish your career as a Senior Kindle™ Evangelist. It’s even easier to make that transition if you’re Jeff Bezos’ ex-brother in law. It’s even easier than that if you have . . . special pictures of Jeff Bezos.

In the words of Winston Churchill, “Never give in, never, never, never, never, in nothing, great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.” Even Churchill notes that at some point your life ceases being an inspiration for people to aspire to, and becomes a case study and example of ludicrous obsession. Does that remind you *cough* of anyone *cough* Hillary *cough*?

I don’t know, maybe she lost because of an image thing? Or was it because she was The Thing?

In your life, based on circumstance, you will find that a certain amount of flexibility is required. Not necessarily “Soviet-bloc gymnast” level flexibility, but at the minimum “middle-aged, middle-school art teacher” flexibility. The economy will change. Jobs will change. And as you age, your abilities will change. This will make a career change not only likely, but inevitable for most people during their lives.

I’d prepared a bunch of my notes before I read the recent story in The Atlantic titled, “Your Professional Decline is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think.” It’s worth a read, since it appears it was written by their one non-communist writer. One great quote from the article is from Alex Dias Ribeiro, who is a retired Formula 1 race car driver:

“Unhappy is he who depends upon success to be happy.”

Alex retired from driving in 1979 at the age of 31, never having finished higher than second place in a major race. I’d make fun of Alex, but he’s certainly done better than I have in Formula 1 racing, where I’m not really sure my butt would even fit into a Formula 1 race car. But I totally am a better blogger. What, he has 38,000 Facebook® followers and has devoted his life to being a humble Christian pastor? Does he floss as often as I do?

He does? Dangit. He has perfect teeth. At 70. Crap.

Alex’s commentary and early retirement age are the point of the article: some abilities decline with age. As much as a forty-year-old man might identify as a twenty-year-old, he isn’t. Alex understood that at 31 he was past his peak as a driver and has dealt with it with far greater humility and grace than, well, me.

What do you mean that bragging about your achievements when you were in high school is after, well, 22?

I’m sure they’re all totally impressed that I knew all the lyrics to that brand-new Bon Jovi album, Slippery When Wet.

As anyone who is older than 25 knows, physical ability goes down with age. This decline is not linear. Think of physical ability as your hairline. Ever see a seventy year old with a thicker head of hair than when they were forty? I mean, unless it’s Joe Biden? Nope.

He says that being around young people keeps him young. I think he means young doctors?

My physical ability declines with age. Shower drain clogs caused by my hair decline with age. Does that mean everything is diminished as I age? Nope. I have a luxurious, flowing mane of ear and back hair. Sadly, I can feel the wind blowing through my back hairs, and all it takes for me to feel that air flow is the breeze from a bathroom fan. The good news is that I can now knit myself a sweater entirely made of myself. Well, I could if I could knit. And if I lived in California. I think that they’d make me move out of the county if I did that kind of creepy “back hair sweater knitting” in Modern Mayberry.

The good news is one other thing happens as you age – mental abilities change.

When you’re young, you have a greater amount of “fluid intelligence.” Fluid intelligence is the fuel for innovation. It’s what makes a five year old with a screwdriver take apart a $300 digital camera (yes, that really happened, and I let him live). Fluid intelligence is the cause of new theories, the skill to solve novel problems, the ability to unhook a bra with only one hand. Fluid intelligence seems to peak at or just before the age of 30.

The article further references a couple of examples that illustrate the problem of declining fluid intelligence: Back before computers and high-speed imaging, an umpire was an umpire and the only difference between one umpire and another umpire was how fat they were. Now, Major League© umpires can be objectively and scientifically graded. Did that fast ball catch the corner of the strike zone? Was that curveball really just outside? Unlike in 1950, this can be checked in 2019.

Statistics show the best home plate umpires are, on average, about 33 years old. The worst home plate umpires average about 56 years old. It may not be a coincidence that the mandatory retirement age for air traffic controllers is 56, which is an oddly specific number. I guess fastballs over the plate at Yankee® Stadium are just another bit of air traffic.

You can trust them! Communism will surely work this time!

Hang on, old people – don’t pack your bags and get ready to board the trains for the new “Sanders-Cortez Leisure Camps” just yet. There’s another type of intelligence – crystallized intelligence. This intelligence is based around taking the information that you know and combining it (plus new facts) to form a synthesized view of the world. That’s a whole lot of syllables that just mean one simple old word: wisdom. The best news is that crystallized intelligence doesn’t decline until senility hits. Wisdom is accessible until you’re drooling.

This explains why rockstars in their seventies play music they wrote when they were twenty or thirty. Writing music requires fluid intelligence. For example: Aerosmith hasn’t written a new song since well before Steven Tyler started looking like your poorly aging lesbian aunt.

(S)he was lead-off hitter in the softball league that consisted entirely of stray cats that (s)he kept in the garage. They did win the championship, which was a bouquet of catnip and chardonnay.

Signs of decreasing fluid intelligence:

Your VCR clock is constantly blinking 12:00.
Interruptions tend to make your mind wander . . . oh, look, a baby wolf.
You still have a VCR.
You have no idea why you came into the kitchen.
You don’t really care that the VCR is constantly blinking 12:00 because the last time you tried to fix it you changed all the menus to Mandarin and had to wait for a 10 year-old to fix it.
Why am I in the kitchen again? I swear, I had it figured out last time.
You leave stickers on your laptop, because you’ll be getting a new one in the next eight years, so why bother?
Was it ice? A beer? Eggs? No, I’d have to cook eggs. Oh, that’s it! I left ramen® in the microwave!

If your dream is to be a groundbreaking theoretical physicist in your sixties? I’m sorry, it’s not going to happen. But teachers, historians, and bloggers all rely on crystallized intelligence. Innovation is not going to happen, but thinking deeply and combining new and old facts and ideas will happen. It’s recognizing that you’ve seen the patterns in society before. It is wisdom, which consists of rubbing your chin and saying . . . “What were you thinking when you decided to try create a musical comedy about the Ferguson riots?”

Wisdom is asking that one additional question before you bomb Iran. It’s why the framers of the Constitution put a minimum age on being President – you have to have wisdom to do the job. Honestly, at my current age I think the Constitutional minimum is too low. Thirty five? No. I’d put the minimum at forty five, unless they had no idea who a Kardashian was.

My brother and I were talking about on the phone about a decade ago. The organization he was working at had just hired a new Chief Financial Officer (CFO) for their billion-dollar organization. The new CFO was 30. My comment to my brother was, “Thirty? Are they nuts? He’s not ready. He has the wisdom of a houseplant. He has the insight of an ice cube.”

My brother’s comment: “But John, he’s really smart.”

A year later that CFO had flamed out and had gone, umm, more than a little nuts and they had to fire him. My brother related several friendly conversations he had with the CFO where the CFO sounded borderline paranoid-schizophrenic. The CFO wasn’t really crazy, though. The position had just been too much for him to handle mentally. It had been unfair to put him in a position where he had such responsibility so young, with so little wisdom.

The focus of life is different after fluid intelligence drops – it has to be. You won’t have a sixty year old winning many high school track meets, but you won’t have any decent life advice coming from little Benny Shapiro, either.

Something tells me Shapiro . . . is no Seneca. Unless he grows an extra head.

Seneca bust photo: Marcus Cyron [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)]

The Left, Doublethink, and Individual Thought

“That’s an interesting point. Come on, let’s get into character.” – Pulp Fiction

Such stunning bravery and individualism!

Not quite a year ago a meme broke out into the wild – the Non-Player-Character (NPC) meme. The meme originated with video games. In video games that follow a storyline, there are various characters that exist only to move the story forward. While you can play a video game character that’s a 4’2” Asian female bodybuilder with tattoos and bright red hair, you can’t play as an NPC.

NPCs can create unplanned humor because they are programmed and react in only very predictable ways. Slug one, and they don’t care. Meet up with the same NPC for the tenth time? It’s like you never met before. They have no original ideas. They exist only to fulfill their programmed destiny.

The connection made, probably at 4Chan back in September of last year is that an NPC is really a great analogy for a Leftist that has given up completely on the idea of independent, individual thought. The contradictions that are contained within liberalism abound, but even more striking is the degree of programming present. An example:

Stephen Colbert is a late night talk show host who is famous for hating President Trump. In the show after former FBI® Director James Comey was fired, Colbert mentioned Comey was fired. The crowd was used to Comey being a villain. Why was Comey a villain? On the eve of the election of 2016, Comey announced a new investigation of the “newly-found e-mails” off of convicted creep Anthony Weiner that cost Hillary the election.

The crowd cheered because Comey got fired. Until Colbert reprogrammed them that, instead of being a bad guy, Comey was now a good guy. See for yourself:

Today, obviously, Comey is a hero of the Left. I would imagine that, if you asked a Leftist, you’d find that Comey was always a hero and they didn’t recall at all that they ever thought he was an evil Trump supporter. It’s like a quote from Orwell’s 1984:

And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed – if all records told the same tale — then the lie passed into history and became truth. “Who controls the past,” ran the Party slogan, “controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. “Reality control” they called it: in Newspeak, “doublethink.”

And the worst thing is when the update is downloading that the NPCs can’t do anything else until they reboot.

When you view it from outside, it’s easily seen. But from the inside, it’s not. The basic contradictions are astonishing in their scope and presentation of Doublethink:

Pregnant men. Perfectly normal.
Islamic feminism. No philosophical inconsistencies here!
Roe versus Wade is written in stone, but the Constitution is a “living, changeable” document.
Transitioning a nine-year-old to a new sex is normal and healthy. Has been going on for thousands of years.
Speech you don’t agree with is violence. I’m triggered!
Violence you agree with is free speech. Punch a fascist!

No, surely it’s not that.

I could go on in naming examples, and likely so could you. Are there contradictory views on the Right? Certainly, but they’re mostly not at core of the philosophy on the Right as they are the very core of the philosophy of the Left. And, unlike the Left, the Right typically doesn’t end it all in a Purity Spiral (Robespierre, Stalin, Mao, Mangos and A Future That Must Not Be).

I’ll even admit that one time, I was an NPC on the Right. There was a point (long ago, college time) when a Democratic congresscritter proposed a national tax cut. President George H.W. Bush opposed it. So I opposed it.

Huh?

I had always been for tax cuts as a general rule. I stopped and thought . . . Why would I support not cutting taxes that the Democrats want to cut? Just because they’re Democrats?

I decided that the Democrat congresscritter was right. Cut the taxes. Obviously, that solved all the problems that our nation has. Oops.

The cure for being an NPC is thought. Since that time, I regularly examine what I think – this blog is a part of that process. I also examine why I think it. If the reason that I believe something is because other people believe it, is that a good reason?

No, it’s not really a good reason. Unless you’re a Leftist.

I think the reason Leftists are more susceptible to the Doublethink that drives them into the NPC cult is that they’re more r-selected – they come from an environment that values conformity and group inclusion. I write about r-selection versus K-selection here (r/K Selection Theory, or Why Thanksgiving is Tense* (for some people)). r-selected animals, like rabbits, move in groups. They’re prey animals, and know that the only safety that they have is in numbers. Doing something that’s different than the herd singles you out. It gets you killed. Rightists are K-selected – they’re predators. Individual behavior is not only tolerated, it’s the only way to get your genes propagated.

Okay this wasn’t an original, but was too good to pass up. I think it came from 4chan.

This explains several things about the Left. They reacted so quickly to the NPC meme that they had NPC-themed Twitter® accounts banned within a month of the meme making widespread appearance. How do you know something bothers someone? When it creates such a strong reaction.

Are all Leftists NPCs? Nope. I know a few I can discuss politics with and we can still be friends. They admit when I have a point. I admit when they have a point – a few very popular posts have had their genesis with conversations I was having with Left-leaning friends. But discussing politics with the typical NPC should be avoided. There is nothing more personal to them than the ideas that they have that don’t impact them at all. Really. Why would a fifty-year-old cat lady be more passionate about illegal aliens than anything else in her life?

By definition, a religion punishes heresy and blasphemy above all else. To call NPCs cult members might sound strong, but the reality is that they probably are. Notice the reaction when a newly-revealed religious revelation presents itself: “DACA”, “living wage”, “Maxine Waters is not the reincarnation of James Brown’s hair”, “religion of peace”, “bake my cake”, or “white privilege” begins.

I’d call it a tie. But unlike Maxine, James liked “Living in America.”

To be against any of these is to be filled with hate. Being left alone is not an option. Having no opinion is not an option. From their perspective, the only opinion you can have is the correct opinion – their opinion.

Me, I think I’ll keep thinking for myself. But remember, that’s dangerous.