Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Don’t Stop Now

“You’ll have a grand tale to tell. A tale of victory.” – 300

I guess Kim is chubby because he never had to run for office.

Certainly, the re-election of Donald J. Trump to the Presidency has been a remoralizing event. I know that many (me included) thought that the GloboLeftElite would do whatever was necessary to “fortify” the results so Trump couldn’t return to power. I think, in the end the real power that saved Trump was the power of his hair. I mean, like Hamlet said, let the best mane win.

I’m in hopes that he won’t let his worst impulses take this second term of his administration run into the problems of the first. Trump’s main flaw (not his mane flaw, which is flawless) is his desire to “make a deal”. Hell, his book was even titled, “The Art of the Deal”. That’s where he got his greatest successes, and that was the great flaw that was exploited and why we ended up sending billions to foreigners, yet still didn’t have adequate border coverage at the end of his administration.

Scientists have discovered a way to walk through walls: doors.

So, now is not the time to give up – we must hold Trump accountable for the promises he made. He understands that he’s not our leader, that, rather, he jumped out in front of a parade that was already in motion and gave it a focus. When he gets off track, like when he praised himself for the Vaxx®, MAGA crowds booed him. And then he stopped talking about the Vaxx™, because he knew that wasn’t where the parade was headed.

We must remain vigilant. I do think that there is hope, since his near assassination, this has probably focused him like a laser on his own mortality. He knows he has four years to do what he has to do, and that’s it. Possibly only two: the mid-term elections may change the House, and turn his last two years into a gridlocked standstill.

Now, a gridlocked standstill is probably better than when congress is “doing” things and will probably lead to a dozen more impeachments for crimes like “breathing” and “sighing”, so the next two years is key.

The good news is that the GloboLeft is shell-shocked. They’ve created little echo chambers that made them get high on their own supply and think that a (possibly) drunken (allegedly) cocaine-using diversity hire anchor baby that achieved absolutely nothing, ever, that wasn’t given to her would be a good candidate. They were (and are) shocked.

Good friends are like toasters – if you throw one down the stairs, they probably won’t make toast for you anymore.

Good. The GloboLeft are shaken to the core, and we should make sure that it stays that way. If they think Trump is going to be bad, we should, at every instance, agree and amplify.

This isn’t spiking the ball. This is making them crazy.

Oh, sure, they wouldn’t be the GloboLeft if they weren’t already crazy members of a death cult. But we want to amp it up. We want them to not be able to think straight. For the next two years. We want to hijack (whenever possible) their amygdalae (Anonymous Conservative talks about it at the LINK). If you work with one of these creatures, you can get them to go off at the slightest provocation.

Why? They’re already unstable. Don’t let them plan. Don’t give them their safe spaces. Don’t let up. They may be in HR. They may be community members. When they make accusations in public, or on Facebook™ or Reddit© or X®, they sound crazy. They will call you a Nazi. They will say that you are evil. They will sound unhinged. Good. They discredit themselves.

You are needed. Keep the pressure on.

Her liver was 152.

As long as the GloboLeft sounds like the unhinged death cult members that they are, they move the Overton Window our direction.

Make them crazy. If you see a GloboLeftist flaking out at the supermarket, you can walk by and say, “This is MAGA country, missy.” That’s guaranteed to end up with a shrieking fit and a crazed post. If confronted, you can just say, “I was wondering where the pasta aisle was. Don’t have any idea why she reacted so.”

So, keep them busy.

To the non-crazy normies, keep dropping redpills. One story I heard from about a normie was that she was concerned that Trump wanted to “drain the swamp”. When it was gently explained that “drain the swamp” actually referred to the corruption of the Deep State at Foggy Bottom, the response was, “Oh, I can see that.”

Never expect normies to know what’s actually going on, so don’t get complicated. Explaining basic economics might help. Might.

Be reminded that these are the same people that didn’t know who was running for president, so, be gentle, and don’t start with weapons-grade redpills about deportation. Ease them into it. Help them draw conclusions. Point out how the mainstream media is lying or not covering the real news.

Well, maybe Juan in a million.

And remember that X® is our friend right now – the closest we have to a mainstream news platform that isn’t censoring (much).

Don’t cede the Second Amendment. Ever. Not a single inch. Point out that the real killers aren’t law-abiding gun owners, but gangbangers mainly shooting gangbangers, and they’d have guns anyway when everyone else was disarmed. Point out that there is a correlation with more guns leading to less crime. Disarmed people are victims waiting for second responders – armed people are citizens who are the true first responders.

Don’t cede morality. The latest hilarity is the 4B movement, essentially women promising not to engage in random sex and rather wait until they’re in a committed relationship. They expected us to get mad, when in reality we say, “Awesome, welcome aboard! Nobody likes a tramp.”

Are the security people at a trampoline store called bouncers?

Don’t cede love of your country, and don’t cede love of your nation. They’re not the same thing, but don’t give up either.

Enjoy the win. Keep the steel in Trump’s spine. And don’t spike the football yet.

It’s not even halftime.

But for now? We didn’t win by a hair, we won by a whole headful.

And you are needed.

The Illustrious Every Four Year Presidential Wrap Up Podcast

Streams will show up at 9EST (click the link below), that’s in less than an hour! (and we typically pregame for five minutes, so it really starts up at 8:55PM)

Mrs The Mrs – YouTube

Funniest News On the ‘Net.

In this episode:

Politics and Stuff
Jackass of the Week
Conversation Street

Tariffs: A Bad Idea Whose Time Has Come

“For the Government, a front-bench spokesman said the agricultural tariff would have to be raised, and he fancied a bit. Furthermore, he argued this would give a large boost to farmers, a lot of fun for him, his friends, and Miss Moist of Knightsbridge.” – Monty Python’s Flying Circus

“As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”

Tariffs became a dirty word after World War II. And why not? The United States sat alone as the only manufacturing nation not bombed into oblivion, and had to do something to create jobs for the G.I.s who were headed home. Their solution?

I mean the Korean War, sure, but we could also build stuff. Houses. Appliances. Cars. Factories that were producing B-19s could be swapped over to make commercial airliners now that Boeing® had a pretty good idea how to make planes that didn’t fall out of the sky even when they were subject to being hit by cannon fire. Unlike Boeing of the 2020s, who keeps astronauts flying even when they want to land, and creates unscheduled landing opportunities for planes that were intended to keep flying.

Tariffs in 1946 or 1956 or 1966 were against the best interests of big business in the United States since it took decades to rebuild the rubble of Europe into something resembling a functional economy that could build a factory.

There was sooooo much money to be made. Tariffs were icky.

Your momma is so old she watched The Flintstones live.

But then as other nations started to industrialize, some managed to peak out and start producing amazing consumer goods, too. Televisions, stereos, cameras and cars from Japan. Heavy pumps and industrial equipment from Germany. These began a wave of imports that displaced American products.

In one sense, this foreign competition spurred the United States to increase quality, but in another, these products were often built in brand-new factories that were funded by the United States so that their host country wouldn’t succumb to communism, while the comparable product from the United States were sometimes built in factories that dated back to the dawn of mass production.

Tariffs, though, continued to be roundly hated for decades, even as they were used against us. There were “trade wars” and the United States lost. Bigly.

China, however, decided that they were tired of having an economy where making balls of mud was the best job available for most people, and started making stuff. Could their industries, stuck in infancy, even remotely compete with the world?

My cat, though, loves this guy.

No. They didn’t have a clue as to how to make a world-class steel plant. During Mao’s “Great Leap Forward”, in order to meet Mao’s aggressive steel manufacturing targets, people were encouraged to set up steel smelters in their backyard. Like most of Mao’s economic planning, it was a failure as the Chinese people melted down their precious farming tools. These were not tractors, mind you. Do you think we’re talking about Chin Lee Rockefeller?

No.

They melted down: Shovels. Scythes. Sickles. Saws. Scissors. Anything that started with S, really.

This “scrap metal” actually was necessary stuff, and lots of Chinese people starved because they tried to meet Mao’s quota.

Oops.

But then, China got smart. A lot smarter. The I.Q. of the country jumped 10 points in one day – the day Mao died. Someone got the idea that they wouldn’t centrally plan all of this, they’d just set up tariffs so that they could encourage creative Chinese to make steel mills (or whatever), and let them keep the profits from doing so.

Oh, and they’d move their way up the ladder, to increasingly more technical components. I remember being in WalMart® back in 1992 and looking at a radar detector. I was impressed by the finish, and looked to see what Japanese or Korean company had made it.

Nope. Made in China.

I made a belt out of old watches once. It was a huge waist of time.

Right then, I knew that China had made an actual Great Leap Forward. They went from a backwater country comprised of peasants to the place where now (2021 figures) they produce 30.5% of global manufactured products. The United States is down to 15%. By the way, the crossover point was in 2010, so it’s not that long ago that this happened. But, considering that China was at nearly zero in 1990, it’s an astonishing growth rate.

Is it low labor costs? No. Here is Apple’s® Tim Cook, “The reason to (manufacture in China) is because of the skill, and the quantity of skill in one location, and the type of skill it is.”

According to Cook, China stopped being the low labor cost country years ago. What they built instead was sheer dominance of the “how” to build. Innovate? Not their first priority – they were fine with stealing and catching up. The labor cost difference to build an iPhone® (this is an older number) was about $5 more in the United States than in China. Would a $5 tariff on an iPhone® have been enough to switch production over here? $10? Regardless, as a percentage of the cost of an iPhone© it’s infinitesimal.

Now, however, the Chinese have figured out how to build them, and that’s not an easy task – it takes tens of thousands of hours of smart people working together to create that know-how, plus a lot of failure along the way.

If China and Best Korea ever combined, would they call it Kim-Xi?

So, tariffs give an industry time to build skill. But there’s a deeper thread, too. When an employee in the United States works to build a widget, they are compensated. Generally, the more valuable and complicated the widget, the greater the wages.

That employee doesn’t keep that money in a box. Nope, they buy things like houses and cars and beer and steaks and PEZ™. Oh, wait, that’s my grocery list. But the point remains – they invigorate their local economies. And, they pay taxes – property taxes, income taxes, sales taxes.

So does their employer. Having a manufacturing base keeps communities alive, and the manufacturer pays all of those local taxes as well. Having an industry making valuable products makes the community more valuable.

If that industry is off in China? There is no benefit to the local economy other than whatever the sales tax and profit was on the iPhone™. And nobody learned anything.

It does matter if a country manufactures, and it does matter if the country manufactures potato chips or computer chips. Computer chips are far more valuable, and produce the knowledge required for sophisticated technology that creates outsized value for a country.

Sean only had cats. Training his dog to sit was too messy.

Is there a case for tariffs? Certainly. Will it increase prices in the short run? Also, certainly. It took China 20 years to catch the United States. Could we catch China in 10?

Maybe. It is important that we try, otherwise they’ll keep selling us things that we could make until we don’t make anything, anymore, and end up as a backwater nation that doesn’t make anything, dreaming of the days when our industry was supreme.

Building stuff sounds like a lot more fun.

Project 2026: A Joint Trump/Wilder Project

“I believe in cutting useless government projects. I also believe in cutting useful projects, future projects, and past projects.” – Parks and Recreation

People in my town are tired of useless projects. They even put up signs that say “End Construction”.

I know that Project 2025® got a really bad reputation during the election. At every point, Democrats and their GloboLeftElite tried to convince voters that Trump was going to implement Project 2025™. Well, he isn’t going to implement Project 2025©.

Instead, President Trump secretly called me through the voices in my dreams and told me, “John Wilder, after we win bigly, and want to bring to the people Project 2026. See? It’s one better already. It will be such a good program, precisely because I’m looking to you to write it for me. And, also, if you look behind you, you’ll see your cat is melting into a puddle of butter. Very disgusting. You should fix that.”

If I steal a rich man’s dinner rolls, is that highfalutin gluten lootin?

When I woke up, I immediately got to work. So, here, without further introduction is Trump’s Project 2026®™©. It’s the best.

Project 2026 is magnanimous in our inevitable victory. As such, we decree the following for the GloboLeftists who have been left a shattered shell of their former selves:

First, to our opponent, Kamala Harris, Project 2026 hereby grants you an unlimited supply of cocaine, box wine, and pantyhose.
To our dedicated GloboLeftist opponents, Project 2026 grants exclusive access to a portion of the Internet that has been cleansed of all ideas that you might find disturbing or triggering. Thankfully, it has already been created and is called “Reddit™”.
Don’t despair. Project 2026 will commit to a peaceful transfer of power back to the GloboLeftElite sometime after the Sun expands to consume the orbit of the Earth.
You are not required to call Donald Trump “president”. He doesn’t care what you think. You are, however, required to have his picture on your bedside table and publicly praise him during the daily Trump Praise Minute. While optional, your tears will make Trump stronger.
Finally, to the rank and file, you are welcome to live in either Portland or Seattle. I hear Puget Sound is lovely. The train cars will be available shortly for quick and easy carbon-friendly transport.

But if she and Hillary team up for 2028, we could have Cackles and Cankles.

Project 2026 believes that sports are a healthy aspiration for every American. As such:

Football players will now be treated like indentured servants again. Free agency is hereby forever suspended, and athletes will be required to live in the cities they play in and will be paid no more than $23.45 an hour. After their sports career is finished, successful athletes will be allowed to sell used automobiles.
Trans females will now be known as “dudes” and will be allowed to compete in female leagues, made of other dudes.

The Economy will be a priority, and Project 2026 put Elon Musk and Ron Paul in charge of managing it. Our working title for this is the Elonomy.

Imports from the Free Mars Colony will be tariff-free.
The five-dollar footlong will return.
The Federal Reserve© Board will be forced to work shifts at Wendy’s®.

If you work at the Federal Reserve®, are you required to drive a Fiat™?

Project 2026 realizes the immense hardship that illegal aliens have wrought on our nation. As such, we will act quickly to fix these issues.

Birthright citizenship is ended, retroactively, by Project 2026. Barack Obama will be sent either to Cuba or the newly-formed People’s Republic of Hawaii.
The Department of Exmigration will be officially formed, and every celebrity who posted that they will be leaving the country will be leaving the country. By Wednesday. The motto of the Department will be “Buh-bye”.
The Department of Exmigration will also enforce the repatriation of all illegal immigrants starting Wednesday. And ending Thursday, though if you are in line by Wednesday, we’ll give you another 24 hours. Any illegals left after that will be sent to our choice of either India or Nigeria.
Only females of exceptional beauty will be allowed to illegally immigrate. Our policy is, “9 or 10, come on in!” The judging panel will consist of Mel Gibson, Elon Musk, and Johnny Depp. The anticipated formation of GloboLeftist Wine Drinking Cat Lady Einsatzgruppen to hunt down this new national resource will be put down brutally.

Project 2026 has a goal of two hot chicks for every dude.

Marriage and children are important to the United States, so:

Starting in 2026 unmarried mothers will receive no child support nor governmental support of any type. Widows are exempt.
No fault divorce is abolished.
Women and men are barred from receiving child support payments or alimony.
Only married women and men between the ages of 21 and 63 can vote.
An era of free power will follow based on Project 2026’s projection that we can exploit the power of suffragettes spinning in their graves at near lightspeed after hearing that GloboLeftist women, after hearing about Trump’s win, promise to be celibate outside of committed relationships.

I went to a farmer’s party. They really knew how to turn up the beets!

Government reform is top on the list of Project 2026:

95% of all federal employees are hereby terminated. Pack your stuff. The remaining 5% are park rangers and the US Postal Service®. Project 2026 thought for a long time about other groups, but they all have to go. All of them. Except for the Department of the Treasury to collect tariffs and the Department of Exmigration.
The ATF’s mission will be radically changed: their new mission will be to make firearms plentiful and low cost.
The FBI headquarters will be relocated to the Swanson Motel, in Bismarck, North Dakota.
All federal employees except for the Federal Marshall Service will be disarmed, as Project 2026 realizes someone has to bring horse thieves to justice.
Project 2026 understands and values the role of education in society, and therefore will remove the greatest impediment to education: The Department of Education. All employees will be fired, and will be barred from ever working in any educational role again.

Project 2026 realizes that the United States is just one of a whole host of nations. The best one, but still just one. Here follows the changes to International Relations.

International relations, imports, all financial transactions and all telecommunications are hereby ended with India and Nigeria until they show proof that they’ve executed every scammer in the country, or turned them into valuable mulch.
Our new policy in dealing with other nations is, “Why should I care?” If any other nation contacts us for aid, our official response will be “Rub some dirt on it.”

Those guys were always cold as ice.

Project 2026 realizes a strong military is important to protecting our borders, which is all we’re going to do with it.

Every young man will be sent to bootcamp, and will continue in bootcamp until they pass or reach the age of 40. After passing bootcamp, each young man is sent home with all the weapons and ammunition they can carry, including C-4. Additionally, Project 2026 will officially rename C-4 as “serious putty”.
The bootcamps will be along the southern and northern borders of the United States, and a “free fire” zone will be established within fifty yards (six decaliters) of the border. This includes people attempting to escape Trudeauistan.
Most overseas bases will be returned to the host country, with the exception that all on-base fast-food restaurants will remain. Exceptions to this are Diego Garcia and Guantanamo, because Project 2026 finds them amusing.

This is a work in progress, so any suggestions for additions can be provided before I transmit this to President-Elect Donald Trump tonight in my dreams. I hope the cat doesn’t melt again. Such a mess. So buttery. Very disrespectful.

Parody Editorial: “We Leftists Lost. Why?” Complete With Salt Mine Of Leftist Tears

“I can’t believe you like money too. We should hang out.” – Idiocracy

You too can mine the salt of a billion GloboLeftist tears.

Parody Guest Editorial by Rebecca Applebaum

Our mistake was thinking we lived in a better country. I want to assure you that, you, GloboLeftist voter, are perfect and pure. There was in no way a problem with a candidate whose major achievements in life was getting an attendance award and showing up. While the lies, resentment, racism and misogyny of the Trump campaign were apparent to anyone as pure as we are, I believe that democracy was lost when the majority of Americans chose a competent white convicted felon Hitler who wants to holocaust, um someone over a Black woman. Our mistake was to think that democracy would work when people wanted competency (a dog whistle for white supremacy!) over a diverse POC who could read a teleprompter. And she read so well, at least at an eighth-grade level!

Only we, the GloboLeft, knew where the problems were and wanted to fix them. It is amazing to think that places like X.com could allow unfettered speech that wasn’t controlled, so ideas couldn’t be rigorously vetted by GloboLeftist fact checkers! We knew that toxic masculinity would want sexist things like a “marriage” (code word for establishing a Handmaid’s Tale world!) and family (oppression of women’s right to take jobs to make PowerPoints™ rather than be domestic slaves to their unwanted offspring.

In fact, we know that we should not change. We need to make sure that trans girls can play basketball against other girls, despite being 6’3” and able to bench press 225, since we know that’s no advantage. They dared call us “weather retards” when we want to keep a particular climate that existed between 1895 and 1953 rather than allow dangerous climate change to require us to raise our buildings six centimeters if they’re on the beach! We let them complain about their housing costs when otherwise strawberries might cost as much as $0.50 more a quart if we didn’t allow Guatemalans to live in four-star hotels in New York.

The media has failed us – they didn’t portray Donald Trump nearly as Hitlerly as we wanted them to, despite showing a Nazi rally that happened only 87 years ago, yesterday, when Donald Trump held a rally in that same place. Which is not at all what Bill Clinton did when he accepted the Democratic nomination, since Bill Clinton is not at all Hitlery. Plus, Russian collusion!

It sticks in my craw that that this affront to democracy happened when a vast majority of Americans voted for someone. That’s not at all our democracy. It’s because the voters are awful who disagree with the GloboLeft. And I certainly think that you should try to get Hondurans deported now that we know LatinX voters are going to turn into Hitler supporters over time.

What is the solution?

It is certainly not to look at our failings and how our message of incompetence and crony capitalism combined with mainly aimless spending coupled with bureaucratic incompetency isn’t right. Our message is right. Every white person is a racist and white women are even misogynist! Imagine that! I imagine they pretend they’re in Margaret Atwood’s glorious non-fiction book, The Handmaid’s Tale, as those strong, virile, white men thrust against them as their hands are bound, and they’re powerless to resist them, finally giving up and giving over to the pleasure . . . oh, I’m sorry. Got lost for a moment. White women are awful. They voted for this.

And, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr! How dare Donald Trump consider replacing Rachel Levine, trans hero and doctor, as a member of our federal bureaucracy. Kennedy, a curse on that hallowed family name, even thinks that the glorious COVID vaccine wasn’t glorious. Even though science says this largely untested vaccine is certainly safer than breathing. Why, Kennedy, with those strong muscles and couldn’t stand for a second in Rachel Levine’s size 18 pumps!

But the worst is Elon Musk. Elon Musk dares to allow people to say almost anything they want to on his hate-filled platform, X. They can show mean pictures of things that aren’t even true, like that squirrel, Peanut, clad in armor and blame what they call an authoritarian state just for serving a search warrant and keeping that horrible man who saved Peanut from a life in a house with people he loved and then, mercifully, euthanized him. I don’t understand it. They don’t even make plate armor for squirrels. And if a squirrel can’t be wild, it must be killed.

Why can’t MAGA understand that?

These are damaged people.

What should we do?

There is no way we should engage, at all, in self-reflection to understand why a vast majority of people in this country didn’t like our message. That majority simply doesn’t understand our democracy.

Also, we should keep looking for the most extreme cases of trans people, like the trans woman who wants to be on the girls’ swim team and let people know how Hitlery they are when they are bigots who don’t want middle-aged men looking at naked young girls in the locker room. This is normal because science from the last six months of human existence says so!

And keep sharing your stories like this one:

I was at a voting location in a deep-red state and a man with a beard covered in tobacco juice was standing behind a woman. She had a black eye. The man was telling the woman, I assume his wife, how to vote. I reported this to the precinct clerk and he just put some tobacco in his lip and said, “This is MAGA country, missy!”

Or this one:

My twelve-year-old daughter came up to me and said, “If only twelve-year-olds could vote, Adolf Drump would never have been elected since we know that the potential impact of tariffs may have an inflationary impact on our economy.” And then everyone in the Starbucks™ clapped.

Things like this don’t sound made up at all, and make us more relatable.

Again, the problem isn’t us and our message being incoherent or directly unconnected with reality. No. It’s someone else. And we’ll be the ones that will have to pick up the pieces, unless they put us in Handmaid’s Tale outfits and, oh, those thrusting hips. Whew. There must be Global Warming because it’s certainly getting hot in here.

Rebecca Applebaum is the author of the books, Why Not Me: Why Do Men Ignore Me and the follow-up, Why White Men Who Won’t Date Me Are the Cause Of All Bad Stuff, Especially Brad Who I Had A One-Night Stand With And Who Never Called Me Back. Her new book, Cats, Wine, and Toxoplasmosis Are Why I Hate Trump is due to hit bookstores next month.

(Inspired by this piece of trash – LINK)

No Podcast Tonight, Enjoy These Spicy Election Memes Instead

The Mrs. is asleep (worked 20 hours yesterday) and Mark is defending Helm’s Deep. We’ll break down the election next week with some fun.

One Of Our Biggest Problems: The Deflation Of Power

“My services are entirely inconsequential to them.” – Raiders of the Lost Ark

I like my steak rare. Like panda or bigfoot.

I’m writing this ahead of time, so as I type, I have had little information about what’s going on in the race, other than it tied in Dixville Notch and that Kamala narrowly carried Guam, which is okay, I guess. Karate Kid XVIII was set in Guam, right? Or was it on an orbital space platform? I forget.

There has already been the smell of fraud coming from the 2024 presidential election – we got that in the last few weeks and discussed it on the most recent (pre-election) podcast and on this week’s Civil War 2.0 Weather Report. The simple answer is that having same-day, in-person paper voting of properly identified voters with public counts is the only way to avoid fraud. Oh, and a purple finger dye would be a bonus.

Never order hay from Amazon®. After a couple of days they’ll as for feed back.

The real problem, though isn’t fraud – the real problem is that elections in a free country shouldn’t be this consequential. But yet, they are. And I’ve discovered my underline, italics, and bold keys. I’m dangerous now that I know a bit more about typography – it’s been a character building exercise.

What caused the election to be so consequential? Deflation, and Inflation.

Let’s start with Deflation.

Back when the United States was just warming up, the powers of the federal government were very limited. In fact, almost every law that existed was a law that existed at the state (or commonwealth, if you can’t spell ‘state’), county, or city level. There was no federal law against murder.

In fact, why would there need to be a federal law against murder? States could take care of that with their existing laws quite nicely, thank you. And we also had lynching, which saved about three days off of the whole “catch-trial-hang” normal course of justice and the cost of a trial. Federal government? Why would they need to get involved at all? We can find our own trees.

And presidents. Being president meant that you were elected to administer the (weak) government of only 3.9 million people, which is approximately the number of people who share a single bathroom in Mumbai. Now there are at least 334 million people living in the United States, increasing the power of the presidency by a factor of 85.

I couldn’t resist. (LINK to Aesop)

But there’s more! Back in 1800, the president would likely have been bored a great deal of the time, since there wasn’t so much to do. There was no real standing army, so there was no military-industrial complex to feed. There was no federal welfare. There was no Department of Education. In fact, there were only three departments: State, Treasury, and War. There was also an Attorney General.

And Washington, elected in April, didn’t bother to nominate people for those positions until September. Summer break, probably. Or maybe he was still hung over. Regardless, the position of the president was so unimportant that Washington didn’t do anything for months, and yet the country kept going.

I’d estimate that the power of the president is 10,000 times, minimum, what it was back in 1800 between the number of citizens and the increase in power from the sheer size and complexity of the federal government. Now, that’s what I call deflation! Imagine going to sleep and finding your dollar was worth 10,000 times what it was the night before.

This was funny to either fans of 19^th Century German opera or fans of 1990s Saturday morning cartoons. And that’s about it.

And congressmen? When we started, there was on representative for every 37,000 people. Now, each congressman represents a staggering 750,000 people. That’s a power inflation of over 20. But it’s also a critical distinction. Here in Modern Mayberry, I can pick up the phone and call the most politically powerful elected official (that represents about 37,000 folks) and expect a personal call back. To be fair, he doesn’t know everybody, but he knows (generally) quite a few folks and I have sufficient stature to have made it to that “call this guy back” list. I mean, who doesn’t want to hear from the village idiot? It’s a very nice village.

Back then, congressmen were at least theoretically accessible. Now? The guy who’s gonna win the race probably knows my name, but there’s no way he could put my face together with it. A congressman is 20 times more powerful (just on numbers) than he was back in 1800.

If that were it, it would be manageable. But it’s not it.

In 1800, or even 1900, your single point of contact with the federal government would have been getting your mail.

During my last interview, the hiring manager asked me if I could perform under pressure. I said, “No, but I know Bohemian Rhapsody.”

Now? The federal government is now the most over-reaching and powerful governmental entity in your life (if you’re American). From the moment you go to bed to the moment you go to sleep it covers every facet of your life. You get up, use FDA approved toothpaste to brush. Get in a shower of a size and volume determined by the EPA, with water quality defined by the EPA, after flushing a toilet whose volume is governed by the EPA. That’s the first five minutes. It doesn’t get better, but I’ll leave the exercise of getting into a car and the rest of the day to the reader.

Just on the population, those positions have become more powerful. But add in the ever-increasing creeping of the federal government into every part of your life? Every decision? Every surface? The power of an individual member of congress has easily increased by a thousand-fold. This is deflation.

The federal government used to be the tip of the power pyramid, far away and not particularly important. Now that geometry is upside down, with the tip being the base. Local decisions are increasingly trivial at the city and county level, more consequential at the state level, but many of these are 100% constrained by federal mandates and power.

The elected official you can most easily reach has the smallest impact on your life. You can’t hope to get the attention of a federal official or congressman because you’re too small. You don’t matter.

Your power has inflated away,

first based on the increase in population diluting the voice of individuals where the number of elected officials remains the same,
then by making the power remote from you housed in unaccountable bureaucracies, and
thirdly, the inherent power of your community has been erased through the forced diversity by purposely injecting foreign communities to break up the traditions and community norms so that your power is even more fully fractured. Somalians don’t make Minnesota better in any way. They are culturally alien and belong in (bear with me) Somalia.

Why?

I went to the Air and Space Museum. Disappointed, since it was just an empty building.

A pyramid that stands on its point is inherently unstable. They know that. It’s also inherently unfree. You know that. The solution is simple, but will take time and effort:

Devolve power away from Washington. Move power to the states. This is inevitable, and will happen because of that instability, because the undeniable weakness of the federal government is showing. A single man like Donald Trump was able to thwart the lawfare, the biased media, the entire Deep State, and even his own party’s hierarchy.

All it takes is one man, and where one will stand up, others will follow.

Make America Great Again?

Yes.

The first step is, though, is to Make the Presidential Election Inconsequential Again.

And, maybe, ship Kamala to Guam if they like her that much.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: A Date With Destiny

“You hear that, Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability. It is the sound of your death. Goodbye, Mr. Anderson.” – The Matrix

I heard that Epstein got a clue to the inevitable – the last guard he tried to fist-bump left him hanging.

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

Volume VI, Issue 6

All memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”. I’ve kept the Clock O’Doom at the same place – though it will notch up quickly if there are any signs of the TradRight stiffening up.

This is a moving situation, and things are changing quickly. The advice remains. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue: Front Matter – A Date With Destiny – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The Big Fraud – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report. These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month. I’ve created a page (link below) for links to all of the past issues. Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 850 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at or before 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Civil War Weather Report Previous Posts

A Date With Destiny

Like most people, I believe that I have free will. Whether that’s true or not isn’t my call, so it’s certainly at a least a pleasurable fiction that I maintain. Free will, however, only applies to our choices, and doesn’t apply to our circumstances. Every person reading this is going to die. We pretend like that’s not the case, but I assure you it is, and there is no way to make a choice that will avoid that fate. Death is inevitable.

So, that’s one example. Another example where free will and choices don’t matter is when uncontrollable forces have been unleashed. For instance, if I drop a stripper off of the Empire State Building, there’s no way I’m not getting glitter on my shirt. It’s inevitable.

I think we’re at the same place with Civil War. It’s inevitable no matter who “wins” this election. That’s not to say that it might not be postponed for a bit, but like death and stripper glitter, it’s coming.

Why am I so cavalier in saying that? Well, it’s obvious if you look around. The things that are most likely to cause civil war are tied to what’s going on in the country. Here are your indicators:

Popular immiseration. This means that people are miserable. Inflation and declining prospects have made most young people miserable, and tortured them, to boot. Generations ago, a bright young man could support his family by being the local butcher or running the local sporting goods store. Now, he has to go to college, study, maybe get two degrees, and have his wife work to get the same lifestyle the guy selling letter jackets had.
Lower birth rates and later marriage age. I recently heard (though I don’t have a source) that when the age of first marriage exceeds 28, civil war is inevitable. Every single time. We’re at 30.
Too many elites. Just like all those young dudes are going to school for years in the hopes of being able to maybe one day buy a house, maybe, there are at the same time too many billionaires competing for power. Bloomberg, Trump, Cuban, Gates, Musk are all looking to see who can rule. There isn’t enough room for all of them, and their dissention forms the core of the leadership for civil war.
Belief that the system is fraudulent. Sure, we’ve all expected that the system is rigged, but 2020 was a slap in the face to election integrity since the very GloboLeftistElite that denounce anyone who doubts the validity of the election OPENLY BRAGGED about twisting the system in the pages of Time® magazine in 2021. I’ve heard of more election fraud before election week than in any pre-election period, ever, and don’t doubt that more is taking place behind the scenes. A fraudulent system that is brazen provides the casus belli for that civil war.
A failing economy. This ties to immiseration, but the economy has been juiced for so long with such amazing amounts of money that it is mathematically impossible to unwind without amazing amounts of pain. And pain causes . . . civil war.
Unpopular wars. Who wants to die for Ukraine? For Israel? For Taiwan? For South Korea? Yup, thought so. Yet there are rabid hawks on both sides that are willing to drag a thoroughly unwilling populace into a war they cannot win.
The fact that there have been at least two attempts on Trump’s life shows exactly how stable our society is right now.

Folks, I cannot stress this enough: this is inevitable, and only the timing is up for grabs. I’ve said before (in 2018 or 2019, I think) that 2025 was the first opening date for Civil War 2.0. I’ll stand by that, but I don’t think it’s likely. I still put the range as 2025 to 2040, with the most likely range being between 2030 to 2035. Big nations have a lot of inertia, like a train after you shut down the engine, keep going for a long time. But not forever.

Finally, this is not a wish, since I believe that everyone underestimates how gruesome this will be. I anticipate that China and Russia would gladly airdrop weapons to both sides when they’re not heading to their microwaves to make popcorn while they watch. But, just like throwing a trash bag full of vegetable soup into a jet intake, we all know what’s going to happen.

It’s destiny. Oh, and speaking of Destiny, she’s up next on stage 3.

Violence and Censorship Update

Obviously, there are things we can’t talk about openly because the consequences are too dire so that people were censored off of YouTube® for trying to report this. Until the lies break:

What happens when FEMA is on the side of the disaster?

And anyone who isn’t lawfully here?

Ahhhh, diversity. Bringing in Afghans to do killing Americans won’t do.

Trump Derangement Syndrome: It’s real.

Looks like Kamala only wants to allow certain speech. Anyone here surprised?

And NPCs on Reddit are with her:

And if Trump is Hitler®, then soon enough:

And speaking of the media, I wonder if they coordinate with the Kamala campaign?

Never forget, they have plans for you.

Biden/Harris Misery Index

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

Yup, up again, and peaking upwards as interest rates are starting to spike. Hmmm.

But not all people are miserable:

And some are too stupid to be miserable:

But people can’t afford McDonald’s anymore.

Updated Civil War II Index

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

Violence:

Violence is up significantly, and this should be higher given that Venezuelan gangs are turning parts of US cities into no-go zones.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it is down a bit.

Economic:

The economy took a huge drop – I think the hangover from all the juicing is coming.

Illegal Aliens:

The latest numbers are simply lies.

The Big Fraud

Regardless of what follows, go out and vote. It makes fraud slightly harder.

Signs of voter fraud in advance of the election are through the roof. Here are a few:

This is illegal:

Ooops, that was election fraud from the last election.

Oh, the Colorado Secretary of State (above) also left nearly all of the voting machine passwords unprotected on the Internet. But it didn’t stop Democrats from suing to keep noncitizens on the voter rolls.

There are more issues, likely into the hundreds by now. At some point it should become clear that this is a humiliation exercise meant to drive home that you have no power. They can lie and cheat to your face, and “What Timmy gonna do?”

LINKS

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

BAD GUYS
https://x.com/rawsalerts/status/1844861906361909266
https://www.city-journal.org/article/no-youre-not-imagining-a-migrant-crime-spree
https://x.com/VivekGRamaswamy/status/1847669300422639725
https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1844125924301984148
https://x.com/TrendingEx/status/1843359191077138512
https://x.com/NoahPollak/status/1847006345662550219

GOOD GUYS
https://x.com/ImMeme0/status/1852394961330692486
https://twitter.com/i/status/1845646215452496049
https://x.com/i/status/1850126594418815417
https://x.com/i/status/1845866508259627261
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/some-mass-shooting-survivors-want-more-good-guys-guns

ONE GUY
https://archive.is/eB7iD

BODY COUNT
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/world/age-depopulation-surviving-world-gone-gray-nicholas-eberstadt
https://archive.is/hfs5Y
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/2023-AHAR-Part-1.pdf
https://x.com/fentasyl/status/1844839172907123183
https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1849634400851341410
https://dailycallernewsfoundation.org/2024/10/10/non-english-speaking-students-are-overwhelming-pa-schools-and-racking-up-millions-for-small-towns-data-show/

VOTE COUNT
https://x.com/i/communities/1848518910653415584
https://x.com/PeterBernegger/status/1850565226690654556
https://x.com/scrowder/status/1850924883678498871
https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1849977065925189699
https://catholicvote.org/millions-of-christians-religious-people-say-they-are-not-voting-in-november/
https://x.com/emmagcawood/status/1850522383863390392
https://x.com/pepesgrandma/status/1850611709549146405

CIVIL WAR
https://realclearwire.com/articles/2024/10/22/quiet_before_the_storm_151815.html
https://newrepublic.com/article/185053/civil-war-reenactors-virginia-play-acting-expect-war
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/10/25/dc-residents-leaving-election-week-00185313
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13933435/MSNBC-host-claims-Trump-family-preparing-civil-war-former-president-warns-America-faces-enemy-within.html
https://slaynews.com/news/clinton-strategist-james-carville-trump-arrest-males-color-elected-calls-armed-uprising-harris-loses/
https://x.com/DrewHLive/status/1820859923787591846
https://thefederalist.com/2024/08/06/firebrand-leftist-jamie-raskin-said-congress-must-disqualify-trump-predicted-civil-war-conditions/
https://tomklingenstein.com/is-the-left-preparing-for-war-if-trump-wins/
https://truthovernews.org/p/democrats-plan-for-color-revolution
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/23/cold-civil-war-cultural-secession/
https://news.yahoo.com/news/hurricane-relief-workers-forced-evacuate-102606823.html
https://studyfinds.org/america-verge-of-world-war-iii/?nab=1
https://internationalman.com/articles/doug-casey-top-3-predictions-for-post-election-america/
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election-trump-american-civil-war-b2634731.html

MANIFESTO
https://x.com/BillAckman/status/1844802469680873747

It Came From . . . 1988

“What’s going on, Andy? Is this what you want to do with your life? Sleep all day long and hang out with the Criterion brothers?” – Funny Farm

How do I get a movie from 1988 to show up? Just say Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice.

FYI – site getting hit last night by . . . something. Can’t respond to comments from the last two posts, so I will when I can.

I was wrong last month when I mentioned I had only one year to go in the 1980s, there are three. This one is 1988, and, going back through the list of movies I found, 1988 wasn’t particularly a great year. Although the corporatism that started to kill movies in the 1990s had started, it hadn’t hit fully. Some movies were still just fun.

As usual, the list isn’t in any particular order, my descriptions of plots are sketchy, and these aren’t necessarily the best movies, they’re just the movies on the list.

Beetlejuice – The original. Tim Burton makes the most beautiful movies, but unless someone is there to stop him from following his worst impulses, the movies are also very stupid. Someone kept Tim in a box, and he got a great performance out of Michael Keaton as the titular character, and Wynona Ryder was in it before she started being a nutty shoplifter.

Dead Heat – Treat Williams and Joe Piscopo play two cops in a buddy cop movie. The big twist? They’re dead and have been reanimated by a mad scientist so that they can commit zombie-cop robberies. The math seems to be a bit off on this one – if I could reanimate people, I’d probably be looking for a Nobel® Prize rather than committing petty heists with Joe Piscopo. Is it a comedy? Well, one of the character names is Roger Mortis. So, maybe, but the actual cop part gets in the way of the actual movie. The nice thing about this is that it got made even though it’s arguably awful – it’s awful in a good way, as in, “Let’s try this crazy idea” rather than awful in the 2024 “let’s make a woke corporate movie and preach girlboss leftie themes and if people don’t like it let’s call them racist” way.

The same hairy dude was in every generated image. Who knew that PEZ® and beards were related?

Willow – Not to be confused with the new Disney® series that was so bad that they vowed never to show it again to get a tax write-off, this is a story of a dwarf who comes from a village of dwarves and gets into a typical sword and sorcery adventure. Think of it as someone who wanted to do a Tolkien movie but didn’t have the film rights. It ended up being a fairly sweet and charming movie, and one of Val Kilmer’s best performances, ever. I liked it more than most people. Bonus: Joanne Whalley.

Big – Tom Hanks was getting ready to break out as an actual actor, and Big was a stepping stone for that direction, where he ended up playing a kid that made a wish to become an adult. But he was still a kid in his brain parts. Nowadays, this movie would have difficulty being made because Hanks (as a kid in an adult body) has sex with Elizabeth Perkins. Yeah. That didn’t age well. I haven’t checked on Elizabeth Perkins to see if she aged well, but, then found she was a brittle old feminist. Sigh. Looks like Tom dodged a bullet.

Funny Farm – This was an absolute box-office bomb, as I recall, but it is one of my favorite movies of all time. It’s essentially Green Acres without the Hungarian accent, but I just love that story, so I can watch nearly endless variations of it. In this case, sportswriter Chevy Chase gets an advance for a book, can’t write it, and steals his wife’s book, exhumes a dead body, tries to set a booby trap for a drunken mailman, and determines that he can live life without being a tool to everyone around him. Unlike the real Chevy Chase.

Is that Susan Sarandon in the middle?

Bull Durham – I put this on here primarily because it is a very good (not the best, but very good) baseball comedy. The Mrs. loves it, so, contractually I’m required to watch it when she watches it. It loses points for having Susan Sarandon associated with it and for being a bit too focused on the romance side of the equation. Best parts? Coach banter and bringing the word lollygagging back. Lollygaggers!

Die Hard – I don’t need to describe this one, since it’s a Christmas favorite. This move turned out perfectly, and was, perhaps, the zenith of 1980s action-adventure movies if you don’t count Predator™ and Terminator©. The twist? Putting an “everyman” into the role of hero. Remember, it’s not really Christmas until Hans Gruber falls off Nakatomi Tower! It is the best end for a movie, Hans down.

Is that Nakatomi Tower in the background?

A Fish Called Wanda – What if Monty Python® never broke up and did more movies? This is as close as you’re going to get to that dream. Fun and funny, and Kevin Kline absolutely steals the show (and an Oscar™) as Otto, a CIA hitman who quotes Nietzsche and believes “the central tenet of Buddhism is every man for himself”. Who knew Buddhists were libertarians? John Cleese plays John Cleese, and Jamie Lee Curtis, sadly, stays mainly clothed.

Vibes – Cyndi Lauper as a psychic stuck with also psychic Jeff Goldblum? Why not? The plot is odd and absurd, with Cyndi and Jeff travelling to the Andes. Yes. The movie involves all manner of silliness with the main focal point to set up odd situations where quirky-girl Lauper can bounce of straight-man Goldblum. Is it one of the best movies of Western Civilization? No. But it did make me laugh.

Tucker: The Man and His Dream – I’m not sure how much of this story is true, but it sounds like Tucker Carlson was trying to make a car after World War II. I’m not sure how this happened, but I think it might have something to do with time travel and Donald Trump’s uncle, John G. Trump, who was an electrical engineer and physicist, and the guy they brought in to steal evaluate Nikola Tesla’s notes so Trump could give them to Elon Musk. I think. Regardless, it was a pretty good movie about a car that certainly sounds like it would have been pretty good, though Tucker Carlson eventually gave up the dream and was later a journalist. You might have heard of him. Two thumbs up.

Young Guns – How much Bon Jovi do you need in a 1980s western? Just a little bit. It also stars the Sheen/Estevez brothers. So, it the singer and actors were all in need of blow driers, but the movie has also been hailed as relatively historically accurate tale of the life of Billy the Kid, with the exception that Kiefer Sutherland is actually only three feet tall, so they had to use a lot of perspective shots.

Oh, yeah, brother!

They Live – John Carpenter took a short story from 1963 and remade it into a politically biting science fiction film where aliens infiltrate and take over American society. Space aliens, not the aliens that eat ducks from the park. Anyway, the film is famous for an amazingly long street fight between Rowdy Roddy Piper and Keith David (not to be confused with David Keith). It is notable that the alien overlords are significantly nicer than the current Biden/Harris administration, so there’s that.

Scrooged – Another huge Bill Murray hit, and probably the definitive A Christmas Carol adaptation of my lifetime. Bill stars as a success-obsessed executive who takes the place of Scrooge. In a meta turn, he wants to do a live version of A Christmas Carol on Christmas for the ratings after saving Karen Allen from the Nazis. And it pulled in plenty of cash, making over $100 million on a $32 million budget. Not bad.

The Naked Gun – After Airplane!, there was a short-lived television show called Police Squad. It was hilarious, but most people don’t have a sense of humor so it was cancelled. Instead, the Zucker brothers resurrected Detective Frank Drebin and made a movie that made tons of money, and probably drove O.J. Simpson to murder since the script showed how easy it was to get away with murder.

This is way better than the original poster and has 100% more Nakatomi Tower.

Working Girl – This movie should have been the sequel to Die Hard where Sigourney Weaver teams up with Bruce Willis to defeat the German space aliens in a musical with Bill Murray singing the theme, backed by Bon Jovi and Lou Diamond Phillips. If only. I honestly don’t remember this movie at all, so my plot is probably superior to the real thing.

There it is. What did I miss?