Leftists, Lawnmowers, and Liberty

“Except lawnmowers don’t have turn signals.” – Psych

It’s obvious that guy never read the script.

Today I welded up a riding lawnmower deck.

It was the first time in years that I’d had the garage clean enough to get whatever tool I wanted without conducting a gymnastics routine worthy of a gold medal – and I didn’t even have a Soviet Commissar that was getting ready to shoot my family.

My garage had been so chaotic that it could have been the White House press corps falling all over themselves explaining why President * intended to lose a fight with gravity going up Air Force One. But that’s another story. I’m sure Snopes® has already debunked that President * fell down, and instead called it “Mostly False” because he obviously fell up the stairs.

Back to welding up the mower deck:

My welding is really, really bad – it looks like toddlers played with molten metal, but without all of the emergency room visits. Regardless, the mower deck seemed more stable when I was done. Pugsley pronounced the mower “fixed” and was happy. If the crack in the mower deck stays fixed it will be due to luck and not my Civil War surgeon-level skill at welding.

You can imagine my glee when my kids had splinters. “Fetch me the hacksaw. . .”

Fixing the mower deck was important for several reasons. First, it showed Pugsley that when something is broken, if we think we can fix it, we should at least try. There have been a couple of times that this has backfired on me like the time I burned out a wiring harness on a Nissan Altima™ installing a stereo. Likewise, I try to tell The Mrs. that if she wouldn’t have stopped me from drilling that hole in my skull, my plan really would have worked.

Second, it showed Pugsley that our destiny is in our hands. Sure, that’s not always exactly true. Those dinosaurs munching on dino cabbage on the Yucatan peninsula certainly were having a legendarily bad day when the meteorite blazed them into future motor oil and plastics for making G.I. Genderless® action figures.

But most of the time, it really is true. We make our own destiny. Our choices, our courage, our virtue, and our tenacity are much greater indicators of our futures than any outside force. That’s a message I want etched in Pugsley’s mind. Of course, I might regret that if he chooses my nursing home – he might choose the Ayn Rand Retirement Villa®, where their motto is: “We only feed you if you have the will to get to the dining room.”

Just like Schrödinger, I should probably have an open casket. You know, to be sure.

Third, we don’t give up. If we fail, we try again. I fully imagine my preschool-level welds will have been just like bear porridge: too hot or too cold and not at all just right.

That’s okay. Another message to Pugsley is that we’ll try again. Honestly, these were very bad welds, but they were the best welds I’ve ever made. They may hold, but I doubt it. I think the metal will crack so badly that Pugsley will claim he was from a broken home.

Then? I’ll weld it again.

One of the reasons I engage in these adventures is that I want to inoculate Pugsley against Leftism. Fixing a mower deck is a small part of that, but still, those messages remain.

How will this inoculate Pugsley? The Left’s main reason for living is being a victim. The Narrative of the Left is always, everywhere, the same:

  • They Are The Victims

This is the first tenet of Leftism. Everywhere, always, the Left is the victim class. Can I prove it? Sure.

Look at any protest. Ever see a Leftist throw themselves in front of, say, a semi-truck? They want to die. They hate themselves. They look to the world and see how utterly wretched they are, and they hate the world that made them with a religious fervor. If they can’t die, they want to see the world burn.

There is no redemption for them.

I was going to go as a suicide victim for Halloween, but I decided to go as Jeffery Epstein instead.

  • They Seek To Convert By Creating Envy

Not everyone can be a True Leftist. Many are converted by creating a culture of envy. Envy is a powerful Evil. Why?

Envy makes a person want what others have. Did the other people earn it? In many cases, certainly not. Trust fund kids didn’t earn the right to drive a Lamborghini®. And lots of people who earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year don’t work nearly as hard as the people who fix the streets or flip burgers.

Looks like COVID inoculation day in a Red State.

That’s a fertile ground for Envy, since in many cases there is only a minimal relationship between happiness and money. When Envy takes over, however, I’ve seen teams tear themselves apart because a single team member convinced everyone that The Man was taking advantage of them.

In 2021, I also see Leftists upset because other people get better jobs. I mean, why wouldn’t someone with a degree in Medieval Albanian Poetry not be making $234,000 a year two years after college? I mean, they were so smart in understanding what Murgatroid the Great meant when he said, “Oh, my headache ist such embiggened by a trough of wine thy previous night.”

  • They Seek To Divide The Country By Making A Country Meaningless

What is a country? A country is made by people born there from parents who were born there from grandparents who were born there. There, I’ve said it. If a person’s lineage isn’t at least that deep?

They’re not really American. Oh, sure, we’ve welcomed them, but unless they’d name their son Brandon or their daughter Kayla (both names I detest) they’re not really American.

If they have a second passport? Not American. Their loyalty is divided.

Being a part of a country means something.

The Left seeks to make it mean nothing. The Left thinks we should take care of a child 15,000 miles away the same way that we would take care of one in our hometown. Certainly, I understand that, but, really, doesn’t that kid have parents and a government? I am compassionate – but I care a lot more for the people in my town than for people who aren’t.

In Chicago, you ignore both.

The Left wants an endless stream of refugees into the United States. Why? So everything that made the United States great becomes the average of countries that were so awful that people came here instead of staying there.

  • The End Goal: To Gain Power.

Aesop rightly pointed out that this is the end goal in the comments a few weeks ago. And, he’s right. Leftists can’t gain control of the country unless they subvert the things that made the United States wonderful. This is also true of the West in general.

They must create enough anger, distrust, and division as possible. In this crisis, they imagine that they will step into power. This worked in France. In Russia. In China. In Venezuela.

The goal is that this will work in the West the same way it worked all over the world.

To make this happen, the values and beliefs of the Right have to go: they become politically incorrect in a storm of feigned weakness and victimhood. If you’ve seen pictures of Antifa®, one thing is amazingly obvious: they’re physically weak.

I’m sure he’s planning to be the poet in the collective farm. Or maybe make special bracelets for the farmworkers.

People who lift weights are more likely to become . . . Right wing. Lifting a weight removes illusions – it’s me against the weight. The man isn’t holding me back. No outside force is oppressing me. And, lo and behold, the people who are lifting will help you.

But only if asked. They won’t come out and suggest a thing. It’s you versus the Iron. They’ll help, but the know, deep down inside, it’s your struggle, not theirs.

So, it’s that simple. Learn strength.

And, teach strength. Teach responsibility.

I’m sorry. I meant weak bedwetters.

That’s why Pugsley and I welded the mower deck. We’re responsible. We can try to fix it. And we won’t give up.

If you want an antidote to the Left, you won’t get much better than that. Lift weights. Be responsible for your own life and your own surroundings.

While I’d like to be able to weld better, but as you can see, fixing the deck a dozen times might provide a much better result.

When the ship lifts, all bills are paid.  No regrets.

“Have you paid your dues, Jack?  Yes, sir.  The check is in the mail.” – Big Trouble in Little China

Note to regular readers:  This post took a rather strange turn, as they sometimes do.  I had the topic picked, and then started writing, and found that the subject and evening led to a very atypical post.  I’m going to leave this one as it is.  I fully expect Monday’s post to be more of the usual stuff.

One of my favorite quotes was from the science fiction writer Robert Heinlein, “When the ship lifts, all bills are paid.  No regrets.”  I read that line when I was 19 or so.  I found it in The Notebooks of Lazarus Long.  It was displayed in a little indy book store and it was one of those times that it seemed like the book found me, and not the other way around – it was the first thing I saw when I walked into the store.

The book store?  That store stayed in business for about two months.  The problem was that the store only had (and I’m not exaggerating) about three dozen different books.  Looking back on it, I doubt that when the bookstore closed down that all the bills were paid – the landlord really should have seen that coming.

I thought about that phrase when I moved to Alaska with The Mrs.  Moving to Alaska isn’t like moving from one state to another down in the Lower 48.  The only real way out is by plane, and you’re not going unless you planned it.  Were all my bills paid?

I made sure they were.  Pa Wilder was quite old by that time.  Before leaving for Alaska, I was quite clear in knowing that it was possible that when we moved was the last time I would ever see him alive.  I made it a point then to tell him everything I needed to tell him, to share everything I could.  I wanted him to be at peace, and I wanted to be at peace, too.

Prepping is for more than economic collapse.

Thankfully, Pa lived more than a decade after when we moved.  He even visited us in Alaska and finally down into Houston when we moved back to the continental United States.

In my mind, there’s a part of me that always sees him in his prime.  That was back when I was 12 and Pa was the father that would work 50 hours a week at the bank.  Then Pa would come home and work my brother John (yes, that’s his name, our parents were classically uncreative) and me for 20 hours over the long summer weekend days hauling and stacking firewood for the cold winter nights up at the compound on Wilder Mountain.

When I thought of him, I always remembered that impossibly tall and competent man of my youth.  When he visited Alaska I was fully six inches taller than him, and the strong arms that had swung a sledgehammer in a mighty arc to split wood with a steel wedge were now thin with age, his walk hesitant and slow.

But he was still dad.

One thing I always did, however, was try to leave each conversation with him as a complete conversation, a capstone if you will.  I wanted to make sure that absolutely every time I talked to him I was leaving nothing unsaid.  I wanted to make sure he knew exactly what I felt.

Pa Wilder lived twenty-five years longer than he expected.  But around the time I was moving to Alaska, I could sense a change in him.  The emails that he wrote gradually developed grammatical and spelling errors.  This was a change.  Previously, Pa had been as precise as an English-teaching nun in grammar and spelling.

It was a sign.  Pa was declining.

Over time, the decline increased.  I can still recall the last time I talked to him and he recognized me.  After spending two days with him, he finally looked at me and said, “You’re John, aren’t you.”

Beyond that, we had some pleasant times, but I could tell that he didn’t recognize me.  One time he looked at me and said, “Who are you?”

“I’m your son, John.”

There was not even a glimmer of recognition in his eyes.

When word came from my brother that Pa Wilder had passed (this was years and years ago) The Mrs., The Boy, Pugsley, and I went to his funeral.  As The Mrs. and I had a private moment between all of the orchestrated family events, she asked me, “Is there anything you need to share?  Are you doing alright?”

To be clear – I did miss and do miss Pa.  But I had made sure that everything that I ever needed to say to him had been said.  My conscience was clear.  I know that, whenever he had a clear moment, he knew that I loved him.  And I knew he loved me.

I had no unresolved issues.

It’s one thing to read the phrase, “When the ship lifts, all bills are paid.  No regrets,” and another to understand it as time passes and wisdom increases.  When Pa Wilder passed, I understood it.  I looked deep into myself and understood that all the bills were paid.  I had no regrets.

The Mrs. had a different experience entirely with the passing of her father several months ago.  Due to COVID restrictions, he had spent the last months of his life with absolutely no physical contact, no presence of his family.  He had been recovering from surgery in a nursing home, and never recovered enough to be discharged.

For month after month, he spent his time alone, with nothing but phone calls from those he loved.

The Mrs. was very upset about this.  Heck, The Mrs. is still upset about this – the process of paying those last bills was cruelly interrupted.  She had more things to say to him – and I understand that.  There are things I’d dearly like to say to Ma Wilder, but that ship lifted too early, and now those bills can never be paid, at least not in full.

I try now to make each meeting, each contact with those around me that I love one where they know exactly where they stand with me, and vice versa.  The idea of continuing my life with those bills, or leaving those bills with someone else isn’t something I want.

To be very clear:  what brought this topic to mind wasn’t anything in particular, just the thought that this has been a helpful philosophy for me.  I do know that the future is uncertain, so I try to live my life so I don’t have those regrets, and try to manage my relationships so that there’s never anything left unsaid.

The check is in the mail.

Read This Post Because You Want To See Why Efficiency Can Suck

“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!  Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope, and nice red uniforms – oh damn!” – Python, Monty

I’m scared that German sausage might be dangerous – but I guess that’s a wurst-case scenario.

One particular afternoon (decades ago) my ex-wife (She Who Will Not Be Named – SWWNBN) moved out.  It was one of those things where we were both immediately happier, though the process of getting a divorce was rough – the judge finally had to sit me down and tell me I couldn’t get the engagement annulled, too.

I kid.  SWWNBN and I were awful for each other.  One of the major disagreements in our life was money.  I was cheap – when SWWNBN wanted to get out of the house for dinner and I fed her Hamburger Helper® in the garage, well, SWWNBN wasn’t pleased.

So on that particular afternoon, SWWNBN moved out she handed me a plastic grocery sack.  It was filled to the brim with papers.  “Here,” she grunted as the heavy sack thudded on the dinner table, causing the legs to audibly groan, “are the bills.  And here is the checkbook.  I have no idea how much money is in it.”

SWWNBN then turned and walked out the door.  For good.

There’s a dentist office in the Vatican – it’s in the Listerine Chapel.

Let me explain how I got into this situation:  stupidity.

I had the brilliant idea when SWWNBN and I argued about money to give her control of the bills.  I figured that if she was responsible for paying them, she’d make sure that they were paid, and help economize around the house, keep the thermostat lower, turn off the lights, and understand that our income versus our bills was a constant fight to avoid trying to find the choice real estate under the overpass – but you have to remember location is everything.

SWWNBN had managed the bills for a few years.  Surely she had been competent.  I picked up the bill on top.

It was a gasoline company credit card.  It hadn’t been paid in two months.  The balance was (from memory) $780.

For gasoline.

SWWNBN had been paying the minimum balance and juggling the payments so it looked like the Titanic was doing swell, thank you very much, until the alarm went up and the crew jumped ship.

The movies The Sixth Sense and Titanic are about the same thing:  icy dead people.

The show of horrors went on as I went through the stack and started sorting them into piles:

  • Paid and up to date (one account, the mortgage was in this stack).
  • Only one or two months late.
  • Late and building a ludicrous balance.
  • Company threatening to send people named Vito and Chico to break my legs.

I then went to my computer and opened Excel®.  I started making a spreadsheet.  The bills were enormous.  In order to not have to “donate” a kidney to someone from the United Arab Emirates, my one option was to take an immediate loan against my 401K.

The next 24 months of my life were an exercise in extreme budget management.  Every single expense was an exercise in nearly zero choices:  every cent had a home before my company direct-deposited it into my account.  How close was I budgeting things?  By the time I was through with a five-dollar bill, Abe was clean-shaven.

My pay had become exactly coupled to my expenses.

Did you hear about that movie role Nic Cage turned down?  Neither did he.

When people think of efficiency, they describe, for instance, a manufacturing facility where all of the equipment is used at maximum capacity, all the time.  Whatever is being made flows from one process to the next and there’s no lag.  All of the processes are coupled.  There is no slack in the system.

This is, of course, a recipe for disaster.

Just like my income being exactly tied to the seemingly endless stack of bills that I had to pay, that kind of factory would bring nothing but chaos.  Whenever any part of it had to slow down or stop unless there was a place to put the “in progress” work, the entire factory would have to shut down or Lucy would have to eat a lot more chocolates.

My life was just like that factory.  If the dollar didn’t come in, I couldn’t pay my bills.  If I had been out of work for even a few months, I would have been bankrupt.  At least if I was bankrupt in summer, I might get some prime real estate in the stormwater culvert.

The example factory isn’t something I’ve made up.  If you look at the outages of natural gas and electricity during the February storm, you’ll see a system where all of the excess capacity had been used.  In colder climates, the systems are built for the cold.  In Texas?

Not so much.  The excess capacity for electrical generation (in some cases) was down for maintenance as pointed out by Nick Flandrey (his website) in the comments section here.

And it would be difficult to convince a business executive to build a lot of excess capacity for the coldest winter storm to hit Texas in over 120 years.  If there’s excess capacity, that executive will try to figure out a way to use it.  His career and BMW® payments require it, although I still feel sorry for that poor German that installs turn signals on BMWs™.

Excess isn’t tolerated – it’s not efficient.  Not a lot of polar bears use sunblock.

But don’t worry about teddy bears.  They’re already stuffed.

But in resilient systems, the excess isn’t just tolerated – it’s required.  There is a conscious decoupling from one operation to the next.  These are systems that are built to be reliable.  Part of our jobs as adults is to scan the horizon as hard as Joe Biden works when he tries to form a complete sentence to see where those breakdowns might occur.

Decoupling is required for many things – the very idea of prepping, for instance, is a conscious act to decouple from a fragile, efficient system.  Building up excess capacity (food, ammo, water purification, heat, shelter) is that very act of creating slack.  It’s building up space between your car and the idiot in front of you in case they hit the brakes on a wet road and you rear-end them and realize you’re underinsured and then they complain about neck pains and then say just kidding and this just got far too specific.

So, back to me, decades ago, sitting in a chair at a dining room table staring at a pile of bills.  Knowing that a truck had pulled into my life and as the bed went up, it had covered me up so deep that only a farmer could pull me out, since he knew that I wouldn’t make the soil richer.

And I dug out of debt, bit by bit, bill by bill.  When I retired a bill was a time of great joy.  And, the first one I paid off was that gasoline credit card that had been at the top of the stack.  Each time I turned a balance to zero?

Why did Angela Merkel cross the road?  Because she wanted to go that way and the pedestrian crossing sign indicated it was safe to do so.

I smiled.  I had decoupled a bit from my debt.  It took six years to get out, and four of those I was married to The Mrs.  I still recall paying a final bill on my final credit card on a crisp January morning.  I had no debt, not even car debt at that point.  Heck, I even paid the exorcist so my house wouldn’t be repossessed.

In my case, decoupling my bills from my paycheck was one of the greatest days of my life – knowing that, regardless of what happened next week was safe.  Then that savings stretched out to a month.  Then six months.  Then a year.

Decoupling gives you time and space, often those things in an emergency that you can’t buy with any amount of money.  Remember the Great Toilet Paper Shortage of 2020?  Sure it was rough, but that’s just how Americans roll.

But one of the biggest lessons is, according to Henny Youngman:

“Why are divorces expensive?  They’re worth it.”

Watch This, Because You Need A Good Laugh

Good news, everyone!  Bombs and Bants is back on a regular-ish schedule.  So, more to come.  I must say, we’re getting funnier and we’ve added another segment on a permanent basis.  So, this might be one show where you listen for the commercials, especially where The Boy does his best Elon Musk imitation.

I had promised that I’d post a link when The Boy got Bombs and Bants up on other formats, and here it is (Bombs And Bants).

 

The Left’s War On Truth

“I’ve heard the truth, Mulder. Now what I want are the answers.” – The X-Files

Wow.  It’s like some of these might be made up.

The first enemy of the Left isn’t the Right.

The first enemy of the Left is the Truth.

The examples go back through history, starting with the Leftist takeover in France after the French Revolution.  In order to completely cut ties with the past, the Left even changed:

  • The names of the months: the Revolutionaries changed all of them, though they kept 12 months.  The coolest name was Therimidor which was, roughly, July.  I’ll give them that one:  Thermidor sounds like a place you keep wine.  I don’t know much about wine, but I do know you have to keep it hot.
  • Weeks went from 7 days to 10 days. Why?  Metric weeks!  They even had special names for the day, but they were all in French and looked like they might cause inadvertent strangulation if I tried to pronounce them.
  • The day went to ten hours. Each metric hour had 100 metric minutes.  Take that, Babylonians!
  • The units of measure. All standards of mass, energy, temperature, and length had to be changed.  Why do I call the metric system communist?  Because it started with the commies.  Did Stalin know how tall he was in feet and inches?  Nope, he was all metric, comrade.

Truth is the enemy of the Left, and the idea was (and is) to destroy history.  This is the reason the statues have to come down in city after city – they represent a Truth that the Left can’t control.  Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves?  His statue has to go.  He didn’t do enough.

Abe doesn’t go to plays anymore.  That last one blew his mind.

This Leftist hatred of the Truth might explain two stories that are recently in the news.

The first one is the reaction of the United States military versus Tucker Carlson.  Tucker Carlson:  Is he a legitimate military target, perhaps more dangerous than Russia?  More dangerous than China?

Well, no.

Mr. Carlson made a 10-minute segment where he criticized the President * for changing the military for political reasons.  The changes?  Most were tied to the feminization of the military.

Carlson made the point that the military’s job is winning wars.  Having pregnant female pilots probably (in Carlson’s estimation) didn’t make sense after President * made a comment about “maternity flight suits” in his address.

I hear this pilot’s husband complained that she worked too hard.  “Well, somebody’s gotta fetus.”

The response, from military personnel, in uniform consisted of a Marine sergeant who said, “. . . those decisions were made by medical professionals, by commanders, and our civilian leadership . . . .” and followed up with, “ . . . let’s remember that those opinions were made by an individual that has never served a day in his life . . . .”

I’m wondering what would have happened to a Marine in uniform attacking someone on the Left on social media?  Oh, wait, Marine sergeant Gary Stein was kicked out with an “other than honorable” discharge for criticizing Obama.  Sure – Tucker Carlson isn’t the Commander-In-Chief, but this is a political attack while in uniform.

John Kirby, Pentagon Press Secretary:  “(The United States Armed Forces) . . . won’t take advice from a talk show host or the Chinese military.”

But would the United States Armed Forces take advice from the Marines?

I hope I don’t give her low elf esteem.

In 2015, the Marines did a $35,000,000 (that’s a lot of crayons) study about integrating women into combat groups.  A pretty decent summary is here on the Marine Corps Times (LINK).  I’ll publish a few snippets from the article that highlight findings of the study (All bullet points are direct quotes from the Marine Corps Times):

  • All-male squads and teams outperformed those that included women on 69 percent of the 134 ground combat tasks evaluated.
  • All-male teams were outperformed by mixed-gender teams on two tasks: accuracy in firing the 50-caliber machine gun in traditional rifleman units and the same skill in provisional units. Researchers did not know why gender-mixed teams did better on these skills, but said the advantage did not persist when the teams continued on to movement-under-load exercises.
  • All-male squads in every infantry job were faster than mixed-gender squads in each tactical movement evaluated. The differences between the teams were most pronounced in crew-served weapons teams. Those teams had to carry weapons and ammunition in addition to their individual combat loads.
  • Male-only rifleman squads were more accurate than gender-integrated counterparts on each individual weapons system, including the M4 carbine, the M27 infantry automatic rifle and the M203 grenade launcher.
  • Male Marines with no formal infantry training outperformed infantry-trained women on each weapons system, at levels ranging from 11 to 16 percentage points.

Shockingly, women are different than men, the study found (All bullet points are direct quotes from the Marine Corps Times):

  • In anaerobic power and capacity, female Marines averaged 15 percent lower levels than their male counterparts. In anaerobic power performance, the top 25 percent of female performers and the bottom 25 percent of male performers overlapped.
  • In aerobic capacity, female Marines demonstrated levels 10 percent lower on average than male Marines.
  • Over the course of the assessment, musculoskeletal injury rates totaled 40.5 percent for women, more than double the 18.8 percent rate for men.

The Marines declare war on Tucker Carlson?

To the Left, Tucker Carlson is evil incarnate – Tucker is questioning one of the Sacred Points of Liberalism – Reality Is What We Say It Is.  That cannot go unpunished.  Personally, I know one former Air Force officer who is female who probably could have done any specialty she wanted to in the Air Force.  She is so far off the charts by multiple standard deviations on intellect and physical ability so as to be not comparable to average in any way.

She has contributed more to the national defense than I ever will – and she’s still doing it.  But the outliers don’t prove the average.

Women can serve, and can serve meaningfully, but they have physical limitations so significant that the Marines in 2015 said that combat infantry wasn’t an option if your goal was killing people and blowing up things.  An average college varsity swimmer can beat every woman’s swimming record – world record.  The woman’s record for deadlifting is 683 pounds – that’s quite a lot.  The men’s record?  1,104.5 pounds, nearly double.

Who says guns aren’t sexy?

No, we’re not deadlifting our opponents to beat them in combat, but strength, speed, and quickness mean something to the Marines or else P.T. would consist of couch time and nachos for lunch.  I’d think physical fitness mattered for people engaged in combat.

The Marine study agreed:  the top 25% of women overlapped with the bottom 25% of men in physical ability.  Also, in sheer competence, the all-male Marines clearly won 70% of all combat exercises.  Though I can’t find the quote, I do recall reading that several female participants in the study were quoted as being of the opinion that females shouldn’t be in combat after seeing the results.

What’s most frightening to me is that the military has come together to attack Carlson.  For the military to attack a civilian in the news media over an opinion that is political in nature is unsupportable.  It’s the next step to the United States Military becoming involved in domestic politics.  Oh, wait, there are troops in the Capitol and permanent fencing going up to keep citizens out?  Nevermind.

Ooops.  Looks like someone reads Twitter®?

The second news item might not originally seem related, but I assure you it is.  The last week has seen the growth of a new orientation:  Super Straight.

Super Straight has its origin in transgender ideology.  You see, if you are a male that doesn’t want to date a “trans woman” the trans community would call you a “transphobe” because, in their world, “trans women are women.”

Well, Super Straight was an amazing troll of this philosophy.  It was actually the brainchild of a 16-year-old on TikToc®.  He was lamenting that he would be called a “transphobe” for not liking “trans girls” so he came out . . . as Super Straight.  That meant that he was only attracted to women who were born as women.

The group noted they felt being called “cis-male” or “cis-female” was hate speech.  Orange and black are the SuperStraight colors.

In 2021 the idea that a biological male might want to only date biological females is being sold to kids as odd.  But even kids can see this is nonsense.  That’s why they’re revolting.  They were using the same language that the Left uses back at them, “Why can’t you stop attacking me for this?  I was born this way.”

And the Left must stop that – the idea that “normal” can defend itself is not acceptable.

The Left has to portray themselves as the undisputed victim class.  They are the ones that are horribly abused.  They are the ones that are deserving of pity because society oppresses them.  The idea that another group might take this from them?

Worse than death.  The Left agrees.

Remember,  trains is hard job.

So, the plug was pulled on the Reddit® forum r/SuperStraight after just over a week – despite the fact that over 25,000 people had joined it that quickly.  Or was it because that many people joined it that quickly?

Ironically, it wasn’t long before SuperLesbians started showing up.  They were creeped out by transwomen wanting to date them and calling them transphobes if they said no.  Also?  SuperGays showed up.  They didn’t want to date transmen.  It was a strange, weird, and amazingly polite group of people who didn’t want to be forced to date people who are (let’s be clear) more than a little creepy.

Is it a crime to notice?

I don’t dislike trans people – I don’t know any of them.  There just aren’t that many in the world.  There might be 0.1% to 0.3% based on a 2014 study.  Many of them have other underlying psychological issues:  their suicide rate is 20 times their peer group after surgery.  Based on everything I’ve read, they are a group that deserves sympathy and psychological help.

The trans movement is probably the biggest finger in the eye of Truth that the Left has pushed so far.  The idea that a 10-year-old kid can make decisions that would lead to them being put on very potent hormones with far-reaching implications to block puberty is frightening.

But the Left will support that with everything they have:  when Rand Paul questioned Dr. Levine about giving kids powerful hormones and conducting surgery on them during confirmation hearings, all Dr. Levine would say is, “Transgender medicine is a very complex and nuanced field with robust research and standards of care . . . .”

See, even the sign language interpreter isn’t buying it.

So, yes.  Levine supports it.  The Left agrees.  And mainstream news was, unsurprisingly ready to complain that Rand Paul didn’t understand medicine.  Dr. Rand Paul, M.D.

It erases our past.  It erases our norms.  It erases the current structure of society.  This is the same exact playbook as the military.  The military ceases to be about protecting the country, it becomes an arm of the political Left, erasing hundreds of years of tradition and purpose.

You realize this is next, right?

That’s why the SuperStraight movement made me smile.  It was founded by kids who see the lie.  They know they are being lied to.  They know the people who are lying, know they are telling lies.  This is the best element of hope:  Truth matters.

The Truth will win.

The Key To A Great Job? The Right Mixture Of Important And Urgent.

“Daniel Dravot, Esquire. Well, he became king of Kafiristan, with a crown on his head and that’s all there is to tell. I’ll be on my way now sir, I’ve got urgent business in the south, I have to meet a man in Marwar Junction.” – The Man Who Would Be King

Well, maybe not this doctor.

I have a friend that I’ll call “Joe”.  Mainly I’ll call him “Joe” because that’s his name.  Since there are estimated to be 1,782,432 people in the United States named “Joseph” that’s really not blowing his cover, except to (I think) two readers.  And, no, his wife’s name isn’t Mary.

Joe is fantastically smart.  He has an intelligence that makes correlation leaps that catch most people by surprise.  In one instance he pointed out a basic physics flaw that showed a billion-dollar business deal was destined to fail.  The company did the deal anyway.  Physics won – physics always wins.

Joe had been right.  You’d think that being right about a fatal flaw in a billion-dollar business would be rewarded, that Joe would be sought after for advice.

If you think that, you’ve never worked in the corporate world.  Being right about something like that means that an executive was wrong.  Executives never like to have people around them that remind them of when they turned $1,000,000,000 into $100,000,000.

There are times it doesn’t pay to be smarter than the boss.

My boss caught me taking NSFW selfies.  They’re serious about mask-wearing.

Besides being right when an executive was wrong, one problem that Joe had is that he had a fairly high capacity to do work.   Normally that would be a good thing, but most work was routine for Joe.  When he and I were working as peers, he would often do no work at all for days on end.

None.  He’d goof off all day, or just play and experiment.  He’d break the software in his computer just to see if he could fix it.

Then, in a furious burst of energy (often before a deadline) he’d work.  Sometimes, the work would last through multiple 20 hour days.

“Joe, you realize that you could have done that work last week when you were trying to get unauthorized access to the company’s main software server and setting up an unsanctioned private e-mail just for the group.  Why didn’t you?” I asked.

“That would be boring,” Joe responded, “so I waited until I didn’t think I’d be able to do the work on time and that I’d miss the deadline.  Then it got interesting.”

I got pulled over while going to work with my loom in the front seat.  The cop said I was weaving all over the road.

In truth, I’d seen some of the same characteristics of creative procrastination in me, so I immediately understood what Joe was saying.  The work itself was rather routine, so the way to bring challenge was to wait until the real risk of losing my job led to peak production.  I had a mortgage and Joe didn’t, so I didn’t fly nearly as close to the flame.

But that’s not the only kind of job there is out there.

On the other end of the spectrum is a job that’s chaos.  Everything is an emergency.  Everything is urgent.

Priorities keep shifting on a daily basis – sometimes on an hourly basis.  It feels like there’s no end to the work, and the pressure is unrelenting.  There are long lists of things that have to be done – now.  The previous day’s plan gets thrown into the trash due to the events of today.

Well, that’s not a job that’s boring.

Don’t worry – they got jobs with Elon Musk, so they could go to otter space.

Lose a day on a job like that, and it feels like the business might implode.  I once told The Mrs., “I can do any job for two years.”  I had that particular chaotic job for 32 months.  32 months really was 8 months too long – there are only so many 70 hour weeks that I could do consecutively and not become as mentally vacant as Joe Biden circa 2021.

An example from my time in ChaosCorp®:  on Sunday around noon when I just started to feel normal, I’d realize that tomorrow was Monday, and I’d have to go back to work.  Goodbye feeling normal.  I knew there would be some fresh crisis on Monday, I just didn’t know what it would be this week.

This was a time when life was too interesting.

Perhaps, though, there was another way?

Going into my Wayback® Machine, I actually created a picture that I can use to illustrate this.  This is from a post back in 2018 (Franklin, Planners, The Terminator, My Unlikely But Real Link With President Eisenhower, Star Wars, and Kanban):

Gotta love Microsoft® Paint™, making a $500 computer just as effective as a box of Crayons® and a sheet of construction paper (plus a sticker).

In this particular graph, one axis shows how important a task is, and the other how urgent.  We’ll skip the unimportant stuff, and only focus on the two boxes on the right side of the graph:

Important and Urgent, and Important and Not-Urgent.

The job I described above where everything was chaos?  Almost all of our work was Important and Urgent.  It’s the kind of work that causes people to get ulcers, gray hair, a facial tic, and start muttering to themselves when they’re hanging out by the coffee machine.

That was me for thirty months.

The “boring” first job I described?  That was one where almost all of our work was Important and Not Urgent.  This was reasonable work that was really important, but we had sensible timelines.  Being generally Type-A personalities, there wasn’t enough pressure for Joe (and me), so we had to invent it ourselves.

Recently, though, I’ve come on a revelation:  the optimum amount of work types (for me) is probably about 80% Important and Not Urgent and 20% Important and Urgent.

Pareto would be proud of that blend.

I tried to put my dog on a vegan diet, but we ran out of vegans.

The nice thing about Important and Urgent work is that it gets me going.  Rather than get to work and plan about the plan I need to schedule to put the Important and Not Urgent work together, Important and Urgent work has to be done.  Now.  It has immediacy.  It gets me going.  Once I get momentum and a pace going, well, it’s easy to keep it going.

Then I get the Important and Not Urgent work done.

The great thing about a day with a good mixture of work like that is that, at the end, my productivity is nearly maximum.  As I get in the car to go home, I realize that, yeah, I really did give it all at work, and it felt pretty good.

But writing these posts?  That’s Important and Not Urgent.  Until I wait to 11PM to get started on writing, like I did tonight.

Then writing becomes Important and Urgent.

Joe would be proud.

Hey, look, the Sun is coming up . . . .

Money Is A Meme

“The Mandela Effect has been an Internet meme for almost a decade. It’s always been called that.” – The X-Files

Where does the Federal Reserve keep inflation?  In debasement.

What is a meme?  In general, a meme is like a bit of cultural information.  It’s an idea that spreads virally.  What are some examples?

  • “All men are created equal.” It’s an idea that no one believes in literally, because it’s not true.  But it does carry the idea that we should all have the same rights, citizen and elected official alike.  Even though we know that’s not true, either.
  • “Taco Tuesday.”
  • “One man, one vote.” Again, another idea that is so deeply bored itself into most minds that we don’t even question if there are some people that shouldn’t
  • “Never deduct a loss carryforward in a tax year when the alternative minimum tax applies.” Well, everyone knows that, right?
  • “Violence never solves anything.” Ahh, World War II was won with Nerf® rifles?

The list makes it quite clear:  memes don’t have to be true to spread and no one should ever take tax advice from me.  What memes do have to be is simple and compelling.  This is why this particular meme was so popular back in 2014:

So that’s what an elected lord and chief of state in several Italian city-states, notably Venice and Genoa looks like!

Doge was and is funny.  It’s simple.  It’s stupid.  Almost anyone gets it.  The idea stays with you, and, in 2014 Doge was the rage.  Sure, in 2020 there were plenty of memes about quarantine, but those were all inside jokes.

Back to 2014:  Bitcoin was still in the early stage, and numerous people used the same idea to come up with a huge variety of alternative crypto offerings, most of which are worth zero now.  One alternative was the Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency based on the Doge meme.  It was done as a joke.  Recently, though, Dogecoin spiked up in value.  The current market value of all existing Dogecoin?

Over $7 billion.  I’m not making that up.  Dogecoin, a crypto based on a joke, is worth more than Uzbekistan.  It had a huge jump recently.  Why?  Elon Musk made a joke about it.

Elon is like Superman® – but every Monday evening he trades Bitcoin.  That’s his crypto-night.

So, that’s one data point.  Here’s another.  This is from the Wall Street Journal®:

Michael Levy was scrolling Twitter last September when he noticed someone mention something that he wanted to know more about. What is NBA Top Shot? He wondered.

This platform to buy, sell and collect officially licensed video highlights was months from becoming a market that would captivate and mystify basketball fans, cryptocurrency enthusiasts, sneakerheads, pandemic day traders and thousands of people stuck at home. But it wasn’t long before Levy texted his friends: “This could be big.”

He [Levy] was so convinced that he decided to spend $175,000 over the next six months on digital trading cards. They are now worth $20 million.  Levy is one of the biggest winners of a manic new market that true believers say is the future of collecting and skeptics call a slightly absurd form of speculation.

That second data point was clear to me.  Unless Levy is money laundering for the mob, there is only one logical conclusion:   Money is a meme.  There is no other logical reason for a video clip to be worth $20 million unless it shows Jesus and Jimmy Hoffa riding the Ark of the Covenant.

I had been playing with the idea that money is a meme recently.  Historically gold and silver were the currencies of choice, possibly because when the Hittites traded with the Aztecs there weren’t enough computer servers to validate a blockchain, and the Hittites weren’t big fans of Michael Jordan, so they couldn’t trade NBA® clips, either.

Little known fact:  the Aztecs worshiped a salted baked bread god called Pretzalcoatl.

Nope.  They had to settle for the original meme, which is a little bit heavier than the data.

It was a lot, lot later that the Romans invented their own particular meme:  they took the silver out of their money and started making it out of Chinesium – you know, that mystery metal you get with cheap stuff from China?  To substitute for making crappy coins, they had to make a lot of coins, thus creating the meme of inflation.

Why I’m concerned about inflation is this:  collectively, we as a nation believe inflation into existence just like a cartoon version of Santa Claus.  Right now, money is sitting in huge pots everywhere.  As soon as people start believing in inflation?

They’ll buy stuff.  Any stuff.  They’ll want to turn their cheap money into something that isn’t losing value day after day and it will flow like quicksilver through the economy.  One story from Weimar Germany during their inflation mentioned a person who bought bedpans.

Why bedpans?  It was better than hanging on to the German Mark.  At least it was worth something.

Apple® is doing a great job to help the economy – they’ve already adjusted their prices for the next 15 years of inflation.

Inflation isn’t a big thing, until it is, until we collectively believe it’s a problem – as soon as the meme takes hold?

Wow.  Much moneys.  Much smalle.  Sad.

Disclaimer:  John Wilder is an Internet humorist who is much better at writing dank memes than predicting the economy and is not a registered financial advisor.  Be responsible for your choices.      

Podcasts . . . Catching Up

Good news, everyone!  Bombs and Bants is not dead, though we did take a few weeks off while The Mrs. and I fended off Ebola.  The better news is that I got a little goofed up and didn’t post links to the podcast a week or two when I should have so there are extra episodes!

Here they are.  As soon as The Boy sends me information, I’ll put up links to Bombs and Bants – we’re on the Apple Podcast thingy and Bitchute in addition to YouTube.

I think we’re getting better most weeks.  The Mrs. handles all the production, and is really getting the hang of it.  So, enjoy!

Edit:

(Here is the Solzhenitsyn Harvard Commencement Address mentioned in the vidya and comments)

I drink, I read, and I make bad puns.  What can I say?

 

Civil War 2.0: Censorship And A Change In Narrative

“Look what I did to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple of bullets.” – The Dark Knight

Perfect name for a clock store in 2021?  Uncertain Times.

  1. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
  2. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
  3. Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
  4. Open War.

February was a silent month as far as violence goes.  Very cold weather, combined with a change in Leftist strategy (see below) calmed the situation.  As such, I’m backing down for this month to “just” a 9 out of 10.  That’s still two minutes to midnight.

As I said last month, the pressure will continue.

I currently put the total at (this is my best approximation, since no one tracks the death toll from rebellion-related violence) holding at 650 out of the 1,000 required for the international civil war definition.

As close as we are to the precipice of war, be careful.  Things could change at any minute.  Avoid crowds.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Slowing The Boil? – Violence And Censorship Update – Changing The Narrative:  Citizen Vs. Terrorist – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The Leadership Vacuum – Links

Front Matter

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

Slowing The Boil?

So people *gasp* are able to talk to each other without the New York Times fact checking?  Horrible!  (note, most memes this issue are “as found” on the ‘net)

The smart move for the Left is to turn down the temperature, politically speaking.  In general, I think they’ll take the opportunity.  Turning down the temperature means:

  • Keeping the leash on Antifa® and BLM©. That is ongoing.  BLM™ and Antifa© served their purpose – they put pressure on Trump.  Already, they’re being set loose as “thanks” for their service.
  • Putting fear into the general public about the Right. This explains the hyperventilating overreaction to the unscheduled January 6 field trip to Capitol Hill.  They’ll use this to drive public opinion, and, after a few show trials, stop.
  • No real action on a gun control bill this session. I think the Left, even as blinded by ideology as they are, realizes that this isn’t an issue that has any acceptable compromise in the minds of 80,000,000 people.  “Not one step back, not one gun turned in” is the default position.
  • For the time being, just work on the mundane blocking and tackling of basic government, all while changing out personnel that don’t meet Leftist ideological principles.

If your pistol isn’t working, check the manual under “trouble shooting”.

One real wildcard is the coming trial of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd.  There is a significant chance that Chauvin walks away from the trial a free man – his department trained him (and every other officer) to use exactly the techniques he employed.  George Floyd was going to die of a drug overdose.  These will be compelling facts to any fairly selected jury with a competent and fair judge.

Of course, it’s 2021.  Fair trials and an impartial justice system just might be a thing of the past.

Violence And Censorship Update

The biggest story in censorship this month is the canceling of Dr. Seuss.  It’s ironic because Ted Geisel (the real name of Dr. Seuss) was pretty Leftist.  This proves again that, in time, every historical figure is eventually condemned because they don’t meet the needs of the new Left.

How is weed the same as the Koran?  Burning either will get you stoned.

Next:

Amazon as late as 2012 fought against banning any book.  That was then, this is now (LINK, account required, H/T to Vox Day, LINK):

Conservatives are sounding the alarm about an updated Amazon policy that bans books the ubiquitous billion-dollar company deems offensive or includes so-called “hate speech.”

Amazon has ramped up its censorship on conservative views in recent weeks. For example, a popular documentary on U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was banned from their streaming service this past week. Before that move, the company deplatformed conservative Ryan Anderson’s book critical of gender theory, “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Movement.”

So, during Black History Month, they banned a documentary about the second Black Supreme Court Justice because . . . on the Right?  And also ban a bestselling book from a major publisher that just has a different opinion than 0.3%-0.6% of the population?

Next:

The phrase “Blue Anon”, a term based on “Q Anon” was at the site Urban Dictionary™.  Anyone can submit a word, and the rules are really, really open.  But the phrase “Blue Anon” apparently rustled their jimmies, since it is banned.  Here’s a link to the story from ZeroHedge® (LINK) where they show that Google® is censoring searches for Blue Anon.

Oh, and for added irony, here’s a quote from the founder of Urban Dictionary©, Aaron Peckham:

Free speech and the Internet go hand in hand, because online, anyone with a computer can be heard. The Internet equalizes people like that — no matter how much money you have, or how old you are, you can connect with a huge number of people. And it’s getting easier as computers become cheaper and easier to use.

Urban Dictionary is one of a huge number of sites where people can talk and think about the world. It’s a place for people to freely express themselves and to write about their lives through the definitions they post. Everyone’s a wannabe sociologist, and you can see that come out in Urban Dictionary. It’s also a way to watch our language evolve and to see what’s hot in pop culture.

Freedom of speech?  Only for certain people.

Changing The Narrative:  Citizen Vs. Terrorist

Trump wanted the military to secure the border from an invasion of illegal aliens.  The Left is using the military to secure the Capitol from American citizens.  Guess who the Left thinks the enemy is?

If you’re reading this, probably you.

What is the difference between an American home and a terrorist training camp?  Don’t ask me, I’m just the drone pilot.

And the Air Force is quick to jump into that spirit, as documented by Academy Watch   (LINK)(h/t Heresolong(LINK)).

Here is a list of things that Air Force Academy students can no longer do:

  • Interest
    • Watching impermissible videos
    • Reading impermissible literature
    • Visiting websites promoting impermissible ideology
    • Membership in an impermissible group
  • Language
    • Making statements sympathizing with impermissible ideologies
    • Making social media posts that mention impermissible causes

What’s impermissible?  Head on over to the link and RTWT.

The idea in play is one from the Clinton era – re-brand the citizens who like freedom as terrorists.  Scare people with stories of militias, and then run the FBI out for a jog to incite a bombing or assassination plot or two with a mentally-challenged member of the group you want to tweak, and, presto, instant public opinion switch.

And this month has been an inflection point in that narrative, and it will be used to get rid of anyone in the armed forces that doesn’t agree with Leftist ideology.  And it will be prohibited to read any other viewpoint.

Updated Civil War II Index

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

Violence:

Up is more violent, and to no one’s surprise, the perception of violence dropped less than I expected in February.  I think the propaganda of “home grown terrorism” was the likely cause.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable.  Instability dropped a bit.  Wonder what warm weather will bring?

Economic:

Interest rates are starting to rise, which caused this to take a big dive this month.  Inflation early warning?

Illegal Aliens:

After a month’s absence, the data is back, but now delayed 60 days.  Must have been the Capitol Riots?  Regardless, as expected, the border is more active.

The Leadership Vacuum

Handy Tip:  If you’re starting a revolution on a budget, use a coup-on.

Very few of the levers of power are in the hands of the Right – I’ve established that before.  Right now is a particularly difficult time for the Right because there is a very real leadership vacuum.

Why?

Because no one trusts career politicians anymore because Trump was the first President in a very long time to fight.

Did he accomplish as much as he promised?  Well, no.  The levers of government are rusty in the hands of someone on the Right.  In the hands of someone on the Left, however, the Executive Orders were flashing by so fast that President* Biden had no idea what he was signing, and even admitted that he was confused while signing them.

Trump did fight.  And Trump did make some temporary gains, most of which will be erased in the first six months or so.  But his biggest legacy was that he was a leader.  From watching him, I think Trump loved the moments when people were attacking him more than any other time.  Trump fed upon the controversy.

Now, though, he’s largely silent.  The Right doesn’t appear to have anyone else in the wings, ready to lead.  Trump will be a tough act to follow.  Until that time?

We wait.

LINKS

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

From Ricky:

“With no further need to rally Left voters with scary Boogaloo profile stories, the entire tenor of civil war coverage has dramatically changed…”

 

With Biden Inaugurated, MSM Narrative Control Engaged:

The Alt-Right Civil War

https://zogbyanalytics.com/news/997-the-zogby-poll-will-the-us-have-another-civil-war

https://www.oregonlive.com/history/2021/01/is-america-on-the-brink-of-civil-conflict-biden-calls-for-unity-but-some-worry-current-moment-recalls-run-up-to-civil-war.html

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/02/18/how-civil-wars-start/

https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-us-news-race-and-ethnicity-conspiracy-theories-philanthropy-f8f793b94b0dd7e8ec62957dcbeb53d8

https://www.facingsouth.org/2021/02/far-right-accelerationists-hope-spark-next-us-civil-war

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2021/02/08/a-strange-game-part-two/

The Republican Civil War

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/03/01/trump-won-republican-civil-war-cpac-showcased-unity-column/6866748002/

https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/Op-Ed/2021/03/04/Jonah-Goldberg-CPAC-shows-there-s-no-Republican-civil-war/stories/202103040047

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/in-americas-uncivil-war-republicans-are-the-aggressors/

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/anti-trump-republicans-are-facing-punishment-back-home-don-t-n1256292

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56240856

The Black Civil War

https://www.thearticle.com/is-this-the-last-battle-of-the-american-civil-war

https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2021/01/american-civil-war

https://www.salon.com/2021/02/09/were-fighting-the-second-american-civil-war_partner/

https://www.recorder.com/my-turn-davis-civil-war-38265615

https://hbr.org/2021/03/the-u-s-needs-a-third-reconstruction-and-business-should-lead-it

https://lasvegassun.com/news/2021/mar/05/show-us-the-tubmans/

The American Civil War

https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/image%20%2814%29_0.png?itok=zqOf_YKB

A Wolfe, Stab Wounds, Dolphins, And Snot

“I’m Winston Wolfe.  I solve problems.” – Pulp Fiction

What’s the difference between a knife juggler and a multiple stab wound victim?  Practice.

I first started reading Claire Wolfe back around the turn of this century in Backwoods Home Magazine.  I have several of her books and have enjoyed them greatly.  Claire is one of the most wonderful of wordsmiths about freedom, and she has a great post up (LINK) now.  The title says it all:  “Freedom Is Dying:  Be Of Good Cheer.”

Of course, regular readers know that I couldn’t agree more.

Claire has a great story that’s contained in the post.  A person named “Lox” came into Claire’s Internet freedom group, and the group tried to help him to freedom:

But “poor” Lox sucked up everything we had to offer, then spat it back out. None of it applied to him. He told us a thousand reasons why all our ideas and experiences were worthless. We were blind and insensitive to the depths of his plight. Nobody had ever been as unfortunate as he. Nobody had ever been as helpless as he. No one had ever been as depressed, as oppressed, as mistreated, as ugly, as inept, as trapped, as misery-laden as he.

Of course, there’s more, and Lox shows himself to be even worse than what’s written above.  Seriously.  I’ll let you read the rest over at her place, because if you’re not going to her place regularly, you should.

Genghis Khan was a ruthless baby.  Why, I remember when he took his first steppe . . .

I’d like to focus for this post on what Claire wrote about Lox in the quote above.

When I was younger (and not yet a wiser Wilder) I can recall running into more than one person like Lox.  The names were different.  The situations were different.  But the behavior was always exactly the same, so I will collectively name them Blandy Blanderson:

  • Blandy has a problem. It is the worst problem of anyone ever.
  • I try to help, either though giving advice, or giving them assistance. I’ve moved furniture on a Sunday evening when Blandy was being kicked out of an apartment, I’ve waxed dolphin armpits (flipper pits?), and I’ve even lent Blandy money so that the Auckland Auk Ark Cartel wouldn’t break his leg.
  • Even if the initial problem is solved, Blandy will then have another problem.
  • I try to help. The next problem is solved.  I’m never going to do dentistry on a dolphin again, let me tell you.
  • Blandy then comes up with problem number three.
  • I decide that Caller I.D. is worth every penny.

If I Photoshopped® myself a dentistry license, would that a doctored image?

I had finally figured out that Blandy didn’t want the problem to be solved.   And I realized that there would always be a problem.  Blandy was in love with the problem.

This was new to me.  I have always had a sunny disposition – one of my Professors in college always said, “Keep smiling, John.”  That’s why it took me so long to understand Blandy.  Why would anyone want to be sad?

I couldn’t understand it, so I observed it.

I noticed that whenever I helped Blandy, especially if my help solved the “problem of the day”, Blandy would never, ever say “Thank you.”  Why would you thank someone who took away the problem you secretly loved?

I can only speculate the causes of Blandy’s behavior:

  • If Blandy could blame someone else, then they weren’t responsible for their situation. Someone or something else was responsible.  They could live their life blaming others.
  • How could Blandy get attention? Having problems got people to pay attention.
  • By having problems, Blandy could get sympathy from others. Without problems, what would start the sympathy flowing from others?

I’m sure that after I stopped helping, I became yet another one of the long list of Blandy’s problems.  “Oh, Wilder, he’s so lucky and fortunate, but he never helps anyone else.”

Dracula returned a mirror to the local Wal-Mart®.  When they asked him why, he said, “I can’t see my self using it.”

In one sense, Blandy’s behavior is vampirism.  Blandy takes a personal tragedy and exploits it so he can get fun and prizes and emotion from others.  The bonus for people playing along at home is that Blandy can also shield a fragile psyche from the consequences of his actions.

But wait, don’t people have real problems?  Don’t people really need help sometimes?

Certainly.

I recall one time calling up a friend and saying only, “Bar.  Now.”  It was noon.  It was an awful day.  He picked me up in 20 minutes, and he got me home safely later that night, even though it took more than a little while to work myself out of the problem.

There are times that people have streaks of bad luck.  I can recall once when I was on such a streak.  I called my friends for help.  They did.  But I noticed that the longer I had my problem, the less one particular friend was interested in talking about it.

That’s when I realized:  by staying negative on a topic and not owning it and putting it behind me, I was starting to turn into Blandy.  That was my signal that it was time to put the problem behind me and stop complaining.

Even Liberals aren’t safe you see; the Left always eats itself, yippee!

Perhaps the biggest takeaway in learning to deal with my problems is that I own my attitude – no one else does.  If something bad happens, well, I could spend every moment of my life being mad at the situation.  Does the situation care?

No.

Heck, I could spend every moment swimming in the salty warm viscous mucus of self-pity.  If I do that, all I get is sticky and become the Michael Phelps of victimhood mucus swimming.  Maybe Coca-Cola® would sponsor me?

Good things and bad things will happen to me.  If my happiness is dependent upon only good things happening to me?  I’ll be forever disappointed because bad things happen, too.  Tires go flat.  Plates break.  The Yellowstone volcano erupts.

Know the difference between snot and broccoli?  A five-year-old won’t eat broccoli.

The Truth as I’ve seen it so far:  if I’m happy on my bad days, I’m going to be ecstatic on my good days.

Do I see many difficulties in the years ahead?  Certainly.  Does sitting around worrying about them make them go away?  Does it make them better?

Nope.

The Blandy Blandersons of this world waltz through it surrounded by a cloud of misery.

I think I’ll skip that.

It’s much more fun being John Wilder.  I’ll echo what Claire says:  “Be of good cheer.”