Toxic Positivity, Because Leftists Say So?

“Dad, you’re, you’re twisting my words! I meant burden in its most positive sense.” – Frasier

In Rambo® 7, Rambo™ fights arthritis.

News stories are like sheep they arrive in flocks as part of a lambush.  One flock of stories this week was about, and I quote, Toxic Positivity.  Just like another bogeyman, Toxic Masculinity, the Left seeks to take something good and turn it into something to be seen as bad.

The basic idea of the stories is this:

  • Positive people make it hard for people to be sad or defeatist.
  • Because people can’t express their sadness or defeat, they feel even sadder and more defeated.
  • Therefore, the people who tried to cheer them up are evil. Oh, wait, the Left doesn’t acknowledge such an old-fashioned concept as evil.  It has to be “toxic.”

Positivity is good.  Is it a universal cure-all?  Absolutely not.  When Ma Wilder died (more than two decades ago), the last thing I wanted was someone to crack a joke or try to make light of the situation.  I was grieving.  I was not interested in anyone putting the “fun” in funeral.

It’s normal to grieve when a parent dies.  But wallowing in that grief for too long doesn’t help anyone.  If I had stayed in that grief?

That’s despair, and despair is evil.  Not toxic.

Evil.  Despair eats into the soul.

Moses was a high-tech prophet – he was the first to use a tablet.

That was my first reaction when I read this story:  whoever is behind it is evil.

Why?

Life is tough, really tough.  People that we love die.  The economy has hit millions directly and is looming over many, many more.

Heck, if I wanted to, I could spend this entire post writing about things that were horrible in 2020 and 2021.  But I’m not going to, because, even when things are pretty tough, almost every person reading this has a life that’s better than 99.99% of every person that has ever lived, even on your worst day.

The four stages of Santa:
1. You believe in Santa.
2. You don’t believe in Santa.
3. You are Santa.
4. You look like Santa.

Objectively, my life has been fantastic, as has the life of The Mrs. and the rest of my family.  Have bad things happened to us?  Sure.  But we don’t dwell on them, because that’s despair.

One thing that’s critical for me when I’m having a bad day is being around someone positive to bring me up and out of my sadness.  It’s critical because if you let it, sadness will turn into self-pity.  And self-pity is a hole with no bottom.

Joe Biden has indicated he wants to put chips in the brains of United States Citizens.  What kinds of chips?  “Well, you know the thing, sour cream and onion, maybe.”

So why are there people preaching against Toxic Positivity?  I can only think of two reasons:

  1. There are a group of people who actively like feeling bad about themselves. As I’ve established before, this group tends to be (but is not exclusively) Leftist.  Positive people are a mirror that they don’t like to see:  a mirror of what kind of person they could be if they weren’t such miserable wretches.
  2. Oops, there’s only the one group.

The alternative to positive people is . . . negative people.

I avoid negative people like I avoid personal hygiene.  Why?  Because every day I live or work around negative people, it feels like my life is slowly being sucked away.  Negative people are emotional vampires.  The sort of defeatism that they spew out is as infectious as Madonna® before her monthly penicillin shot.

I hear mummies are into wrap music.

Negativity can poison a workplace:  it’s the guy at work who is always sure that someone else has it better, that some other group is the favored group, and that whatever raise they get is never enough.  Then one person in their team is recruited – they begin to see that their group are always getting a bad deal, treated unfairly, having to work harder than others.

Strong people can avoid this self-identified victimhood.  However, I’ve seen good people sucked in and become unhappy in a great job, merely because they felt that someone else, somewhere else, had it better than they did.

The biggest weapon against that attitude:  being positive.  That’s why I write so often about it.  I think that 95% of the way I feel on an average day is entirely in my control.  No, it doesn’t apply at a funeral or on other dark days.  But most days?

At my funeral, my friend promised to say, “bargain,” and that means a great deal.

I choose to be happy.  I choose to enjoy my life.  I choose to be positive.  I choose to try to uplift those around me.  Do I acknowledge that times might be rough?  Sure.

But the answer isn’t giving up, and taking our ball home.  The answer is to work harder, get better, and never give up.

Toxic positivity?

Sign me up.

Money In 2021? (Explained With One Bikini)

“Well, Saddam owed us money.” – Arrested Development

What does Superman® dry off with?  A Tow-El.

Money.

What is it?

Really, the truth is money is anything we accept as having value that we can trade for something else.  Cigarettes have been used for money.  Cowrie shells were used in China for money nearly 4,000 years ago.  Booze has often been used for money.

I read an article back in 2013 that bottles of Tide® were being used to trade for drugs in New York City, so you know that there are plenty of insane.  Heck, I hear the Germans are even raising money online through Krautfunding.

Ideally, money has some sort of scarcity attached to it.

Gold has a historic role as money.  You can cut it up into very, very tiny pieces, and you have lots of tiny pieces of gold.  It hasn’t changed – you can melt it back into a single bar again, having lost nothing.  You cut up a dollar bill into very tiny pieces?  You have a pile of gerbil cage fluff.

Gold is nice.  So is silver.

But, like anything, there are problems.

I found a little gold once while prospecting – it was a minor success.

Well, generally always the same problem.  Government.

I’ve mentioned Rome before, because it’s a great illustration of what happens when government designs money.

At the beginning, Roman silver coins were, well, actually silver.  The problem with silver coins is that you can’t make silver show up out of thin air.  Oh, wait, if you’re a government, you can.  The Imperial Romans managed to maintain enough restraint that their silver coins were over 90% silver for a little over 150 years after Empire.

Proving once again I definitely deserve the Nobel Prize™ in Economics for my discovery of Bikininomics©.

After that, the percentage of silver in the coins declined rather quickly.

So did the Roman Empire.

Interestingly, where it took Rome 150 years, it took the United States 142 years for the same thing to happen:  from 1792 (when the Coinage Act was passed) to 1934 (when Roosevelt confiscated United States silver and gold).  History may not repeat, but it sure does rhyme.

Sure, there were silver coins produced after 1934, but silver coins were (largely) discontinued as United States currency in 1965.  (*There were exceptions for dollar and half dollar coins in selected years.  That ended in 1976.)

As soon as the non-silver coins were minted, the silver coins began to disappear from circulation.  Gresham’s Law states the simple fact:  bad money (non-silver coins) drives out good money (silver coins).

But it’s had an impact on people’s thought processes as well:  they have (largely) stopped thinking about gold and silver as money.  Want proof?

Yup.  When Mark Dice offered people either a King Size® Hershey’s™ chocolate bar or a 10 ounce silver bar, everyone chose the candy bar.  As bad money replaced good, people stopped even thinking about silver as money.

The money supply today is fiat money.  I’ve written about that before – it means that our money is entirely made up.  No silver backing, no gold backing, the only backing is the faith of the people who accept it.  Oh, and several thousand nuclear weapons, if you’re talking about the United States dollar.

The next step from that are the cryptocurrencies.

Those are entirely a mathematical concept, though Ricky has noted in comments that this mathematical construct can cost upwards of a million dollars in power a day.  Bitcoin is currently at $33,000.  Four days ago?  $40,257.

Used with permission.

Is Bitcoin a bubble?  Will it go to zero?  Will I go to $500,000?

Honestly, I have no idea.  I would have bet against it going to $40,000.

The scary part of today is just that uncertainty.

  • Gold has (generally) held its value over time, performing far better than the dollar since the Federal Reserve© came into being.
  • Gold hasn’t performed as well as stocks over the same period – creative people added more value than a motionless metal.
  • Stocks are today at a valuation that is (by my reckoning) insane. They can stay that way longer than I can bet against them.
  • Bitcoin? Who can say?  I think its primary role right now is to indicate bubble tops.
  • Bonds? Who wants to buy bonds at nearly zero interest rates?

This is probably one of the more difficult times to invest in my lifetime – risks are very high, but returns don’t seem to have kept up.

First role of 2021?  Don’t talk about 2020.

We seem to be, everywhere I look, near to a breaking point in our systems – economic, political, and social.  Who knows, maybe we’ll be back at cowrie shell money by 2030.

But I think I’d prefer the booze, since I don’t smoke and, well, if you have booze do you really need clean clothes?

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Standing At The Brink

“Treat the cause, not the symptom!” – The Rocky Horror Picture Show

No change this month.  We’ll see what January brings . . .

  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.

We remain in the gray zone between step 9. and step 10.  I will maintain the clock at 2 minutes to midnight.  Last month I indicated that there was a chance to move the clock back if authorities took Leftist violence seriously.

Looks like I was too optimistic.

Previously, I stated that the only thing keeping the clock from ticking to full midnight is the number of deaths.  I put the total at (this is my best approximation, since no one tracks the death toll from rebellion-related violence) 600 out of the 1,000 required for the international civil war definition.

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

In this issue:  Front Matter – Symptom, Not The Cause – Violence And Censorship Update – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Harper’s Ferry 2.0 – 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 post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30 Eastern, free of charge.

Symptom, Not The Cause

The Left has many errors in perception.  Many of these errors are ‘own goals’ – the Left doesn’t know what the Right is thinking because they’ve managed to short-circuit the feedback mechanisms created by the Founding Fathers.  As Sarah Hoyt puts it so eloquently (LINK):

For years I’ve told the left that when they used fraud to win, they’d broken the feedback mechanism.  It didn’t mean their ideas were winning, that people agreed with them, or that they were safe. It was the equivalent of breaking the fire alarm and thinking they were safe from fires.

This is similar to my commentary in this post (Four Boxes: Soap, Jury, Ballot, and Ammo).

If you asked the average Leftist, I think most of them would say that Trump was the cause of the situation that we as a nation find ourselves in.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Trump is a symptom.  Trump is, in many ways, a skilled communicator.  He uses media to bypass gatekeepers and those that would interpret him to speak directly to the people.  Could he have had tens of thousands of people chanting “Build The Wall” or “Lock Her Up” if those people didn’t believe that in the first place?

Of course not.

Trump found the messages that resonated with a very large group of Americans that had been bypassed by both the media and the political process for decades and gave them a voice.  Does he believe in those messages?

I have no idea.  I am not a mind reader.  But Trump became a mirror of a large group of voters to show them that, yes, he heard them.  And, yes, he’d fight for them.  The degree that he actually followed through is debatable.

But back to the voice of the voters:  People wanted to “Build The Wall” not because they hated the people coming across the border, but because borders matter.  If everyone from Japan (for instance) moved to California, you wouldn’t have Californians:  you’d just have more Japan.  Americans, rightly, want to live in America.  They’re not afraid of change, they just want the inevitable changes to be American, and not Japanese (for example).

“Lock Her Up” wasn’t just about Hillary – it was about the groups of politicians that served themselves and the state instead of voters.  Why are the Clintons swimming in hundreds of millions in cash when they came into office as thousandaires?  Why are the Obama family wondering which mansion to stay in each week rather than budgeting for a once a year family vacation?

Corruption.  It wasn’t just Hillary, it was (and is) virtually every politician in Washington.

That’s what Leftists don’t understand – the movement Trump gave a voice to won’t go away regardless of what happens to Trump.  The underlying causes aren’t getting better, they’re festering because the feedback mechanism is broken.

Violence And Censorship Update

The Capitol was stormed, but you know the details on that one.  December had numerous violent protests by the Left, but only the Capitol having unscheduled visitors received major press coverage.  Rationale?

Censorship.

This month has been, by far, the biggest outpouring of censorship of any month of my lifetime.  The sitting President of the United States has been banned from essentially every online social media outlet.  Even the store that sells merchandise related to Trump, Shopify©, has banned him.  I’m certain that stopping the sale of red MAGA hats will solve all of the world’s problems.

Twitter® was, by far, the biggest way that Trump evaded the mainstream media lock on news selection and interpretation.  Trump could speak directly to the American people without being a newscaster using the words “unfounded” every other word.  He had sent 57,000 Tweets™ since he was on the service.

Not only was Trump censored, but I heard that the top 35% of his supporters were also censored.  Journalist John Robb put it very well:

Bottom line:  expect more, much more, censorship in the coming year.

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.  The public perception of violence dropped drastically during November, and dropped again in December.  January?  Too soon to tell.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable.  Instability dropped significantly in December.  January – will it bring conclusion, or more tension?

Economic:

The economic measures took a small setback this month.  I’d expect January to show a minor uptick.

Illegal Aliens:

Down is good, in theory.  This is a statistic showing border apprehensions by the Border Patrol.  Numbers of illegals being caught is rising again from a record November to a record December – the floodgates are opening.

Harper’s Ferry 2.0

In October of 1859, ever photogenic John Brown and 22 of his best friends decided that the time was right to trigger a slave uprising in the South.  Their idea was to capture the Harper’s Ferry Arsenal and then –  well, the “and then” part wasn’t exactly clear to anyone but Brown.  His plan was that he would kidnap slaves locally, and then give them guns as part of a great army.

The slaves he kidnapped ran away from Brown, having no desire to take part in his plan.  In the end, most of John Brown’s men were either shot by the United States Marines that retook the Harper’s Ferry Arsenal or were executed after a trial.  Ironically, it was the actions of Robert E. Lee that stopped the locals from hanging Brown on the spot and allowing him to be taken for a trial.

This was the last major incident that happened before Civil War 1.0, and greatly divided the country:  half saw John Brown as a (sort of insane) leader that was working for good even though people died in the raid.  The other half saw him as a treasonous criminal and a threat to their way of life.

I think that the way that people think of the storming of the Capitol last week has exactly the same polarity.  They went to go protest at the Capitol, found that they could (more or less) waltz in and claim the place.  Having done so, they were like a terrier that caught a Ford F-150® pickup.  “What the heck do I do now?”

Some see it as a (sort of silly) show to our government that the government exists at our pleasure, and that even the walls of the Congress, located in one of the most Leftist strongholds in the nation, is not safe.  They see a group of people protesting an election that they feel was decided by fraud.  They feel this way honestly and sincerely.

Others see it as treason against the nation and actions to prevent a president from being confirmed.  They feel that their cause is just, since, even though there might have been irregularities in voting (50% of Biden voters think the election was stolen) that it’s okay.  They think:  “Trump will be gone, and the Electoral College is silly, since popular votes are what democracies do, anyway.”

Regardless, this is an action that won’t be repeated.  The State is scared that it was tested and found to be so vulnerable.  They won’t make this mistake again – even now thousands of troops are pouring into Washington D.C.

LINKS

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

From Ricky:  “My self-imposed cut off for this batch of links is the GA Senate Race and the Congressional acceptance of the Electoral votes.  Who the hell knows what is about to happen next.”

ON THE EVE OF DECIDING CONTROL FOR THE SENATE AND PRESIDENCY:

QUESTIONS:

https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/blog/do-black-lives-matter-in-the-white-elite-s-civil-war-/

https://www.creators.com/read/pat-buchanan/12/20/is-our-second-civil-war-also-a-forever-war

http://www.sfltimes.com/opinion/is-there-a-civil-war-in-america

https://www.independent.com/2020/06/14/an-american-civil-war/

 

ASSERTIONS:

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/12/the_new_phony_war.html

https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-trumps-final-days-lines-are-drawn-for-a-republican-civil-war-11609772298

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/a-new-civil-war-its-here-the-rights-grievance-politics-is-killing-thousands-every-day/ar-BB1bOXoE

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-gop-elections-mcconnell/

https://www.pantagraph.com/opinion/letters/letter-country-close-to-civil-war/article_e99472ac-6b83-5509-aa93-3f03f2c92382.html

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/12/democrats-civil-war-cease-fire-georgia-senate-runoffs-election-444633

https://www.salon.com/2020/12/12/psycho-secession-texas-lost-cause-lawsuit-was-the-first-shot-in-a-new-civil-war/

 

CALLS TO ARMS:

AZ: https://www.mediaite.com/politics/arizona-republican-party-now-calling-on-voters-to-die-for-trumps-election-fight/

MI: https://www.icbps.org/make-them-pay-michigan-lawmaker-calls-on-leftist-soldiers-to-attack-trumpers/

GA: https://www.mediaite.com/tv/trump-supporters-refuse-to-accept-biden-presidency-in-gobsmacking-cnn-report-could-be-a-civil-war-you-never-know/

TX: https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2021/01/watch-texas-gop-congressman-threatens-civil-war-if-democrats-win-georgia-runoff-elections/

TX : https://www.foxnews.com/politics/georgia-runoffs-senate-chip-roy-congress

 

CALLS FOR CALM:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/louie-gohmerts-talk-of-violence-and-civil-war-is-despicable

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/civil-war-united-states-unlikely-violence/2020/10/29/3a143936-0f0f-11eb-8074-0e943a91bf08_story.html

https://www.indianagazette.com/opinion/the-civil-war-that-fizzled-out/article_4ad57e5a-3968-11eb-9be6-9ff5ee8e14a2.html

https://news.yahoo.com/constitution-answer-seditious-members-congress-113001597.html

https://news.yahoo.com/civil-war-212148092.html

 

CALLS TO SPLIT:

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/529609-rush-limbaugh-says-us-trending-toward-seccession

https://americanmind.org/features/a-house-dividing/a-common-sense-solution/

https://mises.org/wire/red-and-blue-states-its-time-multistate-solution

 

A WAKE-UP CALL:

https://strongnation.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/1243/2e0396bc-8bc1-40f6-ba07-9b94a079b7d5.pdf?1608225594&inline;%20filename=%22Letter%20to%20Acting%20Secretary%20Defense%20Christopher%20Miller.pdf%22

https://www.strongnation.org/articles/737-unhealthy-and-unprepared

The Big Hangover: Finland and Bikini Economics

“These are my good clothes. You can’t go home smelling like a meth lab.” – Breaking Bad

Say what you want about Finland, but their flag is a big plus.

Finland had originally not wanted to be involved at all in war, but the Soviets had attacked them in 1940.  Joseph Stalin had come to the conclusion that he was tired of Finns living on land he wanted, and attacked.  You could say that Stalin was Russian to the Finnish line.

Stalin expected the Soviet juggernaut to wipe Finland off the map in 1940.  Thus began what is known as the “Winter War” to protect Finland.

Did anyone come to the aid of Finland?  No, not really.  Churchill and Roosevelt were certainly sympathetic in the newspapers, but just made sad clucking noises as the Red Army prepared to assimilate yet another country.

Finland was horribly outnumbered.  For instance, the Soviets invaded with 3,880 aircraft.   The Finns had 114 planes.  The Soviets had a maximum of 6,500 tanks, the Finns had 32.  Yes, 32 tanks.

This is the recipe for a huge loss, but the Finns had other ideas – they were fighting to save Finland.

They inflicted over 300,000 Soviet casualties with only 300,000 Finnish soldiers.  The Soviets agreed to a peace treaty, taking over several islands and provinces, far short of their actual war effort.  Rumor has it that the Soviets decided they wanted peace after Christopher Lee (yes, that Christopher Lee) arrived from England as a volunteer to fight for the Finns.

How could they tell Dracula had a sore throat?  The coffin.

At the outbreak of the German invasion of the Soviet Union two years later, the Finns jumped in:  they retook the provinces that the Soviets took, but stopped.  Finland basically relaxed until, in 1944, the Soviets had the Germans on the run.  Stalin looked at Finland and described a Scandinavian church song:  Finnish Hymn.

This brings us to Aimo Koivunen.  Aimo was a corporal in the Finnish Army, and was sent on a ski patrol in March of 1944.  He and his patrol were suddenly surrounded by Soviet troops.  They managed to escape, but Aimo was dead tired from the physical exertion of skiing away from the pursuing Soviet troops.

Sorry, I guess that skiing joke went downhill fast.

Aimo had Pervitin©.  Pervitin™ was issued to some troops to overcome exhaustion and remain awake on guard duty.  Since Pervitin® was essentially crystal meth, the instructions said to just take one.  It was cold.  Aimo was tired.  He couldn’t just grasp one of the pills, so he took the entire bottle.  All 30.

That’s when the fun started.

Aimo became delirious, and the next little bit is fuzzy.  All he knows is that when he woke up less than a day later, he’d skied 60 miles and lost all of his equipment.  He hit a landmine, but that was no impediment for a meth-crazed Finn.  He just spent time in a ditch eating pine nuts and a raw bird that he caught.

Aimo ended up skiing another 190 miles (not kilometers, miles) for a grand total of 250 miles.

In March.

In Finland.

On enough meth to kill a college football team.

Okay, Aimo had more adventure in two weeks than most people have in a lifetime.  He even remembered some of it.

When they finally managed to wrestle the still meth-addled Aimo into the hospital, he had a heart rate of 200 beats per minute (three times a non-meth-saturated-human heartrate).  He weighed 94 pounds, and in the one time I don’t make fun of communist units, that’s only 43 kilograms.

That’s one hell of a hangover.

Oh, sure, I could have told a funny story that describes why I don’t drink tequila, ever, but I thought that Aimo Kiovunen’s story was a better one than I’ll ever have.  So you get that instead.

But what does a meth-soaked soldier have to do with the economy?

In the last decade, our economy has just gulped down about 30 Pervitinâ„¢.

Part of the problem was that our economy was almost already exhausted before the Coronavirus hit.  The economic expansion since the Great Recession was already 128 months old in February 2020 – the longest in United States history.  How did it get that old?

Simulants.  The biggest stimulant was economic policy.  If you wanted to buy a house in 1990, you’d pay 10% interest rates.  Buying a house in 2010, the interest rates were around 4%.  Now?  Even lower.  The Federal Reserve’s® interest rate is zero, if you’re a big bank.  Free money.

Zero interest rate?  A stimulant.

In the last year, deficit spending of the United States has been in the trillions.  $3.8 trillion, to be exact.  In one year.  That’s three times the level of deficit spending in the Great Recession.

How is that for 30 capsules of Pervitinâ„¢ in 2020 after chugging two dozen pots of coffee since 2008?

Never has so much amazingly frightening debt ever looked so good.

You simply cannot put that level of stimulant into an economy and not expect to have an impact.  What’s the impact?

As commenters have noted, the stimulant effect of all of that money dumped into the economy has been muted somewhat because people just aren’t spending it.  There are a variety of reasons for this.  Unemployed people don’t go tossing all of their 401k money into fishing boats and rare PEZ® dispensers depicting Norwegian War Heroes.

The bigger pools, though, are rich people waiting to scoop up depressed assets.  Another pool consists of money that the banks borrowed from the Fed® at zero interest, and then deposited back with the Fed© to earn interest.  This is not a trick that you or I could do, but it props up the banks.

Not one of my more successful pickup lines.

The concern I have is that once the signs of inflation show up, those pools of money will begin to move.  At first with a trickle, and then with an avalanche.  The stimulant will take effect.  And the heartrate of the economy will go to 200 beats per minute (0.2 kilobeats per minute).

There is good news.  You can look for the signs that I’m right, say, gold going up in price.  Or bitcoin going through the roof.  That might be the sign the hangover from the Pervitin© is taking hold in the economy.

Oh, those things are happening?  Keep your eyes open, folks.

The good news is that, despite his adventures in creative pharmacology, Aimo Koivunen lived to be 71.  He survived the hangover.

Let’s hope we do, too.

Penultimate Day And 2021 Thoughts

“The Babylon Project was our last, best hope for peace.  It failed.  But in the year of the Shadow War, it became something greater: our last, best hope for victory.  The year is 2260. The place: Babylon 5.” – Babylon 5

Why did 2020 cross the road?  To get to the other cyanide.

This year we didn’t celebrate our traditional Wilder family holiday, Penultimate Day.  What does Penultimate Day entail?

Well, you drive south for two hours or so.  Then you go to Best Buy® and, under no circumstances do you buy a cell phone.  But you must look at cell phones.  Then, after not buying a cell phone, you go to Olive Garden® and have some nice pasta.

This celebration started (I think) in 2011 or 2012, I think.  The Mrs.’ cell phone (a Blackberry®!) was going south.  We drove to the nearest cell phone store that was tied to our carrier, which was a Best Buy™ about two hours from us.  We got frustrated attempting to figure out the deals after the phone clerk wheeled out a surgical gurney to take out part of my intestines.  I told him, “No way!”

“Really?  You need to look at the contract closer.  It’s in the appendix.”

We gave up on buying a phone.

Then, frustrated at our lack of being able to find a phone, we gave up and decided to have dinner.

Hobbits always use vibrate on their phones – they don’t want the ring to give them away.

And then we drove home.  It was impossibly silly, driving a total of four hours to go to not buy a cell phone.  And we did it on December 30.  So, I made the joke that since the New Year was a made-up holiday, why not make up our own?  Thus Penultimate Day – the next-to-last day of the year – became an official Wilder holiday.

Over the years, we took Penultimate Day seriously.  There were one or two exceptions where we skipped Penultimate Day, primarily because Pugsley or The Boy had a sports event.  That is, of course, acceptable.  The goal of Penultimate Day is to do something fun together as a family.

We stuck to celebrating Penultimate Day.  Why?   Because it was fun, it was silly, and it was ours.

We didn’t celebrate Penultimate Day this year.

First, traveling into a major metropolitan area didn’t make sense to us – here in Modern Mayberry the case-rate for the WuFlu is relatively low, and we have no idea what the requirements are to even go into Best Buy® in Major Undisclosed Metropolitan Area.  Second, while we enjoy going to the Olive Garden™, I’m still convinced that the free breadsticks are some kind of con game.  I keep expecting a bill to arrive from them in 2028:  “owed to Olive Garden© for “free” breadsticks:  $257,065.”

What’s the only pasta you can get during COVID-19 lockdown?  Macaroni and sneeze.

Instead, we slept in late, played a few games, and more-or-less relaxed the entire day.  Our contribution to the economy of the United States?  We had a nice dinner The Mrs. cooked for us at home, used some natural gas to fire our heater, and spent about $3 in electricity for lighting the place.  That was it.  Our participation in the economy on December 30, 2020 was probably less than $20, total.

That’s the problem if you’re running an economy.  No gasoline, no money heading to the Olive Garden©, and no tip to the waitress.

I read that Christmas spending was down this year, to $851 from $976 in 2019.  That’s a drop of 13%.  But this is Monday, not Wednesday when we talk about economics.  On Monday, we talk about the big picture.

But 13% is a huge drop-off.  And when you add in all of the activities that people aren’t doing?  I imagine it was even more.  The big picture?  Economic contraction increases instability.

I wrote in 2019’s Penultimate Day that we were entering a period of chaos, where entire edifices that we used to stand behind would crumble.  Now, we sit in 2021, and a majority of the people who voted in the national election think it was rigged.

How do you get a baby alien to sleep?  Rocket.

Also rigged?  The system of justice in the nation.  We see Antifa® and BLM© “peacefully” destroy cities.  The massive number of unindicted felons?  It’s okay to loot.

2020 was a mess, but it looks like we got to get a glimpse of the man behind the curtain.

2021 will certainly start out like a mess.  January is going to be chaotic.  Regardless, I’m optimistic about 2021 – not because I’m insane, but because I know what starts the upward rise:  the upward rise starts after you’ve fallen and hit bottom.  While we around the world have fallen and are headed toward the bottom, the biggest lesson is this:  bring something back up with you.

That’s the question for today:  what can we bring back up with us?

  • Understanding that the world can change around you in an instant. One moment, the world was normal.  The next?  Lockdowns, the destruction of an economy.
  • Understanding where your vulnerabilities are. Food?  Toilet paper?  What can you do to fix them?
  • Knowing that your job is not “safe” – the entire economy isn’t safe. Be prepared for more dislocations.  What skills are you working on?

These are important realizations.  In 2021 and for the foreseeable future, complacency will not be your friend.  Constantly question your assumptions.  Constantly try to understand your side, but also periodically ask yourself, “What if I’m wrong?”  Try to understand the other side of the issue, too.

You may or may not be wrong, but questioning (not doubting, but questioning) yourself is key to deep understanding.  Hold your own beliefs up to the same scrutiny you use on opposing beliefs.

Thankfully, hindsight is 2020.  Or did I get that backward?

As I wrote on Friday, I’m not sure that 2021 will be a great year, but it will be a birth year for the next phase of what happens to our society.  What’s probable this year?

  • Unemployment continues, and likely gets worse. Ideas of a quick rebuild will be crushed.  People at the bottom end – twentysomethings and service workers – are already hoisting a white flag.
  • Society will become even more fractured. Left and Right are guaranteed to be further apart in 2021 – the way this presidential election has gone is sure to inflame both sides, no matter what happens.
  • The very mechanisms that we normally see as protecting society will continue to erode. People on the Right who are defending the “thin blue line” will become aware that many (not all!) of the police will do whatever the people signing their checks tell them to do.  This is not the year to be a cop in Portland, Oregon.
  • People will continue to flee California and large Leftist cities in a locust-like plague. They will not leave their Leftist ideas behind.
  • The debt of the United States will continue to climb. My bet?  We add another $4-5 trillion this year.  That doesn’t include personal debt and business debt.  The idea that printing money is better than earning it will continue and probably increase in 2021.  This idea will only stop when events force it to stop.

But as I said in the introduction to Friday’s post, I remain weirdly optimistic that, even given all of these trends, this will be a year that we will look back on and say, “That was the year that things changed.”  Certainly, 2020 was a year that will likely be looked on as the start of the crisis.  2021 will be looked at as the year that the seeds of the new are planted.

How can I better describe it?

1776 is they year that most people associate with the birth of the United States.  What most people forget is that it wasn’t until 1787 that the Constitutional Congress was held.  Likewise, it wasn’t until 1789 that George Washington was sworn in as our first President.  That was thirteen years after 1776 – thirteen years where there was war, economic failure, and finally a coming together over a very unique document.

Change takes time.

What did Washington say before his men got in the boats to cross the Delaware to attack the British?  “Get in the boats.”

So, if I’m right, people will look back on 2021 and say, “That was when things turned around.”

And the good news is, Penultimate Day or not, you’ll be there for it.  Again, I never said it was going to be easy.  It will likely be the complete opposite of easy.

Freedom rarely is easy.  And I’m still pretty sure that the Olive Garden© has a comprehensive spreadsheet somewhere charting my breadstick consumption . . . .

Happy New Year 2021!

Okay, because the way the holidays fell this year, my “family” wants me to spend “time” with them rather than write.  The other people that live at my house are sooooo demanding.  So, while we play games and do things together, I thought I’d sneak away and give you last year’s Penultimate Day post, especially since, due to the ‘Rona, we didn’t observe Penultimate Day this year.

I hate to say it . . . but I saw 2020 coming.

The good news?  We still have chips.  And we have yet to open the champers.

Happy New Year, all!

My prediction?  2021 will have another amazing number of surprises, but will be the seed of greatness yet to come.

So, here is last year’s post:

“Well, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but it sounds damn saucy, you lucky thing! I know some fairly liberal-minded girls, but I’ve never penultimated any of them in a solar sojourn, or for that matter, been given any Norman tongue.” – Blackadder The Third

boog.jpg

If we have a boogaloo, let’s hope it’s a short one. I’ve got a dentist appointment next Thursday.

If you’re reading this on Monday, December 30, congratulations! It’s Penultimate Day! This is the holiday that the Wilder’s celebrate every December 30. Why Penultimate Day? Back on December 30, 2012, The Mrs. wanted a new cell phone. We drove an hour and a half south to a Best Buy® (the nearest place that sold cell phones) and then didn’t buy a cell phone. After that, we ate at Olive Garden® and drove home.

I think this was, perhaps, the disaster foretold by the Mayans that ended their calendar in 2012. As is inscribed in ancient Mayan on the calendar: “When the pale people from the north can communicate no more, and instead decided to eat a tasty pasta dish, perhaps with fresh-grated Parmesan cheese (say when!), that shall be the end of time.”

Or my translation may be off. Regardless, we are now celebrating our seventh straight Penultimate Day, and as you read this I might be not buying a cell phone, or perhaps having some sort of bottomless salad and breadstick combination at Olive Garden©. Olive Garden’s™ motto is “when you’re here, you’re family©,” so I borrowed $50 and decided I’d never pick up when they call and insult them behind their back.

penultimate.jpg

Remember, when you’re here, you’re part of the Olivegarchy.

You can join in on Penultimate Day, too. Simply go to a place that cells cell phones that is south of your house. Then, don’t buy one. Finally: eat Italian food. Sure, that’s not the purist version and you might be burned at the stake later for heresy, but, you know, Italian food.

My Penultimate Day post is also the post that I use to look back on the year to talk about the biggest story of the year. In 2017, it was the verified UFO video from the military (Penultimate Day and The Biggest Story of 2017), in 2018, it was the loss of trust in our society (Happy Penultimate Day 2018, and the Biggest Story of 2018: Societal Trust). The 2017 link comes with a (very) short story that I wrote in a Marriott® bar.

In 2019, the main story is the unravelling of society.

The main stories in all of the news is about that unravelling this year.  And it’s not just in the United States:

  • Brexit/Boris Johnson in Great Britain.
  • Yellow Vest Protests in France.
  • Hong Kong Protests in Cleveland.
  • Impeachment.
  • Left and Right Polarity.
  • Your family at Thanksgiving.
  • AntiFa® violence in mom’s basement.
  • Popularity of Stories About Impending Civil War in the United States.

We know trouble is coming.  The topic I’ve written about that’s gotten more views than any other this year has been Civil War 2.  How divisive is society today?  In an example of whistling past the graveyard, a hypothetical future conflict has been referred to as Civil War 2:  Electric Boogaloo.  This has shortened over time to just Boogaloo.  This is, of course, is a tribute to that classic of Western cinema Breakin’ 2:  Electric Boogaloo, a 1984 film about breakdancing that I’m sure you all have seen.

Deciding that they’d like to prove my point about the unraveling of society and the Left being a bitter, humorless bunch of that make the people at the DMV look like a jovial group of partygoers, members of the Left have decided that even the term “Boogaloo” is nearly hate speech.  Yeah, I’m not surprised, either.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

William Butler Yeats wrote the above as the opening of a song for the band Iron Maiden®.  Sadly Bruce Dickenson rejected it on the grounds that all of the members of Iron Maiden© took a vote and decided that they would all be born sometime in the future when guitars were just a bit more electric but yet not too boogaloo.

iron.jpg

Yes, Iron Maiden did an 18 minute metal song about a poem written in 1798.  And it was glorious.

Instead, Yeats settled for using those lines for the opening of his poem The Second Coming a hundred years ago in 1919, and during this time he was writing about what he saw as an unraveling:  an unraveling of science, an unraveling of governmental structures, and an unraveling of heterogeneous communities.  He looked back at the deaths caused by the pointless World War I and its deformed stepchild – the Russian Revolution, and saw an ending of one world, and the birth of the next.

These destroyed structures were built on speed and modernity.  What did Yeats see replacing the modern world?

kardash.jpg

Kardashians are planning on acknowledging their Wookie heritage in a new reality show.

Yeats continued with a vision as ugly as a Kardashian in a swimsuit:

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

What did Yeats see replacing the modern world?  Mysticism.  Power.  Blood.  He was right.  1919 was crappy, but the 20th Century was about to get a whole lot worse.  He concluded:

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Yup.  Creepy.  And Iron Maiden definitely should have recorded this, whether they were born or not.

Yeats’ vision is what we are living through again right now – the ending of one age, and the beginning of another.  This crisis cannot be driven by food shortages.  There is more food now than at any time in history.  It cannot be wealth – there is more individual wealth in the nations experiencing tumult than at any point in their histories.  It cannot be my hair.  My shiny scalp?  Sure.  Not my hair.

Certainly there are problems – I think that the people the Z-Man (LINK) calls the Dirt People (which almost certainly includes every reader of this blog as well as your constant writer, me) are experiencing an economy driven by and for the Cloud People (the Deep State, the Financial Elite).  Regardless of who you voted for in 2012, you knew that Mittens Romney and Barry Obama were on the same team, and it wasn’t your team.

cloudp.jpg

This might be where the Z-Man got that meme – at least it was the first thing I thought of.  And it explains sky-high real estate costs . . . .

In the end the reactions we’re seeing in society in 2019 (Trump and Brexit) are just that – reactions to a society that has gone too far Left, too fast.  Leftists never realize that all they have to do to enact their Socialist Utopia® is wait.  Instead, they smell the blood of the Right in the water and decide that it’s time to end the waiting.  Right now!  Because after making the conscious decision to borrow $375,000 for a degree in cooking, they now know that college (and those vacations to Europe on spring break!) is a right and should be free.

What do Leftist want?  Complete control.  When do they want it?  Now.  Impeachment is a technique for power and control, not enforcing the law, since at no point has anyone been able to articulate a law broken by Trump.  Nixon?  Conspiracy to commit a break-in.  Clinton?  Perjury.  Trump?  I still haven’t heard about a law that he broke that isn’t some sort of fashion or etiquette rule.

Trump is not a savior.  Trump is a symptom.  The Leftist reaction to Trump is yet another symptom.  And the inability to wait for an election that is less than a year out is yet another.

The Right is never the instigator of issues like this – there is a reason the Right is called reactionary – it reacts to the Left.  The Right just wants history to stop.  The Left wants change, and will look for any time to work for it – especially when society is functioning well.  The Left is like a wife who sees a fully functioning family, home mortgage nearly paid off, 20 years until retirement and says, “You know what?  Things are going well.  Let’s burn it all down.”

bored

As long as Stella gets her groove back, that’s all that’s important, am I right?

And the change the Left wants is never gradual – it is Revolution™.  The Left wants to destroy the existing social orders and replace them with Leftism.  As we’ve seen in the past (Robespierre, Stalin, Mao, Mangos and A Future That Must Not Be), Leftism always ends in a bloodbath, either as those on the Left kill everyone to the Right of them, or a cagey leader like Stalin kills all of the people to the Left of him.

This is the context we see ourselves in today.  All time high on the stock market, and all time high (excepting 1859) on the polarity seen in the United States.  We are splitting apart.

How does this end?  I think, if past trends for America have been true, there will be freedom.  America may not look like it does today – I think I’d actually bet money that it won’t.  There will be significant changes, and I think it will be very difficult for Washington D.C. to impose its will on Michigan, Montana, or Missouri if the peoples of those states are unwilling.

This is the last post of the ‘teens – my next post will be in the Tumultuous, Turbulent Twenties.  Remember folks, you heard that here first.  But you won’t hear it here last – I’m pretty sure the centre cannot hold . . . but neither will my belt, not after all of those free breadsticks.

The Funniest Predictions About 2021 You’ll Read This Year

“Since when can weathermen predict the weather, let alone the future?” – Back to the Future

It’s easy to buy clothes for psychics – they’re all mediums.

In the past I’ve done, once or twice, a humorous year in review post. 2020? Let’s let that year rot in the grave – in many ways, it was a year that was worse than having to spend the weekend after Christmas with the Kardashians.

How was that weekend I spent with the Kardashians?

It was hairy, smelly, oily, and just plain silly, no matter how much money got thrown around, it was still awful and made me want to take a month-long shower.

Instead, let’s look forward. Here I have a group of predictions made by the best psychics I could find on the Psychic Friends Network® who somehow decided working for $7.99 a minute was better than winning the lottery or buying Tesla© stock in 2010. These were confirmed by the time-traveling Stephen Hawking, who said, “Yeah, it all looks legit,” before beating me in a one-on-one game of basketball.

I really suck at basketball. Plus? Time-travelling Stephen Hawking is a robot with chainsaw arms.

Trust me, 2021 will be better.

January, 2021

Faced by a mounting crisis in Canada brought about by forgetting to pay the electric bill, Canadian armed forces launch an invasion of Detroit to check for spare change in the couches. The 82nd Airborne is dispatched and quickly prevents invasion of the desirable parts of Michigan. The Canadian Army quickly surrenders, but insists on adding an extra “u” in words like labor, honor, and Wednesday. Within 72 hours the Treaty of Fargo is signed, whereby Canada is punished by being prohibited from withdrawing from Detroit, and also forced to take the Jacksonville Jaguars® and Amy Schumer.

German leader Angela Merkel is quick to condemn the United States, saying, “In the annals of humanity there has never been a bigger war crime than forcing the decent citizens of Canada to take a sub-par NFL® team. Never. You’ll just have to trust me on this.”

Angela Merkel arrives in Paris:
“Nationality?” asks the immigration officer.
“German,” Merkel replies.
“Occupation?”
“No, just here for a few days.”

February, 2021

Facebook® and Google™ announce a joint partnership to, “just know and predict everything about you so that we can manipulate you like a rancher manipulates cattle and extract every bit of value from you before we recycle you into Earth-friendly products.”

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts rules that this is fine. Writing in his majority opinion, he says, “they (Facebook© and Google®) are private companies and are thus not covered by the First Amendment. Also, they have all of my Internet history, and the secret naughty chats I’ve been having with Justice Kagan, and I really don’t want my wife seeing those.”

March, 2021

According to the medical journal, The Lancet, the first COVID-19 vaccine recipients spontaneously renounce any Leftist policy and become staunch supporters of nationalism, Constitutional government and individual liberty. Congressman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez calls for the immediate recall of the vaccine.

Thankfully, nothing happens if she eats ice cream too fast.

April, 2021

George R.R. Martin announces he has written seven complete pages of his next book in the Game of Thrones® series titled, The Winds of Winter. “At this rate, I’ll be complete with the series by the year 4731. So, fans, there’s something to look forward to!”

Martin then laughed his jolly elfin laugh and jumped naked, except for his signature hat, into a swimming pool filled with $100 bills after a dinner of eating panda roasted over glowing Moon-rocks.

May, 2021

In a surprise session, the governments of 33 States serve notice to the United States that they are seceding from the Union. In the joint declaration to the Federal government via short phone call, the States note, “Listen, we tried to work this out. Don’t cry. Stop. It’s not you. It’s me. I’ve changed. I’m keeping the dog. And the nuclear weapons. And all the Tom Petty albums.”

Texas changes its Facebook™ profile to “single.” Canada is still required to keep Detroit and the Jacksonville Jaguars©, despite launching a surprise offensive on the Nordstrom™ outlet in St. Paul, Minnesota, which failed because they didn’t have actual money for parking meters. Who knew those meters would reject Canadian quarters?

I heard that Texas was voted “most likely to secede” in high school.

June, 2021

Elon Musk announces he has joined his consciousness with a machine, specifically a postal meter in the United States Post Office in Enid, Oklahoma (Zip Code 73701). Musk specifically chose this meter because he “want(ed) to not only dominate car production, and space flight, but also being able to know exactly what small objects weigh and calculate what the postage would cost to ship something far away. It’s not so easy to figure that out, you know.”

July, 2021

[REDACTED DUE TO NSC 1993-473-AB-01]

August, 2021

Practical immortality was announced jointly by the Bill Gates Foundation© and the World Economic Forum™. In a surprise, it involves subscribing to Microsoft™ Office© 365®, eating only food obtained from bugs, and living in a small pod as approved by the Facebook™/Google© Freedom For All™ coalition, and limiting stressors by avoiding unapproved news sources.

“With this new technology, most Americans can now expect to live meaningful, productive lives up to at least the age of 50, which is nearly immortal,” said Gates, while stroking a long-furred snow-white cat.

Bill Gates only wants one thing for giving us immortality, namely, to rename the Earth: “The Planet of the Apps.”

September, 2021

President-For-Life Kamala Harris indicated that rumors of her executing prisoners in her last remaining enclave of Beverly Hills were, “gross exaggerations. In most cases, they fought each other to the death for Chicken McNuggets®. We even gave some of the winners Hot Mustard™ sauce, which I believe is in line with the Geneva Convention.”

As troops loyal to the American United American States of America surrounded the Western White House, President-For-Life Harris said, “Guys, can’t you take a joke?”

October, 2021

The Federal Reserve® announced that the main Federal Reserve Bank™ headquarters in Washington, D.C. was robbed by George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and a long list of Hollywood B-list celebrities who were engaged in an overly complicated heist, with comic relief provided by Julia Roberts.

Fed© Chairman, Britney Spears, noted that, “We didn’t lose anything. We don’t have any actual money, silly, we just print it.”

November, 2021

Netflix® Health Advisor© and Minister Plenipotentiary Dr. “Fat Tony” Anthony Fauci stated flatly, “Listen, Harvard© has told us as early as 1968 that sugar is good for you. Eat all you can. And smoking isn’t that bad for you, especially if you smoke filtered cigarettes by a major manufacturer. Corn syrup? It should be called corn sugar! I bathe in it and rub it on my chest every day. So wholesome and healthy!”

When asked about why he said that masks against COVID firstly in February 2020, “wouldn’t help” and then later “should be mandatory,” Fauci said, “Oh my gosh, what is that over there? Look! A baby wolf!”

Dr. Fauci at a press conference: “Don’t worry. If I’m wrong, I’ll still have a job.”

December, 2021

Mopping up actions continue in the former “Socialist Republic of the West” and the collapsed “First New England Commune.” After determining that 93% of the residents couldn’t be poets, communist theorists, and crystal dolphin therapists due to the inability to feed themselves, the last snarky Twitter™ post went up on December 23, 2021, “Well, actually, not everyone celebrates Christmas, so by saying ‘Merry Christmas’ to me you aren’t being Christian at all, are you?”

As of December 25, 2021, peace and harmony prevail in the Reconstituted United States of America, though anyone with the word “studies” in their degree title is immediately sentenced to 7 years in the RUSA “Leisure Camps” where residents are “encouraged” to actually produce something.

See, I told you 2021 would be better!