Creating havoc since 2006. Fair use is claimed for images on this site, but they will be removed (if owned) on request out of politeness. movingnorth@gmail.com
In this episode, we talk about death by gunshot COVID in Colorado, gun culture, and make fun of the ATF (this episode was before they walked back their decision on pistol braces). Our “how to” segment is on how to buy gold.
We’re still requesting viewer photos (ones you own) that you’d like us to share or make fun of (tell us which). Send photos for inclusion and requests for “how-to” segments to movingnorth@gmail.com.
“Put the glasses on! Put them on!” – They Live
Jack Nicholson gave us a Colonel of truth in that movie.
Living in the country has advantages. One of them is being able to conduct experiments into nuclear fusion without a license. Oops. Did I say that out loud?
The other is that I can make a bonfire the size of Delaware. Why would I want to do that? Just like making my own fusion reactor, why wouldn’t I want to do that?
In my case, the next-door neighbor and I have trees that regularly need to be trimmed, or, as I mentioned in a story (A Tree Fell On My House, But I Have A Chainsaw) a while ago, just plain fall down onto my house. We haven’t burned the pile for about three years, so I figured it was time to get rid of prime snake habitat and burn it all down. Winter is the best time for a ludicrously large fire, so we decided tonight was the night.
Now lighting deadwood on fire sounds easy, but this time it was fairly difficult. We were nearly getting ready to give up, go inside, and let the pile smolder out when a section caught. Admittedly it was on the fifth bottle of charcoal lighter fluid, so I guess persistence pays off.
If I ever become an island castaway, I’ll set up a flaming signal on the beach: it’s the shore fire way to get attention.
Within five minutes we had a conflagration pouring tornado-like flames thirty feet into the sky. There is a moment when, after unleashing that fire, I realized it was utterly beyond our control. It was burning fuel so fast that branches suspended five feet about the base were burning with a bright bluish-gold flame. Sparks were shooting 60 feet into the air on an updraft of hot air that would make Maxine Waters blush.
Thankfully, I could release that sweet, sweet CO2 back into the air to Make Siberia Warm Again.
I liked that, because an immense, hot fire burns quickly, and I wanted it to be a boring pile of coals and hot ash before I went inside. It was – within ten more minutes (seven liters) the fire had consumed 70% plus of its fuel and it was perfect for toasting marshmallows – from forty feet away.
We heard sirens sounded like a fire engine in the neighborhood, but we didn’t go and look – showing up at a neighborhood fire with marshmallow roasting sticks is bad form here in Modern Mayberry.
As I sat there beside the fire, I was thinking about Plato.
No, Plato isn’t Goofy®’s dog, that’s Pluto™. Which makes me wonder why a cartoon dog has a dog as a pet? Disturbing.
My computer password is FrodoKirkGoofyScoobyBugsSacramento – just like IT said – five characters and a capital.
What I was thinking about was the dead Greek guy, Plato. In many things, Plato was a complete idiot, but he wrote everything down, so we remember him. Diogenes the philosopher, it is rumored, loved making fun of Plato, especially by putting Icy-Hot™ in the nether regions of Plato’s toga.
But one thing that Plato left us with that was useful was his Allegory of the Cave.
The Allegory of the Cave is a fairly simple story. A group of people are chained in a cave so all they can do is stare at a blank wall. But behind them is a fire, which casts shadows on the wall. Not being able to see real, three-dimensional reality, the people stuck in the cave seeing nothing but shadows give names to the shadows.
I tried to come up with another philosopher pun, but I just Kant. And I Kant lose any more weight. Another Plato.
Their reality, knowing nothing else, are those shadows that they can see.
But one day, one of the people escapes. He leaves the cave, and upon looking around sees the rich tapestry of things that are not shadows. He sees colors. He sees trees. He might see a Taco Bell® depending upon where the cave is.
He finally experiences reality as you and I do, especially if he orders extra cheese on the Nachos Bell Grande®.
It must be a stunning information overload – countless things that he’s never seen before – remember, if it hasn’t cast a shadow on the cave wall, it doesn’t exist in his world.
Having friends in the cave, the escaped person goes back in. “Dudes, you have to see this. We’ve been wrong our whole lives – there’s a rich world out there. Nothing is as it seems to you. Come and see!”
In the kingdom of the blind, is the one-eyed man king?
No, in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is considered, at best, crazy. More likely, however, the one-eyed man is viewed as a threat that must be eliminated. So is our escapee that returns to enlighten his friends.
No one wants to be robbed of their illusions. Many people don’t want to consider alternate viewpoints. The escapee will be shouted down by the rest of the captives. “Surely,” they say, “such a world cannot exist. If it did, I’d have to change my conceptions, and there are two things I never change, my underwear and my conceptions.”
What kind of pants do they wear in Plato’s cave? Yoga Tights? No. Stalac Tights.
The bad news is, to one extent or another, we’re all prisoners of the cave. We see misperceptions in our daily life, either of our own construct or as constructed for us.
Who would construct misperceptions for us?
Lots of people. Here are a few examples:
Don’t worry, in the sequel the Japanese take out Detroit.
I could do dozens more where the government, academia, industry, or unions lied and most people believed them. I’ve written about those again and again – the 1960’s Harvard Sugar Study, anyone (High Carbs, Harvard, Insurance, And Avoiding Doctors)? If it was just statements from politicians that were lies that most of us believed? I don’t have enough electrons on my computer to store all of those.
Essentially, unless I get up and go outside of the cave I’m in, I’m sitting and watching those shadows on the wall. But when I do get up and go outside of that cave, I learn amazing things – all those things that are glossed over in history classes, and generally not easy to find, though they’re (for today) clearly documented on even Left-leaning sites like Wikipedia®.
All of those things that receive warnings on Twitter® and are banned on Facebook™? Shadows. I’m not saying that everything that gets a Twitter© warning is the Truth. But I am saying that if they’re suppressing an idea, it merits investigation and clear thinking, and abandoning your preconceptions to try to find Truth.
But if someone would have told fifteen year old me that those things in the bullet points above were true? Would I have violently rejected that?
Absolutely.
Fifteen year old me wanted to believe in the government, wanted to believe that the press wasn’t hopelessly corrupt. Me in 2020 has seen too much.
If you haven’t seen the movie They Live, there is a scene where the protagonist tries to help his friend stop staring at the shadows on the wall of the cave. In the movie, there are sunglasses you can wear to see a different reality. The clip below from the movie, with Rowdy Roddy Piper playing the protagonist, and Keith David playing his reluctant friend who really, really doesn’t want to put on the glasses (some NSFW dialog):
Rowdy Roddy, rest in peace.
The bonfire in my backyard is now just some smoke and a few glowing coals, not enough light now to cast the amazing shadows that the thirty-foot flame made. But my television is going, showing a documentary where a gentleman is earnestly telling me about his particular trip outside the cave. If he’s right, it changes the world.
As does every trip outside the cave. But, I have my doubts that he’s right because the truth he’s presenting is so counter to mainstream thought, so I’ll keep doing my research. And learning.
Leaving the cave is scary, and it’s difficult. And I absolutely don’t promise that understanding reality a little bit better will make you happy – it’s very likely to have the opposite effect. But it will bring you one step closer to the truth.
Maybe you and I can finally figure out what those shadows really are.
Let’s go see what’s outside.
“You’ll put your eye out.” – A Christmas Story
Nobody was too concerned with my eyes. But do NOT make us have to pay for a neighbor’s window.
(This was first published in 2018, but I’ve made some slight edits. Merry Christmas!)
I’m a believer in Christmas – it’s a time of redemption and rebirth that proves that miracles can happen. People can escape their past, and become something more than they were before – they can become reborn. We can become better. The birth of Christ is an example that we can all be reborn and change our lives in a miraculous and meaningful way.
But, I’m not sure I can recall any particular Christmas miracles.
Oh, wait, here’s one. It’s mostly true, as well as I can recall, and field-tested to read aloud to your family:
On Christmas Day when I was in second grade, the one thing I wanted more than anything else was . . . a BB-Gun. No, this is not a remake of A Christmas Story, this is A Wilder Story. And I was there for this one.
As I recall, this was the last Christmas when we opened Christmas presents on Christmas morning. In all following years, my older brother John Wilder and I wheedled our parents into a Christmas Eve opening of everything but “Santa” gifts. We were insufferable. My brother (really) is also named John Wilder – my parents didn’t want to waste those extra birth announcements they had bought when they could just change the day and year, but that’s another story.
But that particular Christmas morning when I was in second grade I looked down on a real-life lever-action Daisy® BB gun. It looked like a real rifle even though the wood parts were plastic. I’d never shot a real rifle before, but I knew that all I wanted for Christmas was that BB gun. And there it was, all mine, pristine in its oiled metal and plastic perfection.
It looked very real. Mine was the one on the bottom. It was actually mistaken for a real rifle several times. Mainly by me, because everyone who was an adult could see it was just a BB gun.
“Take care of that, and it’ll last you a long time, Son,” Pop said as he handed me my first gun. This was the first time he’d said that to me, and I nodded gravely, feeling the responsibility and pride deep inside me. Pop would later repeat that phrase about boots I got in high school, a Buck© pocket knife I got in fifth grade, and my first car.
I still have the BB gun and the boots. I lost the knife, probably at school. It was expected when I was a kid that you had a knife with you if you were in fifth grade, because what if you had to gut a fish during English class?
But I was in second grade, and I had a BB gun. My BB gun.
And I was ready to use it. I was given a quick tutorial on how to load it, a list of all the things (mainly windows), people (mainly windows), places (our windows), and forbidden objects (neighbor’s windows) that I shouldn’t even think of aiming my BB gun at, let alone shoot. I was trusted to take my new BB gun out on a Christmas morning expedition, because it was made clear to me in no uncertain terms that the worst punishment in the world would fall upon me if I shot something I shouldn’t. I would lose (probably until I was 40) my BB gun, be grounded from TV until I had my own children and probably be branded as a BB abuser for the rest of my life in my Permanent Record. (For kids: Permanent Record is now called Snapchat©.)
With the earnestness only a second grader can muster, I put on my deep blue Sears™ parka (the ad said it was designed for pilots stationed in . . . the ARCTIC, you know, where we fought the Soviets to save Santa from becoming, I guess, more Red) with polyester fur trim, and a pocket for pens and pencils on the arm, because where else would you keep pens and pencils except your left arm? I pulled on my black felt-lined snow boots and stiff green plastic gloves, and went outside. It was cold, certainly below freezing, and probably hovering around zero in non-communist units.
Like a pocket knife, every boy had a parka like this. Every boy. But does anyone know why pilots need parkas if they’re in heated jet airplanes?? Oh, yeah. Soviets. Image from E-Bay.
It had already snowed enough that the snow pile in our front yard was 10 feet (43 meters) deep, but we had a packed trail where our snowmobiles had gone onto the snow-packed country road and up into miles of forest roads that dated back to the old prospectors looking for gold.
My feet crunched in the snow as I walked due north onto the road, my breath puffing out as if from a small blue fake-fur-trimmed steam engine headed uphill. I kept going. What was I looking for? I’m not sure – I don’t remember, exactly. I guess, looking at stuff with a BB gun in my hand and shooting anything that wouldn’t get me in trouble with Ma Wilder at the rate of 6 BBs per step. But I felt like a man, and what would a man with a rifle do? Hunt. Win World War II again. Look for communists. It’s hazy, but I know I had a purpose.
Snakes weren’t a possibility, since I knew snakes wintered in Florida with baseball players, Santa and Cubans. Regardless, I wanted to shoot my BB gun, even if the opportunities to send Soviets back to Russia with a backside full of BBs was limited, at best. I still don’t recall ever seeing a Soviet in the forest until I saw Red Dawn, and then my BB gun was at home.
I guess Europe decided to sit this one out.
I trundled up the road. I think that’s probably the only time I’ve used the word “trundled” precisely since it implies I moved along slowly, noisily, and in a less than graceful manner. All of those applied. But I was ten feet tall with my BB gun, shooting aimed fire into snowbanks and sage brush alike. About a half a mile from my house, more than three-quarters of the way to the Old Cemetery, I saw it.
The Bear.
Sitting motionless, huddled against the barbed wire fence, not 20’ away, was the bear. It was a black bear. I knew that grizzly bears had been killed nearby, but this was definitely a black bear, being black and all. Ma Wilder had told me about them before going hiking and told me to never, ever get between a black bear cub and its mother – she said that was more dangerous than being between Beto O’Rourke and a microphone.
I didn’t know if this bear was cub-sized or mother-sized, but I already knew that this was something way out of my experience level – I mean I still wasn’t even coloring within the lines very well. Communists? Sure, I could take down a dozen of them since they were weak because they were Godless and fatherless and mainly starving when they weren’t swilling massive quantities of cheap Afghan vodka.
But bears? Better call the reinforcements (spelled D-A-D) in.
Calling out an APB on a tiny blonde boy. He looked tasty.
I backed away from the bear, keeping my eyes on it the whole time. My BB gun was loaded, a precious brass sphere ready to explode outward on a column of pressurized air at the bear should it charge me. I knew I was too slow to out-trundle the bear. Even my candy-cane addled brain knew that the BB was scant protection against a bear, but if I was going to go down, I was going to go down fighting like a man, and not running away like a weak Soviet child would. Even though it was nearly zero, I built up a sweat in my green turtle neck under my Air Force Pilot Parka®.
That green turtle-neck was really tight and made me look a lot like an actual turtle, so I only wore it three times. Why? A chubby kid covered in the smell of fear sweat and Nacho Cheese Doritos™ isn’t really a winner with the ladies despite whatever Bill Clinton might say.
An aside: In the safe realm of 2018, I know that it seems insane to allow a second grader to hike up into the forested wilderness alone at temperatures near zero on Christmas morning armed with a weapon that’s patently illegal to arm a second grader with in New York City, and twenty other states that are, no doubt, now deeply under the influence of the Soviets. Or, does it? When I last had a second grader (Pugsley) he had a BB gun and trundled off into the backyard with a zillion BBs. I can attest our backyard is now safely Soviet-free. But back in the day? We weren’t building weak Soviet children. No! We had backbones of steel and cheap Taiwanese Rambo® knives with compasses built into the handle.
So, yeah, not unusual. I guess it was a crazy thing called freedom. Anyway . . .
I got back to the house and threw open the door. I stamped my snow-covered feet inside. Yeah, I know, bad form. But I was in a hurry, I had real news and information for the family.
My parents were lounging on the couch, enjoying a quiet coffee.
“A BEAR!” I yelled.
“I swear, I saw it, a bear! It was just right up the road, right where the hill starts. A bear! A black one!”
Ma looked at Pop, concerned.
Pop Wilder shook his head. “Bears are hibernating. None are up this time of year, not when it’s this cold.”
“No, it was there, right by the fence.”
Ma Wilder nudged him, seeing the absolute certainty on my face. “We should take a look.”
There is a look a man gives a woman when he knows that he has lost the argument even before it started. I know that look because I saw it then. Pop sighed, got up, and got dressed. Half an hour later, he and Ma and my brother were all dressed, and ready to go up the road. I had my BB gun. I hoped that the bear would still be there.
We walked. I pointed, when the Bear came into sight, not 300 yards away.
“See, I told you.”
Ma Wilder looked concerned when she saw visual proof of my story. I think she had put my bear story into the category of “addled ravings of an overly imaginative eight-year old that may or may not process reality like a normal human after he told me that he was worried that Grandma would turn into a zombie (Sleep Deprivation, Health, Zombies, and B-Movies).”
As for me, I was concerned that Pop hadn’t brought bazookas, howitzers, grenades, or maybe a battleship. Nah, Pop Wilder could probably wrestle a dozen or so bears, if they came up to him one at a time, like in the Kung Fu movies. We finally got up to the road where we were perpendicular to the black bear, still huddled up against the fence, not 30 feet (432 meters) away. It hadn’t moved since I’d first seen it. I felt . . .vindicated, even though I’d never heard the word.
“Hand me the BB gun,” said Pop Wilder.
I did.
Pop shot one BB into the bear, smoothly worked the lever like a cowboy in the Old West, and then shot another BB into the bear.
The bear was motionless. It must be dead! Pop Wilder killed it! Pop handed the BB gun back to me.
He then walked back into the deep snow directly to the bear, reached out, and pulled up the black plastic sheeting that had blown into a ball up against the fence.
He handed me back the BB gun and handed my brother the black plastic sheet. We walked home in silence.
So, there was that: the Miracle of the Transubstantiation of the Bear – where a Christmas miracle transmuted a black bear into a sheet of black plastic. Not sure of any other explanation.
But the real Christmas miracle, it’s below. Merry Christmas to all.
“It’s a growth economy, Gus. We’ve already made like, 500 rupee.” – Psych
The economy is so bad, Facebook® just laid off 50 Congressmen.
I was flittering across the Internet the other day and I came across a disturbing image. I mean, who wants to even think about Barack Obama wearing just a feather boa and covered in gerbils? See if I ever go to the New York Times® website again.
But, if I may, I think I found an even more disturbing image – a graph of M1. What is M1? M1 is the narrowest definition of money: it’s the cash in your cushions, it’s the cash in your pocket. It’s the cash in your checking account. Nearly anything you can go out and spend right now and not owe anyone for: that defines M1.
M1 is not, however, credit cards. And it’s not savings accounts or the stock market or savings bonds. It’s ready, hot cash.
And the M1 graph has spiked. Spiked as in going up from just under $4 trillion last year at this time to nearly $6.6 trillion right at this moment – a growth of $2.6 trillion dollars – in one year. That’s a huge change, since it took sixteen years to grow from $1.4 trillion to $4 trillion, and those sixteen years contained the biggest recession the United States had seen since the Great Depression.
So, here, take a look. Since it’s Christmas time, I tried to get the most festive pictures I could find, even though technically one of them isn’t a bikini. Oh, sure, you feel like complaining, but what about me? I’m the one who has to flit through literally hundreds of bikini photos to find the best ones to properly illustrate economic principles while being festive.
This is the longer view, which shows M1 since 1975.
This is a close up of more recent M1 behavior. I made the last little bit on the graph thicker and orange because it was hard to see.
It certainly looks scary. The graph, not the bikini. Look at the graph.
What’s going to happen?
I’m not certain. I originally wrote, “I have no idea” but what has happened historically when a country prints 65% extra cash in one year?
I have an idea of what happens there, and it really is scary. After World War I, the German economy was pretty well wrecked, plus they had to put down a communist revolution. I’m not getting into the details (mainly because it’s boring) but the Germans just started printing money as fast as they could.
And by printing as fast as they could the printing presses were the problem. Thankfully, they managed to double money production – by only printing on one side of the currency.
That’s AOC-level super-genius thinking.
A ewe in a swimsuit just drove up in an Italian sports car. It was a lamb bikini.
Within six years what had cost 1 Mark cost 1 trillion Marks. And all because they printed money. I write on a regular basis about the world changing around us, and this is a great example. In 1914 everyone had been happy with their new-fangled electric lights, and in 1924 you had to pay 4 trillion Marks for a newspaper, but even then the news was the wurst.
The good news is that the Germans could pay off their mortgage with cheap money, right?
No.
While their money melted away in a blizzard of banknotes, their debt was (eventually) tied back to the new currency that replaced the inflated mess. As an example, mortgages were revalued at 25 billion (yes, billion) times their value in the inflated currency.
Surely they did the same thing with depositors, right?
Of course not. In some cases bonds were revalued, but only at a tenth of the value of the mortgages. As always, there were winners and losers, and, as always, most people aren’t in the club that allows them to make out like bandits while the economy collapses around them.
My crack research staff uncovered that Adams never said that even though it sometimes is attributed to him. It took a Google® search and one result. Arduous.
As I write this, a $2.3 trillion dollar spending plan was just passed by Congress. Nearly a trillion dollars of that is going directly to people, many of whom badly need the cash. Trump wants to hold out to double it, since as we’ve seen, what’s another trillion?
The rest of the bill is packed with nearly six thousand pages of “stuff”. Since it’s well known that most Congresscritters can’t spell or type, who wrote those six thousand pages, filled with things like making unauthorized downloads of movies a felony, $30 million to set up the Martin Luther King, Jr./Mohandas Gandhi Scholarly Exchange Fund.
Sounds like CoronaBux for Leftists complaining about how awful the United States treats the hordes of people that keep trying to sneak in? Probably. I could go on and on about the rest of the money we’re shooting like water out of a Super Soaker™, but I won’t. The point is, since we’re in a budget deficit already, this is just printing more money.
Okay, this one might have been a bit made up. And Gandhi was notorious for being able to put back six or seven bacon cheeseburgers at a sitting.
Not all of this money will go directly into cash. But some of it will be quickly recycled back into the United States as cash: we lend Egypt a billion or so to buy guns and jet fighters and bombs, and that money goes, partially, to the salaries of the Americans who make the stuff.
And from there right into that M1 graph.
The one thing I know is that vast amounts of money sloshing around within our economy have consequences. Right now, some of those consequences are being held in check – a steak today costs about the same as a steak last year. Gasoline costs less than gasoline did last year.
Why? Most commodity prices that I’ve tracked are still declining, and have been for nearly a decade as the Everything Bubble that followed the Housing Bubble funnels investments into ever-lower returns.
As I’ve said before – we will have inflation. But we will have deflation first. And when it whips back into inflation?
Well, thankfully, I’ll have a graph for that . . . .
Our Christmas-themed episode is up!
We’re still requesting viewer photos (ones you own) that you’d like us to share or make fun of (tell us which) and we’re debuting our first “how-to” segment just in time for your gift-wrapping needs, which may or may not end up in a minor catastrophe. Send photos for inclusion and requests for “how-to” segments to movingnorth@gmail.com.
We’re still working on getting it on Apple and Bitchute.
The Mrs. (yes, she’s real and not some sort of alternate personality) and I got together with Mark (Practical Escatology – LINK) enjoyed putting this one together . . . I think you’ll enjoy it, too.
You can bookmark the channel – feel free to like/comment/and subscribe.
Thanks!
“The pathway to salvation is as narrow and as difficult to walk as a razor’s edge.” – The Razor’s Edge (1984)
What did the hobbits say as they rode the Ents into battle? “Run, forest, run!”
It was on July 4. I had convinced two of my friends to follow me on a bizarre quest – we were going to climb one of the tallest mountains in North America. By one of them, it’s in the top 50. So, in my book that counts.
The trip started using gasoline – we had a borrowed Jeep® that we took as far up the hill as we could, since it was a borrowed Jeep™. My friend who had borrowed the Jeep© didn’t want to wreck it, since it was before YouTube® and we wouldn’t even get likes from a cool video if we wrecked it on the amazingly rough road.
We decided to make this hike a three-day event. On the first day, we’d do nearly a mile gain in elevation while we camped out 1000’ below the summit of the mountain. Then, we’d summit the mountain and spend the next night at our basecamp. Then we’d hike out the next morning.
Of course, it rained.
At the elevation of our basecamp, trees can’t grow, so we boiled filtered water in the rain. It worked, sort of. At that elevation, water boils at less than 190°F. It was enough to reheat a fifteen-year-old dehydrated Mountain House® Chili Mac, even though the beans couldn’t get hot enough to not be crunchy.
After climbing up a mountain, crunchy beans and all, it was the best dinner I’d had in years. I think I ate two.
The chili mac wasn’t red hot, but there was no way I was going to give it away, give it away, give it away now.
The next day morning we were sore – but we could leave our packs at the camp so we’d just be carrying ourselves and our water. It was nearly half of a mile to get to the summit – a half of a mile straight up.
The trip up was a true scramble – a broken field of boulders that we sometimes had to ascend on all fours. It was steep – very steep. As we intersected the ridge that led to the summit of the mountain, I looked forward to seeing what was on the other side of the ridge. I was certain that it must be flatter than the steep boulder field we’d just climbed – there was no way it could be as steep.
I got to the edge of the ridge, and looked down.
Until that moment in time, I had never been afraid of heights. But I was not expecting to see what I saw.
It was a cliff. A sheer drop off – I was looking at a certified Wile E. Coyote precipice.
When I was stuck on that cliff, they told me not to “look down.” So, I smiled.
I don’t know if you’ve ever looked straight down and seen a cliff that went nearly three-quarters of a mile straight down when you weren’t expecting it. For the first time in my life I was experiencing vertigo – it felt like the mountain under me was going to slide off down that cliff.
I moved back down the ridge. But I still had to climb a few hundred feet upward to reach the summit. Up the side of the ridge I went. I assure you, I stayed back from that knife-edge as we crawled up that hill.
Then, finally, tantalizingly close, there was the summit. I was nearly to the top of one of the highest mountains in North America.
There was one little problem.
Between the ridge I was on, and the top of the mountain there was a path. It was about six or eight feet long, and probably a foot wide, and it was flat, like it had been machined.
What’s the difference between Humpty Dumpty and 2020? One of them had a great fall.
On one side of it was, you guessed it, a sheer cliff that bottomed out 3,000 feet or so below me. On the other side of the path it was a lot better. There was only about a 1,000 foot drop.
Wait, was 1,000 feet better? I’d get more time to live if I fell down the 3,000 foot side.
Choices.
But when facing that last few steps, shaky with the first vertigo in my life, I’ll admit those were some of the toughest steps of my life. But, hey, what was I going to tell the folks back home? That I climbed to a spot nearly three miles into the air to stop two feet before I reached the top?
Nope.
But that ridge (to me) was a razor’s edge. On either side was disaster. I took a deep breath. I put one foot in front of the other. And I walked – one step, two steps, three steps – to the top, where my friends were waiting.
What brought this to mind was an email forwarded by frequent commenter, 173dVietVet, where he said (in part) this on discussing where our country is:
“(I’ve) Done a bit of mountain climbing in my Ranger days and I know full well the meaning of knife’s edge, where any wrong step throws you headlong forever into the abyss of death that lies on BOTH sides . . . .”
We are in that zone. In climbing mountains, the knife edge is more than a metaphor – it’s real. On either side is death, and it’s not metaphorical death, it’s mangled into a wadded pile of Wilder by the combined forces of gravity and the sudden stop on the rocky outcropping at the bottom. Sure, Wile E. Coyote could survive, but not me.
Everything went downhill after gravity was invented.
But in life, the knife-edge is a metaphor. We’ve created a financial situation where the economy is horribly broken, and for the last year we’ve survived mainly by printing money and not allowing people to be evicted from houses, despite the questionable legality of that.
A bigger component to our knife edge is that the rule of law has been progressively ignored in the country. Where is the right of the Federal Government to stop evictions of tenants?
Oh, there isn’t one. They just made it up.
That would be (at best) an action by a State, though even then it’s of questionable legality. But then the Patriot Act made spying on American citizens “legal” so who cares about legal, anyway? Then every agency with three letters of an alphabet decided to swallow up all of that online data, and all of the phone calls, despite laws to the contrary.
Of course, Federal employees were put in prison.
Hahahaha!
No.
The NSA: a government agency that actually listens to you!
Despite obviously illegal orders, no one was put in prison, and the only one likely to be put into prison is the whistleblower (Edward Snowden) if he ever shows back up in the United States. It used to be the Constitution that was ignored, but that’s so 1940s.
Now, the government can ignore any inconvenient law it wants to ignore. Of course, the people that can ignore the law are those that are either leaders, government employees, or those favored (think Antifa™) by the government.
Destroy evidence? A felony for most. But when the government does it? It’s “a regrettable incident.”
What people misunderstand is that Trump isn’t at all the cause of our problems today. Trump is a symptom. Without Trump, the answer would have been (yet another) Bush, this time Jeb, versus (yet another) Clinton, this time Hillary. Oh, the excitement for electing ¡Jeb!
The difference between another Clinton and another Bush? Nothing, really. And America didn’t want that – so America elected Trump. If anything, Trump cleared the fog, and made the knife edge we were walking clearer.
Jeb has a perfect place in government, as the Secretary of Low Energy.
And now, we are walking, and the knife-edge is sharper and narrower than the one that I walked to get to the top of that mountain on July 4th a couple of decades ago.
We have left the bounds of Constitutional governance some time ago – people think it’s quaint when I bring the entire idea of the Constitution up. Is there a path back to an actual Constitutional government?
Sure. It’s narrow – a knife-edge. But so was getting that Constitutional government in the first place. But getting that original Constitution depended upon men climbing a mighty steep mountain several hundred years ago. Were they afraid when they saw the cliff’s edge, the price of failure?
I’m sure they were. But yet they continued. And when it was time to thread that final few steps to the summit?
They did, and damn the dangers on either side.
We face the same knife-edge. Where are we going?
“Frankly, your lack of paranoia is insane to me.” – Silicon Valley
In our library, I asked The Mrs. where our books on paranoia were, she said, “They’re right behind you.”
The biggest natural disaster The Wilder Family ever rode out was Hurricane Ike – it passed right over our house when we lived in Houston. And it was going pretty strong when it hit our place. We lost power, a tree, siding, and a whole lot of roof. Thankfully, Led Zeppelin was there to sing that one . . . Whole Lot of Roof . . . .
In review, the hurricane wasn’t so bad. At one point, I had to do my Captain Dan impression, walking outside in the middle of the hurricane at the strongest winds and yelling into the wind after the power went out and the laptop battery died so we couldn’t watch the John Adams miniseries we were watching on DVD:
“Is that all that you’ve got?”
Since I’ll probably never be able to walk away from an exploding helicopter without looking back as the flames shot up into the sky, it was just something I thought I had to do: yelling into a hurricane wearing a bathrobe and athletic shorts.
I’ve done a lot of cool things in my life, but I really enjoyed that one. I’d recommend it, but my lawyer, Lazlo, advises me against advising you to try it. Maybe you could talk pleasantly into a warm spring breeze?
The reason I did it? We had hit the toughest part of the storm. We had ridden it out. We were prepared.
Never smoke weed during a hurricane – lightning always strikes the highest object.
In truth, the preparation had started before we ever bought our house. We picked a house that was so far outside the flood zone that Wyoming would be underwater before we were.
Yeah, I checked that before we made an offer. I’m paranoid that way.
In my life, I’ve always tried to go to the idea of, “How bad can it get?” Then I thought, “Well, how could it get worse than that?”
In the middle of the night when I wake up with yet another scenario, the answer always comes back the same: “It really can get worse.”
Reality can get really, awfully bad. And it can do so more quickly than we imagine.
During the hurricane, there wasn’t a lot we could do. Stores were picked clean of essentials about 24 hours before the storm hit. Oh, sure, you could get things like diet cookies and soy milk, but the food actual humans wanted to eat was simply gone. And booze? Forget about it. All of that was sold out.
The first big lesson: Prepare Before Circumstances Force You To Prepare. If you’re moving out of a disaster zone (cough San Francisco cough) it’s better to be five years too early than one day too late. Especially if they’re out of beer.
Why did people hoard all the toilet paper? It’s just how they roll . . . .
But not having the store was okay for us. I went to visit one mainly to amuse myself and learn – what would be left? If more people prepared, then systems wouldn’t be overwhelmed when a crisis strikes.
Thankfully, at that point in our life, our pantry had enough food in it to keep us fully fed for weeks or longer. Water? We had a swimming pool (they come with every house in Houston, like mailboxes or manservants) so we had thousands of gallons of water.
Don’t want to drink swimming pool water? Well, if you had the water filter system I had, you could. But we also had drinking water stored in plastic jugs for weeks of use. We ended up using the swimming pool water for bathing and toilet flushing and never missed a beat.
The food was good. Even though power was out, cold cooked corn and cold Hormel Chili™ tasted okay. It was “camping” bad, but not “a normal Tuesday in Somalia” bad. The worst part was the second day after the hurricane – temperatures and humidity skyrocketed, so it was uncomfortable to do anything other than sit around and sweat. Even sleeping was uncomfortable since the still, hot, humid air was like living inside a whale that’s spending spring break in a crockpot.
Don’t sweat the petty things. And don’t pet the sweaty things.
The hand-crank radio was our link to the outside world. Cell service was wiped out. And then, FEMA helpfully came on the radio and told us to go to their website for emergency locations.
Huh? Website? We had a hand-crank radio.
But, outside of minor discomfort, we were fine. I even had beer, though it was warm.
The one (and only one) hole in my preparations at that point was I was out of propane for my grill. I had to borrow from a neighbor to cook the steaks that were rapidly thawing out. That was okay, I lent him 20 gallons of gasoline for his generator, so we were very quickly even-stevens.
Yet another lesson: Every Detail, No Matter How Small, Matters.
I was planning for a much, much bigger catastrophe. The hurricane that hit us was, due to the preparations The Mrs. and I made, an uncomfortable inconvenience. It was in this case that my paranoia made our lives (relatively) easy.
The biggest lesson I learned is one that we speak of commonly now: No One Is Coming To Save You.
If we had any issues that would have resulted in needing help? We weren’t going to get it. The “First Responders” had gotten themselves into an emergency operations building and had no food or water. The radio broadcast a hilarious plea for people to come save the “First” Responders by bringing them food and water.
When seconds count, First Responders will be there in minutes.
The First Responders are almost always Second Responders – you and I, when we have a crisis, are the real First Responders.
No One Is Coming To Save You. Get that very simple fact through your mind. It was one we lived with each day of my childhood up on Wilder Mountain. If you couldn’t save yourself – you were going to die. If Pa Wilder cut off his left foot with the chainsaw while we were gathering firewood and my brother John (yes, my brother’s name is really John as well) couldn’t save him, he was going to die.
That never happened. But we were prepared for it.
Sometimes events I write about go beyond what will happen. I assure you, not one of the events that I write about goes beyond what could happen. The descent of a society into madness and chaos has happened again and again throughout history. Sure, that descent into madness generally doesn’t happen overnight.
Generally. But sometimes? It does.
So, when I look at the world around me, I let my paranoia run. I encourage it. “How bad could it get?”
That’s a starting point. What are the additional things current me can do now to help future me? How many human needs can I solve? For how long?
Where I live, there are several amazing advantages. Great water. Good soil. Low-ish population density. Grain elevators filled to bursting with food that the population could eat in an emergency. Good neighbors that I’ve known for years who think as I do, mostly.
We didn’t move to a rural area by accident. From every story that was told to me about the Great Depression – people in the country, surrounded by their neighbors, had a much better time than people in the cities.
Think about preparing not as being about stuff, but as a way to buy time. Saving money buys time. Stockpiling food buys time. Living in a low-pressure area buys time. Living in a high resource area buys time.
Most preppers suffer from Stock Home syndrome.
If you prepare for something big, and nothing big happens? Not generally a loss. I can eat the food in my pantry anytime. If I prepare by building a pantry when times are good? I often end up saving money because food prices keep going up.
If you prepare for something big, and something small happens, like (for us) Hurricane Ike?
You can ride it out. You get a few days off of work. You might gain weight, having to eat all of that food that is thawing.
And you would definitely get the chance to go out and yell into the winds:
“Is that all you’ve got?”
See? Paranoia has its advantages. I’ll simply say this: paranoia is the only way that our ancestors survived.
Don’t sell it short. Preparation after paranoia brings peace of mind. Heck, I nearly have a Ph.D. in that – just call me Dr. Prepper.
I guess anyone can be called Dr. nowadays.
“It’s just crazy, you know? Everyone’s affected by it. It’s like all the money just vanished.†– South Park
James Bond’s doorbell goes: Dong, Ding Dong.
As I’ve mentioned before, Pa Wilder was a banker at a small-town bank that mainly served small farmers. I can recall (in one of my earliest memories) that a savings account was opened for me. This account was fairly small in the amount of money that was in it, but Pa made me go to the teller and deposit the money that I had earned.
I had earned the money in the most Wilder way possible:  by being five and being completely un-babysittable. Ma Wilder needed to go in to help Pa out at the bank and train someone so she could stay home and keep the 3’10†(34 liter) rodeo clown she lived with (me) in line. Apparently, I was against this plan, because I ran off at least two babysitters in as many days.
Even then, I was difficult to get along with.
At the time, Ma and Pa offered me $20 per week if I would just be good, come home from school and watch re-runs of Star Trek®, and not burn the house down in the three hours between when I got off the bus and when Ma Wilder got home. Even as a kid that sounded like a good deal to me. I could try to burn the house down after Ma got home just as easily as when she wasn’t there. I call that a win-win.
When Ma and Pa paid up, I was owed the princely sum of $100. Pa Wilder took me down to the bank, and they opened a savings account for me. I received a savings “passbook,†which was a little book where the teller wrote down my deposit, and then wrote it down on a corresponding card that showed how much money I had in the bank and had my account number on it.
Of course, I then announced that I was moving out. I figured I could live for quite a while on $100. When Ma then described exactly how many loaves of bread that would buy, I did the math and decided I wouldn’t run away just yet.
But snakes can’t rob banks. They’re unarmed.
The passbook was fascinating to me, though.
It, along with the little card showed how much money I had in the bank. The bank would take all of the accounts and save all of the transactions at some frequency (I don’t know how often but I think it was monthly) on a computer in Capital City, which was hundreds of miles away. So, the records were backed up, but the primary record was paper – the account card at the bank, and in my passbook – which had official meaning, Pa told me – it would be difficult to take money out without one, and they’d have to issue a new one if I lost mine.
I hadn’t thought about my first savings account in years – the passbook was a thing of the past before I was eight – replaced by computer statements sent out monthly, but it provided a view of another world. I drained all of my money at age 13 to buy a motorcycle, so that account ceased to exist even before I got a Social Security Number.
Likewise, I hadn’t thought about that passbook until last Sunday, but oddly enough it was computers that brought it to mind.
My computer is so old, that when I upgraded memory they just added more beads.
On Sunday, it was announced that the Department of the Treasury was hacked (LINK). A program made by the company SolarWinds® was allegedly hacked by the Russians. But it wasn’t hacked on Sunday – it is possible the system had been hacked as far back as this spring, according to the news. The same news that said that:
I am not sure I believe that they even know who did the hack, or when the hack was done. Given that it’s only been a week, I’m pretty sure they have no idea what information is gone, or if any information has been changed. That’s scary.
So, let’s call that dot number one.
I also read about dot number two on Sunday. This particular dot was that the names of tens of thousands of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members working in Western companies had “accidentally†made public. Thousands of them work in the United States, and thousands more across the West. As an example, 600 CCP members work across 19 branches of just two British banks, HSBC and Standard Chartered (LINK).
Of course, it’s not just banks, it’s Boeing® and Google™ and Facebook©, too. But the banks caught my attention.
Was it always so lonely in the Empire?
Dot number three I’ve known about for several years: the Chinese aren’t planning to re-fight World War II, or even any of the Gulf Wars. They have seen the stunning power of the United States military, and understand the United States has spent trillions of dollars to defeat the Soviet Union in a war that never came. Tanks? The chances of tank warfare with the Chinese are slim. The chances of them engaging the United States in a stand-up military conflict are likewise slim.
The Chinese are very smart, and have taken defeating the United States seriously – they have been thinking since (at least) the 1990s of ways to defeat America, in detail. I’d read some of this strategy before, and it is probably worth a post on its own.
Here is the .pdf of Unrestricted Warfare, by Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui (LINK). Thankfully, at least someone in the .mil part of the world has read this – here’s a link to an article about Unrestricted Warfare from the Army University Press (LINK). H/T to Vox Day for reminding me of this information (LINK).
If I were going to fight the United States, I wouldn’t waste my time attempting to build billions of dollars of aircraft carrier and then spend decades trying to learn how to use them well. I wouldn’t try to send millions of men in a mass-wave attack. Where would I attack?
It’s too late for me, though, my Chinese vacuum has been gathering dirt on me for years.
Well, it’s obvious that the Chinese have tried to influence the politics of the United States – how many different politicians have been Fang-Fanged (LINK) by the Chinese has yet to be counted. But there are lots – the Chinese have attempted to find younger, up and coming politicians and reach them early. Again, a great strategy: why fight if you already can influence the leadership of your enemy?
But perhaps, one day that’s not enough. Perhaps one day, it’s required to neutralize the United States.
How would I do it in a single day?
If I were going to attack the United States, I would attack Bank of America© and all of the other large banks. I would attack the Treasury. I would attack the Federal Reserve™.
What would happen if, one day, all of the Bank of America® accounts read zero? What would happen if the Fed® started spasming out trillions of perfectly legal electronic dollars to banks all across the world? What would happen if the Treasury’s computer suddenly forgot who owned all of those electronic savings bonds in the Treasury Direct accounts?
What if every record of every transaction on the NASDAQ® disappeared overnight?
Chaos.
And only one color of dot. I guess going first matters.
Three dots does not make a big dot-to-dot puzzle. But if America was surprised by Pearl Harbor, how surprised would they be if every bank account in the country read zero one fine Monday morning? I’m not saying it will happen – most internet hacks are the equivalent of defacing a poster on the outside of a movie theater.
But if it were to happen, would you think the system where the teller stamped your bank book and then updated the card that had your bank account information on it had some merit?
Sleep well tonight!
Well, if you enjoyed last week’s podcast, this one will knock your socks off. It’s better in every way (really), plus we have a sponsor!
We’re also requesting viewer photos (ones you own) that you’d like us to share or make fun of (tell us which) and ideas that you’d like to see for “how-to” segments, which may or may not end up in a minor catastrophe. Send those to movingnorth@gmail.com.
We’re working on getting it on Apple and Bitchute, and should have those channels up and running by next week, if you prefer those to YouTube.
The Mrs. (yes, she’s real and not some sort of alternate personality) and I got together with Mark (Practical Escatology – LINK) enjoyed putting this one together . . . I think you’ll enjoy it, too.
You can bookmark the channel – feel free to like/comment/and subscribe.
Thanks!
“I have nothing to declare, my dear man, except my genius!” – Babylon 5
Best breakup letter. Ever.
Despite the common opinion that Thomas Jefferson was a hockey player for the Saskatchewan hockey team, “Saskatoon Blades®” (who was remembered for scoring three hat tricks in one season against the “Prince Albert Raiders™” in 1986) there was another Thomas Jefferson that history also remembers.
This Thomas Jefferson was an author, a president of the United States, a founder of a university, and wrote a really great mandolin solo, which has sadly been ignored since the invention of the guitar. Sadly, this Thomas Jefferson was wholly unable to play hockey at all, probably because he couldn’t skate any better than my kid sister.
Regardless, Thomas Jefferson was only 33 years old when he also wrote a document that has been long remarked upon and probably contains some of the most famous sentences in the English language: The Declaration of Independence. In a little bit of history, John Adams had to get Jefferson drunk to convince him to write it because Jefferson was a bit nervous (this is actually true). I’m sure that the next morning, Jefferson said, “I agreed to do what?”
I’m with you, Thomas.
Your eyes aren’t real – they’re just in your head.
About 25% of the original draft was deleted in editing. Apparently, Jefferson had gotten carried away and ended up writing several paragraphs about how he loved potatoes. The committee wasn’t pleased. They didn’t like the part where Jefferson waxed poetically about the way they made his chest glisten when they rubbed the buttery mashed potatoes into it.
In the end, Jefferson decided to hit the print button on the sheep the parchment came from, and the document went out.
A girl: “Hey, Stalin, come over tonight, my parents aren’t home.” Stalin replied, “I know.”
It was not at all in small print, like a car lease at a Mercedes® dealership. The Declaration was meant to be read – a copy of it was sent to King George III, though a bunch of sales fliers for hardware stores and Target® were also included, so George might have thrown it out thinking it was all just junk mail again.
The principles of the Declaration were in common discussion at the time in America, so Jefferson wasn’t making stuff up. Likewise, the people who got the Declaration understood what it meant: times were going to get spicy.
It’s been a while since I’ve read the Declaration, so I thought I’d review it. It’s good stuff, so I thought I’d share it.
For no reason. No reason at all.
The downside is that Jefferson didn’t have a good word processor, and that he didn’t have PowerPoint®. If so, he could have had it down to a dozen slides or so. I’ve made a few changes by adding bullet points and capitalizing the word “Earth”. If Boston is capitalized, Earth should be, too.
Stupid Jefferson.
I trained my dog to smell out fruit, but he doesn’t like doing that. He’s a melon collie.
Regardless, here it is:
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the Earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
- Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
- But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
- Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.
The rest of the Declaration of Independence is an indictment – a listing of reasons why the Declaration had to be written, a “we told you so” section, and the “it’s not me, it’s you” breakup section. There was another section about how Jefferson would really, really, miss Great Britain and keep the big stuffed teddy bear they won him at the arcade, but the committee told him to “not be a wuss” and leave that out.
You never want to reach the end of the Y-axis on a plane.
In reality, when I re-read the Declaration, I was amazed at how, pardon me, revolutionary it was. The United States wasn’t founded by guys doing it “just because” – it was founded by guys who really thought about it, and who couldn’t check up on the Internet and find out about how Cardi B was upset about her hair care products.
They had time to think deeply through these issues. And they came up with this list.
To be clear, I love America. Thomas Jefferson, in 1775 said that he would: “rather be in dependence on Great Britain, properly limited, than on any nation upon Earth, or than on no nation.” Jefferson loved Great Britain, dearly.
The thing that I came away with is these men cared deeply about those around them. But there was a limit to what they would take. That limit was simple: the idea that they couldn’t take part in any fashion in the determination of what happened to their State simply wasn’t acceptable.
The Federal government of the United States has crept up in size and power. The charter of the Federal government is (if you actually read the Constitution) very small.
Anything in there about making sure toilets don’t use too much water? No. Anything in there about regulating what fuels your car uses? That your car must have an airbag? That the toothpaste you use meet FDA standards? That you pay someone a minimum wage?
Nope. Not in there at all.
Hmm. Does this sound like a long chain of usurpations? I could probably think of a few other things. You could, too.
Remember, if you start a revolution, aim for the tsars!
What is the last straw? Is it a tax on tea?
Or is it an election that may have been stolen?
So, think about what the future may hold. Don’t be Wayne Regretzky.
