Burning Your Way To Happiness

“No! Look, what’s the matter with you all? It’s perfectly simple: We have the fire drill when I ring the fire bell. That wasn’t the fire bell! Right?” – Fawlty Towers

At the pub, the owner told me I was drunk and needed to take the bus home.  Turned out those are even harder to drive when you’re drunk.

It was a cold, February campout.  It was also rainy, and also weather that most folks would call miserable.  In fact, it was also the first campout that I was Scoutmaster.

I think the temperature, at its highest, was probably around 45°F.  It froze at night.  We put our tents up in the dark, and I snuggled deep into my sleeping bag.

The next morning, we had breakfast.  One thing that I had changed since I became Scoutmaster was that the Scouts bought, cooked, and ate their own food.  One thing I observed on previous campouts was when the kids and adults ate the same food, the adults wanted good food, and wouldn’t leave the kids alone.  Me?  I had no desire to eat chicken tartare, so I let the kids fix their own food, and I often cooked for the adult leaders.

I drew a picture of a criminal once.  He looked pretty sketchy.

The plan for the day was fairly simple.  80% or more of the Scouts needed to get to First Class (a rank where a boy would know most of the things so they could survive a solo campout for a few days, if need be).  We focused on First Class skills.  One other thing I instituted is that the older Scouts were to teach the younger Scouts, for reasons that are probably obvious.

My job, mainly, was to drink coffee and take someone to the hospital if the hatchet got the best of them.  At this campout, there was one Scout in particular who had very little skill at anything.  One of the Scouts of higher rank ran him through building a fire.

Jack London aside, building a fire after a rainy night on a blustery, rainy day isn’t the easiest of things.  And, to be fair, this Scout wasn’t the quickest on the uptake.  But he worked at starting his fire for a really long time.  More than an hour?  Certainly.  But he had dogged determination, and finally got his fire going.

“Okay,” I said, “You can put that one out now.  That qualifies.”

“No, I want to keep it going.”

I hear arsonists do well on Tinder®.  They have a lot of matches.

I was fine with that.  It was his fire, and if he wanted to keep it going, I was fine with that.  There was little chance of him burning down the soggy campground.

He kept the fire going through the night, feeding it, and teasing it along.

He made First Class, but I must point out, by the time he got the rank badge it wasn’t nearly as important to him as building that fire.  He had acquired a skill.  He could do more than he could before.  He did not need outside validation.  The achievement was part of him.  He was proud of himself.

So often, we get tied up in feeling about things that are beyond our span of control.  Marcus Aurelius wrote, “You have power over your mind, not outside events.  Realize this and you will find strength.”

I hear that Marcus Aurelius got the first weather report.  “Hail, Caesar!”

I know that we are living in a world filled with tough situations.  I would say this, if some outside event upsets you, go ahead and be upset.  Until midnight.

Then, take control.  Realize that what you can be and do is the important thing.  As that Scout taught me, being fulfilled isn’t being surrounded by supermodels and driving a Lambo® while they softly nuzzle your neck and . . . where was I?  No, that’s not fulfillment.  Fulfillment is achievement.

Almost every single person reading this has the power to be better tomorrow at something.  A skill.  Bench pressing five more pounds.  Learning Shakespeare in the original Klingon.  Becoming a better carpenter.  Finally trimming those nosehairs, or at least weaving them into an attractive scarf.

Me?  I write, and try to get better.  When I’ve written what I want, I don’t need anyone to tell me – I feel it inside.

And I’m okay.

Except in especially tragic situations, it is in our power to be better.  It is in our power to improve.  And through doing so, it is in our power to build internal strength.  And we don’t need anyone to validate it.

Life is tough, and it’s even tougher when we try to take on every injustice in the world.  Sometimes we just need to take a few minutes, and build a fire.

Election? Worry About This Instead.

“We pay off the debt in buying the company with cash from its ongoing operation and by selling off pieces of the business.” – Barbarians at the Gate

Why do windmills love hard rock?  They’re huge metal fans.

Two characters were talking to each other in a Hemingway novel (The Sun Also Rises):

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.

“Two ways,” Mike said.  “Gradually and then suddenly.”

Irrespective of who has been in the White House, the debt of the United States keeps growing.  Gradually.  Okay, not gradually.  For the most part, the national debt has been doubling every eight years as Presidents keep spending money we don’t have to get re-elected.  Wait, why does this keep giving me flashbacks to my first marriage?

To be fair, it’s never fun to be the President who says, “Alright guys, I know the party has been awesome, but it’s time to stop spiking the punch with grain alcohol, I mean, look at Nancy – her liver must be 143 years old now and her husband is hammered.  So, let’s go home before we all have hangovers that will last for a decade.”

I found a twenty on the street, so I decided to do what Jesus would do:  I turned it into wine.

Debt is funny.  A little is hard to notice.  When I was first married with The Mrs., we bought a new car.  As in, a seriously new car, from a dealership and everything.  The monthly payment was okay.  So, a few months later, we bought a second one.  These weren’t expensive cars, perhaps (total cost) less than 1/3 of what we made in a year.  So, not Porsches™ and Lambos©.  Think:  small Nissan™ truck.

Ouch.  We weren’t bankrupt, but we were having to watch all our expenses each month.

When I paid the last payment for the last car?  Life was so wonderful.  And as debt dropped, we decided to not get into debt anymore (except for houses).  It was amazing.  That short-term pain and the little hangover that went with a debt moratorium only lasted a little bit.  Life was so much better afterward, and all it cost was half a dozen years of discipline.  And those were the last “new” cars we ever bought.

Did you hear about the guy in Mexico who drove his Audi® into a lake?  Quattro Sinko.

But on a national level, debt has been piling up.  It will destroy the country.  Some folks (Vox Day, for instance) has long pegged 2032 as the date when it all cracks up.  Me?  I called 2026 back in 2018.  I mean the United States?  Everyone could see the U.S.S.R. breaking up, heck, their flag only gave them a one-star rating.

I might be overly pessimistic, since inertia is powerful and the United States has trillions of dollars in inertia.  The first of the two factors that led me to that conclusion were the rising medical costs.  Eventually, if they keep rising, an aspirin at a hospital will cost $5,382 after insurance.

I wish that were a joke or an exaggeration.  The Mrs. went into the hospital earlier this year, and her COVID test was (allowed cost) $1,000.  It was negative.

What’s the difference between an art student and a large pizza?  The pizza can feed a family.

Yup.  Eventually, the costs of medical care – private, Medicare, and Medicaid are going to eat the entire budget.  We’ll become like a country that works all day for Band-Aids™ and Neosporin©.  Of course, that’s a ridiculous outcome.  People will stop going to doctors first.  And they are.  And our medical system is a mess (from a financial standpoint).

That, as I said, was the first problem.

The second one can’t be escaped – it’s the interest rate trap.  The problem is that the United States has been carrying huge chunks of its debt on short-term rates, having to roll it over every few years (on average).

I bought some dirt at high-interest rates.  I guess I should have avoided the loam shark.

The United States gets, generally, pretty favorable interest rates – at least when inflation isn’t running at near-record levels.  But what happens when, instead of 1% or less, the payments are 4% or more?

Interest on the debt doubles.  Take all of the soldiers, stealth fighters, rifles, artillery, missiles, MREs, and aircraft carriers, not to mention all the crayons that the military eats in a year?  The interest payments on the debt will be more than that.

As much as I’d love to blame the Leftists, this isn’t a Left-Right thing, mostly.  The healthcare crisis was started by Ted Kennedy (can’t turn away people who can’t pay) in the 1980s, but the Right has had plenty of time to fix it.  And they’ve only made “compassionate conservatism” while trying to make a “kinder, gentler country” their watchword while expanding medical programs and creating the worst Frankenstein monster yet – a non-private, non-public healthcare system.

Ted was an awful golf player.  He couldn’t drive over water.

And the spending?  The Right has spent as much (if not more) than the Left.  The biggest stop to that in my lifetime was when the Republicans in Congress pushed Clinton into not spending all the cash, and he agreed so he could get re-elected.

In the end, there are more things than just financial that are tearing the country apart, but financial is enough.  Angry, hungry people don’t really care who caused the hangover, they just want the pain to go away.  Regardless of how it’s done.

That’s how it ends.  Gradually, and then suddenly.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report, Midterms Edition

“$10,000. Is that all it takes to be elected senator these days?” – Used Cars

If you’re eighteen, you’re old enough to vote, but not to drink.  But if an eighteen year old looks at the candidates, they’ll understand why the adults are drinking.

  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.

I’ve kept the Clock O’Doom the same, though tensions may very well spike after this election.  The advice remains.  Avoid crowds.  Get out of cities.  Now.  A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Election 2022 – Violence And Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – You Vs. The Deep State – 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, subscribe because you’ll join over 730 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.  Most of today’s memes are free-range, and not originals.  The crop was really good again this month.

Election 2022, Part II

The hype machine is up on the Left and in full swing.  I’m actually surprised at the amazing levels of hyperbole that are in swing.  Here are some examples:

Rob Reiner seems frightfully unhinged, like he might hurt himself.  As do the TV talking heads:

Bill Maher disappoints me.  I had thought that he was actually getting to the point where he was not the reflexive Leftist he was back in 2000.  Nope.  He occasionally talks more reasonably, but he’s as committed as any other Leftist.  Aesop (LINK), you were right.

How insane is the Left?  They’re running John Fetterman, a person slightly more capable of holding a conversation than a bologna sandwich for Senate.  When Fetterman was (rightly) attacked for not knowing the difference between a noun and a shoelace, the Left tried to paint Republicans as “able-ist” as in wanting someone who was able to say his own name without drooling.

He also looks like a Goomba® from the 1993 movie Super Mario Brothers.

Luckily, he has a growth on his neck so he can appeal to both Eagle® fans as well as Steeler® fans.

At least he helps Biden look good.

Because Biden looks like you know, the thing:

But Biden is all about scaring people, too, and so is his Chief of Staff.

The Left, though, is setting us up for more ballot shenanigans:

If you spend a few moments looking at the picture above, you’ll see that in most states, the independents break a little for the Right, and a little for the Left.  But if you look closely at Michigan and Pennsylvania, all of the independents plus some of the Republicans “voted” for Biden.  This is 100% certainty of the fraud that mail voting brings.  Will they cook the books this election?

Why wouldn’t they.  And, you’ll note, fences are going up in Washington D.C.  You can tell that a country is close to Civil War when the politicians live in abject fear of the citizens.

Violence And Censorship Update

Again, organized political violence has been fairly muted this month.  That’s good.  But the .GOV folks are scared – fences are going up all over Washington, D.C.  Even the FED has been surrounded.

In case there is rioting, Ron Paul has been busy.

Stephen Crowder, who broadcasts from a position on the Right, has been banned from his primary outlet, YouTube™, just in time for the election.  Why?  Don’t know.  YouTube©’s rules are vague, so you don’t know why they banned you even after they banned you.  This has a negative effect on free speech since people have no idea where the boundaries are, they stay as far back as they can.  This, in effect, allows even more speech to be banned.

Another person banned is David Icke.  He, however, is a British citizen that’s banned from visiting Europe.  Why?  He is listed as a terrorist.  What does he talk about?  How the elite are literal lizard people.  From watching him in a few videos, I think he sincerely believes that.  But he won’t be visiting any European countries anytime soon.

Reporter James Gordon Meek had his house raided in April.  He hadn’t been seen for months after resigning from his job.  He even skipped going to get an award for his reporting of the pullout from Afghanistan.  He was seen recently, though.  Why did the FBI raid a reporter and cause him to quit?

And there has been some good (potentially) good news with Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter™.  If rumors are correct, it really has twisted a lot of knickers on the Left.  I don’t think Musk is on the Right, but he sure is messing with the Left, which might be enough.

How upset are they?  They want to see if they can keep him from running his toy.

The Usual Suspects are upset.  The “blue check mark” was the sign of an elite.  Now, anyone can have it.  The first price point was $20, but Elon quickly dropped it to $8.  This was hilarious, because people on the Left like, well, like Dick Durbin, who has no self-awareness, Tweeted® the below:

AOC was upset by all this, so much so that she quickly became the butt of jokes:

The ADL®, long known for tolerance of viewpoints they don’t agree with (yes, this is sarcasm), was quick to jump in with the Orwellian idea that, to have diversity of opinions, Twitter™ must ban all speech ADL© doesn’t agree with.

And, represented as a meme:

So, Musk started fact-checking.  The Left was upset that one of the first persons fact-checked was . . . The White House.  The White House was so embarrassed that they deleted the Tweet©.  Official Records Act violation, anyone?

And Kathy Griffin was permanently suspended for pretending to be Elon Musk.  Ha!

I guess we know how some people feel about that . . .

Biden’s Misery Index

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

Yup, up again.  I wonder if his new shipment from ACME will come in soon?

Updated Civil War II Index

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

Violence:

Violence ticked slightly downward this month and the abortion backlash subsided.   Will November be spicy due to elections?  A cold front is coming through, so I’m betting not.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it went up a bit – will November cause a spike?

Economic:

Economic indicators did a dead cat bounce this month.  Inflation has caught up with the Market.

Illegal Aliens:

Illegals are eight (8!) times more this time of year than any time measured during the same month during Trump’s time in office, and close to an all-time record.

You vs. The Deep State

You are being lied to and controlled.  Not (only) by Google™ and Twitter© and Facebook®, but by all of those folks at the request of the government.  Yup, the DHS, the child of the drunken meetup between George Bush and every congressman except for Ron Paul, has decided that they will be the group that decides what information you are allowed to hear on the big social media platforms.  This is not me making this up:

This is how this shows up in a meme:

Sure, they’re private companies.  But being leaned on by .GOV to shut you up?  I have felt it.  I can tell you the month that this page was downranked (not a misprint) by Google™ leading to a major dropoff in traffic from search engines.  The biggest months of attack?  On the months I made the most fun of Joe.  But after a while, it no longer looks like a mistake:

It looks like they’ve been planning it. And thanks to Snowden, we know how deeply they’re hooked in with electronic communications:

They want it all:  to spy on anyone, at any time, and to control what information you are allowed to see and hear.  They’re willing to go to great lengths:

And if you wonder what they value, look at who gets sent to jail:

Oddly enough, we are winning.  There is no reason that the DHS would need to enlist the aid of companies worth hundreds of billions of dollars to have them restrict the flow of information to over hundreds of millions of people if we weren’t winning.  Yeah, I know they own the majority of the institutions in the United States, but they’re proving they know they don’t own our minds.  They’re scared.

Remember, this is in our hands, not theirs.  And that’s what scares them.

LINKS

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

Bad Guys

Huh.  Pre-Musk Twitter 404ed almost all of my Bad Guy links from private citizens by the end of October…

It’s almost like there’s suddenly a crime wave coverup ahead of an election or something…

These two are still up (for now – because they are from Blue Check TV news reporters?)…
https://twitter.com/i/status/1582472383910117377
https://twitter.com/KeeleyFox29/status/1585595820077977600

Good Guys
https://youtu.be/akXJ_yuE-Ek
https://youtu.be/XRkpMhuXmZU
https://twitter.com/BornAKang/status/1584054864178339840

One Guy
Firefighter tries to be a good guy at a convenience store…
https://twitter.com/KcDiscover/status/1582552334994796547
https://www.kmbc.com/article/independence-missouri-shooting-kcmo-firefighter-anthony-santi-charges/41693134

Body Count
https://ijvtpr.com/index.php/IJVTPR/article/view/47/95
https://www.uncoverdc.com/2022/10/19/daniel-bobinski-interview-embalmer-says-blood-has-changed/
https://icandecide.org/v-safe-data/
https://emeralddb3.substack.com/p/the-mortality-rate-is-up-17-across
https://chaosnavigator.substack.com/p/80-young-canadian-doctors-died-suddenly
https://thepostmillennial.com/florida-surgeon-general-covid-mrna-vaccine-found-to-cause-84-increase-in-death-for-men-ages-18-39?utm_campaign=64483
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/ob-gyn-laments-covid-jabs-massive-unprecedented-side-effects-for-pregnant-women-babies/
https://www.eviemagazine.com/post/25-percent-people-received-covid-19-vaccination-missed-work-serious-event-cdc
https://nypost.com/2022/10/22/san-diego-er-seeing-up-to-37-marijuana-cases-a-day/
https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.breitbart.com%2Fborder%2F2022%2F10%2F12%2Fgraphic-mexican-cartel-gunmen-dump-4-human-heads-near-texas-border%2F
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/glock-switch-epidemic-may-be-rippling-through-americas-inner-cities
https://www.unz.com/isteve/fbi-blacks-made-up-60-4-of-known-murder-offenders-in-2021/
https://www.foxnews.com/us/fbi-undercounts-number-times-armed-citizens-thwarted-active-shooting-incidents-report?intcmp=tw_fnc

Vote Count
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/republicans-trump-election-fraud/
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/10/06/bxwz-o06.html
https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/jawdropping-fraud-systemic-ballot-harvesting-in-orlando-black-neighborhoods/
https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.americanthinker.com%2Farticles%2F2022%2F10%2Fdemocrats_are_aboard_the_big_data_emtitanicem.html
https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2022/11/03/mayor-says-milwaukee-election-worker-fired-over-ballot-fraud/69616108007/
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/mail-in-pennsylvania-ballots-with-incorrect-dates-will-be-saved-not-counted-2022-11-02/
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/new-york-has-more-3-million-voters-lacking-proof-identity-analysis
https://www.uncoverdc.com/2022/10/17/election-oversight-complaint-error-pair-causes-undercount-in-elections/
https://www.uncoverdc.com/2022/10/17/election-oversight-complaint-error-pair-causes-undercount-in-elections/
https://thefederalist.com/2022/10/03/bombshell-texts-show-milwaukee-mayor-colluding-with-democrats-to-rig-2022-election/
https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-voting-voter-registration-delaware-constitutions-da8ac023e52da4a78c2ccb110750f8aa
https://whowhatwhy.org/deep-state/what-donald-trump-got-right-about-voting-machines/

Civil War
https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1588262127105703936
https://resavager.substack.com/p/are-americans-still-a-people
https://unherd.com/2022/10/how-turbo-wokism-broke-america/
https://niccolo.substack.com/p/no-the-usa-is-not-headed-towards
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jordan-klepper-civil-war_n_63574553e4b051268c57fda3
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/08/26/civil-war-mar-a-lago-violent-extremism/
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/civil-wars-are-too-easy-to-start-just-ask-the-spaniards
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/08/oath-keepers-trial-evidence-civil-war
https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2022/10/14/donie-osullivan-civil-war-threats-extremism-zw-orig-contd.cnn-business
https://www.foxnews.com/media/bill-maher-paul-pelosi-attack-latest-cold-civil-war
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/07/podcasts/civil-war-belle-sebastian-narrated-articles.html
https://www.thegazette.com/guest-columnists/is-another-american-civil-war-possible/
https://currentpub.com/2022/10/31/how-to-avert-a-partisan-civil-war/
https://www.niskanencenter.org/americas-unfinished-civil-war-with-jeremi-suri/
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202210/1278293.shtml
https://www.gulftoday.ae/opinion/2022/10/23/a-chronic-civil-war-is-raging-on-in-us
https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/12/politics/jan-6-civil-war-violence-what-matters/index.html
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/10/13/no-we-arent-headed-to-civil-war-00061696
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/civil-war-isnt-on-the-horizon-the-original-battle-never-ended/
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/10/dixon-democrats-destroying-america-in-revenge-for-civil-war.html
https://americanmind.org/salvo/become-undraftable/

When You Need A Friend . . .

“Dayman.  Champion of the sun. Ahh-ahh-ahh. You’re a master of karate and friendship for everyone! Dayman.” – It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

The Earth is covered over 80% by water, and most of it is not carbonated.  The Earth is flat.

On a recent version of his podcast, Scott Adams said (I’m paraphrasing because I’m too lazy to look it up), “I’m giving it one year.  Not two.  I’m not going to live another year like this.”

Wow.  I did hear that (in a later podcast) he reported that he changed his blood pressure medication and his mood improved, but am likewise too lazy to verify that, either.

To be fair, Scott has had a pretty bad year.  He’s had health issues, relationship issues.  How bad were they?  At one point in his podcast this spring, he melted down and tore into a viewer in a greatly disproportionate way.  It was like using a chainsaw to trim toenails.  Sure, it’ll do the work, but it will leave quite a mess.

This was the big sign to me that Adams was under a lot of pressure.

After hearing me sing, the choir director told me I was a natural tenor.  “Yes, John, stay ten or twelve feet away from a microphone.”

The point isn’t to diagnose Scott’s health or love life, but rather to point out that regardless of wealth (Adams is loaded) and options in life (he could live anywhere in the world he wants to, drive whatever car he wants to, and never worry about a bill ever again in his life), there is the possibility that someone you know needs a friend.  Scott certainly does.

One of the things that we have seen decline over the past few decades are those institutions in society that were devoted to fraternity – the Elks, Masons, Moose Lodge, bowling leagues, Boy Scouts® etc., have all seen membership declines – some so much that they’ve folded up in many locations.

And in our club we eat the same thing for breakfast:  Synonym Toast Crunch.

Over a decade ago, I was involved with Scouting™.  We would have leader meetings, which I ran.  I had an agenda, and we’d go through it in a rather business-like fashion.  At the end of one of the meetings, another leader, Chuck, pulled out his new cell phone and was showing me its features.

After the meeting, as The Mrs. (she was a leader, too) and I got into the car, I said, “That was weird, Chuck showing me his phone after the meeting.  Why do you think he did that?”

The Mrs. looked at me as one would look at a not-so-bright child, and said, slowly so my dim brain could comprehend . . . “Because . . . he’s your,” long pause, and then “friend.”  She said friend slowly enough that it was about two seconds in length.

My friend asked if I could sleep with someone dead or alive, who would it be?  I answered, “Obviously, someone alive.”

Of course, she was right.  I had been so focused on the “business” side of running the Cub Scout stuff that I had forgotten entirely about the personal side.  Chuck was my friend.  Duh.  But the lesson I learned was simple:  friends really are out there.  Chuck moved away, but I still call him once a year.  And I do my best to stay in contact with friends that, in some cases, I haven’t seen physically in 15 years.

That network of friends is important, at least for me.  While some people might go through life alone and do fine, I find that having a good network of friends helps me.  I can get good advice.  I can complain.  I can share my journey.  I can get good ideas.  I can laugh.  I can share my troubles.

I don’t go through life alone, and I’m stronger for it.

One of the joys of childhood was how easy it was to make friends.  In many cases, we didn’t have anything in common but being the same age, but that was enough.  Something about endless summers and going through similar difficulties was great for bonding.

I then started a camp to train kids needlework.  It was sew in tents.

I think technology has had a big role in our current dislocation.  Our televisions can now bring us nearly every movie from the last twenty years at a touch.  YouTube™ has millions of videos on almost every topic.  And don’t forget that friendship requires trust, something that is in shorter supply today than in years past.  In the end, regardless of why, we can change that.

My request is this.  Look around as you go about your day.  Try to, as much as possible, spread joy to those that deserve it.  And maybe even a little to some who don’t.  A little.  I know that most people who act like jerks are really jerks, but some are just going through a bad time.

Also?  Find and make a new friend.  This takes time and commitment.  And trust.  And there’s the fear of loss, too.  But the wonderful thing about friendship is this:  when it exists, it’s work that helps both people.

Hopefully Adams has found a friend.  If not, I’d be glad to show him my phone.

Problem-Reaction-Solution: Coming Soon To A Country Near You

“Kent Brockman here reporting on a crisis so serious it has its own name and theme music.” – The Simpsons Movie

If a Higgs boson kills someone, does that make it a mass murderer?

Problem-Reaction-Solution has been the playbook of the Left for a long time.  What’s that?  First, there’s a problem.  It may be a real problem, or it may be entirely invented, like my résumé.

Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Israel Emanuel, was famous for saying “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”  In his own words, Rahm explained, “ . . . what I said was, never allow a good crisis to go to waste when it’s an opportunity to do things that you had never considered, or that you didn’t think were possible.”

Yes.  He said that.  It is probably not true that he stood next to a South American quadruped and a doorbell for his senior picture, because that would leave us with Rahm, a llama, ding-dong.

Rahm’s crisis is really just a way to restate the Problem-Reaction-Solution paradigm.  It’s a way to make people do things that were otherwise unthinkable.  Why?

Because some leaders want their people to accept what would otherwise be unthinkable.  This has long been the playbook of the Left.

It has been used by the Left since, well, forever.  The problem-reaction-solution is often called a Hegelian Dialectic, but that has too many syllables for 1:43AM.  And Hegel died in 1831, so I’ll just leave it that this sort of crisis-seeking isn’t a new thing.

Apparently, Hegel didn’t have a side that flattered him.

The Left turns out to be pretty good at this stuff.  Examples?  Well, in Australia, all it took was one mass shooting and the politicians convinced the Aussies to turn in their guns.  The problem was that single shooting.  The reaction?  A well-formed media manufactured panic.  The solution was to turn in all the guns.  The Australian Leftists certainly didn’t let that problem go to waste.

The end result?  Australia had some of the most oppressive COVID-19 restrictions on the planet including concentration camps.  Which is just what government wanted – to turn citizens into subjects.  Taking guns away is a good way to do just that.  The joke is that everything in Australia can kill you easily.  Now that includes the police.

The same attempts were made in the 1990s with the assault weapons ban in the United States.  It went into effect.  Without the Internet, I imagine it would still be in place.  But, luckily, there was a way to bypass the media, and people got together to push back.  I’m not sure that George W. Bush was in favor of rolling it back, but every Republican that had a job and wanted to keep it knew that making it go away in the next election was in their best interest.

People say that Democrats and Republicans can’t work together to accomplish anything, but I’ll remind you, Jeffrey Epstein is dead.

So the problem wasn’t big enough, and (at least so far) hasn’t been big enough because events like Uvalde proved one thing:  waiting for the police to come and save you isn’t a good strategy.  In a way, using the Australia example just isn’t going to work in America.

But what about other things, like money?

It has worked before.  One of the first things that Franklin Roosevelt did after becoming president was to confiscate almost all the gold of American citizens and then make the dollar worth less.  It was the same formula.  The problem was the economy had cratered.  The reaction was that people were panicking.  The solution?  Almost anything Roosevelt wanted to try, he could try, up to and including taking the country (eventually) into a World War.

Whereas Americans seem to have a strong distrust of government taking their guns, the distrust with politicians destroying our money doesn’t seem nearly so strong.  Which brings us right back to today.

The economy has been a mess, for quite a long time.  I could delve back into history even more than I’ve done so far, but I don’t want to write a 20,000 word post.

Moses went to Mount Olive.  Popeye was furious.

But where we are today is precarious.  It is certainly the problem unfolding.  In 2008, when inflation was “tolerably” low, the Federal Reserve® could print money at will.  This allowed bankers to keep the profits that they had made, while the financial system used the Bounty™ Currency Quicker Printer Upper® to socialize the losses.

This wasn’t without creating ripple issues, but it kicked the can down the road for more than a decade.  Then, COVID.  Same playbook:  print all the cash!!!

This time, however, the cash didn’t just go to cover paper losses at banks.  People got the cash, and did what people do:  they spent it.  Another part of the idea was to inject as much money as is possible into infrastructure projects.

Now, I like roads and bridges as much as the next guy, but when all that money chases concrete, it pushes the price of concrete up – that’s supply and demand.  And whatever the government was buying went up in price.  Now, decent cigars haven’t gone up much in price, but eggs, bacon, and gasoline certainly have.

If I want to light a cigar but don’t have matches, I just cut the end off.  Then it’s a little lighter.

So the Fed© can’t print itself out of this one.  Heck, every time the Fed® tries to stop, the economy lurches like a Pelosi getting out of a Porsche™.

So, the problem is here.  The reaction is going to be significant as the economy continues to wobble and waver, and I believe is headed for even darker days.  Forget Netflix™ and avocado toast:  people get grumpy when they can’t afford to eat or buy gas.  The normal solution (printing cash and making it rain) can’t be used.

That leaves us with a crisis that would make Rahm Emanuel drool.  The idea from the government will be to create a solution that, right now, we’d consider unthinkable.

I hear that atheists own more cats than Christians.  Apparently, owning Christians is illegal.

Just like our pushback on the unthinkable banning of guns, it’s our job to push back on whatever nonsense is coming, because I can assure you that it will leave most of us poorer and with less freedom.

Why most of us?  Remember, there’s a reason why people like Rahm Emanuel look forward to things like this.  And it’s not because they lose power or money.

Elon Musk: “This one weird trick drives Leftists nuts!”

“Can we stop twittering like fishwives?” – The Death of Stalin

Where did Sauron take his driver’s test? The department of Mordor vehicles.

Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter® finally went through. It’s almost as if he’s bored running a car company, a space exploration company, and managing his hair implants.

His purchase of Twitter©, though, is different. It’s made all of the Leftist intelligentsia as crazy as evening visitors to the Pelosi house.

Of course, Elon Tweeted® about that:

But when he was challenged, clarified:

Hillary Clinton responded that she was outraged:

And members of her party were puzzled:

The reason Leftists are upset is simple: Twitter™, though it’s never been horribly profitable, has an outsized grasp on public attention. We’re no longer in the world where the Lincoln-Douglas debates where each candidate would speak for a total of ninety minutes in a three-hour debate. Nope. Twitter™ is a platform that allows no more than 280 characters in a Tweet©.

It does match the attention span of the audience, and it has a format that’s very simple for amplifying very short ideas. It’s like taking an idea or an emotion and distilling it down to the smallest bite. If the Declaration of Independence would have been a Tweet®, it would have been, “No way, dude. Make me.” It seems to lose a bit of the majesty that way, but Franklin would ReTweet™ it to King George with a woodcut picture of Washington’s wife’s butt.

Twitter™, then, is important to the Left. The primary reason it’s important is that, until Musk bought it, it was entirely owned by the Left. For a while, Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter©, maintained it was the “free speech wing of the free speech party,” and most content that wasn’t illegal was a go.

Gradually, though, the Left began to hate that. No matter what Trump may or may not have done in office, he was the master of the Tweet©. He could, in a few short words, eviscerate an opponent in such a way that they could never recover. And it was an unfettered way to reach millions.

And the Left hated that. Since they had captured the media, both print and broadcast, they hated anyone who could escape their gatekeeping. Someone like Rush Limbaugh or a group like Fox News™ had to be co-opted, tamed, and turned into a loyal opposition. Rush Limbaugh of 2002 was just a shadow of Rush Limbaugh 1992. And Fox News© never veers too far off of the mainstream.

But Twitter©? It could go to any topic, and ideas could spread at the speed of the Internet across the globe. Any idea could spread this fast, and it could be amplified by tens of thousands. It was important enough that bot nets were created to retweet and comment to give oxygen to topics that certain people liked, while attempting to bury content that certain people didn’t like. How bad are the bot nets? Elon now has the receipts:

On one hand, this was a massive amount of intelligence that I’m sure made the CIA and NSA and FBI very, very happy. Not since Facebook™ had such information been available to them: names, places, private conversations, email addresses, locations, and beliefs.

I stopped using Twitter® and just started yelling my views in public. I have three followers now, but I think two are FBI.

Trump, though, showed the danger in this system. The wrong ideas, unapproved ideas, could begin to spread. The result was that banning for ideas started. Alex Jones in 2018 was the first, and his accounts had over six million followers. Why? Because his accounts had over six million followers.

Steve Bannon was banned. Milo Yiannopoulos was banned for not liking an actress. British politician Katie Hopkins was banned for badthink. Marjorie Taylor Greene (a sitting member of Congress) was banned for daring to share her belief that the 2020 election was hacked.

Those are obvious – but dozens of people have been banned for opinions about the COVID-19 “vaxx” that have been proven, over time, to be 100% true. But they’re banned.

70,000 accounts were purged in January, 2021, for sharing QAnon stuff.

There have been Leftists banned, sure. But Twitter© had become the official mouthpiece of the Leftist oligarchy. Have an opinion that drifted too far from the accepted window of opinions? Banned. And the Left loves it. Check out a list of their demands:

I demand to be recognized, too. I identify as non-Bidenary.

This illustrates the mode of operation of the Left – free speech is their stated goal, right until the minute when they have power. Then? Speech must be controlled, in ever smaller boxes, until the only opinions one is free to share are the official and accepted opinions of the Left. To be clear, this is nothing new. Freedom of speech was officially part of the Constitution of the Soviet Union, but actually attempting to use it would nearly certainly result in voluntary visits to the GULAG if not just a single accidental 9x18mm Makarov shot to the head.

That is the way the Left likes their free speech. But Elon messed up their plan.

To be clear, I don’t think Elon is a savior. He’s just, like Trump, a wildcard that the Left didn’t anticipate. He’s been willing to play their games. Tesla™ made money early because of tax incentives. SpaceX® makes billions a year from government contracts. And Elon’s hair was developed in a secret government lab, like COVID-19. And like COVID, it’s growing wild.

In the end, I think it’s another iteration of Wilder’s Law of Greatest Amusement – if there are two possible outcomes, the most amusing outcome will be the thing that happens. I mean, if Jimmy Kimmel is mad at you, you know you’re doing something right.

Halloween and Scary Movies

“You don’t get it do you? Society nods its head at any horror the American teenager can think upon itself. Nobody is going to care about exact handwriting.” – Heathers

Why don’t vampires go to Africa?  They heard someone blessed the rains down there.

Happy Halloween.

The origins of Halloween are older and murkier than what can be teased out of history.  Is it a Christian holiday tossed over the top of an old pagan one?  Is it a purely Christian holiday?  Is it a floor wax?  Is it a dessert topping?

Why not all of the above?

Regardless, Halloween happens at my favorite time of the year.  One of the things that we lose in the frenetic pace of modern society is a loss of connection to the cycles of life.  There are long cycles:  Infancy, Childhood, Adolescence, Adulthood, and Maturity.  Technology certainly has changed those cycles – children play on tablets seeing things they ought not, and Madonna© pretends she’s sixteen rather than sixteen minutes short of eighty.

The shorter cycles are changed, as well.  A typical day had time when we were fully engaged at work, and time when we weren’t.  Now?  Technology has made it so we’re partially engaged at work, and partially engaged with family.  At least we don’t have to be engaged with Madonna®.

Thankfully Madonna™ can’t walk through walls – she’s a material girl.

But the year, that’s something that technology can only partially mess with.  We can be warm in winter, and cool in summer, but unless we stay inside all year sealed in Tupperware™ (like Madonna®) we are exposed to the changing lights and temperatures of the season.

That is good.  We are humans.  Or at least I assume we’re all humans, since we all enjoy ingesting nutrients and drinking fluids that hydrate us while listening to sounds of non-random frequencies arranged in a mathematical progression juxtaposed with potentially emotionally triggering lyrics about mildly iconoclastic behavior.  Correct?

But all of that aside, I love that we’re still connected to the world via the changing of the seasons.  I’m not particularly a fan of summer.  But I love the other nine months.  And October is the sign that another damn summer is gone.  And Halloween is when the weather turns, and in October there is one particular day when I can know that every day for the next five months will be colder than that day.

And I love that.

I hear Spiderman® got a job as a web developer.

October is also the month when the harvest is done.  The time has come when the cycle is done.  Planting in spring, growing in summer, harvesting in fall.  Winter then comes, and the season has a pause.  This is the time humans need for reflection, for learning, for being together, for planning.  In short, none of the things that Madonna™ does.

For this cycle, at least, technology hasn’t stopped us entirely from getting to our roots.

Autumn is when the die is cast:  we have either done what we need to do to make it through the winter, or we haven’t.  I think that’s why horror movies are part of the season – harvest reminds us that we’re mortal, and for this part of the year we also, historically, had time to reflect on life and death and the cycle.

What nursery rhyme character loves this time of year as much as I do?  Humpty Dumpty.  He had a great fall.

So, thinking about death is natural – it is certainly part of the cycle.  And that’s my guess as to why horror movies seem to fit so well with Halloween.  And I like horror movies.

Many countries do horror movies really, really badly.

  • The Germans, for instance, make horror movies that are these weird psychological horror movies that probably only make sense if you wear rubber suits to go to the bank.
  • The Italian horror movies are nearly incomprehensible as German horror films, but the people in the movies look absolutely fantastic and change sides halfway through the movie.
  • English horror movies are generally as scary as the discussion of tax rates in the House of Commons. I guess that might be scary if you make enough money.
  • The three or four horror movies I’ve seen from Spain look like shoddy copies of Italian horror movies, but starring some American star like John Saxon. Why John Saxon?  Why not – he can fight green goo as well as anyone else.
  • Japanese horror films started as clumsy metaphors for being bombed with nuclear weapons, but then morphed into clumsy metaphors for being overworked by evil corporations after being bombed by nuclear weapons.

I will say it was a touching story.

Nope, for me?  It’s American horror films.  I think we do this particularly well.  My favorites are (in no particular order):

  • The Thing.
  • Alien.
  • In the Mouth of Madness.
  • Reanimator.
  • From Beyond.
  • Salem’s Lot.
  • Scanners.
  • Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (1973 only).
  • Event Horizon.
  • Night of the Living Dead.
  • Ravenous.
  • The Exorcist.
  • Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
  • Phantasm.
  • Prince of Darkness.

I didn’t rank this list on purpose.  If you’ve seen some of these, you’ll know right from the start if this matches up with what you like.  But I’ll add this part, too.  A horror movie doesn’t have emotional impact in a vacuum.  Night of the Living Dead?  To me, it was scary only because I saw it when I was five.  Watching it now, it might be one of the tamest movies on the list, so, your mileage may vary.

I guess that’s what happens when you ask Kanye to enter a bodybuilding competition.

With minor exceptions on the list, most of those have a fairly intense paranormal component.  I think that’s scarier than just people, otherwise numerous other classic movies like Silence of the Lambs would have been on the list.  Sadly, there newest movie on the list was done before the year 2000.  Have there been scary movies made since then?

Yeah.  And I’ve seen bushel baskets of them.  They’re just not nearly as good as what came before.  Except for that one horror star.  She’s scary.

Oh, wait.  That’s Madonna®.

Groundhog Day, But It’s The Economy

“You like Japanese sake, Mr. Bond, or would you prefer a vodka martini?” – You Only Live Twice

The economy also depresses me.  That’s why I drink a gallon of water before bed each night – so I have a reason to get up.

First, I want to pop a signal flare on behalf of Big Country Expat.  He was bananated off of blogspot®, and now has a new home here (LINK).  So, if you were looking for BCE, he’s surfaced.  Expect more of these flares in the future, because more folks will be kicked off of platforms as time goes on.

Okay, back to the blogging.

Back in 2018, 2019, there were few reasons to post contemporary economic posts.  I could do what I like to do best, sit back, research, think, and give a few strategic thoughts on what I thought the future would bring.  There weren’t a lot of stories of an immediate nature.  That had been true (more or less) going back to 2010.  The motions in the markets were longer, and we could take the time to post the waves, print bikini-girl graphs, and talk about the problems that were coming.

Why is our economy like a strapless bikini?  It looks like there’s nothing holding it up.

Now?

It’s that damn movie Groundhog Day.  I have folders of graphs on economic doom that, in a normal year, where each would be the biggest story in months.  In 2022, those stories are coming out every week.  Germany collapsing and all of their people are going to be cold in the 2022-2023 winter?  Check.  Britain collapsing and the latest prime minister wants to (spins wheel) import 50 million illiterate immigrants that marry their first cousins because that’s what will fix Britain’s problem?  People literally saying, “Global thermonuclear war?  Bah, that’s not as bad as COVID®.

I’m not even making the above three stories up or exaggerating it in any way.  The Babylon Bee in 2022 has become non-fiction.  I’m expecting Joe Biden to pull a rubbery mask off his face and reveal himself as the old man who ran the carnival.  He would have gotten away with it, if not for those pesky kids.

So, this week I’m just going to rant.  On (spins wheel) vodka.  “Vodka, it’s not just for breakfast anymore®.”

Our economic system before the Federal Reserve™ was a mess.  Why, people had to have actual gold to back money.  And if a bank got sideways?  It failed.  Talk about incentives.

Gold wasn’t the biggest of the pre-Fed© sins, though.  Regional banking centers outside of New York were taking a larger and larger percentage of the banking market. That, my friends was a sin.  If there’s money to be made off of charging people interest, and a New Yorker isn’t involved, that’s treason.

The Federal Reserve™ Act essentially stopped the growth of banking outside of New York like Kanye West would be stopped from attending a Soros-family bar mitzvah.  But that pesky gold remained.  So, FDR confiscated it.  All of it.

What did Obama use for birth control?  His personality.

Why?  So he could immediately make the dollar worth less.  It was a con.  But one he sold because (smoke and mirrors) I have no idea.  Seriously.  Maybe it was the equivalent of the COVID® panic back then.  If the American public had stormed the White House when FDR stole their money, lynched him, and then placed statues of Eleanor Roosevelt’s face on each coast to ward off evil spirits I think we’d be a better country.

But we didn’t.

I’ll skip ahead to 1971.  There are plenty of things I could complain about in the decades between the 1930s and 1971, but I don’t think there’s enough vodka in the house (only a few gallons) and my liver has indicated that it can only take these utter financial rants about once a year unless I switch to wine or beer.

But, I tell my liver, we already drank the wine and we’re saving the beer for . . . hmmm.  Why are we saving the beer?  Shut up, liver.

Regardless of my weak organs, in 1971 Nixon booted the dollar off of any convertibility to gold.  That was because the French had figured out the game:  they saw how many dollars that we were printing and wanted us to give them gold instead of dollars.  Nixon saw right through that (thank you, vodka!) and just said, “We’ll print all the damn money we want to, or I’ll send G. Gordon Liddy to eat France.”

If you ever feel useless, remember this:  France has an army.

Of course, inflation followed.  Jimmy Carter was an awful president, mainly because he wasn’t aware of what happened, why it was happening, what he could do about it, or  . . . wait, this is sounding like Biden, but Carter was actually smart and relatively virtuous.

Then we sailed.  Interest rates were raised, stopped inflation, and after two decades of high interest rates the currency stabilized to the point gold prices dropped and the biggest problems the country had were Hillary killing people and Bill Clinton having sex with anyone else besides Hillary.

Ahhh, brings back memories of a sillier time.

Pressure though, was there to inflate the currency.  That was built in.  Social Security and Medicare

Hang on.  Need more vodka for this.  Be right back.

Social Security and Medicare require a growing economy.  They require more people working than those that are receiving benefits.  But tax policy and birth control and Hillary Clinton’s Abortion Clinic® (Motto:  No human is too old to abort©!) made it important to import people to pay for this stuff, especially if they’d vote (D) in elections.

That made the economy less stable, rather than more.  But the Federal Reserve© retained two controls:  printing money, and interest rates.  Heck, the Fed© should call it, “This One Weird Trick Allows Us To Print Money Without Printing Money.”

That one weird trick is low interest rates.  When people borrow money, it actually is inflationary.  I could go into detail, but each $100 you have in a bank can be loaned out.  So, if you put $100 in a bank, you think it’s there.  In reality, it has been loaned out, so you think you have your $100 at the same time someone else is spending it.  There’s more to it than that, but I’m running low on vodka and, last time I checked, you have the whole Internet.  I mean, none of it is as funny as this place, but, you know, I have to leave room for other folks.

If you ever try to do yoga drunk, that can put you in an awkward position.

But that brings us to the Great Recession.  The Fed™ and Congress wanted everyone to own a home, so they created massive amounts of money through the magic of low interest rates.  Poof.  Then everyone wanted to buy six or a dozen houses because they never go down in value.

Then it collapsed.

The problem with a debt deflation as the loans collapse is that the cash supply collapses even faster than the Fed© can print it.  That’s the Great Recession.  So, the Fed™ tried to smooth things out by “dropping money from a helicopter” – which is a direct quote from the Fed© chairman.

It worked.  Sort of.  When you do things like that, it distorts the economy in a big way.  You bail out banks, but cause other people to fail.  But those people aren’t congressmen, so, who cares, right?

Again, it worked.  Sort of.  The problems with Social Security and Medicare remain, and are getting bigger.  We’re pretending that those things aren’t happening, just like I’m pretending that having Kamala within a heartbeat of the presidency is something that Jefferson, Adams, or Washington would be cool with.

Then, COVID.  Solution?  Print money.  Now, we’re back to inflation.  The solution is simple:  raise interest rates to the point where they’re larger than Barron Trump.  But we can’t!  Back in the 1970s when we played this game the first time, we had functional manufacturing and the undisputed strongest economy in the world.  It still almost wrecked the place.

At least Barron will never have microaggressions.

We’ve run out of places to hide.  Admittedly, this nonsense has gone on far longer than I expected it could already.  We are living in a time and place where we’ll see more changes in a year than we normally see in a decade.  Heck, we might see weeks in the near future where we see more economic changes in a week than in a decade.

I’ll admit, I do miss boring at this point.  But, I still have you, vodka.