Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Friday Books, Because I Said So

“It’s the most pointless book since How To Learn French was translated into French.” – Blackadder The Third

I finished three books during the quarantine. That’s A LOT of coloring.

Books.

I had a great-grand boss (three levels up in the company) once upon a time who was fairly philosophical in an industry not at all noted for philosophy. One day he showed up in my office, unannounced. We sat and talked for several hours about history and corporate strategy and got along very well. It probably didn’t hurt my career with that particular company.

One thing that my great-grand boss said during that meeting always stuck with me. I’m not sure if it was a quote that was original to him or not, but the quote was, “there is a way that minds can speak to each other through the ages. Books.” I thought that was pretty powerful, nearly as powerful as when The Mrs. mentioned she was going to kill off some of the characters in the book she was writing. The downside is that The Mrs. is writing her autobiography.

Books have been with us for thousands of years, but the earliest books were just a taking spoken word and carving it into a stone or writing it on papyrus or parchment. The true development of the written word came later, where complex ideas that transcended conversation were formed. The medium truly changed the message. The image of a frontier boy, book in one hand and plow in the other was formed. Heck, when I was working gathering with Pa Wilder I remember reading a book on anti-gravity, which was really hard to put down.

On the plus side, I did get a book.

We are on a journey as a world to becoming post-literate. We can still read, but the idea of developing longer, more complex ideas and widely sharing them has gone a bit the way of an endangered species. The ideas that were formerly expressed in literature seem to be passing by the wayside in many ways. The last time I picked up a Time magazine at the doctor’s office, it seemed like I was reading a magazine written for not-so-bright kids.

Is this on purpose?

But for me, books were a formative experience. They remain a part of my life. I had another post planned for tonight, but decided I’d throw out a few books that just came to mind. Were these the best books I’ve ever read? No, this isn’t a best-of list. But, arbitrarily I added some rules: the books have to be at least 20 years old, and no author gets more than one. It’s obvious I love The Lord of the Rings (Evil, With Hobbits And Ring Wraiths) since I wrote about that last week, so it’s not on the list.

It’s mainly a list of books I just want to talk about today. Why? Because. So there. Feel free to toss the ones you want to add in the comments.

The Starship that can’t pay back a student loan? The Millennial Falcon.

One of the first books that came to mind was Starship Troopers. Robert A. Heinlein was a favorite author of mine growing up – he wrote a series of “juvenile” books in the 1950’s that I think are his best work. And of those? Starship Troopers is my favorite. I read it in junior high, and it was thrilling and thought provoking. Mobile Infantry? An amazing concept.

Starship Troopers isn’t the parody movie of the 1990’s. Nope. It’s a real discussion of the tension in the world between liberty and responsibility. It’s a discussion of honor. It’s also a depiction of a world where there is, dare I say, a spirit of nationalism? It doesn’t have Heinlein’s later squishy and retrospectively creepy, um, “free love” ideas. I’ve made both Pugsley and The Boy read it, as I’ve made them read the next three books on this list.

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley was one my seventh grade teacher gave me to read. If she were still teaching in 2020, she would probably be shot for that. Huxley could see the future of conformity – the idea wasn’t that we ever had to ban books, we could just make them irrelevant by replacing them with amusements and intoxicants.

Into this world, Huxley injects a free radical – a handsome blonde individual that was born free and has awareness that the average citizen doesn’t have: John the Savage. Hmm. It’s almost like John was wilder?

Nah.

Anyway, the book for me was haunting. I got to the end, and had to do a full stop. And re-read. Then I got it.

Most babies are born at womb temperature.

I think that Brave New World was what we were living through in the United States from, say, 2000 until 2017. It’s a template for control through amusement. But what happens when the state runs out of other people’s money to spend? That’s the next book.

1984, by George Orwell. I read this one in eighth grade. I can recall reading about the rats while sitting in class on a warm spring day. Many people don’t know that Orwell was a committed socialist until he ran into actual communists during the Spanish Civil War, and at that point he was disgusted and repelled by what he saw. When exposure to actual communists makes you anti-communist, what does that tell you about the reality of communism?

Nah. Antifa® is sure it will work this time.

Dune, by Frank Herbert. The original movie was kind-of awful in many ways. The 2000-ish miniseries was okay. I’m sure it will be butchered in the latest adaptation that’s due out soon. But the book remains the book. It was enjoyable, but when I read it, it was confounding – it seemed like every decision the protagonist (Paul Atreides) made, I would have made the opposite decision.

The story is fairly rich in plot, and has truly wonderful villains. Baron Vladimir Harkonnen was pure evil, but a smart, cunning evil. I always thought that Orson Welles would have been perfect for the role, since Baron Harkonnen was really fat, and Orson Welles had already eaten Ohio just to prepare for this role.

Some people call me the spice cowboy, some call me the Duke of love, some people call me Muad’dib, because I speak of the sandworm of love.

This is the novel that really exposed me to the idea of resource constraints, and spice is certainly a thinly-veiled metaphor for oil. Can a lack of resources bring down an empire? Certainly – that’s why China is working so feverishly to set up systems that bring it all the resources it needs. And why we’ve spent 20 years in the Middle East.

Rendezvous With Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke. A mysterious space vessel shows up in the Solar System and is using the Sun to slingshot to a new trajectory. The astronauts sent to explore the vessel find lots of cool things, but no actual aliens, which remains part of the mystery.

I got this book when I was a kid of 10 or so. How? Some library sent us a catalog. Apparently, the Wilder Compound up on Wilder Mountain was viewed as so remote that they sent a list of books to us along with news that Teddy Roosevelt had been elected president. I put a checkmark by the three books I wanted and sent them the form, and they sent the books to me along with a prepaid return envelope and a new list of books I could check out.

Who paid for it? I have no idea, but they stopped doing it after two years or so.

The book? Not really great by the standards of today. The part that sealed the deal for me when I read it as a kid was the last line, which apparently was added in the very last revision. I’m not sure I’d recommend anyone read it in 2020, but when I was 11 years old and read it?

Magic.

Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang, by Kate Wilhelm. I remember this book because I devoured it in a single fall afternoon – the first book I picked up and didn’t put down until I was finished since my victory over the Cat wearing a Hat. Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang takes place after an apocalypse occurs and for (reasons!) the people decided to reproduce through cloning rather than the usual way. But a boy is born who isn’t a clone, and manages to, well, be human. It won a Hugo™. I just wish my nomination for a Hugo® would have gotten me a better place than sixth out of a field of five.

Oh well.

Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson. This is a deeply nerdy novel. It’s long. It’s dense. It’s fun. But it’s nerdy. Really nerdy. The novel revolves around codebreaking and looted WW II gold. It’s also the only novel on this list where The Boy and I met the author, twice. The first time, The Boy was seven, and I dragged him to an author reading.

The Viking longboats had bar codes on the side, so when they got home they could Scandinavian.

He acted like a seven year old. The Boy, not Neal. The next time I took The Boy to meet Neal Stephenson was when he was sixteen. The Boy’s favorite author in the world was at that time? Neal Stephenson. I made him apologize to Mr. Stephenson, who played along and said that he’d never recovered from The Boy’s previous antics.

Good times. If you like this book, Stephenson has several thousand pages of related books that are similarly Asperger-y .

So, what books do you want to add to the list and why?

How Bad The Economic Crash Really Is

“Mommy, why are you making civilization collapse?” – Futurama

HC pointed out this picture. How could I resist?

Last week it was announced that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the United States collapsed. If you’re not aware, GDP is simply a measure of how much PEZ® is produced in the economy of a country. Okay, it’s not just PEZ©, other (lesser) goods and services are included, too. Call it a rough guess at how well the economic machine in the country is working.

“Collapse” is a word that gets overused by the news media. They want to pump up your fear so you’ll click on their article and give them $0.000043 per click. They don’t make much money at $0.000043 per click, so they need a *lot* of clicks (87,209) to pay for their daily soy latte. The best way to get that many clicks? Either scare people, or provide nudity. Or, if you’re Kamala Harris, do both at the same time.

In this case, however, the use of the term “collapse” is entirely appropriate when 32.9% of the economy disappears. And that dismal number is after an unprecedented borrowing and spending. The US had a GDP of about $20 trillion in 2018. This year, so far, there has been about $5 trillion in extra spending and balance sheet expansion.

So, $10 trillion in half a year, reduced by the 32.9% lowering in GDP takes us to $7 trillion or so. That’s how big they’re saying the economy is. That’s bad. But if you subtract out the $2 trillion in “stimulus” funds that takes you down to $5 trillion.

Borrow a million dollars, and the bank owns you. Borrow a billion dollars, and you own the bank. Borrow $26.6 trillion dollars? You are the United States.

Even if NONE of the Federal Reserve’s® balance sheet where they sprinkled money into the stock market got added to the GDP figure, we’re talking a 50% reduction in the economy in real terms.

50%.

Half.

The economy isn’t an economy at this point – it’s a smoking crater. Well, it would be a smoking crater if there was enough money to pay for the smoke. Yet the Fed™ had pumped enough cash into the stock market to keep it at near record highs. Me? I avoided that and bought a warehouse full of chicken soup stock cubes. Now I’m a bouillonaire.

The solution to our economic crisis from the Left is to keep sending checks to everyone. As I’ve mentioned before, that’s the Weimar Republic mentality. “We can print money and send it to people, that’s all we need to have a functioning economy.” It’s the post-economy economy. All we have to do is make PowerPoints® for each other and wait for our Leftybux payments and then we can go down to the grocery store where the food mysteriously appears each month.

Wish someone would have mentioned that.

If we were going to just send money to a few people to pay for their rent, it would probably work out okay. We’ve been printing money for years and giving welfare based on debt for fifty years. Heck, hundreds of people in town are getting unemployment right now, I even know some. I guess I finally have some friends with benefits. But that’s not good for the economy.

The result is stunningly predictable. As I said before, we’d see deflation, and then inflation. Deflation isn’t universal. Some parts of the economy are working, some aren’t. Inflation has shown up first in food and things people need. Eventually, even toys, say balloons, will show inflation. Inflation will show up later everywhere.

But not yet.

What is showing up is that people in the rest of the world are starting to do the same math that I did up above. How many years can a country’s primary production be debt and expect the rest of the world to ignore that? Well, in the last six months, gold is up 30% and silver is up nearly 50%. Part of that is to be expected – uncertainty driver up precious metal prices.

The Mrs. was yelling at me last night. Thank heavens! That reminded me we were out of duct tape.

In the last two months, however, the United States dollar has dropped by 5% versus a basket of currencies called the USD index. That means that people are liking the USD less, because they see the weakening of the economy. It’s bad enough that my tattoo of $100 bills on my hips is now a waist of money.

It’s tempting to think that all the stuff is there to restart the economy. And in many cases it is just sitting there. The restaurant that closed down is still physically there. The stoves and ovens are there. The refrigerator is still there. But the need for it isn’t there. People have less money to go out and eat, so there’s less of a need for restaurants. Heck, even our best fancy restaurant with a pork theme had to close. I’ll miss Swine Dining.

A growing economy is a virtuous cycle – new business spawns new business. A shrinking economy is a vicious cycle – each job lost at that restaurant has ripples further down the economic chain – the waitress can’t make rent if she doesn’t have a job that generates tips.

Banks have stopped (in many cases) loaning money. Why loan cash you have into an environment where interest rates are at 3.3% in an uncertain economy? Vox Day pointed out this disturbing story showing a collapse in bank lending (LINK).

Yes, collapse is the right word. I’ve long been on record that the economic system of debt-based welfare could only last for a certain amount of time. I had picked 2026 or 2027 before it folded up the tent, and given that markets can stay irrational for a long time due to inertia, pushing into the 2030’s was reasonable.

I had an irrational fear of a speed bump. But I’m getting over it.

Watching a complex system fail always provides unexpected consequences. The system has been headed toward failure for years. Without the extraordinary efforts of 2008, it probably would have collapsed then. I think it was far closer to collapse than most people were aware.

The downside of putting off a system failure is that the pressure from the underlying causes keeps building up. When it inevitably finally does fail, it fails spectacularly, and much worse than if failure had happened earlier. When huge failures happen, sometimes civilization doesn’t recover for hundreds of years.

We have seen, again and again, the concept of systems becoming irrelevant. Sometimes, it’s technology that makes them irrelevant the way that the combination of the Internet and Wal-Mart® has destroyed tens of thousands of small stores. The Black Death altered the economic balance of Europe, and destroyed feudalism while kick-starting the Renaissance.

I hope Covid-20 is different than Covid-19. I hate plague-rism.

What will our current crisis lead to? The end of Globalism? A world without debt? Free PEZ?

It’s hard to say. But the birth of any new civilization is painful.

Not as painful as having to admit they want a soy latte, but painful.

Evil, With Hobbits And Ring Wraiths

“A day may come when the courage of men fails, but it is not this day.” – Lord of the Rings

After the police are defunded, we’ll only be able to afford cyborg hobbits. That’s okay, I like Frobo Cop.

I’m probably in the minority on the following thought: there is actual evil in the world. The rule has been over the last century or so to try to play off evil as, well, things other than evil.

Psychological problems.
Different cultures.
Bad parents.
No parents.
Being my ex-wife.

But the reality is that these are just excuses, though I do know that mummys aren’t evil – they just have a bad wrap.

I hear that Frodo is volunteering build houses in the Shire for Hobbitat for Humanity.

Thankfully, all I can remember of my younger life was (mostly) evil-free. It was good. Like many kids who read too much, a lot of my first experiences in life weren’t first hand – I was transported to the depths of the oceans and the poles of Earth and then to Mars and the Universe beyond by reading. In fifth grade my teacher read The Hobbit to the class – spoiler alert, it was much shorter than the recent movie. But then I was off to middle school.

I stumbled across Tolkien again. He had written a series that had done a wonderful job of describing what True Evil® was: The Lord of the Rings. I still remember the chills that I got as 11 year-old me read The Lord of the Rings night after night in bed before I went to sleep. Ma Wilder was especially disturbed, because she’d hear me saying things like, “Frodo” and “Mordor” and “Gandalf” at night.

Ma Wilder was concerned I was Tolkien in my sleep.

I know the puns are bad – but Bilbo gets mad when I try to kick the hobbit.

I had goosebumps reading about the ring wraiths and was transported into the story, hearing the hoof beat of their horses, feeling their evil presence as they searched for Frodo and the One Ring. The Nazgûl (ring wraiths) were evil personified, so I’m willing to bet Tolkien knew a thing or two about True Evil™.

Tolkien had even planned a sequel, but couldn’t bring himself to write it, despite starting on it at least three times. He described a bit about it in a letter to a friend after he had given up trying to write it:

“I did begin a story placed about 100 years after the Downfall, but it proved both sinister and depressing. Since we are dealing with Men it is inevitable that we should be concerned with the most regrettable feature of their nature: their quick satiety with good. So that the people of Gondor in times of peace, justice, and prosperity, would become discontented and restless – while the dynasts descended from Aragorn would become just kings and governors – like Denethor or worse. I found even so early there was an outcrop of revolutionary plots, about a centre of secret Satanistic religion; while Gondorian boys were playing at being Orcs and going around doing damage. I could have written a ‘thriller’ about the plot and its discovery and overthrow – but it would have been just that.”

A Nazgûl floats into a bar. The barman says: ‘I’m sorry, we don’t serve your kind in here.’ The Nazgûl replies: ‘That’s Wraithist.’

In his quote is what I think we’ve been seeing now. The “quick satiety with good” is sometimes what drives us toward True Evil®, though in Paris in 1789 just like in Russia in 1917 it was the greed exploited by the communists to convince people that the terror and murders would be what led to a prosperous future.

In the last sixty days I’ve seen a lot of evil in the videos taken during the riots. Murder rates are up in those cities. Portland normally has 30 or so murders a year, but in the last two months there have been twenty. That doesn’t make the news.

Why?

The riots are described as peaceful protests. To mention that the lawlessness and rampant evil accompanying it has cost dozens of lives and since more black people have died as a result of the protests than the number of unarmed black people killed by cops last year. They’ve resulted in half a billion dollars in damage to Minneapolis alone, but that doesn’t account for the lowered property values. And what about all of the uprooted lives?

That sort of destruction, especially in the middle of an economic collapse is devastating. Inciting and participating in this riots was a choice, and those who chose to riot were doing nothing short of evil, in service of that same evil force that had taken Moscow early in the twentieth century, though this time because times were good and they were bored.

Hipsters burned their mouths because they ate Hot Pockets® before it was cool.

I’m quite certain that they think they’ll run the new organization, and their socialist dream job awaits. This is the same sort of greed that, in The Lord of the Rings, destroyed men and turned them into ring wraiths. From Tolkien’s Silmarillion:

Those who used the Nine Rings became mighty in their day, kings, sorcerers, and warriors of old. They obtained glory and great wealth, yet it turned to their downfall. They had, as it seemed, unending life, yet life became unendurable to them. They could walk, if they would, unseen by all eyes in this world beneath the sun, and they could see things in worlds invisible to mortal men; but too often they beheld only the phantoms and delusions of Sauron. And one by one, sooner or later, according to their native strength and to the good or evil of their wills in the beginning, they fell under the thraldom of the ring that they bore and of the domination of the One which was Sauron’s.

Evil is popular because the benefits it provides are often immediate and significant. The rewards for being virtuous are sometimes never going to show up other than feeling good about yourself, at least in this life.

I’ve heard that hobbit flowers grow using Frodo-synthesis.

Yes, I believe True Evil® exists. The joy for me is, knowing that True Evil™ exists, I am also sure that True Good© exists, too, even though destroying the One Ring turned Frodo into a hobbitual drinker. I’ll turn it back over to Tolkien for one final quote:

“We have come from God, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming ‘sub-creator’ and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic ‘progress’ leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.”

Oh, sure, Tolkien can write. But can he meme?

Don’t Run Out The Clock On Life.

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.” – Blade Runner

Why haven’t aliens been here more frequently? They saw the reviews – one star.

One of the benefits of living in Modern Mayberry is that there are no shortage of places where you can contribute. After being assistant peewee coach for The Boy’s football (the one men play, not the game for socialist European women) I volunteered to be head coach for Pugsley’s team. The first season, I was less than spectacular. And saying I was less than spectacular is being generous.

Let me be clear – when you’re coaching third and fourth graders who can’t even calculate the orbital dynamics of the planet Mercury because they don’t know relativity and keep getting the wrong answer using Newtonian mechanics, it’s the coaching. The kids are, more or less, equally inept and equally talented. You put the big kids on the line and the fast kids as backs and receivers and wonder what to do with the small, slow kids.

As a first year coach? I was like a small, slow kid. I’m not sure we won a game my first year. That wasn’t the kids; that season was on me – it was all my fault. I’ll admit I have faults, and so will The Mrs. The Mrs. says I have two main faults – that I don’t listen and some other one.

In Europe they call it 30.48cm ball.

I remember the first game of my second pee-wee football season as clearly as if it were yesterday. The offense was on the field. We had just made a first down. There was a minute and twenty seconds (seventeen metric minutes) left on the clock. I did the math – thirty seconds a play, four downs . . . and they were out of time outs.

Wait a minute, I thought. We were up by five points. If we just ran three plays and didn’t fumble the ball and let them score a touchdown – we would win!

All we had to do was run out the clock. Our only enemy was time.

I told the quarterback to just kneel down when the center hiked the ball to him. For a second, he looked confused – we had played the whole game being aggressive on offense, and we’d racked up 28 points. Then it clicked in his head – he was a really smart 4^th grader. All he had to do was not fumble.

He had figured out what caught me almost by surprise: we just had to run out the clock. Spoiler alert: we won. Running out the clock in a football game is a valuable strategy.

I was going to tell another football joke, but it had an offensive line.

How does this translate off the field?

As I’ve mentioned in a previous post – I use a planner. Some of the things that are on my daily to-do list are straightforward. Plan to take over the world. Remember to feed the kraken. But I recently added one:

Are You Running Out The Clock?

You might think that’s a weird thing to think about every day when you go into work, and maybe it is. In the crazy, deflating and inflating economy of 2020, a job might be something that’s required for survival. But a job also might be something you’re going through the motions on and running the clock, and your life out every day watching the seconds tick away until 5pm.

Now, don’t get me wrong – if it’s important to get money to live, fulfillment isn’t the goal – feeding the family is first. In 2020 and 2021 jobs will be hard to find, so if you’re bored but have a family to feed – FEED YOUR FAMILY AND STAY UNTIL 5PM.

I quit my job at the helium plant – I will NOT be spoken to in that tone of voice.

But what happens when a job or your life becomes another exercise in running out the clock and you don’t have to worry about feeding the family?

That’s not a win.

Humans were made to be the most multi-purpose machine in the history of the planet. We’re essentially the Swiss Army® animal. Where other animals inhabit a specific niche or even several niches on the planet, humans alone have consciously gone from the bottom of the sea to the surface of the moon. We can run, swim, climb, think and even make new elements while we try to figure out how to harness the power of a star. We can then rip atoms apart just for fun, and watch C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. And all of this before breakfast.

You know that in freshman English William at least got a B on the Romeo and Juliet section.

Then we can write a sonnet, or, as Shakespeare observed in Hamlet:

What a piece of work is a man. How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty. In form and moving how express and admirable. In action how like an angel. In apprehension how like a god!

The beauty of the world.

The paragon of animals.

Humans are amazing. Shakespeare really got that. If I live my entire life, I’m not sure I can string together six sentences that are so amazing and so understand just how amazing a creature humans are.

Then Will followed up with this:

And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

Four hundred years ago, the Bard was ahead of me. It’s amazing to be human. We have great capabilities. But then? Hamlet goes and decides he wants to run out the clock.

But we’re not made for running out the clock – that’s why Hamlet is a tragedy. Hamlet was only thirty years old. He had grown weary of life, and he didn’t even have the excuse of having met my ex-wife.

We don’t get a deposit back for bringing our bodies back in great condition after we’re done with them. Let me be clear: we have a one use rental on these things. You need to use your body and your life like you stole it. My left hip hurts at least once a month. A lot.

My vacuum has Roomba®-tiod arthritis.

Good. I popped it out coaching those peewee football players. If I get arthritis there? It’s like a gray hair in my beard – I’ve earned it. I want the coroner to look at my body at the end and say: “I’m glad he’s not donating these organs. He used all of them up. How do you wear out a bellybutton? This guy did.”

I’ve seen a “running out the clock” mentality in my own family. When Pa Wilder started to get older, one thing I noticed is that his life seemed to revolve not around achieving, but around existing. He walked. He ate. He watched TV. He took his medications.

But he ceased doing anything of meaning. He ceased fighting. I’ll admit, people deserve a rest from time to time. But even in old age, even if disabled, and even if depressed – you can do something.

There is no time in your life where you can’t matter.

Running out the clock isn’t a goal – unless it’s a peewee football game.

How will you make a difference today?

If You Live In A Big Leftist City – Why Haven’t You Moved?

“I don’t know what you do in New York, but around here we don’t give a man a funeral unless we’re pretty sure he needs one.” – Green Acres

I think I ran over Schrödinger’s cat. Not sure if I feel guilty or not.

Growing up, Green Acres was one of my favorite television shows. I was far too young to have seen it in the first run, but the local television station showed reruns that were on after the school bus made it all the way to the top of Wilder Mountain. The bus rides were long, but I learned a lot about kindness – one time I saw someone give up their seat for a blind student. In retrospect, the bus driver probably showed poor judgement in letting that blind girl drive.

For those of you that haven’t seen it, Green Acres was about a New York attorney (Oliver Wendell Douglas) that decided he was through with city life. Mr. Douglas quit his big city life and moved to the rural town of Hooterville. The show never discusses exactly where Hooterville is, but the best theory is that Hooterville is in the Ozark Mountains in Missouri.

The show was funny in a way that television isn’t now. Oliver always tried to fit in, but never could quite adjust from his city ways. A lot of the humor was making fun of that disconnect between Oliver and the humorous cast of townspeople, though the relationship between Oliver and his wife was loving, strong, and funny. Here’s a scene when there were looking for clothes to donate:

Oliver Douglas: Why don’t we give away this one?
Lisa Douglas: No that’s the dress I graduated from high school in.
Oliver Douglas: How about this one?
Lisa Douglas: That’s the dress I wore the first day of college.
Oliver Douglas: [holding a black, low-cut dress] What about this one?
Lisa Douglas: That’s the one I got expelled in.

Why do I bring this up?

If I ever get a barn I’ll make sure I have an Internet router in there, so I can have stable wifi.

This weekend, The Mrs. and I were snoozing and were listening to the Watchdog on Wall Street, a radio show about investment. In the latest episode/podcast (Expedition New York – LINK), the host advocated what he called the Sam Kinison solution. Give good people U-Hauls® so they can leave the cities that are turning into scenes from Mad Max. “The reality of many urban areas is . . . it’s going to take a long, long time to come back.”

“Move.”

I was slipping in and out of sleep, but discussed the show later with The Mrs.

“He’s right you know. The era of law in those big cities is over. The District Attorneys in those large metropolitan areas have been bought and paid for by the far Left (LINK, LINK, LINK and I could go on forever with links). The DAs are no longer concerned with Justice,” I said. “These DAs are concerned with Social Justice. Try to defend yourself in a lot of these large urban monstrosities, and you’ll find out what the inside of a jail cell looks like pretty quickly. And that scares me because my brother got stabbed in jail. We took Monopoly® just a bit too seriously when I grew up.”

“Well, they can’t move here. We’re full.” That’s not exactly what The Mrs. said, but I can’t repeat it exactly since this is a family-friendly blog.

Although The Mrs. isn’t a social butterfly, she doesn’t exactly hate people. And it’s not new people moving to Modern Mayberry that was bothering her. It’s Leftist ideas.

I donated $50 to a Leftist group the other day. I hope they find a cure.

“They residents of those cities are the reason the cities are in the condition that they’re in. Then they’ll move here, and want to turn Modern Mayberry into what they left.”

The Mrs. is not wrong. Here’s an example.

My brother, John Wilder had this problem in his midsized town. (Yes, his first name really is John as well. Our parents were caught in a soap opera episode and got amnesia and forgot they had him and named me the same thing by mistake.) He was at the neighborhood homeowners’ association meeting when they were selecting a trash company. They recently had an influx of people from the United Soviet Republic of California who had gotten approval to leave the state from the Supreme Soviet.

“Well,” one transplant said, “we certainly must be environmentally friendly. We should pick the trash company that offers the mandatory recycling. They only cost $35 more a month.”

After about an hour, my brother talked the homeowners’ association into picking the cheaper trash company. Is recycling bad? Not at all. Junkyards have been recycling cars for decades. Aluminum recycling makes beer cans cheaper. But in my brother’s town, the only thing that was really recycled was aluminum – the rest of the trash went into the dump whether or not it was neatly sorted.

That’s what scared The Mrs.

I always get sad after crushing aluminum cans – it’s soda pressing.

Modern Mayberry is nice because it doesn’t have those things the big cities have, including all of their problems.

And the economy appears to be in a pretty bad state. The dollar bubble appears to be in the first phase of ending. The gold bubble may be inflating, and inflation will follow a deflation of the dollar, which is exactly as I predicted, but it’s about six months earlier than I had expected.

The median price (right now) for a house in San Francisco is $1,108 per square foot. In Modern Mayberry, I couldn’t find a single house that cost more than $100 per square foot. Sadly, you have to do without all of those San Francisco amenities like people pooping in the streets, riots and the San Francisco 49ers™. On the plus side, the Oakland Raiders® have moved, and if San Franciscans are lucky, what goes to Vegas stays in Vegas.

This is a true statement.

If I were in Seattle or Portland or New York or any of a dozen other large cities I would be moving if I had children. The best time to move is ten years ago. This gives you time to build the relationships and integrate into the community. In Modern Mayberry, I’m still one of the New Guys, even after a decade.

The second best time is now. The worst time to move is after the bottom drops out and escaping from New York looks like something that even Kurt Russell couldn’t do on his best day.

And, if you decide to move, here’s hoping that you find a place as nice as Hooterville. I hear they have good hotscakes there.

Remember that the worst time to move is one day too late.

Riots, Misplaced Virtue And The Parasite Class

â€œDon’t worry. Many women learn to embrace thisÂ parasite. They name it, dress it up in tiny clothes, arrange playdates with otherÂ parasites.â€ – House

But my parasite kept looking over its shoulder.Â I guess it was a nervous tick.

I recall seeing a story about twenty years ago about a Native American tribe, the Pima.Â This particular tribe had gone through periodic famines over the course of their existence since they lived in a desert with little water and no Kwik-E MartsÂ®.Â They had, through surviving those continual famines, developed a resistance to dying when there was no food for an extended period of time.Â This makes sense â€“ those who were susceptible to starvation starved; those who were thriftier with their metabolism lived.

Nowadays, the Pima have the distinction of suffering from one of the highest rates of diabetes in the world.Â Those biological traits slowed their metabolism enough to save them from starving in a famine.Â Those same traits, in a food-rich world, are now killing them.

Thatâ€™s one description of a trait that while good in an environment of scarcity isnâ€™t so good in an environment filled with Twinkiesâ„¢, Rufflesâ„¢, and two-liter Cokeâ„¢ bottles.

What got me thinking about all this?

What do you call it when a diabetic wonâ€™t follow directions?Â Insulince.

Eaton Rapids Joe shared several thoughts with me a few weeks back in an email exchange.Â Iâ€™m certain Iâ€™m not taking this in the direction that he had originally intended, so donâ€™t blame him for this piece. Â For me to write about a topic, it has to come together in my mind.Â One of the ideas he shared sparked my imagination.Â Here it is, in Joeâ€™s words:Â â€œBiologists make the case that periods of easy living followed by harsh purges accelerate evolution. Â Their reasoning is thus: many featuresÂ in isolationÂ are bad for survival. But if several features are combined with other features thatÂ inÂ isolationÂ are counter-survival, sometimes that package is awesome.â€

If youâ€™re not reading Joeâ€™s stuff, you really should be (LINK).Â Heâ€™s thoughtful, intelligent, interesting, and funny.Â His comment resulted in me thinking, and although I wandered pretty far off of his original point, I wanted to give credit to him for the inspiration.

Is evolution overkill?Â Did it defeet the porpoise?

As I started thinking not about biology, but about society, and the traits that either make society work, or destroy it â€“ rather than organisms, I wanted to think about group survival strategies.

Society is made up of individuals, so I thought Iâ€™d look at the individual traits that lead to a successful societal strategy.Â When I looked at positive human traits, two immediately come to mind:

Altruism
Empathy

These have been common throughout most of the history of the United States.Â Theyâ€™ve been common in other places, too, but Iâ€™m going to focus on America. Â These traits were the basis for and result of a â€œhigh-trustâ€ society.Â A high-trust society is one where most interactions arenâ€™t governed by regulations, or kin groups, or hierarchy, or law.Â Where I live, thereâ€™s no law that says you have to stop and help someone whose car broke down.Â Itâ€™s just something we do.

I heard that Shetland ponies are the least trusted horse, at least according to the Gallop poll.

Likewise, for most of the history of the United States, welfare wasnâ€™t a government program â€“ people were helped because groups of ordinary citizens donated their time and effort to help them.Â This had a benefit â€“ it was a healthy outlet for the altruism, and empathy that most people felt.Â It was virtuous for the person helping, and the person being helped.

Government started to take over the role of private charity in the 1930s, and completed the job in the 1960s.Â The insidious part of government-based charity is that it does two things:

It turns the act of charity into taxation.Â Charity moves from being a voluntary program into a mandatory feature supported by taxes.Â Last time I checked, if I decided I didnâ€™t want to support â€˜charityâ€™ by paying taxes, men with guns and bad attitudes would take my money and then give me free room and board at a Federal Camp for Wayward Wilders for five to ten years.Â This removes all virtue for taking part in charity.Â Forced charity isnâ€™t charity, itâ€™s extortion.

Thatâ€™s bad enough.

But it gets worse.

Crabs donâ€™t donate to charity.Â Theyâ€™re shellfish.

The second thing that forced charity does?Â When a person gives another person help, theyâ€™re often grateful â€“ itâ€™s human working with human.Â When a government agency gives that same person help, theyâ€™re resentful.Â Why?Â There is no end to the needs an individual has â€“ and when government doesnâ€™t give them as much as they think they deserve they feel resentment.Â Letâ€™s face it â€“ nearly every government welfare program sucks â€“ itâ€™s just enough to get by in ratty conditions.Â Not only that, these same programs are designed to create an angry perpetual victim class by being easy to stay on and difficult to escape.

Add in the impersonality of the cities.Â Mix with a globalized economy and a country that has let in enough foreign competition to depress the wages in jobs ranging from manual labor to software programmers.Â Dollop in a bit a host of useless yet expensive college degrees.Â Toss in a diversity of cultures and religions not seen since the late Roman Empire while vilifying the common culture of the last 250 years through the government education system.

Stir.

The result is chaos.Â The altruism and empathy which worked so well in that high trust society of the past now work against society.Â Add in that the problems are actually in the process of being solved:Â as an example, the black poverty rate has dropped over 30% between 1988 and 2018.

What to do with all of that altruistic, cooperative, and empathetic energy?

Whoever had â€œgo crazy in an orgy of destruction and violenceâ€ fueled by misdirected virtue is the winner.

Is it riot season or COVID season?Â I want to make sure I have the right decorations up.

I thought a bit about how AntifaÂ® and the Marxist portion of Black Lives Matterâ„¢ grew.Â The traits of altruism and empathy, generally good, have allowed them to grow.Â Heck, even more than allowing them to grow, theyâ€™ve increased the growth rate.Â In any sane society, neither of these groups would be tolerated.

Why?

Though born of misdirected virtue, AntifaÂ© and BLMÂ® have their own traits.Â They contribute nothing to society.Â Theyâ€™re destructive, and feed off of the energy and resources provided to them by productive people.Â In the long run, they may even kill off the productive society that created them.

Thereâ€™s a word for an organism living in this niche.Â The name for that organism is parasite.

It becomes increasingly likely that Antifaâ„¢ and BLMÂ® will leave city after city economically destroyed.Â Who would want to move to Minneapolis right now?Â Portland?Â Seattle?Â The governments of those forever Democrat-controlled cities has been tailor-made for incubating the parasite class.

Well, now that AntifaÂ® has been named a terrorist organization, when will the Democrats start funding it?Â

The District Attorneys in those Leftist cities are crucial to this incubation â€“ criminals arenâ€™t charged with felonies, but are let off with the lightest of charges.Â Unless, of course, they are people defending themselves from the parasite class.Â If that happens, the greatest possible charges will be conjured up, and damn the circumstances.Â Defending yourself from a parasitic criminal mob on your own private property is something that simply canâ€™t be allowed.

Parasites generally are quite healthy as long as they donâ€™t kill the host.Â The mosquitoes I fed tonight didnâ€™t kill me â€“ just left me with a few bumps that will itch for a day or so.Â But it looks like the traits of altruism and empathy may have done more damage than the famine resistance of the Pima.

Accountability: Now With Cheetos and Vicks

â€œThere is no fate but what we make for ourselves.â€ â€“ Terminator 2

I believe there is a man we cannot see who watches our every action, passing judgement, and deciding who lives or dies.Â But enough about the NSA.

My daughter Alia S. Wilder came to visit, and brought her son, Mosquito.Â As we were sitting upstairs chatting, Alia looked over at Mosquito.Â â€œMosquito, please get me a CokeÂ®.â€Â As all of our beverage fridges were downstairs, Mosquito buzzed downstairs to get Alia a Cokeâ„¢.Â There wasnâ€™t anyone downstairs, but that was okay â€“ I had removed all the anti-personnel mines and deactivated the laser defense grid for the weekend.

At least I think I did.

Mosquito bounced back up the stairs.Â He proudly presented Alia with a can of CokeÂ©.Â It was already open.Â Alia was surprised â€“ she didnâ€™t think that Mosquito had learned how to open cans of CokeÂ®.

â€œDid you open this?â€Â I could hear the pride in Aliaâ€™s voice, a pride that her son had figured out how to open a Coca-Colaâ„¢ can.Â Hey, we all know that kids are stupid.Â I can prove it, too.Â I can draw better than 94% of kids 7^th grade and younger.

There was a pause.Â Mosquito replied:Â â€œSomeone did.â€

No one every asks how CokeÂ® is doing â€“ itâ€™s always:Â â€œIs Pepsiâ„¢ okay?â€

Since the Family Wilder has a habit of leaving semi-full Cokeâ„¢ cans around the house like the Easter Bunny leaves spent radioactive fuel rods around the Former Soviet Union, we were all pretty sure that Mosquito had found the remnants of CokesÂ® from a bygone era.Â Maybe the Upper Pugslevanian epoch?

We laughed, and then sent Mosquito back over the wall to get an unopened can of CokeÂ®.

Mosquito had inadvertently provided me with blog fodder.Â The topic?

Accountability.

The reasons I love accountability is what it means:Â itâ€™s the person who is ultimately be the one who will reap the rewards or suffer the consequences of their decisions and actions.Â One of the reasons I hate accountability is that it has become a corporate buzzword which tends to turn a good word into mindless mission-statement-speak parroted by unthinking corporate lackeys.

Like me.

Buzzwords, do you speak them, Mister Falcon?Â (Hint:Â GoogleÂ® â€œMister Falconâ€)

One of the things missing from society today is accountability.Â I really think that this lack of accountability is at least partially responsible for the riots weâ€™ve been seeing.Â What are the rioters accountable for, besides roasting Air JordansÂ® over a gently crackling police precinct fire?Â Are they even accountable to get up tomorrow and go to a job?

No.

Thankfully, real life provides some help in giving great examples of accountability.Â People are ultimately accountable for many of the decisions they make:

Choose a horrible degree in â€œFrench Medieval Gender Studiesâ€ and spend $273,432 getting it? You have to pay it back.
Have a baby at 16 from a daddy who skipped to Canada? You have to raise it.
Miss an appointment for your dream job because you slept in? Iâ€™m sure theyâ€™ll understand.
Decided to spend your twenties travelling to distant continents while your friends worked hard? No, itâ€™s not luck that theyâ€™re comfortable in that house in the suburbs and having kids while you canâ€™t afford a studio apartment.
Living your â€œBest Lifeâ€ (The Lie of Living Your Best Life (now including cookies))?
Realizing that your strategy of â€œdelaying gratification is hard and only pays off later, while eating Cheetosâ„¢ always pays off nowâ€ has resulted in you catching CheetoÂ® lungâ„¢ and weighing as much as a BuickÂ©?

You can tell a college student:Â theyâ€™re looking for breakfast wine that pairs well with CheetosÂ®.

But I am here to announce an amazing idea:Â accountability is freedom.

The thing I normally see is that people run from accountability.Â They donâ€™t want to be judged by what they did.Â They donâ€™t want to sign the bottom line.

But seeking accountability is really freedom.

Why is it freedom?Â Being accountable is being in charge of your own life.Â Too many people seek to run away from accountability, but deep down, they know that fleeing accountability is weakness.Â The reality is that you are in charge of your own life, just like Darth VaderÂ® was accountable for not one but two Death Starsâ„¢.

If, like me, youâ€™re carrying a few too many pounds?Â PEBCAP â€“ the Problem Exists Between Chair And Plate.Â The alternative is that you make yourself a victim of some vague conspiracy between biology and high fructose corn syrup.Â You take the conspiracy route?Â Youâ€™ve made yourself a victim.

When I was working at a convenience store I got the idea that 7-11 was an inside job.

Who likes being around a victim?Â Nobody.Â People like those who are accountable, and stake out that position.Â Itâ€™s one of strength.Â Itâ€™s the path of the virtuous.

But it has to be earned.Â And, in my case?

Learned.

When I was going to High School, I often spent time at my long-term girlfriendâ€™s house.Â Her family was great.Â Her fatherâ€™s favorite movie was Patton.Â General George S. Patton was my personal hero at that time in my life, so letâ€™s just say that he and I got along very well.Â When I went over to his place, he treated me like his son.

But one particular night, his daughter backed her car (a MustangÂ®) into my 1972 green GMCâ„¢ pickup.Â It sent a long dent up the back end on the driverâ€™s side.Â Her father told me to go get an estimate to fix it, and I did.

The estimate was about $700.Â My girlfriend wrote me a check from all of the money sheâ€™d made working fast food for several years.Â I cashed it.Â But then I found someone who promised theyâ€™d fix it cheaper.Â How much cheaper?Â Half.

I got the pickup fixed.Â It looked better than new.

Great news, $350 buck for the John Wilder fund, right?Â I imagined all the things Iâ€™d spend it on, since my girlfriend and I had already broken up â€“ probably a car horn that played Judas Priest songs and maybe a car stereo that got FM as well as AM.

This truck belongs to my friend, Ben Thunder.Â When I borrow it, Iâ€™ve Ben Thunderâ€™s truck.

Pa Wilder rained on my parade.

Pa:Â â€œDid your girlfriend pay for you to fix the truck?â€

JW:Â â€œYup.Â And I got it fixed for half that.â€

Pa:Â â€œSo, why does that mean that youâ€™re entitled to that money?â€

Dang.

Pa Wilder had it all figured out.Â My ex-girlfriend had made herself accountable for fixing my car when she gave me that check.Â My implied promise was that money would go to fixing my truck, not buying a collection of small pewter animals with all of that money that sheâ€™d made working at the local chicken restaurant.

So, that put me in the uncomfortable position of having to go to an ex-girlfriendâ€™s house and give her a check for several hundred dollars.Â The upside?Â That was a good time to ask for my old Alice CooperÂ® cassette tape back – bonus points for anyone in the comments that figures out which Alice Cooperâ„¢ tape it was.

But even better than getting the Alice CooperÂ© tape back was in knowing that Iâ€™d done the right thing.Â I understand now that she had been accountable for fixing my car.Â And I was accountable for doing it in the most cost effective way possible.

Did I give her that money back?

Well, as Mosquito would say:Â â€œSomebody did.â€

But What If You’re Wrong?

“What if you’re wrong, Evil? What if Dandridge is a vampire and he thinks you know it? Would you walk down that alley then?” – Fright Night

How many vampires are good at math? Can I count Dracula?

“Indeed, none but the Deity can tell what is good luck and what is bad before the returns are all in,” wrote Mark Twain.

Yet, so many people are certain that they can determine what good luck is with great certainty. As I get older, like Twain, I’m not sure that I can tell good luck from bad on any given day. So, I try to take it as it is. Rain? Good. We needed rain. Hot? Well, the air conditioning works. Snow? Great – it will kill the insects. A massive hail of arrows that blots out the Sun? Excellent. We can fight in the shade.

I came to this conclusion after one day when I looked backward at my life around the age of 32 – the things that I had hoped for – recognition, money, and a bountiful supply of PEZ® hadn’t made life better. The things I had tried to avoid – a near zero bank account, 16+ hour days as a single dad with a job, and life without a spouse made me a better man and made me think about the relationships between virtue, money, and meaning.

The time of plenty hadn’t made me better, but the time where I spent six months raising kids by myself before I had a spare $150 to buy a used Fender® and an amp at a pawn shop had. Huh? How could that be, especially when I got cheated on the guitar – “no strings attached” had a different meaning in that pawn shop.

I gave up and sold the guitar to a guy in town who doesn’t have any arms. I asked how he was going to play it, and he said, “By ear.”

It was then I decided that getting everything I wanted would have been the worst possible thing for me. Instead, getting a tougher life made me better. I was in my 20s when I had that revelation, and it has stayed with me. It also has led me to always ask myself:

What if I’m wrong?

Not wrong. But really, really wrong?

In some sense, people might call this indecision, like I don’t know what I want. I mean, indecision was when I couldn’t decide between churros and sopapillas for desert, which caught me off guard – no one expects Spanish Indecision. But this is different. I call this humility. I might have a clear sense of what I want, but have no real idea what is good for me. Call it the Twain Zone.

It leads to some interesting thought experiments – what if the exact opposite of what I’m expecting happens?

Historically, I can give numerous examples of surprises that “no one” was expecting – where nearly everyone was wrong.

The U.S.S.R. looked strong and invulnerable in 1985. Rocky IV and Red Dawn reflected the public mood that the Soviets just might win. By 1987, cracks were showing, by 1989 areas were in open rebellion, and by 1991 the U.S.S.R. voted itself out of existence on December 26. That’s a shame. I heard that Soviet bread was so good that people would wait in line all day for a single piece.
Stock prices have reached “what looks like a permanently high plateau,” said Irving Fisher, Yale economist, on October 10, 1929. October 24, 1929 was Black Thursday, where the market lost 11% in a single day. Oops. I will say that COVID-19 makes it feel like 1929 – the stock market is tanked and the bars are closed.
On August 9, 1974 Richard Nixon resigned, less than two years after crushing his opponent George McGovern 520-17 in the Electoral College, winning every state but Massachusetts, where the penalty for drunk driving is re-election to the Senate.

Spoiler alert: Nixon’s decorating crimes would not stand. He resigned office and quit eating spaghetti on the same day – it’s all in the pasta now.

In a financial sense, I think everyone reading this post knows that something is horribly wrong with both the currency and the stock market. The old line attributed to Gary Shilling rings true, however: “The market can remain irrational much longer than I can remain solvent.” Just because you or I might have seen that real estate was overvalued in 2006, doesn’t mean that the market did. Irrationality can persist longer than logic, especially when everyone says, “Real estate? It never goes down.”

Okay, John, you’ve convinced me. Now what?

Well, that’s up to you. I can’t judge your situation unless you send me a few goats, some silver, and a throwout bearing for a 1973 GMC pickup. But what I was hoping is that you’d look yourself and ask a few questions:

If you think that we’ll have unending prosperity and no shortages, what if you’re wrong?
If you think that the riots in (INSERT YOUR CITY HERE) won’t reach your neighborhood, what if you’re wrong?
If you think that things can’t get better than this mess we’re in, what if you’re wrong?
If you think that things can’t get worse than this mess we’re in, what if you’re wrong?
If you think that the stock market can’t go up, what if you’re wrong?

I was also wrong about my chiropractor. I stand corrected.

The situation that the United States enjoyed from 1945 until recently was the most prosperous in (perhaps) the history of the world so far. A good weather forecaster’s most accurate forecast is to say that tomorrow will be like today, obtuse (as in greater than 90 degrees). Until it isn’t. The hot spring day is followed up by the tornado – the winter storm strikes furiously from the north.

So, not knowing where the wind is coming from, I’m okay with it. Hot today? I’m fine. Cold tomorrow? Great. Hurricanes? Wonderful, let’s get to sea in our shrimp boat.

I guess the reason I’m so agreeable when the conditions of the world would indicate that I should be grumpy is that I’ve seen one thing again and again: when I try to divine the future from my current situation, my track record is horrible, since the returns aren’t yet all in.

Okay, I looked it up and the blue stuff is either water or alcohol. Either way I wouldn’t drink it, since if it’s methanol, you won’t see what hit you.

So, evaluate where you are, ask yourself, “What if I’m wrong?” and live a life worth living. I don’t get to choose all of the events in my life, but I certainly can choose how I react.

Unless I’m wrong about that.

Random (Funny) Thoughts, July, 2020

â€œRandomÂ chance seems to have operated in our favor.â€ â€“ Star Trek (TOS)

My high school buddy moved to Chicago and told me it isnâ€™t that violent.Â Heâ€™s a tailgunnner on a school bus.

Once or twice a year, I decide Iâ€™m going to relax with a post.Â Instead of the tightly-constructed gems of wit and wisdom, itâ€™s just a list of things Iâ€™m thinking about.

A fish wouldnâ€™t understand what water is, no more than an American would understand what Western Civilization is. Only one of them tastes good with tartar sauce.
Mark Twain knew that most people canâ€™t tell a good event from a bad one. The best things in my life have come from events that, at the time, felt awful.Â Think about a baby just before birth â€“ nice and warm and then twisting and constricting and exposure to cold and harsh light.Â How could the baby ever have beer unless it was born?? Â Â Iâ€™ve learned.Â I wait to see what happened before I judge if something is good or bad.Â This makes me look like some sort of Zen-master when Iâ€™m calm and everyone else is panicking.
War in the twentieth century was built around maneuver and destruction of the enemyâ€™s capability to fight. War in the twenty-first century will be built around information and the destruction of the economy before the fight can begin.

The Boy and Pugsley went out to Wal-MartÂ® today to go shopping. They announced a weird and perplexing list of shortages.Â We may have moved into a scarcity economy.Â At least we have NetflixÂ®, right?
Western Civilization (i.e., freedom) has been under attack for over 100 years.
Mandatory vaccinations were approved by a Supreme Court decision. That same Supreme Court ruled that you could have mandatory sterilization of mentally inferior people.Â Be careful what you cite.
COVID-19 might be the seed for the final breakup of the United States. Just like the sniper said to his ex-girlfriend:Â â€œI wonâ€™t miss you!â€

Why does the Left get bent out of shape about Russia? I think itâ€™s because during an interview, Vladimir Putin was asked if a woman could become president of Russia.Â Putin responded, â€œNo, because I am not a woman.â€
AntifaÂ® appears to be a group of middle-class kids with daddy-issues who can still afford tattoos, piercings, and black clothing. If they win, Iâ€™d love to see their faces as they learn during harvest season that potatoes donâ€™t originate at Whole FoodsÂ®.
650,000 people moved out of California last year. Number moving to Modern Mayberry?Â Â Good luck, Idaho!
Would we even know that COVID-19Â® existed without the media?
In the minds of most of the Center and Right, Black Lives MatterÂ® is 100% tied to violence and looting.
What if the role of 2020 is to play, â€œThink thatâ€™s cool, 2020? Hold my beer?â€ as everything rolls of the edge?Â Â Donâ€™t worry about that or prepare for it.Â Itâ€™ll be fine.
The Redpill is a meme from The Matrix (1999). It means that you understand what reality actually is.Â Heck those LGBT+ folks wonâ€™t take a straight answer.
Gingko Biloba is a plant thatâ€™s not really related to anything on Earth for the last 270,000,000 years. Itâ€™s almost as old as your mom.

Cancel culture is hilarious, since right now itâ€™s eating the Left. Remember what Napoleon said:Â â€œNever interrupt your enemy when theyâ€™re making a mistake.â€
Free markets (within a nation) are still better than any alternative weâ€™ve found. Free markets between nations is a neat goal â€“ as long as the nations are free.Â But theyâ€™re not.
Joe Biden may be the first politician who thinks they won an election against Ronald Reagan.
I woke up this morning and my hip hurt, probably for something I did in one Thursday in 2013. Is my hip officially cancelled?

The most consequential invention of the 2000â€™s is the iPhoneÂ®. Itâ€™s also the most destructive invention of my lifetime.
During my lifetime, it was certain that the Soviets, Japanese, and Chinese would become the most powerful economic power on Earth. Now?Â The Soviets donâ€™t exist, and the Japanese have become focused on anime and talking cats.
Marriage that produces kids and lasts is good.
The new definition of far-right extremist includes: a desire to be monogamous and marry and have kids, avoiding drugs and porn and alcohol, reading books and hiking.

The undercover Rightwing political operation to completely discredit Leftists, codenamed: â€œJust Let Joe Biden Speakâ€ is apparently working.
Hierarchy is necessary for a civilized society to survive.
The United States has 140 operational bombers. Not in a bomber wing or squadron.Â 140 bombers.Â Â 60 or so of them (B-52) entered service in 1955 and, although not quite as old as Joe Biden, are pretty old.
Donâ€™t let Russia determine the 2020 election! Demand Voter ID!

If COVID-19 has killed more businesses than people, was a lockdown the right call?
Ever notice that since the British gave up all of their guns, that now teenage kids in Great Britain can get put into jail for offensive jokes that teenage kids make?
Imagine what seven billion people on the planet could do if they just left each other alone?
The first rule of being in a gunfight? Have a gun. (Jeff Cooper)

Long time readers would be surprised to know that I do have appreciation for some metric measures: 9mm, 7.62x39mm, and 5.56mm.
What happens when rent is no longer deferred and the unemployment checks stop?
If the aliens ever come? Donâ€™t get on the ships.Â How to Serve Man is a cookbook.

Meaning: Do It Right.

“Bender, it has come to my attention that this company has been paying you to do nothing but loaf around on the couch.” – Futurama

I gave The Mrs. a dictionary for our first anniversary. I wanted to give her something with a meaning.

Imagine you’re between 16 and 24. You live in a country (Great Britain) that has a robust social safety net. Your parents are doing okay. Not millionaires, but doing okay. The U.K. has a huge safety net if you can’t work, or don’t want to work. For instance, in London you can have:

Council flats (apartments) – in U.S. English: subsidized or (nearly) free housing.
Free crisps (potato chips) and biscuits (cookies) delivered by singing Welshmen in chimney sweep attire.
Free Dr. Who™ costumes, though they only come in the sizes of “elfin” and “aircraft carrier”.
X-Box® games delivered at no cost via the luminiferous information aether (Internet).
A majority Pakistani population.
Free healthcare, including funds for Cockney coal-miners to blast and carve your teeth into pleasant looking shapes.
A zero effort, zero risk life.

At least 1,500 citizens of Great Britain turned their back on this life of shabby luxury to go live in a land without air conditioning, bangers and mash, Top Gear™, and cell phone reception for the opportunity to become bloodthirsty Junior Assistant Jihadis in the ISIS® organization.

Why?

I’ve heard that ISIS has a new name. WASWAS.

At least partially because life had no meaning for them – they weren’t accomplishing anything, and they knew it. Carl Jung observed this problem in the early twentieth century. Jung’s observation was made as religious belief was waning in Europe, and as people there were continually centralizing themselves in cities that became larger and larger. Jung saw that the loss of a belief system that allowed them to have a higher purpose in any setting – large or small, was devastating.

Also, Jung saw that this was coupled with the anonymity and lack of true community of large cities. To put it bluntly, for 99%+ of people living in a city, the city doesn’t care if you are there. Your contribution to the whole is diluted to the point of meaninglessness, like the guy in the BMW® factory that installs turn signals. Jung had ideas as to the result of this situation:

The individual’s feeling of weakness, indeed of non-existence, is compensated by the eruption of hitherto unknown desires for power. It is the revolt of the powerless, the insatiable greed of the have-nots.

Did you hear about Carl’s daughter? She was a little Jung, too.

In modern society, the numbers of people are huge when compared to the historical setting that mankind has experienced through time. I wrote a somewhat related post here (Mental Illness, Dunbar’s Number, and the Divine Right of Kings). Modern people have, at least a bit, developed ways to replace the meaning of religion and the belonging that only occurs in small bands:

Sports teams. This allows achievement by proxy. Your team wins, even though exactly one player out of 50 are from the state the team is in? You won! Your quarterback gets traded next year? He’s dead to you. Logical? Effective? Yes.
Video games. Video games are a form of artificial achievement. You achieve a pre-programmed victory designed to manipulate you into feeling good. Designers of video games have turned this into a stunning skill, making successive video games more immersive. And despite this immersion, it doesn’t make kids more violent – I rarely lose a fistfight with a sixth grader.
Work hard, do well, feel good. It’s a simple enough equation. It’s also one of the most real and most wholesome things on this list. Especially if you are a mummy – they aren’t evil – they just got a bad wrap.
Consumeproduct culture. No, that’s not a typo. What is a consumeproduct culture? It’s one that replaces shopping for meaning. Did you find a new Brad Pitt® flavored toothpaste to buy? Great! It shoots endorphins into your brain that make you feel you’ve achieved something. But it wears off, and you’ve got to find Johnny Depp shaped vitamin C gummis and buy them tomorrow to feel okay.
Politics. Just like sports teams, cheering for your side allows you to feel good when you win, and bad when you lose. The current Leftward polarization of the Democrats is very tied into this. How many Leftists does it take to change a lightbulb? 2500 to protest, and none of them working to change anything.
Mind altering substances. Cocaine. Alcohol. Marvel® movies. These allow you to escape just for an hour or two. Oddly, the common denominator in all of this? Robert Downey, Jr.

I’m not saying that these coping mechanisms are evil, or harmful. Some, like working hard, have huge societal and personal benefits unless you’re working for an evil company. Others, like politics? Not so much, especially the Leftist variety. Again, Carl Jung saw the rise of Leftism in his life and correctly described its rise in these two quotes:

Such people are very likely to gravitate toward collective ideologies, mass movements, and institutions which they view as having the power they as individuals lack.

If the individual, overwhelmed by the sense of his own puniness and impotence should feel that his life has lost its meaning, then he is already on the road to State slavery and, without knowing or wanting it, has become its proselyte.

So, the “British” ISIS-Bois sashayed to Samarra and moseyed to Mosul out of their comfortable council flat life. They did this because they felt no meaning in Great Britain. Great Britain was a country that they and their ancestors had no hand in building. They and their ancestors didn’t really contribute to Great Britain in any significant way. They knew that they were no more British than I am Martian, and won’t be until their great, great, grandchild is named Nigel and has horrible teeth.

What’s red and bad for your teeth? A brick.

Therefore, they weren’t assimilated enough to move their search for meaning to Manchester United®, so might as well go and kill some people down in the Middle East. This is just another example that soccer is an evil game devised by aristocratic European women so that they could play it while their husbands did the dishes. (Apologies to Mike Judge)

This isn’t just a crisis of the ISIS-Idiots. This is a crisis that faces mankind in general. Many of the spiritual, social, and political ills the world faces right now stem directly from the minimization of religion and the urbanization of population.

Big cities are dehumanizing. Do you know a person on your city council? Do they know you by name? Do you have their cell phone number in your cell phone? Do you have proof that they plagiarized in high school? Do you know what happened at Uncle Tom’s cabin, and what’s down in the wishing well? Would they pay attention if you called them on a Tuesday afternoon?

This is the norm in Modern Mayberry.

Does it make sense for any person to live in a city where these things are not true? Does it make the citizens of Dallas better off to have a city of a million people where their voice is so diluted that they are just one among millions, feeling no control?

My doctor says I should take meds for my schizophrenia. But look who doesn’t get lonely during quarantine – this guy!

Adding to the frustrations is that most decisions are made not at the local level in those massive cities, but at the national level where hiring a stupid person isn’t a mistake, it’s a feature. In the United States, most regulations that impact people on a day-to-day basis aren’t made in the Modern Mayberry office.

Nope.

Most regulations are made far away in Washington – and not the good Washington where the volcanoes and earthquakes will eventually eliminate all the Leftists. This results in one-size fits all regulations that meet the needs of the lowest common denominator. Why does the EPA design wood stoves for use in Alaska? Can’t the Alaskans be left alone to figure that out?

These rules do more than frustrate individuals. The confine those that could become great. Could a company like Apple® be founded today? I don’t think so they would be crushed by regulations – they would have to remain as an open sauce company. My next door neighbor, who runs a small farm bank, told me that starting a small bank from scratch today would be nearly impossible. The small has been eliminated, the middle is discouraged, and only large companies can compete.

The result is that people on all sides are done with the current system. On the Left, there is a desire for what only could be called a Marxist revolution because the state isn’t powerful enough. On the Right? There’s a feeling that the United States became a little too centrally powerful around 1843.

I side with the Right.

What civilization had the best tattoos? The Ink-ans.

We have learned that the solutions from the Left, in the end, provide only death and tyranny. The “British” people who went to join the jihadis were fans of death and tyranny in their own way. The rioters of BLM are fans of death and tyranny, as well. As mentioned many times, that path is the path of destruction. The Left wants to destroy our civilization, the Right wants to build civilization.

On the Right, I’d suggest leaving the cities. Outside of the danger we’ve seen recently, like Mars, cities ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids. Find your Modern Mayberry. Meet your neighbors. Build relationships.

Find meaning from something more than an Amazon® shopping cart.

Ohh! Did you see that Lighting Deal®?