Friday Movies. Because I Said So.

“A slave stood behind the conqueror, holding a golden crown, and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting.” – Patton

Patton hated fighting against the German fighting tank. No one likes the Peter Panzer.

Last month I did a post on books. The response was amazing, and had lots of comments from folks that aren’t regular commenters. It also cost me about $50 in books that are now on my shelf and in the “to read” pile. And I thank you folks for that. Now I won’t get through my “to read” pile until 2254.

To follow up, I thought I’d bring up movies. Manly movies. This summer, Pugsley and The Boy and I spent several nights watching Man Movies. These were movies that I selected that exhibited manly virtues. I’ll go through some of them below.

I’ve selected movies that are greater than 17 years old. Why? Because of the second movie on the list. Otherwise it would be 20 years, and that’s a long time. My friend drove a limo for 20 years, and now in this economy has nothing to chauffer it.

One question I’ll answer about each one is does the movie pass the three criteria of the Bechdel Test? The Bechdel Test was devised by (really) 1980’s lesbian women to use as a criteria on what movies to watch. I’m not very optimistic that good Man Movies will pass this test:

  1. The movie has to have at least two women,
  2. who talk to each other,
  3. about something other than a man.

And no, none of these movies are about the invention of braille, even though I’ve heard that’s a great feel-good movie.

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First up:

Patton

Patton was my favorite movie the first time I watched it. How old was I? I was still in the PJ and Saturday morning cartoon set. As long-term readers might have guessed, I have a passion for history. General Patton (because of the movie Patton) is a primary reason I developed that love.

Patton also has a personal connection to the Wilder family. Pa Wilder was yelled at personally by General Patton. It turns out that Pa had been sent with orders to deliver supplies to a unit that didn’t exist. So, he’d stop and ask where the (I’m making this up) 551st Infantry Division was. There was no 551st Infantry. The United States Army was purposely trolling any spies that were in France. When Pa Wilder ended up at Patton’s 3rd Army and asked for the 551st, Patton yelled at Pa and then took all of the supplies. And all of the trucks. All of them. Pa Wilder and his company had to hop a ride to get back to Paris.

I walked in and The Mrs. was yelling at the TV: “Don’t go into the church, you moron!” She always gets emotional at our wedding videos.

I’m surprised Patton didn’t tell Pa and his Company to grab their M-1’s and hoof it to Bastogne.

(Note for newer readers who can do math: Ma and Pa Wilder adopted me after the wolves who raised me on Wilder Mountain decided I was too wild for them to continue having me around. Pa Wilder would be grandpa age, since I’m firmly a Gen X kid.)

One night this summer The Mrs. went to bed fairly early. I realized that neither Pugsley nor The Boy had seen Patton. The movie is nearly three hours in length. I expected that they’d watch a few minutes of it, pat me on the head for my love of this outdated movie, and move on.

Nope. They sat, riveted. When they had to go to the bathroom? “Hey, Dad, pause it, please.”

Does Patton pass the Bechdel Test? No. The only women I recall in the movie are a Garden Society that Patton gives a speech to. They have no lines. Would Patton be stronger if there was some subplot involving a young and brave female supersoldier who could fight even better than all the men because she’s the bestest ever?

Of course not.

I had trophy for winning a limbo competition, but it was stolen. How low can you get?

What Patton does, though, is inspire. He was a fountain of bravery and strength. He was probably the best fighting general the United States had in Europe. Patton’s sense of determination and destiny? The stuff of legend. Patton won Oscars® for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Most Manliest Movie Ever Made Up To 1970.

Not a second is wasted. The Boy and Pugsley finished the movie with me around 2AM on a Sunday morning. Good times.

Master and Commander: The Far Side of The World

I first watched this movie with The Boy when he was very young. Master and Commander tells the tale of fictional Captain Jack Aubrey and his ship’s surgeon as they sail on adventures during the Napoleonic wars before the French started surrendering every month when the power bill came in.

If you’re sad that you have never sailed across the Atlantic Ocean, remember, neither has the Titanic

The stunning thing about this movie is that it’s 100% Manly, even though it was made in 2003. The ship is crewed by men. They try to kill French men, who are in turn also manly. The only women seen in the movie are some native women who bring supplies to Captain Aubrey’s ship, the H.M.S. Surprise. Bechdel Test? Fail.

The rest of the movie?

Combat. Strategy. Honor. Tons of honor: there’s even a suicide done for the sake of honor.

And also a responsibility. In one scene, a 14 year old is left in command of the H.M.S. Surprise. The honor and responsibility are not lost on him: a continuing theme of this movie is the responsibility of command. Sure, if you’re the Captain you get the biggest bedroom on the ship. But the cost of that is responsible for every man on the ship, and even the ship itself.

The cinematography is amazing – and the H.M.S. Surprise is a real sailing ship. The movie didn’t make a bunch of money at the box office. That’s okay. At least they made it.

Russell Crowe plays Captain Aubrey. It’s his best role in any movie I’ve seen him in.

Zulu

The Battle of Rourke’s Drift is one of those, “did this really happen?” history moments. Several thousand Zulu warriors (3,000? 4,000?) attacked a small mission in South Africa in 1879. Who was left to defend it? About 150 troops, but only 120 of them were able to fight.

And who was in charge? An engineer. Lt. John Chard, who was described later as, “one of the most unambitious and ugly men” that particular general had ever met. That general had to award him the Victoria Cross (VC), which is the highest award Great Britain has for bravery. Smells like envy to me since the general never earned a VC himself. Also, 11 Victoria Crosses were awarded to soldiers at Rourke’s Drift. That’s not 1% of every Victoria Cross ever awarded.

But it’s close to 1% of all of them. Ever.

I did find a great new machine at the gym – it does everything: Chips. Cookies. Candy bars.

The 1964 movie Zulu is about that battle. It’s fairly unique in that the leader of the Zulu warriors attacking the British soldiers is played by the grandson of the Zulu chief who actually did attack Rourke’s Drift. Stanley Baker and Michael Caine play Lt. John Chard and Lt. Gonville Bromhead. Yes. That’s a real name. Someone actually named their child Michael.

Why is this movie great?

Well, it obviously fails the Bechdel Test, since there are zero conversations between women about anything.

But neither soldier really wants to command. Both of them (in real life) were described as wanting to smoke pipes and fish rather than work hard. Chard assumes command because he has to – he became a Lieutenant first.

The only way to win against 33 to 1 odds? Discipline. And the British soldiers showed it in abundance. They fought smartly, as a group. The movie is well paced, and Stanley Baker and Michael Caine tear up the screen. There are some historical inaccuracies, but it’s a movie, not a documentary.

Why is it manly?

Duty. Ingenuity. Unwillingness to give up.

The Thing

Since there are no women at all in The Thing (1982), it becomes the fourth out of four movies to fail the Bechdel Test. I’m thinking that 1980’s lesbian women probably aren’t good judges of movies I’ll like based on a criteria that has nothing to do with what makes a good movie. Good thing the Oscars® are joining them and demanding that arbitrary criteria are included in selecting the Best Picture Oscar™!

Chuck Norris was abducted by aliens. Once. That’s how we know that UFOs aren’t real.

The Thing was never in danger of winning an Oscar®. It’s a gore-fest John Carpenter movie. And it’s wonderful. If you don’t like horror movies – it’s not for you. But in this movie, Kurt Russell does his best Clint Eastwood imitation for the duration of the film and starts the movie by pouring scotch into a chess computer because it beats him.

The basic plot is that a small group of men are cut off from the world in Antarctica. Antarctica means “no bears.” Arctic means, from the Greek word, arktos, which means “bear.” Antarctica means the opposite, which would be no bears. But Kurt Russell has a manly beard that would make any bear claim him as their own.

The Thing is a great movie.

There is suspense. Just like evaluating a member of Congress, there is that moment when you have no idea who is good and who is bad.

But there is also the manly moment – when Kurt Russell stands up and decides he’s going to stop the alien. Is it because he’s a good guy? Yes. He decided fairly early in the movie that he was probably going to die, but that he would sacrifice everything so that a shape-shifting alien wouldn’t be able to escape Antarctica and become Billary Clinton.

The Thing again returns to the theme of being a man: Liking humans more than aliens. Willing to fight to the last to stop those aliens. Adapting to extreme changes in reality during the span of days.

I have a much longer list, but those are the four that made the cut for a very short list.

Your suggestions?

Magic and Money: More Related Than You Think

“It was the most amazing magic trick I’ve ever seen.” – The Prestige

Mimes aren’t magicians, they just have obstacle illusions.

This is a post about finance.  It’s an awesome one, so bear with me.

I’ve always been a bit of a ham.  When I was in third grade, I got up and did impressions and sang a song.  This was in front of the entire school on talent night, Kindergarten through Senior, and all their parents.  My impressions were horrible.  My singing was worse.

The next year, I got to play a drunken uncle in our fourth grade play.  I’m not making that up.  I had a flask and everything, and the teacher pinned the neck tie of my costume up over my shoulder, since drunks apparently can’t wear a tie properly.  However, you can bet that I delivered my lines with the best drunken slur a fourth grader can muster.

It was another time and place, where we could make jokes with the idea of being funny.  If they did a play like that today, I’m sure that the school district would be shut down, burned, and exorcised from Twitter™ and Facebook®.  I mean, the parents in the play were a man and a woman played . . . by a boy and a girl.  And they were married. And they didn’t have tattoos.

Sacrilege!

The floor collapsed during the fourth grade play.  I guess I was going through a stage.

As I’ve mentioned before, I lived pretty far out on Wilder Mountain.  The nearest kid to my house lived nine miles away.  The nearest McDonalds™ at that time was a two hour car trip.  So, a trip to a magic store was entirely out of the question.  But then came college.

Where I was still a ham.

In college, I was living near Capitol City, and they did have a magic store.  So, I bought three magic tricks.  All three were fun, because they were professional grade, and if you had the mechanical dexterity to open a beer can, you could do very professional, close up magic.

One was a coin trick.

COVID shut down the mint?  It makes no cents.

It’s still my favorite trick.  I haven’t done it in years, but it’s fun to do.  First, I’d show the person I’m doing the trick with (we’ll call them “Mark”) two coins – a United States $0.50 coin, and a Mexican 50 centavo coin.  Then, I put the coins into their right hand.  By the time the coins are in their hands, it’s not a half dollar and a 50 centavo piece – it’s now a half dollar and a United States $0.25.

I’d then ask Mark to put one coin in each hand, while his hands were behind his back, so I can’t see them.  Once each hand has a coin in it, I ask them to hold their hands straight out in front of them.  I’d then guess where the $0.50 piece was.

That wasn’t the trick.

Then, regardless of if my guess was correct, I’d bet them something (say, a Coke® or a beer – remember I was in college) that they couldn’t show me the 50 centavo piece.

They’d smile, and then open their hand, and then show me the quarter and look amazed that it wasn’t the 50 centavo piece.

Except the first few times, it didn’t work.  At all.  It’s not that I messed up the trick, one hand had $0.50 in it, and one hand had a quarter.  But the first few times I did the trick, the Mark immediately recognized that it wasn’t the 50 centavo, and knew it was a quarter.

Well, that sucks.

You have no idea how long this meme took.

But then I thought back – at the magic store where I’d bought the trick, the salesman performing the trick had said, “notice how much smaller the 50 centavo piece is than the half dollar.”  I tried that the next time I did the trick.

Perfect.

Mark, merely by my suggestion, had developed the mental image that the 50 centavo piece was small.  Every time I’ve done the trick using that phrase, and I mean every single time, ever, it worked like a charm.  Without saying “notice how much smaller . . .”?  Over half the time the person could tell that the second coin was a quarter.

The next refinement was the reveal.  Remember when I told the Mark to hold his hands out front, and I’d guess which hand had the fifty cent piece in it?  Amazingly, 90% of people put the half dollar into the same hand.  Which hand?  I’m not giving up all of my secrets.

I would, on purpose, guess the wrong hand after telling Mark not to show me the coins, right or wrong.

They’d smile and tell me I was wrong.  They felt awesome – they’d beaten the magician.  Obviously, the trick was going wrong.

All part of the plan.

The next thing I said was, “I bet you a beer Coke™ that you can’t show me the 50 centavo piece,” and then they opened their hand to see an ordinary quarter?  After seeing the quarter, I’d ask Mark to open the other hand where they’d see a normal fifty cent piece.  They were always amazed when I did it right, but in order for the trick to work, I had to say the right things.

The trick paid for itself in, um, beverages and things.  And the Mark didn’t mind – Mark was amused, and I got paid a small fee for that amusement.

But the things that sold the trick wasn’t the mechanics and metal, it was what I was saying, and how I was saying it, and, even being intentionally wrong was part of the final sale.  You can buy this trick yourself, for about $12 – search “Scotch and Soda Trick” on Amazon.

You’re welcome.

But what does this have to do with money?

A lot, actually.

His version of Purple Rain was awful.

Number One – People who sell stuff know how to sell.  Like my magic trick, salesmen do trial and error to learn what works.  If you buy a car every five years from a dealer, and they have contact with 30 customers a week, who has the upper hand?

If you’re listening to a politician who’s spent his entire life just getting elected, what likelihood to you have of understanding their real character and values?  They probably don’t remember them themselves.  If you’re buying a car, a house, or even a burger at McDonalds, they know the game.  There’s a reason that every well-trained McDonalds© employee asks, “Do you want fries with that?”

They know the game.  McDonalds® knows that a potato costs them pennies, but a basket of fries can go for $3.  Profits may be fleeting, but the pant size increase is forever.

One of the tricks that Bernie Madoff used with his customers was to dress very frugally.  Despite the fact that he was stealing billions ($20 billion by the best estimate I found), he knew the game better than his Marks.  He also was selective with clients – he wouldn’t accept just anyone.  No, you had to apply and be approved.  You had to know someone.

Number Two – Knowing the trick is everything.  When I did the coin trick, only I knew what was coming.  It was all scripted, and I knew exactly what the outcome was going to be.  When I asked people to let me guess which hand the coin was in, they thought that was the trick.  No, the trick was that there was no fifty centavo piece.  But because I created the structure, I knew where the trick was.

That’s a tremendous advantage.  I can use that knowledge to create a scenario where I can manipulate emotions to get the reactions and responses I want.  Why?  I control the conditions.  I control the reveal.

What sorts of tricks are out in the world?

  • “No money down.”
  • “I never got your text.”
  • “Yes, I’ll hold your beer, there’s no way this could go wrong.”
  • “No interest for the first six months.”
  • “Housing prices always go up.”
  • “CNN – The Most Trusted Name in News.”

Number Three – Things are rarely as they seem.  Mark saw only what I wanted him to see during the trick, and I carefully made sure by closing his hand around the coins after I put them there.  Then I told him to not let me see when he put the coins in each hand.  Why?  Because I didn’t want him to see what was really going on.

One of the biggest illusions that most people don’t recognize is that our money is entirely made up.  The $ and € and ¥ and £ only have meaning because we give them meaning.  The United States dollar has no backing other than . . . the promise to trade it for a dollar.  That’s it.  And people keep playing the game even though the Federal Reserve™ tells them the dollar will be worth less every year.  On purpose.

Oh, and the Federal Reserve©?  It’s not Federal, and it doesn’t have a Reserve.  Discuss.

Generally, people didn’t believe that the government had a super-secret plan to eavesdrop on all electronic communications from anyone.  Then Edward Snowden showed . . . they have a plan to monitor all electronic communications, everywhere.  When Snowden joined Twitter® he soon had more followers than the National Security Agency.  That’s okay, the NSA follows everyone.

I knew there was a reason my computer has a sticker that says “Intel Inside.”

Number Four – It’s super easy to suggest things to people.  This shocked me.  One time Scott Adams mentioned that in a line at a copier, if you have to make a copy, all you have to do is have a reason to jump the line.  He suggested, “Hey, can I cut in front of you?  I have to make a copy.”  Note that making a copy is exactly what everyone else was doing, but the request, coupled with a reason, seemed to work.  No matter how stupid the reason.

  • Yes, there’s a reason you want ice cream.
  • What, you thought that was impartial?
  • “The Arctic will be ice free by 2013,” – Al Gore.  Hmm.  Trust me.  Next time it really will be.
  • Asking them to do you a small favor. Oddly, this creates a pattern where people are much more likely to do a big favor for you later.  Oh, while you’re at it, hit the subscribe button.  Don’t cost nothin’.
  • Never trust a flatterer.  I had a boss that, one month after he joined the company, wrote a performance review that would have made me think that I needed to apply for the job of Messiah.  Except in my case it made me never trust him.  I was right.
  • Peer Pressure. People like to do what other people consider acceptable, since being socially acceptable is important.  If everyone is doing it, well, I should, too.  I went against the grain, and now Wal-Mart® insists that I wear pants from now on.

Number Five – The person proposing the bet may not have your best interest at heart.  In the example above, I ended up getting a few beverages.  The person involved got an equal exchange.  No one was ever mad – if they had been, I’d have told them to ignore the bet.

But.

I used the name “Mark” for a reason.  It’s what conmen (ever notice that the Politically Correct Police don’t object to that one?) call the object of their scam.  I’ve even been at carnivals where a guy running a game called out, “hey, Mark” to someone walking by to try to get them to break a balloon and win a poster of Gillian Anderson.  Only five dollars a dart!

I wonder if the aliens believed in her?

There are probably a few other examples that I could bring up, but it’s late, and I have to go practice not singing.  Bonus points if you can tell what two impersonations I did in third grade in the comments.

See, I told you this post would be awesome.

The Great Exodus And Continued Attack Of The Left

“Murder, arson, terror, I’ll agree to anything that gives us power. Power! And we can’t have power if we compromise. Even though it takes years, terror and power.” – Nicholas and Alexandria

Hmmm, ever notice that people started worrying about Global Warming® when the Soviets collapsed? I guess they missed the Cold War.

We’re in the middle of the biggest changes that we’ve seen in the country since World War II or the Great Depression. After WWII, the cities filled up. Coming back from the war, soldiers found that far fewer farmers were needed. Dorito® farmers were also impacted, even if they had a cool ranch.

The centralization of the cities offered the chance to work at huge manufacturing facilities. This was driven as United States took the industry developed to build Sherman tanks and other weapons of mass destruction and converted them to building cars and washing machines. Clarification – they didn’t convert the Sherman tanks into washing machines. But I kinda wished they had – the spin cycle would have been cool, and it probably would only have taken 150 gallons of gasoline per load.

Sure, there were lots of small manufacturing plants scattered across small towns everywhere – there are a few still operating in Modern Mayberry – but the big job creation was in the big cities. As factories have been offshored and closed down, many of the jobs that pulled people into cities have gone away. Cities in many cases (but not all) are now anchored by office jobs – things like finance, insurance, real estate and professional services. Which is nice, because they’ll need insurance after this year.

I’m going to protest the next riot by going out and buying a television.

As I predicted in past posts, we’re seeing the Fall of the Cities as people look around and ask themselves, “Why am I buying a 1,000 square foot two-bedroom house that costs a million dollars to live here?” It was a question I was asking even before the Wu-Flu©. But COVID-19 was the gasoline on the, er, bonfire of the cities that finally got the people living there to ask it, too.

  • First, it showed how cities are hotspots for spreading disease. Except during peaceful protests.
  • Second, work from home showed how few jobs needed to go in to the office every day to keep the large companies going. Why do you need to be in New York City working in a cubicle when you could do the same job from the middle of Missouri with a phone connection? One business I’ve heard of dropped its use of offices from five skyscraper floors down to two. And they don’t anticipate ever using those spare three floors again.
  • Third, it created economic chaos, unemployment, and uncertainty. This creates fear in the lives of people doing their work on a day to day basis. How will they pay for PEZ®? How will they get a job when millions are unemployed, and companies are failing?

My friend Dante was involved in PETA protests, but stopped. Dante’s in fur now.

  • Fourth, it separated people from each other in their daily lives. Even the masks, which (whatever their efficacy) are preventing normal human interaction in most cities. Some states have mandated that anyone outside of their house has to wear a mask. Not when within six feet of one another – just anyone who is outside. Additionally, people need to see each other’s faces – that’s how we bond and interact. People need people. Even the most introverted person needs human contact at some interval.
  • Fifth, the result of this was a moment in time that could be made into a crisis of crime and destruction. This allowed BLM® and Antifa™ an opportunity. And that opportunity wouldn’t be wasted.

Antifa® isn’t new – it’s been around since the 1930’s. It started in Germany under the name Antifaschistische Aktion, and was set up (surprise!) as part of the Stalinist wing of the German commies. Today in the United States, they use the exact same symbol, and exact same name, Antifaschistische Aktion.

I knew there were problems with Antifa™ in this black and white photo, but I couldn’t see the red flags.

The original organization started even before there was fascism in Germany of any significance. Fascism was defined by the commies as capitalist society in general. So, unless you’re a communist (and if you’re a regular reader of this site, you’re not) this means you. Antifa© puts the world into two buckets:

  • Good: Antifa© members.
  • Bad: Everyone else. And, honestly, they’re not so sure that some of the communists might not need some quality time in Spokane Gulag.

Antifa© has led riots across the country. They are systematically attempting to destroy the United States, and they’ve decided to start in the cities. And people are starting to move out. The patterns are varied. One YouTuber® I watch occasionally said he’s done with San Francisco. His wife had a successful business. Had. Now it’s folding up. He cited the figure that 1400 of 2500 street-level businesses in San Francisco were just gone.

What’s the difference between a gender studies degree and being homeless? About five years.

Now he and his wife are gone. They haven’t decided which “red state” they’re moving to but they’ve already left San Francisco. He did directly promise to leave his Blue State ways behind him. He has the recognition that it wasn’t an accident that San Francisco is a mess, rather it was the result of decades of bad decisions. Given that his job can be done anywhere he has an Internet connection, nearly every place in the United States is an option.

The same thing is happening in New York City. People are leapfrogging out of the cities to the suburbs. People in the suburbs are moving rural. They’ve seen what’s happening, and have decided they’ll take whatever real estate gains they can get, and go.

Now an additional crisis has been created:

As such, we’re witnessing a great migration of people out of the cities, and out of Blue States. But that’s not enough, is it? The goal isn’t to own the cities, the goal is to eliminate fascists. Which is everyone who isn’t in Antifa®. How better to do that then to create yet another crisis. It looks like that’s exactly what someone has done.

The fires spreading across the West? At least some of the fires burning all over the West were intentionally set – see various stories at the bottom. It appears that places like Facebook® are banning stories where anyone says that Antifa© is lighting the fire. So, no matter how it looks like it’s something exactly like what Antifa™ would do, and in locations where Antifa™ hangs out, and done by people who look like they could be on an Antifa® recruiting poster, it surely can’t be Antifa©, right?

The fires have been devastating – at least 600,000 people in Oregon have been placed under an evacuation order. Large numbers of these fires were caused, on purpose.

Sounds like a weapon of mass destruction to me . . . .

Old pic ctsy: Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-P046279 / Weinrother, Carl / CC-BY-SA 3.0

Fragility, Resilience, Or Antifragility?

“When we finished he shook our hands and said, ‘Endeavor to persevere!’” – The Outlaw Josey Wales

I guess there are a lot of rivers in France, which makes sense.  Water follows the path of least resistance.

In our lives we have choices in how we react to the world, just like you have a choice of computer passwords.  I tried to choose “hi-hat” but the computer responded that “Sorry, password cannot contain symbols.”

While models always come with limitations, I was struck by an analysis that Vox Day (LINK) posted the other day.  In this, the original author that Vox discusses, Samuel Zilincik, refers to three types of opponents – Fragile, Resilient, and Anti-Fragile.  The author discusses these qualities in terms of how certain nations fought through the history of time.

When I was reading, I thought that’s one way of looking at people as well as civilizations engaged in conflict, so, why not?  Bear with me a little bit as I use World War II as an example that relates three nations to three states of being.

As an example, France was Fragile during World War II.  Yes, I know that World War II France wasn’t a person since if France 1939 was a person they’d have been Inspector Clouseau, but stick with me.  After the German invasion, everything about the French and British response was fragile.  Horrible communication, absolute battlefield collapse of poorly disciplined and trained soldiers, failure of leadership to create even the most rudimentary strategy against mobile warfare, and a general collapse of all French public will after the Germans showed up on the doorstep of Paris.

And the food wasn’t great, either.

We know the jokes about French military performance.  But France was fragile.

How are people fragile?

Bakeries in Denmark don’t add too much sugar to pastry – they don’t want to be sweetish.

I’ve been in tough situations with people, and seen some give up.  In extreme cases, it took very little for them to break down – relatively minor incidents led to implosions.  It was like an Antifa® member losing their cellphone with all their Starbucks™ points.  A complete catastrophe!

But I’ve seen normal people lose it, too.  More than once.  Ever see someone break down because of a bad test score?  Ever seen someone break down because they couldn’t get over a break up?

Fragility comes from having to defend things that aren’t your principles.  The French couldn’t stand to see Paris become a war zone.  My friend couldn’t stand to see a girl that he wasn’t suited for go away.  I wasn’t there to give the French emotional support, but I was there for my friend.  And he was there for me when I got divorced.  The core of fragility is holding on to things that aren’t principles.

Once you understand that everything that you own can be taken from you, but that you still own your attitude and the way you feel about things, you are less fragile.  In fact, you move toward the next stage:  Resilient.

In World War II, the one country that screams resilience more than any other was The Soviet Union.  Yes, Stalin was perhaps the most horrible man to have ever lived and communism is the worst system ever devised, unless your goal is human suffering and misery.  But the Soviet people fought.  And fought.  And fought.  Whenever a Russian dropped, he was replaced by another Russian and a Mongolian and two Uzbeks for good measure.  The Soviet Union had redundancy.  Even though they were generally inferior in many ways, the Soviets didn’t give up.  And, when the German supply lines were overextended?

I hear the bread was great in the Soviet Union.  People would wait in line 8 hours for a single piece.

The resilience worked.  The gradual wearing down of the technical superiority by numerical superiority and a willingness to not surrender.  If you have to choose to fight an enemy, a resilient one is far worse than a fragile one.

What makes a person resilient?  That’s the focus on values.  Sure, the Soviet Union had some really lousy values, but they were willing to fight in what they called The Great Patriotic War for the idea of Russia, even though sometimes the troops advanced with guns pointed at their backs, that was more the exception than the rule.

When you live for values and refuse to give up, you become resilient.

The last way a person can live is to become Anti-Fragile.  Anti-fragile is a term that I saw for the first time from Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the econo-philosopher.  It means that if you drop a vase, it doesn’t shatter, it doesn’t persist, it becomes stronger.  Vases don’t do that.  But systems do.

Well, maybe not drop it, but attack it with several carrier air groups?

The United States in World War II is an example of an anti-fragile system.  When attacked at Pearl Harbor, it became stronger.  Even though Battleship Row at Pearl was in flames, that attack mobilized the American people.  Pa Wilder signed up on December 8, 1941, as did millions of other men.  But those that didn’t sign up formed a pool of men and women that filled empty factories, constructed new ones, pumped oil, farmed, and built ships and planes and truck and tanks on a level never seen before in history.

Although it’s certain that the majority effort that it took to win World War II in Europe was done by the Soviets, it’s arguable that the Soviets would have folded in 1942 or 1943 without the food, trucks, planes, and ammunition that were provided by the United States.

The United States won the War of the Pacific nearly singlehandedly, although it’s early efforts in North Africa left the British shaking their heads and wondering if the United States could even field an army capable of fighting.  The United States emerged after World War II as an industrial, economic and military behemoth.  No one would argue that the United States of 1945 was weaker than the United States of 1941.  The United States in 1941 is a great example of anti-fragility.

Oh, yeah, don’t forget the atomic bombs.

The prettiest atoms become atomic models.

How do people become anti-fragile?  Well, start by being resilient.  Then?  Add learning.  If you can recognize your mistakes and learn from them?  That’s a good start.  Capacity?  Oddly enough, a person operating at peak capacity has less anti-fragility – they have little capacity to improve and a great deal of capacity for failure.  Efficient systems are prone to failure.  The two-income household was, even before this economic downturn, more prone to bankruptcy, rather than less.

Why?

Because the system is too efficient – most couples tend to use every dime they earn.  When one income goes away?  They system fails.  Unused money (savings) is redundancy.  It’s inefficient, but it’s capacity that you have for the unexpected.

And if you’re not focused on keeping everything, you can take risks.  Lots of them – just so long as the risks aren’t so big that they crater you.  This blog is one of mine.  And the younger you are, the bigger risk you can take without cratering your life – you have time to make it up even if you lose everything at age 25.

I wouldn’t let my kids sleep in the bed with me when they were little.  I told them I couldn’t risk the monster following them into my room.

A vision of Truth is required.  One time a friend of mine and I were discussing this, and he noted that I might be trying to write what people want to read, rather than what I believe.  Nope.  My soul is in this.  Do I agree with everything I’ve written?  Of course not.  I’ve written over 535 posts over the course of 3.5 years.  I’ve learned.  Some of my views have changed as I have changed.  I’d be foolish to not change my views as I learn and understand more.  But as I experiment, my soul has to be involved – I have to be a seeker of Truth, even in my experiments.

I’ve had a few moments of being Fragile in my life – mainly when I was trying to hold on to things and situations that I should have left behind me.  I’ve had the majority of my life lived in a Resilient mode, putting one foot in front of the other and moving onward.

I can see that the best and most productive times in my life are when I’ve lived it in the Anti-Fragile mode.  It may seem odd, but in many ways the Resilient mode is the enemy of the Anti-Fragile mode.  Resiliency is about persevering.  It’s not bad.  There’s rarely any traffic on the second mile and working harder is, in some ways, the easy way out.

But when you achieve an Anti-Fragile life?  Sometimes you achieve something amazing enough to even surprise yourself.

And always remember that when Germany and France go to war, you know 100% who will lose.

Belgium.

Tesla: Overvalued, But Pays For The Best Space Program On Earth

“You guys taking it all in? Because this is what it looks like when Google acquires your company for over 200 million dollars. Look:  Dustin Moskovitz. Elon Musk. Eric Schmidt. I mean, Kid Rock is the poorest person here.” – Silicon Valley

I hear Elon Musk’s car insurance premiums are astronomical.

I’m a fan of Elon Musk.  Singlehandedly, he’s shown that even though getting to space is very, very hard, that he can do it.  Beyond that, when working with NASA®, they noted that working with SpaceX™ they accomplished in a month what would normally take NASA™ a year.  NASA® kept saying the work was too Falcon Heavy.

Musk has also proven that if you focus on getting things into space, you can do it.  NASA® gave up on getting things into space right after Von Braun died and is now a jobs program that hires gender and grievance studies majors.  I’m not kidding.  Really.

Instead of, oh, going into space, NASA© chases imaginary offensive names of astronomical features (NASA© corroborates this here – LINK).  From the press release:  “The Agency will be working with diversity, inclusion, and equity experts in the astronomical and physical sciences to provide guidance and recommendations for other nicknames and terms for review.”

If Elon Musk’s wife breaks up with him while he’s on Mars, will that make her his Space X?

Because that’s the important thing, right?  We don’t want people thinking of the Eskimo Nebula or Siamese Twins Nebula.  Because . . . colonialism?  I forget.  Is there a scorecard I could download?

One thing I’ve been fairly consistent about, though, is that Elon Musk’s car company, Tesla® is a scam.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great scam.  I’ve heard that the cars are wonderful.  And from a speed standpoint, the Tesla™ can go from 0-60mph (that’s 27.39 parsec per eon) nearly as fast as any car on the planet.

But the price of Tesla®, even after losing 25% of its value in the last few days, is ludicrous.  Tesla’s™ market cap is $307.7 billion dollars.  Volkswagen® is worth $77.5 billion, Toyota™ is worth $210.8, and Ford™ is worth $27.5 billion.  So, if Elon looked under his couch cushions for some spare change, he could trade Tesla™ for VW®, Toyota©, and Ford™.

But at least communism means always having enough to eat, right?

Is Tesla® a good company?  Sure.  But Tesla™ made 367,000 cars last year.  Ford©, Toyota® and VW™ combined made 27,000,000 cars.  That’s nearly 74 times the number of cars that Tesla® makes.

I think most people have invested in Tesla® because Elon Musk gets things done.  And, it amuses me that Elon Musk takes the money he’s earned from Tesla™ to work on arguably the best space program since Apollo, back when NASA™ had real engineers working on real engineering problems and done it in his spare time.

Tesla® is a symptom.

I hear that Coronavirus symptoms start right off the bat.

When money is flooded into a market by bankers looking to prop the market up, it flows oddly.  The faster the flow?  The bigger the imbalances.  When people are rushing to put money into the market, they look for the shiny objects.  One of the shiny objects in this case is Tesla®.  There are others.  Dozens of them.

It is my theory that the entire market is filled with imbalances right now.  The money that was flooding in to prop the market up is leaking everywhere.  Reasons don’t matter.  That’s the way that markets work over the short term.  Silly things happen – you’ve seen it earlier this year with toilet paper.  What I’m saying is that, yes, Tesla® is just like the toilet paper of the stock market.

The best way to steal a Tesla® is to put it on auto-pirate.

The Great Toilet Paper Shortage of 2020 was just that – markets working in a panic.  The world is ending, so what do I do?  Make sure that I can poop in comfort.  Like getting into a war with Italy as one of your allies, it’s not a great strategy, but is a strategy.  In mid-late 2020, the market is flooded with money, attempting to buy whatever looks best and prettiest.

Just like the TP 2020 Terror®, the Reinflation Bubble of 2020© isn’t at all rational.  And, like Tesla™ lost 25% of market value in a few days?  It’s my theory that will happen across the whole market.  Note – I’m not a financial advisor, so use the advice of a random guy on the Internet as just that.  I pulled my money from the market, mostly, in February.  After that, I’ve been spending my time collecting the three precious metals:  gold, silver, and lead.

As I get older, I’ve discovered a simple truth – I have no idea if my kids will enjoy getting shares of Tesla® when I die.  But I do know that if they each got a suitcase of untrackable gold and silver, half a dozen rifles and a few thousand rounds of ammo at my funeral, they’d smile.

My buddy Ty won a gold medal at the Beijing Olympics®.  China won’t give him the medal because they won’t recognize Ty won.

I know this column is short, but I stared at that last line for about an hour and wouldn’t change a word.  Not a bad place to end.  Let’s call it a day.  I know that NASA already has . . . .

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: 56 Days To The Last Election Ever In The United States

“It appears we will be required to ignite the midnight petroleum, sir.” – ST:  TNG

It’s all fun and games until it hits midnight.  And we’re getting pretty close.

  1. People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology.  Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
  2. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
  3. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures.  Just in case.
  4. Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
  5. Open War.

We are at step 9.  Step 9. is, of course, two minutes to midnight on the clock.  Violence continues to be commonly justified by local and state authorities.

In this issue:  Front Matter – What Is A Civil War? – Violence And Censorship Update – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – 56 Days Until The Last Election – Links

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

What Is A Civil War?

Multiple comments that I’ve had, both in the comment section at the blog, as well as in email and even text message asked the question – what happens to the index this month.  The answer is that we’re still at a 9 out of 10.  The only thing remaining to take us to a 10 is a body count.  That’s because I’m using this (admittedly academic definition by Doyle and Sambanis in 2000) as my definition for the existence of a civil war:

  1. The war has caused more than 1,000 battle deaths. This war hasn’t yet done so.  Is 1,000 an aribitrary number?    This is the only criteria not yet met.
  2. The war represents a challenge to the sovereignty of an internationally recognized state. I think it’s clear that Antifa® and BLM™ want nothing less than the dismantling of the existing state and construction of a Marxist Utopia©.  The fact that they are aided and abetted by fellow travelers in district attorney offices, mayoral offices, and congressional offices doesn’t mean that they aren’t communist revolutionaries fighting against freedom from the inside.
  3. The war occurs within the recognized boundary of that state. This is an easy one.
  4. The war involves the state as one of the principal combatants. One of.  Not the only one.  Ask a policeman in Portland if they feel that they’re in control.
  5. The rebels are able to mount an organized military opposition to the state and to inflict significant casualties on the state. It states casualties, not deaths.  And that also makes this an easy one to check off.  Organization discussion is directly below in the Violence And Censorship Update.

 

I list all of the five criteria for a simple reason – to show that the only thing between us right now and a full blown, internationally recognized definition of civil war is the number of body bags we have yet to fill.  When I started this update last year, I was expecting things to move faster than you expected.  I did not expect things to move faster than I expected.

They have.

Violence And Censorship Update

Violence this month is obvious.  The killings have started.  Outside of the increasing violence tied directly to police standing down because they have no support which I talked about last month, bullets are now flying in the “mostly peaceful” protests.

Outside of the CHAZ murders, where two teenagers were killed, much of the violence has been peripheral.  I moved the index up to nine out of ten when killings became commonplace.  As near as I can tell, the killings directly associated with the Antifa™ and BLM® action is probably somewhere short of 100.

But two of those deaths are deaths that Antifa© cannot abide.  In Kenosha, I wrote about Kyle Rittenhouse’s clear self-defense shooting against both a pedophile and a wife beater, and alleged self-defense shooting against a person who was (by the film I saw) drawing down on him.  You can read it here – reviews say it’s the best thing I’ve ever written, but I’d suggest my signature on my divorce papers from my first wife was better (Have The Kenosha Riots Given The Right Our Rosa Parks?).

From my vantage point, Kyle Rittenhouse is a hero.  But Antifa™ cannot let that stand.  At all.  It’s my estimate that out of rage, the killing in Portland as well as the attempted murder by car in Portland were “revenge” hits on people wearing paraphernalia of the Right.  If you read reports that break down the killing (HERE) and other experiences (HERE) in Portland, it becomes clear that Antifa® is using military discipline, and is broken up into a military command structure.  (H/T to Vox Day (LINK) and Mike at Cold Fury (LINK))

Antifa™ is a dedicated group.  They have undergone a brainwashing and are a religious cult – no Jim Jones Kool-Aid® drinking cultist could compete.  I wrote about that here (Why Would Anyone Become A Leftist?), and stand by it.  Antifa® and BLM© stand against everything that has made America wonderful, rich, and prosperous.  And they are fanatics.

I’m not sure if you know what they have in mind for people that don’t agree with them.  It isn’t pleasant.  The idea is that there is a pure society coming, and the way to get to that new society is to eliminate everything that doesn’t fit.  Which almost certainly includes you.  But don’t worry – they want to torture people to death to show the remaining people how wonderful the future communist utopia will be.  See?  You serve a purpose in their minds.

Updated Civil War II Index

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

July was generally better than June, which is like saying that World War I was “better” than World War II.  Let’s go to the graphs.  In general, I’ve used bikini graphs in the past.  Given where we are, I’m a bit more somber.  Here are the graphs, without bikinis.

Violence:

Up is more violent.  June pegged the scale of violence.  This measure because the way it’s constructed, doesn’t go higher than 300.  It’s lower again this month despite clear assassinations by the Left.  Does that mean it’s less violent this month?  Certainly riots are down, but the measure is a measure of how people feel about the violence.  Since it’s so common now, it’s not spiking.  That is, in my opinion, very bad – we’re getting used to this nonsense.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable.  Instability is down, slightly.  I expect September and October to be down more, since voting generally has a calming effect and all emotions are focused there.  After that?  All bets are off.

Economic:

Down indicates worse economic conditions, are down slightly.  Again, we’re nowhere near the bottom.  I expect that to drop off in October.  Maybe to historic levels.  But I could be wrong?

Illegal Aliens:

Down is good, in theory.  This is a statistic showing border apprehensions by the Border Patrol.  Oops!  This metric is now nearly at the highest it’s been in years.  As the Wuflu® hits Mexico, the Mexicans are deciding to head north again.

56 Days Until The Last Election

I firmly believe the United States has had stolen elections in the past.  But the nice thing about the Electoral College is?  It makes it really, really hard to steal an election.  Impossible?  No.  Hard?  Yes.

Every single person in every graveyard in Chicago, California, and Queens can vote for a Democrat, and it doesn’t matter.  The Electoral College adds legitimacy to an election by breaking corruption at the state lines.  That’s one reason the Left hates it.  It makes elections hard to steal.  In my state, my vote doesn’t really matter – my state will go for Trump even if every person in every grave, ever, votes Democrat.

Mail-in voting changes all of that.

Yes, this was one of my favorite original memes that I created, but a new version.  Still valid.

Stalin has been quoted as saying, “I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how.”

It’s hard to cheat in a Red State.  You have to steal zillions of counties.  It’s easy to cheat in a Blue State – you just have to cheat in the big cities.  If everyone in Chicago voted Trump, Illinois would still go 60% for whatever Democrat was opposing him.  But with mail-in voting?

Examples I have seen show the party on the outside of the envelope.  How hard would it be to casually “lose” a few thousand votes from envelopes that had a big, fat, R on the outside?  Or a few thousand from precincts that consistently vote Right?  Not hard at all.  This is on top of demonstrated voter fraud in Left cities where poll workers were caught on camera dumping ballot after ballot into the box on election day.

If mail-in voting passes?  We’ve had our last election day.  From now on?  It’s selection day – selection of the candidate that the Left wants.

Thanks to the innovation of mail-in voting, you don’t even have to bring the corpses to the polls!  What else will modern technology come up with?

In a further, ominous sign, the Media® has been setting up the idea that Trump will win on election night in a convincing manner, but will lose as the mail-in ballots are counted.  This is particularly horrific.

If you knew which six counties you needed in close states, could you game the Electoral College?  Absolutely.  You could have boxes of ballots pre-staged in Philadelphia, or Milwaukee, or Cleveland to flip the results.  Simple.  Want Florida to turn blue?  Just found a box with 25,475 Biden votes in Miami.

Don’t think the Left wouldn’t try it.  They would do anything to win the election, since they’re contemplating electing a person who couldn’t navigate a corn maze with more than two stalks standing.

If mail-in voting is made the law of the land?  Expect that this is the final election, ever, that won’t be a simple selection of the candidate that best fits the desire of the Left.  Sure, there will be some token people on the Right elected, but they’ll mainly be people who believe in real conservative values, like only allowing 1,000,000 illegals in a year, and only allowing 7,000,000 people a year in on H1B visas, and restricting anything but a muzzle loading black powder rifle, like our founders intended.

Oh, wait, conservatives have conserved nothing!  They just pick the values from the Left from ten or twenty years ago, and defend those until the death.

LINKS

That’s a bad ending to a video game . . .

All are from Ricky:

MSM message: alt-Right continues the march to civil war….

https://www.the-sun.com/news/1316052/proud-boys-group-brawl-antifa-protests-kalamazoo-michigan/

https://www.the-sun.com/news/1354432/portland-brawl-breaks-out-proud-boys-antifa-fight/

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2020/09/03/schmidt-trump-supporters-want-to-see-a-second-civil-war-in-this-country/

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/08/30/white-supremacists-are-invading-american-cities-to-incite-a-civil-war/

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/sandia-labs-goes-nuclear-employee-who-sparked-internal-revolt-over-critical-race-theory

https://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/americans-sense-something-is-wrong-gun-sales-up-72_08272020

…a challenge that must be met with force…

https://jonathanturley.org/2020/08/18/berkeley-columnist-calls-for-violent-resistance/

https://www.dailycal.org/2020/08/12/this-war-cant-be-civil/

http://thesaker.is/will-hillary-and-the-dems-get-the-civil-war-they-are-trying-to-provoke/

…for abstract justice…

https://theweek.com/articles/931090/are-bread-riots-coming-america

https://nypost.com/2020/08/11/black-lives-matter-organizer-calls-chicago-looting-reparation/

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/08/27/906642178/one-authors-argument-in-defense-of-looting

…and with concrete action…

https://summit.news/2020/08/14/black-lives-matter-mob-demands-white-people-give-up-their-homes/

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/watch-blm-protesters-shot-homeowners-while-marching-through-rural-pennsylvania-town

https://www.theorganicprepper.com/battle-zones-america/

This revolution WILL be televised, as documentaries…

https://theduran.com/steven-turley-new-civil-war-being-fought-on-three-fronts-video/

https://theduran.com/the-second-american-civil-war-is-here-part-i-the-combatants-video/

https://theduran.com/the-second-american-civil-war-part-ii-strategy-of-the-blues-video/

https://theduran.com/the-second-civil-war-part-iii-update-dr-steve-turley-largely-confirms-video/

https://theduran.com/the-utopia-of-democrat-activism-video/

…an unending stream of gripping short-attention-span clips from the front lines…

https://twitter.com/The_Real_Fly/status/1300955946521432064

(Scroll here for more video gems:) https://twitter.com/The_Real_Fly/

….and an explosion of editorials…

https://www.columbiadailyherald.com/story/opinion/columns/2020/09/02/rowland-civil-war-real-possibility/5690696002/

https://themichiganstar.com/2020/08/28/commentary-in-kenosha-the-seeds-of-civil-war/

https://greensboro.com/rockingham_now/opinion/ending-the-civil-war/article_a2f83f72-eaef-11ea-88b4-e7bcbc8a60ec.html

https://signalscv.com/2020/09/jonathan-kraut-an-undeclared-civil-war-in-america/

https://www.niagara-gazette.com/opinion/singer-promoting-a-new-civil-war-in-america/article_399450b1-7aee-5a47-abd1-8555b616d0cf.html

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/portland-killing-trump-caravan-civil-war-20200830.html

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/kenosha-trump-kyle-rittenhouse-portland-antifa-20200901.html

https://www.newspressnow.com/opinion/editorials/stop-a-civil-war-before-it-starts/article_57576526-e7d3-11ea-a6c0-f31f4893dc90.html

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2020/08/20/thursdays-headlines-armed-for-the-civil-war-edition/

https://prospect.org/politics/americas-civil-war/

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

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/the-thin-veneer-of-american-civilization/

https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-opinion-kenosha-wisconsin-unrest-violence-shooting-20200826-m3e7zcqg7faxxou2xhqywmsobe-story.html

And as one (now-dead) Antifa guard claims to have fired the latest shot heard ’round the world…

https://www.insider.com/portland-shooting-suspect-said-saw-civil-war-coming-2020-9

…a newspaper founded during the last Civil War won’t be around to cover any new one…

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/09/04/trump-and-stars-and-stripes-attacking-american-icon-column/5706859002/

If Journalists Were Pinocchio? We Could Climb Noses And Be On Mars Tomorrow.

“I hired you to raise the vocabulary level of this paper. I want to keep the journalistic level very low.” – Transylvania 6-5000

FACTS

How can we change history if you have your own copy?  Paging Winston Smith – we need to edit the past.

Every once in a while it’s good to try new things.  This post probably a one-time thing, but I had all this material, and couldn’t resist.

What is it?

It’s a list of stories where the media was so biased that they performed anatomically impossible acts to sell their stories.  I have double this number of examples, but I consciously steered away from more sensitive topics where the media contradicted itself. 

Why?

Well, I described one of the examples I had with The Mrs. 

The Mrs.:  “Don’t use it.”

John Wilder:  “Why?  I fact checked it.  It’s legitimate.  Both stories are still on their web site.”

The Mrs.:  “It detracts from the message.  It may be true, but people will just focus on the subject, and not the point you’re making.”

I took The Mrs.’ advice.  I skipped that example.  And 27 others.  I could have doubled the post length with more examples of unintended irony or media just contradicting themselves on Tuesday because Monday’s message wasn’t convenient.

The Mrs. is right. 

The message isn’t the topic of the contradiction, it’s the contradiction itself.  The topic of the contradiction was more sensitive than the ones presented below.  If you wanted to convince someone of the lie, showing them a lie without the baggage might be more helpful.  That’s my theory. 

I didn’t create any of these, I caught ‘em wild on the Internet.  If you know of any that are factually inaccurate, please do let me know.  I didn’t check all sources, and anything added in the image itself isn’t mine. 

The snarky comments below? Those are mine.

Remember, these are the people that are attempting to convince you how to vote in the next election.  These are the people who want to control your views.  These are the people who want to be immune from your comments, and, in the case of the Vice® comment above, not be held to account for the things they said in the past. History is inconvenient.  As you will see.

WIRETAP

When is a wiretap not a wiretap?  Well, did they really use wires?

VIOLENCE

As we all know, old ladies with walkers commit 50% of the crimes in the United States.

TRUTH

To make CNN happy, all Joe has to do is fog a mirror.

SOROSIt’s a conspiracy theory that George did the thing he bragged about doing?

POST

Democracy dies in darkness?  How about irony?  Does that need a tanning bed?

PHILLY

Is it Schrödinger’s murder rate, which is neither down nor up?

NFL

Oh, and Schrödinger’s ratings, too!

NEWSWEEK

If the White farmers move to the United States, would they be African Americans?

NBC PROTEST

I think these two were posted within an hour of each other.  Those crazy night shift guys!

MAYOR TERROR

Well, she has a point.  I mean, as long as they’re attacking businesses, it’s not domestic, right?

LONDONCOVIDAhh, England.  You’ll only be in here once, right?  Oh.  More to come?

LEAVE

Apparently family leave is awesome, unless you’re a woman.  Which is anyone in 2020.

KHAN

Whew!  How things change in a month!  Did Khan need a diaper, too?  

INDIGEN

So, does that mean the Vikings can kick the Maori out of New Zealand? 

HIV

Literally no one could have seen this coming, right?  Must be racism.

HEALTH2

It’s vital to know about certain candidates, right?  Must be a guy thing?

HEALTH1

Oh, not a guy thing.  Hmm.  What could the reason be?

GUILT

Joe Biden denies that his dementia is dementia is fair?

FREDO

We reject the idea that people are stealing the things we said people are stealing.

FIRE

The fires that the scientists predicted nearly a year in advance?  It’s misleading to say that we mismanaged them.  Bigot.

FEELS

Whew!  Fact free journalism that’s based on convincing people to do the things we want!  Zimmerman, get on that right away!

FACTS

Ahhh, the Left has him now!

CNN

Get that girl a GoGurt, stat!  She’s been saved by the entire population of Syria!

CLOTHES

I’m naked.  Except for my jeans, underwear, socks, and the shirt I have.  Oh, and the cellphone.  Totally naked.  

BLM

Hmm, so if a person gets out of prison after spending decades in for being in a terrorist group doing terrorist things and was caught with hundreds of pounds of explosives?  Well, kind of a terrorist.  But what a great resume to get a board seat on a charity with nearly a billion dollars on the books!

AUTHOR

Same writer.  I guess that only Some Woman Lives Matter?  

ALLEGED

Yasmin just can’t catch a break.  Allegedly.  What a fantastic American.

ALLEGED

Get a television show, fascist.  Then people know you’re telling the truth.

Guard your mind.  What are they pumping into it?

 

 

Investing? Invest In Yourself.

“If M.A.D starts making gold out of lead, it will undermine the world economy!” – Inspector Gadget

CAT

I invested in a series of walking trails for mental patients, but it failed.  I guess Psycho-Paths® was a bad name.

By the time the stock market crashed to signal the beginning of the Great Depression, the economy of the United States had already gone through an amazing decade of change.  Electrification was moving rapidly across the country, and prisons could finally retire the acoustic chair.  Radio was a miracle that was now bringing masses of people together as the radio waves propagated across the country at the speed of light.  Natural gas, long a nuisance in the oil patch, was being piped and compressed and shipped across larger areas of the country, bringing instant heat (and some explosions, since they hadn’t added the stuff that makes it smell bad yet) to millions.

Perhaps one of the biggest dislocations was that horses were rapidly being replaced by cars and trucks.  The economy was being motorized.  Some have even come to the conclusion that part of the dislocation in the economy was that the millions of horses required to plow, move freight, and move people weren’t required anymore, leading to an oversupply of horses.  That’s not a situation that lasts long – the oversupply of horses, can, um, be solved.  I mean, too many horses for the barns?  That’s un-stable.

But if once the oversupply of horses is solved what about the oversupply of food for the horses?

Well, what are they going to do with all of that farmland, now suddenly made even more productive through the addition of tractors and cheaply made nitrogen fertilizer?

Produce more.  Which drives prices down.  Which leads to . . .

Deflationary depression.

AMISH

It’s hard for the Amish to travel – their system is a little buggy.

I would say that “for the want of a horse, and economy was lost,” but in hindsight the real problem was the bankers.  The bankers during the 1920’s and 1930’s even developed the first birth control – their personality.  The Federal Reserve Bank® (which is neither part of the government nor really a bank) managed to destroy the economy through poor currency manipulation choices.

Part of the secret of the efficiency of market economies is that there is no controller telling people to start restaurants or PEZ® vineyards or bikini ranches.  The feedback from the economy is measured in customers buying the product, and if the product is good enough, profit encourages people to make it.

The flip side of that is business failure.  I originally wrote that was the down side.  It’s not.  Businesses, in a normal economy, that can’t produce a viable product should fail.  Note that I’m forced to write in a normal economy.  2020 has created the situation where tens of thousands (I’m not exaggerating) of businesses have failed due to the restrictions from the reactions to COVID-19.  It’s even been an international problem – Finland closed their border.  No one will cross the Finnish line.

COVID

The riots in Detroit don’t get many news stories, but I heard the rioters there have caused $20 million in improvements.

That’s not normal, of course.  Hair styling places are failing in the more restrictive states.  In Modern Mayberry?  Not so much.  But in San Francisco?  You can’t get your hair styled, unless you’re Nancy Pelosi.  I guess that the rules prohibiting business operation are only for common people.  St. Nancy can go in and get a cut and a blow dry when no one else can.  Sadly, Nancy wasn’t wearing a mask, which was the only positive thing about CoronaChan since the whole thing started.

In normal times, business thrive or fail, and both of those things lead to a stronger overall economy.  The services and goods that aren’t wanted anymore go away, like Beanie Babies®.  Thank Heavens.  But in these times of artificial economic crisis?  Good, strong businesses fail.

Regardless of the type of crisis we have now, it is upon us.  Whether or not the business would have failed is irrelevant.  The only real question is what happens next.

One thing that is sure, the economy after this crisis passes won’t look like it used to.

I’ve posted about possible good investments in the past – if I were betting, I’d bet that gold in ten years would be a better bet than Netflix® or Tesla™, even if Tesla© starts its own religion, and builds Elon Mosques.  But who knows what the economy will even look like after this crisis?  I can’t guarantee any of it.

TESLA

I hear that Space-X has designed electric grass for Mars.  They call it E-lawn.

So what to invest in?

Yourself.

Time is potentially quite short.  How should you invest your time?  In yourself.

There are so many skills that are required of a human.  PowerPoint® is probably not really high on them, so I wouldn’t spend much time there.

The first place I’d begin to prepare is mental.  In the United States, we have become very used to the most modern conveniences.  Air conditioning when it’s hot.  Central heat when it’s cold.  Even in Modern Mayberry, day or night I can go and get gasoline, a gallon of milk, and some beef jerky.  Fast Internet that allows me to stream a television show that’s been off the air for nearly 20 years.

What happens when you don’t have those things for a day?  A week?  A month?  When you’re used to being able to see what the temperature is in Moscow, Manila, Manhattan or Manchester, what happens when the weather becomes a mystery?

At least Biden can hide his own Easter eggs.

When you’re used to seeing real-time riots in Kenosha or Portland, what happens when you don’t know what’s happening in your own city?

I’m not saying that’s going to happen – the Internet is robust, and the systems we have built for delivering milk, gas, electricity and natural gas have redundancy.

But still, these things are possible.

Have you put your mind in a place where they have happened?  What would you do?  I mean, if your spouse convinces you to go to a psychiatrist, will your couch talk you out of it again?

After the mind, invest in your body.  If you’re out of shape, get in better shape.  Anything will help.  Get out and run.  If you can’t run, walk.  Being able to count on your body is always good – and if you’ve been neglecting it because of work, it’s time to pay back that debt, with interest.  I am fortunate enough to already have the body of an athlete already – a sumo wrestler.

Hmmm.  Maybe I need some work, too.

SUMO

I got a sumo wrestler for Christmas one year.  I had asked for a heavy sweater.

What other ways can you invest in yourself?  There are thousands of skills that are valuable, no matter what the future brings.  Can you do basic medical care?  I’m not asking if you can sew up a lung, but can you clean a flesh wound?  Do you have Band-Aids® and Neosporin™ for a year or two?  Iodine?  All of that is cheap and available now.  Will it be in six months?

The Mrs. bought a book on medicinal plants that showed up the other day.  I was surprised that it didn’t list thyme as a remedy – I heard that thyme cures all wounds.  What kind of books do you keep?

Can you garden?  Annually, The Mrs. spends about $117.53 to grow about seven tomatoes.  I would make fun of that, but I would also say that The Mrs. has learned lots of ways to not grow tomatoes, too.  Her gardening knowledge is better than mine.  It’s a little late to invest in gardening this year, but it wouldn’t hurt to start to understand what it takes.  There’s a whole Internet.  Heck, you could practice by killing some houseplants, like I used to do.

This isn’t a bad time for a hobby.  What kind of hobby?

  • Lots of farms have auctions and I’ve seen farmer forges there.
  • Carpentry, with and without electricity.
  • Small engine repair. Small engines can do a great deal beyond weed eating.
  • Always easier when ammo isn’t so dear, but we are where we are.
  • Making wine or whiskey – both are great for barter, and legal to make in most places.
  • Fixing things around the house. When’s the last time you patched a leaky roof?

I could probably come up with a dozen more in ten more minutes, and I imagine the comments will fill up with them.  Again, in some circumstances, these are nothing more than hobbies, and if you pursue them with a local club or group, you’ll build more community in addition to building yourself.

Regardless of the future we will see, investing in yourself pays dividends.  Plus?  It’s always better to try to grow tomatoes and fail when failure is just results in a humorous story.

Why Would Anyone Become A Leftist?

“Prime minister? I thought Italy used a king?” – Archer

ANTIFA

There’s a joke to be made about that cake, but just like food under communist rule, you wouldn’t get it.

Sometime earlier this year, I asked myself a simple question.  Why would anyone be attracted to communism?  It’s the one single system that has never succeeded.  It’s a system that, when implemented as designed, kills tens of thousands, and in the twentieth century, over 100 million of their own citizens.

For the life of me, I couldn’t understand what would drive so many people to communism in the year 2020.  In 1900 in Russia?  Well, maybe.  A typical Russian peasant wouldn’t have known much about the failings in Paris of the Leftist French Revolution.  Some bald guy says, “free loaves of bread for life,” and that might have done it.

But during the 2000-2020 time period in the West, it’s clear that communism shouldn’t take root, right?  Up until the COVID-19, the economy in the United States was going so well that some of Joe Biden’s kids could afford to quit their second jobs in the Ukraine.  But even with that economy, young people were being recruited to communism.

Why?

I had no idea how they could be recruited.  But in roving through the Internet, I found a book, Anatomy of the Red Brigades by Alessandro Orsini, which had exactly the information I was looking for.  The Red Brigades were a Leftist terrorist organization that was formed in 1970 and lasted until the 1980’s.  They were most famous for kidnapping and killing a former Italian prime minister named Aldo Moro.  They were also responsible for the later kidnapping of American Brigadier General James Dozier, who was rescued.

PENCIL

I have other pencil jokes, but most of them are pointless.

Post-war Italy was a difficult place.  It was rapidly transforming from an agricultural economy to an industrial one.  Like me, I’m sure some were tempted to steal industrial cooking implements.  But I didn’t – I’m not a big whisk taker.

As people moved from rural farms to slums in the cities to work in factories, they were uprooted from centuries of continuity in life.  That uprooting was the first step in creating a communist.  As a rule, the Red Brigades recruits were disaffected.  These people were already at the margins of society.  Orsini calls this process disintegration.  The group manipulating the new recruits would do everything possible to remove the new members from their previous outside relationships.

Once they were removed from those old relationships, reality was what the group said it was.   And what reality were they focused on creating?  The basic idea is one familiar to doomsday cults around the world.  One Red Brigadist described it as the “fanaticism of a new religion.”  Communist recruits are taught that:

. . . they are “children of the light, arriving in this world to punish and redeem, to destroy and purify.  The Red Brigades want to wash away the sins of capitalism with blood.

GRETA

They are taught that the world is corrupt, and in danger.  Remind you of anything, say, Greta Thunberg?  The idea that capitalism is sin is now taught nearly uniformly to children of the world.  Of course, it has to have a name, and Global Warming® is probably the most convenient:  it’s a sin brought on by capitalism and the old people, and will kill them if they don’t take rides on multi-million dollar yachts and speak before the United Nations.  Oh, and then be invited by CNN™ to talk about COVID-19.  Yes, they asked Greta for her expertise on that.  And for her expertise on Some Black Lives Matter©.  Each of these three has the same story being pumped into the head of the Marxist – there is a threat to the existence of all that is good in the world, and only Leftism can solve it.

Radical Leftism.  See how that works?

The process of radicalization was described by Jean Guitton (as related by Orsini):

  1. Segregation – They are kept apart from healthy past relationships – their new relationships only come through communist contacts. They are then immerse in Leftist thoughts and theory.
  2. Permanent Indignation – Inner purity is confirmed (and signaled) through outer indignation – the Left loves to despise any who think even slightly differently than they do.
  3. Desire to be Persecuted – When people in the “world” make fun of the Left, the Leftist love it – it shows how virtuous and pure the Leftist is, and confirms to them how horrible the rest of the world must be.
  4. Purification of Means through the End – Any violence is justified because it will lead to the promised land of no work and infinite goodies. Building it on a mountain of skulls is just a feature.
  5. Principle of Secrecy – Antifa’s© external goals that they advertise aren’t their real goals. They know that what they really want is the complete destruction of society, and to have it rebuilt just as they see fit.  But they don’t say that – so every member is essentially a member of a secret society.  That binds them together – they can only speak freely to each other.
  6. Preventative Internal Terror – The one thing Leftist cannot stand is anyone to the Right. Anyone collaborating with the Right in any way?  Betrayal?  Any member who strays from Leftism is certainly the biggest enemy of the Antifa©, even more so than actual fascists.

CLEAN

I got a puppy, but the ducks attack it.  Last time I get a pure bread dog.

The focus then becomes one of purity.

Purity, of course, can never be reached.  That’s why SBLM® and Antifa™ aren’t fighting for anything real or measurable.  The goal of SBLM® is “the end to systemic racism,” whatever that is.  The problem is it can’t really be defined.  It’s not a real goal – it’s a stand-in for purity, a purity that can never be reached.

The reality is that this impossible goal of for their purification must be unreachable.  It must be ludicrous.  Why?  The goal isn’t to end systemic racism.  The goal is to engender hatred in the members.

How bad is the hatred?  “Love and Strength will subdue and destroy the imperialist bourgeoisie; we shall build a society free from the slavery of salaried work,” is directly out of their literature.  To quote Orsini speaking about them, even when Marxists kill people, they see themselves as the real victims.  “They are desperate people who have no real alternative to murder.”

OJ

We all know that OJ was the real victim, right?

And that’s the difference.  The people who manipulate the communists want power.  That’s not the goal of the communists.  They want the power so that they can personally cleanse the world.  In one interview, Orsini quoted a communist who didn’t want any luxury himself after the communists won.  Nope.  All this particular commie wanted was to be allowed to personally execute capitalists after the revolution.

Capitalism is what they hate the most.  And fascism.  What’s fascism?  Anything that’s not communist.  Don’t be fooled – Antifa© isn’t against fascists.  They’re against Bernie Sanders because he’s too far right, and think he’s probably a fascist, too.  Antifa™ wants to kill everyone even slightly to the right of them.

In their current state, the concept of logic and argument isn’t something a Leftist in Antifa™ or SBLM© can even hear.  They will, due to their programming, ignore any logical argument, any evidence.  Point out that when Pol Pot takes over Cambodia in a bloody revolution that kills off nearly thirty percent of Cambodia’s population.  If they’re not too far gone, they just won’t hear you.

If they’re far gone, you’ll just hear silence, as they think, “They deserved it.”  Purity is the goal.  Their thought process that they cannot let the lives of people stand in the way of the future Earthly paradise.

CLEAN2

I had to use this picture.

How did Italy defeat the Red Brigades?  Massive numbers of arrests, and large amounts of jail time for those involved.  Hundreds of Leftists were forced to flee Italy to avoid prison.  I’m fairly sure this was fine with the Italians – as long as they never came back.

And our Leftists in the United States?  Getting rid of them won’t be easy.  They’re fully supported in most cities, even as they slowly destroy the cities – some district attorneys won’t charge Antifa© or BLM™ rioters with anything more than a misdemeanor.  Beyond that, they’re well-funded – SBLM™ alone has hundreds of millions of dollars available.

I wonder if they’ll make reparations to the business owners that were destroyed through their riots?

Nah.  The looters were the real victims of the riots, right?

Have The Kenosha Riots Given The Right Our Rosa Parks?

“We’re all Sons of Liberty here.” – John Adams (2008)

TREAD

What was it that Jefferson said about the Tree of Liberty?

Friday posts originally were about health related topics.  I’ve deviated away from “health” as a topic to focus on what might be more important now – mental health, specifically attitude.  There’s a reason for this.

The goal of the Left, as amply illustrated by Yuri Bezmenov (Yuri Bezmenov’s 1980’s Prediction of 2020), is to demoralize the West.  Demoralization’s goal is to destroy the moral outlook of our nation.  The goal of Demoralization is to destroy your moral outlook.

If you’re a Christian, the goal of the Enemy (you know who when I write the big E) is to make you feel despair.  If you’re not a Christian, and still on the Right, the goal of the enemy is the same – to make you feel despair.  To make you feel you cannot win.  To make you feel that there is nothing you can do to stop the inevitable march of history.  The Enemy (or enemy) wants you to believe that the victory of the Left is inevitable.

That’s why my Friday posts are, at least recently, focused on the opposite.  The victory of the Right is inevitable.  And that’s what scares the Left more than anything.  They will do absolutely everything they can to make you feel powerless.  They will do whatever they can to make you feel that nothing you do matters.  You can’t fight them.

That’s smart.  But a 17 year old in Kenosha proved it was a lie, and may very well be the Rosa Parks of the Right.

I was wrapping up the writing on Wednesday’s post when the events in Kenosha happened.  By events, I mean where Kyle Rittenhouse allegedly killed two people and wounded a third.  I say allegedly, because even though I saw it from nearly six different angles, nearly in real time, by saying allegedly that makes me sound official.  And my attorney Lazlo says it makes it harder for Leftists to sue me.

What I saw was fairly simple.  It was a 17 year old kid who ran from someone who was allegedly going to hurt him.  I allegedly saw a muzzle flash, which meant that someone shot at Kyle as he was fleeing.  A melee ensued, and several shots can be heard on the video.

Kyle is then seen on video, first looking to provide medical care to the man on the ground, and then talking on his cell phone.  The dying man on the ground is 5’3” manlet Joseph Rosenbaum.  Rosenbaum was an ex-convict who had spent nearly a decade in jail for sexual misconduct with a minor, who was required to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.  Clearly, Rosenbaum was a gem of a manlet.

Rosenbaum made the mistake of chasing someone with an AR-15.

MINOR

Oh, maybe that explains it.

Running from a fight is clear evidence of attempting to de-escalate and avoid bloodshed.  When shots were fired by others first?  When Rosenbaum caught the pudgy Rittenhouse?  Someone shot Rosenbaum in the head.  It’s not even clear at this point that it was Rittenhouse, but if it was, he was clearly being attacked.

In another video just after the first, you can see Kyle running toward the police.  Kyle falls, since it looks like he has a body made for being the first kid knocked out in dodgeball during PE class.  Immediately, Rittenhouse is attacked, kicked in the head.  What amazes me is that Kyle rolls into the attacker who is allegedly kicking Kyle in the head, knocking him over.  While he’s rolling over, it looks like he’s clearing a jammed round on his AR-15.

Are you sure this isn’t John Wick?  Or John Wicksconsin?

WICK

Do you think his power comes from the Crocs® or the socks?  Or is Crocs™ in Socks a new Seuss© book?

That first attacker moves on, wisely deciding that trying to fight someone with an AR might have fatal consequences.

The second attacker, one Anthony Huber, then slams a skateboard down on Kyle’s head.  Anthony Huber was convicted, twice, of domestic abuse.  Including strangulation.  It’s amazing that out of two BLM® protestors, we have two dirtbags.  Hmm.  Surely this isn’t a pattern?

HACK

Clearly that’s a peaceful use of a skateboard, right?  Now who is going to raise that kid his girlfriend had with another dude?

Kyle allegedly brings up his AR-15 and launches one round, center of mass, straight into Huber.  Now, where I come from, if someone is attacking you with a fifteen pound piece of wood and steel while you’re lying down on the ground, that just might be considered an attack with a deadly weapon.

Huber staggered a few feet, and then collapsed.  He ultimately lost the battle with life, as predicted in the Book of Eugene Stoner, Chapter 5.56.  Huber was 25.  His pronouns are was/were.

The final person that Kyle allegedly shot was Gaige Grosskreutz, 26.  Grosskreutz is a member of the “People’s Revolution Movement of Milwaukee,” and we all know how level headed communist revolutionaries are.  But Gaige, good commie that he is, was allegedly (I can’t verify this independently right now) convicted of felony burglary, because hey, private property is theft, right comrade?

Mr. Grosskreutz allegedly held both hands up to Kyle, who was sitting on the ground.  One of the hands held a pistol.  Kyle didn’t shoot.  But when Grosskreutz moved to draw down on Kyle?  Kyle reacted with the reflexes of a cat and allegedly blasted away Grosskreutz’s right bicep.

Grosskreutz’s pronouns are now Lefty the Leftist and Ow, I Found Out.  Oh, and alleged felon in possession of a handgun?  I’m sure that will go over well.

DRAW

Yup, that’s a gun.  But certainly a peaceful member of the “People’s Revolution Movement of Milwaukee” wouldn’t want to hurt Kyle, right?  Re-education is what commies do best.  Right?

KILL

Ooops.  Forgot.  Commies want one thing, I mean, besides food.

When reviewing the footage I was astonished at the discipline of Kyle Rittenhouse.  Each person he allegedly shot was clearly attacking him.  He held back the second each threat passed.  If I had been shooting, I’m not sure that I wouldn’t have kept shooting at the targets commies until the magazine ran dry, especially with Grosskreutz.  It’s also astonishing how quickly it happened.  The elapsed time from when he was attacked by Huber and when he allegedly shot Grosskreutz?  Less than five seconds.

Life comes at you very, very fast.

The Leftist press has lied, again and again and again about what happened.  “Shooting into a crowd” was a headline I saw.  Didn’t happen.  This was from Reuters® tonight:

“The charges against Rittenhouse in Kenosha County include first degree intentional homicide in the death of Anthony Huber, who was carrying a skateboard when he was gunned down.”

Well, technically Huber was “carrying a skateboard.”  But Reuters™ failed to mention that Huber was using that skateboard as a weapon to smash in Kyle’s head right before Kyle allegedly shot Huber.  This is clearly shown in the picture above.  Sadly, Huber’s string of domestic abuse convictions will have to end at two, and the world will be deprived of his skateboarding.  It’s like saying that JFK was not able to comment after a mostly peaceful ride through Dallas.  Technically true, but still a lie.

The reaction from the Leftist-controlled media is proof – if you’re not taking flak, you’re not over the target.  The Kyle Rittenhouse story scares them to death.  A young man, with a gun, saves his own life while trying to do the right thing.  The biggest irony is that every bit of information about the people he allegedly killed or wounded shows that these people, like George Floyd, like Jacob Blake (allegedly shot seven times while allegedly going for a weapon after allegedly resisting arrest in Kenosha) appear to be failed human beings.  Drug addicts.  Violent.  Pedophiles.  Wow, the Left sure chooses heroes from the wrong side of the track.  I’m sure they’ll show a heart of gold by the end of the movie.

The person in opposition?  A 17 year old kid who wanted to be a cop who was seen scrubbing graffiti off walls earlier in the day.  This scares the Left more than anything.  They want every city to be as lost and broken as Portland.  But the lesson here is that cities fight for themselves.  Why would people from Montana come to the rescue of Portland?  The people in Portland made the mess.

PORTLAND

Kenosha means, in Potawatomi, “the place of the pike.”  Wonder what the Potawatomi translation is for “the place of the AR”?

One 17 year old has pulled the underwear tightly up the butt of the Leftists in America.  One.  That’s why they are frightened of him.  This is the same way that society was afraid of Rosa Parks.  Here was one man, standing up for his rights.  He stood up, even though he was 17, to fire and chaos.

Can a black woman sit in the front of the bus?  Sure.  Can a 17 year old defend himself from people trying to kill him?  Sure.  And all of the virtue signaling in the world won’t save you from the Left.  They have proven that, again and again.

VIRTUE

Well, honestly, it’s not like Unitarian Universalists believe in anything, anyway.

Kyle Rittenhouse has just been notified that the same attorney that atomic-wedgied the Washington Post® for Nick Sandmann is now on his side.  And, I hear, he has a funding site from this news article (LINK).

If real justice is done, Kyle Rittenhouse will be out of custody within a week.  I’m not holding my breath.  But now the Right has a face.  A story.  And the real truth about what it takes to fight and beat the Left.  Honesty.

And a 17 year old boy.  Remember, the victory of the Right is inevitable.  Not necessarily today.  Or this week.  Or this year.  Or this decade.

Remember, we are stronger than the Enemy, or enemy, ever will be.

And smile.

SMILE

For the last several years, most of my memes have been forged in my underground meme foundry.  These are all “as found” on the Internet – thanks, /pol/.  Comments are mine.