Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

“All the best doctors are in the Gulag or dead.” – The Death of Stalin

Stalin has a special place in his heart for you, right at People’s Worker Camp Number 1323.

I’ve been more time driving recently, and with that time, I’ve learned to speak Dutch, memorized the Dewey Decimal System, and figured out how to make a bagpipe using trash bags, duct tape and copper pipe stolen from abandoned buildings.

I kid.  PVC pipe works better.

I’ve actually spent most of the time driving listening to commentary on the news, history, or other podcasts that drift on up into the “play me next” list.  I guess that means to a certain extent my viewing history is determined by an algorithm written by a pimply-faced 19 year old in the basement of the Google® complex.  Thankfully, he writes pretty good code, and I thank all of the girls that wouldn’t date him for that.

Yes, I know that it’s YouTube®, but I really don’t let watching it distract me from driving – I swear I never actually watch YouTube™ while I’m texting and drinking coffee at the same time while steering with my knee in a school zone.  In reality, most of what I “watch” doesn’t require any visuals at all, since often it’s just a person talking.

The Mrs. tells me that the steering wheel is just in my way.

However, in the case of one particular video, the story was one of the most horrible I’d ever heard and I was thankful that pictures didn’t survive to illustrate it.

Let me tell you about it.

In 1933, a guy named Genrikh Yagoda (head of the OGPU secret police, which eventually become known as the KGB) got together with his best buddy Matvei Berman, who ran something called

Главное  управление  лагерей

– which has the sort-of boring translated name of “Main Administration of Camps.”  I first heard about Berman’s organization though its more common name, Gulag.  Yagoda and Berman had a fantastic idea.  Stalin had decided to punish the Kulaks by taking all of the food out of the Ukraine and closing the border – I write more about that little adventure here (In the World Murder Olympics, Communists Take Gold and Silver!).  That meant that there wasn’t as much food in the Soviet Union since they were purposefully killing all the people who made the food in the area where the food came from.

A rational leader would respond by, oh I don’t know, stopping the slaughter of all the farmers that grow the food?  But not Stalin-era Soviets.  No, they needed a solution that allowed them to keep killing their own farmers, yet still grow food.  Since Yagoda had police and Berman had prisons, they’d use the police to arrest citizens to fill the prisons and make the prisons farms that grow food.

Secret, secret police:  the CatGB.  Only known weakness?  Laser pointers.

But what crime to arrest the citizens for?  Yagoda and Berman came across the idea of requiring internal passports.  If you were caught without your papers?  Boom.  Deport to the Gulag where you could be magically made into a productive farmer to patriotically feed the Motherland.

The local secret police that worked for Yagoda loved the idea.  They loved it so much, that even if you had the internal passports, you could still get arrested.  Why?  Quotas.  The plan was for the secret police to arrest 2,000,000 Soviet citizens for export to the farms.  With a demand of 2,000,000, there was no reason for actual guilt to be required.

In the infinite wisdom of Yagoda and Berman, they decided the best people to abduct for their new farming plan were . . . city people.  I mean, how hard could farming be?  This was the Yagoda-Berman plan – they would send these arrested city dwellers off to Eastern Russia so they could make farms in Siberia and gloriously feed the Soviet Union.

Red Acres is the place to be . . . farm living is the life for me . . . Siberia stretching out so far and wide . . . Comrade, keep Moscow just give me that Gulag life

If you’re like me, you’re immediately wondering how this bulletproof plan could fail.  As their plan was being enthusiastically carried out, tens of thousands of people were being arrested.  Time to ship them east.  How?  Open barges used to haul timber.  In May.  In Siberia.  Amazingly, of the first 5,000 shipped out, only 27 died on the 2,500 mile trip.

Immediately died, that is.  The day they got there several hundred more died of exposure.

Not having any real orders, and not having any tools or shelter or, well, anything, the guards dropped all of the first 5,000 prisoners on an island in the middle of a river.  Another 1,200 or so were shipped to the same island by the end of May.  Nazino Island was the chosen site.  Why?  Who knows – probably made sense from the viewpoint of a map in Moscow.  And those guards?  They had no shoes.  No uniforms.  No training – they were new recruits as well.

Nazino Island is 2000’ across at its widest point, and about 2 miles long as it squats in the middle of the Ob River.  As a landing point for 6,000 city-bred farmers, it probably couldn’t have been worse – part marsh, part forest.  The forest part would have been fine, if they had axes.

But they didn’t have any equipment or shelter of any kind.  Thankfully things couldn’t get worse, could they?

If only it were just rain . . .

Wait, they could – there were regular, violent criminals tossed in with the poor randomly arrested citizens.  And violent criminals tossed in with scared people was a way to make the disaster even worse as the criminals took charge.  What little food was given to the prisoners (about 900 calories of rye flour per person – 300 grams per day) was often given to the criminals to distribute, with worse than predictable results.

How could it have been worse than predictable?  The city folk mixed what flour they actually got with water so that they weren’t eating handfuls of dry powder.

What water did they use?  River water.  Raw river water.  Unboiled raw river water.

Many became violently ill.

It gets worse.  Much worse.  By June, only 2,000 of the Nazino deportees are left alive, and only 200 of them were in any condition to work when they were moved to the next labor camp – one that actually had buildings and tools and food this time.  Go to YouTube© and search for “Stalin’s Cannibal Island,” if you want more details.  But I’ll warn you – it’s disturbing content which should be clear because you’re using “Stalin” and “cannibal” in the same search term.  I don’t recommend you watch or listen to a video on it, so I’m not linking to it – you can’t unhear it.  Make your own call if you really want to watch it – it’s not hard to find, especially if you’re driving.

No one knows if Nazino was the worst of Soviet excesses.  We only know about it because a local communist leader was so appalled by what he saw that he sent a report to Moscow.  The report was immediately classified, and popped in a folder in a featureless warehouse next to the Ark of the Covenant.  Only after the fall of the Soviet Union did this information come out because someone found a dusty copy in that Siberian warehouse.

And that, perhaps, is the greatest tragedy.  The following phrase has been (rightly or not) attributed to Stalin, “If only one man dies of hunger, that is a tragedy. If millions die, that’s only statistics.”  Not long after the report reached Moscow, Stalin stopped the program that Yagoda and Berman had started.  Millions were still sent to the Gulags and millions died in them, but there was at least some planning, food and logistics to go with the casual cruelty.

In 1938, five years after Nazino, Yagoda was shot after a show trial because he irritated Stalin.  One year later, Berman was shot as well after his own show trial.  It’s unlikely that either was executed with Nazino in mind – Stalin just didn’t like Yagoda and Berman after a while and when Stalin didn’t like you, it was pretty common that you were guilty of huge numbers of crimes.  It’s likely that Stalin simply didn’t care about the dead citizens and had probably forgotten about them by the time he got around to thinning the herd.

This is communism.  It’s not an aberration.  It’s not an unusual condition.  It’s a story that’s repeated wherever communism is tried.

Che, showing his skill at mining for glorious mineral resources for the worker’s paradise!

Despite the soft face put on socialist regimes by their proponents, this is the inevitable end state.  Communism results inevitably in a war against the people, with places like Nazino being the rule rather than the exception.  When you see the faces promising class warfare and offering free things, remember that this is what they mean – eventually every citizen either cowers in fear of the state, or is consumed by it.

There is an alternative, thankfully.  You too can learn to make your own bagpipe . . . but I’d avoid doing the tricky bits in a school zone.

It’s 11:59 on Radio Free America, this is Uncle Sam with music and the truth until dawn.  Right now I’ve got a few words for some of our brothers and sisters in the occupied zone:  the chair is against the wall, the chair is against the wall, John has a long mustache, John has a long mustache. – Red Dawn

I must say that I think 6:30 is the best time on a clock – hands down.

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

The clock didn’t move this month after last month’s increment – thankfully the step between 8. and 9. above is a big one.  But I thought that about the step between 7. and 8., too.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Violence and Censorship Update – Virginia:  Win or Loss? – Updated Civil War II Index – Vexit – Links

Welcome to Issue Nine 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 II, on the first or second Monday of every month.  Issue One is here (LINK), Issue Two is here (LINK), Issue Three is here (LINK), Issue Four is here (LINK), Issue Five is here (LINK), Issue Six is here (LINK), Issue Seven is here (LINK) and Issue Eight is here (LINK).

Violence and Censorship Update

Obviously, there was more censorship in January – it’s become a fixture.  It wasn’t censorship, exactly, but the real story wasn’t was Project Veritas (LINK), which didn’t get a lot of coverage.  Project Veritas is run by James O’Keefe, who has been better than anyone at getting Leftists to drop their masks to show what the real plans are and what they really feel.  In January O’Keefe dropped several videos showing Leftists within the campaigns of various Democratic presidential hopefuls.

Notice how when it came time for surgery, Bernie didn’t hop a plane to Canada?  It’s almost like he had a change of heart.

The following quotes are all from Bernie Sanders campaign workers – paid workers from the information that I can find.  After these statements were made public, I can find no public repudiation by Sanders or his campaign of these views or the employees that made them.  I can’t find any record that these workers were fired.  If this were on the Right?  Each employee would have been front page news until he was publicly executed by being nibbled to death by ducks wearing Monica’s blue dress on a pay-per-view with profits going to the Clinton Foundation®.

• Let’s force them (billionaires) to build roads – rebuild our roads, rebuild our dams, rebuild our bridges. Let’s force them to do that.
• Well, the Gulags were founded as re-education camps. What will help is when we send all the Republicans to the re-education camps.
• I’m ready to start tearing bricks up and start fighting. …  I’ll straight up – I’ll straight up get armed, I want to learn how to shoot, and go train. I’m ready for the f___ing revolution, bro, I’m telling you.  Guillotine the rich.
• … do we just dissolve the Senate, House of Representatives, the Judicial Branch, and have something Bernie Sanders and a cabinet of people, make all decisions for the climate? I mean, I’m serious.
• Yeah, you’re not gonna get Bernie to say “Gulags,” but like, I’m all aboard for Gulags, like, I feel there needs to re-education for a significant portion of our society. I mean, but running for president in the United States you can’t say anything like that, right?
• …putting them up against a wall.  I mean the alternative, instead of trying to like…re-educate these people and put them back into society the only option is, the only other alternative is to f___ing (makes shooting gesture/noise) you know what I mean?
• I’m ready to throw down now. I don’t want to wait and have to wait for f___ing DNC.  The billionaire class.  The f___ing media, pundits.  Walk into that MSNBC studios, drag those motherf___ers out by their hair and light them on fire in the streets.
• Well, I’ll tell you what in Cuba, what did they do to reactionaries? You want to fight against the revolution, you’re going to die for it, motherf___er.

When the Left is telling you it wants to either kill you or put you in a labor camp, re-educate your children, and destroy the Constitutional government of the country and replace it with a communist junta, you just might want to listen – there are red flags everywhere.

The Soviet Constitution promised freedom of speech.  The United States Constitution promised freedom after speech.

Virginia:  Win or Loss?

On the Right, the biggest question in the aftermath of the rally on January 20 in Virginia is did the Right win or lose?  My answer is simple.

It’s now known as Schrödinger’s Rally.

The case for a win:  a group of peaceful protesters, many of whom were armed, exercised their Constitutional rights of assembly and bearing arms.  That’s very positive.  The media reported 22,000 people – which would be roughly the size of the 1^st Marine Division.  And no, I’m not trying to indicate that the group of people that showed up would in any way be as combat capable as the 1^st Marine Division unless the Marines had been given an infinite supply of tequila, pizza rolls, and strippers for six months.  Even then, my money would be on the Marines.

But the sheer number of people was a win.  It showed that not only were people engaged enough that they’d give up a holiday to show support for their rights, but also that it was significant enough that it wasn’t turned into violence by either the State or agents provocateurs embedded by the State.

The case for a loss:  nothing changed.  The anti-gun bills are moving through the Virginia assembly with no delay.  No politician changed his or her vote.  In that respect, the rally was a failure

Why didn’t any politician change their vote?

Because no politician had to pay any price for their support of the votes, nor do they feel that they’ll have to pay a price.  And, no, to be very clear, I’m not suggesting violence on them or any illegal action.  But what I am suggesting is that if they pay no personal price, they’ll never change.  What are legal ways to influence them?

• First – make sure that they aren’t re-elected. That requires organization and planning.  Oh, and voters.
• Second – go through their histories thoroughly. Don’t blackmail them – find (legally) all of their dirty laundry and air it – imagine what Ralph’s browser history looks like.  Isn’t that a public record?
• Third – make sure that that people are rude to their wives and shun them at social functions. How will Governor Northam’s wife, Pam, feel if people tell her what they think of Ralph when she stops in to get a Starbucks®?   What if her public meetings were peacefully protested?
• Fourth – remove their privacy in every public space. Park vans outside of their houses with billboards that advertise what a horrible person lives within – they’ve done this with Susan Collins in Maine, so it’s a tactic that’s fair game.  But the Geneva Convention does categorize playing Twisted Sister® 24/7 at their house a crime against humanity.

I’m sure that there are people who are far better at this than I am who can come up with dozens of legal ways to make a vote against Constitutional rights pretty uncomfortable.

Updated Civil War II Index

More graphs.  Last month, someone mentioned that one of the graphs didn’t contain a bikini, and I promised bikini graphs, and one graph showed a one-piece bathing suit.  My deepest apologies for this journalistic error.

Violence:

Up is more violent.  Violence is edging back up for the second straight month.  I still imagine it will remain low for the winter, and hope it doesn’t get as high as the bellybutton.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable.  It skyrocketed last month, and plummeted this month as impeachment proved to be nothing.

Economic:

Down indicates worse economic conditions.  The economic indicators all were positive, and strongly so, in January – they were so strong I would expect they’d go down in February.

Illegal Aliens:

Down is good, since (in theory) ICE is catching fewer aliens because there are fewer people trying to get in.  The numbers are down this month, all the way to near her finger.  Numbers are also becoming lower on an absolute basis – fewer crossings seem to be real.

Vexit

In January, there was a proposal filed in the West Virginia legislature to invite counties from Virginia to come on over and join them, since the only think most of Virginia has in common with the Democratically controlled sections is a license plate.

The major problem with this sort of a solution is that it makes too much sense.  It allows people to peacefully self-determine the government they have and also begins a process that might lead to a peaceful disassociation between Left and Right.  Let’s face it, the Right doesn’t want to hang around the Left, but not nearly as much as the Left dislikes the Right.

What do you expect from a group that tried to get Hannibal Lechter to run for Governor of New York?

Easy choice then – have a peaceful divorce and figure out who has to take the kids to the dentist, right?

Nope.  That isn’t the way the Left really works.  The Left doesn’t want peaceful disassociation – the Left wants power and control.  The words from the Bernie bros are clear – Gulag, firing squad, or being burned alive are the choices on the menu.  Heck, the Right builds walls to keep people out – the Left builds walls to keep people in.  There is absolutely no way that either the Leftist Virginia General Assembly or Congress would approve people leaving their control.  Aesop’s treatise on this is well-written and clear (LINK).

But.

When Gandhi wanted to Inexit, what did he do, besides walk around nearly naked?  He started a resistance movement that eventually led to the British Empire telling India, “Yeah, you’re more trouble that you’re worth,” while at the same time striking a blow for the rights of the nearly nude.  Is that something that can happen in the United States, a peaceful separation?  To be clear – if everyone decided to stop paying taxes tomorrow, the IRS would cease to exist.  The existence of the IRS shows that people, while not liking it, consent to it.

Any government exists so long as it reflects the will of the governed.  East Germany dissolved over the course of five days in November of 1989 after having existed for over forty years.

Is Virginia there yet?  No.  But don’t underestimate the power of a people that want to have freedoms.

Links

Most are from Ricky this month . . .  enjoy!

Soleimani background

Left not standing for flag

Here’s how asymmetric warfare will be waged during the next CW.  Substitute “drones” for helicopters and “anything” for pigs, add cellphone coverage for viral optics, and away we go….

Q showing up again.

Brand new…top media continues to cover this.   The graphic in the first one is awesome.

Boogaloo is bad think.

Vox doesn’t like guns.

The British looking for an in.

Billionaires?

Left thought.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/10/21/war-menu-2020-elections

Carville thinks the Left is nuts.

“You guys.  You lollygag the ball around the infield.  You lollygag your way down to first.  You lollygag in and out of the dugout.  You know what that makes you?  Larry?” – Bull Durham

These are some pretty rough office politics.

One big question about careers:  should you play the game?

Way back when I was in college, I had a part time job.  My boss was out of town, but asked me to send out mail that was 100% fraudulent.  He was attempting to get confidential business information from a competitor by pretending to be someone else.

Thankfully, I knew that this was more than just a bad idea – it was illegal.  Really illegal.  Like spending vacation time in the federal pen illegal.  I told him no, it was illegal.  He told me to do it anyway.  I didn’t do it.  I even took it to his boss.  All his boss said was, “Well, he shouldn’t have used our address.”

The next day I took this problem to a professor in one of my business classes.  I asked him what I should do.  “Well, John, you’ve already quit, so I don’t see much more you need to do.”

“But,” I replied, “I haven’t quit.”

He smiled and shook his head.  “No, John.  You quit.”

When I thought about it, he was right, I had quit.  I just hadn’t realized it.  But it was the right thing to do.  Besides, anyone who will knowingly ask you to commit a crime is more than willing to turn you in to the cops to save themselves.

So, no, don’t play that game.

Pa Wilder didn’t know magic tricks.  He said accounting tricks were enough.

What if the game is simply immoral or unethical?

In one case, ethics cost me a job.  I was at an interview and the interviewer asked me if I would do this rather specific unethical act.  “No, that’s unethical.”  Oops.  Their actual business model was based on gaining a competitive advantage by behaving unethically.  I haven’t lost a minute of sleep over not getting that job.

I also had a boss who asked me to do something unethical.  I said, simply, “That’s unethical.”  I believe my boss didn’t know it was unethical and he looked disappointed – not in me, but that his idea was unethical.  “Are you sure it’s unethical?”

Your mileage may vary – but I’ve decided I’m not going to play that game, either.

What if it’s just stupid or silly?

Well, then if you need the work, you play the game, cheerfully.  I know that, especially when I was young, I felt that doing stupid things at work was . . . stupid.  I made the decision early on – swallow my pride (along with the jelly donuts in the break room) and go along to get along.  Selling out?  Not really.  There is always a political element to work.  Heck, get six people or three women together and there will be politics.

But if you have a family to pay for and don’t have the means to do it, don’t let your ego talk you out of a job.  Do you need to cower and whimper?  Certainly not.  If that’s the behavior that’s rewarded at the company, find another job.  It’s never going to get better because your boss isn’t an accident.  Your boss was promoted because he or she exhibits the behavior that the company wants.

Which brings me back to the promised subject of today’s post:  goals.

I’m thinking “writing dank memes” wasn’t what he was looking for.

My boss asked me a question, one that I wasn’t really ready for:

“Where do you see yourself in five years?”

As much as I could be surprised, I was.  I had no real answer.  Thankfully, this wasn’t my first corporate conversation, so I played the game and gave my answer.  When I described my answers to The Mrs., she laughed.  “You just gave the Bull Durham answers.”

The Mrs. loves that movie, and it appears to be a part of our marriage contract that whenever we’re flipping through channels and Bull Durham is on, she gets to watch it.  Anyway, the relevant scene is:

Crash: “You got something to write with?  Good.  It’s time to work on your interviews.”
Nuke: “My interviews?  What do I got to do?”
Crash: “You’re gonna have to learn your clichés.  You’re going to have to study them.  You’re going to have to know them.  They’re your friends.  Write this down.  We’ve got to play them one day at a time.”
Nuke: “Got to play – that’s pretty boring, you know?”
Crash: “Of course it’s boring.  That’s the point.  Write it down.”
Nuke: “One day at a time.”
Crash: “I’m just happy to be here.  Hope I can help the ball club.  I know.  Write it down.  I just want to give it my best shot, and the good Lord willing, things will work out.”
Nuke: “Good Lord willing -”
Crash: “Things will work out.”

What’s funny is that I had already spent a chunk of time working on my goals that very week.  I looked at several aspects of my life – relationships, this blog, taking over a small island in the Pacific and making them worship me as their fire god, and brushing my teeth every morning.   I have space for work goals, but those are still blank two weeks after the conversation with my boss.  That alone is probably the focus of a future post, but not in the next week or two.

I ask my kids what they want to be when they grow up – maybe they have some ideas I could steal.

But goals are crucially important.  It’s not like Jeff Bezos woke up one morning and said to himself, “Whoa, where did all of this money come from?”  No, he had goals.  One of them involved getting jacked, another involved him becoming the world’s richest man, and the last one involved perfecting his version of the Roomba®, which was really just two miniature poodles hot-glued to a dinner plate.

I guess Jeff got divorced because his wife was past her Prime®.

Jeff Bezos has goals and I do too, although none of mine involve having the National Enquirer® post pictures of my, um, crotch cuckoo on the front page.  I don’t know how Jeff does it, but when I write down my goals, I use a fairly simple formula:

What – Write down in as much detail (as you need) to describe the goal.  Mine vary from achieving a very specific number of regular readers for this blog to setting higher standards for myself in some other areas of life, like learning to braid my armpit hair.  The goal should be significant enough to warrant the effort.  For me, launching an interplanetary mission might be really hard.  But it’s a no-brainer for Elon Musk, who I believe keeps most of his weed on Mars.

Why – Why am I doing this?  Superficial goals will lead to superficial effort.  If you don’t look at the “why” and feel that it’s really important to you, the goal itself is trivial or you haven’t gotten to the real why.  If you can’t come up with a good why you should achieve the goal – kill the goal like Nancy Pelosi kills a half-empty fifth of vodka.

When – A deadline is a spur for action.  External deadlines on things like doing the taxes are powerful, but self-imposed deadlines work, too.  In my case, I’ve set a deadline for writing these posts three times a week.  If I didn’t?  They wouldn’t get done and I would spend all my time practicing my armpit hair braiding.

How – Goals just don’t achieve themselves.  Here I often will get very specific.  Number of minutes working out, number of pushups, that sort of thing.  I realize that when working towards a goal, especially an audacious one, no one has all of the details worked out on the first day.  That’s fine – your plan can and will change as you take action.  Just make sure that “eat less than 1500 calories a day” doesn’t morph into “don’t eat the seventh eighth jelly donut.”

The closer that you can link your goal to your actual physical survival, the less that you need any of the above.  Very few drowning men write mission statements and then create a list of action items.  It’s simply not necessary.  Similarly, I didn’t write down that I’m going to write three times a week – it’s a given.  I did write down some concrete steps on how I was going to get better, but The Mrs. felt that the “kidnap better writers than me and chain them in the basement” step was a bit extreme.  She thought rope would probably work.

The uncut version of this movie is just called “Face”

In last Wednesday’s post I mentioned to not dwell on negative outcomes.  I stand by that, especially when peak performance is required.  But negative outcomes are very helpful when it comes to staying motivated to working a plan, week after week, sacrificing to get better when I could be torturing my captive writers and eating jelly donuts instead.  For some goals I use those negative outcomes as an incentive, of sorts, and it seems to work.

Especially at first, don’t have more than half a dozen goals.  For me, it’s important that I write them down on paper.  Something about sitting and writing them makes them more real.  And it also makes the final step, checking progress, easier.  I suggest you do that weekly.

So, get to it – play the game and get your goals done.  There’s no time to lollygag, because what does that make you?

A lollygagger.