Civil War 2.0 Weather Report, #10: Economy on the Brink?

“The reason I’m going to Santa Corona, Steve, is the worst thing that can happen there is that I run out of suntan lotion.” – Wonder Woman (1978)

clock10

This year, International Woman’s Day was on Sunday, March 8, which is when we moved the clock to daylight savings time.  So now they’ll complain that they only get 23 hours for every day, while a man gets 24.

  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.

The clock didn’t move this month for the second month in a row.  Will Leftist state governments support Antifa violence this spring and summer?

In this issue:  Front Matter – Violence and Censorship Update – Virginia:  Imposing Costs – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Civil War 2.0 in the Time of Corona – Links

Welcome to Issue 10 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.  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), Issue Eight is here (LINK), and Issue Nine is here (LINK).

Violence and Censorship Update

Generally, this section reports on either violence or censorship:  it’s one of the other.  This month, it’s both.  We’ll start with Violence.  Arthur (LINK) sent a link to a story that got some coverage – the attempted murder of people just because they supported the other side of the political spectrum.  To be clear – this man (LINK)was attempting to kill old people who were expressing support of President Trump.  Thankfully he was incompetent – driving wasn’t something they studied in Marxist theory class.

I’m amused when the Left talks about “Right Wing Extremist Violence®” because it’s generally either propaganda or a funding ploy by Lefty organizations to frack the pockets of liberal donors on the Coasts who want to be “doing something” to stop the Hate®.  At every level in the last four years, Leftist violence has greatly exceeded violence coming from the Right, and if you don’t believe me, I can point to a few congressman who were shot at (and shot) by a deranged Sanders supporter who might beg to differ.

antifa

The difference between a Leftist and a puppy is a puppy stops whining when it grows up.

As the country continues to unravel, I expect a significant uptick in violence from the Left.  If Bernie loses his shot at the presidency, I fully expect that the very first target will be the Democratic Party, with riots in Milwaukee at the Democratic National Convention.  Leftists hate the Right, but they hate mainstream Democrats even more (see links below).  And with enough practice, sadly, Leftists might become proficient at hurting people other than their parents.

Moving on to censorship, Leftists should be pleased that censorship is still in fashion.  Because there isn’t a comprehensive list of bans for YouTube®, I can only report what I’ve seen in the news or that were mentioned in passing by other sources.  Several Right-ish content producers were banned recently, and probably the most prominent one I know of is I, Hypocrite.

When I heard about the banning, I went to his Bitchute® site and watched the video he felt was responsible for his banning.  It was tame, mainly just him arguing that the Left-Right violence statistics as reported by another YouTuber™ in a debate were wrong.  He also spent a great deal of time criticizing his own debate performance and preparation.  It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary in a typical political debate except he admitted when he was wrong and his opponent had a strong point.

Now his voice is silenced.

YouTube© has also started demonetizing channels that feature content that’s favorable to the Right, like Sargon’s channel.  Sargon’s biggest offense?  Dunno, having a keen beard?  I can’t seem to find anything offensive.  But demonetization is generally just the first step before deplatforming.

On the Twitter™ front, they recently permanently banned the news website ZeroHedge© for a tweet popularizing a story that the Coronavirus may have been a result of genetic engineering.  The most recent mainstream stories I’ve heard seem to confirm that’s an opinion that’s not out of the question.  So, a news story that’s (admittedly) fringe?  Instaban.  That may be one reason a “conservative” buyer is looking to shake up leadership at Twitter®.  I’m not certain that would change a thing, since most “conservatives” seem to care more about the opinions of the Left than either the truth or honest dissenting opinions to the prevailing Leftist opinions.  Crazier parties, right?

Virginia:  Imposing Costs

Last Weather Report, I wrote about the concept of imposing costs, as in the Right wasn’t imposing costs on the Left.  Here’s what I said:

. . . 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. 

Well, someone did come up with a legal and peaceful way to make Virginia State Delegate Mark Levine, Leftist, uncomfortable.  Levine is the author of the bill to confiscate semi-automatic guns from law-abiding citizens of Virginia.  Brandon Howard, American, showed up in front of Mark’s house.  With a protest sign.  And a rifle.  Here’s a link to the story (LINK).

In no way did he use his rifle in a threatening fashion, but Howard did protest.

Delegate Levine’s panties got very much in a twist.  He immediately called the police, but was quite upset to find out that Mr. Howard had done nothing to violate the law.  Levine was quoted by the article by saying that “. . . if they cannot prosecute him (Howard) because of the way our Virginia laws are, well then that’s the advantage of being a lawmaker.  I intend to come back to Richmond and introduce legislation to make sure that anyone who threatens a lawmaker at the point of a gun and says I’m coming to your home with a gun unless you change your mind on legislation.  I want to make sure that person can be prosecuted.”

Mr. Levine’s sense of irony must be broken to not see how his sense of having his rights violated would result in him writing a law to enable cops with guns to stop citizens from peacefully protesting in a way that he doesn’t approve of.  The research I saw indicates that Mr. Levine has a copy of the Constitution that he keeps in his pocket.  The only conclusion I can come up with is that Mr. Levine is illiterate?

This will not be the last time that costs are imposed on the Left as they try to restrict rights.  Assume as the Right gets as sophisticated and as active as the Left in this type of work, it will increase rapidly.

Hank Curmudgeon left a link (LINK) to this guide last month and suggested I print out this figure and include it.  I’ll just leave it here, since it seems to fit:

Insurg

Updated Civil War II Index

More graphs.  February was a kind month, but the seeds were set for turbulent months to follow.  In keeping with the journalistic standards of Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise, I’ll note that I did make sure that all pictures used resulted in no harm or mistreatment of any bikini, anywhere.

Violence:

violf

Up is more violent.  Violence remains steady.  My prediction?  Peaks in June-July-August as political violence coming from the Left peaks.  That may make a strange graph, but I’ll do my best to find a fitting match in a bikini if and when it happens.

Political Instability:

politf

Up is more unstable.  Instability skyrocketed with impeachment, and then got better before bouncing slightly this month.  Expect increased instability as we move to November, with August being secondary peak during and after the conventions, and bikini’s flash red.

Economic:

econf

Down indicates worse economic conditions.  The economic indicators began to turn in February.  Based on the way this index is calculated, it does not yet show the impact of the free-falling stock market, which (as of this writing) is limit-locked down on the early futures, with oil collapsing to the $30’s.  Expect March numbers to collapse, which is in keeping with the chaotic nature of the way her hair is displayed.

Illegal Aliens:

borderf

Down is good, in theory.  This is (thanks for the terminology correction, 1chota) a statistic showing border apprehensions by the Border Patrol.  One would assume we’re catching fewer because there are fewer to catch.  And those aren’t legs that last forever, since they obviously end in October.

Civil War 2.0 in the Time of Corona

It’s rare that a society devolves into civil war when everything is going along fine.  Part of the recipe for trouble is economic instability.  The second part is hating each other – and we already have that in place.  What keeps us from killing each other is the day job, and the fact that most of us have all of the Twinkies® and Ho-Hos™ and Strawberry Starburst Piña Coladas© that our sticky fingers and sugar addled brains can pay for with our nearly maxed out credit cards.

But then enters Coronavirus:

Ooh, my little viral crop, my viral crop
When you gonna give me quarantine, Corona
Ooh, you make my economy stop, my economy stop
Got stop the production line, Corona

Never gonna wash, cough it up, such a dirty hand
I always buy the TP, hoard the food that is canned
My, my, my, aye-aye, whoa!
M-m-m-my Corona

corona

The Boy did a fine job photoshopping this.  I guess he has the knack.

As I write this on Sunday evening, March 8, 2020, the stock market has already tripped a stop-loss trigger before opening.  Oil prices are collapsing.  The Everything Bubble is imploding.

What’s next?  If this economy follows every other collapse in recent economic history, job losses start soon.  Businesses collapse.  Banks?  They’re in the business of generating profits in good times, while having the government and taxpayers pay for the bad times.  This is, for some reason, referred to as the free market.

Economic recessions can happen when the economy has been growing too quickly, too long, or both.  Sometimes they end just because it was time.  Other times, an event occurs that causes the growth to stop.  Corona has the ability to be that event, and even if the economy was in peak condition, Corona could have started a recession.

Given a recession, the political landscape will be in turmoil.  On the Democrat side, I’m not sure that Bernie can get the nomination – that’s the conventional wisdom – and I dearly hope that’s right.  A hard Leftist leading a country in times of economic trouble always provides the worst solutions, and always prescribes more of the same solutions when they don’t work – it’s like a medieval doctor performing more bloodletting when the first bloodletting didn’t work.  It’s that we never did true bloodletting.

Joe Biden isn’t really certain what planet he’s on most days, and Donald Trump will go through him like a velociraptor in a room full of kittens.  President Trump’s recent tweet that “Biden will be tough to beat” was the 2020 version of “don’t throw me in that briar patch.”

joe

And that’s no malarkey, you frog faced bony soldier.

That’s my take – but the range of outcomes is so very wide with Corona, it’s nearly impossible to make a good prediction right now.  Give it two months.  Then we won’t have to predict, we’ll know.

Buckle your seatbelt – this definitely increases the odds of conflict happening sooner.

Links

link

Most are from Ricky this month . . .  enjoy!

NBC Misunderstands Boogaloo.  Probably intentionally.  But they can’t do math, so maybe not intentionally.

Clickbait on Boogaloo.  Strangely, no Antifa reports?

Salon admits that they feel their side is Leftist.

More Leftists Boogaloo afraid.

Progressive Magazine is worried that Ed Asner is worried about people on the Right having guns.  Or something.

Globalists want Trump out.

Daily Dot revisits Electric Boogaloo, adds even more stupid than NBC.

Doug Casey talks Fourth Turning.  Good read.

Vox Magazine thinks Identity Politicsis awesome.  But only for the Left, not for the Right.

Salon is ecstatic that Bernie is a symbol of people turning hard Left.

Must read:  Roots of the Divide.

The Left . . . looking for segregation.

What is an American?  Hint:  no one can agree.

The Week talks about Ross Douthat having a stupid opinion about the divide in America in a new book review.

Socialists hate the Democrats.  See, I told you.

Auntie Beeb writes about Sanctuary Counties in Virginia, still butthurt about 1776.

Michael Lind wants bigger government, more control.

 

Complacency, An English King, Elon Musk, and Bikinis

“Well, perhaps what we most needed was a kick in our complacency to prepare us for what lies ahead.” – Star Trek, TNG

dinos

Q:  Why can’t dinosaurs clap?  A:  They’re all dead.

Once upon a time The Mrs. and I bought a piece of bare land to build a house on, and not a Lego® one like they make in California.  The land was in a county that had (eye roll) rules about that sort of thing.  In order to get a permit to build the house, we had to have our land approved as a subdivision.  We did it the old fashioned way – we did it ourselves.  We prepared the relevant paperwork, hired the surveyor, and worked with the county zoning staff to present it to the Zoning Commission.  After discussing it at the meeting, and observing the property, the chairman of the commission stated:

“Mr. Wilder, the commission would like to reserve a 40’ foot strip of land along the north boundary to put in a road at some future point.  In your zoning packet, we’re going to add that you will deed us this land at no cost if we ever decide to build said road.”

That was over an acre.

The Commission Chairman must have seen the expression on my face.  I’ll admit it, I wasn’t pleased.  I felt, based on my law degree of “reading the Constitution” that this was a clear violation.  It was, I felt, a “taking” of my land with no compensation.  Even though I didn’t say a word, and wasn’t wearing a Gadsden Flag t-shirt, I think he knew right where my head was.

GADSDEN

Snek no lyke step.

“Now, Mr. Wilder, you understand that we as a Commission have a duty, a duty not only to those living here for today, but for those not living yet.  Why, this subdivision will be recorded and be in force for the next thousand years.”  I don’t recall the next sentence, because I really couldn’t believe what I had just heard.

The next thousand years?  Was he taking the same kind of drugs that Bernie does?

The Mrs. and I finished our turn at the podium for the meeting.  We left and went outside.  The Mrs. beat me to the punch.

“The next thousand years?  Was he serious???  What an idiot.”  We actually still joke about it to this day.  You would have been proud of her scoff when I read it to her tonight.  It was perfect.

We had both focused on the same sentence.  It was pompous.  It was self-important.  It was delusional.  It was . . . complacent.

The idea that the governance, the structure, or even a culture that respected property rights would follow a continuous path for a thousand years was deluded.  1,000 years ago, the Danes ruled Norway and England as well as Denmark under King Cnut (yes, that’s spelled right) the Great.  Ever hear of him?  Well let me tell you if you misspell his name just one time in an e-mail to Karen, you’ll have to spend an hour explaining old English history to HR so you can prove you really meant that Karen was displaying the wisdom that old King Cnut was cnown for.

knaren

Yeah, just like Karen, the Commission Chairman was a Cnut.

That more or less proves my point.  I doubt that the records of that subdivision named the “Free Autonomous Reserve Tract” will even exist in a thousand years.  It could be that whatever emerges from the nearly certain Musk Cat Girls on Mars© Uprising of 2257 or the Amazon™ slave rebellion of 2856 against Bezosclone4651 don’t destroy the records, but don’t bet on it.

Elon

Elon apparently has a different version of Cat Scratch Fever.

Expecting a county commission’s decisions to be relevant 1,000 years into the future was an outrageous example, but it proves the point I’m trying to make.  Often, we get so complacent in our day-to-day lives that we’re willing to believe incredible things that we normally would scoff at, like, oh, Joe Biden doesn’t have dementia.  I mean, it’s normal to answer the question, “What is your vision for health care?” with “I remember when it was polite for a man to call a woman a ham-handed yellow-teethed hammer soaker before you made sweet love to them in the back of your tree fort, I mean if you had a dozen or more.  Pinecones, right?  Those were the days when you could rub my legs and watch the hair spring back up and the wood elves would play music for hours on their nose harp.  Ever have a nose harp?  We did, but you could call women broads then, because they liked to get you coffee, what with the skirts and pantyhose and all.  Canada.  And if you don’t like it, you can damn well vote for that Reagan fellow.”

One way I choose topics to write about is I want to look at a subject I know something about, and then dig deeper.  My idea is that often one of the biggest dangers was well defined by Mark Twain:  “What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.”

It’s a shame Twain never learned to write properly and not use “ain’t” – maybe if he had his career would have gone somewhere like mine has.  Anyway, when I find a disconnect like Twain described, or new information that’s something that I like to write about.

But when I can find that same situation and tie it directly to a problem or situation in society today?

That’s perfect.

Okay, nearly perfect.  It has to be interesting, too.  The relative changes in the combustibility of dryer lint throughout the twentieth century might be not what you expected, but it’s probably not particularly interesting, unless you like to burn dryer lint as a hobby, which I hear is what Jeb Bush is into now, at least when it’s group craft time.

TWAIN

Okay, that’s actually “lightning and lightning bug.”  

I really like learning new things, and I learned something new today:  One thing I like writing about, and keep returning to as a nearly constant theme here is:  complacency.  It’s evident when I write about the economic system (Rome, Britain, and Money: Why You Can’t Find Fine China after the Apocalypse), or prepping (Be Prep-ared) or really nearly any topic I write about.  And I try to live by my advice.

In my life, I try not to be complacent about:

  • Relationships: Love is a voluntary choice.  Being complacent about those around you is a good way to lose a relationship, and that can be expensive.  But, for certain people, it’s worth it.  (That’s an ex-wife joke.)
  • Jobs: Jobs come and go, even within companies.  I have seen entire departments disappear as technology made people irrelevant.  Always be learning new skills, or at least be learning more about the “niece” of your boss.
  • Value of Money: When I was a boy, Bernie Sanders would shine a shinbone for a nickel.  Now?  I think he wants to expand Medicare to do that.
  • Economic Future: The stock market will always go up, right?  Well, no.  Sometimes
  • Limits of Human Knowledge: Much of what is science is a fad, to be replaced by new science in a few years.  Not so much with math.  Mostly not with physics.  Medicine?  75% of it is washing your hands and eating right.  20% is antibiotics.  5% is not step on snek.  And Aesop will change all of these percentages if he gets this far.

Wilder, Wealthy and Wise is absolutely against complacency.  I don’t like complacency.  I like finding places where it has snuck into my life or I see it sneaking into the lives of others.  I especially like sharing things that help people see complacency in their own lives, because then I don’t have to change anything about me.

That moment when I’ve written something, and I imagine that someone’s entire world view changed?

That moment is why I write, though some of you might say that for a writer, I’m a fairly competent typist.  Regardless, that’s the enjoyment I get from this, besides the jokes and the bikinis.  I want to create discomfort in me.  And in you.  And also be able to explain to The Mrs. why I spend so much time looking at bikini pictures.

“Research, dear.  It’s for my readers.”  Oh, the things I put myself through for you.

dogkini

At least it’s not another Kardashian.  But I think the dog has less hair.

Back to complacency.  When it comes to life and health, how often do you step back and question your basic, underlying assumptions?  If never, you should.  How often are they wrong?  If never, then you’re not testing them hard enough.

Assumptions change because circumstances change.  A forty year old metabolism isn’t the same as a twenty year old metabolism.  If you eat like you’re twenty when you’re forty and fifty, you’ll end up weighing 657 pounds and being buried in a piano box.  I guess the good part about that is “all the Oreos®,” and being able to dress convincingly as Jabba the Hut® at Halloween, but the downside is attractive slave girls cost more than you think.

Assumptions change because knowledge changes – we were wrong.  All of us.  Sugar used to be great for you, it was a carbohydrate, and those were good.  But fat?  Fat was bad, as bad as John Travolta acting in a movie that requires his character to be able to use words of more than one syllable bad.  Everyone knew that, and they were right.  But only about Travolta.  Companies even made fat-free cookies in special green packages so you could know that you were safe eating them.  But in 2020, we know that’s insanity.

Lkini

But I hear Darth Braider did her hair.

What circumstances have changed in your life that you need to account for?  What will be changing?

As for knowledge, what does “everyone know” that’s wrong today?  That’s tougher.  I think that the news about sugar (for instance) started to show up in more than “fad” levels about the year 2000, a good 20 years after the war on fat in food began.  Pay attention.  And if something seems too good to be true, it probably isn’t.

Complacency.  Heck, I’ve made mistakes.

Probably enough for 1,000 years.  Just ask Karen.  She’s quite a Cnut.

Dangit.  It’s HR again.  FCUK©.

(FCUK™, of course is the British clothing brand “French Connection, UK®.”)

Silly.

Uncertainty, Retirement, and Immortal Lawyers

“This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time.” – Fight Club

juicebox

The 13th Rule of Fight Club:  If your mom is going to drive you home after Fight Club, make sure she signs you out first.

With everything in the news right now, it’s probably a good time to talk about money and life.  There are significant uncertainties right now, and here are a few examples in no particular order:

  • Corona Virus – A big deal? It might be.  I just saw that Corona® beer had changed their name to Bubonic Plague™.
  • Nuclear Iran And Nuclear North Korea – The plus side of nuclear war is no more pop-up ads.
  • Impending Market Meltdowns – Escalators were down, while Pencils lost a few points. Paper was stationary and Diapers remained unchanged, while Toilet Paper reached a new bottom.
  • A Left Wing That Has Bad Intentions When It Gains Power – The upside is that when a Leftist walks into a bar after the Revolution, he’ll order shots all around.
  • Jack’s Raging Bile Duct – Wait, hold up?

Okay, it’s not really a bile duct.  And the guy’s name wasn’t Jack.

I was reading about a guy who just retired at about age 60.  He had saved and invested his whole life, making sure that he would have enough money to last until he was 90.  Since he had been a high-powered Wall Street guy, he did really well.  He had saved millions, so he intended to live a pretty nice retirement with lots of travel around the world.  Oh, he wanted to live in a pretty expensive town.  And, even though money isn’t everything, it kept him in touch with his children.

Then?

mario

Mario had to retire from plumbing because the Yelp® reviews all mentioned him raiding the fridge for mushrooms and stomping on any pet turtles he saw.

He was diagnosed with cancer – but a type that’s incurable.  And it’s a fairly tough type:  it’s got a 50% survival rate to make it for 5 years.  Amazingly, he was writing about what people in their fifties might do in the current investment climate.  He wasn’t writing about the fact that the remainder of his life was maybe reduced by 83% from his plans.

Me?  If I were him, I’d be spending at least some of the money that I’d saved to last me for twenty-five years of life until 90 on a very, very nice bottle of scotch.  And perhaps a cigar made from angel wings.  For dinner? Nothing special.  Maybe some surf and turf:  yeti with Loch Ness monster filets grilled over lava pulled from the center of the Earth.  I’d make sure that I used every second that I had left to me.

hannibal

No clowns though.  They taste funny.

But what if our lives were infinite, would that change anything?

I was driving down the street with The Boy and Pugsley several years ago.  We were driving home from a camping trip, and were going through a small town on a sleepy Sunday morning.  It was early enough that people hadn’t even gotten up for church yet.  As we drove I saw a sign that said, “Jim McGill, Insurance and Real Estate” and decided to make a joke, because we’re a fun family.

I pulled out my best booming operatic voice, so deep and resonant it makes Brian Blessed sound like he hasn’t yet hit puberty:

blessed

Don’t hate him because he’s beardiful.

“Jim McGill is here to help you with all of your insurance and real estate needs, as he has for a thousand years here in Cedar Ridge.

“No one has more experience than McGill, who has studied the intricacies of umbrella insurance policies for decades of the countless years of his nigh-immortal life.  McGill can also use his communion with the deep and ancient dark spirits of the Earth to find the very best property for you.  Since the dawn of single-celled life on this puny planet, there is no insurance agent or realtor who will ever get you a better deal.”

The Boy piped in: “Brought to you by the power of the Necronomicon™.”

See, I told you we’re a fun family.

immortal

Oh, I thought you said immoral.  My bad.

I was making a joke, but stumbled upon a truth.  The joke was supposed to funny because here was an immortal being, selling insurance in a small town in the Midwest.  But as I drove on, I realized a different truth:  if an immortal can’t afford to spend his life doing trivial things, why do we?

Not that there’s a problem selling insurance, or a problem with selling real estate.  I have a friend who dreams about selling real estate.  She’s going to get her license.  I think she’ll have a lot of fun with it – she likes working with people, and it’s something that’s important to her – finding the right person to sell the right house to will probably be fun and she probably won’t have to summon demons and other Satanic spirits to find a nice three bedroom on a cul-de-sac for a married couple with a baby on the way.  Probably.

For me, personally, selling real estate would be one of the punishments that would be reserved for a deep level of Hell:  lower than people who mow lawns at 8am on Saturday morning but not quite as low as Congressmen.  But I think it will really make my friend happy.

jake

He has a very special set of skills . . . .

And that’s a good reason to be a realtor – being happy by helping other people.  It’s also a good reason to sell insurance.  But never forget, doing a job is just that, doing a job.

We may not like everything we have to do at work, and we’re certainly not special snowflakes who deserve the job of our dreams just because we got a Master of Fine Arts in Paranormal Entity Identification and Eradication.  We get paid to go to work because it’s not a hobby.  Lots of times we’ll do things we’d only do if you were getting paid, like when I polished Grandma’s corns for a shiny new nickel.

It may be that the gentleman with cancer is writing for a reason – because that’s how he’s wired.  I get it – I’m writing this sentence at 4am.  But he has a choice.

There comes a time to realize that, if the basics are covered, you really do have a choice.  Money only buys a certain amount of happiness.  A new car isn’t necessary if you have one that works – no matter how old it is.  You are trading your life for money, and even if you die with a lot of money, you’re still dead.

Make sure the trade is worth it, because you’re literally trading your life for it.

Meanwhile . . . somebody go pluck an angel’s wings.

The Siege of Waco and the Deep State

“There’s a reason you separate military and the police.  One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people.  When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.” – Battlestar Galactica (New One)

ATFRAID

Don’t worry, Leftists, all those people at Waco were here legally.

The Waco Siege started 27 years ago.  It started as a raid by the ATF – Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.  The ATF was formed after the Gun Control act of 1968.  In researching the ATF, I was amazed that its history consists of nothing more than an unending series of scandals and heartache visited upon (mainly) people with no criminal intent who had no idea that they were violating some extremely technical law.  And that’s on a good day.

How bad is the ATF?  Here’s what a Senate subcommittee said:  “Based upon these hearings it is apparent that ATF enforcement tactics made possible by current federal firearms laws are constitutionally, legally, and practically reprehensible.”  From that, it actually got worse.

The ATF was involved (besides Waco) in the Ruby Ridge disaster (which netted a body count that included a 14 year old boy and a mother holding a baby) as well as operation Fast and Furious where guns were intentionally illegally sold to Mexican drug criminals.  It’s okay selling guns to drug cartels because Fast and Furious was named after a Vin Diesel movie, and who doesn’t like him?

It appears that most of the actually useful things that the ATF does revolve around databases that attempt to match weapons to crimes.  Keeping close to computer screens and away from actual A, T, and F might be a good idea, since they’ve lost (in just one audit) over 76 firearms, plus hundreds of laptops.  Oops.  Too much A?  And this is the group that revers Elliot Ness and the famous Untouchables as their forefathers.

donut

Looks like the Deputy Director really wanted to win the pie eating contest with the FBI, so they hired Karen.

In an existence consisting of repugnant, objectionable, and odious events the Waco Siege is probably their crowning achievement.  Waco is certainly the worst single thing the ATF has ever done.  The fact that it’s not the only bad thing people talk about when they bring up the ATF tells you just how incompetent they are.

What did the ATF do that was so bad at Waco?

They launched a military-style raid against a church, the Branch Davidians, for no real discernible crime other than being a great target for a raid that could get publicity right before Congressional budgets were set.  Oh, and ATF agents knowingly lied in order to get military support, indicating that there were illegal drugs at the church when there was no evidence at all.  And this is just for starters.

On the morning of the attack, the agents shot the dogs, then engaged in a firefight with the members of the church.  The ATF says they didn’t shoot first.  The surviving Branch Davidians say the ATF did shoot first.  Since the ATF was recording the raid for use in public relations, it seems odd that they don’t have footage of that.  Almost as if the tapes were . . . conveniently lost?  Nah.

The ATF may be evil, but they make up for it partly by being incompetent.  After 45 minutes of exchanging gunfire with the Branch Davidians, the ATF asked for a do-over, since they had shot all of their ammunition.  The church allowed and honored a ceasefire when they could have easily killed every single ATF agent as they tried to withdraw.  But the folks in the church didn’t.  Once the threat of attack had passed, they let the agents leave in piece.  Did I mention that the Branch Davidians called 911 when they were first attacked?

knocking

ATF agents are notoriously bad at knock-knock jokes.

The Waco Siege then spiraled into a circus.  The press, FBI, and the Texas National Guard all showed up.  When a group of moms and kids surrendered, the moms were immediately arrested and the kids placed in state custody, which made the remaining kids not want to leave.  Funny, that.  The FBI hostage negotiators sent in a camcorder so the Davidians could show they weren’t being coerced into staying.  The FBI refused to allow the tape to be given to the media.  Why?

It might make people sympathetic to the Branch Davidians, which wouldn’t do because the FBI needed them to be the villain.

During the standoff, the FBI continually ramped up the stress through lights at night, and horrible sounds during the day – which is probably a questionable strategy when dealing with an end-of-the-world cult.  The FBI then decided that broadcasting “This is not an assault” over a loudspeaker while using a tank to demolish the structure and pump in flammable tear gas.  If that’s not an assault, I’m not sure what is, especially since there are infrared recordings that may show muzzle flashes on the morning of the attack – muzzle flashes of people outside shooting into the compound.   Apparently, this sort of behavior isn’t an assault – it’s just the non-threatening way that FBI agents normally great each other.

attack

I will warn you, the FBI can leave a mess.

Malcolm Gladwell tallied the forces in his article for the New Yorker:  “Outside the Mount Carmel complex, the FBI assembled what has been called probably the largest military force ever gathered against a civilian suspect in American history:  10 Bradley tanks, two Abrams tanks, four combat-engineering vehicles, 668 agents in addition to six U.S. Customs officers, 15 U.S. Army personnel, 13 members of the Texas National Guard, 31 Texas Rangers, 131 officers from the Texas Department of Public Safety, 17 from the McLennan County sheriff’s office, and 18 Waco police, for a total of 899 people.”  Those were just the ground forces – there were helicopters and other flying surveillance, too.

The Siege ended in tragedy after the tanks went in – a total of 76 dead in that final “not an assault.”  The church members perished horribly in a fire that may or may not have been started by the government.

I don’t want to give the impression that the leader of the Branch Davidians, David Koresh, was a hero.  He clearly wasn’t.  Outside of his taking wives that were very young (though still within Texas marriage age at the time, per the Sheriff), Koresh had the opportunity to end the standoff without tragedy.  That still doesn’t absolve the government, because if Koresh felt he wouldn’t get a fair deal, it looks like he was right.

Almost immediately after the first catastrophic attack by the ATF, the involved agents started writing reports on what happened.  And were stopped even though writing reports doesn’t allow them to use what is apparently their only skill – bungling operations and getting people killed.  Someone from Washington, D.C. noticed that the agents were writing things that could be used by the Davidians to prove themselves innocent, which must violate some sort of ATF policy.

Thankfully, the evidence remaining from the fire was at least carefully cataloged so Americans could have faith that the justice system would produce a fair result?  No.  The entire site was bulldozed within two weeks after the fire, destroying valuable evidence.

Evidence?  Why would you need that?

peewee

His courthouse is in the basement of the Alamo.

I mentioned that I was going to write about Waco to The Mrs.  We discussed it for a while, but she opened with, “Well, I guess that’s another list you’ll be on.”

We continued to talk about it.  Her position was that Waco started the Right/Left split in the country.  From one standpoint, she was correct.  If you look at the Pew® data from back in 1994 (LINK), we weren’t that split as a country, but by 2017 the split was in force.  Waco happened right at the front of the polarization of American politics.

voice

I blame the vegans, ruining Thanksgiving with their stupid tofu turkey.

The Mrs. and I continued discussing the Waco Siege.  We both agreed that Waco was also the most blatant display of the Deep State back before the year 2000, and she felt it was the blow that really split the country.  How so?

  • The search warrant for the raid was based on multiple lies.
  • The Branch Davidians had phone lines cut with the outside world so they couldn’t plead their case except through the FBI.
  • Evidence was “lost” including physical evidence as well as video evidence.
  • Agents writing routine reports after the failed first raid were stopped from creating reports because their stories didn’t match and the government didn’t want to provide evidence that the Branch Davidians could use to be found innocent. Innocence is for government agents, silly.
  • Stories of agents never actually matched with each other, being inconsistent as late as 6 years after the raid.
  • Physical evidence (as was available) contradicted agent testimony or suggested agents may have lied.
  • In the end, every charge that could be brought against the survivors was brought, but there were no charges brought against a single Federal agent. Perhaps 9 (from the data I could find) ATF personnel either retired early (presumably with full benefits and honors) or were “under scrutiny” which probably means that they wouldn’t get promoted again for a year or two.
  • There were lasting career consequences, though: one FBI leader was demoted from a very high position, and the rest of his life was horrible.  Just kidding.  He moved from one high paying executive job in the private sector to another.
  • Leftist Senators (most prominently Charles Schumer) bent over backwards to justify what the ATF did during the Senate hearings on the Siege. I can say this with confidence:  Chuck Schumer is the ATF of the Senate.

The parallels to the Deep State today are similar:

  • Hillary Clinton can intentionally violate the law related to storage of classified information. No charge.
  • The FISA affidavit that started the Mueller investigation could be based on . . . lies. No charge.
  • Andrew McCabe could lie to Congress. No charge.
  • John Brennan could lie to Congress. No investigation.
  • Roger Stone could lie to Congress. No investigation.  Just kidding.  Hammered as if by the fist of an angry god, and convicted of a crime.
  • General Flynn made non-consequential misstatements of fact when he was in a “friendly chat” with FBI agents. No charge.  Just kidding.  Hounded like he had stolen Satan’s bra and convicted of a crime.

Certainly I could come up with more examples.  But the point is clear – the Deep State protects itself first.  Members can commit murder, and there will be no charges.  Members can lie to cover each other and be immune.  Members can destroy evidence without consequence.  Members can get in the 10 item only line with 12 items.  No consequences.

stapler

When I think about why the Deep State would go so far to protect its own, my first question is, why?  You see this as a regular fixture with almost any member.  Some of those being protected aren’t important.  The on-scene director at Waco – why protect him?

The answer is fairly simple:  these people know things.  They know of the activities that the Deep State wants to hide.  They’re the ones who know the real secrets, both on you and me but more importantly on each other.

Why could Waco not be ended peacefully?  Because it would give Koresh a victory.  And a victory, no matter how small would, they felt, make them less powerful, less respected.  There is a reason that the ATF and FBI posed in pictures on the still-smoldering remains of the Branch Davidian compound.  There is a reason that after the fire took down the Branch Davidian flag, the ATF raised an ATF flag at Waco.

ATF

Nothing says reasonable like a selfie on top of ashes!

That reason is the Deep State’s deepest desire.  What does the Deep State want?

Power, both personal power, and power to the organizations they serve.  Make no mistake, the Deep State is partisan, and loves all of those who like state control.  Why else would they militarize a Federal Bureau that was less effective than Soviet situation comedy writers?  You could look into the sneering, mocking weasel face of Peter Strzok while he was giving testimony to Congress and see it in his eyes.  Contempt.  Contempt for those that weren’t of his Deep State pedigree, and a smugness borne of the thought that there was nothing that could ever be done to him.

derp

Would you trust this man with your secrets?

He had become like the hero of the ATF, Elliot Ness.

He was Untouchable.

Being Overwhelmed, a Survival Guide

“I guess this whole experience has left me feeling a little overwhelmed.  Flying at warp 10, evolving into a new life-form, mating, having alien offspring . . .” – Star Trek:  Voyager

HANDPUMP

Whenever I get too overwhelmed and I need motivation, I think back to what Grandpa Wilder said to the doctor on his deathbed:  “Be positive.”  I just wish he would have answered the doctor about what his blood type was instead – they might have saved him.

Overwhelmed.

It’s that moment when everything is happening at once.  When the dishwasher is flowing a mass of foam that looks like a 1960’s science fiction monster onto the kitchen linoleum.  When the new baby has a fever of 102°F and is expelling fluids at high velocity from every orifice.  When the wife is crying because it’s Sunday night and someone left a Sharpie® in a pocket and it’s now all over her white skirt that she was going to wear for her presentation that was going to make or break her career.  And then out in the driveway the car has a flat.  And when these are all happening . . .

All at once.

It’s overwhelming.

I’ve been there.  And so have you.  It’s part of life.

Being overwhelmed brings with it that moment of time when you feel hopeless.  There’s literally too much input for you to make rational decisions – deal with the suds on the linoleum or put the baby in the freezer?  In some cases, if you’re overwhelmed enough, there’s a tendency to not make any decisions and freeze like an artificial intelligence told to compute ways that Mayor Pete could really be elected president outside of his home planet.

But somewhere between the intersection of life, family, work, and self you’ve created that moment and now you’re overwhelmed.  There is but one salvation:

Scotch.  Action.

justpark

I think one of those might have a slight door ding.

The first thing I do when I find myself in a situation like this is, well, something.  Not just anything, however:  I try to prioritize loss of human life or loss of property first.  Which one life or property?  Depends on who it is and what’s going to be lost, I mean if the choice was to save the life of the ex-wife by donating my used shoes or to let her die and collect aluminum cans by the side of the road in Arizona in summer instead?

What’s aluminum going for nowadays?  I kid.  I hope she does well – Star Wars® well.  In a galaxy far, far, away from me.

onering

I kid.  She wanted to leave as much as I wanted her to leave and I really don’t bear her any ill will, and I think that she would agree with me that divorces are expensive because they’re worth it.

After taking whatever emergency action is required, I like to list the rest of the things that are overwhelming me.  While it’s not actually solving the underlying problem(s), it at least puts a boundary on the situation.  It’s translating me from thinking that “there’s too much to do” to a list that, while it might be really long, is finite.

And then?  I like to prioritize.  First on the list are the things that have to happen now – the urgent and important issues.  Then I take action to get them off the list.  I know it sounds crazy – making yourself feel better by taking the issues that are bothering you and dealing with them?  What sort of sorcery is this?

I know, it sounds as foreign as a “job” to a Bernie Sanders supporter.  But unlike a Bernie Sanders supporter, my method works.  Crossing something off the list that’s urgent and important – it makes me feel less whelmed.  Bonus – now you and I know that whelm is really a word.  (I didn’t until the little red squiggly didn’t show up underneath it and then looked it up to make sure.)

quadrants

I did this a while ago.  It’s based on comments from Eisenhower but has the stink of MBA all over it now.

Items that are urgent and important are the ones to do first.  But even though you get a burst of dopamine from solving those important and urgent items, it’s a tyranny in your life – a tyranny of crisis.  Unless you’re a drama queen or a Kardashian (but I repeat myself), being in a constant state of adrenaline from always having to react to the latest emergency is tiring and probably wears out your deodorant.

The first step away from this continual crisis management state is an understanding of a simple truth:  not everything matters.  The second step might be to understand that a deodorant that’s “Strong enough for a man, but made for a woman™” may not be enough if you have the scent glands that produce Kardashian mating musk.

kardash

I hear they’re filming a remake of Gorillas in the Mist, but to save money it will just be ninety minutes of Kardashians showering.

When you are stuck in that emergency, dig out, not deeper down.  I’ve seen people respond to emergencies by taking more and larger risks.  They hope that a home run will save them.  Eventually, the risks get higher than a hippie in a hot air balloon so that even if they won, it still wouldn’t save them.

Dig out.  Solve one problem.  And then the next.  I have always found that one solution leads to the next, and before too long I feel in control.  Success breeds success.

And for heaven’s sake, don’t be like Hillary Clinton running for president for the 35th time:  learn from the situation so you never have to repeat it.  Some advice:

  • Learn to say “no” and mean it – there are large numbers of charities, clubs, boards and even hobbies that will consume all of your time if you let them. Guard your time jealously – it’s all you have.  Time is the biggest resource – nine pregnant women can’t make a baby in a month.
  • Understand that other resources matter, too. Money is a pretty big one.  I know that some folks preach that you have to have an “attitude of abundance.”  That’s fine, if it teaches you to be happy with what you have.  It’s not fine if you end up buying three new cars and a European vacation on $12,000 a year.
  • Understand that some results matter more than others – in some races there really isn’t a second place. If a loss will be devastating, either plan to win, or don’t play.
  • Learn that effort is better than genius. Combine the two and you have a nearly unstoppable combination, but if I have to pick just one, I’ll pick effort.  There’s rarely any traffic on the second mile, except for that Jesus guy.
  • Schedule.  Anticipate.  You can’t plan your future entirely, but you can plan to have skills and competence in things that may help you in the future.  You can never tell when carving a flute out of your enemy’s shinbones might come in handy, so practicing early is recommended.

spanish

Beware of the comfy chair.

But sometimes, even though you’ve planned, even though you’ve attempted to do the right thing, you’ll lose.  Sometimes, tsunamis hit.

And sometimes the dishwasher shoots suds all across the kitchen floor, even if you tell her to stop it.

So get to work.

The Coming Recession, Explained Using Six and a Half Bikinis.

“Well, just find yourself a man with a spotless genetic makeup and a really high tolerance for being second guessed and start pumping out the little uber Scullys.” – The X-Files

FIRST

After the next recession, most people will be on their feet in no time, after the bank repossesses the cars.

This wasn’t my originally planned topic. My originally planned topic was a discussion of PEZ® seed pricing mechanisms in 1850’s Great Britain, complete with discussion on how many orphans could be traded per bushel of finished PEZ™. Alas, I’ll have to return to that exciting topic some other time, since the world financial system seems to be imploding.

Okay, imploding isn’t the right word. And it really may not be as bad as it looks.

But today? It looks bad. Maybe not implosion bad, but I heard that some bankers had been discouraged. I guess they lost interest.

How bad could it be?

If it just stays at a financial level, the worst I would expect would be a W.I.L.D.E.R.™ Level 4 (Great Depression) in the United States, though it might hit a W.I.L.D.E.R.™ Level 5 (National Collapse) in China. You can read all about the W.I.L.D.E.R.™ Levels here (The Lighter Side of the Apocalypse) in an article praised by critics as “one of the best things ever written by a man with such questionable levels of personal hygiene, fashion sense, and grooming.”

In order to understand and guess at the future, let’s take a look at the past. The most recent past economic downturn was the Great Recession. What happened then?

sp500

As you can see from this chart, the S&P 500 experienced a big downturn right around the calf and knee area. Feel free to enlarge – just explain that the study of economics is really interesting.

Several things: first, lowered interest rates and the idea that anyone could and should get a mortgage led to a massive mis-investment in housing. Part of the cause were things called stealing and looting mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations. I won’t go into technical details, but it was a way that Harvard® educated MBAs convinced themselves that a strawberry picker making $14,000 a year could afford a $720,000 mortgage (LINK). And, yes, this really happened.

Second, the world was awash in money after the Fed flooded the fields with money after the Dotcom Bubble. Where did that money go? Everywhere. Houses. And . . . oil. Oil prices skyrocketed during that time. Companies rented oil tankers and kept them full, sitting at sea, continually selling futures on the oil in the tanker. They made fortunes by pretending to sell oil. I know that sounds like I’m making an obscure joke, but no, that really happened.

The price of housing hit the financial system like a mousetrap on a cat’s tail. Or a cat with a mousetrap on its tail? Or . . . nevermind. People kept borrowing more on their houses as their houses appreciated. They spent that money on pickups and boats and child care and food and vacations. The people weren’t evil, but they thought that the value of their house could never go down, so the risk was small. Rational people, like bankers, were telling them this. Heck, some even invested in more houses so they could double or triple their magic ATM.

30year

This view of 30 year mortgage rates explains that there have been mortgage rates. Look closely, and you can see them.

Finally, one day the music stopped on the housing prices. Was there a cause in particular? Not really. But the market lost the one thing required to keep it afloat – belief. Every market rises as the beliefs of the participants overcomes the worry of loss. Wow, that sounded poetic and cool. But it’s also true.

In many ways, the stock market is a barometer not only of the actual underlying economic performance, but how people feel about the future. It keeps going up as long as people keep being optimistic and has proven to be a much better barometer of economic activity than the amount of leg hair I grow before each winter and then form into a nice, soft nest to sleep in when it gets cold.

crude

Crude oil prices had Exxon® jumping for joy in 2008!

One thing that brought the mood of people down in 2008 was the price of oil. In the midst of the recession that came from the housing bubble, the secondary oil bubble inflated. Prices increased more than double in a single year – from $70 per barrel to over $140 per barrel at the peak. Oil acts as a tax on everything to do with physical goods. To move a Tom Brady’s booty dinghy from where it’s made in by incontinent baboons in Romania to his rump mechanic in Massachusetts requires energy – energy from oil.

So that’s the “why” for 2008. How does that relate to today?

The Great Recession was brought about by an actual recession – things slowed down in the country because there were only so many houses that could be made. That’s different than today’s trouble. The stock market is tanking not because of a recession, but because the worry about Corona-Chan locking up the flow of physical goods from China. I wrote about that last week (Corona Virus, with a Slice of Recession?).

What have we seen so far?

stand

This was a pretty good miniseries documentary.

The stock market has decreased in value. In general, a stock price has two components – the first is the value of the factories and land and machinery that the company owns. This is boring, it’s like saying a Stradivarius violin worth less than a piece of firewood because the firewood weighs more – in the hands of a genius, the violin can make masterful music, though in the hands of my kids it just made me contemplate the positives of being deaf.

The second and often biggest component of value to a stock is the assumed growth of that stock. This is why older, boring stocks like Ford® are priced closer to the value of the assets they own – no one thinks that Ford™ will end up tripling in size in the next three years. There’s an ex-wife “tripling size in three years” joke, but I’m bigger than that.

But people do think that Tesla© can triple in size in three years. Therefore, people value Tesla™ more than Ford® even though it sells about six million cars a year and Tesla© sold only 370,000 cars in the last year. You’d think that Ford™ would be worth about 10 times what Tesla® is. But in reality, Ford© is valued at $28 billion, while Tesla™ is valued at $147 billion. Is Tesla™ really worth that much? That’s up to Tesla®. But give me $147 billion and I bet I could sell 380,000 cars a year, too. And they would be pretty neat ones and they wouldn’t look like they were designed by a third grader with limited imagination.

cyber

Elon took a lot of heat for the Cyber Truck design, primarily because it looks like something that no human would buy. Thankfully, Elon’s next advance will be robotic customers.

Tesla© has convinced people it is almost six times more valuable than Ford©. That’s what I call optimism. Or a con, but at least a con for a good cause (Elon Musk: The Man Who Sold Mars).

Since the stock market is based on optimism, this latest decline in February of 2020 shows that investors are shaken. The world hasn’t (yet) changed but the implications are now becoming concerning enough to cause the market to drop. Is this going to be a big drop, like in 2008, or another head fake?

I can’t be sure. But I do know that this seems like a good time to trot out what I learned the last time the economy went south.

Lesson One:

Market bubbles aren’t rational. Companies rise faster and farther in a bubble without regard to, well, anything. Uber®, which is basically “Taxi App” is worth $61 billion dollars, which is more than Elon Musk spends in a typical year on hair plugs. Uber© lost $8.5 billion dollars last year while generating tons of bad publicity because its founder is a douche and it treats drivers worse than Mongolian bull milkers. There are tons of companies just like Uber™, and all with an idea that they’ll “disrupt” segments of society. Essentially, disrupting involves an app, a smart phone, and booting someone out of a job. Some are, I assume, legitimate ideas that will be profitable in the future. Others are like GoPro™, which is (in Karl Denninger’s words) just “camera on a stick.”

I heard someone call this the Disruption Bubble, and it’s as good a name as any to describe the distortions and irrational money flows as everyone tries to find the next Amazon™, Facebook© or Google®. In a real panic, stupidly valued things like Uber® deflate, and deflate quickly. But companies that are really worth something will fall in value, too.

The best time to buy a company is when it is cheap. It will never be cheaper than when people are panicking like Godzilla® is hungry for Japanese take-out and orders Tokyo. Finding quality companies that are selling at a 90% discount is possible during a real panic.

Lesson Two:

When the market falls, investors have less money. But they still have bills. So what will they do? If this is like 2008, they’ll sell other things. What kinds of things? Cool cars will be cheap, but not everyone is in the market for a Lambo. But gold dropped, too. During 2008, gold went from $1000 per ounce to as low as $720.

gold

You can see the price of gold really drop around the shoulder area, and take off afterwards.

I can’t guarantee that gold will drop, but I’d be watching if you want to buy some – there might be a great opportunity to buy gold at a lower price than the current $1655 per ounce.

Lesson Three:

In past recessions, the interest rate that is charged for the 10 Year T-Bill generally dropped. Why? People wanted to get to a safer asset. That asset has generally been the dollar. The most likely candidates to replace the dollar were the Chinese whatever-they-call-it and the Euro. As China is now in the grip of Corona, it’s not a flight to safety. Every European country with a beach is thinking about dumping the Euro and exiting the EU so they can print wrapping paper and call it money, the Euro isn’t a great one, either. The Swiss Franc is kinda awesome, but they only make so many of those.

10year

Look closely and you can see that the Fed doesn’t have a lot of room to lower rates.

Nope. It’s the dollar. In times of economic uncertainty, the dollar will increase in value relative to other currencies. Does it make sense? Maybe? It seems that the world notices the Navy, Army, Marines, and all of those nuclear weapons and those make the banks in New York seem a bit more secure.

Expect that if this goes like 2008 for a while you can buy foreign stuff like a king. For grins I track the New Zealand dollar – it’s right now at its lowest value in five years. I bet it goes even lower soon, so sheep should be quite a bargain. Remember New Zealand’s national motto: “We’re not Australia.”

Don’t expect to find a great place to get a good yield anytime soon if Uncle Sam is paying less than a 1%, you’re not going to get even that good of a deal. Negative interest rates have already hit Europe, and there’s no reason they won’t hit the rest of the world. Investing in cash in mason jars buried in the backyard might be a good idea. Send me your map, and I’ll keep it safe.

Lesson Four:

No financial collapse looks the same. Each one of them is unique, and this one has been a long time in coming so, if it’s hitting right now, it could be really bad. Each of the above lessons might be wrong, so look for opportunities where you see them, not where an Internet humorist thinks they might be, no matter how charming and freshly showered he might be. Oh, if you have cash, it does no good if it’s in a bank that collapses. Just sayin’.

A friend of mine made the joke in 2008 that “when the tide goes out, you see who isn’t wearing a swimsuit.” There are vulnerabilities that very few people know about right now that will (in hindsight) become obvious in the days or years ahead. Just nod sagely and pretend like you expected it would happen all along. That’s what I’ll be doing.

Wildcards:

Desperate people sometimes do desperate things. As the Soviet Union collapsed, there was some small risk that an official decided he was better dead than not red, and pushed the button. That didn’t happen – in large part because by the time the Soviet Union collapsed, nobody believed in it anymore: it was as tired as Joe Biden’s campaign.

mankini

Okay, I’m sorry.

sorry

If China were to teeter near collapse, would they decide to launch a regional war to keep the people together so the nation didn’t collapse or fall into civil war? Hopefully not, but the chances of it happening are greater than zero. As you prepare for a world where there is a financial dislocation, don’t forget to prepare for a cultural dislocation as well. Buying food now when it’s cheap and easy to get doesn’t make you a hoarder – it makes you one less person who is drawing on system resources if things go bad. Preparing for bad times when times are good is a profoundly moral thing to do. But don’t forget to complain like everyone else.

Nobody likes a smug prepper.

Disclaimer:

Keep in mind, this is NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE. I make fun of Johnny Depp and PEZ® and post pictures of girls in bikinis over economic graphs and am even writing this sober. Consult someone who has those credentials and maybe drinks martinis at lunch since that seems pretty swanky. Also, I don’t own any direct positions in any of the stocks discussed, and don’t plan on taking any positions in them (maybe ever), though I do own a Ford™ truck. I’m betting that maybe some of my 401k money is investing in, well, something and might include these stocks, but I don’t know. Maybe it’s just invested in magic beans?

Stalin’s Cannibal Island and Distracted Driving

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

lastly

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.

youtube

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.

CATGB

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.

redacres

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?

igor

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.

noseche

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.

Don’t wish your life away, complete with Catch-22 and bikini picture

“Mr. Frond.  He’s a tall glass of . . . annoying.” – Bob’s Burgers

commie

I guess you could say that Bernie engages in wishful thinking.

A few years ago I was in a meeting with my boss, who has since retired.  It was a particularly hectic time at work – we were looking down at a calendar of 13 hour days, 7 days a week, for the next few weeks.  We had already been on that hellish schedule for at least 20 days.  We couldn’t have been more exhausted if we were a car muffler or the guy charged with keeping Joe Biden away from functional microphones.

At this point, the most dangerous place in the office was getting between me and the coffee pot.  HR had cautioned me about my threatening language when I found someone in the way of the coffee, but I responded that growling wasn’t really a language.  They said I was being intimidating, but I stared at them silently and then they went away.

So, we were busy.  As I said, I had a meeting with my boss.  My boss leaned back in his chair.  In a very tired voice he said, “Well, I don’t want to wish my life away, but I’m looking forward to finishing this.”

The part of that sentence that really stuck with me was, “I don’t want to wish my life away.”

When faced with something unpleasant, I want it to be over, and the sooner the better.  I think that’s just human nature.  I’d actually never given that desire a second thought.  “Let’s finish the bad times so we can get to the good times, right?”

biden

It serves you right, you knock-kneed slobbering tuna monger.

I also recalled another, slightly different example of this kind of thinking.  When I was a child waiting for Christmas, I wanted the days before Christmas Eve to dissolve into the past like all of those bodies in Bill Clinton’s basement so I could begin unwrapping presents like a Tasmanian Devil® with chainsaw arms.  A similar example is how people can’t wait for the work week to finish so that they can get to the weekend and live their “real” life.

But life isn’t just the good times – it’s also the crappy ones, too.  It’s also the dull ones.  It’s the hours spent at work.  And it’s the hours spent in a dentist chair.  And that really is the sum of life – it’s not the great moments, it’s all the moments.  It’s what we live in every day:  that’s life.  Life isn’t just hopping from peak to peak, victory to victory, Christmas present to Christmas present.  Nope.  Most of life is spent in the valleys and hillsides and Bill Clinton’s basement.

holyspirit

I will say the one time I had Tequila I did end up on my knees.

I did an experiment once on a warm spring day.  I was in the parking lot of a liquor Bible store to get some beer to buy extra Bibles for the Bible room in my house.  For whatever reason I stopped and just looked around.  I observed as closely as I could.  I looked everywhere.  Up into the blue sky and the wisps of clouds moving lazily to the east.  I looked at the grain of wood in the gray sun-bleached privacy fence by the parking lot.  The staggered brick pattern of the store wall contrasting with the evenness of the mortar joints holding them in place caught my eye.  From the natural to the manmade, I looked deeply.

As I spent time that afternoon really looking at and observing my surroundings I was struck by how much beauty that I was surrounded by, day after day.  This was a beauty that I never noticed – it was just visual noise in my daily life.  But that beauty really was there, hidden in the small things that are everywhere.  Also it was in bikinis, but those really weren’t hidden.

BIKINI

It has been mentioned that I needed more bikini.  I assume you mean on hot chicks, because it’s considered an international war crime if I posted one of me in a bikini.

There was a weird majesty in the moment.  Most days I don’t take the time to look for it.  But I know that it’s there if I want to take the time to look.  After that, things weren’t really the same.  I began to look closer at all aspects of life.

Not too much later I read an article that said that even when it gets fairly cold, say -5°F with a wind of 10 miles per hour, it would take up to half an hour to get frostbite.  I’m not making fun of those temperatures – they can be deadly.  But if I was walking around outside and the temperature was 40°F with a wind speed of 10 miles per hour I might be a bit uncomfortable, but a healthy person with exquisite DNA that was the result of a secret government breeding program named Project Lunchbox (like your humble host) could easily stand those conditions for hours in just a light jacket with no lasting negative impact.  Shiver?  Sure.  But I’d be fine.  And so would anyone else without a weird medical problem even if they weren’t part of Project Lunchbox.

LUNCHBOX]

When we had to do a group project in school we were in trouble – we were all “that guy”.

The same is true about high temperatures.  Yes, I might sweat – it’s not like I’m a member of the English royal family.  But for the most part, most ranges of heat you’d encounter in the United States isn’t life threatening to a healthy person.  Uncomfortable?  Yes.  Sweaty?  Certainly – we already established that.  But only uncomfortable, not in danger.  One summer the air conditioning went out on my car.  My response?  I rolled the windows down when I headed home from work.  After a week or two, the heat ceased to bother me at all.

As I kept at it, I realized that there were a lot of other conditions I could simply ignore if I chose to:

  • Hunger – Most people reading this have never been really hungry in their lives.
  • Thirst – Water is important, but it how many times are we actually thirsty versus just drinking because of habit?
  • Airline Seats – Okay, these really are from the fifth circle of Hell. But I can scrunch up in one for an hour or so.
  • Ear Hair – If I let it grow long enough, I can braid it like the bride at a Leftist wedding.
  • Bad Smells – How many of them are just annoying? I mean, besides the French?
  • Disorder – Not everything in my life needs to be perfectly arranged, but it would be nice if Pugsley put the Vise Grips® back after he was done braiding my ear hair.

After all of this, the minor irritants of life ceased to irritate me on most days.  As I became less irritated, the thing that oddly became more irritating was people complaining about minor irritations.  I then had yet another realization:  some people just like to complain.  So I added another thing to my list of things I could ignore if I chose to:

  • Annoying People

I’ll admit that not everything in my life is always exactly the way I’d create it if it were entirely up to my choice.  And that’s good.  It’s that difference (along with carbohydrates) that forces me to grow.  Bad times give me an excuse to call my friends and discuss my problems with them.

JESUS

Jesus told me I could turn water into whine.  I guess he had enough the third time I brought up airline food. 

Also, I am human.  Annoying people, especially the professional-level annoyers, still annoy me.  And the list of things I can choose to not be angry about is just that, a choice.  From Catch-22:

Dunbar loved shooting skeet because he hated every minute of it and the time passed so slowly.

…

“Do you know how long a year takes when it’s going away?”  Dunbar asked Clevinger.  “This long.”  He snapped his fingers.  “A second ago you were stepping into college with your lungs full of fresh air.  Today you’re an old man.”

“Old?”  asked Clevinger with surprise.  “What are you talking about?”

“Old.”

“I’m not old.”

“You’re inches away from death every time you go on a mission.  How much older can you be at your age?  A half minute before that you were stepping into high school, and an unhooked brassiere was as close as you ever hoped to get to Paradise.  Only a fifth of a second before that you were a small kid with a ten-week summer vacation that lasted a hundred thousand years and still ended too soon.  Zip!  They go rocketing by so fast.  How the hell else are you ever going to slow time down?”  Dunbar was almost angry when he finished.

“Well, maybe it is true,” Clevinger conceded unwillingly in a subdued tone.  “Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it’s to seem long.  But in that event, who wants one?”

“I do,” Dunbar told him.

“Why?” Clevinger asked.

“What else is there?”

Joseph Heller was probably a bit more pessimistic than I am.  I don’t think that living a life filled with unpleasant conditions is required for a long life.  If so, people would be lining up at chiropractors to have them misalign their spines.  But, on the other hand, someone did marry my ex-wife . . . .

ex

And you pay half of all your stuff.

No, the wisdom that my boss shared with me is clear.  Spending your life torturing yourself isn’t productive, except in California.  But even during a bad time or when you’re anticipating a good time in the future, don’t wish your life away.  Each minute is a precious one.

Use them all.

I suggest skeet.

Corona Virus, with a Slice of Recession?

“Global? Oh, great. I’ve doomed humanity.” – Ash Versus Evil Dead

china

I hear it can only be caught from crowds.  Introverts everywhere smiled as they stared at your shoes.

The other day I was emailing back and forth with James M. Dakin, proprietor of the Bison Prepper (LINK).  I mentioned that I’d bring up an old essay we’d both read back when Jim and I went to different high schools together.  That essay was I, Pencil.

I, Pencil was written by Leonard Read and published in 1958.  The essay is available here (LINK).  I, Pencil is a fairly short essay with a fairly long introduction.  Spoiler alert:  Leonard felt that no single person on planet Earth can make something as simple as a boring old yellow No. 2 pencil.  And, he’s right.  A pencil, even a 1958 version, uses components that are sourced all over the globe.  Mr. Read makes a great point – the free market takes components from all around the world to make even the simplest and most mundane object.

pencil

I cut myself with a pencil – I drew blood.

Likewise, the knowledge required to make that pencil is distributed across the globe.  No single person can make the pigments for the paint by milking the Tanganyikan paint turtles, and pick the aluminum from the Australian aluminum trees to make ferrule that holds the eraser on.  And that eraser?  It’s made of rubber from the Congo.  I’d make fun of the Congo, but, really.  It’s the Congo and they have enough problems (LINK to a really fascinating story of crossing the Congo).  Plus the wood is made from sustainably farmed free-range vegan trees in California.  Don’t forget the graphite – it’s from the Sri Lankan graphite glaciers.

The humble pencil is a creature of Globalization.

How much Globalization?  Sadly, it looks like Dixon Ticonderoga used to make most of its pencils in the United States, but now apparently makes only enough pencils here to claim that it actually makes pencils in the United States (LINK).  There were a few pencil jokes I was going to make here, but they’re pointless.

While we talk about globalization as being a new phenomenon, Globalization has been a thing since the days of the American Revolution – the tea that Sam Adams threw in the harbor during the Boston Tea Party came from halfway across the planet.  Even back to the days of Rome, there is evidence of far flung trade – shipwrecks found in the Mediterranean are often found filled with wine or olive oil being shipped across the Empire.  Sadly, the Romans abandoned those cargos after they broke the V second rule of being on the bottom of the ocean.   

ROME

X/X

Globalization provides a huge advantage.  Some things aren’t available around the world – resources come from other places for a reason – corn is imported to the South Pole because corn grows rather poorly in ice.  Shockingly, wood comes from places with trees, and having Saudi Arabia export timber is probably not a great business strategy.  But having Saudi Arabia export oil is.  And having the United States export food also makes sense – we grow more than we can eat.

When done right, Globalization provides the benefits of bringing together resources and knowledge from far-flung corners of the world to meet the needs of people that most of them will never meet.  But Globalization doesn’t consist only of benefits.  With Globalization, Ticonderoga® can decide to make pencils in China.  Hundreds of jobs are then lost in the United States.  A typical journalist would indicate that the people who lost pencil-making jobs should, “learn to code.”  When those same journalists lost their jobs due to Globalization, they cried on Twitter® when told that perhaps it was their turn to #learntocode.  The journalists even got people banned for suggesting they take their own advice (LINK).  Still missing:  journalists who became coders.  Also missing:  journalists with a sense of humor and irony.

Although the United States spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year on yellow No. 2 pencils made in China, should pencils stop showing up from China, there won’t be chaos and anarchy in the streets except around SAT® test taking time.  I mean, we all remember the No. 2 pencil riots of 1989, right?

But that is just a humble pencil.  What other things are imported from China (LINK – warning – quite an addictive set of graphs)?

crust2

You can tell that toothpaste was invented in New York City.  Otherwise they would have called it teethpaste.

A lot of the things the United States imports from China are trivial, or convenience items that we could live without:

  • Lots of toys are manufactured in China, including trikes and video game consoles, virtually all Christmas decorations, and (the census has a category for this) practical jokes. Yes, the Corona Virus could directly cause a shortage of fake dog poo.
  • Strollers and toasters are almost all made in China. Why did I combine these items?  No reason.  None at all.
  • Millions of wet heads could result.
  • Artificial flowers. Now here the Chinese are particularly cunning – they’ve cornered the production of not only plastic artificial flowers, but also artificial flowers not made from plastic.  This is a true strategic threat.
  • Nearly every thermos. The United States could bankrupt itself in additional ice costs.  Also, cold soup?
  • 100% of lawn edgers are made in China. 100% of my lawn edger hasn’t left the garage in five years.

Okay.  There is a lot of stuff that comes from China we live without.  Unless you work at Wal-Mart®.  Without those imports to be sold, the impact should be minimal.  Very few people have ever had a life or death situation that could be solved by fake dog poo.  I’m pretty sure this is the first time that last sentence was ever written in the English language.

polystat

Had much super fun time inserting receptacle into hand.

But . . .

  • Nearly every “portable digital automatic data processing machine not weighing more than 10 kilograms” comes from China – all $37 billion worth.
  • 65% of cell phones – $72 billion.
  • 80% of “other radio telephones” $44 billion.
  • And, oops, it seems that 80% of pharmaceuticals and 97% of antibiotics in the United States are imported from China ().

Amazingly, everything that China exports to the United States only amounts to (about) 3% or of the United States economy.  Stopping Chinese imports to the United States would have an immediate impact because of lowered sales regardless of what we import.  But as the bullet points above show, slowdown of imports from China could also have an immediate effect because of what we import.

The third impact would come from what we make out of the things that China sends us.  Things like . . . cars and pickups.  Where does the housing for the alternator in the Ford® pickup come from?  Touch screens?  How many are made in China?  How many days until Chevy™ can’t build a car because it’s missing a switch that runs an air conditioner?  Last time I checked, most cars need nearly 100% of the parts to be called a car.  At least until I work on the engine – then I always seem to have a few bolts left over.

headlight

Not one of my repairs.  But I have used zip ties as a structural material.

The third impact of reducing manufacturing in the United States would be large.  I don’t have precise figures but I can guess – it might be as much as a 10% drop in the economy in the year it happened.  For reference, the Great Recession of 2008 had a 4% drop in economic activity.

I’m probably not the guy to talk about how the Wuhan Flu is going to spread.  I’m certainly not the guy to tell you how to treat it if you get it.  But I do know that something like the shutting down of factories in China can spill over to the United States and cause recessions or worse, even if the Corona virus never became an epidemic here.

Stock up on pencils while you can . . . .

The Revolutionary: A Wilder Review

“We, the soldiers of The National Liberation Front of America, in the name of the workers and all the oppressed of this imperialist country, have struck a fatal blow to the fascist police state.  What better revolutionary example than to let their president perish in the inhuman dungeon of his own imperialist prison.” – Escape from New York

MAORIT

Rittenberg and Mao.  One of them was working for his country at the time.

Two weeks ago, Concerned American over at Western Rifle Shooters Association (LINK) posted about a documentary, The Revolutionary.  His request was pretty simple – “Find it.  Watch it.  Tell us about it.  Any takers?”

I raised my hand.  Here we are.  As you read this, I suggest one little thought:  would a Leftist takeover be any different in the United States?

The film opens with a shot of a library, filled with books with Chinese ideograms written on the spines.  Finally, the hand of an elderly man pulls Mao’s “Little Red Book” – Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-tung from the stack.  That elderly man, Sidney Rittenberg, then announces with gravity that Mao was a “great hero and great criminal.”

The Revolutionary is a documentary about Sidney Rittenberg and his time in China.

Sidney who?

Sidney Rittenberg was born in Charleston, South Carolina to a wealthy and politically powerful family.  Rittenberg went to college at the University of North Carolina.  The documentary doesn’t mention graduation (he didn’t), nor does it mention that he became a committed communist while at college (he did).  His first work was as a union organizer.  What union?  Apparently all of them.  Rittenberg recounts that one paper described him as:  “an alien element who is here spreading class hatred.”

I’m surprised he didn’t get shirts made.

rittenarm

“I don’t always fight for my country, but when I do it’s not really for my country.”

Sadly for the Chinese people, Rittenberg was drafted and sent to Stanford to learn Chinese for the U.S. Army.  After being sent to China with the Army, Rittenberg did the usual thing soldiers do and stayed and joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1946.  The film hints that Rittenberg made contact with communists as soon as he could after reaching China, so he might have been playing for both sides at once.

After joining the Chinese Communist Party, RIttenberg acted as a liaison and translator with the U.S. Army in the area – even translating the Laurel and Hardy movies that the Army brought (I’m not making this up) for Mao to watch.  Per Rittenberg, Mao told him that he wanted to show the world that “China could be civilized and democratic,” which I’m betting Mao thought was the central message of most Laurel and Hardy films.

In his first real taste of actual communism (versus the imaginary unicorn communism Rittenberg made up in his head) as Mao was about to take over Beijing and consolidate final victory on the Chinese mainland in 1949, Rittenberg was arrested because Stalin cabled Mao that Rittenberg was a spy.  This may be the only thing (besides dying) that I ever was happy that Stalin did.

attack

The Chinese version of Swan Lake has a slightly different ending and involves a steel mill.

For the next five years Rittenberg was in prison, and his account of this time in the documentary is filled with self-congratulation that he was a fine, faithful communist even in his jail cell.  Offered the chance to go home to the U.S., Rittenberg declined and studied for five years in his jail cell until Stalin died and he was released.  During the time he was in prison, the communists actively purged countless people on the losing side of the Chinese Civil War, and lost hundreds of thousands fighting Americans in Korea.  These were down from the 11,000,000 or so killed during the Chinese Civil War, so it almost seems like Mao was getting tired of killing Chinese.

Spoiler alert:  Not at all.

In theory, Rittenberg could be absolved of culpability in those deaths and the treason of supporting a government at war with the United States.  But after Stalin died, Rittenberg was released.  And after showing such loyalty by staying in prison, he was admitted to the “real” Communist Central Party.  He was on the inside.

How far inside?  In a country where hot running water was nearly unknown, he had it.  He had a driver and car at any time of the day or night.  If he wanted entertainment?  He had tickets to any shows.  Vacation travel.  And, he noted he was, “paid better than Mao.”

Rittenberg’s first crime, at least as shown in the documentary, was in 1957.  It was at that point where Mao’s “Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom, Let a Hundred Schools of Thought Contend” scheme unfolded.  Mao, in theory, told people to argue about what would be best for China and let the best ideas win.  Rittenberg admiringly notes that Mao, “with great artistry,” coaxed anyone who had a different opinion than Mao to speak it.  Then like a vengeful junior high cheerleader, after Mao knew who his enemies were, he crushed and ruined them.

lmao

Who says Mao doesn’t have a sense of humor?

One person who worked with Rittenberg in the Radio Beijing propaganda section during the “Hundred Flowers” was the daughter of the founder of Goldman Sachs®.  This unnamed daughter fought for the civil rights of those being crushed by Mao, and challenged Rittenberg.  Hadn’t Rittenberg fought for civil rights in the United States?

He had.

But she just didn’t get it, said Rittenberg.  Apparently civil rights were to be fought for before power was achieved.  After gaining power, civil rights weren’t something to fight for – they were a negative.  But Rittenberg got it.  Rittenberg described taking part in “struggle sessions” where people – his friends – were denounced, beaten, and berated.  Often, Chinese would commit suicide rather than be the subject of a struggle session.

Rittenberg’s second crime was in the Great Leap Forward.  I wrote (a bit) about the Great Leap Forward here:  In the World Murder Olympics, Communists Take Gold and Silver!.  This was Mao’s attempt to modernize the Chinese economy to match the industrial output of China to that of Great Britain within fifteen years.  The idea was that food production would exponentially increase, and that, from small steel forges in the backyards of peasant huts, steel would be made to match the output of a first world producer of steel.

But the Chinese had a problem.  How on Earth could they get that much iron and steel so quickly?

Easy!

Melt your pots.  Melt your pans.  Melt your plows and tools.  And while you have all the men working at melting down useful items, leave the fields to the very young and the very old.  Call the death toll due to famine as 40,000,000.  This brings Mao’s total up to 51,000,000.

Oops.  But he’s not done yet.

grtlp1

Spoiler:  there wasn’t a Chinese spaceship during the Great Leap Forward.  Also?  No Lucky Charms®.

This led to the largest famine in world history.  When this was pointed out to Mao by one of his trusted lieutenants, Peng Dehaui, Mao had Peng placed under arrest – later (during the Cultural Revolution) Peng was beaten so badly his back was splintered.  Taking constructive criticism might not have been at the top of Mao’s skill set.

But that’s not how Rittenberg sees it.  “Everybody lied.”  Rittenberg said that the lies started at the bottom, and the leadership farther up was “deceived.”  Certainly lower level officials gave the numbers Mao wanted to see.  They knew the alternative.

pretend

They also pretended to make steel.

For Rittenberg to blame the peasants and low level officials for lying is pretty much the “she had a short skirt on and I couldn’t help myself” level of defense – the defense of a man who knows that he was corrupted by luxury and ideology.

I’ll note here that for the last 2,000 years, China has led the world in killing Chinese.  The cumulative total for the various civil wars and fights dwarfs any other conflicts in the world.  And Mao killed more than Chinese than any person in history.

But a catastrophe as bad as the Great Leap Forward hurt even a near-deity like Mao.  He lost tremendous amounts of power as sane people tried to get the economy working again so that the Chinese would be a little less accomplished at killing Chinese.

Mao would have none of it – by far he was already the best killer of Chinese in history, and there was no way he was going to let up as long as he was alive.  He created Sidney Rittenberg’s next, and probably worst crime:  the Cultural Revolution.  I wrote (a little) about that, too:  Robespierre, Stalin, Mao, Mangos and A Future That Must Not Be.

To put the Cultural Revolution in perspective, it was really just a way for Mao to regain power.  Essentially, he told the youth that it was, “right to rebel” and to oust those that ran the communist government because they presumably weren’t good enough communists.  What was a bad communist?  Someone who was against Mao.

cultbomb

The nuclear spinach helped the most.

This is where Mao’s Little Red Book made its appearance.  Everyone had one.  Everyone HAD to have one.  What did it mean?  Whatever you thought, unless Mao said different.  Teenagers and college students were told to take control of their institutions, and they did, forming what they called the Red Guard.  But there were lots of different Red Guard organizations, and they often fought each other for no other reason than they had different opinions on the best way to support Mao.  Think of it as Lord of the Flies, but running Congress and every public institution.

Oops.  Too late.

At the least, hundreds of thousands died, with every kind of atrocity listed from cannibalism to baby-killing, all in the name of Mao.  The high range of the death toll was 20,000,000, which would take Mao’s total to over 70,000,000.  And Sidney Rittenberg was right in the middle of it.  He gave speeches to these Red Guards supporting them since that was, according to him, “my role to play.”

SIDNEY

Sidney gave speeches to every size crowd, from 100,000 at a stadium, to 12 people at a Denny’s™ grand opening.

Rittenberg was a prime figure in the start of the Cultural Revolution, he knew of the violence.  He knew of the murders, the suicides, the atrocities, and the ruined lives.  In his words, he “made feeble protests . . . against it.”  But he gave up, rationalizing that, “ . . . revolution is not like having guests to dinner . . . not gracious, not gentle.”

Rittenberg knew what was going on.  He related a story where one group of Red Guards captured and tortured rival Red Guard members.  They tortured them, and recorded the screams of the tortures.  Why?  So they could play them to their members to “harden” them.  Rittenberg knew that about shopkeepers killed.  Teachers stabbed.  All of this occurred while the army and police were told to keep their hands off and let the Red Guards do as they pleased.

Rittenberg knew that millions were being murdered.  One military leader told him that, “more soldiers were killed in the Cultural Revolution than in any campaign in China’s history.”

DINNER

Yes, Rittenberg knew this was going on.  And he willingly went along with it.

Eventually, if you play with dictators, you’ll eventually end up on the wrong side of them.  Rittenberg did.  At this point in the documentary, The Mrs. noted that, “it was too bad they didn’t put a bullet in his head.”  She’s cuddly that way.  But she’s not wrong.  Instead they stuck him in solitary, and let him out after Deng Xiaoping took control after Mao died.

Since it looked like there wasn’t much country left to loot and they stopped killing Chinese by the bucketful, and finding his luxurious lifestyle gone, Rittenberg felt his job in China was done and took his wife and family and moved to the United States.  He was only there for 60,000,000 of the 71,000,000 deaths that occurred during Mao’s time.

Several of the scenes of the documentary were shot in Rittenberg’s house, I assume.  The house was beautiful – lake or oceanfront beautiful, and contained a dining room set that probably cost thousands of dollars.  How did a poor communist afford it?

After coming back to the United States, he sold his Chinese connections to the highest corporate bidder, and charged millions.  After taking part in activities that destroyed millions of lives, he lived the last forty years of his life in luxury, apparently unburdened by self-reflection of an odious, treasonous, treacherous, and pathetic life that brought tragedy to so many.  Not that I’m judgmental.  To me, the most chilling part is how the one person he didn’t blame for the horror that was Chinese communism was, well, him.

At the end of the documentary, he has a rare moment where he reflects that maybe he would have been better just going over and helping the Chinese and teaching English, and not being a leader in the Chinese Communist Party.

“But I didn’t want that.”

And neither do the would-be Rittenbergs that are present here in the United States today.  They want the power.  They don’t mind the body count.

The Revolutionary, 2013, 1 hour and 32 minutes, is streaming now on Amazon® Prime™.