Free Speech? Not If You Want Healthcare.

In the wild, there is no health care. In the wild, health care is, “Ow, I hurt my leg. I can’t run. A lion eats me and I’m dead.” Well, I’m not dead. I’m the lion. You’re dead. – The Office

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Thankfully we have the United Nations – where governments that oppose free speech can finally be heard.

On Monday, November 4, 2019, the National Health Service (NHS) of North Bristol, like my ex-wife, implemented a policy to deny service to people whose opinions they don’t like.  The italicized text directly below is me quoting the NHS directly.

The abusive behaviour policy covers anyone (visitors or patients – J.W.) with mental capacity making (sic):

  • Racist or sexist language, gestures or behaviour.
  • Excessive noise.
  • Abuse of alcohol or drugs.
  • Threatening and offensive language.
  • Malicious allegations.
  • Intentional damage to trust property.

I’m pretty sure my ex-wife’s list is shorter, consisting of only one item: “Being John Wilder.”  Breaking those NHS rules will get you banned from the hospital.  If you are a patient, they’ll at least wait until your life isn’t in immediate danger.  And then they won’t serve you anymore.

You can read it all here (LINK).  First, I’m assuming that whoever wrote the web page knew English, but the English spell it behaviour – we spell it behavior.  They spell it colour, we spell it color.  Flavour?  No, flavor.  I guess that must be why George Washington texted King George “LOL, getting rid of u” in 1776.  Second, this seems like a pretty reasonable list, right?  How could you be upset about those things?  If someone were coming into my place of business, I’d kick them out for doing many of the things listed.

But this isn’t a private business – this is the provider of healthcare for 90%+ of the population of the United Kingdom.  And the plain language that you and I might agree was reasonable will morph over time.  A guy casting a porno movie is being investigated for a hate crime in Britain because he didn’t want to cast a transsexual with, um, man parts for the porno he was filming about sex between a man and a woman.  Why is that a hate crime?  Because the transsexual (who, I remind you, has man parts) identifies as female and wants to play the woman’s part in a porno, but without having woman parts.

Yeah.  I need a scorecard, too.

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I guess there’s no Internet in Farmington, NM.

But the silliness doesn’t stop there:  a comedian that goes by the Internet name “Count Dankula” was sentenced to an £800 fine for teaching his girlfriend’s dog a trick.  Was the trick eating toddlers?  No.  The trick was teaching the dog a salute that was fairly popular in Germany between 1932 and 1945.  Why would he do that?  He was irritating his girlfriend, and unless he can teach the dog to pilot a bulldog-scale Messerschmitt Bf-109, I think the United Kingdom is safe.  Since the dog was featured on a YouTube® video, it is, therefore:  hate crime.

Given the two examples above, if I were British, I’d have zero confidence in the way those “reasonable” points on the list above would be interpreted in the future.  Deny white privilege?  Obviously hate speech – we’re not going to work on your broken leg.  Oppose continual reparations for (INSERT GROUP HERE)?  Obviously racist – we’re sending you to racist jail!

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Help me eliminate all Cancers.  Then we’ll move to the Capricorns.

Great Britain has had the National Health Service since 1948, since they decided that German bombs weren’t effective enough at destroying their economy.  I kid.  The English seem to generally like the NHS – like Social Security in the United States it appears to be a political third rail.  Touch it, and your career in eating crumpets, bangers, mash, and drinking tea in Parliament is over and it’s back to fish and chips and sending your children to the mill so you have enough money to buy cheap gin.

The service has drawbacks, but seems to work for the English, for now.  I have some doubts about long-term viability, but I’m not British, so I don’t get a vote.  But “Baby Oliver” is alive today (LINK) because even though the NHS refused to operate on him, he got surgery in the United States.  It appears that the NHS learned their lesson with that publicity – they wouldn’t even let “Baby Alfie” out of the country (LINK).

On the bright side, dentistry is free(ish), too.

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The British have sensitive teeth.  They’re so sensitive, just saying that offends them.

The kicker is, of course, the control.  The most ominous line in the press release is:

Any cases will be reported on the trust’s (a subdivision of the NHS – J.W.) incident management system and on patients’ individual notes.

Back when I was in grade school, teachers would say in a really grave tone that certain behavior would end up “on our Permanent Record.”  They really said that, and you could hear the capital letters when they spoke.  It was as if that in some far-flung future where Snake Plisskin was attempting to break the President out of New York and I was applying for a job and it would still be in the Permanent Record.

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The Secret Service expenses for all of the living ex-presidents are highest for Bill Clinton.  That party bus ain’t gonna drive itself!

I imagined that when I finally got that great interview to be Starship Captain or whatever the interviewer would pull out a copy of my Permanent Record, shake his head disapprovingly, and say, “I’m sorry, Mr. Wilder.  We simply cannot offer you a job because in fifth grade you called Brenda Vincent, a,” he would then take a long pause and adjust his glasses while staring at the paper, “poopy haired chum smuggler.  We simply cannot have a man like that at Enron®.”

In reality, my Permanent Record from grade school was probably sent to a landfill when they tore the building down.  Brenda’s bait smuggling history is now lost to eternity.

But in 2019 we really do have permanent records, and in greater detail than most people realize.  I get ads on my laptop in the evening that relate to conversations that I had in the afternoon when the laptop was off but my phone was nearby.  There are networks of cameras that cross the nation that track license plates.  If you use a credit card, you can be tracked from gas station to gas station and hotel to hotel.  Your Internet search history?  If your ISP doesn’t have it, the NSA does.  Speaking of job interviews – you don’t really have to apply to the NSA – they already have your resume, cover letter, and know all of your references.

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At least someone is interested in my life.

Increasingly in our “capitalist” system, people with unpopular opinions keep getting being censored, but it gets worse. Recently, Stefan Molyneux, who is more of a libertarian than anything, was kicked off of PayPal® – though at this writing those links were still up.  If he were in the U.K., he might be denied medical services as well, and since he’s suffering from Stage 4 baldness, I hate to think about the potential future complications.

To be clear:  in a socialist medical system, if you disagree with their opinions, the Leftists want to deny you medical service, and hope that you die.  In a capitalist technocracy, if you disagree with their opinions, the Leftists want to silence you, deny you banking services, and hope that you die.

This will be a factor in your life.  Life may get very rough before it gets better, and “rough” may last quite a few years.  But I tend to think that the Right will win in the end.  Why?

Because my ex-wife is on the Left.  And I wasn’t sure about Hell until I met her.  Now I’m sure.

So if there’s Hell?

There’s Heaven.  Onward, my friends!

Why Character Just Might Be A Better Indicator Of Marriage Stability Than What Her Butt Looks Like

“Just because you are a character doesn’t mean that you have character.” – Pulp Fiction

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When the bugman began to hate . . .

There was a time after She Who Will Not Be Named was forever banished from Stately Wilder Manor, but before I met The Mrs.  Yes, your host, the John Wilder was single.  Can you believe I didn’t beat the ladies off with a stick?  I mean, the restraining order and all . . . well . . . the less said about that the better.

There was one particular woman who had caught my attention.  One evening, I introduced her to my friend who I’ll call Jim, mainly because his name is Jim.  Oops – I think I’ve said too much.  Now everyone will know who he is.  If only Jim weren’t such a rare name!

“What did you think?” I asked Jim.

Ever the good friend, Jim said, and this is an exact quote:  “What do you two have in common besides your eyes and her butt?”

They say that for a statement to really hurt, it has to be true.  Jim had delivered the Atomic Wedgie of Truth®.  He was, of course, correct.  And you should be so lucky to have friends that will tell you the truth as bluntly and completely as Jim.  The relationship between the woman’s butt and my eyes ended soon thereafter.

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A friend of mine went to the hospital because of a wedgie – sadly, he was diagnosed with Stage 4 dorkiness.

Not only is character important in dating, it was pretty important to a company I worked for once upon a time:  I was one of the employees lucky enough to be trained in behavior-based interviewing.  The basic idea of behavior-based interviewing is that people, like the official results of Jeffery Epstein’s autopsy, don’t change very much.  Therefore, the best way to get an actual prediction of the candidate’s future behavior is to understand the candidate’s past behavior.  Then we were taught how to interview so they would share relevant situations so we could understand the candidate really well.

If the interview technique is done right, it doesn’t feel like an interview, it feels like casual conversation.

I was horrible in my first few interviews, as in scaring the candidate because he thought the company hired robotic androids that only appeared to be human.  Thankfully, there was a feedback system from the candidates, and my boss gave me some tips based on it.  He told me that it was okay to blink and breathe while conducting an interview, and that wouldn’t be perceived by the candidate as weakness.  I took a risk that he was right, and the candidates stopped shaking so much during the interviews.  I guess staring unblinkingly directly into their eyes nonstop during the interview is a bit creepy, so I allowed myself no fewer than three blinks per minute.

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I really messed up this interview.  They asked me if I was a people person.  I answered, “Yes!  I am a people!  Or is they go great with mustard a better answer?”

But if you do anything several hundred times, you can get pretty good at it unless you’re Nicholas Cage acting in a movie.  It (really) did bug the candidates that I could take notes without looking down at my notepad.  It’s not a great superpower, but I decided to keep that quirk going, since it was a sign of dominance that I could use to weed out the weak.  And I eventually ended up interviewing hundreds of new graduate applicants – heck, I even used the behavior-based interviewing techniques on The Mrs. the night we met to see if she had any of the character, um, difficulties that led to the untimely departure of She Who Will Not Be Named.

The Mrs. didn’t have those flaws.

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So, on one blind date the girl said she was a huge country fan.  Me:  “Well, I like Russia, too.”

The thing that surprised me the most was that interviewees would tell me the most incredible things – like how they’d lied to people.  How they’d stolen from their employer.  How much they felt the world was out to get them.  By the way, if you lived in Fayetteville, Arkansas in 1998 and never figured out who shaved your pig, dyed it blue, and dressed it like Dolly Parton, I think I might know the guy that did it.  Don’t worry – he told me it was mostly consensual.  Except for the perfume.

The interviewing system was based almost entirely around character.  The company I was working for considered good character the most important factor in what constituted a good employee.  More than once I heard, “You can teach a good person to do their job, but you can’t teach a bad person to be good,” from my boss.  Then he’d shake his head and look at me with a sad, defeated expression on his face.  Of course I didn’t blink.  I had to show him the respect due the alpha of the pack.

But there were employees who actually possessed good character there, too.  As an example, one employee I know was attempting to find some financial information that was relevant to his job.  Somehow in working through the company computer network he stumbled upon the check writing software.

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Thankfully the money is headed her way from that Nigerian prince. 

Yes.  My friend found the software that would have allowed him to write himself a check for $50,000,000.  No human would have seen the check – it would have been printed on company check stock, signed with a dot-matrix signature, popped in the mail, and delivered directly to my friend’s house.  The company had billions (really) in the bank.  It wouldn’t have been immediately caught.

My friend called me over and showed it to me.  It was a moment I was in awe.  This company had huge piles of money in various bank accounts.  I realized that just a few keystrokes could end up making my friend an overnight millionaire, at least until the audit found a few missing millions.  In a situation that would tempt some people, my friend calmly picked up the phone, called accounting, and let them know they had a really big problem.  And he didn’t do it from a beach in Brazil while sipping some drink that comes with an umbrella.  But not flaming.  That’s for tourists.

That’s good character.

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Climate science has taught us that science demands seriousness.

The company actually had a list of traits they were looking for.  What did they consider good character?  Humility was on the list, as was honesty and a few other things people generally think are representative of virtue, as I wrote about Kardashians, Hairy Bikinis, Elvis, Wealth, and Virtue.  There are a lot of things that change about people, but absent a significant psychological event (and sometimes not even then), their character doesn’t change.

That brings me to this statement:  the most important part of parenting is helping to build character.  I think I’ve established that character is important, so when is it important?

I think that the primary focus of parenthood is guiding children through one critical age range:  middle school, from the ages of around 11 to, say, 14.  Did you go to grade school with someone who was pretty cool, only to watch them become a complete dirtbag in high school?  I know I did, and the time that they went downhill was in middle school.

The ages of 11 to 14 are where kids are first practicing at being adults, and are in the process of crystallizing the character that will define them for the rest of their lives.  They’re understanding being really hurt and rejected for the first time, how to deal with defeat.  What love is.  What their values are.  How to deal with victory.  They’re understanding what true friendship and loyalty really is.  They’re finally (thankfully) understanding what deodorant is, though generally just a few weeks too late.

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Knowing how to relate to Pugsley is everything.

And they’re deciding if they want to reject virtue and turn to the Dark Side© evil.  Sorry, but Disney® has trademarked that phrase, along with all jokes related to mice, intellectual property abuse, and and ducks.  And, yes, I understand that some percentage, say 70%, of character is flat-out genetic in nature.  There are families of dirtbags that have been dirtbags for 100 years.  If you think about it, you’ll know who I’m talking about.

As I mentioned before, I even used the techniques I learned from interviewing in the blind date that eventually netted The Mrs.  When I finally took The Mrs. over to meet Jim and his family, Jim approved.  “You guys seem great for each other.”

Perhaps Seneca, writing back in 60 AD or so (back when your Momma was just 50 years old), said it best:

Each person acquires their own character, but their official roles are designated by chance.  You should invite some to your table because they are deserving, others because they may come to deserve it.”

When you are evaluating people to be your friend, your mate, or your employee, character is primary.  Great butts are secondary, in the end.

Get it?  Butts?  In the end?

I kill me.

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Civil War II Weather Report: One Year Out. Plus Bikini Graphs.

“It’s my pot pie!” – South Park

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After you’ve killed the last vampire, I guess it’s you’ve got the final Count down.

  1. Those who have an opposing ideology are considered evil.
  2. People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology.  Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
  3. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
  4. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures.  Just in case.

As tempted as I am to move the clock because of the party-line impeachment inquiry vote, I’m going to hold at Stage 7 this month.  A more formal set of structure needs to be in place to get to Stage 8.

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The French Civil War lasted a very long time.  Those guys just couldn’t win.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Violence and Censorship Update – Civil War II Goes Mainstream –– Updated Civil War II Index – Starvation (via Yer Ol’ Woodpile Report) – Links

Welcome to Issue Six of the Civil War II Weather Report.  These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War II, on the first Monday of every month.  Issue One is here (LINK), Issue Two is here (LINK), Issue Three is here (LINK), Issue Four is here (LINK) and Issue Five is here (LINK).

Violence and Censorship Update

Just once I’d like to come back and report that things were looking good for censorship, that, hey, life is getting better.  October 2019 was not that month.  In October, Twitter® made the announcement that they were not going to accept advertisements from political candidates anymore.  That’s good.  Last election I voted based on yard signs.  I think I voted for my realtor.

That sounds fairly even-handed.  But Twitter© engages in soft censorship as well, limited the reach of many tweets, most of them on the Right.  If asked, I’m sure the Twitter© would indicate, innocently, that “it was the algorithm” that was responsible.

That’s a pretty little lie fancy way of saying, “we don’t like your speech so we’re going to tune the computers to allow less of it.”

Also deleted this month was Red Ice, a 330,000 subscriber channel on YouTube®.  Since that was a main source of income (via sales) it hits the creators economically.  Paypal® banned “street artist” Sabo.  They’re hanging on to his money for six months They paid him after the bad publicity (LINK).  In the article, they have a link to a poster he was selling on (Regr)Etsy™?  Funny, not available on (Regr)Etsy© anymore.  It’s almost like he’s . . . censored.

Do not, for an instant, think that payment sites, video sites, and social media sites are anything but Leftist sites.  If you are on the Right, they want you to be silent.  If you won’t shut up, what condition do you think they want you in?

I love this video – it shows the real way that censorship works – when the ideas are censored, your mind replaces the censored material with something that was likely more exciting than the original material.  Censorship will backfire.  I too, love to BLEEP all day.

Civil War II Goes Mainstream

I heard once upon a time that couples who don’t divorce, don’t talk about divorce.  It’s as if the idea of the divorce wasn’t even allowed to enter the room.  The logic, I suppose, is that once you talk about divorce, it becomes one step closer to being real.  In that way, a divorce in New Mexico, a tornado in Oklahoma, and a civil war in the United States all have something in common – someone is losing a trailer home.

On more than one occasion this month Drudge® (yes, I know) has featured stories on the United States being near the outbreak of a Civil War.  Most of the articles really didn’t read the study; in it, it asked, on a scale of 1=peace and 10=war, where are we in the United States.  This is exactly the scale I developed in Issue One of the Weather Report.  I have us pegged at a 7.  So does the average respondent in the linked (LINK) survey.  I don’t know any social science jokes – I took chemistry instead.  And my chemistry jokes never got a reaction.

So, yeah.  7 out of 10 on the Civil War scale.  It’s not just you.  It’s not just me.  This poll shows that everyone feels we’re headed this way, and most people feel we’re about the same distance from crossing into chaos.  I hope it’s not chaotic like the Mexican Civil War where they ended up fighting Juan-on-Juan.

This month we are one year out from the 2020 presidential election.  I think if the Democrats had any confidence in one of their candidates beating Trump, there would be no official impeachment inquiry in the House – this is an emergency effort.  If you go back and read my previous posts, I was pretty skeptical that we’d see impeachment proceedings in 2019/2020.  But here we are, so take all of my predictions with a grain of salt.  There are several outcomes we can review at this point:

Senate Clears Trump, Trump Wins:  Probably the most likely scenario as of this writing, and also the most amusing.

Outcome:  I can foresee that one way where we tiptoe through this crisis without collapse is that Trump wins and somehow avoids the twin specters of public Balkanization (Left and Right) and economic downfall.  More likely?  Four more years of divided government, where Trump is thwarted at every turn by activist judges that hate (certain) laws being enforced with increasing deficit spending.  Expect increasing street violence.  Regardless:  Trump will be the Last President (Trump: The Last President?).

Senate Clears Trump, Trump Loses:  The second most likely scenario, although in this case I simply cannot see a Democratic candidate that won’t whither under the Twitter®fied gaze of Trump.  However, Silicon Valley® is doing everything it can to pull all of the oxygen it can away from Trump – it has deleted account after account of followers on the Right for comments that followers on the Left routinely get away with.

Outcome:  This emboldens the Left.  They think they have already won.  I would anticipate an attempt to immediately erase everything Trump did, up to and including stacking the Supreme Court.  Attempting to push too far, too fast tips the economy.  Things get spicy, quickly.

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Elizabeth Warren would lose the election to a drawer full of socks.  I think she can taste defeat.

Senate Convicts Trump, Democrat Win in 2020:  The third most likely scenario.  Which democrat?  Elizabeth Warren?  Creepy Joe?

Outcome:  This also emboldens the Left, perhaps even more than Trump being acquitted.  In this they would have their dream of the last three years come true.  The Democratic party is already split, between the Legacy Left (think Biden, Pelosi) and the True Left (think AOC and the Teen Girl Squad).  This puts the True Left into control.  The True Left likes what’s going on in Venezuela and Cuba.  Gotta break a few eggs to get to the Worker’s Paradise, right comrade?

Senate Convicts Trump, Republican Win in 2020:  The least likely scenario of the four, and also the weirdest of the four.

Outcome:  The Republicans would be in disarray after a conviction.  In fact, I think in more ways than one, Trump has ripped apart the Republican party from within and exposed people like Mittens Romney as the “me too, but let’s wait a year” wing of the Democratic party.  I’d be surprised if Mittens isn’t writing articles titled, “The Conservative Case for Redistribution of the Means of Production to the Proletariat,” and, “Transgender Surgery for Minors – A True Conservative Value.”  The Left would be even more outraged that yet another election was stolen, and would push back even harder.

Are there other scenarios?  Sure – we are in a time where people think we’re 70% of the way to Civil War.  That could lead to things normally reserved for Third World countries where the President-for-life wears a fancy uniform with lots of medals.  Coups.  Military juntas.  Trump calling out tanks in the streets.  A ninth season of Game of Thrones.

Updated Civil War II Index

I’ve been teasing graphs for two months – here they are, with full bikini treatment.

Violence:

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Up is bad.  Violence is up overall during the year.  I would have expected that it would have peaked in the summer, but, no.  It’s staying high.  I expect real riots in June and July of 2020.  Potentially there will be riots at both national conventions – the Republicans in North Carolina, the Democrats in Wisconsin.  I expect that the Republican National Convention in 2028 will be held in a Ramada Inn® in northwestern Montana.  The Democrats?  Probably a reinforced bunker in an undisclosed location.

Political Instability:

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Up is bad.  Surprisingly, down a little from September, but still quite high.  Actual action on impeachment will increase this, especially if resolve fails in the Senate.

Economic:

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Down is bad.  Weird things are going on in the economy.  Interest rates in many countries are negative(!), yet mortgage rates went up last month.  High interest rates in mortgages will lead to housing price declines.  And the last time that happened . . . .

Illegal Aliens:

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Down is good, since (in theory) ICE is catching fewer aliens because there are fewer people trying to get in.  Trebuchets would get that number to zero in an afternoon.

Starvation (via Yer Ol’ Woodpile Report)

“As in all war, food would be weaponized in a Civil War II. We don’t have to go back to antiquity for examples, more recent events provide a long list . . . .”

Remus talks about this in issue 600 (LINK) and issue 601 (LINK) of Yer Ol’ Woodpile Report.  These would be good to read and share with friends.

History and cold calculation suggest food would be a weapon in a Civil War II, one of many, but of prime importance long term. Civil wars have long gestations, go kinetic suddenly and get complicated in a hurry. We have no firm knowledge what would set it off, who would be actively involved or how it would end. But the outlines are repeated well enough to guide our preparations.

The ruling class already treats middle America as this century’s Untermensch. Nothing is off the table in a civil war. Seizing the nation’s food would be an obvious move. Expect them to deploy troops to secure big ag and the necessary transportation facilities, destroy anyone who got in their way and terrorize potential troublemakers. But there’s a limit to even the deep state’s resources. Prudent survivalists in the far hills wouldn’t warrant their attention, they’d be more likely to trade shots with desperados than find themselves in a firefight with regular forces.

Food is the indispensable survival prep. At minimum this means a secure long-term stash of high calorie food sufficient to outlast the initial violence and privation without relying on resupply. Call it a year, maybe two.

The United States is one of the most spoiled blessed countries on Earth.  Calories here are cheap and abundant, and very few people in the United States have ever felt real hunger at all.  Starvation is such a non-problem that there is no statistics for people in the United States who have died of starvation.  The biggest complaints is that people live in “food deserts” where the only things they can get are processed foods, which make them fat.  More like “food desserts” than food deserts.

Are there hungry people in the United States?  Certainly.  Are there many starving people?  Certainly not.  Obesity in children is a far bigger problem.  Oops.  Was that insensitive?  Larger problem?

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Beefcake!

Hunger is a potent weapon.  Food is, by any historical calculation, amazingly cheap now.  Stocking up 3,000 calories per day for a person for a year could be done for $500 – if you really like rice.  Flour is cheaper – $250 or so.  For a year.  It’s not a lot of variety, but it’s way better than starving.  Here’s a great website that breaks down food on the basis of how many calories you can buy for a dollar (LINK).  How much would you like to have if the trucks stopped coming to the local store?

Check out The Bison Prepper (LINK) for ideas on frugal prepping when dollars matter.  Time might be short.

Links

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As always, please feel free to send me links or leave them in the comments!

Glenda on Globalism.

Adam on Multiculturalism.

A book suggestion from Montefrio at The Burning Platform.

From Mary Christine at The Burning Platform:  Frank and Fern.

From Vote Harder at The Burning Platform – 500 survival links.

A video from Mark at The Burning Platform.

An article from Mark at The Burning Platform on Lenin.

From Ricky:

Feels Like Civil War

America’s Domestic Viet Cong

Permanent Coup

Life is Struggle. Struggle is Easier with Panzers. Especially if You’re Struggling with France.

“Your death will stand as a landmark in the continuing struggle to liberate the parent land from the hands of the Roman imperialist aggressors, excluding those concerned with drainage, medicine, roads, housing, education, viniculture and any other Romans contributing to the welfare of Jews of both sexes and hermaphrodites.” – Life of Brian

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Fun fact:  the first winner of the Tour de France was a Panzerkampfwagen III.

A few years back I worked with a friend named Will.  Will was one of the more creative people I’d ever worked with.  One particular week, I knew he had a deadline to finish a rather significant project for our boss that Friday.  It was Tuesday and I asked him if he had finished it, since he was goofing off enough to make George R.R. Martin’s writing progress look like a cocaine-snorting crotch-weasel.  And cocaine-snorting crotch-weasels move pretty fast.

Will responded, “No.  I think I’ll start on Thursday afternoon.”

In the conversation that followed Will admitted that work was pretty easy for him.  “But if I wait until I have some important deadline, until I’m not sure that I have enough time to finish, then work gets pretty interesting.”  He was completely serious.  He didn’t really care if he got fired or in trouble – he just wanted life to be interesting.  I thought about it, and, looking back, had noticed that I had done much the same thing.  In fact, it’s so common, there are thousands of posters and jokes about it.  I mean, if they threatened to kill one of my friends each hour I procrastinated, I could probably be pretty productive.  But, you know that depends, too:  which friend?

In retrospect, this points out that winning doesn’t make people happy, in and of itself.  If that was the case, Will would have done his work in advance and goofed off later rather than earlier.  That’s simply not the case.  Most people do the same and procrastinate in some fashion.  Statistics show anywhere from 25% to 95% of people procrastinate.

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Procrastination will be my downfall.  Emphasis on “will”.   

That’s a wide enough range to be utterly meaningless.  And since social scientists did the study, I trust it about as much as I trust drunken toddlers run the legislative branch of our government.  Congressmen probably would agree with me, since I know that they generally really hate that kind of competition from intellectually superior people who are at least attempting to be potty trained.

Why procrastination?

I think there’s a lot of stress today in the workplace because the work is no longer optimized for the worker, it’s optimized for the lowest common denominator.  Most companies want most processes to be able to be done by someone of limited *ahem* intellectual means.  That makes the pool of qualified workers so much bigger, and they can pay lower wages.  Keep in mind, this doesn’t mean that everyone who’s working a job that’s designed for an I.Q. of 85 has an I.Q. of 85 – far from it.  But take someone of average (100) I.Q. and dump them in an 85 I.Q. job?  There is more than a little potential for boredom.

And with that boredom can come mischief.

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Horseplay?  Quit foaling around.

The best possible job for anyone has certain characteristics – you know what’s expected of you.  You have the tools to do it.  Crucially, the job can’t be so easy that it’s trivial.  The job should also not be so hard as to be frustrating.  There’s that middle road, where you’re learning, where there’s enough challenge to keep you fully engaged in the work.  Thankfully, many jobs have a ladder where as you increase your competence, you get increased responsibilities.

The downside, of course, is that the most skilled carpenter might make a really crappy carpenter foreman.  The skill set from one spot in the organizational hierarchy to the next step up may not even be remotely related.  The idea and general practice of promoting the best carpenter to foreman at least has one advantage – at least we know that the foreman is good at something.  That something may not be leading people, but worst case, his people know he’s good with a hammer.

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H.P. Lovecraft loved getting hickies, but would only get them from neck romancers.

I’ve mentioned the following story more than once, but I keep bringing it up because it was one of my “a-ha!” moments of understanding in life.  In the very old HBO® series Dream On the protagonist was a literary agent.  He had a secretary named Toby, who specialized in being unhelpful.  In one episode, Toby was at work, playing a supermarket simulator on the company computer.  She started as a bag boy.

“Cleanup in Aisle 9!” she screamed at one point in the episode.  She showed an intensity playing the game that she never showed on her job.  “I’ve been moved to cashier!”  She was thrilled at the promotion.

Finally, her crowning achievement.  Toby had won the game.

“I did it!  I did it!  I’m the manager!” she yelled, with excitement.

A long pause.

“Of a supermarket . . .”

Now her voice had dropped into a questioning tone.

“that doesn’t exist.”  The last line was delivered with profound sadness and self-awareness that her day had been wasted.

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Me:  What’s up, glitches?

Toby, the secretary had been thoroughly engaged in the game in a way that was never available to her in real life.  I’ve played a few video games since seeing that episode, but for the most part that one line stripped them bare to me:  “Manager . . . of a supermarket . . . that doesn’t exist.”  It showed that her victory was as hollow to her as the skull of a congresswoman from New York.

Since many jobs have been defined downward in so many ways, I can certainly see the rise of gaming.  Gaming sells the experience people want and need.  Good games provide a tutorial system to show you how to use the controls.  They then run you through a series of challenges that teach you to be more competent with the in-game systems and controls, and provide tools that are in many cases only barely adequate for the job, requiring focus and concentration for you to succeed.  Winning the game requires an investment of work, study, concentration, focus, and control.  And $60.

Games provide the challenges that work really should be providing to the younger generation.  They often have tools and abilities that far exceed what their job should provide.  How do they cope?  Killing cops, stealing cars, shooting radioactive zombie cowboys.  But eventually you have to go home so you can play your game that you paid $60 for.

Gaming is popular because humans are machines built to compete.  If life offers sufficient competition to keep us interested?  Fine.  But if living standards are great and everything is going well, but the people aren’t challenged?  Hello, World War One.  There was simply no reason for Europe to descend into that madness other than things were going well and the people were rich and bored.

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If you survive assault, pepper spray, and mustard gas, are you a seasoned veteran?

Easy success is boredom.  What happens to a society, a world, where success is set on easy?  It breeds discontent.  We see that in Europe now.  Germany was nice and happy and reunited and things were going well.  Boring.

Here’s an idea!  Let’s import a bunch of foreigners.  That should spice things up!  Foreigners now make up 12.8% of the population, but commit 34.7% of the crimes, according to the Wall Street Journal®.  Why do they commit the crimes?  I’m pretty sure I don’t care.  But why would Germany want to import a population that commits 30% of the murders and over 41% of the burglaries?  They were bored.  Things were going too well.

Normally, when things were going too well, Germany would fire up the panzers and take a trip west, but that turned out just to be too easy.  And I like giving the French a hard time – I get more visitors from Malta (Want Some Short Term Gain and Long Term Pain? Also, Malta.) than from France.  And the Germans certainly couldn’t take over Malta, mainly because the distance to Malta isn’t measured in panzers per baguette.

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I recently read a book about French war heroes.  That was an inspiring six pages.

But if you have the difficulty of your society set too hard?  Riots and revolution and turning into a tyrannical dictatorship.  The difficulty is no easier, but at least you get brainwashing and random executions, so there’s that.

Western Civilization has been fairly stable is that it’s built on two fairly strong foundations – capitalism and hierarchy.

Crony capitalism is inevitable.  If I were to say “in a properly functioning capitalist society” I’d be no better than the Leftist weasels that lament that their particular brand of Hell on Earth has never been tried.  No.  Capitalism in the United States isn’t fair, and the rich get to make a lot of the rules and restrict competition.  But you have the ability to join them.  The system isn’t so rigged that mobility is impossible.  And you can certainly trace out a comfortable life, especially if you’re born rich.

But capitalism really does provide competition – it’s hard to dominate a system (unless your name is Bezos) that is so huge, just like Jeff’s mistresses butt.  It’s a game of nearly infinite complexity.  You can play as hard and as long as you want on so many different angles.  That leads to stability.

The other factor leading to stability is hierarchy.  Men, left alone, will soon develop a hierarchy.  They want the hierarchy.  It gives them a place.  It creates (generally) healthy competition to reach the top, unless your name is Macbeth.  That hierarchy is often replicated in structures across the country – from homeowners associations at the very bottom, to Elon Musk at the very top.

Sure, there is only one Elon, but you can live in the middle to upper half of the hierarchy without having to even have a job.  There are many activities that pay nothing and lead to huge amounts of mojo.  Musician.  Biker.  Actor waiter.

Blogger.

And, yes, there are days when I put off things, too.  I’ve had this one project I need to do at work.  I’ve had it since July.  It’s due next Friday.

Guess I should be starting that one pretty soon . . . .

Success, Fight Club, Strippers and Socialists

“We have just lost cabin pressure.” – Fight Club

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The second rule of Wilder Club is if this is your first visit, you have to comment.

I had a conversation with a friend today.  Oh, sure, I hear you say, what would an iconoclastic iron-jawed individualist with a body odor redolent of medium rare ribeye (with just a hint of pepper) like John Wilder need with a friend?  I guess we all have our little weaknesses.  And dogs follow me.  Because I smell like steak.

In this particular case as with most of my friends, I’ve known this friend for years.  I’ve known most of my close friends longer than The Boy has been alive, and he’s in college now.  It’s nice.  If a day, a week, a month or a year goes by, so what?  We can still restart the conversation where we left off.  It’s as comfortable as watching a movie you’ve seen a dozen times.

I’ll make the observation that the only place where the character of people change is in a movie – almost all of my close friends have the same sense of humor and the same sense of values that they had when our friendships were forming.  Absent a significant emotional event, people are a constant.

And I like that.

There is a corresponding trust that comes with being a close friend – honesty.  That’s why when talking with my friend, I really enjoyed the chance to be honest.  Honesty is difficult because it requires that trust, because really honest criticism is hard to take, even when it comes from a friend.  Or a co-worker.  Or a relative.  Or someone you just met.  Or your UPS® delivery guy.  Oh, wait.  Most people don’t like honest.  But my friends do.

This particular friend is really in a good position in life, which seems to be a common pattern with my friends.  He has a spouse that makes more money than he does, and, in general, the household probably brings in enough cash each month so that Nigerian princes send emails to them asking for money.  They’re wealthy enough that they donate to the homeless.  This appears to be a more socially acceptable donation strategy than my “donation to the topless,” scheme.

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Yes, this is the only joke that I’ve ever seen that involves both the Greco-Roman philosophy of stoicism and stripping.  I’m sure that Seneca would be proud.

But lest ye want to class my friend as the evil, selfish, wealthy type, he’s not.  The family has a huge number of kids, and it’s a close family.  My friend is constantly taking time off to go to athletic events, and when we catch up, I can sense that the relationship he has with his kids isn’t a surface relationship – it’s genuine and deep.  I can tell, because I know people who understand genuine relationships, who listen to both sides of a family argument – my neighbors.

And yet . . . despite the wealth, despite the great family, my friend feels that there’s something missing.  He is as high as he wants to go in the company he works at – any higher and the travel demands would pull him away from family.  He’s long since mastered his job – there is little that can be thrown at him that he hasn’t seen in the last fifteen or so years.  So, his condition is one of high pay, mastery of work, and, improbably, discontent.

John Wilder:  “You realize you have an advantage that 99% of people would die for.  You’re financially secure.  You can quit your job anytime.  Literally, you could walk in to your boss this afternoon and quit.  Your lifestyle wouldn’t change a bit.”

Not Elon Musk:  “Yes.”

Unlikely Voice of Wisdom John Wilder:  “So, what is it you want to do?”

Really, I Promise It Isn’t Elon Musk:  “I need to think about it.”

Channeling Tyler Durden From Fight Club® John Wilder:  “No.  If you think about it, you’ll end up doing nothing but thinking about it.  You have to do something.  Physically start it.  This weekend.  I’ll check back on Monday to see how you did.”

There is a scene in the movie Fight Club™ where Tyler Durden holds a gun to the head of a liquor store clerk.  If you haven’t seen the movie, I strongly suggest it.  I probably watch it once a month while I write – I think there are few movies that communicate the human condition in modern life so well.

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Pugsley doesn’t miss many school days.

JACK, in voiceover:  On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

CLERK:  Please… don’t…

TYLER DURDEN: Give me your wallet.

Tyler pulls out the driver’s license.

TYLER:  Raymond K. Hessel. 1320 SE Benning, apartment A.  A small, cramped basement apartment.

RAYMOND:  How’d you know?

TYLER:  They give basement apartments letters instead of numbers.  Raymond, you’re going to die.  Is this a picture of Mom and Dad?

RAYMOND:  Yes.

TYLER:  Your mom and dad will have to call kindly doctor so-and-so to dig up your dental records, because there won’t be much left of your face.

RAYMOND:  Please, God, no!                            

JACK: Tyler…

TYLER:  An expired community college student ID card.  What did you used to study, Raymond K. Hessel?

RAYMOND:  S-S-Stuff.

TYLER:  “Stuff.”  Were the mid-terms hard?  I asked you what you studied.

JACK:  Tell him!

RAYMOND:  Biology, mostly.

TYLER:  Why?

RAYMOND:  I… I don’t know…

TYLER:  What did you want to be, Raymond K. Hessel?

Tyler cocks the .357 magnum Colt© Python™ pointed at Raymond’s head.

TYLER:  The question, Raymond, was “what did you want to be?”

JACK:  Answer him!

RAYMOND:  A veterinarian!

TYLER:  Animals.

RAYMOND:  Yeah … animals and s-s-s —

TYLER:  Stuff.  That means you have to get more schooling.

RAYMOND:  Too much school.

TYLER:  Would you rather be dead?

RAYMOND:  No, please, no, God, no!

Tyler uncocks the gun, lowers it.

TYLER:  I’m keeping your license.  I know where you live.  I’m going to check on you.  If you aren’t back in school and on your way to being a veterinarian in six weeks, you will be dead.  Get the hell out of here.

JACK:  I feel sick.

TYLER:  Imagine how he feels.

Tyler brings the gun to his own head, pulls the trigger — click.  It’s empty.

JACK:  I don’t care, that was horrible.

TYLER:  Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of Raymond K. Hessell’s life.  His breakfast will taste better than any meal he has ever eaten.

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How dare you . . . make Greta uncomfortable.

And it’s true.  I tend to think that everyone’s life would be a little better if they had Tyler Durden to be a life coach, to ever so gently coax them to be the best they can be while holding a .357 magnum Colt® Python™ to their head.  That seems to be a bit frowned upon, so that leaves my friends with me.  See how lucky you are?

In my role as Dr. Durden, I’ve noticed that there’s a problem some people have.  It’s being too clever.  It’s thinking.  How do I know?  It’s my problem that I try to compensate for by writing and doing.  If I think about doing something, it will never get done.  I keep thinking about fixing the bannister that broke when we moved in to the house a decade ago.  It’s never been high on my list, since people falling down stairs is funny, with extra points if they are really old.  But thinking about doing something never accomplishes anything.

If I plan to do it, it will get done.  Half of my time driving to and from work on a day I’m going to write a post, I’m writing it in my head, selecting jokes, thinking of themes.  It’s also spent thinking of how I’m going to connect the idea I want to share with students who might be forced to read this post when Mrs. Grundy tells them to compare and contrast my work with that poseur, Mark Twain, in high school in the year 2248 (that’s when Kirk will be a sophomore).

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Okay, generally on my drive to work I have about five or ten minutes between cars, so it would take several hours to get a group of cars behind me like that.  But a man has to have goals!

It may look like I’m driving to work, but I’m really plotting out what I’m going to write about.  To be honest, it sometimes takes both lanes to do that.  I wish the State Patrol® would be a little more understanding to artists like me.

Thankfully, The Mrs. is.

The Mrs. and I had a conversation the other night.  It may or may not have involved wine – I’m not telling unless I’ve been subpoenaed and am under oath to a House subcommittee.  Actually, it wasn’t so much a conversation as The Mrs. describing to me how she felt about this little project I publish three times a week.

I don’t make any money on this blog, though I’ve made clear since day one that can change at any time.  I have plans for several (eventual) ways to do that including adding subliminal messages causing you to want to pay for my health insurance.  It looks like it’s already worked for Bernie Sanders.

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In a socialist paradise all bloggers make $450,000 a year, right?  But I worry that for this Christmas we won’t have an Elf on a Shelf, we’ll have a Bernie on a Gurney.

No, at this point, writing is a hobby.  But it’s a hobby that takes over 20 hours a week, sometimes closer to 30 hours.  I still have a job, and I won’t stop interacting my family, so most nights I won’t even start writing before 9pm.  A lot of that time comes from time I’d normally be selfishly engaged in what you mortals call “sleep”, but a chunk of that time comes directly from time I’d be spending with The Mrs.

When I’m writing, I’m simply not available.  I’m writing.

The Mrs.:  “You know, I would certainly have an issue with the time that you spend writing, if it weren’t important.”  There was more to this, where she detailed the number of hours I spend.  But I keyed in on the word “Important.”

I was a little surprised by that.  “Important?”

The Mrs.:  “Yes.  I can see that what you’re writing about is important.  People need to hear it.  So keep doing it.”

Okay, that proves she never reads this stuff.

But as I talked more with my friend, the concept of “meaning” came up.

My Friend Who is Really Most Certainly Not Elon Musk:  “So, it’s about meaning?”

Suddenly as Wise as the Roman Philosopher Seneca John Wilder:  “That’s silly.  You don’t go off chasing ‘meaning’ in your life.  Pick out something you like to do, and do it.  But figure out how to make it important to other people.  You like to woodwork, right?  You say you never have time to do it.  Do it this weekend.  Film it.  Put it up on YouTube®.  I’ll be checking up with you on Monday.”

I asked myself, why is my friend working at all?  I think because he feels he’s supposed to work.  That having a job is a rule, it’s what he’s always done.  The problem that many of us have is that we tend to create rules where there aren’t any rules.  I’m not sure why.  Perhaps we need to justify what we do.  Perhaps it’s like my two important rules for life:

  1. Don’t tell everything you know.

Success?  My friend is already successful in most ways a person can be successful.  Their life is really good.  I told them, directly, “You’ve been given so many gifts.  If you don’t make something special of your life, you’re wasting it.”

Interestingly, this applies to you, too.

And me.

How will your breakfast taste tomorrow?

Collapse, Star Trek, and Lord of the Rings

“To a New Yorker like you, a Hero is some type of weird sandwich, not some nut who takes on three Tigers.” – Kelly’s Heroes

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And the phasers won’t be set on “hug”.

I was surrounded.  There were four of them.  They were younger than me, and one of them looked faster.  Maybe.  But I still had the upper hand.

I knew their weaknesses.

The reason I knew my foes so well?  They were my kids:  The Boy, Pugsley, and Alia S., and backing them up was Wee, my grandson.

I’ll have to admit, it was fun.  There was lighthearted bantering all around, like when Alia mentioned to Pugsley that he should beware of stray currents, since he was grounded all the time.  Half of the comments were digs at me and my parenting style over the years – tales of early mornings, tales of me saying “it’s not good enough” and tales of me, in general, giving them a task and letting them figure out how to do it despite them building up Chernobyl-like levels of frustration.  Yup.  I’ve seen each of them melt down.

I enjoyed every second.  I enjoyed even more looking at them, and seeing that each one of them was highly competent in their own way.  I felt proud.

Much later, Alia S. went off to bed while several of us were still up.  Most notably, Wee was up.  Wee, being small, wanted to watch Spiderman©:  Into The Spider-Verse™.  I haven’t seen it, though I’ve heard it’s good.  In the way of the grade school set, Wee wanted to watch it for the second or third time…that day.

The great thing about being Grandpa is that they’re not your kids.  I gave him a bowl of ice cream and looked for a movie that I wanted him remember watching with Grandpa Wilder for the first time.  Star Trek®:  Wrath of Khan showed up on the suggestion list.  It had been years since I saw that movie.  My bet was that it was perfect for a “Saturday night at Grandpa’s” movie.

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And at Christmas?  Why not the Wreath of Khan?

It was a perfect movie for Saturday night.  It was also stunningly free of the Leftist social messages that every movie seems to be pushing in 2019.  The Wrath of Khan was simply an attempt to make a good movie that engages the audience, where characters learn and grow, and where the good guy (Kirk™) is really a good guy.  The bad guy?  Yeah, he’s really bad, and it’s established quickly.  Khan® puts tiny mind-control armadillos into Chekov® and Captain Redshirt™ and laughs at their agony.

Khan™ really is a bad guy.

And the good guy displays virtue, and wins in the end.  Is the victory at a cost?  Certainly, but Kirk© knows that, and his character changes as a result of that cost.  I was stunned at how much better that movie was than most movies being put out today.

After finishing Wrath of Khan©, Netflix™ suggested Lord of the Rings:  The Two Towers®.  The Two Towers™ was always my favorite book in the Lord of the Rings® trilogy.  When I was a kid growing up, the middle school library didn’t have The Fellowship of the Ring™, so I picked up the worn paperback copy of The Two Towers®.  It was amazing.

It started in the middle of the action – no preamble, no explanation, and slowly I pieced together what the characters were and what their relationship was to each other.  When I finally got a copy of The Fellowship of the Ring©, I was a little bit disappointed.  It was good, but not really necessary for the story.

Wee was sleepy, and I hadn’t seen a three hour movie in a while, so I clicked on The Two Towers®.  I had watched it when it first came out, and I was wondering if I’d enjoy it.  I wasn’t disappointed.

I won’t get into the plot deeply, because Tolkien wrote backstories for his characters running for thousands of years.  But there is one sequence that I wanted to mention.  The king of Gondor had been slowly seduced (partially by magic) by his advisor, who was named Gríma Wormtongue.  With a name like that, how did the king not see betrayal coming?  Rule 2:  Never take a resume from a person named Wormtongue.  What’s Rule 1?  Never trust anyone who likes the band Flock of Sméagols.

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Remember, Rohan is really a nation of immigrants.

Anyhow, due to his condition, the king wasn’t cognizant of his son dying, and that his kingdom was being overrun.  Who was overrunning the kingdom?  Orcs, under control of the bad guy, and humans that had been convinced that Rohan really belonged to them.

At the last minute, Gandalf the Just-In-Time shows up and wakes up the king from the magical spell possession (edit by JW, see comments), and kicks Wormtongue out of Rohan.  As the king prepares to defend his people, surrounded by an army of ten thousand, he says:

Where is the horse and the rider?  Where is the horn that was blowing?  They have passed like rain on the mountains, like wind in the meadow.  The days have gone down in the west, behind the hills, into shadow.

How did it come to this?

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The Mrs. keeps muttering words like, “Hobbits”, and “Gandalf” and “Mordor” while she’s dreaming.  She keeps Tolkien in her sleep.

The line, “How did it come to this?” was the kicker.  A realization that he and his entire nation, their culture, their way of life, were in danger of being destroyed and this single battle was all that was between them and all they had ever known being snuffed out forever.

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Not an original – found at “Know Your Meme”.

The Two Towers is certainly not a movie that could be made today.  It’s not the violence – there are many movies that are more violent that have been made.  It’s simple:  the subject matter is far too controversial.  Groups of good men fighting against evil, standing fast, holding the line.  Tolkien warned against using his stories as allegory for the modern world, but it’s difficult not to see parallels.

The Mrs. wasn’t there to watch the movies, but she had seen them before.  When I mentioned they were good in a way that today’s movies aren’t, she said, “Good guys are good guys because of what they do, not the color of their skin, their gender identity, or who they choose to sleep with.  They are good guys because of their actions, not the boxes they check.”

The Mrs. and I had discussed Friday’s post (How One Texas Court Case Defines The Future For A Seven Year Old . . . and The United States), and she had picked one line that I had discussed prior to writing it, “11 out of 12 jurors in the Lone Star state voted that a seven year old boy should be allowed to become a girl, is a sign not that society is collapsing, it’s a sign that society has collapsed.”

“That was the part I was wanting to hear about,” The Mrs. said.  “Why has society collapsed? Why did the jury vote that way?  Were they afraid?  Or, worse yet, did they actually believe that was an appropriate way to treat a seven-year-old boy?”

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Collapse Cat is never wrong.  If only I would have sold that Sears® stock like he told me to . . .

I think it’s both.  In my county, Trump received nearly 90% of the vote.  But I noticed something strange – there were few signs supporting him in front lawns.  I had nine signs, as I recall.  Why nine?  Because I didn’t have ten.  Even in a deeply Right part of the country, there is some hesitation to show that allegiance in public.  Showing Leftist views?  Not a problem, even here in Modern Mayberry – in pride day everything is as rainbow as Lucky Charms®.

I think people are afraid to push back against a society where the media does everything it can to make people on the Right think they are alone, that they are a small number, weak, divided.  That’s not by accident.  Again, 90% of the county voted for Trump, but I saw only a few dozen Trump signs.  I did see one Obama/Biden sign even though they weren’t running, but I think those people just wanted to advertise they were gun free because they wanted Allstate® to buy them a new couch.

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Sort of like this.  H/T Kenny

The deeper rot is the change in public opinion.  How many jurors really felt that it was a good idea to let a seven-year-old make choices like that?  I cannot think of a fact that would make me agree to that disposition.  We live in a country where, too often, parents leave teaching to the schools, especially on the crucial issue of values.

Today we are taught in our schools and in popular culture to value everything and everyone.  There are no bad guys, just misunderstood people.  9/11 wasn’t the fault of the people who brought the towers down, it was the fault of the United States.

That’s clearly wrong.  There are bad guys.  There is evil in this world.

And there is good.  I’ve seen it in the eyes of my children this weekend, when they roasted me in the basement.  Perhaps that really is the answer – have children, raise them well, and watch as your children come back to see you.

And make fun of you.  But that’s okay.  I loved every second of it.

How One Texas Court Case Defines The Future For A Seven Year Old . . . and The United States

“There’s no basement at the Alamo.” – PeeWee’s Big Adventure

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“I guess we’d better turn over our guns.” – No Texan Ever

In 1836, Colonel William Travis surveyed the situation.  It was grim.  He was surrounded.  His troops were outnumbered.  He was out of deodorant.  Defeat was certain.  The information his messengers brought back was clear – there would be no rescue.  With this certain death in mind, Colonel Travis addressed the defenders of the Alamo:

Colonel Travis:  “We must die,” he began. “Our business is not to make a fruitless effort to save our lives, but to choose the manner of our death.  We can surrender and be executed.  We can attack and be butchered.  Or, we can remain in this fort, resist every assault, and to sell our lives as dearly as possible.”

Travis then drew a line in the dirt with his sword.

Colonel Travis:  “I now want everyone here who is determined to stay here and die with me to come across this line.  Each man-”

Captain Triggered:    “Or woman.”

Colonel Travis:  “Or woman, to come across himself-”

Captain Triggered:  “Or herself.”

Colonel Travis:  “Or herself.  Furthermore, every man-

Captain Triggered:  “Or woman.”

Colonel Travis:  “Why don’t you shut up about women, Captain, you’re putting us off.”

Captain Triggered:  “Women have a perfect right to play a part in our movement, Colonel Travis.”

Colonel Travis:  “Why are you always on about women, Captain?”

Captain Triggered:  “I want to be one.”

Colonel Travis:  “What?”

Captain Triggered:  “I want to be a woman.  From now on I want you all to call me Loretta.”

Colonel Travis:  “What?”

Loretta:  “It’s my right as a man.”

Davy Crockett:  “Why do you want to be Loretta, Captain Triggered?”

Loretta:  “I want to have babies.”

Colonel Travis:  “You want to have babies???”

Loretta:  “It’s every man’s right to have babies if he wants them.”

Colonel Travis:  “But you can’t have babies.”

Loretta:  “Don’t you oppress me.”

Colonel Travis:  “I’m not oppressing you, Captain Triggered, you haven’t got a womb.  Where’s the fetus going to gestate?  You going to keep it in a box?”

(Loretta starts crying.)

Davy Crockett:  “I’ve got an idea.  Suppose, Colonel Travis, you agree that Loretta can’t actually have babies, not having a womb, which is nobody’s fault, not even the Mexicans, but that he can have the right to have babies.”

Jim Bowie:  “Good idea, Davy.  We shall fight the Mexicans for your right to have babies, brother.  Sister, sorry.”

Colonel Travis:  “What’s the point?”

Jim Bowie:  “What?”

Colonel Travis:  “What’s the point of fighting for his right to have babies, when he can’t have babies?”

Davy Crockett:  “It is symbolic of our struggle against Santa Ana.”

Colonel Travis:  “It’s symbolic of his struggle against reality.”

norris.jpgI’m just waiting for his next movie:  Walker, Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

This week another line was crossed.  Like the Alamo, it was really just another custody dispute in Texas.  Unlike the case of Santa Ana versus 3,000 crazy Texans, the custody case was about a real child, rather than a typical Texas divorce or Oklahoma tornado – where in either case someone loses a mobile home.

If you haven’t heard about this case, it involved a seven year old boy.

This particular seven year old child has been the subject of an ongoing trial that gathered national attention, and with good reason.  The child is a boy.  The father attempted to gain full custody of the child because the mother saw him liking the movie Frozen and wanting to dress like the main character.  I have never seen the movie Frozen.  Perhaps if Frozen was written by Matt Bracken (LINK) and starred a bunch of Soviet-era tanks, I might have been interested.

But this boy who likes Frozen is seven.  I recall when I was seven.  I wanted to be an astronaut, exhibiting a desire to dress in a helmet and coveralls, and pretending a plastic M-16® was a laser.  Ma and Pop Wilder, being concerned, took me to a psychologist.  The psychologist suggested that they transition me from the real M-16© that I kept by my bedside to a laser pistol and launch me into orbit at the earliest opportunity.  The psychologist explained that I had astro-dysphoria, which could be treated before I reached puberty though gravity blockers.

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I now identify as Tyler Durden.  But so do several people.

Okay, that didn’t happen.  But there was a kid in my class who played with his sister’s Barbie™ dolls.  Even in second grade we made fun of him for that.  Last time I saw him he wasn’t playing with Barbie© dolls.  He was playing nose guard for their high school football team.  What would have happened if he was seven in 2019?  I think he might have been given a dozen needy housecats and a barrel of chardonnay.

But a jury in Texas (Texas!) ordered that the mother get custody of the “trans” child so the mother could raise the child as she wished, which included “transitioning” the boy named James into a girl named Luna.  Included in the order was that the mother had full authority to give the boy hormone blockers as he approached puberty to suppress him becoming more manlike as puberty hit.

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Keep in mind, Silence of the Lambs was a horror movie, not a “how-to” manual.

On Thursday (10/24/2019) it appears sanity prevailed.  The judge in the case overturned the jury verdict and awarded the husband joint custody – in this case the mother cannot make sole medical decisions about James.  The boy’s father hailed it as a victory, but the judge also issued a gag order – neither party can talk any more in the media about this case.  This may be the last we hear about James until he’s 18.  More about that gag order later.

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The one time the jury voted to acquit me, it was great!  I got to keep all that money!

I did not sit in the jury box.  I’ve often been reluctant to criticize juries because I wasn’t there as the evidence was presented.  I wasn’t there to hear the testimony, to see the people involved in the case.

In this case it doesn’t matter:  I will criticize mercilessly, like a hungover, sleep-deprived Viking named Jen Vilder in the depths of a nicotine fit.  11 out of the 12 jurors, who voted to allow the mother to turn a seven year old boy into a girl, are monsters.

Each of them.

The point of principle is very strong here – as a society we simply do not allow seven year old children to make life changing decisions.

  • We don’t allow them to drink booze.
  • We don’t allow them to vote.
  • We don’t allow them to drive.
  • We don’t allow them to get tattoos.
  • We don’t allow them to own guns.
  • We don’t allow them to have ear hair.

These laws are in place because society rightly realizes that seven year old children have the brain capacity of a slightly mobile houseplant.  I have ice cubes and ribeye steak in my freezer that are older and wiser than your average seven year old child.  Children are malleable – Marx knew that.  Stalin knew that, too.  Stalin said, “Education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.”  This is nothing less than an attempt to devastate an entire generation and demoralize a people.

I speak from the experience of raising children, from being involved in youth organizations, and adopting “a few” random seven year old children from the Wal-Mart© parking lot.  I have never met a seven year old capable of writing a letter to Santa that would get past the screening Elf, let alone making decisions that could lead to permanent deformation and infertility.

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I hope this doesn’t make you Claustrophobic.

I’ll throw this in here:  if you’re an adult, and want to pretend to be a female?  I’m not sure I care.  It appears that this just might be a gimmick for guys to dominate both male and female athletics.  It’s not like women are transitioning to men to become a linebacker for the New England Patriots® – they can’t, because there’s no real affirmative action for football – society takes football seriously.

I have, however, heard that the latest complaint of the trans community is that it’s transphobic when lesbians won’t date trans women.  Yes.  Let me restate the complaint – trans people think that lesbians should be forced to date people with guy parts.

Frankly, that amuses me.

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“Hannah” took “her” team to a world championship.  Yay!

It’s wonderful when the Community of the Woke has to deal with the consequences of Wokeness, and tries to explain that men can have periods and women can drive well.  As long as I don’t have to believe it, I can take a Monty Python® view and wait for the trans community to argue that, even though men can’t have periods, they have the right to have periods.

Genius!

It’s fine to watch adults ignore reality – watching a man that has transitioned to being a woman play rugby with actual women is amazing – it shows that before long that trans women will conquer all of sports.  Biological women?  They can stay home and make sandwiches, I guess.

But kids are different.  Drag queen story hour at the library?  Wow.  That wasn’t a thing since Weimar Germany.  And we all know what happened after Weimar Germany (hint:  it rhymes with “Mitler”).

The remaining part of this story that bothers me is the gag order.  Sure, it’s in the best interest of the kid.  I’ll agree to that.  But if dad loses custody?  If Dad, who gets to see his son 56 hours a month loses the next court battle and his mother transitions him to “Momma’s little girl”?  We won’t hear about it because dad can’t talk about it.  And that . . . could be a travesty.

Colonel William Travis drew a line in the dirt in the Alamo.  The consequences were simple:  step over that line, and fight side by side with Travis, to the death if need be.

But a different kind of line was drawn in Texas this week, a line that is so profound that it should shake every reader to the core.  What bothers me, and what should bother you the most about this case is that it wasn’t the dictate of a crazed bureaucrat or judge.  No – in this case the judge was the sane one.  11 out of 12 jurors in the Lone Star state voted that a seven year old boy should be allowed to become a girl, is a sign not that society is collapsing, it’s a sign that society has collapsed.

I’m thinking that in Modern Mayberry, that wouldn’t go over very well.

Texans?  Stand up.  The line you have held dear has been crossed.

How long will you stand for it?

Hold the line.

On the other side?  Madness.

Life Insurance? Nah, They Can Suffer.

Dot:  I’m sure you have the life insurance squared away?
Ed:  Have we done that honey?  We gotta do that honey!
Dot:  You’ve got to do that H.I.!  Ed’s got her hands full with this little angel.
H.I.:  Yes, ma’am.
Dot:  What would Ed and little angel do if a truck came along and splattered your brains all over the interstate?

-Raising Arizona

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Is it just me, or was it Transformers® who started the trans debate with whole “robots identifying as trucks” thing?

A long time ago, Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert®, came up with a handy, short guide to finances.  His quip was, “I’d write a book of financial advice, but it would only be one page long.”  I wrote about it before, but that was two years ago and this will be funnier.  The nice thing is that his list of financial advice is simple, and applicable to most people in normal times (from, say 1950 to 2020):

  1. Make a will.
  2. Pay off your credit cards.
  3. Get term life insurance if you have a family to support. 
  4. Fund your 401k to the maximum.
  5. Fund your IRA to the maximum.
  6. Buy a house if you want to live in a house and can afford it.
  7. Put six months’ worth of expenses in a money-market account.
  8. Take whatever money is left over and invest 70% in a stock index fund and 30% in a bond fund through any discount broker and never touch it until retirement.
  9. If any of this confuses you, or you have something special going on (retirement, college planning, or tax issues), hire a fee-based financial planner, not one who charges a percentage of your portfolio.

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I don’t carry life insurance – I want to die just as I was born – as a burden to my family.

I think, for various structural reasons, normal times won’t continue, but I’ve blogged about that more than once.  We’re seeing inflation accelerate (10 Years (or less) To A $10 Big Mac – How To Explain Inflation To Your Friends) and we are, perhaps, getting ready to party like its 1859 again.  So, yeah.  It all might be going to hell, but it could also be much better than my worst projections, and some of the above might matter.  Yeah, I know, this is like having a mortician say, “But on the bright side….”

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My insurance company is dependable – every month since I’ve had my policy they’ve sent me a bill.

So far, I’ve accomplished most of the things on the list above by Mr. Adams.  When I’ve varied from the suggestions, I’ve actually suffered financially – Scott is a pretty shrewd fellow, and he’s certainly more successful financially than most people.  For instance, if I had kept more money in the market, I would be that much more heartbroken when Netflix™ costs $12.  Not $12 a month, but $12 for the whole company.

Being wrong in my case is okay – I’m in pretty good shape financially – I was able recently to add meat to the Hamburger Helper® (I’m not saying it was hamburger, and what neighborhood will miss a cat or two?), so not being 70% in the stock market has been okay.  I’m able to sleep better at night and not worry.

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Sadly, Hamburger Helper™ only works if the hamburger wants help.

But one thing on Mr. Adams’ list above that isn’t on mine anymore:  life insurance.  Sure, I take the company life insurance policy because it’s cheap super cheap, and if I were to pass away, The Mrs. would get the princess-ly sum of $500,000, which in the year 2029 will buy you a pack of illegal vaping juice.  I hope (on any given day) that I’m worth more alive than dead to her.

Besides, if anything suspicious happened to me, she’s an author and her Internet browser history looks a list of creepy websites the Zodiac Killer was too scared to go to.  The Mrs. could be 100% innocent, but it would still be difficult to explain why she’d spent several weeks researching “undetectable poisons to kill your bald husband with.”  Wait.  That’s just a bit too specific.

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Mental note:  eat only what The Mrs. eats.  Also:  wear a helmet.

The purpose of life insurance is simple – it’s not a lottery – it’s a mechanism so that if the breadwinner was to die early, the family could be financially secure without the income they provided.  But what financial security does my family need to provide for?  The Boy is off at college, and with his scholarships I think he pays tuition, room and board in pocket lint and beef jerky wrappers because it doesn’t cost very much to go to Bob’s State University and Discount Amateur Asbestos Mine if you do really well on the ACT®.

Pugsley will in a few short years be off at college, too, and that’s it.  Our last financial challenge.  We’re in good shape for that today.  Also, if I were to die, the major source of weird family expense goes away.  The Mrs. is unlikely to spend nearly as much as I do on hobbies like ham radio.  I know that no one was more shocked than I was to find out that you couldn’t use a store bought ham.  I think you have to get a fancy farm raised ham.

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If a pig eats ham, that must make a really good radio?

So if I passed on, then what?  The Mrs. would have to get by on our nest egg, which should work great as long as she doesn’t’ have any fancy needs, like electricity.  My need for life insurance now is nearly zero.

But it wasn’t always so.

When I was younger, I actually bought the greatest amount of life insurance the company offered.  The nice thing about life insurance is that it’s one product that’s priced appropriately – when you’re youngest, it’s cheapest.  And when you’re older, it costs more.  When I was young, I wanted to make sure that the family had its needs taken care of.  I don’t recall it ever costing much more than $30 a month, and that was for $2 million or more.

That was good.  When The Boy was first born, we didn’t have much as far as savings and we had almost two decades to plan for.  And we had no idea if he would get scholarship after being dropped on his head all of those times.  Now?  We can afford to go bowling whenever we want.  And we can get some of that fancy box wine when company comes over.  And our risks as a family have dropped significantly.

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Think of box wine as juice boxes for adults.

Frankly, I never needed life insurance at all.  It was a product I was paying for that did me absolutely no good.  I would never see a dime of return.  Silly people I live with, wanting to be protected.

But in 2019, what would I add to Scott Adams’ list?

  1. Live in a safe place. Think about population density when you determine safety.  Be there and be part of the community.  If the place is too big to recognize people in the stores regularly?  It’s probably too big.  Be there sooner rather than later.
  2. Have food. Start with a month’s worth – nobody thinks you are crazy for having a month’s worth of food.  More is better.  Farming areas are nice – people are generally friendly, and they make the food.
  3. Be able to get water. Clean water is good, but there are ways to make water clean.
  4. Know what you can’t live without. If it’s PEZ® or insulin or fabric softener, know and either save it up, or learn how to do without.  I regularly shame The Mrs. pancreas to try to get it to produce insulin.  No luck so far.
  5. It teaches you what you need and don’t need faster than anything.
  6. What would you add?
  7. Did I mention PEZ™?

Leftism is a Religion, and Kipling is the Cure

“Remember, we can’t question the mores of the natives.” – The Man Who Would Be King

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Our main weapons are . . . oh, sorry.  I triggered Briana by saying “weapon.”  To the safe spaces!

I had a subject picked out for today – despite your thinking that I might think up these topics in a booze and PEZ® induced haze on the spur of the moment by throwing Velcro®-covered toddlers* at a “Wilder Post Idea” mat placed on the wall to come up with humorous combinations of idea, I don’t.  Maybe I should – it actually sounds like a lot of fun, except, well, having to be around toddlers.  The upside would be throwing them.

No, dear reader, I try to map out these posts at least two weeks in advance using the much less amusing no-toddler-involved pen and notecard method.  I then do notes and research at least a few days in advance.  But last week I looked at my notes for the post I had planned.  It’s a big, complicated, ambitious post, so I’d been working on those notes for more than a week.

It’s not ready yet.

Thankfully, I have toddlers, Velcro© and a wall I have a list of ideas for posts written on notecards that I keep in several notecard boxes.  I’ve got several hundred ideas, depending on the category.  In truth some of them are little more than crude sketches in in crayon.  In reality, these are not second-rate ideas – they’re just ideas that I haven’t gotten to yet.  And I pulled this one out of the box:

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It means: “Leftism as a religion.”  It’s obvious, right?

You may or may not have a religious beliefs – I do.  I don’t bring up my religious beliefs on this blog as religious concepts for the purpose of discussing religion – I’m not the guy who would be good at that.  I try to stick with religion and how it relates to society.  With the exception of the immediate cultural references and political figures of our time, I aim to make a lot (50%?) of these posts timeless – something someone could pick up in 20 years (or 200 or 2000), and still get a chuckle and a bit of wisdom out of while wondering just who the hell Johnny Depp was, and why does the Great Bard of The New Dark Ages™, that handsome devil John Wilder keep writing about him.

But in 20 years (or 200, or 2,000), Leftism will still be seen as a religion.

I think religion is built into us, biologically.  In 2012, the best scientific research on this was:

“We have found a neuropsychological basis for spirituality, but it’s not isolated to one specific area of the brain,” said Brick Johnstone, professor of health psychology in the School of Health Professions. “Spirituality is a much more dynamic concept that uses many parts of the brain. Certain parts of the brain play more predominant roles, but they all work together to facilitate individuals’ spiritual experiences.” (LINK)

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Okay, is it just me that thinks that it’s funny that the guy who studies brains and religion goes by the name of “Brick”?

As Brick says, most people have a religious inclination.  Some folks who read this blog are atheists – and I’m not here to try to convert them.  The ones that are here are the cool kind of atheist who, most often, don’t hate people who have religion.  They are, for lack of a better term, libertarian atheists – they don’t care if you believe.  Just leave them out of it.  On average, however, people want to believe in something.  Our brains are hard-wired for it.

And that’s why Leftism appeals as religion – it’s an effective way to drum up a group, and nearly 70% of atheists are Leftist in the United States.  So, Leftism cloaks itself as a rational, political movement, but it’s really a religion:  a religion as weird and deformed as Bernie Sanders’ aorta.  Let me explain:

Religion is a relationship between man and a higher power.  The deformation present in Leftism is that man is that higher power.  Look at the statues to Lenin, Stalin, and the posters of Fidel and Hugo Chavez.  Man has replaced the higher power – man is the object of worship.  Let’s dig a little deeper.

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I saw Lenin pick his nose the other day – I always knew that communists had no class.

The components of a religion are:

  • A belief system that doesn’t require proof.

It’s taken on faith. Leftism doesn’t require any more proof than is in Hillary’s chardonnay.  Every single Socialist or Communist government has resulted in thousands to millions of deaths, and all of them fail, either Soviet-style, Cuba-style, or Venezuela-style over time.  Ask an ardent socialist or communist, and they really will tell you that socialism in Venezuela would have really worked if only it had been given a chance.  I guess 10,000,000% inflation (per year) in a country with the greatest oil reserves in the world is a sign of a successful, functioning socialist economy.

  • There are (in most religions) demons – a power opposing the higher power.

Just as people are the higher power in Leftism, people are also the demons.  It’s the unbeliever (people like you and me) that is causing difficulty.  Leftism is great at finding and identifying scapegoats to point at to proclaim that they are the cause of all problems, Stalin and Mao were awesome at that(In the World Murder Olympics, Communists Take Gold and Silver!).  Most commonly, it’s people who are successful.  In Leftist terms, people are successful only because they are taking the success that rightfully belongs to the victim class.  Communism is great at finding villains, and great at finding victims, too.  Sadly, it runs out of the money of the villains.

  • There is a method of salvation.

The method of salvation for a Leftist is joining the Left.  It is becoming versed in the various High Holy Words of Leftist Salvation such as privilege, Climate Change© (formerly Global Warming™, the 1%, racist, social justice, assault rifle, greed, change, economic justice, fascist, and progress.  No actual change in personal comfort is required – taking a private jet to transport Leo and his starlet of the week to a Climate Change® conference is okay, as long as Leo keeps repeating that fossil fuels are evil.  I mean, a Leftist donates one kidney, he’s a hero.  When I donate ten?  They called me a monster.

  • There are sins – rules that cannot be broken.

You would think that most actions that were counter to the High Holy Words of Leftist Salvation would be wrong and would brand you a sinner.  That’s wrong!  You can falsely claim a person of another race put a noose around your neck when you went to Subway®.  It’s sad that you then have to hire immigrants do it, because it’s a job American’s won’t do.  Or falsely claim that a person of another race cut your dreadlocks.  Obviously, these are racist acts, but there is to be no punishment for them, because being a racist isn’t a sin, as long as you are a believing Leftist.  Being rich because you’re an evil capitalist isn’t even a sin.  There is only one true sin:  heresy (see below).

  • There is heresy.

This is the ultimate sin.  Thinking a thought counter to the ideals of the Left is bad, and itself punishable by re-education in a Leftist government.  But to dare utter a thought that’s counter to one of the catechisms of the Left?  That is the ultimate sin:  heresy.  Wrongthink.  Thoughtcrime.  But it’s okay if you’re not from this country.  You can ignore all of the above, because it’s wrong to judge an immigrant on a moral basis.  I mean, what could go wrong with marrying your sister?

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I’m worried about a cat and chardonnay shortage in 2023.

Don’t get me wrong – I don’t think that the people on Wall Street care about me any more than your average communist.  But thieves and people on Wall Street (but I repeat myself) only want my money.  Leftists want my money and my soul, The Mrs.’ soul, and the souls of my children in exchange for power.  I keep wondering . . . what’s the catch?

I used to enjoy engaging in light argument for fun with people who disagreed with me politically.  It was nice.  I learned a lot.  I learned where my arguments were weak.  I learned where I was wrong.  And when I was wrong, I admitted it, gave them the point and moved on.  It was fun – a great way to be exposed to new ideas and learn.  One two hour argument with me being pro-Second Amendment arguing with a friend who was against gun ownership ended . . . when I asked him if he had a gun.  He started laughing, and admitted he had what CNN® would call an arsenal.  He was having fun with me for two hours.  But I learned.

I don’t do that in person anymore.  If a friend who is Leftist brings a point up, mainly I’ll ask questions.  I don’t argue.  Friendly light arguments have gone from an enjoyable conversation to one where true emotion is unleashed and the person on the Left gets angry.  Heresy, you know.  So, I ask questions.  I don’t try to make points – I listen, and ask what the solutions should be.  But interjecting Wrongthink?  It simply won’t work.

That, primarily, is the difference between the Right and the Left.  The Right is confident enough that history has shown that the answers of the Right, though brutal, are effective (Kipling, Gods of The Copybook Headings, and It’s Different This Time).  The answers of the Right will return, not because they are ideologically pure, but they are the only methods known that actually work.  I’ll leave the word last to Kipling*.

*No toddlers were hurt in the writing of this post or the associated poem.

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I spent several hours trying to fix the kipling on my car today with Pugsley.  Turns out it was just a corroded battery terminal.

Gods of the Copybook Headings,

By Rudyard Kipling, 1919

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

 

Original of Crayon drawing by “My daughter Teresa” [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)] via Wikipedia Commons.

And, no, I don’t have a daughter named Teresa.

Regrets? Don’t Regret Anything, Unless You Want Me To Slap You When You Are Old.

“Nothing leaves alive.” – Dreamcatcher

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See, now Darth Vader® has no regrets.  Except for being in Episode III.

I’ve never written anything before that made me want to go to a hospice and slap a bunch of old dying people, but this particular post led me there.  I’ll explain.  It’s okay, it’ll all make sense in the end.  I’m a trained professional.

I have made many mistakes in my life.  Most of them I don’t remember – they were small and didn’t have any consequences, or at least any consequences I’ve seen yet.

Then there were some slightly larger mistakes – let’s call them medium size mistakes.  There have been consequences to these.  Again, medium-sized mistakes most often lead to medium-sized consequences.  A scar here (carve away from your thumb, not towards it), a stock gone to zero there (thanks a lot, Enron®) and one really bad car trade when I was 24 . . . medium-sized.  Medium-sized mistakes are big enough for a big sting, but whatever permanent impacts there might be aren’t immediately fatal.

The biggest ones – I won’t give a laundry list of those.  Most of those were where either passion, inexperience, a momentary lapse of character or judgement, or (worst of all) when all three contributed to a mistake.  Some mistakes lasted longer, some were short.  But all stung.  The biggest include a marriage that led to divorce, underestimating a sociopathic boss, and wearing that white dress to my little sister’s wedding.  I mean, I look fabulous in it, but some brides just have to be the center of attention.  Also a bit weird because she wasn’t really my sister.

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Staaaaaart again . . . .

To put it bluntly, I am the author of almost every problem I have.  If I didn’t cause the problem, I’m probably complicit in creating the problem or not dealing with the problem.

But I don’t regret it.  None of it.  Not the victories, certainly, and not the failures.

Why?

Life is a one-shot deal.  And life is a ratchet.  It only turns one way – we can’t take anything back.

Regret isn’t a one-shot deal, though.  If there’s anything that will burn a hole in your soul, it’s regret.  Regret never comes alone – it brings guilt along for the ride.

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My biggest fear is having a heart attack during a game of charades.

If I were to dig more deeply into those feelings – regret and guilt are just ways that fear manifests itself.  Fear of . . . what?  Regret is a fear that the consequences of your choices or actions will impact you negatively, and cannot be changed.  Here is a list of some of the common regrets from people on their deathbed (from a former palliative care nurse named Bronnie Ware, and, yes, I spelled that right – blame her parents, not me):

  1. “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”
  2. “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.”
  3. “I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.”
  4. “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.”
  5. “I wish that I had let myself be happier.”

Even a quick look at this list tells me one simple thing:  regret is for losers.  I have never seen a whinier pack of self-serving weakness since I last watched a Democratic presidential debate.  Everything, absolutely everything on this “top five” list is just, well, sad.

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Me?  I’m still holding out hope for a pyramid.

Would you like to go to your grave worrying about any of those things?  I can’t imagine doing it.  I refuse to let regret rule me.  And I refuse to let any decision I made twenty years ago rule me.  Hell, I refuse to let any decision I made last week rule me, except for choosing that convenience store egg/muffin sandwich – I don’t need to explain why.  Deal with the consequences?  Certainly.  But regret?  No.

Let’s go down the “top five” list:

Not living a life “true to yourself”?  I’ve never heard such nonsense in my life.  I was talking with a guy the other day who quit his job because his boss asked him to do something illegal.  That’s being true to yourself – he walked away without a paycheck but with his values and beliefs intact.  If you’re not being true to yourself, you’re either weak or flighty.  The good news?  Anyone who reads this blog is neither.

Wishing you hadn’t “worked so hard”?  That’s also nonsense.  A soul thrives on doing good work that matters.  Doing good work excellently is hard.  The Mrs. teaches, and works hard at it – I can see from her talking about her students, talking about the ones who learned and improved, the ones who keep coming back to her classroom to report on their lives that her work matters.  Working hard at work that matters is what makes us the best humans we can be.  If you think you worked too hard, you weren’t doing anything worth doing.  The good news?  Change now.  You have an entire lifetime to fix that mistake.

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I got fired from the calendar factory.  They get really mad when you take a day off.

Didn’t have the “courage to express my feelings”?  Wow.  This is the weakest on the list, so far.  Number one:  do you have feelings that matter?  Most feelings are stupid – and I have stupid feelings, too.  Thankfully, I’m not a five year old – I am at least twelve.  I get to examine my feelings and reject those that don’t reflect my values, my virtue, my beliefs.  I get to choose.  If I feel slighted by something silly or petty?  I get to choose to understand what a fool I’m being and ignore that feeling.  Again, if you don’t express your feelings, that’s not always a bad thing.  Your feelings are often stupid.

I’m sorry that “staying in touch with your friends” was so hard.  But it’s really not.  The people you care about, that care about you, are there.  They always have been, they always will be.  I don’t Facebook® much – why?  I call my friends, on an actual phone.  I text my friends.  Am I often the one that calls first?  Sure.  Do we develop different lives, does life pull us away for a while?  Do hundreds or thousands of miles separate us?  Maybe.  But I make quite a few phone calls.  And mostly my friends pick up. Sure, it’s true that the biggest miracle Jesus exhibited in the Bible was having 12 11 close friends (thanks, Judas) after the age of thirty – but you just need a few – a few that will have your back.  A few you can share with.

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Also, as a single guy it was easy to make friends.  Lots of girls I asked out wanted to be friends.

Seriously – number five on the list is a wish for “letting themselves be happier.”  Happy is easy (All You Will Ever Need To Read About How To Be Happy* (*Most of the Time)), being significant is hard.  It requires hard work while being true to yourself.  It requires expressing those feelings that your virtue allows to exist.  Friends?  The good ones will be with you forever, and you can restart your conversations with the slightest hint of time passing, even if you haven’t talked regularly in a decade, if they’re true friends.

I’ve never thought about going to a hospice and slapping someone, but this list made me want to do it.  I know, I know, it’s too late for them.  And this is the list of people who had regrets.  People like me?  I don’t have a single regret at this moment of my life.  Not one.  In a hospice, I hope I’d be the, “Regrets?  No.  More clam chowder, please,” guy.

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The Boy made me some fake ramen noodles this summer – it was an impasta.

To be clear – it’s not that I don’t care.  It’s not that I’m not blameless.  It’s not that I was always right.  Not one of those things is true.  But I have done the most important thing I can think of:  When I do something I regret, I’ve changed myself so that I won’t (Clintoncide, John Bolton’s Waifu, and October Market Crashes: Knock on Wood) do that thing again.  I cannot change the past.  But if I have learned, if I can help others not make the same mistakes while not repeating my own mistake?  Like an algebra teacher for the soul, I have taken something negative and turned it into something positive.  The bonus is I get to end the dreams of high school freshmen in the process.

And I’m not planning on having any regrets tomorrow.  If you have regrets?  Fix them now or recognize them for the dead weight they are and cut them loose.

The alternative?  Trust me, you don’t want to have me chasing you down in a hospice and slapping you silly.

BONUS SOUP MEME!  I made too much soup meme by accident.  Enjoy.

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