Life Is A Struggle: That’s A Good Thing

“The closer you are to death, the more alive you feel. It’s a wonderful way to live. It’s the only way to drive.” – Rush

A computer once beat me at chess.  It lost at kickboxing, though.

The Mrs. and I have recently been playing chess.  It’s not a lot of chess, it’s mainly on Saturday nights when things are a bit slower.  I’ve been enjoying the games.  If I were to guess, before the last time we played, the games tilted slightly in my favor.

I think I’ve won about 30.  The Mrs. was still sitting at, well, zero wins.

30-0.

Don’t think poorly of her.  The Mrs. is going from a standing start.  At one point in college, I lived with eight other guys in a house, and nearly all of the time a chess game was going.  I could generally beat everyone in the house by the end of the school year.  It took a while for one guy, about four months.  First, he wiped the floor with me, then he and I traded games.  By the end of two semesters?

I usually won.  I have played a lot more chess than The Mrs.  I will say this, though, she’s smart as a whip, and when I give her position analysis and show her why she lost the game, she listens.

The Mrs. doesn’t listen like someone who wants to defend why they did what they did.  She listens with the ears of someone who wants to learn, who wants to get better.  There has been exactly zero ego in learning the game for her.

Did I mention that The Mrs. is competitive?  Really competitive?

Ever notice that Tom Cruise has a tooth perfectly centered under his nose, like it’s one-half tooth too far over?  Now you’ll never be able to unsee that.  You’re welcome.

The last time The Mrs. and I played chess, we played three games.  The first game, I crushed her.  By the start of the mid-game, I was up on pieces and position.  It was like a velociraptor in a room full of bacon-wrapped kittens covered in pudding.  Then the next game.  Again, by the mid-game, I was up.  I was toying with her king like a teacup poodle lords over a pork chop, getting ready for checkmate.

Then, she moved.

Then, I moved.  That’s the rule, right?

But my move made it so she had no legal moves left.  The Mrs. wasn’t in check, but couldn’t move.  I was winning, decisively.

But if she has no legal moves and her king isn’t in check?

It’s a draw.  The score was now 30-0-1.

My blunder, her draw.  The next game went, shall we say, a little differently.  The start went okay.  Then, in the mid-game?  She took control and by the beginning of the end-game?  I was breathing for air harder than Biden sniffing a teenager.  Which Biden?  Apparently any of them.

What mall did they get this picture taken at? 

Then?  I caught a break.  The Mrs. was up on pieces and position, but I found a way out.  I could keep her king in perpetual check.

The Mrs. moved, I moved, check.

The Mrs. moved, I moved, check.

The Mrs. moved, I moved, check.

Note:  I couldn’t win, but I could make the game as annoying as an 8-year-old asking, “Are we there yet?”

Thankfully, there’s a rule for that.  It’s called?

A draw.

We went from me constantly crushing her, to her lucking to a draw, to me grasping to find a way out of a game without a loss.

30-0-2.

Good for The Mrs.

And good for me.  Now I’m going to have to work to bring my A-game.  And Saturday nights just got better.

Why?

Would it be better if I could crush her in chess every evening like Oprah crushes couch cushions?  Of course not.

I told my barber to cut my hair like he would for Tom Cruise.  He made me sit on two phone books.

The best victories in life are going head to head with someone near your level in skill.  Going all out.  Pushing each other to be better.  I mean, I can beat up any number of third graders.  Honestly, I have no idea how many third graders I couldn’t beat up.

I could do it all day.  It’s really not a challenge.  Seriously, I could beat up lots of them.

But fourth graders?  I mean, I could be at least the third-best player on the fourth-grade soccer team.

Life is challenge.  Life is struggle.

And thank heavens for that.  Or thank Heaven for that?  (Stick with me – this isn’t a sermon.)

Speaking of Heaven, from the time I was just a little Wilder, I caused a *lot* of problems at church.  I distinctly recall that I colored a picture of Jesus with His skin being bright purple.  On purpose.

My only excuse is that I was five and had no glitter.

The Sunday school teacher came up to me and said, “Johnny, you know that Jesus wasn’t purple.”

I replied, “Well, please allow me to retort.  Jesus is God, right?  Well, if He wants to be purple, He can be purple.”

How can you argue with logic like that?  Even kindergartners score some points now and then.  I last saw my Sunday school teacher when I was thirty.  She was really thrilled to see me.  I think she was just happy I hadn’t started the Cult of the Glittery Purple Jesus.  And, yes, all of those things really happened.

But back to heaven, or in this case, Heaven.

When they described Heaven to me in Sunday school, I was as appalled and indignant as a precocious five-year-old can be.

Sunday school teacher, describing Heaven:  “You’re happy all the time.  Nothing bad ever happens.  You wake up and everything is fine.”

Five-year-old me thought:  “Well, that sucks.  It’s stupid.  That sounds boring.”  Even then, I was wise enough not to throw out a level-five heresy in the middle of Sunday school.  Jesus might turn me purple or something.  I’m certainly glad they didn’t teach me about Valhalla then, because that sounds much, much better than Heaven:  Wake up.  Fight and get soused and maybe die.  Wake up.  Repeat.

What did the Vikings call English villages?  Chopping centers.

Sure you teach little kids the things that you think they like.  But me as a little kid?  Peace was the last thing on my mind.  But I’m not alone.

When you look at the life of Jesus, He didn’t spend it sitting on fluffy pillows and eating Ding-Dongs®.  Nope.  If you think WWJD, remember, taking a whip and kicking vermin out of church is within the realm of permissible actions.

Jesus was clear in that:  life is the struggle.

  • Life is not about the easy way out.
  • Life is not about running out the clock in the 20 years until you retire.
  • Life is not about being nice.

If you played your life like a video game, your goal isn’t to have a pleasant but non-threatening experience.  You want to climb the mountain, fight for the fair maiden, and drink from the skull of your enemy.  I want The Mrs. to be kick-ass at chess, so when I win, it means something.

It meant something to The Mrs. when I had to force a draw to save my sorry (rare NSFW word coming) ass.

That, my friends, is life.  Life is the struggle.

And my bet at Heaven is that it’s more like this:

LEVEL ONE COMPLETE.

PREPARE FOR LEVEL TWO.

I started a job digging deeper and deeper holes – but that was boring on so many levels.

Yeah.  Let’s go.  Let’s live life.

Bring.

It.

On.

Take big bites.

Who is with me?

Specialization And Generalization, Take Two

“If you do not return with the plumbers and the rock, I shall personally . . . kill you.” – Super Mario Brothers (Movie)

I bombed southern France too many times.  Now I don’t have too much Toulouse.

Last week I wrote a post about specialization versus generalization (LINK).  As a part of the discussion, Aesop chimed in with a rebuttal post.

Specialization Versus Generalization: The Economy Chooses

I love it.

His post was called, “Yes, BUT…” and can be found here (LINK).  RTWT.  If Aesop were President, during his first term he’d solve all our national problems in the first 10 days and then would be able to take the rest of the 1451 days of his reign teaching Nancy Pelosi to beg for crackers.  Heck, he might even take the time to housebreak AOC.

There are very few words I’d disagree with in his entire post.

Von Mises (he of the incredibly heavy tome “Human Action” that I’ve referenced before LINK) wrote about just this.  Von Mises noted that you could if you really wanted to, break a rock with another rock.  You could get gravel that way.

A Brief Guide To Human Action – Which Leads To Human Freedom

Ugh, Grug make gravel.

Please be gneiss.

But it’s as slow as Biden trying to do a connect-the-dot picture of a straight line.

Pounding one rock against another is the most direct, the most general way to make gravel.  You can use this tried and true method pretty much any time.  Heck, I did that when I was a kid and tried to make arrowheads out of the rocks up on Wilder Mountain.  I do know that it didn’t take long to knap an edge so sharp it could do my algebra homework for me.

There is, however, an alternative to pounding one rock against another.  You could, if you had patience, get a hammer.  But, first, someone had to make the hammer, which involved mining ore, smelting, and then casting or forging the head and mating this with a wooden handle.  Plus, you could use the hammer to smash avocados and make whack-a-molé, guacamolé’s ugly sister.

A hammer is much better at making little gravel than hitting a rock with another rock, but it’s more indirect.  Even better is to wait until a chemical industry forms, wait for dynamite, use that hammer to drill a hole in the rock, drop in some dynamite, and make lots of little rocks, all at once.  Von Mises successfully showed that indirect methods are much more efficient than direct methods.

Indirect methods require specialization, and more than one chemist blown to bits before rocks can be blown to bits.

A terrorist blew up my rugs. That’s what I call carpet bombing.

I have no disagreement that this is, by far, the more efficient way to do it.  It’s the best way to do it, until (of course) people develop the metallurgy to make complex rock crushers that make tons of gravel hourly.

This all happens in a stable society.

That stability has waxed and waned throughout history.

Once upon a time, the Romans controlled Britain.  They did this because they decided they didn’t want to control the whole world, they just wanted to control the countries that were adjacent to the Empire.  And then the next set of countries that were adjacent to the new, larger, Empire.  And so on.

Archeologists love dinner plates because people (like Pugsley) washing dishes drop them and break them.  Because they’re ceramic, they last nearly forever in a garbage dump.  Imagine the archeologists from Tau Ceti visiting Earth in the year 1,238,631 thinking that the people in our time sat on toilets all of the time because that’s one thing that will definitely outlast anything that mankind ever made.

Our future name, “The Poopy Potty Sitters of Planet Three” will be chosen by Zamorg Flooglplaz, Ph.D., Polaris University (Mascot: Gelatinous Brainsuckers).

I didn’t have breakfast on the tectonic plate, instead, I had the continental breakfast.

Like I said, archeologists love plates.  And when they dug into the trash heaps in London (no, I don’t mean Johnny Depp’s house) they found that when the Romans were there, people ate off of “pretty nice” plates, “pretty nice” being a technical description that by definition excludes Johnny Depp’s place.  It turns out that most of those plates were made in the south of France (which we now call, “France”), and then shipped throughout the Roman Empire.

The people in the south of France were really good at making plates because they had yet to learn how to smoke and wear berets, and the Roman Empire was big enough and stable enough that the French could specialize in making plates.  Since they specialized, they got pretty good at it.

But then society became unstable.  The Romans Legions left, promising, “Hey, Britain, I’ve got to go to work.  I’ll call you next week, promise.  Oh, look at the time.”

When the Roman Empire collapsed, so did the trade in plates.  100 years after the Romans (and their cool plates) left Britain, the king ate off of plates that were worse than any commoner could easily afford when things were nice, stable, and efficient under Roman rule.

Stability in society leads to specialization which leads to efficiency which leads to (generally) higher standards of living for everyone.

But instability doesn’t have to impact an entire Empire.  Instability can impact individuals throughout their careers.  Why did the journalists hate it when their “learn to code” mantra go thrown back in their face when they were booted to the curb and they found that they had no other remotely marketable skills?

Because journalists are rich kids who weren’t smart enough to get into law school.  Writing snarky columns about “10 Reasons Your Dog Is Transgender” isn’t really a marketable skill after HuffPo® decides to fire them.

What programming language did George Lucas use?  Jabbascript.

Unlike most journalists, I’ve had (sort of) a Swiss Army Career™.  I’ve developed a particular set of skills (not the Liam Neeson ones) that have allowed me to do a lot of different things, but I’m only an expert in one or two.  But that suite of “pretty good” skills has allowed me to, like a Swiss Army knife, be incredibly useful from time to time.  Scott Adams calls this a “talent stack” and not all of them are equal.

Had I limited them to a single expertise, I would have been less valuable, and much less employable when the industry I was in slowed down and another one was hot.  As I look at the success level of many of my colleagues, it has been due to their variation in skills rather than their expertise in a single skill that led them to success – and some of them are wildly successful.

To further explain Swiss Army talent, Steve Martin can do several things at a world-class level, (including comedy, and acting), and is really good at musicianship and writing and sort of okay at singing.  Together, this blend elevated him to a national treasure.

(And no, I’m not comparing me to him, just using him as an example of someone who inspires me.)

If Martin had kept slaying them nightly as a standup, odds are that as fashions change he would have been a “Remember that guy with the arrow through his head in the 1970s?  He was funny,” trivia answer.

He would have been the Gary Mule Deer of his generation.

“Thankfully, perseverance is a good substitute for talent.” – Steve Martin

Another point I raised was certification.  In last week’s post, I made light of certification that can be found in many, many careers.

In a highly technical (and stable) world, certification is (sadly) essential to keeping people alive in certain professions.  Aesop brought up William Mulholland.  To quote Aesop,

“He (Mulholland) emigrated to America from Ireland, and started out as a literal ditch-digger for the city of Los Angeles, scraping mud out of the irrigation canals that supplied the bustling metropolis of 10,000 with all the water that could be gotten from the muddy semi-annual creek known as the Los Angeles River. He was an uneducated, unlettered, self-taught civil engineer who worked his way up to chief engineer of the city from scratch, just because he could figure things out.”

But, (also from Aesop):

“He (still Mulholland) was working on another project, still large and in charge, and he placed an earthen dam in one of the canyons north of Los Angeles. What he didn’t know was that the rock there was a terrible location for a dam. Which hydraulics, geology, and physics all demonstrated rather rudely one night in 1928, when the whole thing collapsed, killing at least 431 people (they’ve found bodies up to as recently as 1994) in the ensuing flood, ending Mulholland’s career, and he died a broken man.”

Mulholland’s error can be found again and again, even with credentialed professionals – re:  Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which was designed by the best and the brightest.  Stuff happens when you push the envelope of what we can do.  Part of the reasons that people don’t die on commercial airlines (very much) anymore is because we’ve discovered most of the ways that the airplanes can fall out of the skies.  Because airplanes built by credentialed engineers fell out of the skies, other credentialed engineers fixed the mistakes that made them fall out of the skies.

To be clear, before the planes fell out of the sky, the designers (mostly) had no idea they were making a mistake.

Mario’s™ favorite state?  Luigiana.

Our reliability is built on a sea of failure, sort of like I always imagined that the Marios® I killed in Super Mario Brothers fell on an infinitely deep pile of Mario skeletons.  It’s like the Tom Cruise movie, Edge of Tomorrow (If you haven’t seen it, it’s like Groundhog Day with the backdrop of an alien invasion of Earth).  Cruise’s character dies again and again but is reborn right where he was the previous morning with the knowledge of why he failed.

Engineering is like that.  Fail and learn and fix and stop failing.  Elon Musk’s SpaceX® exemplifies that sprit.  There’s another spirit that he exemplifies, and that’s the Robert Anson Heinlein quote that I tossed up last week:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.

Specialization is for insects.

I’ll admit that, off of RAH’s list, I haven’t conned a ship, I haven’t set a bone, and I haven’t yet died.  I do think I could plan an invasion as well as Churchill did at Gallipoli.  Probably better, though I think Churchill could have taken me in a drinking contest.  I have done most of the others if you replace “hog” with “deer”.

Yes, that exact list?  Okay, it’s not my list.  But I’ll bet that you (and most people who end up here or at Aesop’s place) have multiple talents on a comparable list.  You can do lots of things that Bob never could have done – heck, I bet your list is better.

And being a generalist matters when novel solutions are required.  Novel solutions require (often) a combination of lots of different knowledge and experience.  Generalists are the pioneers and the people who keep the fires going after Rome leaves.  Generalists are the ones who figure out how to make the next sets of dishes after the supply from ancient France (now known as “France”) goes dry.

Aesop is right.  Specialists win when the weather is fair and the seas are calm.

I’m right.  Generalists win when the path is unclear and the seas are rough.

If I discover a way to make gravel out of rocks faster, I’ll let you know – it will be a ground-breaking discovery.

I prefer to live in a society where specialists help us create a great standard of living and keep increasing human knowledge.  But I also know that humanity forgot how to make concrete (which the Romans used in making the Pantheon in 126 A.D., which is still standing today) until about 1750 A.D., and we really didn’t get good at it until 1900 A.D.

Specialists make the world better and can achieve far more than generalists ever could.  They help the world see farther, and do more.  Generalists help the world advance in weird leaps that sometimes have horrible unintended consequences, but they also keep the fire of civilization burning.

Why not both?  Me?  I’ll be in the other room, making little rocks out of big rocks.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Preparing For The Commissar

“Ottoman, there’ll be no Justice of the Peace for you, just a big piece of justice.” – The Tick

6:30 is the best time.  Hands down.

  1. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
  2. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
  3. Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
  4. Open War.

April had increased violence.    None that I could see was from the Right, which appears to still be stunned that the Leftists are actually doing all of the things that they promised that they would do.

I’m holding April at 9 out of 10.  That’s still two minutes to midnight.  If I were betting?  July or August will take us to a 10.

I currently put the total at (this is my best approximation, since no one tracks the death toll from rebellion-related violence) only creeping up at around 700 out of the 1,000 required for the international civil war definition.

As close as we are to the precipice of war, be careful.  Things could change at any minute.  Avoid crowds.  Get out of cities.  Now.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Chauvin And Justice – Violence And Censorship Update – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index –  Leftists Destroy GATE – Links

Front Matter

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

Chauvin And Justice

Derek Chauvin, a former officer with the Minneapolis Somalia by St. Paul Police Department, was convicted on three counts (at least two of them mutually exclusive) after minimal jury deliberation.  There are many articles that talk about the injustice of the decision.  I wasn’t in the jury room so I can’t say too much about the decision.  I guess my only question is how much fentanyl does one have to consume before it becomes listed as a suicide if three times a fatal dose isn’t enough?

The fate of those two men, Floyd and Chauvin, tells us a tremendous amount about the justice system in the country.  But the Derek Chauvin trial showcases a much bigger agenda involving the justice system.

What is the message that was issued to every police officer in Minnesota and in almost every Leftist-controlled state?

Don’t do your job.  If you do, and you take down the wrong junkie, you’ll be fired.  If you’re lucky.  Instead, just show up.  If you want to arrest someone, just make sure that they’re not people you can get in trouble for policing.

Well, it’s not like the Unitarians believe anything.

The goal is:  cops cease to police.  If cops cease to police, the justice system will simply break down.  I’ve covered multiple times why the justice system is the cornerstone of Western Civilization.  The justice system is a stroke of genius that takes vengeance from the hands of individuals, and puts it into the hands of a “just and impartial” system.

Is the “just and impartial” system flawed?  Certainly.  But the thing that’s required is the faith in the system, even though it has flaws.  If we believe that justice is real, it keeps the scourge of vengeance at bay, even when there are occasional lapses.

Perhaps that’s what the jury was thinking.

Perhaps.

But the message to them was clear.  The demonstrations.  The dead pig’s head on the defense expert witness’s (former) front yard.  Maxine Waters agitating the local community to “keep the pressure on.”

Thus, the verdict.  This is a single case, about two men whose lives intersected.

Long term though, the goal isn’t about this case, the goal to remove the cops.  This will destroy the “just and impartial” system.  That’s clearly the plan now.  Look at recent “protests” in Portland and Plano.  The police are there to protect the protesters and put in jail any who resist the protest.  And if a mob shows up at a house and damages it?  If the mob points weapons at those who protest?

The only crime will be self-defense.

But this removal of police is in the script.  This is act one.  This will:

  • Increase crime, because the police are being pressured to not do their one job: arrest criminals.
  • Increase actions of vengeance, because the criminals aren’t being punished.
  • Vigilantes, of course, will be punished far more harshly than the criminals.

What happens when crime increases and vigilantes increase?

A solution from the Left will arise.  They won’t call them Political Commissars, but they will be.  Social Justice Police?  Equity Enforcement?

I hear that mummys like wrap music.

The “just and impartial” system, then envy of the non-Western world, will soon be gone.

All by plan.

And who will be left to look to?  The Left.

Violence And Censorship Update – Turbo Magnum Edition

Item 1:  Rudy Giuliani is a high-profile political figure in the Untied (yes, that’s intentional) States.  He also looks like he smells like a combination of gin, Vicks-Vap-O-Rub®, hair cream, and mothballs.  But Rudy is also a lawyer, specifically the lawyer for President Trump, representing him in several different matters.  This is important since an attorney’s work is uniquely privileged – an attorney provides guidance through the legal system for people who aren’t familiar with it.  It’s like when The Mrs. explains to me that other people are human beings that have things called “feelings” that I should pay attention to.  Pfft.

The attorney-client privilege isn’t absolute, the privilege doesn’t cover ongoing fraud, attempts to intimidate witnesses, destruction of evidence, et cetera.  But it’s a really big deal.  It’s one of those protections that was put in place so everyone can trust the system, even those the system is attempting to punish.

Recently Rudy’s office was raided, and not by the St. Pauli Girl t-shirt squad to give him an atomic wedgie followed by tequila shooters.  Rudy’s a political figure, but he’s also a lawyer.  That should be an amazingly high hurdle to stop a raid, but in 2021 America, it isn’t.  Just like Chauvin’s conviction – Rudy’s raid was meant to suppress speech and protection that the Left doesn’t agree with.

A truck of Vicks Vap-O-Rub® wrecked during rush hour last month. There was no congestion for a week.

Imagine if it had been Podesta or Hunter Biden or Hillary Clinton or even Satan getting raided during the Trump administration?

The howl from the Left would have been deafening.  And, yes, the Church of Satan members voted 99%+ for Biden.

Item 2:  Nick Fuentes is a twentysomething (22) kid that runs something called America First™ which is a political movement focused around views of the Right – he even makes fun of the pure economic conservatism of Turning Point, USA®.  Nick used to be on YouTube®, but they banned him.  And so did most private apps where he could make money or get publicized on.

Libertarians and Leftists will agree:  it’s a private company and the terms of service matter, not the Constitution.  I’ve made my arguments about that, and had some good ones with friends who are as impartial as I can find.

But.

Nick Fuentes was put on the No-Fly list recently by Biden’s Department of Homeland Security.  The Federal Government’s No-Fly list.  The worst that I could say about Nick (from what I’ve seen) is that he’s annoyingly smug.

Smug is not a crime.  The sole reason that Nick could be on the No-Fly list?  He says things people in government don’t like.

This is not a “bake my gay cake bigot” moment.  This is the unfettered use of government power to destroy ideas.  Sure, the FBI spied on Martin Luther King.

Think they’re not looking at you and me?  Laugh at the wrong meme?  Hope you can drive.

Item 3:  I track the website traffic and where it comes from to Wilder, Wealthy and Wise©.  Okay, I don’t do it personally.  Some nameless small gnomes that live inside of computer chips count the visitors to this place.  Whatever.  They don’t ask for vacation.

A small (but significant) number of visitors to this site came from Google®.  Millions?  No.  But thousands every month.  By any stretch of the imagination, this site is easily in the top 20 most-linked to site on the Internet about Civil War 2.0.

And these are quality links from pretty popular sites.

But I don’t show up on Google® under that search.  I can understand that.  But what if I look for the entirely novel phrase (my own invention thanks to Cory Hamasaki, R.I.P.) Civil War Weather Report?

I get links about weather during the Civil War.  I once got links to current weather forecasts for Gettysburg, PA from Google™.

If I go to DuckDuckGo®?  With that phrase, I’m number one.  With Civil War 2.0?  I’m still in the top results.  I get more hits from DuckDuckGo™ many weeks than I do from Google™.  DuckDuckGo® has 0.5% market share.  Google® has 92.26%.

All things being equal?  I should get about 180 times the number of hits from Google™ as I do from DuckDuckGo©.  And it used to be about five times the traffic, if not ten times the traffic.  Not now.  Some days, I get more traffic from DuckDuckGo™.

The nosedive started in:  February, 2021, right after a certain person was inaugurated.

Hmmm.  I’m not the first site “de-tuned” by Google® and I won’t be the last.

Now all my devices use DuckDuckGo®.

Updated Civil War II Index

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

Violence:

Up is more violent, and violence is down slightly in April.  I was expecting it to go up, but I was also expecting Chauvin to be found not guilty.  The state-media propaganda of “homegrown terrorism”  drumbeat is ongoing, even as protester violence and inner-city violence is going through the roof.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable.  Instability dropped this month.  I expect it to increase next month, but the Left keeps pushing for more control.

Economic:

I expected this number to be less positive.  It’s not.  As I predicted, April is the month that we find that inflation moves from a thought to a widely-felt reality.  What’s next?  It won’t be better.

Illegal Aliens:

This data is at record levels for this time of year.  Comments from the Left?  “There needs to be more.”

Leftists Destroy GATE

Gifted And Talented Education (GATE) is a pretty cool program.  The idea is that smart kids can work on material that challenges them.  That’s good.  Really smart kids, when bored, cause a lot of problems.  How else do you explain the Crusades?

But of course, the biggest problems in our country (sorry Aesop) seem to emanate from either D.C. or California.  The newest push is an “equity” focused math program.

The framework draft starts with the biggest lie published in the English language in 2021:

“All students are capable of making these contributions and achieving these abilities at the highest levels,” and, “evidence that shows all fifth graders care capable of eventually learning calculus, or other high-level courses , when provided appropriate messaging teaching and support.”

No.

Not at all.  And what the hell is “messaging teaching”?  Sounds like a crack-addled mail-order diploma-mill Doctor Of Education (looking at you, Jill Biden) theory.

Inequality is rampant in the human condition.  No matter how much I wish that I could be taller, I can’t think myself taller, and no amount of Social Justice Warrior Equity Cheerleading could make me taller.

No amount of teaching, even super-special “messaging teaching” can make me even a millimeter taller.

And no amount of teaching, even super-special “messaging teaching” can make a dumb kid smarter.  You can make a Lamborghini® out of duct tape and cardboard, but the only way it’ll make 50 miles an hour is if you drop it out of an airplane.

My parents told me I was a gifted child.  Turned out they meant that I was left on their doorstep in a box.

What this statement means is simple:  smart kids, according to the educational establishment in California, don’t exist.  They even say that explicitly:  “We reject ideas of natural gifts and talents.”

Guess we’ll have to page Harrison Bergeron (LINK – read it if you haven’t – it’s short).

It’s trivial to prove that some people are talented and some are not – in fact, it’s fairly commonly known now that 60-90% of all of everyone’s attributes and abilities are inherited.  Everyone.  There is no mystical person who has attributes that are Play-Doh® in the hands of the schools or state.  Is it nature or nurture?

It’s nature.  Nurture can mess it up.  Nurture can get the best out of what’s there.  But you can’t get a ribeye steak out of a cat.

This denial of reality is 100% required by the Left, however.  The idea of anything be unequal is an idea they cannot accept, even when it’s real, which is why untrained women have to win fights against Navy Seals in movies, and why Leftists pretend that Caitlyn Jenner ain’t a dude.

LINKS

As usual, links this month are courtesy of Ricky.  Thanks so much!!

READY ON THE RIGHT

 

 

READY ON THE LEFT

 

 

READY ON THE FIRING LINE

 

 

READY FIRE AIM

 

Why I Write

“All work and no play makes Jack Phil a dull boy.” – The Shining

What do you call a Mongolian defeatist?  Genghis Khan’t.

Stephen King, especially the coked-out version who doesn’t remember the entire Reagan presidency, often wrote about writing.  This might have been interesting if all of those main characters in his stories weren’t writers, too.  The Mrs. has felt that Steve has been a bad writer since, oh, 1992 or so.  The Mrs. had been a big enough fan that she drove three hours to take part in an interview with him back in the day.  I gave up on him around 2008.  The Mrs. even Facebook®-told-him he was a “hack”.

I don’t often write about writing.  But I write a lot.  652 posts since March, 2017, with a total word count before this post of 942,879 words.  So, just like Mr. King, I’ve at least become a much more proficient typist since 1992.

Why do I spend the hours writing these posts every week?

Well, the first reason is I like to write them.

When I’ve finished a post and I’ve said absolutely everything that I want to say, and said it exactly the way that I want to say it, I feel great.

That’s a problem.

I run a weird sleep schedule because of the posts, and often finish up writing into the wee hours of the morning.  On more than one morning, I finished the final touches on the post and scheduled it just as the Sun was coming up.

There have been one or two days when I went straight from the keyboard to the shower to work to back home and then directly to bed.  Ugh.  This (partially) explains why I generally only comment right before the new post shows up.

I’m so tired that I can only buy pizza from Papa Yawns.

But even when I finish so I’ll have a shot at getting a few hours of sleep, there comes the problem of feeling great, because there is nothing worse than going to bed at 3AM with a looming 6AM alarm when I’m so excited about what I wrote that I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve.

That makes me happy.  But it also makes me as sleepy as Joe Biden before they take him out of the fridge and unzip the Hefty Glad Bag™ each morning to thaw him out.

I also write these because at least some people like to read them.

I’m not sure I’d put the effort into writing these on a regular basis if people didn’t come by.  I used to journal but ended up putting that down after some ludicrous number of pages that no one will ever read.  It got to be pretty repetitive after a while.

My neighbor thinks I don’t respect his boundaries, or at least he wrote that in his journal.

I know that some of you like reading these because you comment.  Of course, there are those who are regulars who never comment – and that’s fine!  Then there are those that only send me email.  But there is a sense of real community that I’m seeing building in the comments.  I consider it a win when half the comments are people talking to each other – and I try to stay out of that, mostly.  It is a food fight, after all.

I write these because, on occasion, I think I’ve got something to contribute.

It’s no real surprise to anyone who reads here regularly that I’m fairly concerned with more than one set of trends related to our future.  The biggest clue to that is seeing things that showed up in the past – Kipling’s Gods of the Copybook Headings (which I’ve written about before and I’ll reprint again below) seems written to describe our modern age.  That may make sense – Kipling was watching from the peak of British power, and seeing the cracks forming in 1919 that would shatter less than 30 years later.

“I’d kill for a Nobel Peace Prize™.” – Barack Obama

I get that sense today, and get clues that we’re far from the United States – the Untied States? – that any of us knew in our youth.  Just like Kipling used his genius and verse to create snapshots of the world, I try to do the same with humor and more than one bikini graph.  Different times, different tools.  Also, I doubt they’ll give me a Nobel Prize™ for literature unless they create one especially for me for bad puns.

Our future will be different, but I like to think that when the dust settles we don’t end up like Moscow in 1919 but the United States in 1787, the beginning of something better.

I do it because I like humor. 

I have no idea why.  I’ve been writing nonsense like this since I was a kid.  It makes me as happy as Hunter Biden when he got the highest test score.  I mean, the policeman holding the breathalyzer wasn’t amused, but . . . .

I do it because I want to leave something behind.

Yup.  942,879 words.  If you read them all out loud, it would take you nearly as long as the Lord of the Rings trilogy movies.  Unless you got the special extended version, which lasts 19.5 years.  It may not be great, but just like the Federal Reserve® and money printing:  I make up for it in volume.

Bruce Willis will play an older Frodo in the next movie.  Old Hobbits Die Hard.

I do it because I want to get better.

The Mrs. challenged me on this one when I wrote my previous blog, and for the first year on this one that I wasn’t really trying.  They were “fine”, she told me, but unless I was working to make them better, why should I spend all of that time and be content with “fine”?

She was right.

And it takes me a lot longer now to write a post.  There’s a whole process, which, unlike Stephen King’s best work, doesn’t involve turning myself into a snowmachine but it does involve a lot of editing.  The Mrs. doesn’t even think that I’m a hack, and she’d tell me.

And she’s mean.  The Mrs. once (this really happened) walked by NFL® commentator Phil Simms (former quarterback) and said, exceptionally loudly so there was NO DOUBT he heard her, “Look, it’s Boomer Esaison.”

He was on camera.  He paused in mid-sentence, just a half-second, but restarted and kept chugging on like a pro.  But I could tell he was a little irritated.  The lesson here?

If you make The Mrs. mad, you will pay.  Just ask Stephen King or Phil Simms.

Ok, Boomer.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

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!

Specialization Versus Generalization: The Economy Chooses

“Hey, you’re really trying to be accurate.  Is it getting hot in here?  Wait a minute! What’s happening to my special purpose?” – The Jerk

You could say a generalization made by a farmer is an overall statement.

The economy has been really stable for a long, long time.  Certainly, there have been dips here and there, but for the most part, we have seen amazing amounts of . . . stable.  Even the Great Recession (after a liberal application of amazing amounts of money) was made as smooth as leather – I’ll never be suede in that.

In many ways, the solution for the economy for the last twenty years has been exactly what a college freshman would ask at a party at 2 AM:  “Dude, I’ve got a $20.  Can we get more beer?”  The Fed® has a fake I.D. and decided to add more money.  Keep the party going.

Of course, everyone loves a party.  And everyone loves stability.

But what does stability bring?

Specialization.

In a stable environment, every ecological niche gets filled with very specialized variations.  Look at the Arctic.  It may be cold, but it’s stable because the climate varies only a little.  There are very specialized variations of bears and foxes and birds that exploit the ecosystem.  Likewise, the equator with its constant miserable heat produces the same thing:  amazing amounts of specialization including a zillion things in the Amazon jungle that will kill you just for a picture that they can post of Facebook®.  The anteater comes to mind:  a creature so specialized that it eats only ants and has a tongue specialized just for that.

Anteaters can’t catch COVID.  They’re filled with anty-bodies.

In the economy, this flourishes as credentialization©.  Microsoft® doesn’t recognize that word, so I put a little © next to it so now I own it.  Ha!  Take that!  I’d make a “Bill Gates is getting divorced joke” here, but he’s had a hard enough time already.  I’ve already been rejecting his updates since 2017.

We live, however, in an economy built on amazing levels of specialization.  How does one prove their ability to work?  A credential.  The number of credentials has flourished, even in my lifetime.  There was even one where all I had to do to get the credential was apply for it, as it was brand new.

I didn’t apply.  I still look upon that particular credential with disdain – as Groucho noted, why would I want to be in a club that would accept me as a member?  This particular credential is entirely built upon the idea that if I know a specific set of terms that they agree on, I can put a few letters after my name.

Pfffft.  Nope.  Though I did speak at one of their meetings for a few beers.  I may have standards, but they’re low.

Let’s get in a time machine so we can have some fun.

If I wanted to be a doctor in 1821, how did I do that?  I called myself one.  If my patients lived, I’d get more of them.  If they died?  I’d have to move to another town and give bad advice there.  Or run for Congress.

I might not save patients, but I’d be a popular doctor.

One of my personal heroes is Isambard Kingdom Brunel.  Why?

Isambard built stuff and set the stage for the entire twentieth century.  What kind of stuff?  Docks.  Boats.  Railroads.  Bridges.  The first transatlantic steamship.  The first tunnel under a real river.  He even built a hospital that was prefabricated and shipped to the Crimea for all of those Light Brigade guys that rode half a league, half a league onward.

One ship he built, the Great Eastern, could travel from London to Sydney, Australia (it’s somewhere south of Kentucky) and back.  Without refueling.  The second Transatlantic Cable, the one that worked?  It was put down with one of Brunel’s ships.

Did Isambard Kingdom Brunel have to take a test to prove he was an engineer?  No.

If there is a mountain worthy of the name mountain, it’s Everest.  If there is a man who is worthy of the name engineer, it’s Isambard Kingdom Brunel.  Credentials?  Isambard don’t need no stinking credentials.

His work speaks for itself.

What do engineers use as birth control?  Personality.

But now we live in a credentialed world.  Landscape architect?  You have to take a test to call yourself that.  Trim nails and put polish on them?  In many places, you have to have a credential for that.  Cut hair?  Yup.  Have to pass a barber test in many places.

But nails and hair grow back.  If you have bad landscaping, there’s no worry because chainsaws are a thing that exists.

The number of jobs you can’t do without formal credentials keeps expanding.  Do some make sense?  Well, probably.  But I’d suggest that 90% of credentials that exist do so only to prevent competition.  Need a teaching certificate to teach children?

Why?  I can’t think of a single reason other than to eliminate competition.  Laura Ingalls Wilder (from whom I stole the Wilder moniker) graduate grade eight and then . . . was a teacher.

The sea of credentials that we find ourselves surrounded by is also an attempt to avoid liability.  In an attempt to avoid responsibility, lawyers and lawsuits require more and more credentials in jobs where credentials are mostly meaningless.  Oh, and the lawyers were some of the first to pull the ladder up.  Let’s be real:  90% of being a lawyer is reading comprehension.

That’s what comes when you live in a stable economy.  Specialization increases, even to ludicrous levels.  People have jobs where they are so remote from any activity that produces actual value that they don’t even know what their company does that produces value.  HR, I’m looking at you.  Oh, wait, there are at least 12 types of credentials that you can get for HR.

See?

Oh, and I’ve probably made 99% of my readers mad at this point.

But what happens in an unstable economy?  The real winner is the generalist.  I’ll turn to a Robert Anson Heinlein quote I’ve used before:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.

Specialization is for insects.

See, I come screaming out with all of the new themes.  This one is sooooo fresh.

I’ve done almost every one of the things that Heinlein talks about.  I’m hoping to save the “die gallantly” until it’s useful, since it seems it would be wasted if I were to use it in negotiating with DirecTV® over my monthly bill.

In a stable economy, specialization (and the dreaded credentialization©) is valued.  In an economy where things are unstable?

Generalization wins.

The Mrs. bought me a suture practice kit for Christmas.  I was thrilled.  It had a scalpel, needle, and thread.  I can now sew up a wound in plastic.  I would not try to sew up a wound unless you were going to die if I didn’t give it a go.  That’s the definition of unstable.

I’ve taken first aid courses throughout the country.  The second best one was in Alaska.  They spent time teaching skills.  In the lower 48, most of it was, “dial 911 and keep the patient comfortable until the EMTs arrive.”  So, my job, when a human life was on the line?  Make a phone call.

This is Specialization at its peak.

Understand, as long as the economy persists in being stable, specialization will increase.

But when Winter hits?

Or was that generalizations about broads?

Generalization wins.

Personally, I am not very good at supporting increased specialization.

We’re humans.

We can do more.  And if the economy goes where I think it will?

We will need to do more.

Culture Wars: The Boy Scouts And Hollywood, Including A Bikini Graph

“Envy the country that has heroes, huh?  I say pity the country that needs them.” – Reign of Fire

My book on the Nordic nations is really difficult to write.  I’m not sure I can Finnish.

There are institutions in this country that are fundamental in shaping it.  Two, in particular, helped define the 20th century in the United States of America:

  • Hollywood®
  • Boy Scouting

Both were a product of the American expansion between 1850 and 1940, and both were forged in the American West.

Boy Scouting?  American?

The official story is that Boy Scouts was brought to the United States from Great Britain.  In the immortal words of Jules, “Please allow me to retort”:  Sir Robert Baden-Powell was the guy who “officially” started Boy Scouting, but given his aristocratic upbringing, Baden-Powell’s idea of camping was spending an afternoon on the patio with only one servant and no ice for his gin.

The truth is much more American:  Baden-Powell based Scouting on Frederick Russell Burnham, who was born in Minnesota and crossed paths with outlaws and thieves as he learned the tricks from old cavalry scouts that served in the Indian Wars.  Once all the Indians were killed or in a reservation, Burnham got bored and hitched a ride to South Africa to kill and conquer that continent, too.

In South Africa, Burnham was eventually made Chief of Scouts of the British South African Army in one of the Boer Wars.  The Boer Wars were that time when the British found out that the Boers were sitting on the biggest gold strike in the world, and decided that all that was required was to get those pesky Boers off of all of that obviously British gold.  I first heard of Burnham while reading this amazing true story (LINK).  It’s long-ish, but amazing because it’s true.

Why do Scoutmasters wear that hat?  This guy.  This picture was taken after he was personally decorated by the King with the second-highest award given by Britain to soldiers, and given a permanent rank in the British Army.  Also given personally by the King.

Why do Boy Scouts wear neckerchiefs?  Because Burnham wore a neckerchief.  In Baden-Powell’s estimation, the goal of Boy Scouts was to turn boys into men like Burnham.

Scouting was built on just that American ideal – individual ruggedness and preparedness.  Baden-Powell said it very well, “A Scout is never taken by surprise; he knows exactly what to do when something unexpected happens.”

Scouting, in one quote that I read sometimes back, was based in the preparation of an ideal citizen – one that could contribute, one that could learn, and one that was not reliant on the government.  It created capable, rugged boys who in turn became capable, rugged men.

Scouting found very fertile ground in the United States.  Very soon there was a shortage of little old ladies to escort across the street, and they had to take shifts so the Boy Scouts could assist.

I kid.

But there are very few organizations (outside of churches) that have done as much good for the United States as the Boy Scouts.

Sadly, Boy Scouts is essentially dead.  The last decade killed it.

Well, you can’t say the Left isn’t good at something.

It had already been on life support.  The peak number of Boy Scouts was in the early 1970s at about five million boys.  To have a similar number today would mean that there would be ten million Scouts.  There aren’t.  I expect that the number (when it is announced later this month) will certainly be less than two million, and probably closer to one million than two.  The graph I put together (there are many conflicting sources, and I put this together using the most accurate numbers I could find, along with some guesswork and interpolation) shows that the number of Scouts is consistently declining.

I guess that nobody asked the Scouts what their opinion was.

This utter collapse in the number of Scouts is despite the tricks that the national leadership has employed to keep numbers up:  they added kindergarteners, the glue eating set, to a new program called Lions.  Since the name “Boy Scouts of America” wasn’t clear to them, they decided to add girls to the program and rebrand it as Scouts BSA® where BSA™ doesn’t stand for anything really.  It was all an effort to keep the numbers up.

I don’t have high hopes for the girls involved in Scouts BSA™.  One local Scouts BSA© leader took girls out camping.  One of them snuck a spare cell phone, called a boy with a car, and disappeared with him for a week.  Somehow, that didn’t make the local papers.

If you look at the graph, the Boy Scouts had been in trouble before.  In the 1980s they realized the program had deviated from what made it popular:  being rugged.  They reintroduced the old-school methods, and popularity surged.

In 2014, they admitted homosexuals as youth.  In 2015, they admitted open homosexuals as leaders.  In 2017, girls who think they are boys were allowed to join.  Deciding that none of that mattered anymore, in 2019 girls could become Boy Scouts Scouts BSA™ members.  At every point, the Left made the point:  it’s not enough.  Now they want atheists to be able to join.

The Boy Scouts® used to stand for something.  Scouts BSA™ stands as just the latest conquest by the Social Justice Warriors.  Note that commies throughout history have hated the Scouts.  Now that they own it, they can finally kill it.

This is just one story.  You can find attack after attack on the Boy Scouts from the Left since the Scouts were founded.  Why?  Boy Scouts until 2010 was the thing that scared Leftists the most:  strong individuals who were responsible for their own actions.

Hollywood© is a similar American story – rooted in the West.  About the time that Burnham was killing his way across South Africa and unwittingly starting a youth movement that would transform the 20th century, the movie industry cranked up in California.  Why?  Well, Edison owned patents, and California was a very long way away from Edison’s lab in New Jersey.  The bandits that Burnham knew in California didn’t disappear – they just turned into businessmen.

See?  I can do a transition!

Hollywood™ has been a similar success story, though with a few twists and turns.  For a large number of years, films coming out of Hollywood© mirrored (in many cases) the Rightist views of the American public.  In the height of the Vietnam War protests, John Wayne starred in The Green Berets.  Even as late as 2002, Disney® put out Reign of Fire, which was staunchly Right in attitude.

I’m not ashamed to say that I love movies.  There are those who say that’s silly, and you’re more than welcome to your opinion.  I see them as a way to thrill to bravery and watch as Good defeats Evil.  It is a myth-making process that can showcase the very best of what we, as humans, can be.

Duty.  Honor.  Tradition.  Cannons, pistols, and swords.  French people being shot.  How can you not love this movie?  Did I mention French people being shot?

Now, in Current Year, Hollywood™ has managed to mangle several amazing film franchises because they had to inject either gender or identity politics into the films, and not in a light way.  The latest Star Wars™ films?  Pretty bad, like eye-rollingly bad.  It wasn’t the effects, mind you.  Those were amazing.  It wasn’t the actors – Hollywood© is a consistently ruthless meritocracy of talent.

It was the stories.

Once upon a time, movies were fun.  Really fun.  Some, of course, still are.  But what happened to the funny teen comedy?  Well, comedy requires that someone is made fun of.  So?  Comedy is out.

No, today movies have to be “woke” and parrot the Social Justice Warrior line and teach an important moral.  It’s funny when that moral isn’t what China likes, so that Hollywood™ has to change their picture, or change posters to minimize black cast members so Chinese people will go to see the movie.

Hmmm, I wonder if BLM® approved of the poster change? Think they speak Chinese?

Perhaps the reason for the injection of the Leftism is the studio executives wanting to placate their talent or their audience?

It doesn’t matter.  It failed horribly.

Sure, it’s a Wilder Bikini Graph®.  I was so very not going to do a bikini graph for the Boy Scouts.

Just like in Boy Scouts, now that the Left has fully taken Hollywood®, the rot has set in, and it begins to decay.  People don’t want to tune in to see what Leftist fantasy has won this year’s Leftist award.

Neither one of these losses of the Left is a win for the Right.  The world was better when we had Boy Scouts.  The world was better when we had more movies with better heroes, and comedies that made fun of everyone.

Thankfully, I have a sea of old movies that I can watch.  Also, thankfully, something will come to replace the Boy Scouts in time.  Politics is downstream of Culture, and Boy Scouts and Hollywood® are part of a culture that no longer exists as it did for nearly 100 years.

That’s okay.  We will rebuild.  We will create institutions that will renew our culture.

Just like Burnham taught us:  we will never give up.  We will keep the flame alive, and fight when the odds are stacked against us.

Why?

Because we are so very pretty.  We are just too pretty for God to let Western Civilization die.

Envy And Being Thankful: One Of These Is Good

“I mean, people should be envying us, you know.” – This Is Spinal Tap

A friend of mine has a really jealous wife.  She went through his calendar and wanted to know who May was.

In the second year of my career, I didn’t get a bonus.  I had gotten one the previous year, but by my second year I had done some great stuff, and managed to save the company quite a few dollars – as in several hundred thousand dollars.  Since I had gotten one the first year for, and I quote, “managing not to cause my computer to short out by drooling on it”, I was expecting even more money.

Nope.  Zero.  Nada.  Nil.  Empty set.  Biden’s brain.

Several of us at the company were all hired at the same time, and we compared notes.  Almost no one had gotten a bonus.  One person in the group did get one, but he wisely didn’t advertise it.  I think it was because he had good hair.  He still does.

Pavlov’s hair was really soft because he conditioned it.

Of course, I got together with another co-worker who also didn’t get a bonus, and we had (really) a pity-party.  It may or may not have involved more alcohol than it should have, as well as us complaining about a company that provided us more than enough money for a comfortable living, great benefits, and fun work.  It was exactly like two kids complaining that their parents were meanies.

One thing I’ve tried to do in my life is to understand when I’m mad, why I’m mad.  Was I being an idiot, or did I have a legitimate grievance?

In this case, I thought long and hard about it, and came to this conclusion:  I was securely and completely an idiot.  A self-absorbed one at that.  And just like a German sausage that’s been left out of the fridge overnight, I came to realize:  spoiled brats are the wurst.

Why?

Watching Willy Wonka makes me crave chocolate.  Perhaps I should avoid Breaking Bad.

I was angry because I wasn’t recognized as a special snowflake and given a pat on the head.  It was selfish.  Beyond that, it was silly.

From that point onward, I decided to have the following attitudes:

  • If the place I work gives me something extra above my base salary for free, I’m going to take it and smile. It was more than I had before.  If you always expect zero, you’re rarely disappointed.
  • If the place I work doesn’t give me something extra? Smile anyway.  Life is what it is, and being mad only upsets me, reduces my performance at work, and makes it less likely I’ll get something extra.
  • Don’t worry at all about what someone else gets. It doesn’t matter.  At all.

Now, there is an argument about “fairness” but I’ve noted that fairness is entirely in the eye of the beholder.  It’s subjective, especially in an environment where raises and bonuses are based not as participation trophies, but as an actual reward for performance.

Yeah, her ears stick out and she has a list of previous boyfriends tattooed on her back.

In reality, every second I’ve worried about someone else’s situation is a second of my life that was as wasted as Kamala Harris sounds whenever she talks.  In fact, I’ve trained myself to not feel upset.  An example:  when I was in Texas, driving my (bought used) four-door mutant-ninja-turtle-green Taurus® and I saw a $120,000 Mercedes™ pull up alongside at a stop sign, I’d think:

  • Nice car. Bet they haven’t paid it off.  I recall reading that something like 70% of people who own a Mercedes© bought them with a loan.  I assure you I owned my Taurus© free and clear.
  • Okay, if they have paid their Mercedes® off, my Taurus™ was still far cheaper to insure.

I didn’t create these little mind games to elevate myself above them; that would be monstrous.  No, I created them to kill any momentary envy I might have.  I’ve been doing this for years now.  It’s almost second nature.

How has it worked?

World hunger and Mercedes® have a lot in common.  Princess Diana couldn’t stop either.

It’s worked really well.  Now, when I see successful people I don’t envy them a bit.  I try to learn more about them and how they got successful.  Success isn’t about a competition against other people, success is the result of being the best that I can be.  If I’m wallowing in self-pity or envy then there’s no way I can be the best that I can be, because I’d be spending too much time at Leftist protest marches.

I know that some groups advocate that “whatever you feel is natural, and you should totally go with it, dude.”  And that’s utter nonsense.  In most (not all – grief at the loss of a loved one comes to mind) cases I feel what I choose to feel.  That’s right.  I don’t have to feel whatever pops up into my brain.

I am responsible for my attitude.  I am responsible for how I feel.  These are not some alien being inhabiting my brain.  These are my choices.

I can feel envy.  I can feel self-pity.  And if I choose those feelings?  I’ll always, always be miserable.

Or I can reject those feelings, and feel pretty good about life.

Does that mean that I reject reality?

Certainly not.  But I have no idea about the context of most people’s lives.  To judge someone on a bonus, or a car?  Nope – it doesn’t make sense.

I judge people rationally.  By the size of their earlobes.

I spilled coffee on my keyboard.  Now there’s no escape.

And one bonus I got later was stock.  My boss apologized because they had authorized a certain number of shares, and the share price had gone down to $2 at the time he gave them to me.  It wasn’t a lot of money.

I said, “thank you,” and really meant it.

I later sold the stock at $40.

See?  Start with thankful.  Good things will follow, except for the hair.

I do miss that.

Good Advice And Bad Advice

“Jack-San, if you want Yoji’s advice about the babes, you come to Yoji with respect!” – Mr. Baseball

The last thing Pa Wilder told me was, “Son, it makes sense to spend money on good stereo equipment.”  That was sound advice.

One thing we often do as a family is go out for dinner at an Italian place on Friday nights.  When we went out, it was a no-cellphone zone.  Everyone had to leave ‘em at home in a pile by the door.  We also didn’t apologize – we figure that everything was left in the pasta.

The other dinner rule was that only one subject was off-limits:  computers.  It is a subject that The Boy, Pugsley, and I could talk about for hours, but one The Mrs. has no real interest in – as long as her electronics work, there really isn’t a need for them to be discussed.  We couldn’t even talk about spiders, since they’re web designers.

But one night, The Boy was going on and on about Bitcoin.  He was in fifth grade.  Bitcoin this.  Bitcoin that.  An endless stream of information about Bitcoin.

I finally looked him in the eye and said, “How many Bitcoin do you have.”

“Seven.”

“How did you get seven Bitcoin?  Did you mine them?”

“No, mining them is too hard for my computer.  I mine Litecoin and then when the price of Litecoin is high and the price of Bitcoin is low, I trade for Bitcoin.”

You can’t eat Monopoly®, either.  Tastes too gamey.

At that point, Bitcoin was worth about $500.  So, I was presented with my fifth grader having set up a cryptocurrency trading scheme that had netted him about $3,500.  He even started up his own server to discuss cryptocurrency trading.

Some kids mow lawns.

The price of Bitcoin dropped pretty low.  He traded Bitcoins for, of all things, web hosting.  All I know is that his stash of coins disappeared, otherwise he would be sitting on enough money to buy a house today.

The Boy even gave me half a Bitcoin for father’s day one year.

I gave it back to him when he wanted to buy something.  Silly me, giving back a $25,000 (today’s prices) father’s day gift.

The advice I gave him when he had seven Bitcoins?  Save them.

Oh well.  If I didn’t follow my own advice, why should he?

We have a restaurant that serves breakfast at any time.  I chose medieval France.

But each of us has been given good and bad advice throughout our lives, and we took it or we didn’t.  When it comes to money and work, there is a world of free advice out there.  Here is some bad advice I’ve gotten over the years:

  • (From Pa Wilder, before my first marriage): “Well, they say that two can live as cheaply as one.”  Well, the divorce cost me the price of a Lamborghini®, so, that’s not really true.  Still, I’m happier to have the divorce than to have owned a Lamboâ„¢.
  • “Gold, why would you buy gold? It’s fallen in price to $300 an ounce!”  I would have ignored this, but I didn’t have $300.  Because of the divorce.
  • “Buy new cars. That way you’re not buying someone else’s problem.”  Again, this was Pa Wilder’s advice, which might have made sense in 1960, but not in 1999.
  • “A car is one of the biggest investments you’ll make.” A car salesman.
  • “Don’t move from company to company.” Again, this was Pa Wilder.  Every single time I got a great raise, it was from moving from to a company that valued me more.

If you ever think you’re a failure, remember this:  you’re closer to being worth $900,000,000 than Jeff Bezos is.

I’ve had some good advice, too:

  • “Buy more ammo.” The Mrs., 2018.
  • “Really, you need to buy more ammo.” The Mrs., 2019.
  • “Buy land. If it blows up, you still own a hole in the ground.”
  • “Do not forget, stay out of debt.” – Hamlet as seen on Gilligan’s Island
  • “Modern used cars are generally a good deal.”
  • “Don’t make fun of bald men. If you do that you’ll go bald.”  Too late.

Part of the problem in life is that good advice sometimes sounds exactly like bad advice, and vice versa.  Also, Pa Wilder’s advice was good based upon what he knew, and the life he had led up to that point.  Job hopping, in his world, was the sign of an unreliable employee.  In my career, moving from job to job was what people did.

Alas, my kids were gnome schooled.

When given at the wrong time, good advice can be bad advice, which sounds suspiciously like luck.  Is it all luck?

Certainly not.

Does luck matter?

Certainly it does.

I’ll turn it over to you:

  • What’s the best advice you’ve gotten?
  • What’s the worst advice you’ve taken?
  • What bullets did you dodge?
  • What advice would you give a 20-year-old?

And I’ll take my own advice next time, and keep any $25,000 gifts that any of my kids give me.

Watch The Latest Podcast Because . . . It Has Four Bikinis.

The wait is over! The latest episode of Bombs and Bants is up!  Watch it because this one actually features bikinis, exotic dancers matter, the CIA, and a great article about the relative unpreparedness of the United States military.  Watch it because you want to.

Watch it for our PARODY sponsor, Bonnie’s Coffee, and for a new episode of Hidin’ with Biden.

Also?  The Mrs. is releasing some of the most beloved commercials in the universe – just wander over to the YouTube page and you can see gems like:

I had promised that I’d post a link when The Boy got Bombs and Bants up on other formats, and here it is (Bombs And Bants) for Bitchute, Apple podcasts, and Odysee.

The Left Has Plenty Of Plans For This Crisis

“Welcome to my world crisis, Mr. Bond!” – Tomorrow Never Dies

That door handle looks like it’s from an 80’s Fiat©, which means it isn’t driving anywhere until it’s dropped all its oil on the garage floor.

The last year has seen more change than the last twenty years, combined. This is to be expected, especially if you give Strauss and Howe’s The Fourth Turning idea any credence. A short version of The Fourth Turning (also known as Kondratieff Wave Theory) is that there is a roughly 80-year cycle of human affairs. Let me use the life of my Dad, Pa Wilder, to describe it:

When Pa Wilder was young he spent most of his childhood in Winter, the first defining experience of his life was the Great Depression. Back then, they had printed versions of the Internet that they would get delivered to their house every day, called newspapers. They also had cell phones that never needed charging, and that you could never lose because they were in the living room and conveniently connected by a cord to the wall.

I’m sure all of the kids on the playground talked with Pa about how obvious it was that the Federal Reserve’s® monetary policy, combined with bankers lending to anyone with a pulse led to near financial collapse. Oh, and how their parents couldn’t afford shoes. Thankfully, Pa lived in a farming community, and every little house in town had a very large garden out back. Food from the grocery store?

Why would you spend money on food when you had to pay for the mortgage?

Al Capone set up this particular location during the Depression. Pa Wilder said I should never go camping with a gangster: he didn’t want me to have a criminal intent.

That’s the sort of lesson that bored itself into Pa Wilder’s mind. As a kid, he saw people lose houses, he saw people lose fortunes. He saw a nation nearing collapse.

Economic collapse led to the second thing that defined Pa Wilder’s youth: World War II. Not long after Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor he was in boot camp in Ft. Sill and before long was a 2nd lieutenant in the Army. The next four years he spent on an all-expenses-paid European vacation

The end of the war was the end of Kondratieff Winter. What followed was Spring.

In post-war United States, growth and unrivaled prosperity followed from 1945-1965. Pa Wilder, like the rest of the G.I. generation, came back and built families and factories and farms. They looked out at a world that was shattered, and they made fortunes rebuilding it. They even found Dean Martin’s favorite eel. Don’t remember that? It’s a moray.

Spring was characterized by extreme faith in government institutions – sure the government had fumbled the ball in the Great Depression, but it had unified the country for World War II. It stayed back enough to allow growth, and Eisenhower’s America got out of North Korea and planted the seeds for the Super Science® projects that would provide unmatched weapons systems and the seeds of space exploration.

I wanted to have another space pun, but I didn’t have time to planet.

Spring gives over to Summer. Around 1965, the spiritual awakening was followed in 1975 by the “Me” decade. In Summer, the economy is humming along, the weather is great, and the first questioning of the previous ideas that led to the success of the country begins. It’s probably no coincidence that the disastrous Immigration Act of 1965, the arguably unconstitutional Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Lyndon Johnson’s voter-plantation Great Society acts (1964 and 1965) took place at the start of Summer when Americans were questioning their values, questioning the things that made America great.

Pa Wilder was an established businessman, working as the president of a very conservative farm bank. You could get a loan, but only if you had collateral and a good income stream. Pa Wilder told more people “no” than “yes” for loans. That bothered him, with the exception of the fact that he told me, “I’ve never had to foreclose on a house, son.” To him, it was a moral duty. Thankfully Pa never served in the paratroopers, otherwise, they would have called him “debt from above.”

In society, however, the big splits had started in 1965. The subversion of colleges started and would be nearly complete by the 1980s. Religious decline started, and Nixon got tired of hiding the fiscal shenanigans of the country that gold was exposing. His solution? Get rid of gold.

But Summer was still a good time. Autumn, however, is harvest. Pa Wilder was pretty close to retirement at this point, and the real economic power had moved to the Boomers. Pa’s natural fiscal conservatism led to a strong and stable business. The people that took over from him, however, would “give a loan to anyone with a pickup and a backhoe.” They even loaned out money on haunted houses, places they were sure were going to be repossessed.

An ultra-long radio wave walked into the bar. The bartender said, “Why the long phase?”

Inertia is important in an economic system. But in 1985 the financial systems of the United States began to be harvested. “Greed is good” became the motto, and systems were run entirely for near-term economic benefit. Everyone from Pa Wilder’s generation was dead or retired – the new people in charge had no living memory of the national crisis brought on by The Great Depression.

The end of Autumn is the first chill of Winter, and the end result was the Great Recession (right on time!) in 2007-2008.

In the Winter, things fall apart. I’ve been really quite amazed that things have held together so well since that first cold snap. Obama was, well, a disappointment. Trump seemed (in many ways) overwhelmed by the system and couldn’t figure out how to move the levers of power in any significant and lasting ways – which makes sense on a failing system.

That was the starter’s gun on the crisis, the date Winter began. We should have been a long way through it by now, but this Winter is different:

  • The United States had a uniquely dominant position at the start of Winter, having both complete military dominance as well as a strong economic dominance of the world.
  • The Federal Reserve© decided to just print all the money that it could to spend its way into continued prosperity.

Sure, sometimes government wants to stop a crisis so that the citizens can have a stable country. Sometimes.

But other times, governments are waiting for the crisis, looking forward to it. Planning on it. In one article titled Sometimes the world needs a crisis: Turning challenges into opportunities(LINK), the Brookings Institute lists the things they love about crises. I admit that some of them are positive, but here are a few that I think are a bit more ominous – these descriptions are directly from Brookings:

  • Systemic Change: Global crises that crush existing orders and overturn long-held norms, especially extended, large-scale wars, can pave the way for new systems, structures, and values to emerge and take hold. Without such devastation to existing systems and practices, leaders and populations are generally resistant to major changes and to giving up some of their sovereignty to new organizations or rules.
  • Dramatic Policy Shifts: Sometimes the fear generated from a crisis and corresponding public outcry enables and even forces leaders to make bold and often difficult policy moves, even in countries not involved in or affected by the crisis.

COVID-19 was the big crisis they were waiting for this Winter. As the economic systems unwind under the unsustainable debt the ‘Rona is the perfect opportunity. Imagine the tapestry of that you see was planned. What end is being sought?

What The Mrs. would have said in the same situation: “It’s over, John, I have the high ground.”

Well, they told us already. Systemic Change. Changes to virtually every system in the United States. Want to have a nice, neat, prosperous, and orderly community? Too bad. That’s not a thing that’s going to happen. The police will be neutered. How badly will communities suffer? Here’s how bad it is now:

  • Leftist controlled Chicago: arrests/stops are down 53 percent, murders are up 65 percent.
  • Leftist controlled New York City: arrests/stops are down 38 percent, murders are up 58 percent.
  • Leftist controlled Louisville: arrests/stops are down 35 percent, murders are up 87 (not a typo) percent.
  • Leftist controlled Minneapolis: arrests/stops are down 42 percent, murders are up 64 percent.
  • Leftist controlled Los Angeles: arrests/stops are down 33 percent, murders are up 51 percent.
  • Leftist controlled St. Louis: in 2020, the murder rate hit “a 50-year high, with 87 out of every 100,000 residents being murdered.”

When there is murder and mayhem there is control. This is their plan. This is the crisis. Remove police – replace with ideological commissars that aren’t bound by law. Now, if they see a “crime” that they feel is wrong, they can punish it however they see fit. Most commonly, this will just be by removing the protection of the law and letting the mob do the rest.

The biggest crimes? The crimes against the Left.

That’s just the first of the planned Systemic Changes. There are more planned.

  • Universal basic income.
  • Boards to approve hiring at private companies.
  • Equity everywhere.
  • More rules than you can imagine. All of them will be based on some fear – guns in rural areas will be restricted because people in the city can’t stop killing each other.
  • Climate change lunacy: to meet Joe Biden’s climate goals, Americans would be restricted to four pounds (344 milliliters) of meat a year. This will be walked back.
  • And your ideas: they probably won’t be as bad as the real plans.

Why do organizations hire female Chief Equity Officers? Because they’re cheaper.

To be clear: Winter is here. The Left has an endless list of Leftist goals to accomplish during the crisis to come. The Winter will be dark.

Where are our goals? The Right cannot just have the goals of “what the Left wants, but less,” or, “the opposite of what those guys want.”

After that? Organization. And leadership.

And longjohns. Winter is here.