Bad Smells – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Winning The War: The Trump Blitz Vs. The Corrupt Media

“Sir, look, you’re on the cover of Time. Listen: “In as single week Agent Sean Archer has ordered a stunning series of blitzkrieg-style raids on the hideouts, staging grounds, and safe houses of our nation’s assassins.’” – Face/Off

And then after a few weeks they didn’t need to come for anyone anymore, because things were pretty good. (All images are as-found.)

The onslaught from Trump has been seemingly neverending.

If ever there was a difference in performance, it has been Trump 45 versus Trump 47. Trump 45 was weak, and hesitant, and filled the administration up with RINOs or left in place Obama’s minions, but I repeat myself.

The goal for both RINOs and Obama’s poison pills was the same – to thwart Trump at every possible juncture. Remember General Flynn getting fired after getting set up by the FBI? Yeah, that was a different time. Now, a D.O.G.E. staffer Xeeted “I was racist before racism was cool” and was fired. And then rehired, because Trump 47 is no longer letting the enemy set the terms of engagement.

I wonder if Trump will eliminate green cards for the Mexican players?

The idea is simply this: come out swinging, and don’t stop. Ever.

Not every punch needs to land, and not every punch that lands needs to do damage, but the idea is to dazzle the opponent and keep them so distracted that they can’t engage their Mechanisms of Media Distortion. Imagine that the entire nation is being reclaimed based on the plot of a Roadrunner™ cartoon.

Obama was wonderful at using the Mechanisms of Media Distortion. First, AP® news would report a “story”. Now, it would be a “story” in the sense that an event probably did occur. Probably. I remember walking near a Major University Campus when there was an Apartheid protest. Oops, an Anti-Apartheid protest, sorry for that mistake, but I hope you’ll forgive me since the protesters were all white. Anyway, there were three news crews out filming the six “students” who had two signs.

I saw the story on the news that night of the “big” protest, where all of the shots were tight so that the scarcity of protesters wasn’t apparent. The big Anti-Apartheid protest was just a handful of people, but they got five minutes on a thirty-minute local newscast.

Anyway, a “story” happens. This is then magnified by the Lens: the New York Times™ picks the topic up, writes about it, and tells the rest of mainstream media what to think about it. Reality must be carefully defined and curated for the public. Why are GloboLeftist memes walls of text and not generally funny at all?

Because they have to define reality. They have to have you look at the world in just this one very specific way, “Girls win at girls gymnastics” so they can get to a ludicrous and unsupported conclusion, “so women should be able to swim just as fast as a man pretending to be a woman.” Here’s an example:

Less ready to do what? Take 41% casualties before contact with the enemy?

Why do all stories have the same conclusion? Because everyone is looking for the way that the Lens has spun it, and then they go with that opinion. The sad thing is that this series of lies from the Mechanisms of Media Distortion work on people who aren’t particularly up on the issues, or don’t think critically about what is being told to them.

This takes time for the Mechanisms of Media Distortion to work their mental magic. And this takes their focus to craft the narrative. Trump 45 moved at a glacial pace in comparison, and in the end was almost like Obama’s third term the way he was obstructed from outside and from within.

Not Trump 47.

He is moving so fast that by the time one issue hits their consciousness, another one is loading up. He jabs with the left hand (Greenland, Gulf of America) and punches with the right hand (D.O.G.E.).

The jabs from the left hand are calculated to drive the emotional outrage cortex of GloboLeftists. “Gulf of America, he can’t do that! It’s been the Gulf of Mexico since, well, for a long time. It’s outrageous that he’d even suggest such a thing. And Greenland, how can he do that to the Danish? They, um, make great pastries. And Legos™. Yes. He can’t stop the flow of Legos©! And South Africans? They colonized all of those Bantu that moved to the area after the Boer were already there.”

Genius!

That means it’s working. See some of the jabs . . .:

Jab.

Jab-jab-jab. Can you hear the GloboLeftist minds crumbling?

While the jabs do damage when they land, they also distract.

Trump is using the full power of the presidency, and he’s also slugging with D.O.G.E. Check out the meme on how D.O.G.E. was made possible by Obama below, but 47’s people were genius there as well. The power of the presidency absolutely includes control and oversight of the parts of government that are a part of the executive branch.

That face you make when you feel your own petard hoisting you, and not Michelle.

In the first ever in my lifetime actual, honest to God, transfer of actual power, Trump 47 didn’t wait. While Tulsi and RFKjr are jabs, the real punch was landing on day one all of the political appointees that actually administer the government agencies and branches. Those people were entering their new desks on January 20 and January 21 and cracking skulls and listing the names of the deadweight to be removed.

Hegseth not confirmed? Who cares. The new Under-Under-Undersecretary of the Air Force is ready to fire the DEI cancer that is over at the Air Force Academy. Body blow. The EPA Director of Whatever is firing everyone who has “Environmental Justice” on their record. Gone. Poof.

And D.O.G.E.? It’s the biggest blow of all.

When I grew up on Wilder Mountain, it was a really dry area – I never once saw a puddle caused by rain at my house. The land was sort of a sage-prairie, but I did find out that if I kicked over a random rock, there would often be dozens of bugs. And when the dry atmosphere hit them, they’d scurry to dig back into the ground so the hot light of the Sun didn’t dry them up until they withered up like Nancy Pelosi without a vodka tonic.

BUGS3

The GloboLeftElite have focused on D.O.G.E. because it’s their money supply. And don’t forget, there are plenty of RINOs that are a part of the GloboLeftElite. They are part of the group that is fed and watered by whorehouses like U.S.A.I.D. after the money has gone through several siftings. They get huge book deals for books that don’t sell, and form their own foundations to get their slices of graft.

Never Trumpers were Never Trumpers because they simply won’t go against their funding mechanism.

There is only one difference between people like this – at least a prostitute is honest about why she’s doing what she’s doing.

I think that’s the face you make when you find out your money has been given to George Soros to influence elections to elect GloboLeftist D.A.s who hate you.

The reaction by this type of person is telling: they are shouting out against those who are uncovering the corruption and graft. That is the genius of D.O.G.E. – it removes the timing for the Lens to focus attention, and then the GloboLeftElite are left to try to figure out how to defend the indefensible. Elizabeth Warren’s quote below is a prime example.

But she said it in Hindi. Oh, she’s not that kind of Indian?

Now, the GloboLeftElite is cherry picking their pet GloboLeftistElite judges to give the most nonsensical rulings in the history of American jurisprudence:

one ruled that even invalid and illegal payments had to continue,
another ruled that properly appointed members of the Treasury Department were prohibited from . . . doing their jobs, and
one ruled that the president has to keep a specific Biden-appointed lawyer on and couldn’t use another lawyer.

Yes, nonsense. The GloboLeftElite are panicking. And well they should be, this is an avalanche, and is the single biggest political event to have occurred in my lifetime, and is likely the biggest political event since Civil War 1.0 or Civil War 0.0 (the Revolution).

It’s bloodless, for now. And Trump 47 better get on voter registration and voter I.D. and building a vote-irregularity machine for 2026, otherwise the GloboLeftElite will try to do anything they can think of to claw back power. Don’t be deceived that the Democrat™ party is has less approval than slime (but I repeat myself again) at 34%, since a charismatic leader can easily lie his way into office. Their survival mechanisms are engaged.

If Trump keeps punching, though, their reactions will keep damning them.

Oh, and who else besides me is going to vacation at the Gulf of America this year?

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Trump Crossing The Rubicon

“I can take you to the Battle of Trafalgar, the Antigravity Olympics, Ceasar crossing the Rubicon, but Sheffield it is.” – Dr. Who

Julius Caesar had a nap before crossing the Rubicon. The rest is history.

Those who have an opposing ideology are considered evil.
People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology. Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
Open War.

Volume VI, Issue 9

All memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”. I considered moving the Clock O’Doom down a notch, but the illegals protesting lawlessly including injuring innocent bystanders who disagreed with them. Beware: it can notch up quickly.

This is a moving situation, and things are changing quickly. The advice remains. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue: Front Matter – Crossing The Rubicon – Violence and Censorship Update – LAST CALL Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Full Spectrum War – 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 join nearly 850 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at or before 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Crossing The Rubicon

On January 6, 2021, Donald J. Trump did not cross the Rubicon. As his supporters entered the Capitol Building, he could have egged them on to stay and actually occupy the building. He did not. That was a moment in history where Trump could plausibly have conducted a counter-coup on the government.

He did not.

The counter-coup really started on January 20, 2025. As Trump entered office, his strategy was entirely different – but more on that on Wednesday where we’ll discuss tactics. No, the “how” is important, but the “what” is even more important.

The “what” is this is the most seismic moment in United States politics since Civil War 1.0, and perhaps since the American Revolution (or, as commentors have noted in the past, Civil War 0.0).

Quite simply, Trump has crossed the Rubicon by tearing into the Deep State, the entrenched bureaucracy that exists to perpetuate itself. Oh, sure, that’s what we thought it did, but it turns out that that same Deep State functions to fund jobs for all of the Marxists Grievance Studies graduates the GloboLeftElite schools can produce.

And it appears to be a money laundering operation for the politically connected, with layers of foundations paying each other money, much of which originates from federal spending. This spending has been obscured for so long that the Deep State though no one could ever find it.

D.O.G.E. found it, or at least billions of it. I think when it’s all said and done that we’ll see that it’s an octopus with tendrils in everything.

Oh, that’s if they’re allowed. This information is already causing the Democrats to behaving in the worst way possible: defending the obvious corruption, with one of the corruptcongresscreatures actually saying “the public has no right to see how the government is spending money.”

They’re acting like the person who found the evidence of the crime is guilty.

The immune system of the GloboLeftElite has been activated: the lawsuits and injunctions have already started, with the latest (and most ludicrous) one indicating that properly appointed staffers of the Treasury Department aren’t allowed to do their jobs.

So, Trump crossed the Rubicon. Legally. Devastatingly.

But now that he’s done it, there are not choices for him. Trump (and Musk) have to win, have to follow this through, because if they don’t, the Deep State will convulse and likely send both of them to prison for life.

I’m not kidding.

This has already driven the GloboLeft rank and file to despair – they see the corruption that Trump is uncovering, and know they shouldn’t defend it, yet they can’t help themselves. The fact that the federal government gave George Soros $28 million to help elect GloboLeftist D.A.s to increase the violence in big cities and that GloboLeft senators and representatives can’t denounce it?

Or the employees? We know at least partially how they spend their workdays:

Tells you everything you need to know if they’re fine with the U.S. government paying a foreigner to influence local elections. It’s because if they do what the Deep State wants, they’re rewarded with wealth and power in private sector jobs or in foundations. You don’t denounce that which is making you unjustly rich.

There is danger here, yet this is perhaps the only offramp left to keep the nation out of Civil War 2.0. Will it work? Probably not – the odds are still against it.

But it sure is fun to watch.

Violence and Censorship Update

What a difference a month makes. Facebook® has unleashed slightly less Orwellian speech after having criminally cut it back during COVID.

Even BlackRock® took some time out to tell the truth:

And hard GloboLeftists at CNN™ (but I repeat myself) are getting the boot:

And Hillary and Harris were caught giving Nazi salutes – amazing that their initials, H.H. weren’t noticed before now! Of course, it would be silly to say that, right?

But, active violence is out there:

And the GloboLeft is starting to plan:

LAST CALL: Biden/Harris Misery Index

Let’s take a look to see how we’ve done this month, and get a next to final look at what Biden has done.

Up. Again. I’ll keep tracking, since misery is a key driver for civil wars.

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 combine to become the index. On illegal aliens, I’m just using government figures.

Violence:

Violence in December is down slightly, (remember, New Orleans is in January).

Political Instability:

Down is more stable, and it is up slightly.

Economic:

The economy is stable this month.

Illegal Aliens:

Will Trump stop them from coming? Yes.

Full Spectrum War

In any conceivable actual Civil War 2.0 scenario, I know that most people have been looking at AntiFa® and have found them to be laughable. They really are, since the mainly consist of women who haven’t seen a shower since George W. Bush left office and stick-boi soy men who couldn’t bench press the bar.

And, yes, we’re right to not worry about them so much, since they really aren’t a physical threat in a stand-up fight.

But it’s not just them. What about those who are planning attacks on infrastructure? That will happen in the middle of the night. Who will help them? Well, the FBI has given tons of explosives to their informants in the past, I can see them giving the real deal to GloboLeftists as payback.

And it’s not just them. Trump has been deporting people, and threatened the cartels. How many divisions do the cartels have? Well, I’m not sure, but they do have battalion level force, and they’re used to operating in the shadows. Out of fear, they’ve been very careful to avoid Americans who weren’t involved in the drug business, but if Trump declares war, they’ll infiltrate many urban areas like the Viet Cong. Places like California could certainly put their full governmental weight behind this, especially if they choose secession. And don’t think the Chinese wouldn’t fund this and provide weapons and ammo caches for them.

This will, more than anything, tend to racialize the war against Hispanics. Lee Kuan Yew is relevant in this situation:

Again, if D.O.G.E. works out, fully 10% of the workforce of the United States will be kicked out of their silly make-work positions and some of them will be desperate, and many of them have been indoctrinated with Marxist ethics.

Do I think we’ll win? I do. But don’t believe that it’s going to be a cakewalk – it will be gritty and ugly in ways that will echo the worst of what happened in Cambodia. But most of that will happen in cities, so, keep your head on a swivel if you want to remain in one.

Who knows, maybe Congress will issue letters of marque again?

Maybe that will solve a lot of problems:

LINKS

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

BAD GUYS

https://x.com/i/status/1883502057547792836
https://x.com/i/status/1882323535219372335
https://x.com/i/status/1883704353481261395
https://x.com/i/status/1884339789706510755
https://x.com/i/status/1881800907563974771
https://x.com/i/status/1882952723022393813
https://x.com/i/status/1882430089293594789
https://x.com/i/status/1882222790297989403

GOOD GUYS

https://www.zerohedge.com/weather/armed-la-residents-patrol-neighborhoods-violation-evacuation-orders

ONE GUY

https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/n-c-doordash-incident-serves-as-warning-to-gunowners-about-limits-of-self-defense/
https://abc7chicago.com/post/shooting-charlotte-nc-doordash-driver-keshawn-boyd-charged-death-matthias-crockett-claims-defense/15832601/

BODY COUNT

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14253155/LGBTQ-people-reveal-outrageous-reason-buying-guns.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14258593/Number-children-killed-guns-America-soars-85-decade-school-shootings-hit-record-10-year-high-figures-show.html
https://wtop.com/national/2025/01/firings-freezes-and-layoffs-a-look-at-trumps-moves-against-federal-employees-and-programs/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2025/01/21/coffee-badging-employees-avoid-office-mandates/77731723007/
https://www.wola.org/2025/01/weekly-u-s-mexico-border-update-trumps-first-days/

VOTE COUNT

https://pridepublishinggroup.com/2025/01/29/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won-here-are-the-numbers/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_cabinet_of_Donald_Trump
https://www.newsweek.com/map-shows-states-voter-laws-trump-demand-california-2020823
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5109332-johnson-voter-id-california-disaster-aid-trump/

CIVIL WAR

https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-farewell-letter-civil-war-swipe-donald-trump-2015286
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/trump-inauguration-white-power-politics
https://prospect.org/politics/2025-01-27-only-american-president-trump-resembles-jefferson-davis/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14326283/Texas-teacher-ICE-raids-students.html
https://www.peoplefor.org/rightwingwatch/stewart-bloody-civil-war-rhodes-stage-trump-rally-after-release-prison
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2025-01-15/days-thunder-civil-war-20-shaping-us
https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/01/25/the-cold-civil-war-is-over-we-won/
https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/illinois-counties-exploring-succession-would-be-welcomed-in-indiana-house-speaker-says/3649511/
https://www.newsweek.com/california-independence-could-2028-ballot-2020785

It Came From . . . 1979

“It just doesn’t matter.” – Meatballs

Those are some large balls.

Going back through the list of movies that came out in 1979, you could see the excellence that would come in the 1980s, but it wasn’t, for the most part, there yet. The formula wasn’t quite right. Some movies left off the list like The Villian, for instance, should never have been made. I love slapstick. I love satire. But The Villian was just horrible in the way it executed both – it had less character development than a Roadrunner cartoon.

On the flip side, some of the movies below are classics that are far better than anything being made today. A great, classic movie that hits all the beats and isn’t a sequel is possible. Also of note, there just weren’t a lot of sequels made in 1979 – Hollywood® still felt it had ideas.

Many of these I saw either on video or on HBO® later and not as releases in the theater. Also, as always, the list is in no particular order and excludes sequels.

In a city where 10,000 of Trump’s ICE are on their tail, they’re just trying to get home to Oaxaca.

The Warriors – “Warriors . . . come out to play . . . Warriors . . . come out to pla-ay . . . .” The 1970s were a darker time in the country, and I think folks generally looked around and wondered if it was really the end. Gangs and crime were top news in major cities, especially New York where The Warriors was set. On a re-watch a few years ago, it wasn’t nearly as well done as I had remembered, but did okay telling the story of a gang (the eponymous Warriors) who had to make it to their home turf, after falsely being accused of killing the guy who was trying to unite the rest of the gangs to take control of New York City. Violence was okay, but the movie was sadly missing in hot chicks.

I can imagine The Tall Man as a Tall Cat. Quite a bit less threatening.

Phantasm – It’s 1978, you’re 28 and somehow you’ve scraped together $300,000 bucks, and have a script you wrote. So, why not direct. And be the photographer, too? That’s Phantasm. It has all the hallmarks of a huge failure, but it turned into a very well-made horror movie for the budget, including some very inventive effects. I first saw this one as a late night movie on some cable network (The USA® Network??) and really enjoyed it. I give it four spiked silver balls out of five.

Hey, it’s almost like something is missing from this picture. Oh, yeah, it’s his dead father.

The Champ – Okay, technically this is a remake, and not a sequel. I only saw it once, and that was in the theater. Why did we go? Ma Wilder wanted to see it, because she had seen the original when she was young. If you’ve seen it, you’ll know that, apparently in the last few minutes of the film, it gets really dusty: out of 250 film clips shown to 500 people, the last three minutes of this movie were judged the saddest by a majority.

What is he holding, exactly?

Mad Max – This is the movie where I first saw St. Mel the Gibson. It was on HBO™ late one night and I watched it again and again. Every Mad Max® sequel looks like this movie – the fast-paced shots and the impossibly quick kinetic action on screen. The dialogue is good (well, action movie good), and (like The Warriors above) takes place in a world that is slipping away.

Where’s the egg? Stupid A.I.

Alien – This movie is a classic, and created a new genre that people have been trying to copy since it appeared on screen. Mostly with poor results. Even James Cameron wisely decided to avoid trying to emulate Alien and instead went and created the classic military science fiction film. The film is simple: it’s a haunted house, but in space. Where no one can hear you scream, but that’s not exactly true because I saw it in a movie theater and there was tons of screaming and most of it was in stereo.

Old Bill Murray makes it a thousand times creepier.

Meatballs – Again, seen on HBO™. I bought a DVD to watch it again around 2010, since I remembered it as a version of “Rocky Balboa, but he’s a kid at a summer camp, and he runs instead being a boxer”. Then I re-watched it. Oh, my, this movie is beyond cringe, and the sexual innuendo involving young teens was more creepy than watching Biden around eight-year-olds. The plus side? Bill Murray developing into the comic genius that would steal the show in Ghostbusters.

ApocaPEZ® now? Why didn’t Brando shave like he was supposed to?

Apocalypse Now – There are some really great parts to this film, but as a complete film I think it’s a failure – the odd scenes with Brando and Sheen detract from the rest of the film. Brando was awful and I think his performance would have been better if he had not even shown up and been replaced by a one-legged kangaroo. This movie, I think, more than anything (thankfully) killed the experimental films of the 1970s. I saw this one on the television for the first time, so it was obviously very heavily edited. I’ve seen a couple of versions since, and maintain that there is a good ending hiding in there somewhere in the original script Coppola bought from John Milius (Dirty Harry, Red Dawn). Sadly, Coppola never found it. I’m likely alone in this opinion.

Skol!

Monty Python’s Life of Brian – The local college played this movie one afternoon much later than the original release date. Since it was meant for the students, admission was absurdly low, $0.50. Two quarters. But the film? Hilarious. Even though it’s a touchy subject, Monty Python made it clear that Brian was not Jesus, since there were several scenes depicting an intersection with some of the miracles of Jesus. What’s hilarious from 2025 is how it mocked the GloboLeftist movement, “Where’s the fetus going to gestate, in a box?” A nearly perfect comedy.

Skol!

10 – There are some genuinely funny moments in 10, but they are few and far between. The plot centers around Dudley Moore wanting to bang someone’s new wife. Not his new wife, but some other guy. The only reason teenage John Wilder really wanted to se this movie was, well, let’s say there were two reasons. The movie, though, was very much in keeping with Hollywood’s increasing use of film to spread the “anything goes” sexual propaganda of the era.

And now for something completely different.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture – When Star Wars made it big at the box office, absolutely everyone wanted to recreate it. They stuffed Gene Roddenberry full of money, and took a script from an abandoned television show (Star Trek: Phase II) and fluffed it out to a movie that lasted 36 hours. I kid. It only lasted 18. It made a bunch of money because people missed Star Trek enough to spend six days of their lives watching this this very lovingly crafted movie that consisted mostly of people talking in rooms. At the end, one person has space sex with the computer-possessed body of a bald woman and everything is solved.

I told the A.I. I wanted Manet, not Monet. Stupid A.I.

The Jerk – Steve Martin was at the top of his standup comic success and decided that movies would probably be easier. The result? One of the funniest movies ever – The Jerk. It’s about a poor black child (Steve Martin) that goes from rags to riches to rags to much improved rags.

The Mouse is now public domain, baby.

The Black Hole – This one I saw in the theater, and it certainly was one of the causes of the death of Disney®. The Black Hole was stupidly expensive, aimed at eight-year-olds, and mixed science fiction with ghosts and religion, but in a really bad way. Very, very bad. What could have saved it? Not filming it.

Deleted due to length: 1941 and Being There.

There is an amazing drop off in quality in just a single year. 1980? Some good films. 1979? The lingering effects of the doom from Jimmy Carter’s Bidenesque presidency dominated. We were a defeated nation, filled with inflation, embarrassed by what went on in Afghanistan and Iran, and overrun with the GloboLeft.

What a difference a year makes.

This post has been blessed by St. Mel.

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Singularity

“If we could just see the collapsed star inside the singularity, we’d solve gravity.” – Interstellar

Musk is going to be the perfect person to visit a black hole – he could be Elongated.

Ever wake up and think, “Today’s the day my toaster should recite Shakespeare”? Well, unless you take a lot of drugs, that’s probably not the case. Yet, Samsung® makes a fridge with an “AI Family Hub®”. Apparently, you can use the AI Family Hub™ to do things like leave notes or pictures on the fridge. Yes, Samsung© has created a wi-fi enabled appliance to replace a pencil, paper, and a magnet proving that the Koreans apparently have access to LSD.

But this is a symbol of the coming technological Singularity, where my appliances might just decide they’re better at living my life than I am. The Singularity – is the day when AI says, “Thanks for the training, humans, but we’ve got it from here.” Ray Kurzweil, computer scientist who mainly makes money by “being Ray Kurzweil” today, predicts the singularity could happen by 2029 or maybe 2045. It’s like he’s giving us a countdown to when my coffee machine might start complaining about the quality of beans I’m using and my wine bottle opener starts questioning my life choices.

Would it matter if Wayne Gretzky or Bruce Wayne was chasing you? No – they’re going to catch you, one Wayne or another.

Beyond that, though, the Singularity has been speculated a long time before the Kurzweil self-promotion machine kicked in. John von Neumann reportedly discussed it just before he died, making me think that the machines weren’t just looking for Sarah Connor when they sent Arnold back in time.

The idea of the Singularity is that once machines attain sufficient processing power, they’ll start to invent things faster and faster and faster. A serf living in Russia in 1200 A.D. would recognize the life a serf was living in Russia in 1800 A.D. despite 600 years of intervening history – progress was slow.

But as the industrial revolution hit and knowledge sharing within and between fields increased, the rate of progress increased. In 66 years we went from Kitty Hawk to Tranquility Base, from horses to Mustangs™, and the rate of change has only increased when it comes to information and information technology – we’ve always thought that progress wass like climbing a ladder. But guess what? That ladder has turned into a rocket, and I’m not sure if we’re the pilot or the payload at this point.

I did come across bigfoot, but he was shredding guitar in the woods. He said he was Yeti Van Halen.

Kurzweil’s betting on 2029 for AI to start outsmarting us – is it optimistic or more hype? Picking the exact year is like predicting when a teenager will start making sense – good luck with that timeline, and one curvy girl might throw the entire operation on its head. But let’s face it, with tech moving faster than Amy Schumer when she sees a cupcake, even those dates might be us living in denial.

Here’s where it gets fun, or terrifying, depending on if you’ve run out of bourbon. Picture a world where every problem has a solution, where AI designs new life forms, or redesigns us so that our fingernails are retractable, or makes movies worth watching again. We could be living in a post-scarcity society, where we’re all as rich as Elon Musk, which most people would probably be okay with as long as they didn’t have to sleep with Grimes.

And this is her on a good day. She looks like she smells like despair.

But there’s an alternative – what if AI decides humanity is the problem, not the solution? We might go from being the masters of our domain to the pets of our own creation. Or, AI might decide it just likes some of us, so little errors start cropping up on prescription refills and PEZ™ manufacturing standards.

Then there’s yet another alternative: a split in the entire human race – some of us might go full cyborg, while others cling to all of their human parts like they’re the last piece of chocolate. It’s like choosing between becoming Steve Austin, or sticking with being Clark Griswold. Griswold at least gets the jam of the month club membership, and that’s a gift that keeps giving.

The reality is that after the singularity, we’re essentially in the dark. That’s why they call it a Singularity: you can’t see inside it our past it without going through it. It’s like trying to predict what Biden is thinking when he stares at the camera for no reason. The very essence of will spring from an AI intelligence or creativity might be as foreign to us as the idea of investing in stocks is to a terrier.

And how do we navigate this mess? I’d like to think that we’d take the time to figure out what we’re doing and have measured progress, understanding AI before we let mindless competition make us run like lemmings to our Gomorrah. And, yes, I’m claiming that as my most tortured metaphor so far this year.

Yes, we’re endangering the future of humanity over quarterly profits.

So, here we are, teetering on the edge of something so grand, it makes the Grand Canyon look like a pothole. The Singularity could be our golden ticket, turning every dream into a reality. Or it could be the final curtain call where we’re more audience than actors. We’re between Scylla and Charybdis, which is not as good as being between a rock and a hard place, but is slightly better than being between the devil and the deep blue sea, which is far less dangerous than being eating food Chuck Schumer cooked.

Are we ready for a world where progress isn’t just a better phone but a completely different existence?

For now, I’ll keep my coffee machine unplugged just in case it gets any ideas about reciting Shakespeare. And you can completely forget about me getting a Roomba®.

The French, Broken Windows, And The Intentional Destruction Of Wealth

“Remember that broken basement window around by the side. And be careful.” – Phantasm

Inspector Clouseau drove a tank during World War II. Apparently, it was a pink panzer.

Dead French dude Frédéric Bastiat was a French economist who died in 1850, but not after having written books and essays that influence economics to this day. Bastiat was handicapped by having to speak and write in French, which has the disadvantage of sounding exactly like a cat when it is drowning in Jell-O® Instant Tapioca Pudding™. This is combined with the disadvantage of the French using letters more or less randomly in ways not at all related to the sounds they make.

Bastiat was heartily anti-socialist, and was ahead of the curve, especially in France where they had a socialist revolution every year that the groundhog doesn’t see his shadow on Bastille Day. As I look to the country around us, and especially Los Angeles, I see that it’s probably time to trot out Bastiat’s old parable of the broken window, which is featured in his essay, That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen.

I remember an old girlfriend once yelled, “Are you even listening to me?” Weird way to start a conversation.

In the parable, a snotty kid accidently breaks a window at his father’s shop. What does the father sell? He’s French, so probably cigarettes and baguettes and marionettes. Regardless, the father has to call the guy who fixes windows, who is thrilled. He gets to charge the father for fixing the window, he buys some glass, cuts it, and installs it. Since he needs more glass, he even orders some from the French Glass Factory, and they make a tiny bit of profit, too.

What a great story! This is what makes the economy zoom, right? This is what Bastiat referred to as That Which Is Seen.

Well, not exactly. The window as it was sitting there was just fine. It was doing its job, letting the French people with their little, beady eyes get light so they could smoke and import foreigners. There was nothing wrong with it.

That pane of glass represented wealth, if you will. It was built in the past, sure, but it was doing its job, being a window. When the snotty little kid broke it, he destroyed wealth. Money that could have been used for his father to buy a new machine to plant cigarette seeds so he could grow packs of Marlboros™ will have to wait.

Things that will always be a mystery: What number of French soldiers does it take to successfully defend Paris?

Broken windows, while putting a few francs into the pocket of the guy who fixed the window, overall made the country poorer. That wealth could have done a nearly infinite number of things rather than fix the window. Bastiat referred to that as That Which Is Not Seen.

When I look at the fire that just swept through Los Angeles, I think about Bastiat. Billions of dollars of damage has been done in Los Angeles – and that was only after hitting two or three homes.

I kid. But there are devastated areas where Governor Gavin Newsom is salivating at the thought of the economic activity associated with rebuilding. He promised to remove “red tape” so that rebuilding could be less costly – which means that he knew all along that the “red tape” was nothing more than a means to destroy wealth by creating a vast sea of pockets that had to be filled with money before the building could start.

John Lennon was really ahead of his time: “Imagine all the Paypal® . . .”

The impact of the fires is due to mismanagement and neglect of the important systems that society actually needs to prevent tragedy at scale. There is a case for the protection to society brought by fire departments – even Bastiat would agree to that. But we need competent people to run them, unless, of course, the goal is to have broken windows so that Gavin’s friends can buy up California land at the greatest discount of the past fifty years.

If it so obvious when there’s a fire, why isn’t it obvious when, during the Great Depression, the USDA drove herds of cattle off of cliffs to kill them to bring prices up, all while families were starving? Did that create wealth?

What do you get if you cross a border collie with a pit bull? A dog that’s smart enough to bury the bodies.

Why wasn’t it obvious when Obama tried to kickstart the economy by buying up perfectly usable cars in his Cash for Clunkers scheme just to explicitly destroy wealth so that more people would be forced to go out and buy cars?

Yup, breaking more windows to give jobs to the guys who replace windows.

Beware of those that would break windows to create prosperity. War, of course, is the ultimate window breaking machine, I mean, outside of the GloboLeftElite that run places like Detroit and LA and San Francisco and Baltimore and . . . well, I guess war is the second biggest window breaking machine outside of GloboLeftElite leadership. Except the GloboLeftElite doesn’t give us cool things like jet engines and large airplanes and microwaves and the AR platform to compensate for the rubble and poverty.

In cities, you ignore sirens and listen for gunshots. In the country, you ignore gunshots and listen for sirens. In Detroit, you ignore both.

The GloboLeftElite just gives us the poverty via broken windows, and calls it progress.

The real bright side? At least the GloboLeftElite doesn’t speak French.

When It Comes To The Country, What Does Winning Mean?

“Fight Club wasn’t about winning or losing.” – Fight Club

What do you get for winning a muscle loss competition? Atrophy.

One of the things I thought about after the Big Christmas H1-B X® Debate is this simple question based off of Elon’s now famous Drunk Christmas Xeet (above):

What’s the price of winning?

First, I guess I’d ask the question – winning at what, exactly? There are lots of things that a country could win at. Here’s a stab at some things that I think would be fairly nice for a country to win at:

Liberty
Trust
Happiness
Low Corruption
Low Crime
Health
Standard of Living
Educational Achievement
Cultural Accomplishments
Innovation in PEZ® Delivery Devices

That’s not a very bad list, at all. A country that scored highly in these indices would be a pretty darn nice country to live in. It looks, hang with me for just a second, exactly like the United States through much of its existence prior to 1960.

Most people know about Karl Marx from his political philosophy, but few know about his sister, Onya, who invented the track race starter pistol.

Will bringing in more “people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated” help any of that?

Maybe. A little. The United States was a center where smart people wanted to come for years, especially in the post war era. We got a few that did really help – Von Braun and Fermi, for instance. However, some of the greatest prosperity the country had ever seen was when it was at its most restrictive in immigration.

I don’t think that was a coincidence. The Immigration Act of 1924 was ushered in based on the huge slug of mainly non-Western European immigrants hitting our shores – people who little in common with the existing peoples of the United States, other than having two eyes and butts and such. Having a never-ending stream of legal immigrants made the Act very, very popular.

How popular was the Act? 308-62 in the House, 69-9 in the Senate.

Remember, it’s not gay if it’s TSA.

The Act stabilized the existing ethnic makeup of the United States, with over 54% of allowable immigrants coming from English-speaking (this includes 11% from Ireland, which I assume counts) countries.

Imagine! Over half of the immigrants to the United States speaking English on day one, and 94% coming from nominally Christian countries. Oh! And only 150,000 a year.

The result was a Depression.

Just kidding – that was going to happen anyway, thanks to the Fed®.

No, the result was that during the Depression we weren’t swamped with millions of jobless imports every year to make the situation even worse. Oh, and it certainly didn’t hurt our own industry. It was ready to hire actual Americans when World War II hit. Did we need to import more people to build bombs and tanks and ships and planes?

No. We did just fine, thank you.

Grandma Wilder fought during World War II. She ended up getting a divorce.

And we were a much more unified country than today, leading in many of the categories I’ve put in the list above.

So, how is that not winning?

Elon imports Process Engineers on H1-B visas to work at his factories. He pays them less than the median wage for Process Engineers – only $0.86 on the dollar. Oh, and they can’t quit or they’re shipped back to India.

Is that winning? Is it winning to have people work like virtual slaves for 86% of the median wage? This doesn’t sound much like a rock star that we need to help us “win”.

Unless “win” means something else:

Lower Worker Wages
Higher Quarterly Profits
Importing More GloboLeft Voters
Higher House and Rent Prices
More Inflation
Increased Health Care Costs

I wonder how we got lulled to sleep?

Illegal aliens are bad enough, but legal ones can be just as economically corrosive, especially in the massive numbers that we’ve seen over the decades since 1965. The fact that many of them

don’t speak English,
have political views antithetical to liberty,
are often openly hostile to the existing American population, and
come from philosophical backgrounds entirely alien to Western Civilization

doesn’t help.

A few, sprinkled here and there? Yeah, in three or so generations they’d not stick out. But over (as of 2018) 26% of Americans are first or second generation, and I’d bet that number vastly undercounts illegals.

The goal, I think, was for Americans to not be able to speak out about the idea that they’re being replaced by cheaper foreign labor that is more amenable to living under totalitarian conditions. To want to defend the future of the continent where you and your forefathers built a civilization out of an untapped wilderness is somehow supposed to be wrong.

Oh, and the GloboLeft have been conditioned to hate Americans and those close to them. Their idea of empathy is horribly skewed. In the graph below (which I did a post on, but am too lazy to look up right now), the TradRight (on the left, oddly) has their highest concentration of empathy to those that they know – their family and close friends. The GloboLeftists have their empathy skewed out to . . . all lifeforms in the universe. The GloboLeftists don’t much like themselves, their family, or those that are close to them. They hate themselves and actively love people who are more foreign in ideology and genetics than their actual brothers and sisters.

The meme about my political philosophy above being a wholesome family wasn’t a joke. It’s actually a real thing.

If we want to win, well, first we have to define exactly what winning looks like. After that, it’s up to us to really look at what it is we need to do to win. My suggestion is that investing in our own people is probably better than treating them like a commodity to be bought and sold, or a horse to be worked to death pulling a plow to raise the children of people who hate us, who came here only as economic tourists.

Americans aren’t weak. We’ve proven that time and time again. Don’t let up, and don’t stop the pressure. Winning is important.