Tag: John Wilder

Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise: Civil War 2.0 Weather Report

Mr. Wilder at Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise writes another installment of his Civil War 2.0 Weather Report.

  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.

March was had increased violence as the country warmed up.  Sadly for the Left, none of the violence measured up to their requirements – they were looking for very specific circumstances.  They needed a white guy with an AR-15 killing four or more people, kids if possible.  The Left was disappointed.  All of their lottery violence tickets turned out to be of the wrong ethnicity, and then they were immediately disappeared from the news.  Poof.

I’m holding March at “just” a 9 out of 10.  That’s still two minutes to midnight.

I currently put the total at (this is my best approximation, since no one tracks the death toll from rebellion-related violence) holding at 650 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.

In this issue:  Front Matter – The Cold Civil War – Violence And Censorship Update – Enter The Leftist Panopticon – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Running The Gun Gauntlet – 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, feel free to subscribe and you’ll get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30 Eastern, free of charge.

The Cold Civil War

Loudoun County, Virginia – A group of school staff and elected officials formed a Facebook® group:  the “Anti-Racist Parents of Loudoun County”, which sounds nice enough, I guess.  What they were doing was, however, the opposite of nice.  They were plotting how to publicly destroy people who differ with their ideology.  You can read about the details here (LINK).

The Anti-Racist Parents of Loudoun County primary spokesthing, Jabba The Teacher.

What was the difference?  The “Anti-Racist Parents of Loudoun County” believe strongly in Marxist societal division theory Critical Race Theory (CRT).  If you haven’t read much about CRT, I can assure you that CRT is 100% a collectivist’s dream.  The laundry list of things that CRT advocates is pretty rough:

  • Dismantling merit-based systems
  • Removing rationality
  • Removing legal equality and Constitutional and legal race-neutrality
  • “Naming one’s own reality” – as in “My Truth” and not The Truth
  • Reparations, and nationalism (but only for non-whites)
  • And a lot of other things

In most bullet-point lists, I throw in a few silly ones just for fun.  Not in the list above, since almost everything that CRT stands for is very, very silly…

This is cancer in our country.  CRT is specifically designed to create division.  It is working.  The scariest part of this is that a group of publicly paid teachers and elected officials have set up a secret club to publicly destroy parents who disagree with them philosophically.

Welcome to the Cold Civil War.

Violence And Censorship Update

The biggest story in censorship this month is the censoring by Amazon® of the book When Harry Became Sally by Ryan T. Anderson.  The reason?  “Amazon™ has “chosen not to sell books that frame LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness.”

Now, since one study showed that 41% of transgender folks had attempted suicide, well, there is at least an argument that mental illness may be at play in some cases of transgenderism.  That’s a weak statement, and almost certainly true.  Yet, Amazon© wouldn’t allow that to be published in 2021.

What message does that send to a writer?  More importantly, what information does that send to a publisher?  Since Amazon™ sells between 50% and 80% of the books sold in the United States, would a major publisher take a chance on ideas that Amazon© might find objectionable?

No.

And it’s looking like YouTube™ wants to remove the “dislike” button.  Why?  There are several theories, but one that amuses me the most is that Joe Biden’s handlers are upset that whenever he has a video out, that the dislikes overwhelmingly swamp the people who hit the “like” button.  The comments are already turned off.

In YouTube©’s latest idea, the “dislike” button will still be there, and you can still use it.  The video creator can see the number of dislikes, too.  So, if it’s an anti-bullying campaign, it’s the stupidest one ever because the bullied person can still see how many people don’t like them.

I’ll note that in the videos I reviewed for this post, none of them have comments available.

They know you don’t like them.  They know what you think of them.  They just don’t want other people to be able to see it.

Enter The Leftist Panopticon:

There was a creepy English guy named Jeremy Bentham who was a “social” thinker in 18th century England.  One of his inventions was a prison.  The idea that Jeremy had was a prison where just a few guards could look and see everyone at once.  This panopticon was a prison where you were never really free of the gaze of the guards.

Welcome to 2021, so we have to be able to do better than that, right?

If Donald Trump had indicated that he was going to use government money to hire private companies to scour social media to find people that opposed him, and use the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to run the program, Elon Musk would have been able to hear the Leftist outcry from his pleasure palace on Mars.

But swap out the name to “Joe Biden” and there has been remarkably little negative comment.  Have a need to update the No-Fly™ list with pesky people from the Right?

Go for it.  And here’s the (LINK) to prove I’ve not been making this up after watching too much Alex Jones.

The Left will certainly do it.  And it won’t be limited to recent ideas, either.  The way that Leftists feel about the Right is simple:  if you ever, ever supported something the Left is against now?  You’re a heretic.  Cancelled.

Do you expect the DHS to be any different now they’re in the hands of the Left?

We have entered an era of technology where every move that you make can be tracked.  I noticed this on my phone when I stopped at a new restaurant.  Google® popped up with, “Hey, can you tell us if this restaurant has any typographical errors on the menu?”  Google’s® A.I. was asking little old me to help it know absolutely everything about everyplace.

That same Google® data was used and cross-referenced to bring charges against people who were in the Capitol on January 6, 2021.  This data went from, “we can’t use” to “we won’t use” to “we will use” in just a few years.  It’s now a primary tool for law enforcement.

As will be your friends, your email, your web history, your web search history, and, soon enough, a track of you moving from camera to camera in any urban space.

The Civil War 2.0 implication is this:  the Left is using this information actively.  Act accordingly.

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 up in March.  I expect it to jump in April.  If Chauvin is found not guilty?  Through the roof.  The state-media propaganda of “home grown terrorism” is increasing the public perception of violence at this point.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable.  Instability is near record levels, as the Right doesn’t believe in President *, and the Left wants to cancel the Right.

Economic:

I expected this number to be more positive.  It’s not.  I think we will find that April is the month that we find that inflation moves from a thought to a widely-felt reality.

Illegal Aliens:

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

Running The Gun Gauntlet

I had predicted that the ludicrous Sheila Jackson-Lee bill for gun control would be dead on arrival.  I was right.  But the other bills keep moving along and are a lot more likely to pass.

They’re smaller bills.  Increasing the number of background checks by making almost all transactions require background checks.  There’s a “family exemption” that soon enough will become a “family loophole” after the appropriate victim and shooter combination is found.

In reality, there’s no way to track these background checks, since a very large number of guns in existence have absolutely no paperwork of any type connecting them to their current owner.  After the background checks don’t stop gun violence, the call will come for a national gun registry so that ownership can be tracked.

Registration at the Federal level won’t happen, because people won’t register.  Okay, some would.  But most won’t.  When Connecticut tried to get “assault” weapons registered, it is assumed that only one weapon out of eight was registered.  People know what is at stake.

Doing all of this at once is too much, and too far.  The average American gun owner simply will not comply with registration in 2021, and even the stupidest Leftist understands that widespread noncompliance just gives people a reason to understand the relative strength of individuals and the relative weakness of the government.

As I’ve said before on another post (LINK), the largest army that the world has ever seen are the 80,000,000+ members of the Right in the United States.  As soon as the Right realizes that, they will understand that we truly are only ruled by our consent.

And that is truly what the Left fears.

LINKS

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

The MSM narrative remains fragmented.

The Alt-Right Civil War

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/03/30/jan-6-capitol-riot-jail-time-478440

https://www.opb.org/article/2021/03/28/proud-boys-clash-with-anti-fascists-in-salem/

https://wwmt.com/news/local/fbi-testifies-wolverine-watchmen-were-trying-to-instigate-a-second-civil-war

https://www.newsweek.com/pastor-rick-joyner-urges-american-christians-prepare-civil-war-1576570

https://napavalleyregister.com/opinion/letters/trump-s-undeclared-civil-war/article_16821682-efae-5831-868b-a239815747ba.html

https://napavalleyregister.com/opinion/letters/the-real-civil-war/article_6c453064-39db-5540-949e-e8f9dfd071be.html

The Republican Civil War

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/03/31/cold-civil-war-being-waged-republicans

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/3/29/a-cold-civil-war-is-being-waged-in-america

The next battle for American democracy is around the corner — and moderates must be in the fight

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2021/4/1/22356594/conservatives-right-wing-democracy-claremont-ellmers

The Black Civil War

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/04/the-many-lives-of-grandmaster-jay/618408/

https://allhiphop.com/features/the-nfacs-grand-master-jay-speaks-out-on-legal-status-hip-hop-freedom-and-the-future/

https://www.msnbc.com/craig-melvin/watch/-it-means-that-you-re-preparing-yourself-to-defend-yourself-nfac-leader-on-militia-name-meaning-108925509977

https://news.yahoo.com/inside-look-black-militia-group-110636647.html

https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/armed-protesters-in-douglasville-were-peaceful-sheriff-says

The Armed Forces Civil War

https://www.defense.gov/Explore/News/Article/Article/2542699/seac-dod-will-move-fast-against-extremism-after-completion-of-stand-downs/

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2021/03/19/some-troops-see-capitol-riot-blm-protests-similar-threats-top-enlisted-leader-says.html

https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2021/03/29/civilian-employee-who-allegedly-advocated-for-civil-war-banned-from-air-force-base/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/aaronsmith/2021/04/01/gun-sales-soar-from-stimulus-and-bidens-gun-control-plan-amid-mass-shootings/?sh=378c7e866020

https://slate.com/technology/2021/02/3d-printed-semi-automatic-rifle-fgc-9.html

https://www.amestrib.com/story/news/2021/03/25/iowa-state-isu-students-emailed-3-d-printed-guns-day-after-boulder-mass-shooting-colorado/6995202002/

Could the U.S. Ban Guns? Australia Tried Something Pretty Close.

The American Civil War

The End of America?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17179/hr1-for-the-people

https://wirepoints.org/mass-federalization-how-washington-is-bailing-out-failed-states-decapitating-competitive-ones-and-ending-america-as-you-knew-it-wirepoint

https://www.persuasion.community/p/john-mcwhorter-the-neoracists

https://thecritic.co.uk/schools-gone-woke/

Wilder, Wealthy and Wise: The Great Purge Ahead

Wilder, Wealthy and Wise opines on what he perceives as The Great Purge Ahead

The Soviet Great Purge started in 1936.  Stalin already had a bad reputation as a Dictator who couldn’t say no – he had gotten rid of millions already in the Holodomor (In The World Murder Olympics, Communists Take Gold And Silver!).  The Great Purge was different.  The piles and piles of earlier dead had been peasants and kulaks (kulaks were peasants that had enough money to own a cow), mainly.   Even before the Great Purge Stalin had the world record for Russian killing, a record he still proudly maintains.

By 1936 Stalin, always paranoid, decided his main opponents were, surprise, still Russians.

Anyone who had been a trusted advisor of Lenin had to go.  Anyone who looked like a threat to Stalin?  Had to go.  The Red Army had troops with guns.  Three out of five Soviet Marshalls were executed.  13 out of 15 army commanders, 50 out of 57 corps-level commanders, and 154 out of 186 division commanders were caught up in it.

The very top of the Soviet Military was decapitated.  But that was a small portion of the Great Purge.  In the end, probably a million or more were murdered or died in the Gulags.  Anyone in politics was fair game, and the more power the bigger the target on their back.  Many of the people who helped Stalin with the Great Purge eventually were victims of it themselves.

What was the basis of the Great Purge?  Even though Stalin binged and purged, it wasn’t bulimia, it was Power.  Stalin wanted to keep power.  His greatest weapon?

Fear.

And fear is currently the weapon (predictably) used by the Left today.  They want to push people to the fringes, isolate them, and then purge them.  The first step is making them feel alone.

Of course, there haven’t been executions in the United States.  However, Obama purged 197 high-level officers in the first five years of his administration.  That’s quite close to the Stalin numbers, and perhaps even greater when you consider that the military in 2000s America is far smaller than in late 1930s Russia.

The purge has lately increased.  The current SecDef has made it clear:  “The job of the Department of Defense is to keep America safe from our enemies, but we can’t do that if some of those enemies lie within our own ranks.”

Just let that sink in.  The current Secretary of Defense has stated that he thinks that the biggest enemies of the United States are in the military, right now.  Today.  The leadership of the military has already been purged.  Now?  The rank and file is in the process of being purged.  Anyone not actively supporting the Leftist agenda will be drummed out.

They want to purge anyone who is involved in “extremism” from the military.  As far as commies, I certainly agree.  But extremism for a Leftist is mere disagreement with a Leftist.  Don’t agree that having a 9-year-old boy dance as a girl in front of gay men at a strip club is entirely good and appropriate?

Extremist!  Behavior that would have resulted in imprisonment for the mother in all but the last 10 years since 1787 is now considered so sacred that it is impossible to challenge.  Now, speaking out against it is extremist.

Hollywood® is already on the job with this requirement.  Star Wars® was a part of my childhood.  I saved money when I was 12 to buy overpriced dolls action figures.  The mythos of Star Wars© was always one of Good versus Evil, which burned itself into my young imagination.

Now?  It’s Leftism versus the Right.  At every opportunity, the creative element at DisneyLucasFilmStarWars™ has abandoned the production of good movies to produce movies that are water carriers for the narratives of a Leftist agenda.

I grew up loving Star Wars©.  It was fun.  It was escapism.  It was a place where there were good heroes and evil villains.  Okay, I’ll admit, the entire series should have ended when the Emperor© said, “And now you die, young Skywalker™” during Return of the Jedi©.

The latest is that an actress got fired for expressing mildly Right viewpoints.  Heck, they weren’t even something that 95% of every American wouldn’t have agreed with when Kurt Cobain was still sucking air instead of pushing daisies.

And that is the technique of the Left.  If they can’t directly imprison you, they do their best to turn you into an unemployed, destitute outcast of society.

Imagine 50,000 Leftists watching everything you re-Tweet® to catch you.

But, thanks to me, you can watch the purge unfold in real time.  The Long March through the institutions of the United States is ongoing.  Here’s the current status of the things the Left owns:

  • The K-12 educational system.
  • Colleges and Universities.
  • Most Protestant religious organizations.
  • Most Catholic organizations.
  • The psychological establishment.
  • The American Medical Association.
  • All mainstream news media.
  • All mainstream entertainment media.
  • Most departments of the Federal government, absent the armed services.
  • The general officer corps of the armed services.
  • The courts.
  • Silicon Valley tech companies.
  • Many (but not all) Most Fortune® 500™ companies.

The result in 2021 is that of the institutions of the United States, the Left has or is consolidating control over nearly all of the important ones.  What remains?  Junior officer and enlisted men in the armed forces (at least for the next few months) and the governors and legislators of a few states.

Oh, and at least 80,000,000 inconvenient people.

The idea is to scare Americans about the Purge, to scare them about their place in society.  If the State and the Media can scare Americans like that, they can achieve their ultimate goal:  to make them be quiet.

One of the greatest compliments I’ve had from a friend about this website was this, “If they (the powers that be) were really reading and understanding the things you say, you’d be much, much higher on The List.”

The Mrs. prefers the elevator, I prefer stairs.  I guess we were raised differently.

The reason I don’t feel fear is this:  I’m not alone.  As I said earlier, there are 80,000,000 other inconvenient people on the list.

Standing together?  We can’t be canceled.

Standing together?  We can’t be purged.

Standing together?  We can’t lose.

This isn’t over.  We’re not done.

Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise: Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: A Bridge Too Far?

John Wilder at Wilder, Wealthy and Wise updates his Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: A Bridge Too Far?

“War, war, war!  This war talk’s spoiling all the fun at every party this spring. I get so bored I could scream!” – Gone With The Wind

No change this month.  We’ll see what February brings . . .

  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.

We remain in the gray zone between step 9. and step 10.  I thought seriously about rolling back the clock to five minutes to midnight.  Violence is down, since the Left has seriously decided to clamp down on their useful idiots of BLM® and Antifa™.  The Right has (so far) not been any sort of a serious threat to anyone.  The hijinks that took place at the Capitol was closer to the football team painting something naughty on a water tower than any sort of real insurrection.

But then I reviewed the stories that I’m covering this issue.  Nope.  The Left wants to calm down the Far Left, but only so it can turn its full attention to the Right.  The pressure will continue.

The Right offers nothing to the Left.  It is comprised of nationalists – people who worry more about the nation than a group of foreigners.  The Right doesn’t hate the foreigners – it just worries about Americans first.  And the Right, more today than ever, worries about wanting a free capitalist system to make the lives of Americans better – not a free capitalist system for the sake of the system itself.

I currently put the total at (this is my best approximation, since no one tracks the death toll from rebellion-related violence) 650 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.

In this issue:  Front Matter – A Bridge Too Far – Violence And Censorship Update – The Scouring Of The Shire Armed Services –  Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The Full Power Of The State – 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, feel free to subscribe and you’ll get every post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30 Eastern, free of charge.

A Bridge Too Far

Operation Market Garden in World War II is the origin of this particular phrase.  The idea was a quick run to Antwerp to open up the main portion of Germany so that Berlin could be taken by December, 1944.

It failed.  It was an (overly) ambitious airborne assault on a series of bridges that would have allowed for an attack into Germany – Eisenhower approved it, not because he thought it would work, but because it was a part of a general offensive.

A Bridge Too Far would be an apt description of the Sabika Sheikh Firearm Licensing and Registration Act.  Thankfully, the chances of this travesty being enacted are small.  This act, however, is a dream list of Leftists everywhere:

  • Universal gun registration.
  • Psychiatric tests, including input from your ex. We all know how stable those relationships can be.
  • $800 fee for “insurance”
  • All magazines of greater than 10 rounds would be illegal.
  • Huge penalties for noncompliance.
  • And so, so, much more . . . .

I won’t go into more details, because, as I said, this particular bill won’t become law.  I think that even the far Left in Congress knows that passing this would be a de facto declaration of war on 80 million-plus American Citizens.

Just because it fails this time, don’t think that this isn’t exactly what they want.  It may be a bridge too far now, but their general offensive will continue.

Violence And Censorship Update

Time Magazine® (LINK) is happily showing off, step-by-step, how a group of unelected hardcore Leftists from unions coordinated with Leftists in Tech, Hollywood® and:

“Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears.”

Viral smears includes, of course, actual reporting of (for instance) Hunter Biden’s corruption and dissolute lifestyle – where “they” got The New York Daily News© kicked off of Twitter®.  The idea was that there was no rule that they wouldn’t try to change (Constitutionally or not) in order to make sure that Trump would lose.  Or that the system was set up so that they could manufacture enough votes for Biden to win.

What’s worse than 1,000 conspiracy theorists?  A real conspiracy.

Censored?  You and me.  And it’s ongoing – one Tweet® that included a direct quote from the Time© story was identified by Twitter® as disinformation.  Let that sink in.

It would be wrong, apparently, to think there was a secret conspiracy to defeat Trump.

Even when the conspirators spend 6,500 words in Time Magazine™ admitting it.

The Scouring Of The Shire Armed Services

The Secretary of Defense has just issued a 60 day stand down to combat “extremism” in the ranks.  What’s extreme?  No one has said.  It could be a Tweet® that is now no longer in favor that a soldier made years ago.

So far, the III-percenter® logo has been identified as “extremist” and has been identified as something that has to go.  No tattoos, no t-shirts, and I’d assume no posters.

The Left is afraid – a large percentage of those arrested related to the Capitol Hill incident (so far) have been veterans – 14% was a number that I saw.  Of those, 8% were Marines, so the article I read said, “Of special concern are the elite units.”

So, the purges will start.

What ideologies will be purged?

  • Social Justice™? Certainly not!  Despite the fact that it requires communism to implement, it’s the current ideology of the powers in charge.
  • Black Lives Matter©? Absolutely not!  How could an ideology that has the support of the entire Fortune 500© be wrong?  Besides, those weren’t riots, they were peaceful protests.
  • Antifa®? What wrong with being Anti-Fascist?  Huh?  What’s fascism?  Fascism is whatever is to the Left of Antifa™.

Nope.  Not those.

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, or I would be, if they published any this month.

Violence:

Up is more violent, and to no one’s surprise, violence jumped again in January.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable.  Instability jumped significantly – getting Trump out has not made things better.

Economic:

January showed a major jump.  I’d expect a market crash sooner than later – politically it’s best to get those out early in an administration.

Illegal Aliens:

No data this month.  Has FedGov decided to stop publishing it?

The Full Power Of The State

I’ve documented above how the Left is taking over or already has taken over communications, social media, the military, and the voting process.  That’s not enough.

Recently, the Bank of America® was requested by the FBI to provide information on its customers.  What sort of information?  Well, all of it, if the customer met this very broad list:

  • Customers confirmed as transacting, either through bank account debit card or credit card purchases in Washington, D.C. between 1/5 and 1/6.
  • Purchases made for Hotel/Airbnb RSVPs in DC, VA, and MD after 1/6.
  • Any purchase of weapons or at a weapons-related merchant between 1/7 and their upcoming suspected stay in D.C. area around Inauguration Day.
  • Airline related purchases since 1/6.

And, no, not everything had to click to get you on the list, but still, 211 people managed to make the list.  Bank of America™ wasn’t required to give this information without a proper warrant.  But Bank of America© did.

At least one citizen was questioned by the FBI based on this information.

So, now it’s not only the Federal government’s amazing ability to listen to you, follow you on social media, and track your every movement.  Now they enlist banks to participate in closing the loop.  Unless you pay in cash, they have a list of every transaction you make.

So, pay in cash?

Have you tried to do that with a rental car?  Have you tried to do that with an airline ticket?  Tried to check into a Holiday Inn Express®?

They might take cash, but they’ll need to see a credit card, first.

How else would you leave a perfect record for the FBI?

LINKS

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

PUNDITRY

 

https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2021/01/american-civil-war

https://www.thearticle.com/is-this-the-last-battle-of-the-american-civil-war

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-01/capitol-riot-trump-four-corners-sarah-ferguson/13098356

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/news/2021/01/19/494758/united-states-early-days-domestic-insurgency/

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/01/how-close-did-us-come-successful-coup/617709/

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/512483-second-us-civil-war/

 

POLLS

 

https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2021/01/07/US-capitol-trump-poll

https://www.axios.com/poll-america-falling-apart-4a13376f-f962-46e3-8e2c-174d396f25d1.html

https://www.businessinsider.com/many-people-united-states-believe-cold-civil-war-survey-2021-1

https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/2021/02/01/civil-war-during-trumps-pre-riot-speech-parler-talk-grew-darker/4297165001/

 

POLITICS

 

https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/congressman-paul-gosar-oath-keepers-militia-civil-war-jim-arroyo-11529183

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/09/we-are-perilously-close-to-a-civil-war-it-is-our-job-to-stop-it/

 

PREPARATIONS

 

https://www.al.com/news/2021/01/some-republicans-call-for-second-civil-war-citizens-take-arms.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/01/boogaloo-prepare-civil-war/617683/

https://www.ajc.com/news/militia-alliance-in-georgia-signals-new-phase-for-extremist-paramilitaries/UD2JMQV5A5EABHHAKBQZBK2IVY/

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/increasingly-militant-parler-refugees-anxious-qanon-adherents-prep-doomsday-n1254775

 

(SECRET) POLICING

 

https://summit.news/2021/01/20/leftists-call-for-new-secret-police-force-to-spy-on-trump-supporters/

https://caityjohnstone.medium.com/viral-trumpsnewarmy-video-is-liberals-at-their-craziest-and-scariest-aee81d5deeb1

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/this-site-posted-every-face-from-parlers-capitol-hill-insurrection-videos/

https://facesoftheriot.com/#

 

PERSPECTIVES

https://www.city-journal.org/html/why-robespierre-chose-terror-12935.html

https://blogs.prio.org/2021/02/can-we-predict-civil-war/

https://theweek.com/articles/960957/worstcase-scenario-americas-immediate-future

Wilder, Wealthy and Wise: Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Standing At The Brink

John Wilder of Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise updates his Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Standing At The Brink

“Treat the cause, not the symptom!” – The Rocky Horror Picture Show

No change this month.  We’ll see what January brings . . .

  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.

We remain in the gray zone between step 9. and step 10.  I will maintain the clock at 2 minutes to midnight.  Last month I indicated that there was a chance to move the clock back if authorities took Leftist violence seriously.

Looks like I was too optimistic.

Previously, I stated that the only thing keeping the clock from ticking to full midnight is the number of deaths.  I put the total at (this is my best approximation, since no one tracks the death toll from rebellion-related violence) 600 out of the 1,000 required for the international civil war definition.

But as close as we are to the precipice of war, be careful.  Things could change at any minute.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Symptom, Not The Cause – Violence And Censorship Update – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Harper’s Ferry 2.0 – 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, feel free to subscribe and you’ll get every post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30 Eastern, free of charge.

Symptom, Not The Cause

The Left has many errors in perception.  Many of these errors are ‘own goals’ – the Left doesn’t know what the Right is thinking because they’ve managed to short-circuit the feedback mechanisms created by the Founding Fathers.  As Sarah Hoyt puts it so eloquently (LINK):

For years I’ve told the left that when they used fraud to win, they’d broken the feedback mechanism.  It didn’t mean their ideas were winning, that people agreed with them, or that they were safe. It was the equivalent of breaking the fire alarm and thinking they were safe from fires.

This is similar to my commentary in this post (Four Boxes: Soap, Jury, Ballot, and Ammo).

If you asked the average Leftist, I think most of them would say that Trump was the cause of the situation that we as a nation find ourselves in.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Trump is a symptom.  Trump is, in many ways, a skilled communicator.  He uses media to bypass gatekeepers and those that would interpret him to speak directly to the people.  Could he have had tens of thousands of people chanting “Build The Wall” or “Lock Her Up” if those people didn’t believe that in the first place?

Of course not.

Trump found the messages that resonated with a very large group of Americans that had been bypassed by both the media and the political process for decades and gave them a voice.  Does he believe in those messages?

I have no idea.  I am not a mind reader.  But Trump became a mirror of a large group of voters to show them that, yes, he heard them.  And, yes, he’d fight for them.  The degree that he actually followed through is debatable.

But back to the voice of the voters:  People wanted to “Build The Wall” not because they hated the people coming across the border, but because borders matter.  If everyone from Japan (for instance) moved to California, you wouldn’t have Californians:  you’d just have more Japan.  Americans, rightly, want to live in America.  They’re not afraid of change, they just want the inevitable changes to be American, and not Japanese (for example).

“Lock Her Up” wasn’t just about Hillary – it was about the groups of politicians that served themselves and the state instead of voters.  Why are the Clintons swimming in hundreds of millions in cash when they came into office as thousandaires?  Why are the Obama family wondering which mansion to stay in each week rather than budgeting for a once a year family vacation?

Corruption.  It wasn’t just Hillary, it was (and is) virtually every politician in Washington.

That’s what Leftists don’t understand – the movement Trump gave a voice to won’t go away regardless of what happens to Trump.  The underlying causes aren’t getting better, they’re festering because the feedback mechanism is broken.

Violence And Censorship Update

The Capitol was stormed, but you know the details on that one.  December had numerous violent protests by the Left, but only the Capitol having unscheduled visitors received major press coverage.  Rationale?

Censorship.

This month has been, by far, the biggest outpouring of censorship of any month of my lifetime.  The sitting President of the United States has been banned from essentially every online social media outlet.  Even the store that sells merchandise related to Trump, Shopify©, has banned him.  I’m certain that stopping the sale of red MAGA hats will solve all of the world’s problems.

Twitter® was, by far, the biggest way that Trump evaded the mainstream media lock on news selection and interpretation.  Trump could speak directly to the American people without being a newscaster using the words “unfounded” every other word.  He had sent 57,000 Tweets™ since he was on the service.

Not only was Trump censored, but I heard that the top 35% of his supporters were also censored.  Journalist John Robb put it very well:

Bottom line:  expect more, much more, censorship in the coming year.

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.  The public perception of violence dropped drastically during November, and dropped again in December.  January?  Too soon to tell.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable.  Instability dropped significantly in December.  January – will it bring conclusion, or more tension?

Economic:

The economic measures took a small setback this month.  I’d expect January to show a minor uptick.

Illegal Aliens:

Down is good, in theory.  This is a statistic showing border apprehensions by the Border Patrol.  Numbers of illegals being caught is rising again from a record November to a record December – the floodgates are opening.

Harper’s Ferry 2.0

In October of 1859, ever photogenic John Brown and 22 of his best friends decided that the time was right to trigger a slave uprising in the South.  Their idea was to capture the Harper’s Ferry Arsenal and then –  well, the “and then” part wasn’t exactly clear to anyone but Brown.  His plan was that he would kidnap slaves locally, and then give them guns as part of a great army.

The slaves he kidnapped ran away from Brown, having no desire to take part in his plan.  In the end, most of John Brown’s men were either shot by the United States Marines that retook the Harper’s Ferry Arsenal or were executed after a trial.  Ironically, it was the actions of Robert E. Lee that stopped the locals from hanging Brown on the spot and allowing him to be taken for a trial.

This was the last major incident that happened before Civil War 1.0, and greatly divided the country:  half saw John Brown as a (sort of insane) leader that was working for good even though people died in the raid.  The other half saw him as a treasonous criminal and a threat to their way of life.

I think that the way that people think of the storming of the Capitol last week has exactly the same polarity.  They went to go protest at the Capitol, found that they could (more or less) waltz in and claim the place.  Having done so, they were like a terrier that caught a Ford F-150® pickup.  “What the heck do I do now?”

Some see it as a (sort of silly) show to our government that the government exists at our pleasure, and that even the walls of the Congress, located in one of the most Leftist strongholds in the nation, is not safe.  They see a group of people protesting an election that they feel was decided by fraud.  They feel this way honestly and sincerely.

Others see it as treason against the nation and actions to prevent a president from being confirmed.  They feel that their cause is just, since, even though there might have been irregularities in voting (50% of Biden voters think the election was stolen) that it’s okay.  They think:  “Trump will be gone, and the Electoral College is silly, since popular votes are what democracies do, anyway.”

Regardless, this is an action that won’t be repeated.  The State is scared that it was tested and found to be so vulnerable.  They won’t make this mistake again – even now thousands of troops are pouring into Washington D.C.

LINKS

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

From Ricky:  “My self-imposed cut off for this batch of links is the GA Senate Race and the Congressional acceptance of the Electoral votes.  Who the hell knows what is about to happen next.”

ON THE EVE OF DECIDING CONTROL FOR THE SENATE AND PRESIDENCY:

QUESTIONS:

https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/blog/do-black-lives-matter-in-the-white-elite-s-civil-war-/

https://www.creators.com/read/pat-buchanan/12/20/is-our-second-civil-war-also-a-forever-war

http://www.sfltimes.com/opinion/is-there-a-civil-war-in-america

https://www.independent.com/2020/06/14/an-american-civil-war/

 

ASSERTIONS:

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/12/the_new_phony_war.html

https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-trumps-final-days-lines-are-drawn-for-a-republican-civil-war-11609772298

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/a-new-civil-war-its-here-the-rights-grievance-politics-is-killing-thousands-every-day/ar-BB1bOXoE

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-gop-elections-mcconnell/

https://www.pantagraph.com/opinion/letters/letter-country-close-to-civil-war/article_e99472ac-6b83-5509-aa93-3f03f2c92382.html

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/12/democrats-civil-war-cease-fire-georgia-senate-runoffs-election-444633

https://www.salon.com/2020/12/12/psycho-secession-texas-lost-cause-lawsuit-was-the-first-shot-in-a-new-civil-war/

 

CALLS TO ARMS:

AZ: https://www.mediaite.com/politics/arizona-republican-party-now-calling-on-voters-to-die-for-trumps-election-fight/

MI: https://www.icbps.org/make-them-pay-michigan-lawmaker-calls-on-leftist-soldiers-to-attack-trumpers/

GA: https://www.mediaite.com/tv/trump-supporters-refuse-to-accept-biden-presidency-in-gobsmacking-cnn-report-could-be-a-civil-war-you-never-know/

TX: https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2021/01/watch-texas-gop-congressman-threatens-civil-war-if-democrats-win-georgia-runoff-elections/

TX : https://www.foxnews.com/politics/georgia-runoffs-senate-chip-roy-congress

 

CALLS FOR CALM:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/louie-gohmerts-talk-of-violence-and-civil-war-is-despicable

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/civil-war-united-states-unlikely-violence/2020/10/29/3a143936-0f0f-11eb-8074-0e943a91bf08_story.html

https://www.indianagazette.com/opinion/the-civil-war-that-fizzled-out/article_4ad57e5a-3968-11eb-9be6-9ff5ee8e14a2.html

https://news.yahoo.com/constitution-answer-seditious-members-congress-113001597.html

https://news.yahoo.com/civil-war-212148092.html

 

CALLS TO SPLIT:

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/529609-rush-limbaugh-says-us-trending-toward-seccession

https://americanmind.org/features/a-house-dividing/a-common-sense-solution/

https://mises.org/wire/red-and-blue-states-its-time-multistate-solution

 

A WAKE-UP CALL:

https://strongnation.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/1243/2e0396bc-8bc1-40f6-ba07-9b94a079b7d5.pdf?1608225594&inline;%20filename=%22Letter%20to%20Acting%20Secretary%20Defense%20Christopher%20Miller.pdf%22

https://www.strongnation.org/articles/737-unhealthy-and-unprepared

Wilder, Wealthy and Wise: America – Walking The Razor’s Edge

From John Wilder at Wilder, Wealthy and Wise comes America: Walking The Razor’s Edge

…But that ridge (to me) was a razor’s edge. On either side was disaster. I took a deep breath. I put one foot in front of the other. And I walked – one step, two steps, three steps – to the top, where my friends were waiting.

What brought this to mind was an email forwarded by frequent commenter, 173dVietVet, where he said (in part) this on discussing where our country is:

“(I’ve) Done a bit of mountain climbing in my Ranger days and I know full well the meaning of knife’s edge, where any wrong step throws you headlong forever into the abyss of death that lies on BOTH sides . . . .”

We are in that zone. In climbing mountains, the knife edge is more than a metaphor – it’s real. On either side is death, and it’s not metaphorical death, it’s mangled into a wadded pile of Wilder by the combined forces of gravity and the sudden stop on the rocky outcropping at the bottom. Sure, Wile E. Coyote could survive, but not me.

But in life, the knife-edge is a metaphor.  We’ve created a financial situation where the economy is horribly broken, and for the last year we’ve survived mainly by printing money and not allowing people to be evicted from houses, despite the questionable legality of that.

A bigger component to our knife edge is that the rule of law has been progressively ignored in the country.  Where is the right of the Federal Government to stop evictions of tenants?

Oh, there isn’t one.  They just made it up.

That would be (at best) an action by a State, though even then it’s of questionable legality.  But then the Patriot Act made spying on American citizens “legal” so who cares about legal, anyway?  Then every agency with three letters of an alphabet decided to swallow up all of that online data, and all of the phone calls, despite laws to the contrary.

Of course, Federal employees were put in prison.

Hahahaha!

No.

Despite obviously illegal orders, no one was put in prison, and the only one likely to be put into prison is the whistleblower (Edward Snowden) if he ever shows back up in the United States.  It used to be the Constitution that was ignored, but that’s so 1940s.

Now, the government can ignore any inconvenient law it wants to ignore.  Of course, the people that can ignore the law are those that are either leaders, government employees, or those favored (think Antifa™) by the government.

Destroy evidence?  A felony for most.  But when the government does it?  It’s “a regrettable incident.”

What people misunderstand is that Trump isn’t at all the cause of our problems today.  Trump is a symptom.  Without Trump, the answer would have been (yet another) Bush, this time Jeb, versus (yet another) Clinton, this time Hillary.  Oh, the excitement for electing ¡Jeb!

The difference between another Clinton and another Bush?  Nothing, really.  And America didn’t want that – so America elected Trump.  If anything, Trump cleared the fog, and made the knife edge we were walking clearer.

And now, we are walking, and the knife-edge is sharper and narrower than the one that I walked to get to the top of that mountain on July 4th a couple of decades ago.

We have left the bounds of Constitutional governance some time ago – people think it’s quaint when I bring the entire idea of the Constitution up.  Is there a path back to an actual Constitutional government?

Sure.  It’s narrow – a knife-edge.  But so was getting that Constitutional government in the first place.  But getting that original Constitution depended upon men climbing a mighty steep mountain several hundred years ago.  Were they afraid when they saw the cliff’s edge, the price of failure?

I’m sure they were.  But yet they continued.  And when it was time to thread that final few steps to the summit?

They did, and damn the dangers on either side.

We face the same knife-edge.  Where are we going?

Wilder, Wealthy and Wise: Civil War 2.0 Weather Report – At The Bank Of The Rubicon

John Wilder at Wilder, Wealthy and Wise updates his Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: At The Bank Of The Rubicon

Good thing it’s not already at 5:56 . . .

  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.

We remain in the gray zone between step 9. and step 10.  I will maintain the clock at 2 minutes to midnight.  There is the possibility of a reduction back to step 8. in the future.  Post-election, authorities have begun to crack down on Leftist violence, plus the cold weather makes riots less fun, especially since the stores the fuel has all been burned.

Previously, I stated that the only thing keeping the clock from ticking to full midnight is the number of deaths.  I put the total at (this is my best approximation, since no one tracks the death toll from rebellion-related violence) 500 out of the 1,000 required for the international civil war definition.

But as close as we are to the precipice of war, be careful.  Things could change at any minute.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Banks of the Rubicon – Violence And Censorship Update – Maps –  Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Intolerable Acts and the End of the Republic – 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, feel free to subscribe and you’ll get every post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30 Eastern, free of charge.

Banks of the Rubicon

They were going to come after him, he knew, with the full legal apparatus of the state should he give up power.  He knew this.  They had told him as much.  They hated his fame and popularity; they hated his bestselling books where he boasted of his accomplishments.

But it wasn’t just him, it was his family.  He knew that they would take legal action against his family, try to take every bit of his money.  They meant to ruin him.

He didn’t want to do it, but they had forced his hand.  He would call for an insurrection to take power so that his enemies couldn’t pervert the law to use against him, to use against his family.  In the end, was there really a choice?  He would take unprecedented action, because the politics in his country were ruined as it was.

Gaius Julius Caesar stood at the banks of the Rubicon, and hesitated.  To take a Legion across the river under his command would mean civil war.  It would break long-standing tradition.

He ordered the troops forward.  On to Rome.  Caesar reportedly said, “The die is cast.”

“What does the weather look like, Brutus?”  “Hail, Caesar.”

History doesn’t exactly repeat, but it sometimes rhymes.  I’ve been writing about an American Caesar for years.  The parallels between the United States in December, 2020 and the Roman Republic on January 10, 49 B.C. are large.

Could Donald Trump seize power and become something different than a President?

Yes, he clearly could.

But that might mean the end of the Republic – which has seen a string of peaceful transfers of power that has gone back through time to George Washington.

Wouldn’t it?

Probably.  But one could argue that installing a president in an election where there is overwhelming evidence that fraudulent activities took place similarly would destroy the Republic, but just over time.

Will Don cross the Rubicon?  If so, expect it on or before the next Weather Report.

Violence And Censorship Update

As I write this, violence appears to be down.  Winter, plus it appears that some of the Leftist leaders have gotten the order to keep the rabble in check now that they are “in control.”

As part of the “shut it down” theme from the Left continues, I’m getting reports that large numbers of Leftist accounts are now being shut down by Twitter®.  Is this the Leftist’s usual playbook that, once they feel they have power, to get rid of the useful idiots?

Possibly.

How do communists spread their propaganda?  Using commercials.  Meme is as-found on the ‘net.

Of course, this censorship doesn’t come from government – nope.  This censorship now comes from private companies.  I’ve been meaning to write a post about how evil that is, but hadn’t gotten around to it.  Thankfully, Alexander Macris wrote it well (LINK) so I didn’t have to.

From the article (but RTWT):

This essay has only scratched the surface of a very deep topic. The mechanisms by which tyranny is outsourced are ubiquitous. And it’s not just bypassing the Bill of Rights. Outsourcing of tyranny is used everywhere to bypass the checks and balances placed on our government. Whether it’s accepting control over our currency from the Treasury, offering private mercenaries unconcerned about the laws of war, or monitoring and recording all of your private data, Tyranny Inc. is ready to do the dirty job that government isn’t supposed . . . but really wants . . . to do.

Maps

I’ve seen dozens of maps that describe a hypothetical Civil War 2.0.  This one I found interesting for several reasons – it shows the approximate physical extent of Leftist demographics in the country, but also encapsulates a factor that most people don’t consider when dealing with Civil War 2.0 – outside forces.

Found this map on the web – don’t have a person to give credit to.  We’ll just call them Anon.

Yes, we know that while Civil War (Beta Version) was fought with Great Britain across an ocean, Civil War 1.0 was fought between states, Civil War 2.0 will be street to street – perhaps with dozens of Stalingrad-type conflicts across the nation.

But while I was watching some movie that involved narco-gangs, I ended up doing research.  The fourth-largest (behind 1. American Citizens, 2. American Armed Forces, and 3. American Police Forces) armed group in America are likely the drug cartels.

Civil War 2.0 would be an opportunity for them.  But it would also be an opportunity for China.  I didn’t put the map together, but you can certainly see that Anon put time into thinking which nations might help which side in the event of a Civil War in the near term.  I had several that I could argue with, but I thought I’d present it for what it was – another take on the way an uncertain world might shake out.

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…(continues)

Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise: The Archbishop, Trump, And The Coming Great Reset

Here’s John Wilder of Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise discussing the “Great Reset” that has been all over the blogosphere recently – The Archbishop, Trump, And The Coming Great Reset.

I first became aware of “The Great Reset” last week.  There are quite a few YouTube® videos about it, but one of the more unusual mentions was in a letter to President Trump from a retired Catholic clergyman.  This particular clergyman is Archbishop Carlo Viganò.  I don’t know what the difference is between an Archbishop and a Bishop, but I suspect it has to do with a better quality of footwear.

Anyway, Archbishop Viganò wrote the following in the letter:

A global plan called the Great Reset is underway. Its architect is a global élite that wants to subdue all of humanity, imposing coercive measures with which to drastically limit individual freedoms and those of entire populations. In several nations this plan has already been approved and financed; in others it is still in an early stage. Behind the world leaders who are the accomplices and executors of this infernal project, there are unscrupulous characters who finance the World Economic Forum and Event 201, promoting their agenda.

The purpose of the Great Reset is the imposition of a health dictatorship aiming at the imposition of liberticidal measures, hidden behind tempting promises of ensuring a universal income and cancelling individual debt. The price of these concessions from the International Monetary Fund will be the renunciation of private property and adherence to a program of vaccination against Covid-19 and Covid-21 promoted by Bill Gates with the collaboration of the main pharmaceutical groups. Beyond the enormous economic interests that motivate the promoters of the Great Reset, the imposition of the vaccination will be accompanied by the requirement of a health passport and a digital ID, with the consequent contact tracing of the population of the entire world. Those who do not accept these measures will be confined in detention camps or placed under house arrest, and all their assets will be confiscated.

You can read the whole letter here (LINK).

Okay, the story the Archbishop was sharing seemed like an Infowars® segment, but with less tinfoil.  What was up?

Well, it is stuff that’s directly out of an Infowars™ segment:  as I dug into the Archbishop’s clues, it was exactly correct.  The World Economic Forum©, which runs that annual Davos conference in Switzerland where 3,000 of the elite of the business world, academia, Hollywood, and the press get together to discuss how awesome they are for sacrificing themselves by flying their private  jets to visit a Swiss resort.

Alex Jones regularly says they’re up to no good when they meet at Davos.  Not everything is a conspiracy:  I’m certain that Alcoa® and Planters™ will never be allowed to merge, since everyone is afraid of the AlumaNutty.

I know the Leftists complain about the 1%, but this is the 0.00004%.  The amazing thing?  The 0.00004% agree nearly entirely with Antifa’s® agenda.  Here’s what the Great Reset entails, as showcased in articles on the World Economic Forum©’s own website (LINK):

  • “We must build entirely new foundations for our economic and social systems.” The Davos folks describing freedom:  “Be free.  No!  No, not like that.”
  • “In fact, one silver lining of the pandemic is that it has shown how quickly we can make radical changes to our lifestyles.” I’d like to point out that some things didn’t change at all:  WNBA games have always been empty.
  • “. . . will require stronger and more effective governments . . . .” I’m against both of those things.  If we have strong government, I really hope it’s Three Stooges®-level incompetent.
  • “ . . . governments should implement long-overdue reforms that promote more equitable outcomes.” Remember – equality is we all have the same chance.  Equitable means we all get the same outcome.  Except, of course, for the 0.00004%.

 

There are three main points that the World Economic Forum© is currently selling as the Great Reset:

  • International coordination on almost everything is the first component. If you thought we had too much globalization already?  Get ready for armies of international bureaucrats to write legislation and regulation that no one is accountable for.
  • “The second component of a Great Reset agenda would ensure that investments advance shared goals, such as equality and sustainability.” Who shares these goals?  Well, at least the 0.00004% do, and they know best, right?  Especially when they spend your money.
  • Finally, they want to “harness the innovations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to support the public good, especially by addressing health and social challenges.” The Fourth Industrial Revolution is Davos-speak for the post-Internet acceleration in information technology and the way that it interacts with the physical world.

But the World Economic Forum dives deeper.  One of the more chilling aspects is that they no longer want individuals to own, well, anything.  You can read the article here (LINK), right off of the World Economic Forum’s© website.  I did a little digging, and found the author was a member of Danish parliament, but prior to that?  She had spent 8 years getting a Masters in theology, became a part-time theology teacher, and then was in parliament.  Sound like a blonde version of AOC?

Everything that Archbishop Viganò suggests is an aim of the Great Reset is plainly on the World Economic Forum© website, with the exception for the Archbishop’s claim that that people would be put into camps if they didn’t comply by being vaccinated and chipped.  That, in my mind, makes sense.  It’s not normally something that a country advertises, “Hey come for the free stuff, stay for the concentration camps.”  Or, “Virginia, it’s for Lovers of Barbed Wire.”

My review of the Great Reset is simple:

It’s the same hokum that the Left has been selling since before the French Revolution.  The Left promises they will make people into new men and they will share the prosperity with everyone.  But those in control will then ask the question – how many people do we need, really?  The answer is a simple one, and it’s always the same:  fewer than we have now.

In reality, the 0.00004% never even start to share.  The 0.00004% will make life easy and free.  All you have to give up?  All of your freedom.  Hmm, I can get the Devil to grant my wish in exchange for my soul, and I don’t even have to go down to the Crossroads?

Which is why an Archbishop might write a letter in the first place . . . .

Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise: Civil War 2.0 Weather Report – 56 Days To The Last Election Ever In The United States

Two minutes to midnight…

From John Wilder at Wilder, Wealthy and Wise, Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: 56 Days To The Last Election Ever In The United States is his latest update to his Civil War 2.0 series.

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

We are at step 9.  Step 9. is, of course, two minutes to midnight on the clock.  Violence continues to be commonly justified by local and state authorities.

In this issue:  Front Matter – What Is A Civil War? – Violence And Censorship Update – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – 56 Days Until The Last Election – Links

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, feel free to subscribe and you’ll get every post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30 Eastern.

What Is A Civil War?

Multiple comments that I’ve had, both in the comment section at the blog, as well as in email and even text message asked the question – what happens to the index this month.  The answer is that we’re still at a 9 out of 10.  The only thing remaining to take us to a 10 is a body count.  That’s because I’m using this (admittedly academic definition by Doyle and Sambanis in 2000) as my definition for the existence of a civil war:

  1. The war has caused more than 1,000 battle deaths. This war hasn’t yet done so.  Is 1,000 an aribitrary number?    This is the only criteria not yet met.
  2. The war represents a challenge to the sovereignty of an internationally recognized state. I think it’s clear that Antifa® and BLM™ want nothing less than the dismantling of the existing state and construction of a Marxist Utopia©.  The fact that they are aided and abetted by fellow travelers in district attorney offices, mayoral offices, and congressional offices doesn’t mean that they aren’t communist revolutionaries fighting against freedom from the inside.
  3. The war occurs within the recognized boundary of that state. This is an easy one.
  4. The war involves the state as one of the principal combatants. One of.  Not the only one.  Ask a policeman in Portland if they feel that they’re in control.
  5. The rebels are able to mount an organized military opposition to the state and to inflict significant casualties on the state. It states casualties, not deaths.  And that also makes this an easy one to check off.  Organization discussion is directly below in the Violence And Censorship Update.

 

I list all of the five criteria for a simple reason – to show that the only thing between us right now and a full blown, internationally recognized definition of civil war is the number of body bags we have yet to fill.  When I started this update last year, I was expecting things to move faster than you expected.  I did not expect things to move faster than I expected.

They have.

Violence And Censorship Update

Violence this month is obvious.  The killings have started.  Outside of the increasing violence tied directly to police standing down because they have no support which I talked about last month, bullets are now flying in the “mostly peaceful” protests.

Outside of the CHAZ murders, where two teenagers were killed, much of the violence has been peripheral.  I moved the index up to nine out of ten when killings became commonplace.  As near as I can tell, the killings directly associated with the Antifa™ and BLM® action is probably somewhere short of 100.

But two of those deaths are deaths that Antifa© cannot abide.  In Kenosha, I wrote about Kyle Rittenhouse’s clear self-defense shooting against both a pedophile and a wife beater, and alleged self-defense shooting against a person who was (by the film I saw) drawing down on him.  You can read it here – reviews say it’s the best thing I’ve ever written, but I’d suggest my signature on my divorce papers from my first wife was better (Have The Kenosha Riots Given The Right Our Rosa Parks?).

From my vantage point, Kyle Rittenhouse is a hero.  But Antifa™ cannot let that stand.  At all.  It’s my estimate that out of rage, the killing in Portland as well as the attempted murder by car in Portland were “revenge” hits on people wearing paraphernalia of the Right.  If you read reports that break down the killing (HERE) and other experiences (HERE) in Portland, it becomes clear that Antifa® is using military discipline, and is broken up into a military command structure.  (H/T to Vox Day (LINK) and Mike at Cold Fury (LINK))

Antifa™ is a dedicated group.  They have undergone a brainwashing and are a religious cult – no Jim Jones Kool-Aid® drinking cultist could compete.  I wrote about that here (Why Would Anyone Become A Leftist?), and stand by it.  Antifa® and BLM© stand against everything that has made America wonderful, rich, and prosperous.  And they are fanatics.

I’m not sure if you know what they have in mind for people that don’t agree with them.  It isn’t pleasant.  The idea is that there is a pure society coming, and the way to get to that new society is to eliminate everything that doesn’t fit.  Which almost certainly includes you.  But don’t worry – they want to torture people to death to show the remaining people how wonderful the future communist utopia will be.  See?  You serve a purpose in their minds.

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.

July was generally better than June, which is like saying that World War I was “better” than World War II.  Let’s go to the graphs.  In general, I’ve used bikini graphs in the past.  Given where we are, I’m a bit more somber.  Here are the graphs, without bikinis.

Violence:

Up is more violent.  June pegged the scale of violence.  This measure because the way it’s constructed, doesn’t go higher than 300.  It’s lower again this month despite clear assassinations by the Left.  Does that mean it’s less violent this month?  Certainly riots are down, but the measure is a measure of how people feel about the violence.  Since it’s so common now, it’s not spiking.  That is, in my opinion, very bad – we’re getting used to this nonsense.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable.  Instability is down, slightly.  I expect September and October to be down more, since voting generally has a calming effect and all emotions are focused there.  After that?  All bets are off.

Economic:

Down indicates worse economic conditions, are down slightly.  Again, we’re nowhere near the bottom.  I expect that to drop off in October.  Maybe to historic levels.  But I could be wrong?

Illegal Aliens:

Down is good, in theory.  This is a statistic showing border apprehensions by the Border Patrol.  Oops!  This metric is now nearly at the highest it’s been in years.  As the Wuflu® hits Mexico, the Mexicans are deciding to head north again.

56 Days Until The Last Election

I firmly believe the United States has had stolen elections in the past.  But the nice thing about the Electoral College is?  It makes it really, really hard to steal an election.  Impossible?  No.  Hard?  Yes.

Every single person in every graveyard in Chicago, California, and Queens can vote for a Democrat, and it doesn’t matter.  The Electoral College adds legitimacy to an election by breaking corruption at the state lines.  That’s one reason the Left hates it.  It makes elections hard to steal.  In my state, my vote doesn’t really matter – my state will go for Trump even if every person in every grave, ever, votes Democrat.

Mail-in voting changes all of that.

Yes, this was one of my favorite original memes that I created, but a new version.  Still valid.

Stalin has been quoted as saying, “I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how.”

It’s hard to cheat in a Red State.  You have to steal zillions of counties.  It’s easy to cheat in a Blue State – you just have to cheat in the big cities.  If everyone in Chicago voted Trump, Illinois would still go 60% for whatever Democrat was opposing him.  But with mail-in voting?

Examples I have seen show the party on the outside of the envelope.  How hard would it be to casually “lose” a few thousand votes from envelopes that had a big, fat, R on the outside?  Or a few thousand from precincts that consistently vote Right?  Not hard at all.  This is on top of demonstrated voter fraud in Left cities where poll workers were caught on camera dumping ballot after ballot into the box on election day.

If mail-in voting passes?  We’ve had our last election day.  From now on?  It’s selection day – selection of the candidate that the Left wants.

Thanks to the innovation of mail-in voting, you don’t even have to bring the corpses to the polls!  What else will modern technology come up with?

In a further, ominous sign, the Media® has been setting up the idea that Trump will win on election night in a convincing manner, but will lose as the mail-in ballots are counted.  This is particularly horrific.

If you knew which six counties you needed in close states, could you game the Electoral College?  Absolutely.  You could have boxes of ballots pre-staged in Philadelphia, or Milwaukee, or Cleveland to flip the results.  Simple.  Want Florida to turn blue?  Just found a box with 25,475 Biden votes in Miami.

Don’t think the Left wouldn’t try it.  They would do anything to win the election, since they’re contemplating electing a person who couldn’t navigate a corn maze with more than two stalks standing.

If mail-in voting is made the law of the land?  Expect that this is the final election, ever, that won’t be a simple selection of the candidate that best fits the desire of the Left.  Sure, there will be some token people on the Right elected, but they’ll mainly be people who believe in real conservative values, like only allowing 1,000,000 illegals in a year, and only allowing 7,000,000 people a year in on H1B visas, and restricting anything but a muzzle loading black powder rifle, like our founders intended.

Oh, wait, conservatives have conserved nothing!  They just pick the values from the Left from ten or twenty years ago, and defend those until the death.

LINKS

That’s a bad ending to a video game . . .

All are from Ricky:

MSM message: alt-Right continues the march to civil war….

https://www.the-sun.com/news/1316052/proud-boys-group-brawl-antifa-protests-kalamazoo-michigan/

https://www.the-sun.com/news/1354432/portland-brawl-breaks-out-proud-boys-antifa-fight/

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2020/09/03/schmidt-trump-supporters-want-to-see-a-second-civil-war-in-this-country/

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/08/30/white-supremacists-are-invading-american-cities-to-incite-a-civil-war/

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/sandia-labs-goes-nuclear-employee-who-sparked-internal-revolt-over-critical-race-theory

https://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/americans-sense-something-is-wrong-gun-sales-up-72_08272020

…a challenge that must be met with force…

https://jonathanturley.org/2020/08/18/berkeley-columnist-calls-for-violent-resistance/

https://www.dailycal.org/2020/08/12/this-war-cant-be-civil/

http://thesaker.is/will-hillary-and-the-dems-get-the-civil-war-they-are-trying-to-provoke/

…for abstract justice…

https://theweek.com/articles/931090/are-bread-riots-coming-america

https://nypost.com/2020/08/11/black-lives-matter-organizer-calls-chicago-looting-reparation/

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/08/27/906642178/one-authors-argument-in-defense-of-looting

…and with concrete action…

https://summit.news/2020/08/14/black-lives-matter-mob-demands-white-people-give-up-their-homes/

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/watch-blm-protesters-shot-homeowners-while-marching-through-rural-pennsylvania-town

https://www.theorganicprepper.com/battle-zones-america/

This revolution WILL be televised, as documentaries…

https://theduran.com/steven-turley-new-civil-war-being-fought-on-three-fronts-video/

https://theduran.com/the-second-american-civil-war-is-here-part-i-the-combatants-video/

https://theduran.com/the-second-american-civil-war-part-ii-strategy-of-the-blues-video/

https://theduran.com/the-second-civil-war-part-iii-update-dr-steve-turley-largely-confirms-video/

https://theduran.com/the-utopia-of-democrat-activism-video/

…an unending stream of gripping short-attention-span clips from the front lines…

https://twitter.com/The_Real_Fly/status/1300955946521432064

(Scroll here for more video gems:) https://twitter.com/The_Real_Fly/

….and an explosion of editorials…

https://www.columbiadailyherald.com/story/opinion/columns/2020/09/02/rowland-civil-war-real-possibility/5690696002/

https://themichiganstar.com/2020/08/28/commentary-in-kenosha-the-seeds-of-civil-war/

https://greensboro.com/rockingham_now/opinion/ending-the-civil-war/article_a2f83f72-eaef-11ea-88b4-e7bcbc8a60ec.html

https://signalscv.com/2020/09/jonathan-kraut-an-undeclared-civil-war-in-america/

https://www.niagara-gazette.com/opinion/singer-promoting-a-new-civil-war-in-america/article_399450b1-7aee-5a47-abd1-8555b616d0cf.html

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/portland-killing-trump-caravan-civil-war-20200830.html

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/kenosha-trump-kyle-rittenhouse-portland-antifa-20200901.html

https://www.newspressnow.com/opinion/editorials/stop-a-civil-war-before-it-starts/article_57576526-e7d3-11ea-a6c0-f31f4893dc90.html

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2020/08/20/thursdays-headlines-armed-for-the-civil-war-edition/

https://prospect.org/politics/americas-civil-war/

https://www.independent.com/2020/06/14/an-american-civil-war/

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/the-thin-veneer-of-american-civilization/

https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-opinion-kenosha-wisconsin-unrest-violence-shooting-20200826-m3e7zcqg7faxxou2xhqywmsobe-story.html

And as one (now-dead) Antifa guard claims to have fired the latest shot heard ’round the world…

https://www.insider.com/portland-shooting-suspect-said-saw-civil-war-coming-2020-9

…a newspaper founded during the last Civil War won’t be around to cover any new one…

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/09/04/trump-and-stars-and-stripes-attacking-american-icon-column/5706859002/

Wilder Wealthy and Wise: Civil War 2.0 Weather Report – Two Minutes to Midnight

Here’s John Wilder of Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise with his latest Civil War 2.0 Weather Report.

“I can’t sugarcoat this. We’re at Threat Level:  Midnight!” – The Office

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

We are at step 9.  Step 9. is, of course, two minutes to midnight on the clock.  Violence continues to be commonly justified by local and state authorities.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Talking About Divorce – Violence and Censorship Update – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Living Two Minutes To Midnight – Links

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, feel free to subscribe and you’ll get every post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30 Eastern.

Talking About Divorce

I read an article once that said that couples that talk about getting a divorce are much more likely to get a divorce.  Heck, when my ex-wife said she wanted a divorce on Valentine’s Day, I was surprised – I wasn’t planning on spending that much.  But talking increasing the divorce risk – that made sense to me:  every time you talk about an event, you tend to bring the event closer to becoming real.

How?

It’s not magic or a witch’s incantation, or at least I didn’t see my ex-wife doing incantations, though there was a smell of sulfur around midnight.  It is simply that when people talk about divorce, they start imagining what it would be like.  When divorce fantasy is better than marriage reality, the lawyers get called in.

In a recent “war game” of different election scenarios, John “Spirit Cooking” Podesta played the role of Joe “stay in the basement until November” Biden.  Crucially in the war game scenario where Biden lost, “Biden’s team sought to encourage large Western states (California, Washington, Oregon) to secede unless pro-Democracy reforms were made.”

Both sides are talking about divorce.

Violence and Censorship Update

Violence associated with the protests is now so common that stories that would have made national news four months ago are, at most, up for a single news cycle.  “Peaceful” protester draws an AK on someone driving by and gets ventilated?  Yawn.  Two women (I guess) are frolicking on an interstate at night and get (inadvertently) mowed down by someone driving a car?

It’s bad.  In Chicago, 2,249 people have been shot this year as of July 29 (LINK), which is nearly 700 more than in all of 2019.  At this rate, more people will be shot in just Chicago this year than during the entire Falkland Island War between Great Britain and Argentina.  This is patent proof that black lives don’t matter to Black Lives Matter®, since deaths of unarmed black people at the hands of cops in all of 2019 were, according to USA Today™ (LINK) only . . . 25.

Unjustified use of police force is horrible.  But . . . cops killing unarmed black people is nearly the smallest problem faced by black people in the United States.  BLM©?  It’s a lie.

Censorship was up again this month.  In focus was Qanon.  I wrote about Q a long while back (QAnon, The Chans, and Other Cryptic Stuff), and haven’t kept too much up with that subject.  But this month in another set of coordinated censorship Twitter® banned over 7,000 accounts that Tweeted™ about Qanon.  YouTube® has deleted “tens of thousands” of videos and “hundreds” of channels that were about Q.  Facebook© won’t be left out – they nuked a Qanon group with 200,000 members.

What about Qanon scares the mainstream?

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.

July was generally better than June, which is like saying that World War I was “better” than World War II.  Let’s go to the graphs.  As is custom at Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise, the graphs are presented with girls in bikinis, because if civilization is collapsing what better time is there for bikini graphs?

Violence:

Up is more violent.  June pegged the scale of violence.  This measure because the way it’s constructed, doesn’t go higher than 300.  It’s lower this month.  Does that mean it’s less violent this month?  Certainly riots are down, but the measure is a measure of how people feel about the violence.  Since it’s so common now, it’s not spiking.  That is, in my opinion, very bad – we’re getting used to this nonsense.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable.  Instability is down only slightly, which might seem weird, but the political system is still stable overall.  I expect this to spike in the next two months, and may introduce a new measure based on the election as we get closer to November.

Economic:

Down indicates worse economic conditions, but this month it’s up.  The part of me that hopes, hopes we’re on a real upswing.  The part of me that thinks says we’re nowhere near the bottom.

Illegal Aliens:

Down is good, in theory.  This is a statistic showing border apprehensions by the Border Patrol.  Down, probably related to WuFlu, unemployment, and riots.  This is near a five year low for this time of year.

Living Two Minutes To Midnight

Two minutes to midnight is a tough place for the United States to be sitting, and we’re here.  The confluence of great events, economic, political, and social is upon us.  It’s in these times of upheaval that systems collapse in complexity from a high level to a lower one.  Highly complex society provides us nice things like video games and delivery of eyeglasses made in China in a week.

Societies of low complexity struggle to feed themselves and live in mud huts.  Low complexity societies are always on the edge – a famine could mean real death due to starvation, not that the shake machine is broken at McDonalds® again so you have to go to Sonic™ if you want a shake.

In order to grab or consolidate political power, there are politicians that would gladly drop our standard of living to that of starving people in mud huts.  Those that would support them imagine a world where they’ll be allowed to be artists and poets and philosophers and the mud huts will be left for those who oppose the new way of doing things.

Living in this time, I have one suggestion:  be as prepared as you can be for nearly anything to happen.  Understand that things you’ve taken for granted your entire life can change in a day.  I never thought I’d live in a society where rioters could stop cars of peaceful citizens with impunity and the tacit approval of local and state governments, but here we are.

Things are moving fast.  Be ready…

Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise: Eight Phases of Crisis – Covid-19 Edition

John Wilder at Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise has written a someone what long, and maybe slightly rambling but still good, piece on crisis stages that we may see with Covid-19. Eight Phases of Crisis – Covid-19 Edition is a couple of weeks old, now, but still germane.

…Here are, as near as I can determine, Eight Stages of a Crisis™, a level at which each crisis can be evaluated compared to the other – this is my modification of work originally done by Zunin and Myers.  This is like the Kübler-Ross five stages of grief, but with the apocalypse in mind.  Why settle for one death, when you can have millions or billions on your mind?  It’s so nice and cheery.  The nice part of using this model is that you can gauge where we are in the current COVID-19 mess.

The Warning

This is the opening stage of a crisis.  It may be short, as in 9/11, or it may be a slow-motion collapse like the gradually increasing troop buildups and mobilizations that led to World War I.  Everyone wanted to stop it, but no one was sane enough to say “no.”  The Warning before the first Civil War was literally decades in length.

In the current COVID crisis, The Warning came during and just after the December impeachment.  With the focus of the country elsewhere, who cared about the flu?  We don’t trust the media very much.  Why?  They don’t seem trustworthy.  Example:  when Trump shuts down air transport to China, CNN® says it’s racist.  When China shuts down air transport from the United States, CNN™ says it’s a wise and prudent move by China’s benevolent leadership…

The Event

The Event is generally not long, but it can be.  It’s the Shot Heard Round the World at Lexington and Concord in the Revolutionary War.  The Event is when the rules change forever, and nothing can ever make the world go back to the way it was.  It’s the spark that lights the fire.  When people look back, everyone can see The Event.

Nothing is ever the same afterwards – The Event changes everyone that it touches, and often ends up changing systems permanently.  It is disruptive.  It may not be the reason that everything fails, it might just be a small event toppling an already unstable system.  In a crisis like 9/11, the event is obvious and instant.  COVID-19 has led to a slow-rolling avalanche across the economy.  Was it poised for a fall anyway?  Possibly…

Disbelief

When things have changed, and changed drastically, people refuse to believe it.  When the power is out because a tree fell on the power lines, I will walk into a room an automatically flip the light switch.  Why?  Habit, partially.  But there’s a part of my mind that is existing in Disbelief, perhaps, that doesn’t believe that the power could ever be gone.

Disbelief isn’t a coping strategy, and it’s not an attempt of the mind to protect itself, at least in a healthy person.  It’s more inertia.  You’re used to the world being a certain way, and when it isn’t, part of your mind isn’t quite ready to process it…

Panic

At some point, the mind is confronted with the new reality and forced to accept it.  But the rules are new, and unknown.  What to do?  One could take a deep breath, and review the situation and think logically or?  One could Panic.  Panic is easier, and doesn’t require a lot of thought.

Panic is the natural reaction when your brain realizes that it has done zero to prepare for the new reality…

Heroism

While the Panic is ongoing, the first glimmer of Heroism starts to show.  Brave men and women working in the medical field are the first signs of Heroism.  Donald Trump talking with Al Sharpton to address the problems he sees is Heroism – realizing that there is a greater good, and that sacrifice is required.  Heroism is embodied throughout the response to the crises where a few have an opportunity to save many, and where enemies put aside squabbles for a time because it’s the right thing to do…

The Cliff

Keeping order requires energy.  Some part of the energy of the system is put into keeping order.  In a time of significant social cohesion, like World War II, the United States didn’t face The Cliff, even though virtually every other developed nation did.  Instead, the energy that the crisis took was replaced by people working together.

Most of the time in a real crisis, however, there’s The Cliff.  I wrote about it here: Seneca’s Cliff and You.

We have not fallen off The Cliff.  Is it certain that there is one?  No.  But every single leader, elected or appointed, is acting like it’s there.  I believe we will see it.  The new normal will be grow from events moving quickly.  Already at Wilder Redoubt, we’ve had nothing but home cooked meals for the last week, with a couple of store-bought sandwiches being the exception.

Will home cooked food, family dinners, and homeschooling be the legacy of COVID-19?

I expect that we’ll see The Cliff soon enough…

Disillusionment

After the fall, things suck.  We had heroes, but the time for Heroism is over.  Disillusionment sets in when things don’t snap back to normal.  Things will seem rosy, only for failure to crush hope.  The more government “helps” during this phase, the worse recovery will be.  Roosevelt “helped” so much during the Great Depression that he extended it for years.

But politicians will take drastic steps, because they can’t help themselves.  The length of time Disillusionment lasts?  Months to years…

Rebuilding

This is the other side of The Cliff.  Whereas, as Seneca said you go down a cliff pretty quickly, you only build up slowly.  Rebuilding the economy will take years.  If we do it right, we’ll build a stronger economy, less dependent upon foreign supply lines, that guarantees freedom while preserving the traditional values that built the wealth in the first place.

If done poorly?  The system is controlled, oppressive, and coercive…(continues)

Click here to read the entire article at Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise.