Month: January 2023

A Black Swan May Be The Only Thing That Will Stop This Madness

America, Economy, Emergency Preparedness, History, Society & Culture

In my previous post I concluded that it may take a cataclysmic event to restore sanity to our nation. I’m not talking about the price of eggs or gas skyrocketing, or store shelves being empty for a few days. I’m talking about something that will cause even the most dumbed-down, brain-addled, handheld-screen-addicted person to pick his or her head up and say, “Wow, maybe some things are more important than what the Kardashians are up to this week!”

I’ve long said that Economics is the dismal science, an academic exercise in futility, and while it may be fun and may earn a whole raft of propeller-heads an income, even wealth, it’s really only mental masturbation of the highest order.

Why do I say this? Because economics deals with building “models” that describe what the panoply of pulled levers have caused in the past with the hope that those models will help us predict the future. The fundamental problem with these models, however, is that they depend on two flawed assumptions: 1) the “rational man” and 2) the “absence of an outside shock”.

In case you haven’t been paying attention let me state the obvious:

First, there is no such thing as a rational man (or woman). All human beings are driven, at least in part if not entirely, by feelings, perceptions, etc., what I’d characterize as “squishy stuff”, NOT rational, analytical thought.

And, as we have all seen, “outside shocks” OCCUR ALL THE TIME! They differ in magnitude, of course, but they destroy models’ explanations of the past and their usefulness as predictors of the future.

Nevertheless, thousands of economists and bureaucrats pontificate endlessly on the overarching topics that impact our daily lives and GET PAID TO DO SO! Sometimes they’re right, more often they’re wrong, but they persevere.

In his famous book, Nassim Nicholas Taleb defines a Black Swan as an improbable event with three basic characteristics: it is unpredictable, it has massive impact, and after the fact, explanations are concocted to make it appear less random.

Examples of past Black Swan events include: the 2000 Do-Com Crash, 9-11, the Fall of Lehman Brothers, the Fukushima and Chernobyl nuclear Disasters, BREXIT, and most recently, COVID.

None of these were severe enough to wake people up. The effects, though severe, were not of such duration that people got serious about paying attention to things that matter.

Now we’re sufficiently far down the slippery slope, there is sufficient chaos, there is enough “information” flak in the air, that only a really BIG Black Swan of significant duration will, in my opinion, bring us back to REAL Reality!

So, what might such a Black Swan consist of?

China invading Taiwan
Israel nuking Tehran
The North Koreans launching a nuke at Japan
The San Andreas fault creating Nevada beach-front property
Tactical nukes get used in Ukraine
NATO deploys troops to Ukraine
The Stock Market crashes
The Yellowstone Volcano erupts
Biden resigns and Harris becomes President and Michele Obama becomes Vice President (threw this one in because it is such a frightening nightmare!)
A terrorist attack on the 9 key substations takes down the electrical grid for from 3 months to a year
Another, more deadly virus gets out of a lab
A coronal mass ejection REALLY hits Earth and wipes out much of what is electronic

I could conjure up more… These are just some “known unknowns”. A Black Swan is by definition an “unknown unknown”!

That one about a protracted blackout is the one that worries me the most. Three weeks without electricity and we’re in trouble. Three months without electricity and we’re in a shit-hit-the-fan, possibly even TEOTWAKI (The End of the World As We Know It) situation. I urge my readers to think about this stuff. The time to prepare for a Black Swan walking up your driveway isn’t after it’s already at your front door. It’s not as if we haven’t been forewarned and as if we don’t see how vulnerable our country and society is.

No Silver Bullets, No Easy Answers

America, Emergency Preparedness, Government, Headlines, Reason, Society & Culture, Values

Since the election, through the Holidays, now well into the New Year, I’ve been thinking about the answer to the question, “What now?”.

Sorting through the “news” each day, I can’t help but see more and more confusion over what is true, what is falsehood, what is sensationalism, what is understatement. The one word to describe our state of affairs is: CHAOS.

I don’t see any cohesive strategy, any clear direction, any comprehensible plan to either ‘make our country great again’ or ‘take it back’ or ‘drain the swamp’ or ‘root out corruption’. I see little to no consequences for malfeasance, for lying, for theft, for waste, for self-abusive destruction of what has since its inception been the greatest country in the world.

‘Common sense’ is no longer common.

Demagoguery,, self-delusion, obsequiousness and self-centeredness are common.

Psychologists call it ‘other-directed’. Fewer and fewer people think critically much less skeptically. Individualism has given way to herd instinct. Emotions rule – no one spends the time to think rationally.

What was fringe is now mainstream. Pushbacks against what would in other time be considered lunacy are met with overwhelming, crushing condemnation. It’s as if the one reasonable person standing in the middle of a valley is being charged by thousands of buffalo. Just read the responses on Twitter or any other social medium to a ‘traditional’ statement or viewpoint.

I’ve long thought that the way to change the course of our national ship is with good leadership, with the development of new Hollywood heroes who successfully fight and win against the encroaching and increasingly pervasive evil infecting our society, with ‘reality’ hitting Gen X and Gen Z such that they awaken from their folly.

It ain’t happening! The megaphone afforded by the Internet puts power in the hands of the deleterious, the destructive, the Evil. On one hand it improves lives. On the other hand, it destroys them.

It’s not just artificial intelligence that has supplanted real intelligence. Social media and the ubiquitous handheld phone/tablet/computer combined is now an addiction.

Pew Research tells us:

  • 46% of teens say they use the internet “almost constantly”
  • 48% of teens say they go online several times a day
  • 48% of teenage girls say they’re online “almost constantly”
  • 43% of teenage boys say they’re online “almost constantly”

Look around you. It’s not just teenagers. So long as our society continues to descend into an artificial reality, fundamental human priorities will be back-burnered, what’s important neglected, what’s moral diminished, what’s good scoffed at.

No hero, no charismatic leader, no game of whack-a-mole is going to turn this around. Artificial reality has become Real Reality!

Thus I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that it will take some kind of cataclysmic event to wake up society and get people serious again. A Black Swan. Something that completely shatters what I will call Artificial Delusion and return us to basics.

It’s long past time to prepare for that Black Swan event.

An Exceptional Article Worth Reading

America, Government, Headlines, Society & Culture

As I have often said, there are many who say it like I wish I could have said it. The following article, found on American Thinker January 11, 2023, is an example. J.B. Shurk expertly lays out the case for “we the people” pushing back on government. I strongly urge you to read the full article which can be found here. Some excerpts:

“Ordinary people have extraordinary power. Don’t believe me? Watch what happens if tens of millions ever decide to close their bank accounts all at once. Or critical sectors of the workforce decide to stay home for weeks. Or a sizable percentage of the population refuses to obey arbitrary and capricious government orders. When citizens become fed up enough to take matters into their own hands, those with government-bestowed titles learn quickly how little power those vaunted titles actually have.”

“Nothing is so certain as death and taxes,” the old proverb goes, but it might just as accurately be said of almost all governments throughout history that those in charge will extract from those under their thumb either death or taxes — and often both. Force is the only language most governments know, although that force is often disguised as being performed for the people’s “own good.” As it turns out, force is generally sufficient for corralling humans into their government-controlled pens, especially if there are carrots or other treats inside to keep them content, if not particularly happy. When those pens have nothing attractive to offer and become overrun with filth, however, then those doing the corralling must resort to more and more force in order to make their captives obey.”

“It is not the American way, however, for citizens to live higgledy-piggledy under the ambiguous reign of one government dictate to the next. It is not American for an unelected bureaucracy to create rules out of thin air and enforce them upon the people through agency prerogative and regulation. It is not American for presidents to legislate through executive order.”

“It is not American for congresses to conduct show trials against American citizens or to demand that tech companies censor points of view. It is not American for courts to scribble over the Constitution whenever expedient. It is not American for the Department of (in)Justice to persecute citizens for their political beliefs or for the FBI to act as a lethal enforcer against the regime’s political enemies.”

“It is not American for there to be so many criminal statutes that no American could possibly know them all, let alone confidently act without fear of sanction. It is not American for there to be so many government agencies and divisions that no American could capably draw a diagram listing their roles and functions.”

It is not American for the government to champion its secular religion over the moral tenets of Americans’ spiritual faiths. It is not American for the government to ignore the will of its citizens and subvert immigration law by leaving its borders unprotected and wide open. It is not American for an amorphous Intelligence Community to spy on American citizens with neither warrant nor probable cause. It is not American for the news media to be so co-opted by the State that they almost universally support the government’s talking points — no matter how ludicrous and unsupported — while taking aim at dissenting citizens’ debate.

It is not normal for a “government of the people” to regularly denigrate its citizens as racists, extremists, deplorables, terrorists, misogynists, bigots, and rubes. It is not normal for any government claiming to be “for the people” to declare half the nation “enemies of the State.”

“These are the acts of a government committed to using intimidation, violence, and other forms of coercion in order to get its way.”

On The House Speaker Circus

America, Government, Headlines, Politics

I watched Hannity last night excoriate Lauren Boebert, referring to the sixth failed Kevin McCarthy vote, endlessly repeating “It’s 200 to 20”! No Sean. It’s 0 for 6! The issue isn’t whether there are more votes for McCarthy than against him. The issue is binary: either he has sufficient votes or he doesn’t. If he doesn’t, an alternative is needed.

I come down on the side of the rebels in this clash. If the Republican Party doesn’t change its leadership, strategy and tactics, it will continue to fail to take back the country, drain the swamp and prevail against the Leftist onslaught.

One of the phrases I keep hearing about Kevin McCarthy is: “He’s done the work. He’s raised the money. He’s recruited good candidates.”

THAT’S THE PROBLEM! THE REPUBLICANS RAISE MONEY AND RECRUIT CANDIDATES. THE DEMOCRATS ARE FIGHTING A WAR, COLLECTIVELY, FOR THEIR PRINCIPLES, WRONG AS THEY MAY BE! There’s a huge difference in approach to governing!

As I’ve noted previously, our Speaker doesn’t have to be, nor should he or she be, another Nancy Pelosi. Couldn’t happen anyway – Republicans wouldn’t follow a demagogue or someone as corrupt as she was/is.

Our Speaker must do more, however, than eat rubber chicken, raise money and recruit candidates who will kowtow to “Leadership’s” diktats. Our Speaker needs to FIGHT, INSPIRE, MOTIVATE, LEAD, not just espouse, but TEACH and PROMOTE conservative principles (as Reagan did!). He or she needs to do more than just talk. The GOP Speaker needs to rally the Silent Majority who overwhelmingly support the conservative agenda and PUSH that agenda. And at the moment, while Biden controls the Senate and Executive Office, the Speaker needs to BLOCK, TACKLE and CLIP the Democrat agenda at every opportunity.

Kevin McCarthy lacks the most important of the necessary leadership qualities: the ability to inspire and motivate! He is, in fact, an archetype of the Old Guard (a.k.a. Swamp)!

I could be wrong on this, but isn’t is just possible that the Rebel 20 opposition to McCarthy is based on a sincere desire to change the way the GOP does business in Washington? Could it be that while they may not have a specific “hero/heroine” in mind as an alternative, that first they have to win the argument that electing McCarthy won’t help us win but set us back further? Could there be personal antipathies and hidden agendas, yes, but fundamentally, is what the Rebel 20 are saying, “This is our chance to change how the GOP will fight Leftism in the Future, and it begins on this hill.”?

Some pretty terrible labels are being attached to the Rebel 20: “terrorists”, “obstructionists”, narcissists, etc.

I, on the other hand, think they’re behaving the way they are because they fundamentally recognize the following:

Republicans are ill-equipped to take back the country, drain the swamp and fight the Left. If we don’t change, we’ll continue to atrophy and die.

The Left, lemmings and brain-addled followers that they are, coalesce whenever the music comes up and they “feel” righteous in their pursuit of the “Can’t we all get along” utopia they dream about. Like proper sheep, they follow the demagogue leaders who have written and pronounced the words of the hymns. No original thought. No concern for what’s best for America. Concern only for power and money, and I might add, celebrity.

Republicans, on the other hand, are the inheritors and keepers of the rugged individualism that built this country. They are skeptical, thinking, opinionated but generally more altruistic and freedom-loving, self-reliant, subscribe to the notion that “government isn’t the solution, it’s the problem”, and are unwilling-to-be-dominated and refuse to be told what to think or do.

So, with those solid principles in their ideology, of course they’re opposed to Kevin McCarthy’s business-as-usual approach to leadership!

Let it play out.

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