According To Hoyt

I’ve been trawling the wilds of X again. In my defense it’s the only way to find out what is actually going on in the rest of the world that the press wishes to hide.

Anyway, I fell into a talk about the reflecting pool where the title was Decay is a Choice. Like this: apparently, as far as I understand (I don’t have the history on hand just now) the story goes like this: the Obama administration spent something like 300 million to have the reflecting pool be “ecologically minded.” Meaning it was either filling from a river or from grey water (I don’t remember which) and it was lined in a “natural” way or some crap. (I honestly can’t remember, though the post I read two weeks ago described what was done in oh so green sounding words, and all sorts of eco-techno nonsense (most eco-techno is nonsense because they don’t understand engineering and don’t know reality from a hole in the ground. They’re frankly iffy on reality beyond wordage.)

On the surface, this was done for ecological and green reasons, and of course all the usual suspects applauded, but what actually happened was that within two weeks — predictably — the reflecting pool was basically open sewage with algae and goose poop. AND THEY LET IT STAY LIKE THAT.

Now you can argue that this was because they couldn’t admit failure. Sure, you could. And it probably was part of it. Heaven knows the Little Man Who Wasn’t There (Obama) was absolutely loathe to admit he might fail/have failed at anything. Or done anything wrong.

But given his not-so-hidden hate-on for our country, you know and I know he got a secret (?) frisson from the fact that the reflecting pool, supposed to reflect a monument to America’s past, was in fact open sewage. In his tiny (not a reflection of intelligence but of pettiness) mind, this reflected the true state of our country and all that jazz. In fact, at the same time they were tearing down monuments to our past and covering others in graffiti.

A post on ex, the one entitled “Decay is a Choice” was in fact hypothesizing that the left does this stuff on purpose.

I know it sounds far-fetched, but I’m sure he’s right. It’s a combination of four things:

1- They’re Marxist who think that wealth is a finite pie and somehow bringing America down will automagically bring everyone else up. (This is the opposite of reality. There should be a term for that. Not just false, but the actual opposite of reality. But Marxism is a reductionist and stupid lens to view things through.)

2- They are straight up oikophobes, imagining that places abroad, particularly those with people who tan are full of natural communists. America isn’t so America must be eeeevil. And therefore they hate us and want us to suffer.

3- They genuinely straight up love decay, filth and nastiness. You see, they are upper class keyboard muffins (thank you shesellsseashells for the lovely term) who have never experienced nastiness. To them this is what “authentic” means as opposed to their lives which they experience as plastic and too nice. For some it might be a cover for guilt for their unearned riches. For others it’s simply a kink. Nostalgie de la boue.

4- They are despicable sadists who get off on making everyone suffer. This goes with their illusion of being “elite” and wanting the “peasants” to be humiliated.

At this point you guys are looking at me like I’m nuts, but really cast your mind on the administration of the autopen and tell me if those points don’t unify everything they did, from the open border bringing in the dregs of the third world (not sending their best is the best case scenario. Most places were sending their utter worst), to letting gangs run rampant, to defunding the police, to indoctrinating kiddies on the stupid idea that slavery was the point of the country, to taking our money and giving it to people who hate our country, to not letting us have the energy we need as an industrial society, to– Everything they did really.

From the outside, it looked like America was decaying, but the decay was not organic. Decay was a choice and the choice wasn’t ours, but imposed from above.

Decay is a choice.

And it only goes on until the people decide enough is enough. Let me put it this way, as the um…. spicy stuff going on the other side of the pond shows? Decay only goes on until the governed decide they’ve had enough.

And we’ve had just about enough. We’re not getting spicy because FOR NOW our government is combating the decay.

However, California should take notice of what’s going on the other side of the pond. Because not only is decay a choice, IT IS NEVER THE CHOICE OF NORMAL HUMAN BEINGS. And it is never the choice for people who live in it. People prefer living in clean surroundings and being safe. Most normal people want to work, have a home, have a stable relationship and raise fat babies.

Anything else is being imposed upon them by a plague of academics who, for the reasons listed above (and probably others) decided that the West and PARTICULARLY America deserved decay and decline. And since they’d actually never understood decay and decline, they decided to impose it from above. Which means it’s not real. It’s Kay-fab decay and decline. Which–

People don’t like. The encropofication of reality is not the preference of normal, healthy human beings. Of which, thank the good Lord, the US still has plenty, whatever the news tell you. (I didn’t even list above the decay of our education, which is very much a choice. There’s nothing wrong with the minds of the young. Our education establishment has worked really hard at preventing them from learning, is all.)

It is important for everyone — yes, particularly you, doomer 23900 in your dungeon — to realize that encropofication (From cropolite) is not real. It’s a choice. It’s a mod on reality. There is no reason for it to exist. Just like there was never any real reason to stop building nuclear plants; there was never any real reason for not producing oil in the US; there was never any reason to let mentally ill and drug addicts turn our cities into cesspools; there was never any reason to destroy and spit on our past.

It is the choice of a cultural minority, which has installed itself in the seats of power and for whom this is an aesthetic and possibly sexual choice.

It is NOT OURS. And there’s no reason to allow the small group of shit-aesthetes any power.

It’s time to push their noses in. Before the necessity comes to us that came to people across the pond. Because that necessity comes with a lot of horrible choices and also inevitable pain I don’t wish on our land.

So go forth. Build under, build over, build around. Make things beautiful, shining, prosperous. There’s nothiing wrong with that, and no reason to feel ashamed of preferring it.

And annoy a Marxist today. Yes, I now it’s easy. But also every time a Marxist cries an angel gets its wings. And I don’t care if you don’t believe in angels, just do it anyway.

Go be clean and happy. And if you still can, raise fat babies. If you can’t, help someone else raise fat babies.

There’s a lot of angels needing wings.

I was there. I remember. All through the early oughts, we, the insufferably, terminally plugged in wondered when this amazing new means of communication, this thing that allowed all of us to become “journalists” would pay off in elections, in public opinion, in everything.

In 2016 and definitely in the reaction to 2020 and the ridiculous gaslighting and prosecution not just of Trump but of anyone who said what we all saw happen “the results of 2020 were impossible and, oh, btw, the king is so senile he talks to invisible people and no longer knows who or what he is” we saw the first fruits.

The left brought everything they had to bear. EVERYTHING. Starting in 2016 they were a locked-in-step chorus, not just the news, but every “artist” (pardon me if I scoff) from writers to producers to everyone, all spoke with the same voice trying to convince us they had already won, resistance was futile and we were just the remnants of the lost world where truth mattered.

Ten years earlier it would have worked. Arguably it worked, in crowning Obama and whoever was really ruling for him.

In 2016 it sputtered and died. If you think it wasn’t a big surprise, go look at the news from that election, as the results came in (Always advisable if you’re down anyway.) They threw everything they could at it, in 2020. Everything. From the — What did Joe call it. I can’t remember the exact wording anymore. Besides it’s early, and I haven’t had coffee (I might not finish this before ten, but let the record show it’s six am. Gah. It’s a day like that) — the most comprehensive and inclusive fraud machine ever deployed in American politics (and hooo, boy, that’s a lot) and they managed it. Nothing short of a revolution. Then they started dismantling everything.

And yet…. and yet we’re still here, and 2024 didn’t go the way they were so sure they’d set it up to go.

Also the fraud has become — as it was for those of us who watched it all the time — obvious, glaring, in your face. (Hi, California!)

And now, now suddenly, it seems the whole world is wakening and seeing and demanding sanity, not the crazy stuff that our self-proclaimed betters force down our throats every day and claim is for our own good while making the world into hell.

What changed? Well, some of it really was just more people reading their news online, till mainstream news are the domain of the very young, the very old and the very busy and naive.

But more importantly, I realized last night, we keyboard journalists in our pajamas (to coin a phrase. Eh.) stopped simply reacting to and amplifying or picking and choosing among the main stream.

In my early blogging days almost all my blogs (and my posts at instapundit) were inspired or took from main stream news sources.

There’s still a bit of that, of course, but Epoch Times and other smaller players are a breath of fresh air. And there’s genuine individual reporting from people who are there, or involved with the thing, or know about the thing. We’ve even done some (Thank you to Larry Good for his posts on the water that Data Centers actually use, not the scary weirdness we’re being propagandized with. And thank you to other guests over the years who brought their expertise to my blog.)

However, the turbo charge is so new most of us haven’t processed the change: Twitter/x not being just an echo of the narrative and amplifier of main stream news but a genuinely free speech platform (with hickups, of course, but getting better.)

Without twitter, we wouldn’t know that Ireland is actually reacting to the outrage perpetrated on it. Or that England is taking things passively. Or that we, who aren’t on the left in the US, exist and are still fighting. Without twitter, we would be like most of Europe, where our MSM seems almost fair and balanced by comparison tot he leftist bilge inflicted on them.

And — hear me out — this is just the start. There is also, as someone has noted, a great change in the air, a great change in Latin America (of all places) and a great change in the world in general which honestly can be traced to USAID stopping financing every leftist cause around the world.

Turns out that the great and invincible left that kept pushing for world communism and fighting America as it was founded and making us feel like we couldn’t win was actually a vast paper tiger founded by our very own tax money.

We were being robbed to fund our enemies, while the media at home lied and told us to give it all up.

This, where we stand now, is just the start. The villains have started being unamasked. Some of their funding was removed. But we are only at the very beginning of a great big change.

When I was little and a young woman all the leftists said “Come the revolution.” because of course, part of their heretical beliefs is that in the end there is a communist revolution everywhere that puts them in power.

Turns out they couldn’t be more wrong. Yes, there is a revolution coming. There is a revolution, in fact, under way. But it is against the false creed the left has blared in our ears while keeping us gagged so we couldn’t protest.

This is just the beginning.

In the end, we win, they lose.

A lot of people have said we’re approaching the 250th anniversary in a very muted way. And they’re not wrong.

Though to an extent it’s not fair to compare it to the centennial, because it’s a half-centennial, it’s still a noteworthy occasion for the Republic and we definitely should celebrate it. And I won’t lie and say that it wasn’t part of the reason I voted for Trump — way down the list of reasons, guys — because I didn’t want the 250th to be “celebrated” by accusing us of racism, sexism, homophobia and pillorying the founding fathers in effigy.

But I’d also be lying if I said that I’m not somewhat disappointed that I haven’t see more official celebration noise from Washington DC. I suspect it’s because, let’s face it, the president is busier fixing more important things, and also that when the left fights you to the ground on things like cleaning goose shit and algae from the reflecting pool and adding a ballroom to the White House, they’re going to fight you for every play, every firework display, every flag waving.

Heck, we know they are since they already went after the performers for the concert and basically mau-maued them into dropping out. Something those performers are going to find/are finding is a very bad idea, because the left neither buys nor supports art. But they are noisy and artists are sensitive. (Unless they’re on the right. Skin like rhinoceros we had to grow, people. And even so some of us get discouraged at times. Those of you on whose shoulders I’ve cried (not very often) KNOW this.) And the left is willing to do this to SPOIL A CELEBRATION OF AMERICA. Because to them this is political. Loving America is political. Think on that. “I love my country” is political.

It is political because they imagine themselves as something other than belonging to a nation, as sort of like gods, floating around the petty sphere of national politics. Which they’re not. Instead they’re weaponized fools destroying that which gives them the ability to speak freely. Never mind…

People have said even at the private level, there’s less celebrating and decorating. They think this is because the economy is bad. I don’t THINK so.

Look, first of all, as hard as things are just now, I don’t think the economy is bad as such. Note this is an opinion, because our numbers are and have been completely monkeyed with. But my opinion comes from things like: I don’t feel like crying at the grocery store checkout anymore. I find a lot less dairy and meat on sale, which is a bummer, since we more or less live from that. OTOH the prices are lower, and obviously people are able to afford it more, since less or it goes into sale. Other stuff. Like our friends are complaining less of catastrophic need for money. Oh, it still happens, but far less. Like…. have you noticed I’ve run a lot fewer give send go requests for emergency help from my circle on instapundit?

Now am I saying it’s all bread and skittles? Well, no. Because you see things got very very bad. By election 24 we were seriously considering some retrenching that would materially hurt our lives. Because we couldn’t figure out where to find the money. BUT–

The feeling I get now, at least from my circles, is that EVERYONE is hustling as hard as they can. Like everyone has another job, on top of their job, another hobby-that-pays, another something. Everyone is working super-hard.

This is something that started under the autopen administration, because everyone was working more than one job JUST to keep their heads above water. (I guess I’m working two. Here and fiction. Oh, and instapundit. I guess …. well, the Little Pickle while on a trip with me, watching me keep up with things, pointed out I SHOULD sleep sometime. At least occasionally.) But now we’re still doing it, and sometimes doing it harder because we’re trying to recover. The looming mid-terms and the next presidential election are all too close. We remember how close we came to crashing. And we’re afraid of getting back there with no preparation. So we’re preparing. By working like crazy people.

We haven’t seen our local friends in forever, because they’ve been working like mad people. And so have we, except when I get sick (yes, yes, I should sleep sometime. Look, I hear you. Also if you need the info, I’m on a maintenance antibiotic which seems to be working and have a CT scan and a scope scheduled for July 15th. Yes, I have to wait that long because then I can have it done by a specialist and it’s one step less. I won’t lie and say it’s not nervous making. Now shut up.) Oh. Now I think about it, Dan has three jobs too, except one of them is strictly seasonal. But still. Then he wonders why he doesn’t have time for music and writing. Okay. Something will have to be done.

So, even I, who live and breathe the fourth — the High Holy Usaian Holidays! — have not done much yet, and we’re less than a month off.

In other words, I think every one of us, who are patriots and want to celebrate, starting at the White House and on down, are so d*mn busy we haven’t had time for the frivolous but fun celebration of our beloved Republic.

Another bit is that we’re all contrarian as cats. Remember when the covidiocy tried to forbid celebrating the fourth and even LA was a sea to shining sea of fireworks? Well, we feel less of a need to spite the left because they’re not in fact in power right now. HOWEVER–

Look, it still spites them. And those of you younger than I who will be alive if very old at the tri-centennial will want to tell your kids your remember the 250th and what you did to celebrate it.

So, let’s plot and plan. What can you do to celebrate our great nation’s 250th anniversary? What do you think will make the left squirm the worst?

Me? I’m going to try to write some tales. Now, I don’t know how many or when, but I’d like to start in about a week. Tales of the USAians, maybe. Or maybe something else. It’s not much, but it’s what I can do.

What can you do? Make a joyful noise. We’ve survived — warts, stumbles and all — for 250 years. Yes, the work to restore will be immense, but for now let’s celebrate the simple survival. Sit down. take a load off and make a joyful noise.

The work will wait. For now it’s time to celebrate.

Recently there have been a lot of days I glance and the headlines, then shut the browser and dive into writing. Because honestly even some of the things happening here, I AT BEST don’t understand and hope sincerely there is something going on behind the scenes to make it more hopeful. Also, I don’t want to ponder questions such as “Will California ever be a representative state again, even slightly influenced by the will of its inhabitants?” Not that I particularly care about California, but I know what happened to my beloved Colorado. And then there’s abroad. Don’t go abroad. They do things stupidly there. From the latest nonsense of our neighbors to the North to Spain killing trouble teens and deeding their kids future to the Muslim invaders whose ass their ancestors’ kicked all the way to Africa, to… Well, we’ll just say under no circumstances should I have done a deep dive into the Henry Nowak’s case. More is still coming out and I stumbled on a piece this morning about how the lesson the British establishment took from this was “We need to fight disinformation.” By which they, like the Autopen Administration mean “We must stop people telling the truth in a way other people hear it.” And then I get very angry and have trouble writing fiction or blog posts or much of anything.

I am slowly coming to the conclusion that Heinlein was right during WWII to only read the papers two weeks late, when it was pointless to get angry about old news.

However of the many things that enrage me — why is your blood pressure so high? asks my doctor. We must put you on meds. No, they must not. I must curate what I read, is all — right up there, at the top, under the tab marked “I’m getting sick because I can’t kick the *ss of people who righteously need it” are a bunch of naturalized Americans talking about what a terrible place America is and how ashamed they are of our history. PARTICULARLY some *sshole in the news talking about how there was nothing worth celebrating for the 250th anniversary.

This is when I start stomping around the house screaming “America, love it or leave it.” Or “Terrible compared to what? (with a choice of profane adjectives afterwards)” Or “If you hate us why did you come here?” Most of all though, I basically want to grab them by the shoulders and shake them till all their teeth fall out. And then I can help them pack, hold a whip around for their return ticket to whatever sh*thole they came from, and they can go back to the place they really love. Or, alternately, we can save money and time, put them in a large packing box and mark it “return to sender. Content not up to standard.” I promise we’ll put holes on top of the box. We’re not monsters.

If you’re looking at that and raising your eyebrows, let me make things clear: No, I’m not saying we can’t criticize our nation or our government. Look, I’m still me. I looked, just this morning (Okay, I was trying to figure out where the heck I put the kleenex store. I swear our basement is arranged according to a schizophrenic hoarder’s dream) and there was no pod in the basement. If I go an entire year without criticizing the government, even when they’re the guys I vote for — which honestly, usually means I wanted to vote AGAINST the other guys — I strongly advise to come rescue me, because it’s a sign I’ve been kidnapped and am under duress.

But criticizing our government or particularly aspects of our nation, even the parts we can’t change, like climate or fauna — y’all, Texas is lovely, but could it be SLIGHTLY less lizardy? Shudder. — is not the same as criticizing the nation. And it’s definitely not the same as hating the nation, saying there’s nothing to celebrate, or pretending that our history is particularly terrible or scandalous compared to the rest of the world.

Those of you, if we have any reading this, who are recent graduates from our factories of mass industrial “education” let me assure you that if you think that America is “The worst” you’ve been the victims of a scam that maleducated you and gave you a skewed view of the world.

Briefly, every nation in the world is composed of humans. Humans — though this was said originally of Americans in another form — can be counted on to sometimes do the right thing, after they’ve tried everything else. This is particularly true when it comes to humans in the thrall of a newfangled idea that all the experts say is true. So, if you flinch at stuff like slavery, or eugenics, or even witch trials, rest assured that all these ideas were, at the time, considered “actually compassionate” and endorsed by all the best experts of the time. Which is also a caution towards assuming your opinions and the way we live now are the right and correct ones. Because I guarantee that not very far in the future, people will be looking at the 21st century and saying “Ew, they were the worst.” (And I could give you guesses at the things they’ll say, some of which will shock the living daylights out of you. Though I bet they’ll come up with new fads that make me want to shake them to.)

It is the temptation of the young and poorly educated to think that what we “know” now was always known and that the things our ancestors did that horrify us they did KNOWING they were wrong and from evil motives, instead of their being merely human, doing the best they could in their times.

In that sense, the US does more self-examining and chest-beating than any nation ever, except for ancient Israel. Also, because your teachers were themselves maleducated and dreaded above anything seeming TOO patriotic (quelle horreur) they didn’t tell you that for all the bone headed stupidity this nation has achieved (Hey, we elected Woodrow Wilson and FDR and let them run around doing stupid sh&t to their heart’s content, blatantly against he constitution, okay?) we’re still a shining line among the nations of the world.

Take slavery, for instance: it’s still a defacto occurrence in most nations in the world, particularly Africa and China (ooh, boy, China) not to mention every single Muslim country. It might fly under other names, but it’s still there. Oh, here too. You’ll be happy to know the stunning brave people attacking ICE are fighting for the perpetuation of slavery. What? Oh, yes, WHY DID YOU THINK THEY WANTED TO BRING IN PEOPLE IN BATCH LOTS WHO HAD NO DEFENSE AND NO CONTACTS HERE? Sure, there’s also an army of them brought in to plunder the social net programs (which honestly should not exist, not here of all places) but a lot of them were brought in simply to work for no or very low wages and to be in positions they couldn’t complain. Do you think the vast numbers of kids apprehended in California pot farms were there on a field trip? And don’t get us started on the unaccompanied minors (a lot of them kidnapped from their families) released to the first person who claimed them who subsequently disappeared. Pretend they’re all JUST being exploited in sweatshops. No, really, by far the preferable fate, and you’ll sleep better tonight.

But the point is this is not a “American guilt.” Yes, absolutely it is something we should be working on, which is why good border control and a pruning back of H1B visas to about 1% of current would be a really good idea. No bringing in of the vulnerable to exploit and no displacement of American workers by what amounts to slave labor is a good idea, but more importantly, it removes the incentives to enslave people one way or another. Because wanting to enslave people is a defect of the human heart. Yes, yours too, gentle reader. (Though some of us consider telling people what to do a chore and are therefore slightly immune to THAT one issue.)

On every score just about, America is better off than most of the nations of the world. Yes, even Europe, whose patina of history and beauty has been cracking in truly ugly ways recently.

Which is why so many people, including yours truly, was always attracted to the US and came here to live and to become as American as possible. (98% or so. There’s some that will never conform, but that’s for anyone raised abroad, even Americans.)

Yes, becoming American after coming here was work. Yes, some of it pretty much amounted to chasing myself around my own brain rooting out “everybody knows” most of them things I learned with mother’s milk and before I could examine what I was being taught. I’ve described it as being akin to self-brainwashing. Rooting out as much of my previous culture as I could find and identify and correcting it.

Now a lot of it — maybe 25% — wasn’t so much rooting out wrong things for right ones, as rooting out “habits of how we do things” for new ones, that fit better with the US. It wasn’t a moral thing, just a fitting in thing.

So, why do it? Why undertake that painful process if there was no moral issue involved? Well, because there was a moral issue. Having undertaken to come and live here, I owed it to my hosts (and later my co-citizens) to respect their habits, traditions and beliefs as much as humanly possible. I.e. to become as much like them as possible.

Because by coming here to form a family and have children raised as Americans, I was in fact marrying my fortune (in the sense of fate) and future to America’s, and uniting my progeny to hers. It is nothing else than a marriage. And as in a marriage, you adapt as best you can to your spouse’s habits and way of doing things (and he/she to yours) so I was duty bound to adapt to America. Only since I am one person, and relatively unimportant, in all but matters of morals, I am the one who should adapt, because standing by yourself and telling the world to move is cute, but very ineffective, and a nation of at least 300 million is the world, compared to me.

And, this is very important: if you’re going to marry your fortunes and your fate and your descendants to a place WHY WOULD YOU DO IT IF YOU DON’T BELIEVE IT’S THE BEST PLACE ON EARTH? (Warts and all?)

If you are moving to a place you think it’s terrible, particularly if that place is a foreign country, WHY MOVE? Why not stay where you are?

Now, there are times and movements of utter necessity. Sometimes people have to abandon a place they love and to which their ancestors gave blood and money, for the sake of preserving their lives (salutes Dave Freer across the ocean) but even then…. EVEN IN THOSE CASES why would you move to a place you consider worse? Why not escape to the best place you can find, one you’re prepared to adapt to and love with all your heart and all your mind and all your will power?

And yes, some people come here for money, same as many people marry for material considerations. There’s nothing dishonorable in a marriage of convenience. That was most marriages throughout history. However, as a matter of morals and attitude, once you decide on the marriage of convenience you’re still honor bound to cleave to your spouse and defend them right or wrong to the best of your ability (even if slowly and carefully trying to influence their less than admirable qualities.) BECAUSE you wed your future to them. Your descendants are part of them. If you find you can’t love them, it behooves you to leave.

Of course, what we’re facing is the international would-be elites, who view themselves as supra-national. They think that they can move anywhere, and they don’t need to fit in because they’re above us, the common folk.

In fact, what they have done, in their ignorance and vaunting ambition is ignore that culture always exists and there’s no such thing as a human who is above culture. What they’ve fallen for the is “international” illusion that was part of the supposed international socialism, aka communism. It was never true. At the root it was always Russian nationalism projected on the whole world.

And what they have done by trying to mold themselves that way is turned themselves into a culture of international parasites. They remind me of the line in Independence Day “They’re like locusts….”

There is only one remedy for those people. If you hate this country so much that you can’t celebrate 250 years of survival against all odds?

My offer to help you pack stands. And I’m sure all Americans of good will — and ooh, do we have a will! — will contribute to your return ticket.

Or, you know, postage. And we promise to punch air-holes on top of the box.

If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. By clicking through and buying (anything book-related, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion. Remember though all of these submissions are from people willing to be associated with this blog. So if you’re trying to buy from people who don’t hate you, this is a good place to start.– SAH

FROM DALE COZORT: The Best of Space Bats & Butterflies

Space Bats & Butterflies Book Four is part of a collection of books that bring together alternate history or time-travel stories, book excerpts, essays and world-building exercises from the ninety-plus issues of a long-running Alternate History zine.

• Japan Wins at Midway.
• Earlier B17 Trigger a Bomber Race
• France Fights on From North Africa
• Barbary Pirates Raid New England
• Alternate Biography
  • A Con Artist & His “People’s Car” Changes the World
  • Lenin Lives on to Shape the Soviet Union
  • A German Master Army Builder Transforms Nationalist Chine into a Powerhouse

Fiction stories and excerpts:

• In 1937, High Tech Descendants of Japanese pirates invade California From an Alternate Reality.
• A British Wizard tries to Save the US Pacific at Pearl Harbor
• The Apollo 13 Missions Succeeds & the US Triggers a Deadly Trap Lurking on the Moon.
• In a Strange Variation on Alternate History, Dinosaurs and Mammoth Fight a Desperate War.

FROM JAY MAYNARD: Lone Star Crystal (The Crystal Therapy Chronicles Book 3)

Magic heals. But can it survive the light?

Crystal therapy has transformed lives in rural Missouri and distant Wales. Now it is coming to Houston, rising at the heart of the Texas Medical Center.

CJ Hollister knows how to build things that last. He trusts foundations, schedules, and hard reality — not magic. But as the Texas Crystal Therapy Institute takes shape, he finds himself drawn toward something more permanent than anything he has ever built.

His daughter Rachel is a bioethicist trained to question power and defend autonomy. From the outside, crystal therapy raises troubling questions: permanent suits, new names, and a commitment that can never be undone. When her father chooses to step inside, professional skepticism becomes something far more personal.

The system works. The people inside it choose to be there. No one is forced to stay. But Rachel must decide whether consent is enough when the choice changes everything.

As the institute nears completion, father and daughter must face the same question from opposite sides:

What does it mean to choose a life you can never leave?

Lone Star Crystal is the third novel in The Crystal Therapy Chronicles, a science fiction series about healing, identity, radical choice, and the consequences of changing the world.

FROM RACONTEUR PRESS, WITH A STORY BY J. KENTON PIERCE: The Muse Within Us: An Anthology of Dark Fantasy and Horror (Raconteur Press Anthologies Book 77)

What happens when inspiration stops feeling entirely human?

Paintings that command armies. Songs that shatter crowds. Ancient poems that speak directly into an immortal ear. A revolver forged from the ruins of Earth, passed from hand to hand across generations, delivering justice with a chorus of the dead riding in its steel.

The Muse Within Us is an anthology of dark fantasy, horror, military science fiction, and literary speculation. These eleven stories all ask one question: does inspiration come from within, or are we tuning into signals already moving through the world?
Editor Wally Waltner has gathered writers from across the speculative spectrum. Within these pages: a sorcerer-seamstress transformed into a dragon by her masterpiece; a court prince whose animation magic revives a forgotten civilization; a musician haunted by crowd-controlling spirits called the whispers, carrying two hundred dead from one show; a Norse scholar who realizes he has been speaking ancient kennings directly into an immortal ear; and a war painter ordered by a god of war to paint ever bigger victories until he refuses and pays the price.Also here: a baker empowered by a minor demon of boiling oil trapped in petrified wood; a mason’s boy whose hands transform into the arches of a destined cathedral; a blues musician whose song outlives him through new vessels; a gunsmith on a dead Earth forging a revolver that carries a chorus of voices across centuries; and a young woman who discovers that flowers blooming where bodies fell grant strange artistic power at a terrible cost.

Some of these muses are generous. Several are predatory. All of them change the people they pass through.

The Muse Within Us because what moves through you may have its own agenda.

FROM RACONTEUR PRESSES, WITH STORIES BY KARL GALLAGHER AND ROSS HATHAWAY: For Want of a Rivet (Raconteur Press Anthologies)

Small decisions. World-altering consequences.

That’s the premise behind For Want of a Rivet, an anthology of eleven alternate history military stories that asks one deceptively simple question: what if a single invention, tactical choice, or quiet act of courage had gone differently?The stories span a century of conflict and a dozen theaters of war. A Royal Navy pilot spots the German fleet and changes the shape of World War One. Air privateers carrying Letters of Marque dogfight over the Western Front while a brash young balloon-buster rewrites the record books. A Japanese naval officer quietly suppresses a breakthrough antenna technology that will shape the Pacific war. German engineers develop a submarine that makes the Atlantic a killing ground. British scientists discover how to bend the enemy’s own guidance beams back against them, and a stage magician helps make the resulting deception invisible. An all-Black paratrooper battalion that was supposed to be fighting wildfires instead drops into the Battle of the Bulge. A French Foreign Legion scout finds a Roman tunnel under the most heavily defended line in Italy. A Polish tank crew fights to hold the cork in the bottle as Operation Unthinkable opens. A SOE agent moves through occupied France on a prosthetic leg — and the rivet that keeps it silent may decide the war. Britain and Germany forge an uneasy alliance against Soviet France. Japan defends the Imperial Palace to the last man.

These are stories about the human cost of invention, the weight of small advantages, and the soldiers, spies, and engineers who never made the official record.

Eleven contributors. One question. For want of a rivet, the war was lost — or won.

Stories include: ”Wings over Jutland” (William Meinert) · “Ace of Aces” (Karl K. Gallagher) · “Radio Waves” (Joe Salem) · “The Danzig Ghosts” (Michael Patrick Coady) · “The War They Could Not Print” (Ross Hathaway) · “Little Groups of Paratroopers” (Bart Kemper) · “Callis Caecus” (Nick Aalderink) · “Operation Unthinkable” (Samuel A. Mayo) · “Cuthbert’s Silence” (D. S. Ligon) · “Axis of Alliance” (G. Scott Huggins) · “The Last Kamikaze” (Robert Miller)

FROM J. MANFRED WEICHSEL: Savage Headhunters

Based on a more-or-less true story of World War II

All World War II soldiers Brian and his pal Jefferson want to do is collect the skulls of their enemies. Their exploits are captured on film by Abigail, a hot female war correspondent, and they become celebrities back home.

But one day Abigail, jealous of the attention Brian and the other men are getting, has a picture of herself with a skull published in Life magazine. The American public is outraged, and when the American public gets outraged, they demand blood.

Who will live and who will die in this gory, grotesque satire from the subversive author of Action Girls: Triple Threat, Ebu Gogo, and Five Maidens on the Pentagram?

FROM LEE ECKHARDT: SECRET OF THE LOCKED CITY: A Novel of Mars and its Canals

Nineteen-year-old Cyril Michael Haskin is the youngest NASA astronaut ever to set foot on Mars. Through an incredible series of events he finds himself transported – not across space, but across dimensions – to another Mars, a completely different Mars from the one he knows, a Mars crisscrossed with canals built by a long-vanished alien civilization.
There seems to be no way to get back home – until he learns of the Locked City in the Syrtis Major region, the only Martian structure Terran colonists have been unable to enter, a place some believe to be still inhabited by the Old Martians. Cy becomes convinced that he must reach the City, but is prevented from doing so by the authorities, for he, the young man who appeared out of nowhere, finds himself under the increasing suspicion that he is actually a Martian sent to spy on the colonists.
Along with three new friends he sets out for Syrtis Major, braving the perils and terrors of this savage Mars to reach his goal, not knowing if he can even gain entry to the City, much less find a way home.
Will he be able to solve the Secret of the Locked City?

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: No Man’s Land: Volume 1 (Chronicles of Lost Elly)

Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.

On a lost colony world, mad geneticists thought they could eliminate inequality by making everyone hermaphrodite. They were wrong. Catastrophically wrong.
Now technology indistinguishable from magic courses through the veins of the inhabitants, making their barbaric civilization survivable—and Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Kayel Hayden, Viscount Webson, Envoy of the Star Empire—Skip to his friends— has just crash-landed through a time-space rift into the middle of it all.
Dodging assassins and plummeting from high windows was just the beginning. With a desperate king and an archmagician as his only allies, Scipio must outrun death itself while battling beasts, traitors, and infiltrators bent on finishing what the founders started: total destruction.
Two worlds. One chance. No time to lose.

FROM FRANK HOOD AND S. T. GAFFNEY: That Has Such Creatures

How does a man find home when nowhere and everywhere is home?
An aging rocker sets the record straight about his controversial career and unknown love.
Why does a humble mixologist in a vape shop think he has the right to claim he saved baseball?
A young man catches a leprechaun who changes his life in a most unexpected way.
A wandering wizard and his young apprentice are tasked with performing a secret and dangerous task for a powerful king.
Six years after his friend’s death, Charlie Moore finds a document that may lead to terrible consequences for all those who have connections to the late, rich, and eccentric David Larkin.
A cat is offered a chance to protect his mistress from a mysterious creature.

These are a few of the short stories in this collection that range from science fiction, fantasy, and horror to mystery. The husband and wife team of Frank Hood and S. T. Gaffney serve up a book full of mostly fictional stories, and a few that might just be stranger than fiction.

“Very much enjoyed DARKNESS, DARKNESS.” Ray Bradbury

“The man knows how to write a sentence!” Harlan Ellison

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Time Enough to Spy

A spy has at long last come in from the cold — but all is not as it seems. The longer his debriefing continues, the more uneasy he becomes. In particular, how can he reconcile his presence here with the impossibility of both rescue and escape from a polity with the power to remodel the bodies of their subjects at will?

What secret hides behind those cool professional faces of the agents who briefed him so long ago? Has he been induced to betray all he was sent to protect?

A short story of the Madrian Empire.

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: I’m The Beautiful But Evil Space Princess Who Rules A Galactic Empire But Really Wants To Leave People Ruthlessly Alone!: Volume 1

Alice is the Imperial Princess Regnant of the Galactic Empire. At 22, she has been thrust into power after her father (the Emperor) and her two older brothers have all died in various ways. Her Imperial Chancellor, Lord Rupert, does everything he can to support her, but has somewhat different ideas about how the Empire should be run than did his late Emperor.

Alice has one major problem: She cannot be crowned Empress Regnant until she marries and produces an heir.

But Alice, being kept busy three days a week by interminable audiences with petitioners, and the rest of the week with what she terms “mostly busy work”, has no real way to meet young men — well, reasonably eligible young men, anyway, and of her own age — with whom she might eventually take up and form a household. And she chafes at the necessity of trying to rule, hands-on, an Empire so huge it cannot be truly ruled by any one person to begin with.

She just wants to leave people alone, as her father and his predecessors did for centuries.

Then, into her life walks the Crown Prince of a planet many, many parsecs away from the Capital Planet…and her life begins to take on a life of its own…

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Witch’s Daughter (Empires of Magic Book 2)

FOR SOME REASON AMAZON IS PLAYING SILLY GAMES WITH THE REVIEWS FOR THIS BOOK, WHICH I THINK IS AFFECTING SALES. IF YOU’VE READ IT, PLEASE REVIEW!

Some letters come from the living. Some come from the dead. This one comes with a formula that turns a rowboat into a miracle.

Seventeen-year-old Lord Michael Ainsling — youngest brother of the Duke of Darkwater, builder of mechanical marvels, survivor of fairyland — receives a letter from a man sixteen years dead. The inventor Tristram Blakley has not perished; he has been imprisoned by his own genius and begs the one mind in all of Avalon brilliant enough to understand his work to set him free. All Michael has to do is find seven missing brothers first and walk a magical path..

Fifteen-year-old Albinia Blakley has spent her whole life under her mother’s iron thumb — and her mother is a witch. The day Al finally escapes down a rope of knotted sheets, she lands in a world she doesn’t recognize, with no money, no magic kit, and no idea that the stranger who catches her is about to become her greatest ally.

Together, a girl with more secrets than she knows and a boy who builds machines that try to murder him must outwit a sorceress, navigate the treacherous courts of Fairyland, and unravel an enchantment years in the making — before a family is lost for good.

Witch’s Daughter is a gaslamp fantasy brimming with wit, warmth, and wonder, for readers who love their magic wrapped in velvet and their adventures served with morning tea.

FROM JOHN BAILEY: Book I The Glass Constellation (The Calibration Fall Trilogy 1)

At the height of interstellar civilization, humanity and its allies have achieved what earlier ages believed impossible: instantaneous communication across light-years, perfectly calibrated faster-than-light transit, and seamless cooperation between hundreds of worlds.

Then the measurements begin to fail.

A military reconnaissance squadron disappears despite flawless telemetry. Manufacturing systems produce identical components that no longer behave identically. Communication relays return contradictory timestamps from the same transmission.

At first, the anomalies are dismissed as statistical noise.

But when a catastrophic trinary stellar cascade destabilizes the hidden constants underlying interstellar technology, the great network binding civilization together begins to fracture. Navigation diverges. Synchronization collapses. Entire fleets lose agreement on shared space and time.

As governments struggle to preserve order, scientists and archivists race to understand a terrifying possibility:

The universe itself is drifting out of calibration.

Caught between political denial, military desperation, and the accelerating collapse of physical certainty, humanity faces a crisis unlike any war or invasion in history. The enemy is not a hostile species or empire.

It is the failure of reality-dependent civilization itself.

The Glass Constellation is the first volume of The Calibration Fall Trilogy—a sweeping hard science fiction saga of collapsing interstellar order, drifting physical law, and the enduring struggle to preserve meaning in a universe that no longer agrees with itself.

Perfect for readers of:

• Foundation
• Dune
• Revelation Space
• A Fire Upon the Deep
• Hyperion

FROM KAREN MYERS: Bound into the Blood – A Virginian in Elfland (The Hounds of Annwn Book 4)

Book 4 of The Hounds of Annwn.

DISTURBING THE FAMILY SECRETS COULD BRING RUIN TO EVERYTHING HE’S WORKED SO HARD TO BUILD.

George Talbot Traherne, the human huntsman for the Wild Hunt, is preparing for the birth of his child by exploring the family papers about his parents and their deaths. When his improved relationship with his patron, the antlered god Cernunnos, is jeopardized by an unexpected opposition, he finds he must choose between loyalty to family and loyalty to a god.

He discovers he doesn’t know either of them as well as he thought he did. His search for answers takes him to the human world with unsuitable companions.

How will he keep a rock-wight safe from detection, or even teach her the rules of the road? And what will he awaken in the process, bringing disaster back to his family on his own doorstep? What if his loyalty is misplaced? What will be the price of his mistakes?

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: MONEY

As I said, as I was getting better — situation indeterminate right now, further tests booked for mid July — I wrote a lot of clanker songs.

I’ve been putting them up one a day, sailing into the sound-track cover for the third volume of No Man’s Land.

(I’ll link the post with the previous below, if you haven’t been following the saga.)

Note that I had much fun experimenting with different ways to do the graphics because, let’s face it, Ellyans hit the uncanny valley.

So, anyway, here they are.

This one has all the previous songs in order and apparently I’d already shared Kitten? And Six Months for 23 years? Ah well. You know they say the memory is the first thing to go. Meh.

Again, what have we learned about getting a writer into a quixotic “let’s write a sound track for the world’s longes book” quest? Precisely?

Write the answer down on your exercise book. You will be graded.

I know everyone here is semi-amused when I go on rants about people of the wrong race getting cast.

Look, seriously I don’t even mind race swapping in theater or something that’s obviously artsy. One of the best Pride and Prejudice adaptations I’ve seen, the cast was small enough you had to pretend you didn’t know Mr. Darcy was also Mr. Bennet. (To be fair they wore different coats!) And all the girls were different RACES (okay there weren’t five races, but the girls who were white were so different they might as well be, and one was Asian and Mary was black.) and it didn’t matter. It all worked, because it had a just slightly campy and deranged edge, and accommodations were made, such as the girls unrolling a carpet, to make the “path to Oakham mount.”

That’s fine. no one watching that could take it for reality.

It’s the lying that disturbs me. Things like Bridgerton, or historical movies which cast Africans in a time and place where an African who was there would only be known for this characteristic. Like the episode of a Robin Hood show where the scamming “nun” was black. My doods, this might seem reasonable in America in the 21st century, but let me assure you it wouldn’t even seem reasonable in Europe in the 20th century, much less the 13th. When I was a kid, the village had one black person (a young couple had moved to the village. She was black.) NO ONE KNEW ANYTHING ELSE ABOUT HER. Took three years for me to know she had a name. People were absolutely friendly to her. (Her kids and grandkids now live in the village.) It’s just that this one characteristic was so out of the common way no one knew her for anything else. Same way there was one protestant family and their name as far as I knew was “The protestants.” Like that.

The series completely lost me because honestly, how could you be a scammer and assume different identities when your skin color made you immediately and clearly obvious to be you for miles and miles around?

And if you’re going to say “There were always black people in England/Europe” we can’t be friends anymore. That’s what is used to justify these abominations. Were there always black people? Yes, probably. Look, homo sap moves around a lot, mates promiscuously (lit.) and is never actually that isolated. If we were, we wouldn’t be able to mate anymore. BUT the question is “how many black people were there around at any given time.” Well, from accounts, any that existed became a sort of curiosity. And for the common run of folk, their experience calibrated by those of their kind, Portuguese were blackamoor. Heck, the expression blackamoor itself tells you the calibration, since most moors were at most deeply tan Mediterranean. Also, Anne Boleyn was considered dark, and as someone explained “Dark was anyone not as pale as Jane Seymour” a woman that was so pale she appeared green in certain lights.

So, yes, I take issue with stuff that’s blatantly a-historical. But that problem is minor.

No, you see, the problem is that our schools — all the schools in the west, not just here — do such a craptastic job of teaching our kids history — or anything, really — that people take entertainment for history.

So, what’s happening is that they are straight up lying about history to people who don’t know any better.

But that’s not all they lie about, and I swear Great Britain is worse. I mean, we’ve all noticed (thank you for asking, yes.) that every commercial these days has a bi-racial couple. Which is bizarre, as in real life, yes, Americans intermarry a lot –maybe a lot more than at any time in in the past — but it’s not the majority or even half. Because guess what? White people or “pass as white at a glance” are still the vast majority in this country. So, yes, by and large they marry each other.

But the English programs are worse than this. And it’s the programming, not just the commercials. I stopped watching British mysteries, which used to be one of my primary modes of decompressing because I noticed every couple was different races. Every single couple. And once you notice that, for something set in the bucolic English countryside, it’s impossible to un-notice or watch the show and not notice it every time. Yes, yes, “use the best actors’… you mean white people can’t act at all? Because by proportion of the population they’re still the VAST majority in England, more so than even here. And that makes no sense whatsoever.

Also, after a few months I decided to try watching again, and the plots were all about racism. It culminated in a show about this woman who had joined a white supremacist group as a runaway teen. As an adult, she was married to an Indian man, and helped African immigrants learn to read. But as they investigate and her past comes out, everyone turns their backs on her, and the moral was that she deserved this, for being an idiot when she was under 20. That was the last time I tried. I still occasionally watch British mysteries, but only old ones.

Understand, I’m not bothered by bi-racial couples. As a lot of you know. Heck, if you squint and shake the snow globe, Dan and I are in a bi-racial marriage. You just have to decide which of us is the minority and through which ancestry (we is Heinz 57.) Without bi-racial couples, I wouldn’t BE here. Or my kids, which would be a greater loss.

What I’m bothered by is lies. I’ve now watched the producer and one of the stars of Bridgerton give interviews in which they said Queen Charlotte — German, blond, cousin of the king — was really black and that there really was this separate system of black nobility, like an appartheid state in the Britain of the 18th century.

And I want to scream, because, you know, it’s a lie.

I don’t care about the races. I care about the lies.

Because what it does is it causes young people to try to make sense of it. It goes something like this: Wait, if black people were always here in numbers, just separate but different, why didn’t we hear about them until now.

And then OMG the racism!

The same way the portrayals of incredibly mixed small communities will cause people to wonder why their isn’t and think “OMG, the racism.”

I’m not saying there’s no racism in England/Britain. As I pointed out, my relatives counted as a different race to them until very recently. Might still.

I’d go a long way to say racism in America is negligible. Not non-existent, for is it not written, “the chowder heads thou shall always have with you” BUT negligible.

In Europe things are different. And you know, people in Europe have a much stronger narrative (and slightly stronger reasoning) for being “one blood.” So some racism or at least xenophobia is understandable.

BUT what I’m saying is that lying about the past, to show newcomers have always been there, and we should be more tolerant is not the solution. As it should be bloody obvious.

LIES ARE NEVER THE SOLUTION. They just create other problems.

In this case the problem it has caused is a bunch of white policemen so determined not to be racist that they take the opinion of the murderer and arrest the victim while he’s dying.

These same people now think the solution is hiding their web site with policing rules, and lying some more.

Note that the left has for over a hundred years screamed about the propaganda that got us into WWI and WWII. Propaganda is evil.

Unless they do it of course. And do it in the most bassawkward way possible.

And stoke hatred.

I was going to blog about the people who don’t want to celebrate the 250th. But it’s difficult because there’s this lump of different feelings in the way.

A lot of it is related to the death of Henry Nowak, in England, and I’ll got into that first. No, Great Britain is not us. Though, let’s face it, we got a heck of a way down that path before the election in 24. And it doesn’t mean anything, necessarily about the people of Great Britain but more of the boot on their necks. Except they’ve tolerated the boot a lot longer, and let themselves get disarmed, which…. never mind. Europe.

But that’s probably why this hit me harder than it should have. Look Great Britain was a beacon of freedom compared to late seventies Portugal (and we won’t even mention before, okay?) and I grew up reading British authors. There’s a reason Skip in No Man’s Land is from Britannia on High, a series of colonies established to mimic the “impression” of Victorian England of pro-British novelists. There was an early romantic attachment to the idea of England, warts and all.

More importantly, that poor kid, Henry Nowak was a first year college student. I was once a college student doing an absurd route of walk, train, walk, bus, walk to get to college in town and then across town. Of necessity this took me through some pretty iffy parts of the big city I had to cross, though thank heavens that was “pre-diversity” Europe and the worst thing that happened to me (multiple times) was having a crazy person follow me yelling either threats or obscenities. And there were the inevitable late nights, both for study and to hang out with friends, mostly Swedish-language-club friends, for various reasons. I can imagine being in his position all too easily.

And then there’s the police reaction. how do you even? I mean, I’m sorry. The fact that this is in accordance with the instructions, not to say the indoctrination of the police in England is evil, bizarre, but most of all red-veil inducing. I’m a berserker. I try not to let myself get riled up to the point I have to depress myself to stop going off. But it is too late in this case, and worse there is no one to go off on. Not anyone I can reach anyway.

Then there is the idiot in Congress (the House, I think) who thinks it is very suspicious the ICE detention centers contains mostly non-white people. The composition of the people coming in, apparently, doesn’t matter. They should just and only arrest white people. Apparently.

And all this, like the blatant male-hatred that was being pushed down every channel by the autopen’s administration, is based on the Marxist’s restricted and dual vision.

Because Marxism divides the world into oppressed and oppressors, with the groups shifting according to the time and the subject, but still maintaining that duality, they can’t conceive of say ending racism without shifting to anti-white racism. And they view wanting to stop mistreatment of white people as “racism” because they are incapable of imagining a system in which there is no oppressed group.

It is inherent in their view that someone must be oppressed. You simply have to pick who is oppressed.

So, of course, for women to be free, men have to be oppressed. For black people to be free, white people have to be oppressed.

They are incapable to break free of this completely wrong duality in their heads. And in the name of this duality they are dragging us straight to hell.

To stop the cultural suicide of the west, and, frankly, of civilization and ultimately of the human race, we must break this wrong duality.

People are people. Shoving them into arbitrary groups does nothing to solve any problems. And then arbitrarily deciding which of those groups is “bad” and which is “good” and acting accordingly is outright evil.

Their idea of anti-racism is being racist against whites. Their idea of feminism is being prejudiced against men. Their idea of balancing the scales is to put stones on one side.

And it does nothing, absolutely nothing, except leave an innocent boy bleeding out on an English street, while the police who should be helping him wax sarcastic at him.

A horror they’re trying to export here, and have succeeded in many places.

Mind your teaching of your children, and more importantly mind what others are teaching them. Marxism must be eradicated root and branch and sent back to the hell it came from.

I don’t like writing posts about my disagreements with Trump. This is neither because I feel muzzled, or am afraid of my commenters, or idolize the man.

In fact, far from idolizing him, what I like best about Trump is that I’m fairly sure he can handle the country without tilting us into a ditch and so I don’t feel I have to keep an eye on him 24/7. I do a round of my usual sites early morning, in the same spirit I used to read the newspaper, often just skimming headlines, and then I’m free to run off and play with fiction or clean the house, or clean the house then play with fiction. All fine by me. Note the “fairly sure”. The TDS afflicted will say I think he’s a god, but their inability to understand simple English is legendary. It just means I don’t think he has an active animus against the country. Which from the other presidents in the last 20 years, is getting to be a rare quality.

No, the reason I don’t like to protest something he’s doing on this blog, is that he has a way to outflank me in mere hours or days after I complain about something. Note, not saying he plays 3-D chess either. I’m saying that he has access to information I don’t have (DUH) and his decisions are hard to predict. Also that what I think is going on based on even the best reporting I can find, is often so wrong as not to be in the same universe. So it has lead me to adopt a policy of “let the man cook”.

I’m about to break that policy. And what’s more, I don’t even have any constructive solutions. But I have to get this off my chest. The last time I did this was with his enabling (even if he didn’t do it himself) the Covidiocy. I had a feeling he was listening to the wrong people. The feeling is back.

First I want to make clear I don’t oppose the war in Iran. Like most people my generation, “I’ve been waiting for this moment for all my whole life, oh, Lord.” Or close enough. I’ve wanted us to go beat the mad mullahs into a prayer rug since the “hostage crisis”. Because, seriously, who takes diplomatic personnel hostage? And gets away with it? We should have gone in guns blazing THEN. Or right after they were released. We didn’t make it clear “don’t touch our diplomats” and then Benghazi happened, and this is going to keep getting worse till we teach savages the lesson that you don’t touch our diplomats.

When I was an exchange student in Ohio in 80, my comparative political systems teacher, a Marine, hung the Ayatollah in effigy every morning before starting class. I loved that man. I fully agreed with him.

So, no, I’m not upset we finally went in and bombed the living daylights out of the Mullahs. Because you know, it had to be done.

It particularly had to be done since, after Obama had pelted them with pallets of cash, they’d gotten froggy. Not just with financing/helping the neolithic barbarity unleashed on Israel in 10/7, but with their nukes. They’d gotten ambitious.

And the problem of them getting ambitious is not that they’d have a nuke. The USSR (allegedly) had nukes for decades and we’re still here. It’s that they’re crazy-cakes religious fanatics with a nuke. Their religion explicitly enjoins them to bring about the end of the world. And boy, oh, boy, would they love to.

So I cheered the bombing. But then–

Why did we stop? And why are we trying to make a deal with people whose main drive is to BRING ABOUT THE END OF THE WORLD?

Yeah, yeah, I do get it. Trump is notoriously averse to putting American military lives at risk. Frankly it’s refreshing. Yeah, maybe he avoided the draft, but so did Clinton and that never stopped Clinton spending American lives like water, particularly when there was no real benefit to America from doing it. He was perverse that way.

But–

There is a but there, ain’t it? But– Mr. President, sometimes it’s necessary. And yeah, I do understand the imperatives pinning you: the midterms are breathing down all our necks, and we can’t let the precious little LIVs (Low Information Voters) saddle us with outright communists and jihadists, because we’re trying to clean out Iran. Yeah, yeah, you don’t want to bomb their oil infrastructure to kingdom come because you don’t want to hamper the possibility of world development, and a civilized world runs on energy. Yeah, yeah, you’re taking on heavy winds from the loyal opposition in your own party.

All that is a given. However: if you’d sent boots in two months ago to clean out the IRG, it would be done and gone, and now we could settle back into taking care of other things.

So why didn’t we? My guess is polling and public opinion not allowing it.

The problem with all that? We’re not going to be able to fix the problem of Iran and are going to have to keep doing pretend peace talks until after the midterms.

And the problem with that is that a) Trump is sounding like Obama “This is my line, and if you don’t like it, I’ll draw another one.” b) Iran apparently was and is much closer to a nuke than we thought.

Given that it’s an old technique in the US for the president to allow or incite an attack on us as a chance to turn the public opinion to a war like footing (we’re notoriously reluctant to go to full America on someone. And when we got full America we’re fully deadly.) yet what are we willing to lose to an Iranian nuke to do that?

Look, it would be one thing if we were sure they’d hit Seattle, but even so, I have friends there, and some people who read here are there. Same for NYC. Same for the ivy leagues, same for Los Angeles and San Francisco. Because even hives of scum and villainy have decent Americans in them.

But you know, I know, and even my cat Havey who doesn’t remember his own name or that he’s a cat knows that the most likely target is Israel. Are we going to lose our most reliable ally in the Middle East to this? Well… And the second most likely target is DC. Which, yes, where do we send the thank you note, but guys? Right now the most likely result of a decapitation strike like that is that our cold civil war goes hot at a speed.

So– are we really going to risk this?

Mind you, if we sent boots in, my idea would be, go in, break everything, come home and tell them not to make us come out again. The era of “nation building” should be not only dead, but buried so deep that it will be forgotten. BUT–

But if we’re going to shy away from it because elections, and votes and–

Is the risk we’re running acceptable? And who is the president listening to? Because whoever it is, they don’t have the world’s best interests at heart.

I don’t like criticizing the president, because he usually proves me deep at sea within days of a post doing that.

I can’t tell you how desperately I hope that’s the case now.