Writing to Understand

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

You know that talk about what you write for?  Why you write?

When I came in to the profession, given realities that weren’t exactly too hard to suss out, I stood a better chance of having a 19th century Eastern European prince get sucked up in a cross time vortex, fall in mad love with me at first sight and shower me in the crown jewels than of ever making a living doing this fiction writing thing.

When I started writing it wasn’t for Baen and that Baen has a limited number of slots in its publishing stable.  I knew the factors were things like “being able to attend tons of conventions and making up to editors and what can loosely be called opinion makers in the field” and that satisfying that requirement required other things like “don’t tell people when they’re being frigging idiots.  No, not even if they’re being frigging idiots right in front of you.  No, not even if they really, really deserve it.  No.  Just no.  For heaven’s sake, go to your room and scream it into the pillow if you have to, but make sickly sweet smiles when people explain to you they’re really victims because their father looked at them with patriarchal disdain when they were two.”

Somewhere there’s a bunch of pictures of me at conventions between oh, 1999 and 2008, and I am sure I look as though I’m wearing a corset, and also possibly as if I’m terminally constipated.  It was the effort of holding my opinions in.

In the face of all this, and knowing that the field rewarded exclusively loud and convincing parroting of talking points, I persisted in writing stuff and trying to make a living.  (Yeah, I even tried some talking points, but I was never good at it – possibly because subtexts kept creeping through.)  It is probably a testimony to my stubbornness that I actually remained published for over ten years, particularly given the times in which I was working.

But why, dear lady, you’ll ask yourself.  What possessed you?

When we were talking about it yesterday, some of you said you wrote because otherwise people would come and put you away in straight jackets.

This, of course, is completely ridiculous, as are all suggestions that writers suffer from a mild form of dissociative disease and that—

Yeah, basically.  You’re basically right.

Sort of.  Sideways.

Remember that thing in Stranger in a Strange Land when Heinlein has Mike realize that laughter is what you do when things hurt too much?

It is sort of like that.  For me at least.

I’ve said before that I wouldn’t write as I do if I weren’t being paid for it.  This is true to a great extent.  I mean, would I stop writing?

I once stopped writing.  It was glorious.  It lasted almost two weeks.  I cleaned the house, organized my books, took the boys to the park to play.  And then an idea ambushed me and poured out of my fingers with such intensity that I couldn’t stop myself writing it.  And after that, I had fallen off the wagon for good.

However, two and a half years ago, when Kris Rusch told me about indie, I was ready to walk away from it – at least walk away from it as a way of making a living.  As much as I enjoyed working for Baen I couldn’t work just for them and hope to survive, and besides if I only have one publisher I start worrying about things like whether the cover sends the right message, and I’ll drive anyone who works with me up the wall in no time flat.

So, if I had walked away would I have stopped writing?

Totally.  Er… not.

I might have stopped writing under my own name and as myself, but by now there would be fifty fan sites with a very odd writer, sometimes writing fan fiction for shows she’d never watched.  (I’d probably also have tried to write Shakespeare fan fiction, so it would be a dead giveaway.)

The thing, would it be as time consuming as it is now – no, of course not.  Would my writing take in account that people might need to read it?  Almost certainly not.  Given the erratic nature of my mind, these fan pieces in alternate reality are probably full of allusions and deep embedded significance that only I and maybe two people on the planet will get.  (And I don’t mean because they’re so smart and erudite – I mean because like me they have some truly weird mental associations.  Like the smell of chalk reminds them of pomegranates.  And don’t you wish you knew?)  Like there will be quotes from Asterix comic books unattributed in otherwise perfectly serious situations.

So would my writing be less stressful?  To an extent.  It would be mostly more erratic.  My muse trips on acid when left to its own devices.  Or behaves as though it did.

But I’d still write.  In heaven’s name why?

Because reality doesn’t make sense.  And the only way I can process things without writing fiction about them is by trying to make them make sense.  This means, btw, that the best way to upset and baffle me is to act completely irrational.  I can get someone being upset at me because my personal style annoys them.  I can get someone being upset at me because I once did something to them, even if it’s something I don’t get.

However, if someone comes at me and says “you know I hate your guts because penguins!”  I’ll spend the next three weeks obsessing over these words and trying to figure out what the person meant by “penguins” and any real or symbolic penguins that might be involved in my life at any given time.

The two things that completely confuse me are rudeness and making no sense.  This has probably been obvious by how long it takes me to deploy the troll hammer when a troll, cunningly, manages to combine both.  (Though I’m learning and I use some of you as canaries in the mine.  If these people make you sound like you want to stomp bunnies, the hammer descends.)

But my interpersonal failings notwithstanding, people who are irrational and refuse to fit any logical category are easy.  At fifty I’ve learned that most of these aren’t worth a second thought.  I either wall myself off from them completely, or I hold them in the container of “is okay, but periodically goes off meds.  Ignore the off meds stuff, but never trust.”  Sometimes, on rare occasions I go “Is okay but went through really painful, bad phase due to – illness, pregnancy, menopause – is safe to trust again, now.”

What drives me to writing like it drives other people to drinking is the big, societal, huge,  massive things that SHOULD make sense and don’t.

Like, say, a party that proclaims itself concerned with the rights of individuals running around making sure that people vote ONLY by mail, where vote fraud is huge and implicit.  (No?  How many people will resist voting for grandma, who is not quite there?  And that’s before the incentives for fraud at the top levels become clear.  “We’ll just find a box of ballots in the trunk.  We know people would vote for us if they voted their interests.”)  And yet managing to keep the appearances of being concerned with allowing people to vote – that’s all.  This even as it strikes down laws that would prevent non-citizens from voting (through verification of status.)  This even as it ignores certain groups intimidating other groups at the polling stations.  As in, New Black Panthers.  Brandishing clubs.

Like, say, a party who says that they want you to be free and express yourself and sex is beautiful endorsing codes of conduct and speech in campuses that would make Victorians go “whoa, that’s to far.”  Only of course, the codes are against men (asking for a date is sexual harassment!) which would baffle the Victorians even more.

Like, say, the IRS using its power to punish political enemies of the party in power and then a grown woman, an attorney at the highest levels, saying, with a completely straight face that no, she didn’t realize the Tea Parties didn’t apply to both groups on the left and write.  She thought “Tea party” was a generic term, like Kleenex.  (I wish I were joking.)

Like four men being abandoned to die in Benghazi, while those who should have sent rescuers to them refused to let rescue happen… And then spent a week blaming it on some Coptic Christian’s craptastic movie on Mohammed, to the point of making an apology-commercial to play in Pakistan.  (That filmmaker by the way is still in jail.  Yes, yes, parole violation.  Really?  This justifies being yanked from your home in the middle of the night?  Being put in jail and virtually having the key thrown away?  Not to mention publicizing your name so members of the religion of peace and Theo Van Gogh you?)

Like guns run into Mexico.  No, they weren’t tracked as they’d been in the previous (ill advised) Wide Receiver.  They were just sold to Mexican nationals of dubious associations and not tracked at all.  You see, wide placed people in the administration had kept insisting we needed gun controls in the US because, well, the guns were going to Mexico’s drug war.  But it turned out research revealed they weren’t.  Most guns there were foreign.  So…  So, if you are a person who thinks reality should conform to your idea of it, you send guns to Mexico, so they’ll be found there, and you have a reason for gun control, because it is the right thing to do, of course.  (Because it has worked so well in Europe.  At least in these people’s minds.  – and yes, I hate the above explanation, but if you find another explanation for Fast and Furious I’d like to hear it.)

Like the NSA scandal – spying on everyone, all the time, so the NSA is reading this post last night, hours before you get to see it.

Like, using the EPA to attack political opponents.  Like, blackmailing organizations into supporting Obamacare.

None of these is unexplainable, you say?  There are reasons, rooted in the fantastical, fanatical and frankly a little scary religion known as Marxism?

Sure there are.  But none of that explains how all these things are revealed, one by one, and yet life goes on, and the person on the street has no idea, and cares even less.

Ask them what Fast and Furious is, and they’ll say the movie.  Ask them what Benghazi is, and they don’t know.  Show them clips of people at a political convention saying we belong to the government, and they don’t howl with outrage.

And we’re not talking about completely disconnected people: writers, scientists, college students, all of them will look at you blankly and say “oh, that’s just a way of speaking” or “Oh, that’s just some weird political scandal.”

You see, even as trust in the media plummets, people trust it for one thing: if it were important, it would be reported.  It might be badly reported, but it would be reported.

Only it isn’t.

And how do you explain that?

I don’t know.  The press, like most of our intellectual class is blinded by Marxism.  It’s such a pretty little system.  Like a rube Goldberg machine it does nothing useful, but it’s so complex, so interesting…  So they want to believe in it.  And wanting to believe in it blinds them to reality – with which Marxism has not even the narrowest of contact points.

So they think oppression and totalitarianism wears jackboots, goosesteps and has racial obsessions of the “if you’re not blond you die” type.

Anything that doesn’t fit this stereotypes, and anything that comes under the shiny coat of Marxism can’t be bad.  Because fighting for the downtrodden is never bad (and anyone who is not blond, male and gooseteppish can be interpreted to be downtrodden.  I mean, surely you were yelled at once in your life.)  Because wanting to take care of others is always good.  Because no one should have anything more than others: material, physical, mental.  We should all be equal, and then there would be paradise.  (Because Marx said so.  In fact, having seen what envy can feed on–  Never mind.  Marxists remind me of Muslims who want every woman swathed in sofa-covers to save them from the sin of lust.  We’re all supposed to be poor to spare the poor Marxists the sin of envy.)

And so obvious abuses and obvious infringements can’t be a sign of encroaching tyranny.  They can’t be.  Because if they were the journalists would react.  And they’re not reacting, because it’s with good intentions, and it’s the good people, and it’s—  Well, do you see anyone goose-stepping?  No.  Then go home, and go back to sleep.

It is this irrationality that makes me write fiction.  There is no way to fully express the anger, the baffled, frustrated anger that stops me up, that makes my hands shake, that makes me … clean the basement really well.

Only sometimes, after a while, my subconscious comes up with something and pours it forth.  And through it, I “get” it.  This was why I wrote A Few Good Men.  (And for that matter Sword and Blood.)  And it is why I’m working on Through Fire.

Because sometimes you need to go deep into a lie, to find the sort of sense you can’t find in the truth and to come to terms with the world as it is: irrational and often prejudicial.  More than that, it’s the only way to figure out the way out – to find out how to escape the nonsensical reality, how to shake the globe just right to make things make sense again.

In City Clifford Simak has people use kaleidoscopes to rewire the human mind to understand what it’s like to live in the other worlds of the solar system: and to want to go there.  As with Heinlein’s psycho-linguistic program it’s something that makes me squirm.  People should decide of their own free will and logic, and not because they were manipulated.

But sometimes you have to go deeper than logic, and sideways to reason to make sense of things.  That’s the place where fiction operates.

Hopefully – and if it works out – that’s where fiction operates for both the writer and the reader.

Afflict the comfortable?  Don’t make me laugh.  These things are mostly a good story, unstoppable.  And if afterwards you stop and go “Wait, but if that’s true then–” that just happens because of the what the story is, what it has to be.

It is not preaching.  It’s a kaleidoscope, through which the world makes a form of sense anew.  It’s the oldest of all human art forms.  It is language and thought and emotion.  It is what makes us human.

And when it works, it is what makes the world less insane.

 

205 thoughts on “Writing to Understand”

  1. You laugh because it hurts too much. And sometimes the hurt is too great to laugh, or write, or even want reality.

    So what escapism is offered at that point? I’d really like to know.

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      1. Daydreaming can be such fun. Daydreaming of ways things might go right if right types of people were present and the circumstances favorable. Of course the way to tell that story is to make the circumstances to _look_ anything but favorable, but anyway.

        And how the bad guys, who may somewhat resemble the real life idiots you are forced to watch, or to deal with, only probably the fictional versions will be even worse, might get foiled. If the right good guys were there and the circumstances favorable.

        Can be a very pleasings daydream, both to read and to write.

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        1. Sorry – right now all my dreams, day or night, are nightmares.

          I may have to take a hiatus for a while. Got a bodyslam worth of bad news, And the prognosis is not good.

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    2. Way back in the ’60s, there was a book called Yiddish for Yankees. It purported to explain Yiddish humor to goyim. My Jewish friends thought it was a hoot. In how wrong it was in a lot of ways, but also how right.

      It explained, among other things, that Yiddish humor is lifeboat humor — as in we’re all in this together, we’re adrift on a trackless sea or sinking fast, and all we can do about it is laugh.

      I don’t remember much else about that book, but I do remember that. Lifeboat humor.

      M

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    1. I will read because something seems interesting or tickles my fancy. Though the only pattern is maybe comical or/and adventure. More to it although Ive only just gotten into reading for information ie 1776. Interestingly for myself if I don’t read I feel stir crazy. I’m a book zombie. Shuffling around my room. Booooks. :)

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            1. NP in my case, but my parents put me through a few years where they tried to stop me from reading. I had books stashed all over the place and at the very least I was reading the warning labels on cleaning products.

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                1. My parents thought that I wasn’t living in the real world. Since my world has turned out quite different, I still don’t see their point. ;-)

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                1. My mom honestly thought it would make me “unhinged”. I also think she was afraid it was making it impossible for me to fit in Portugal. She was probably right.

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                2. There were a lot of reasons– 1- religious reasons 2- family reasons (I should do what my parents expect me to do) and so on and so forth. I read to escape and because other worlds were so interesting. It was also a way to travel (I have this desire to see things that I haven’t seen before). My parents could see this in a boy (or my brothers), but a girl? Well, I was supposed to find a nice boy, get married, and produce children. Plus I was supposed to live close to them and still be under my parent’s thumb. No way– no how– it just wasn’t in my temperament.

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              4. Now this is one thing I know several of you have said, especially Cyn and Sarah. I just cannot imagine it. I wasn’t a sickly kid (my brother was…), and I spent a preponderance of my time outdoors, but I also read almost constantly — and everything I could get my hands on. I used to read the encyclopedia for fun. I cannot ever remember a time when I didn’t have at least two books going at the same time. Everyone on my dad’s side of the family were voracious readers (not so much on Mom’s, but a few were – including Mom.). My children are all avid reasons, with the exception of my son, who has the brain damage and who functions on about a fifth-grade level intellectually.

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                1. I used to read the encyclopedia for fun.

                  I was very fortunate as a child to have access to Grolier’s The New Book of Knowledge. I couldn’t understand why people were so aghast when I mentioned having read the encyclopedia article on, say, genetics or the history of animal husbandry. Then eventually I encountered someone else’s set of encyclopedias and discovered that not everyone had articles written in an engaging and accessible manner.

                  I may have to wheedle my parents into giving or loaning that set to me for my minions- a great many things have changed, but it’s easier to fill in the gaps than to find good books on so many subjects.

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                  1. Grolier’s was pretty good. I think my dad had a set of Compton’s Encyclopedias, which were probably published in the 1950s. I used to pull them out and read the science entries.

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                    1. The Book of Virtues, here. In addition the the encyclopedias. By the way, what happened with that video game thing your son was working on? I remember you mentioning it some months ago, and it sounded interesting, but then I got crushed by school-work and work-work and only just found the time to try to keep up with the comments here again.

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                    2. Well, apparently when you’re trying to learn organization and also keep a group of people who are volunteering their time rather than being paid together at the same time, your progress tends to be a bit slow. He’s still slogging along, and I’ll certainly let people know when it’s up. Thanks for remembering. He says it’s picking up speed now.

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                2. Ah, once on SFWA newsgroup writers were talking about the times their parents locked them out of the house because they were reading too much. One discovered that day that the library was in bicycling distance.

                  To be sure that was perhaps an abnormally high reading group.

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                  1. Well, my family is full of readers and my parents’ house is full of books, but they still took the books away from me. (Not my brothers, but not because of sexism — because I was even more voracious a reader than they were.)

                    To be fair, I’m pretty sure that I read at a scary rate, and I really wasn’t interested in much else besides reading. My social skills were low, and my parents were also worried that I’d go blind (seeing as how I was already extremely nearsighted and astigmatic). When your kid does nothing but happily read away for as many hours a day as you’ll let her, I guess you feel like you have to do something.

                    But honestly, most young kids are constantly sucking up knowledge of one kind or another. It’s just more obvious when you’re doing most of it through reading instead of television, games, etc.

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            1. While stationed on a ship I had read every fiction book onboard. it got so bad that I ended up reading operational manualls for equipment we no longer had.

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          2. First night in a cheap hotel room in Manhattan. Phone book. Visited a book store the next day so rest of he week was fine. But I did go through most of that phone book that evening, looking for funny names. The rest of the week I used it for killing cockroaches.

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          4. My grandmother told me how she learned to read upside down. She used to read while washing dishes. Newspaper in a rack in front of her. Her parents turned it upside down thinking reading would slow her washing. Didn’t stop the reading.

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        2. Conversation with my wife the other morning:

          Me: “I need something to read. What are you reading there?”

          Her: “I’m grading my students’ final exams.”

          Me: (pause) “Can I read some of them?”

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    3. And everyone knows Penguins are evil (well at least one is) so penguins causing someone to hate you seems perfectly plausible. Its the pomegranite and chalk smelling ones that you have to worry about

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      1. pomegranates are in season in Portugal around the same time school starts. They’re also my favorite fruit. So mom would find the very first ones and put them in my school lunch bag. :)

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      2. Somebody says penguins and I start thinking about those ones in the movie ‘Madagascar’. I don’t remember much of anything else from that movie, but the penguins were funny.

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  3. We’re all supposed to be poor to spare the poor Marxists the sin of envy.

    No, because otherwise the poor Marxists can’t push us about like chessmen on a chessboard, and it hurts their pride so — and it doesn’t even spare them, since whether they can or not, they want to push us about like figures on a chessboard.

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    1. The problem is that they don’t actually realize this (at least the run-of-the-mill Marxists, the “True Believers”. The leaders know, but pretend they don’t). They believe that if we can just even things out everywhere, then Paradise!

      But, as has happened with every movement I know of that purports to want to right injustices, once they have achieved their goal, they will want to continue to do more, because they are Changing The World. So they will look around and find more reasons to push people around. And then more, and more, and more.

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      1. Well, there’s always General Cincinnatus.

        And that’s why the American officers founded the Society of the Cincinnati — to reassure people that they weren’t going to hang about and rule, but instead go home and mind their own business.

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  4. I write because once upon a time we went on vacation. And my parents made me return all my book to the library a week before. I was going into word withdrawal. So I started to generate the words to read myself.

    That’s when I discovered that you could chase plot bunnies onto the page and trap them there.

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  5. Side point; the nitwit who made the video that the Obama misadministration used as an excuse for their screwup in Benghazi was convicted of using aliases and misrepresentation to obtain money by fraud. In order to make the video in question he used an alias and misrepresented what he intended to do with the money he was soliciting. In other words, he once again committed exactly the crime he was on parole for. Assuming that this had come to the attention of the authorities, he would be exactly where he is now, even if nobody remotely connected to Obama gave a goddamn. As I understand it (in theory, at least) if you violate your parole in some way unconnected to what you are on parole for you may get only scolded, but if it’s for exactly the criminal behavior you were in prison for in the first place, back inside you go for the rest of your sentence at the very minimum.

    Which isn’t to say that there aren’t aspects of how his arrest was handled that don’t smell to high heaven.

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    1. Actually no. It is very rare in practice to go back in the pokey for this sort of thing. And the parole violation was not for soliciting money or any of that. It was “using a computer.”

      Now what galls me: with the NSA spying and all… they could, when they need the next scape goat, reach for any of us for a hundred minor violations.

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        1. Although I DO NOT recommend reading the goat-gagging novel, this is a key plot element of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. The bureaucratic bête noire of the novel at one point explains to Hank Reardon that the entire goal of regulation is to allow them to force compliance under threat of prosecution. It is a variant of the Soviets’ “sugar trap” in that the goal of the created situation is to enable your extortion.

          See also licensing and permitting processes.

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      3. Umm. IIRC both Paterico (who’s a DA in LA) and Ken@Popehat (who’s a criminal defender) seemed to think that the parole violation part – once discovered – was pretty reasonable. To raise money for the film and then make it etc. he performed actions that were direct explicit violations of his parole terms.

        What wasn’t reasonable was having him arrested at o dark thirty by a team of officers all coincidentally filmed on national TV. And of course the fact that no one had even heard of him and his stupid movie until the state department told everyone about it and apologised for it. And the fact that he’s still in jail now without any additional hearings

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        1. The parole violation simply allowed them to avoid the inconvenience of having to stage a show trial between the show arrest and show imprisonment.

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          1. That’s the big issue here. When the administration was blaming the video, but before anyone knew who had made it, Hillary and Co were calling for whomever had done it be put in jail.

            Then they find the guy, and they find he’s committed some form of parole violations to make the video, and now he’s in jail, and that has absolutely nothing to do with their calling for him to be locked up in the first place, but doesn’t take a rocket scientist to draw a line from A to B.

            There’s another case wending its way through the military courts that the President decided to pass judgement on prior to any verdict, and the Judge presiding over the case ruled that because the President had demanded a specific punishment, that punishment could not be applied, even if it was in fact merited, simply because the President had demanded it before the case :
            http://www.stripes.com/judge-obama-sex-assault-comments-unlawful-command-influence-1.225974

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            1. Obama’s probably going to find some way to get the judge over that, but I’m glad he stood up that way. This crap of Obama making statements like that about cases he knows nothing about needs to stop. He’s supposed to be a lawyer, for crying out loud – he is supposed to know better. Oh, wait. Look who I’m talking about.

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    2. Parole violations for any but the most extremely violent are not met with late-night (timed for Pakistani evening TV!) arrests and press coverage. They’re typically administrative things.

      I get the way normalcy bias makes you want to believe this was a “clean” case, but it wasn’t. The White House needed a scapegoat and California “law enforcement” delivered one.

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  6. What worries me more and more is that we seem to be slipping gradually into a “CoDominium” future – admittedly without Russia, maybe China instead. We have the semi-permenant underclass – uneducated, unemployed (and mostly unemployable) – we have the taxpayers and we have the ruling elite. Sadly we don’t have spaceships and other planets so we’re stuck on this one…

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      1. We have spaceships in much the same manner that a muzzle loading black powder flintlock is a real gun. Until there is a fundamental breakthrough in propulsion technology analogous to that of self contained metallic cartridges for firearms we do not have and will not have the kind of space flight we here all wish for.
        While I applaud the privately funded space efforts as a necessary first step, they are peddle boats on the mill pond when what we all want is a nuclear powered vessel with interstellar capabilities.

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        2. I think your endpoint on “What we want”, while true to an extent, is a little over the top as a comparison. We still have a long way to go just in our own solar system. The infrastructure required to build an interstellar vessel, even if we had a drive for it right now, would take decades to build, even with a dedicated program. And we don’t have a drive. It will take a major breakthrough in physics for that. In case you’re thinking you can do it without a breakthrough drive technology, I ran the numbers. With a fusion power plant, using optimistic efficiency numbers, you can get 1% C with a craft that masses 4-5 million tons (for 10%, the numbers get insane; like, 10^19 tons. Using stages, you can reduce that significantly, but not enough to bring it down to realistic numbers).

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          1. Best I can tell we are in violent agreement.
            I was in space operations for a quarter century and I know the numbers intimately. The moon is a piece of cake if we want it, partly simply because we already know it’s possible but mostly because in astronomical terms it’s so damn close. To do manned Mars would take significant breakthroughs in at least three areas. And none of that even touches on the complete lack of political will to do anything major in space by our or any other government. I applaud the private sector efforts and am most heartened by the successful delivery and return of a cargo payload to ISS. Most Americans don’t have a clue how truly important that achievement was. Still, it’s early days for them, and their greatest threats aren’t technological, but political.
            All that said, give me a one G constant thrust engine and the entire solar system opens up. Very little of note would be more than a couple weeks away. Give me even a tenth G constant thrust and we’re still talking trips measured in one or two months.
            The stars sadly are completely out of our reach without a major breakthrough in theoretical physics, ie the infamous warp drive.

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            1. And Tito is going to send a couple on a free fight trajectory past mars for a 500+ day trip? In two years? Crazy.

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  7. There is a plan– and it started before the fall of Wall Street on Black Friday. Plus a lot of historians admit now that FDR’s plans did cause the Depression to last a lot longer. What pulled us out of that Depression was the Great War. Plus since then we’ve had a back and forth pull towards Marxism. Reagan pulled us back, but it still wasn’t far enough imho and I really admire that guy.

    One of the things that Reagan tried to do, and was shut down, was to reduce or eliminate departments that had nothing to do with Federal Powers. He was shut down by the American people (voted in a Democratic Congress) and the Congress. It is these Departments that have one after another become the hammers of the Executive Office.

    The reason I can see the logic and pathway is that when my brain is working properly, I see patterns (the big ones over history or over the Country). The pattern tells me that there is a group of people who have been working on turning the US away from the Founding Fathers’ ideas. It takes more than twenty years to have full control of education, and other institutions (even in the churches btw).

    I can only assume that it is power that is wanted and needed– less than wanting a perfect society.

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    1. The reason I can see the logic and pathway is that when my brain is working properly, I see patterns (the big ones over history or over the Country). The pattern tells me that there is a group of people who have been working on turning the US away from the Founding Fathers’ ideas. It takes more than twenty years to have full control of education, and other institutions (even in the churches btw).

      I can only assume that it is power that is wanted and needed– less than wanting a perfect society.

      I don’t disagree, but afaik the Founders understood that government, left to its own devices, tends to expand. Ours may have reached a critical size at which it cannot be pruned back without trauma.

      I would also caution that conspiracies and master plans, though they might be present, are not necessary for such a process to play out. It might happen as spontaneously as gas rushes in to fill an opened vacuum chamber. Conspiracies, when they arise, might be a by-product of something more fundamental.

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      1. It will collapse. I think my friend Bill Reader is right, and it were better it collapsed faster. But collapse it will. True believers are trying to hasten collapse because their theory goes something like “Collapse ????? Perfect communism.”

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      2. I see your point– but– seeing what it was like and what we were taught in school about the Constitution and then seeing the change in how it was taught about fifteen years later– there was a large group of people who had to have been changing the curriculum… Notice I didn’t say conspiracy– I think people who were either power-hungry coupled with people who really thought they were bettering society.

        Whatever or whoever these groups were and are, we are now reaping the agendas. We are in the gas explosion.

        I have worked with little admirals and generals (telephone communications) and I have seen how each one of them like to build an empire. They don’t even have to be in cahoots with each other. Now that I have seen State government, I see the same thing. These groups of people work the same way with the same goals. I am pretty sure it is the pathway of power-hungriness and may not even have a director or a higher up.

        I am not sure if I am being clear– RES is the great translator– He could probably interpret what I said better than how I said it. ;-)

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        1. On the one hand, thanks for the compliment. OTOH, !@#$&! Not today.

          Structures determine development. 100+ years ago our industrial leaders promoted and pushed the adoption of the Prussian system of education. Do some research into the philosophies of John Dewey and his compadres. The goal was development of workers employable by the industrial model as opposed to the crafts model.

          People educated to be employable by large industry are going to have certain political (and social and religious) inclinations. They are going to ask their politicians (and thus government) to fulfill certain desires, facilitate certain desires and ignore certain desires. These will differ from the desires of crafts workers as the desires of large cattle ranchers differ from sheep herders.

          If you look at the premises and assumptions and methodologies of groups within a society and at how each pursues its purposes you can make certain basic predictions about how that society will develop, how it will react to pressure, how it will configure to meet challenges. Looking at the pedagogical methods employed in a nation’s classrooms — at whether children are assigned to group projects versus told to work on their own — tells you a great deal about how those people will organize as adults.

          It does not require conspiracy theories, merely an understanding of the effects of conditioned reflex, of incentives and of constraints facing a culture — of human nature. Capitalist or Communist, greedy or altruistic, people are prone to feather their own nests and build their power base in order to insulate themselves from the tides of outrageous fortune. Whatever justification they offer is usually just the veneer they put on their own perceived self-interest.

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            1. Es nichts.

              Although it is easier when it wells up spontaneously. Unlike others around here I do not write to order and thus am not practiced at forcing it. I find it much easier to so steep myself in an idea that the sense of it wells up and overflows onto the page. (Yes, I am quite aware I just admitted to doing most of my writing when I am full of it.)

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          2. Prudence counsels that I, too, should not continue what promises to be a worthwhile discussion. T.S. Eliot:

            …Think now
            History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
            And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
            Guides us by vanities. Think now
            She gives when our attention is distracted
            And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
            That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
            What’s not believed in, or if still believed,
            In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon
            Into weak hands, what’s thought can be dispensed with
            Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
            Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
            Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
            Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
            These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.

            That passage aroused my perplexed irritation when I encountered it in youth, but it stuck with me. Today I perceive in it a dark truth.

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          3. And given the results of education, churning out people of similar viewpoints and paradigms, you don’t need a conspiracy. The uniform movement of the statists requires very little in the way of coordination, because the moves are sort of “built-in”. Stimulus -> Response.
            Bah. Time to write a world where that system is broken down.

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          4. RES, Do you have some links. From what I see it was the Progressive movement that drove a lot of stuff that we seem to want to blame “industrialists” for. I can imagine that Gary of US Steel might something like that and maybe some others, but frankly I haven’t seen the attachment to “advanced theories” that Progressives seem to spend so much time trying to attach to the heavyweights that the Progressives call “robber barons.”

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            1. It is a broad topic, but start with John Taylor Gatto [http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/] and work from there. His connecting of dots means he may be a crank (I take no stance on that), but the dots are there.

              The industrialists supporting importation of this pedagogy would be Rockefeller, Ford and their fellows.

              The entirety of his The Underground History of American Public Education appears to have been published online at Lew Rockwell’s site, from which I take this excerpt:

              The Prussian mind, which carried the day, held a clear idea of what centralized schooling should deliver: 1) Obedient soldiers to the army; 2) Obedient workers for mines, factories, and farms; 3) Well-subordinated civil servants, trained in their function; 4) Well-subordinated clerks for industry; 5) Citizens who thought alike on most issues; 6) National uniformity in thought, word, and deed.

              [SNIP]

              For a century here, Germany seemed at the center of everything civilized; nothing was so esoteric or commonplace it couldn’t benefit from the application of German scientific procedure. Hegel, of Berlin University, even proposed historicism — that history was a scientific subject, displaying a progressive linear movement toward some mysterious end. Elsewhere, Herbart and Fechner were applying mathematical principles to learning, Müller and Helmholtz were grafting physiology to behavior in anticipation of the psychologized classroom, Fritsch and Hitzig were applying electrical stimulation to the brain to determine the relationship of brain functions to behavior, and Germany itself was approaching its epiphany of unification under Bismarck.

              [SNIP]

              For the enlightened classes, popular education after Prussia became a sacred cause, one meriting crusading zeal. In 1868, Hungary announced compulsion schooling; in 1869, Austria; in 1872, the famous Prussian system was nationalized to all the Germanies; 1874, Switzerland; 1877, Italy; 1878, Holland; 1879, Belgium. Between 1878 and 1882, it became France’s turn. School was made compulsory for British children in 1880. No serious voice except Tolstoy’s questioned what was happening, and that Russian nobleman-novelist-mystic was easily ignored. Best known to the modern reader for War and Peace, Tolstoy is equally penetrating in The Kingdom of God Is Within You, in which he viewed such problems through the lens of Christianity.

              [SNIP]

              … amid a well-coordinated attempt on the part of industrialists and financiers to transfer power over money and interest rates from elected representatives of the American people to a “Federal Reserve” of centralized private banking interests, George Reynolds, president of the American Bankers Association, rose before an audience on September 13, 1909, to declare himself flatly in favor of a central bank modeled after the German Reichsbank. As he spoke, the schools of the United States were being forcibly rebuilt on Prussian lines.

              From Chapter 7 of The Underground History of American Public Education: The Prussian Connection

              Like

            2. I acknowledge the irony of the Progressives having their roots in policies put into place by the “robber barons” even as I recognize the falsity of progressive accusations against “robber barony.”

              As Mary McCarthy famously said of the progressive Lillian Hellman, “Every word she writes is a lie—including ‘and’ and ‘the.”

              Like

          5. I’ve been slowly reading through The Ancient Regime, and one of the things that jumped out at me in the current section I’m in is the French Economists school of politics were basically the Marxists before there was a Karl Marx.

            The only major difference was that when Marx came around, he hid the administrator/dictators behind an invisible curtain, but he was advocating the same basic principles as the first waves of groups the took over France, post French revolution.

            It seems to me that this is a conflict that has been going of since time began.

            Like

            1. I don’t know about the beginning of Time, but if you read Livy’s History of the Roman Republic you will find much the same topics of privileges/duties of the patricians versus those of the plebians being debated then as are now.

              Seems there are always some people arguing that because they are more special* they ought be treated differently.

              *for whatever value of “special” you employ

              Like

                1. There is a hole in the universe for a certain type of personality. I see that phenomenon at the apartment complex. When the manager gets rid of a family with a kid who is out of control and causes severe problems, another one shows up around the same time the first one is leaving. I don’t know why– I just see it.

                  Like

        2. Notice I didn’t say conspiracy–

          Noted.

          I think people who were either power-hungry coupled with people who really thought they were bettering society.

          “They came to do good, and stayed to do well.” Some of them were set on doing well all along.

          I have worked with little admirals and generals (telephone communications) and I have seen how each one of them like to build an empire. They don’t even have to be in cahoots with each other. Now that I have seen State government, I see the same thing. These groups of people work the same way with the same goals.

          And, per Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy, they understand each other implicitly.

          I am pretty sure it is the pathway of power-hungriness and may not even have a director or a higher up.

          At any rate, not until the process is well advanced.

          I am not sure if I am being clear

          I think so. My previous comment didn’t disagree with you.

          Like

      3. Also we should remember that government is not an entity in and of itself– it is run by people, and it is done by people, and traditions were first started by people.

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      4. The genius of the Founders was to establish conflicting and limited spheres of power: the Federal against the State, the State against the Municipal, the Secular against the Church. Knowing each would fight to expand its own purview while defending against encroachment the Founders trusted the dynamic tension of the arrangement, like stones in a Roman arch, would keep each sphere within its limits.

        They also imagined a free and dynamic Press would be sufficiently heterogeneous to play these interests off against one another, rather than fall monolithicly into place in support of one particular “enlightened” view of the public weal.

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          1. I was contemplating, while circumventing the NY Times’ paywall (what can I say? I like their baseball coverage, science articles and obituaries; when their editorials all too often bleed into their journalism is when they become incoherent) and looking at the Washington Times story about the Black Louisiana politician leaving the Democrat party for the Republican … ahem, as I was saying: you can tell a great deal by a “newspaper” site’s willingness and ability to charge for its product.

            The Washington Times seeks to be influential; therefore it disseminates its content freely to reach as wide an audience as possible. The NY Times is influential and thus is able to command a premium of those wanting to know what it is reporting. By this same token, the WT must adhere to higher journalistic standards because its “virtue” is not assumed. The NYT, occupying the cultural high ground, benefits from the presumption of its virtue, even to the extent that it can overcome scandals too numerous to mention at least as far back as Walter Duranty.

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    2. It all depends on your definition of a perfect society, don’ it?

      If by “perfect society” you mean that wise and enlightened people will rule for the benefit of all, that gets you one result.

      If by “perfect society” you mean one which protects the weakest and comforts the needy, you get a different result.

      If by “perfect society” you mean one in which individual effort and initiative is encouraged and rewarded, you get still another result.

      If by “perfect society” you mean one in which artistic sensibilities are encouraged and rewarded … you’re in for a heap of trouble.

      A perfect society means many things to many people, all of them at least slightly different and requiring different structures. Look up “If by whiskey …” fallacies. From Wikipedia:

      My friends, I had not intended to discuss this controversial subject at this particular time. However, I want you to know that I do not shun controversy. On the contrary, I will take a stand on any issue at any time, regardless of how fraught with controversy it might be. You have asked me how I feel about whiskey. All right, here is how I feel about whiskey:

      If when you say whiskey you mean the devil’s brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster, that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean the evil drink that topples the Christian man and woman from the pinnacle of righteous, gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation, and despair, and shame and helplessness, and hopelessness, then certainly I am against it.

      But, if when you say whiskey you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and laughter on their lips, and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer; if you mean the stimulating drink that puts the spring in the old gentleman’s step on a frosty, crispy morning; if you mean the drink which enables a man to magnify his joy, and his happiness, and to forget, if only for a little while, life’s great tragedies, and heartaches, and sorrows; if you mean that drink, the sale of which pours into our treasuries untold millions of dollars, which are used to provide tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitiful aged and infirm; to build highways and hospitals and schools, then certainly I am for it.

      This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise.
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If-by-whiskey

      Like

      2. Chuckle Chuckle. RES, I’ve heard about that “by whiskey” thing and it’s still humorous.

        As for “what you mean by a perfect society”, IMO it doesn’t matter because no matter what shape the perfect society is, humans can be depended on to break it. [Smile]

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        1. Have you ever read Mark Twain’s tale of “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven”?

          A perfect society would be hard-pressed to comply with humans’ capacity for boredom. I expect none here would desire Eden: there’d be nothing in the Garden to read. And yet, place any of us in the Library at Time’s End and we’d eventually complain.

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          2. … And yet, place any of us in the Library at Time’s End and we’d eventually complain.

            This is a common objection many people have to the idea of heaven lasting for eternity: that it would be boring. Yes, it would be IF there were no new books being created, no new music… If that were the case, you would inevitably run out of things to do eventually. It might take millions of years, but eternity is just that: eternity. Infinite time.

            However, there’s an assumption baked into that criticism: that there would be no creativity among the people in heaven. That all the people who were authors or composers during their time on Earth would somehow have their creativity removed on arrival in heaven. Which is an assumption that is completely unjustified as far as I can see. If there is life after death and we are still ourselves in some significant way in that life, then why on earth would Bach stop being a brilliant composer? Or C.S. Lewis a brilliant thinker and imaginative author? Why would they, and millions of others, not continue to produce new creative works, since they enjoyed doing so so much? We just had a discussion about how many authors can’t not write; if you’d still be yourself in heaven, then why would that change?

            No, I think that those who find the concept of eternity to be boring are seriously underestimating human creativity (and also underestimating God’s infinite creativity, of which human creativity is a reflection — though that part of the argument, which is based on Christian theology, would be irrelevant for some people: atheists, for example).

            Incidentally, if this sort of discussion interests you, I highly recommend Randy Alcorn’s book Heaven. He goes into a lot of detail about what the Bible suggests heaven is like, and how it differs (greatly!) from the harps-clouds-and-halos popular conception.

            Like

            1. Just to be clear, I was not attempting to define “Heaven”. Depending on your belief system that can be very very different, even for Faiths as closely related as Judaism and Christianity. I was merely noting the absurdity of people attempting to establish a perfect society without first fixing their own imperfections.

              Like

            2. As the prophet Kipling foresaw:

              When Earth’s last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted and dried,
              When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died,
              We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it — lie down for an aeon or two,
              Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall put us to work anew.
              And those that were good shall be happy; they shall sit in a golden chair;
              They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comets’ hair.
              They shall find real saints to draw from — Magdalene, Peter, and Paul;
              They shall work for an age at a sitting and never be tired at all!

              And only The Master shall praise us, and only The Master shall blame;
              And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame,
              But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
              Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They are!

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            3. Actually infinite time is perpetuity, during which in reality you only have one moment — you are continually gaining a moment, but losing the last one. Eternity is outside time all together, so as to encompass it all the moments at once.

              OTOH, there is the question of whether Heaven is eternal for saints and angels.

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            4. However, there’s an assumption baked into that criticism: that there would be no creativity among the people in heaven.

              Plus– all of us here who’ve tried to get the thing in our head out on paper?

              Imagine being able to get it across. Perfectly. Including how to express why you find something so nifty.

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      3. I notice that not all your perfect societies are commensurate. A ” wise and enlightened people will rule for the benefit of all” could be any of the next ones because it does not define the benefit of all, and furthermore, any of the next ones could be administered by any form of government — in theory.

        “artistic sensibilities” OTOH, you are dead on the money

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        1. Eh, I was composing on the fly and as often happens, got swotted.

          Ever notice how the first couple examples are often the weakest? One out of five ain’t bad.

          Like

    1. From DS9:

      Bashir: What I want to know is, out of all the stories you told me which ones were true and which ones weren’t? Garak: My dear doctor…they’re all true. Bashir: Even the lies? Garak: Especially the lies.

      On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 9:32 AM, According To Hoyt wrote:

      > ** > Zachary Ricks commented: “The best fiction writers reveal truth by > telling lies (fiction).” >

      Like

      1. I feel I should be afraid now of what I read. Considering some of my recent omg world is ending. Duck and cover books. Some read like training manuals… but what if they are wrong. Or right?

        Ot. Any good recemdation for budget software for either pc or mac?

        Like

          1. Something to help keep track of spending. Yet doesn’t pull bank info (or maybe super secure if pulling bank info is what is needed nowadays?)

            Like

            1. I use Quicken 2005. That was the last good version for Mac. The MS version is supposed to be a lot better. A friend is using either Money Dance or iBank, I can’t remember which. If it gets to the point where my Quicken files are no longer supported, I’ll probably switch to Money Dance which runs on all platforms.

              I’ve done personal finances on a paper spreadsheet. It’s fine if you keep it simple and don’t accidentally transpose digits like our fine host. There’s a reason that VisiCalc was the first killer app.

              Like

        2. My suggestion would be to take a basic accounting course to learn the fundamentals of money management then sit down with any spreadsheet program and create your own tool. Personally, I use Excel which is cross platform.

          Like

        3. I’ve recently begun experimenting with GnuCash. Prior to that I was using a spreadsheet system that I built from scratch. GnuCash works well so far, and it has good documentation. In fact, the documentation includes explanations of the accounting principles on which each step or task is based. If your needs are fairly simple, I’d be happy to share the system I built; I’m making the switch because my finances have become too complex, and I don’t feel like reworking my homebrewed system unless I have to.

          Like

          1. Cool- I have tried to Gnu Cash and I like the man page/help. It is super feature rich regarding principles. However the actual help for the program seems sort of confusing to me.

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            1. Well, the homebrewed system I have is very simple, and might work for you. If you can wait a couple of weeks until I have time, I’d be willing to walk you through the system. If you’re interested, just shoot me an email at freerangeoyster at google’s email system. If not, no worries and best of luck in your financial endeavors.

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              1. Thank you, I shall email you sometime before I head into work tomorrow. My finances aren’t terribly complex at all, I just apparently suck at budgeting.

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  9. Because fighting for the downtrodden is never bad (and anyone who is not blond, male and gooseteppish can be interpreted to be downtrodden. I mean, surely you were yelled at once in your life.)

    Calvin and Hobbes had a comic a few days ago, which encapsulated this kind of attitude beautifully.

    Like

      1. Oh, well, it was new to me. I never followed it much when it was in the paper, because I didn’t get the paper.

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  10. My sense is that we are moving toward dystopia and best and collapse at worst, and that the process, paradoxically, is both irreversible and unnecessary.

    Although I agree with the spirit of your post, IMO each major party would wreck the country if given its way. The national disease is systemic, not partisan. (Angelo Codevilla’s googleable essay about the ruling class was a very worthwhile read.) My dutiful vote goes to candidates who seem to wreck the country slower, but I am gradually withdrawing from interest in politics as long as politics continues as usual.

    I have no idea what it might be, but something may come out of the blue and change our course. If so, I don’t expect such a development to emerge from the political process; if anything, I expect the political process to try to squash it..

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      1. Agreed. Too often, the stuff they’re allowed to get away with is stuff they shouldn’t be allowed to get away with, and vice versa.

        Like

    2. The people who have been elected are, except perhaps for a handful of Tea-party candidates, all great believers in the benefits of the state and they want more of it, if nothing else because more state gives them more power. They are supported in this belief by millions of bureacrats and endless lobbyists and rent-seekers who thrive by sucking at the public teat. Sadly I fear that in pretty much the entire developed world these parasites now outnumber the workers. Kipling wrote about this a century ago and it’s far worse now than it was then – http://www.telelib.com/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/prose/ActionReactions/motherhive.html

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      1. The overt goal does not always represent the covert purpose. Teenage boys who admire a girl’s mind are often aiming somewhat lower, teenage girls who admire a boy’s [fill_in_the_blank] are often actually saying “notice me” and politicians promising pie-in-the-sky are typically in the business of selling ladders (or recipients of generous campaign support from ladder makers.)

        Submitted for your consideration:

        Black Louisiana senator flees Democratic party: ‘Free at last’
        By Cheryl K. Chumley – The Washington Times
        Tuesday, June 18, 2013
        Louisiana State Sen. Elbert Guillory said in a video message delivered to constituents — and particularly, his fellow black voters — that he’s finally come to his senses and realized the Democratic Party disguises an all-consuming quest for control as concern and aid for minorities.

        The senator announced his defection from the Democratic Party for the Republican Party a few weeks ago. But just recently, he released a video explaining his reasons, titled “Why I Am a Republican.”

        In short, he says Democrats routinely push a social justice and welfare aid agenda to control blacks — rather than help them move from poverty, The Blaze reported.

        Some of his video statements: “You see, in recent history, the Democratic party has created the illusion that their agenda and their policies are what’s best for black people. Somehow, it has been forgotten that the Republican Party was founded in 1854 as an abolitionist movement, with one simple creed — that slavery is a violation of the rights of man.”

        Mr. Guillory reminded, the Blaze reported, that Frederick Douglass referred to the GOP as “the party of freedom and progress,” that former Republican President Abraham Lincoln was the one to sign the Emancipation Proclamation, and this it was the Republican Party that created the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments — outlawing slavery, granting citizenship to descendants of slaves and abolishing race-based voting prohibitions.

        “The Democrats, on the other hand, were the party of Jim Crow,” he said. “It was the Democrats who defended the rights of slave owners.

        He then said that welfare and food stamps were never aimed at helping the poor, but rather controlling them. The proof? Blacks and minorities are still “as poor as they’ve ever been,” he said.

        “At the heart of liberalism is the idea that only a great and powerful big government can be the benefactor of social justice for all Americans,” Mr. Guillory said, in the video. “But the left is only concerned with one thing: control. And they disguise this control as charity.”

        The real leader of destiny — including the destinies of poor and minorities — is not government, but God, Mr. Guillory said.

        He said, in the video: “These are the ideas at the core of the Republican Party. My brothers and sisters of the American community, please join me in abandoning the government plantation and the party of disappointment — so that we may all echo of one Republican leader who famously said, ‘Free at last, free at last, Thank God almighty, we are free at last.’ “
        http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jun/18/black-louisiana-senator-flees-democratic-party-fre/

        Video and embedded links at article URL.

        Like

      2. ” Some of the sound bees warned them that ill-gotten gains never prosper, but the Oddities at once surrounded them and balled them to death. That was a punishment they were almost as fond of as they were of eating, and they expected the sound bees to feed them.”

        For some inexplicable reason, I’m reminded of the “protest” that swarmed the home of the Kansas Secretary of State.

        Like

      3. And I’d like to say that it takes Kipling to tell an anti-communist story set in a beehive.

        Like

    3. “You may not be interested in [insert subject here], but [subject] will always be interested in you.” It’s like the president declaring that the “War on Terror” is over. It’s only over if we’ve surrendered, because the other side is still very much willing to continue it (it’s been an ongoing process since 610AD, it ain’t gonna change unless it’s totally and irreversibly crushed).

      Like

      1. We haven’t surrendered. We aren’t paying the tax, and we’re not subjected to sharia whenever dealing with a Muslim

        Like

        2. A prominent Muslim cleric in Britain has publicly encouraged his co-religionists to move to Britain and take advantage of the generous public support available there, declaring it a tax to fund jihad.

          Is there any doubt that many similarly regard America’s public benefits?

          As for being subject to sharia … in parts of France, Sweden, the Netherlands and Britain it is already in effect. I suspect it is so in certain parts of the United States, too — and that those regions are growing. After all, has not our very President declared that “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam”?

          Is not rejecting his enlightened and benevolent prescription for our lives the greatest possible insult?

          Like

          1. Which means, obviously, that Great Britain has not surrendered. They are still waging jihad.

            They have rather high terms before they will deem we have surrendered.

            Like

        3. How about the Feral Prosecutor down in Tennessee issuing warnings about prosecuting people for “anti-Muslim speech”?

          Like

            1. Yeah, but I don’t think he backed down from the intention. He just didn’t expect a backlash.

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          1. Good, because they will not think we have surrendered no matter how much we may think so, until we grovel in the RIGHT manner.

            Like

        5. Considering that the very backbone of Obamacare is based on jizya, I wouldn’t be too sure….

          “You don’t have to convert to Islam, but if you don’t you have to pay the jizya to remain unmolested…”

          “You don’t have to buy health insurance, but if you don’t you have to pay the penalty tax to remain unmolested…”

          Like

  11. Just wrote a practice bit with a mandarin/dictator type telling herself some lies/incorrectness like how ‘Linuxers’ were dangerous.

    For me, its flat and comedy where the villain is not aware of how villainous and just totally stupid and illogical they are. Y’know, write a story from the viewpoint of someone who thinks that they are forever scarred by that patriarchical glance at two years old, and who thinks this is completely sensible so they need to travel back in time, and replace all the fathers of the past with DadBot 4000’s built in the year twenty five hundred.

    Like

    1. What, exactly, makes your villain hate Linux? Employment at a deep-pocketed software development firm, perhaps?

      Like

  12. On a slightly separate note, I stayed up well past my bedtime to finish Draw One In The Dark. Very well done, milady! Enough plot zigs and zags to hold interest, and a plot twist near the end that led into a most satisfying ending.
    Bravo! Author, author!! And all that jazz…

    Like

      1. Which I bought the ebook yesterday and I admit I finally had to read the end of because I kept worrying(through no fault of your own) where the story might go.

        As I’ve said here before other authors have soured me(well even more than I was before).

        Like

          1. Sour me? No. :) To be quite honest(and not a suck up), but here and Darkship Renegades you reaffirm why I should trust your stories. Not that they are predictable, but consistent within their story. If that make sense?

            I’ve just become gun-shy because of so many authors writing their next book and I feel like I’m reading a totally different series suddenly. Or the whole cast of characters suddenly develop Schizophrenia/multiple personalities and I missed that plot point.

            Like

              1. I may have spoken two “pages”(kindle pages) too soon. To this point(not quite finished because I’ve been busy) the characters stay true to form and you can’t know how grateful for that I am, but the second thing that has kind of soured me happened and it was so out of left field too.

                I’ll not say what because of spoilers, but it is kind of thrown in there like its no big deal so far. Which is part of the reason why I’m gun shy. I can’t be as indignant and I’m not sure if it is because in this regard I’m actually chauvinistic, the character, or what. Kind of makes me sad in myself that I don’t. Still I have to worry every time I pick up a book now. Where before it was needless it now may not be.

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                1. If it’s the issue with Kyrie — it’s been planned since the beginning of the series. No, it’s not what you think in terms of er… continuing the series. Part of what I wanted to do with this series, though, was show a young couple, growing up, and that’s part of growing up.
                  If it’s Tom’s new powers… they’re not… how do I put this? they’re just another frigging load of responsibility. Which I needed to give him, so he can face what’s coming… which includes, in the next book, Kyrie’s birth family. :-P (That too was planned from the beginning.)

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                  2. If I said Raf’s second run in does that explain it? And my concern is do I have to worry at the turn of every page in future books that others could have a similar run in.

                    I kind of like how Tom seems to be growing up both as a person and his powers. I’m hoping Kyrie shows some glimmer of her own growth as a shifter before the end. I’m not 100% sure if I’m thinking what you are thinking on Kyrie since I’ve still got that bit to go, but if it is related to the very last pages then I don’t think I have an objection. I say I don’t think because I’m not to the point where I learn why it happened. I mean I can guess, but there is the slimiest measure that I could be wrong in my guess. Though I wouldn’t think Tom would be that relaxed about it by the end if I was wrong.

                    Though now I worry that I don’t know what you are talking about. Errr…I should have seriously sat down and finished the book last night, but I needed to be social last night. The catch 22 of needing this job to buy books even though I would rather read books than do this job. :(

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                    3. Yes. He’s a sweetie. I was rather appalled it was perceived as a throw away plot point, then I realized it’s because this series has a looooong span (book takes place about every six months) so development is gradual.

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                    4. In the end I can accept that was my perception of it and not what you were trying to do with it. Also thank you very much for explaining what you did mean by it.

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                    5. No — and this connects to the next post — I didn’t think of how this often happens as a throw away. Since I’d never consider doing that (Stephen Donaldson went against the wall SO HARD) I kind of blocked out how many people do. Er… I hope it’s not perceived that way by too many fans.

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                    6. With how even more common it has become it really seems to have become a bullet point on “the list to make today’s successful book”. I’m not really sure who’s foisting off the imaginary list, but they need to stop. I get second/third book in or second series in and suddenly I run into the list. I’m not sure if they are not doing as well as I think or just see the success of some others and latch onto the list.

                      Not to say I though you were following the list, but I suddenly ran up against what you wrote and I was totally at a loss for why. As I said I do thank you for explaining it. And I was totally conflicted because I have little doubt if it had been someone else(especially a certain someone else as I explained partially why) I would have gone totally ballistic. I understand now and not to judge your choice, but I’m still at a bit of a loss.

                      On the other had I finally finished the book yesterday and everything else was a total joy to read. I loved the ending a lot and thought it was really cool what Tom did and how true to the kind of person you wrote as in the other two books he managed to stay. And yet still grow. It seemed to hint why he could do that extra thing and the other can’t, but I wasn’t sure if it was because of the unlock or if it was because it was Tom. And liked how much trust people showed him because of his kindness to every one. I was hoping for a little more Kyrie growth as a shifter, but from what you said I would assume that might come in the next book with more about her past.

                      I really didn’t know what to think of the ones behind everything at first, but by the end I was getting into it. I’m even more curious now why dragon though. I mean I love dragons so it is really cool one of the heroes is one, but I’m not sure it makes sense from what we learn. It still doesn’t seem to fit with the black flyer we meet at the end.

                      Oh and I was really sad about the brain removed part.

                      (Double checks that everything is vague enough.)

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                    7. Oops. “It still doesn’t seem to fit with the black flyer we meet at the end.” should read “It still doesn’t seem to fith even with the black flyer we meet at the end”.

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            2. Series are dangerous. The writer runs out of inspiration but also of cash. The gap between books gives the readers too much time to speculate, meaning that the end result disappoints because it’s different. Or the first books box in the later events too much.

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              1. Mary,
                in this case it was a matter of the first book having a horrible cover, selling very badly, and the second book falling in a well. It took the rising numbers of the space operas for people to find this series and have its sales growing. So then I was asked to do the third, but it’s been… six? years, so getting myself in the frame of mind I was in while writing, while still keeping it interesting to who I am today was mind bogglingly difficult.

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                1. Those are only possibilities.

                  To be sure, six years is a lot of time for readers to come up with their own notions that they like better. . . .

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                    2. I’m guessing she burned it. Not with a lighter or a match, but with a flamethrower, or maybe napalm, or thermite.

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                    4. Friends, do your sheep lack… flavor? Try Sheep Dip! Now in five amazing flavors!

                      Oh, wait. You really do dip sheep into that stuff. Wow. And here I was thinking “Lamb McNuggets”.

                      (Star appears overhead… “The More You Know…”)

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                    5. Lamb McNuggets….which made me think “no, they’d use mutton, that’s what usually goes into fast food meat, the older animals that need to be minced to be good”…. which made me think of my grandma, who called anything that had been slaughtered because it didn’t have a lamb last year “lamb” when she served it, and made it taste so good that folks believed it… which made me think that I wish I knew where I could get mutton!

                      Goat, I can get. (not that I’d want it) But not mutton. There’s something wrong with the world.

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                2. Just as a FYI and not as a picking at you and I have to double check the second book, but I do think you were inconsistent between the two on a minor point.

                  And I need to double read as at one point on of the villains seemed described differently than later. That could very well be my misunderstanding thought. It sounded like it was cat+cat which would mean cat+dog which wouldn’t explain the feral. But then when it is mentioned again later it was dog+dog. Unless the cat+cat was the cat pulling the same thing that happened sometimes in book two.

                  And all of that is probably too vague for you to understand what I’m saying, but make perfect sense to me.

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                  1. I haven’t read the production version of _Noah’s Boy_ but Sarah had the mistaken idea that “Dire Wolves” were the same critters as “Sabertooths” (no snerk because a Sabertooth is on the cover).

                    Of course, Rafiel’s “second in” (if it’s the one I thinking about) might not happen naturally but the Shifters’ animal forms may react differently that “true” animals.

                    Oh Sorwen, do you visit Baen’s Bar? There’s a conference (Snerkers Only) for discussions of new releases without worrying about spoiling the story for others.

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                    2. Doh! I could still have spoke to the rest. Yeah that is the cat and dog thing I was talking about. I understand that and may be why I’m handling it better rather than chauvinistic, but at the same time I’m sure I would have totally blown up on the reverse. I’ll explain why in the bar.

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                    3. Yes, and those shifters are REALLY old. BTW the animal I was using was the Smilodon known from the tar pits in CA and I SWEAR it’s now described as one, now as the other — so it just happened to be I fell in with whatever was in the last book I read. I’d have retconned it but the criticism arrived after it was set for print. SO … will fix it for paperback. (grin.)

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                  2. Ah… that’s because revisions were made pending the re-edition and the third book is consistent with book three. Also, I know what you mean and the issue is that the prehistoric animal in question is sometimes described as a canid, sometimes as a feline, and I slipped. Though it’s possible those… people being so ancient they had more cross breeding er… span.

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                    1. I can totally accept cross mojonation just because I’m easy in regards to something like that. Though I’m sad that it went away then. :(

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              2. There’s also a tendency to have “capability creep”. Sometimes the characters get more capable, but that’s understandable as the character gains experience, but sometimes the character goes backwards, like in the Warlock In Spite of Himself books, his son is a powerful psionic at 18 months old, but he seems to be less powerful when he is a child of about 10 and older, or even in his first solo adventure as an adult.

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                  1. If it’s used as a trope, though, there’s mention of it. There, it was just an unnoticed (by the characters) change. In that story world, people got more powerful as they aged, but Stasheff seemed to reset the boy after that one book.

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                  2. As we become more involved in the world and more aware of how breakable we are, we often become less free in our exertions, just as you run with less abandon after a few falls and skinned knees.

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      2. Hey really? Cool. at 40% through the second according to the kindle…what an awesome device. I think I like my Fire HD better than my original Kindle. Although I will still take the Kindle for reading outside for a while, or at night.

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  13. I’ve often felt like a half-baked artist over the years, because I have no overwhelming compulsion to create something in particular. I find creation deeply satisfying, and I can perform several kinds, but I can and have walked away from all of them without trouble. I love to make music, but haven’t written a song in at least two years, haven’t even sung in a choir or picked up my guitar in quite a while. I have at least half a dozen stories rattling around in my head, but the rattle is just background noise, it doesn’t bother me. I’m flirting with architectural design these days, but I mostly fit it into the cracks of time, with no real urgency to do it. I know artists who declaim that a true artist will create no matter what, that even if they weren’t selling anything they would be driven to paint/write/play/dance/etc. So where does that leave those of us who are more free to choose?

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    1. Just keep trying at it. I was like that once — I could never finish any story I wrote. Setting smaller goals works; I’ve done it.

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    2. Hmmm, I am right there with you. Every year I participate in NaNoWriMo, and every year I hit 50,000 words pretty easily. And for the rest of the year…? I do feel guilty that I’m not writing more, and I do occasionally set goals to write more, but I’m not obsessed with writing more, if that makes sense.

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  14. I think the comments from people that makes me the angriest when talking about everything that has been revealed recently is “Well I’m not doing anything wrong so it doesn’t affect me” often with “If it keeps me safe then I’m willing to give up a little freedom”.

    Never mind the fact that you’re giving up a freedom or the fact that once given up you’ll almost never get that freedom back or the fact that you are giving it up not only for yourself, but for everyone that comes after you. Never mind the fact that you only have their word that it will help let alone their claims of all the attempts it has thwarted since it started. The word of people that have been keeping this totally secret from you the whole time. Or the fact that the over site for this was all ran behind your back by a group that you know nothing about that has no direct accountability to the public.

    Those realizations should seriously make you feel a lot less safer.

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    1. No one ever thinks that bad things can happen to them — until they do.

      Talk to my man Martin Niemöller:

      First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out–
      Because I was not a Socialist.
      Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out–
      Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
      Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out–
      Because I was not a Jew.
      Then they came for me–and there was no one left to speak for me.

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    2. The ones spouting the nonsense about “I haven’t done anything wrong” need to have “Three Felonies A Day” tattooed on their bodies…. with a dull needle.

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  16. Besides, there’s all those characters in your head, trying to get out…

    Wayne

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  17. Afflict the comfortable? Don’t make me laugh. These things are mostly a good story, unstoppable. And if afterwards you stop and go “Wait, but if that’s true then–” that just happens because of the what the story is, what it has to be.

    Parables are prime teachers for a reason; I think people think in stories….

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  18. Just seen the good reads site. is the Heinlein all up there list wise? Plus I guess the rest of recommendations? That is cool

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    1. That should be all of it, yup. With an occasional parental guidance or an over-14 warning for some titles. Go, young squire, and read to your heart’s content. Or until the library kicks you out. > >

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      1. Hmmm, I seem to have somehow missed hearing about the recommendations site. What’s the link?

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            1. Likewise. I’ll help flesh out the book recommendations soonish, but right now it’s 11:30 PM where I live, and I’m going to bed.

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