Whole

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

So I thought I’d give a report, only it’s not a report on the current state of my writing so much as on the current state of my psyche – and no, it’s not whining.  In fact, it’s surprisingly not whining.

It’s almost exactly a year since I decided to throw caution and social manner to the winds and be myself as hard as I could on this blog, as well as everywhere else.

I’m not even absolutely sure how to characterize this “coming out” since I find being called “conservative” an almost puzzling when my ideal state is almost a complete overturn of the current crony capitalism and also has bloody nothing to do with “conservative” in Europe which implies a belief in classes, etc.  But I know that when I decided to start talking about what I believe I KNEW the “establishment” would characterize me as “conservative” and also, therefore, as “a bad person.”

Look, first, I’m going to point out that having to hide your opinions, political or otherwise, is likely the normal state of the human race.  I’m not whining (or not much) except in comparison perhaps with an ideal state, where every man shall sit beneath his vine and his olive tree and no man shall make them afraid – something that has yet to happen in the state of human life.

One of the unspoken conditions of getting a job is to pretend to be the sort of person that your employer would like to employ.  This can mean something innocuous, like you’re the sort of person who is clean and polite and show up on time, but because humans are humans you pick people like you (or like what you want to be like) to associate with, so you’re likely to pick people on less tangible characteristics.  It is not a slander to say that religious people might prefer someone of their religion.  Throughout history, immigrant communities have preferred to hire someone of their own ethnicity.  And people who’ve gone to the “correct” colleges and hold the “correct” opinions are likely to hire the same.  Which is what we’re faced with in the writing community.

It only seems strange because it’s so uniform, and there used to be almost no refuge.  That is a side effect of both the concentration of publishing into a very few houses and of the “long march” that the extreme left has engaged in in this country.  (Very long – if we’re to believe Heinlein, and I do, then they were in a fair way to taking over one of the major parties in the thirties.)

To me, too, hiding my opinions was perfectly normal.  Look, guys, if I hadn’t learned the fine art of double think, there’s a good chance I wouldn’t have survived my high school years, let alone emerged from college with a degree in the liberal arts.  I just pretended, when answering the questions that they were set in a separate universe, where Marxism works.

So when I started trying to break into writing, I didn’t consciously think of hiding my opinions, but I also didn’t go out of my way to rub anyone’s nose in them.  And then, after I’d broken in and talked to some editors – including the surreal conversation with the one who thought libertarians wanted to ban the internal combustion engine (and also were close kin to Satan) – I started not only purposely hiding my politics but laying in a trail of confusion and razzle dazzle both in my works and out of it.

Mind you, my opinions are “diverse” enough.  As most of you know I have no issues with gay marriage, but I do have an issue with forcing churches to perform it.  I can see euthanasia being legalized as a personal decision (none of my business, even if I’d try to talk a friend out of it) but hate the idea of the creep (people who are allowed to euthanize while depressed/mentally ill) and also of the state (or even the establishment) convincing people to do this “for the good of others.”  I won’t say I don’t have an issue with abortion – in terms of “war on women” the health issues that attend it, the SOCIETAL issues that attend it, and the almost universal pressure to sanctify it are pretty icky.  I’ve talked about it on this blog, and I don’t intend to go there again.  I think the whole “you’re a human if mommy says so” corrodes our civil liberties.  I also think it’s almost impossible to stop before ten weeks, and the whole idea of a regulatory apparatus to stop it completely makes me queasy. In my more annoyed moments I wonder if the regulatory apparatus to stop the murder of ADULTS is worth is.

Beyond that, it’s a gut thing.  I was raised “pro choice” – no other option since I grew up in Europe and all the bien pensant were “pro choice” – but I haven’t called myself that since the first time I got pregnant.  Personal. Internal.  Intense.  Let it go.

However, the way the establishment works, it doesn’t matter how many things you agree with them on, if you don’t agree with them on something, then you are Satan.  It is, I think, the result of being a small, insular society, no different from a tiny village in an isolated region.  They are afraid of the stranger and those who are different.

So I learned to play on the opinions I shared with them and not mention the ones I didn’t.  The fact that they tend to assume “all smart people agree with me” helped me greatly.  As did the fact they believe “conservatives” froze sometime between the nineteenth century and the fifties.  The fact I think women have minds, the fact I believe melanin has nothing to do with capacity to perform intellectual tasks.  If I touted those, I was immediately assumed to be “one of the good people.”

Not enough, mind.  I was never willing to parrot the whole party line enough to become one of the precious darlings.  That’s fine.  But it was enough to keep publishing in a broad spectrum of houses.  And I didn’t go so far, I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror.

I thought…

I confess I didn’t realize how much pressure I’d been under.  I used a nom de blog to comment on political blogs (and cause mischief.)  I was in the background of several discussions as the Dan Rather thing unraveled for instance.  But in the daylight world, I pretended never to read anything outside Main Stream media.

Then Toni Weisskopf, who had been talking to me ABOUT Puppet Masters asked if I wanted to write the afterword to the re-edition of the book.

There’s no way I could pass that up, even if it meant outing myself.  In fact, at the time I remember thinking “Should I?”  then I thought “Come on, how many of them will read Heinlein?”

As it turns out surprisingly few.  In fact, each step in this “coming out” was attended with a few more whispers, but nothing overt, until a year ago when I finally started seeing doors overtly shut in my face. Which is fine.  I knew what I was doing.

It still comes as a LONG journey.  Four years ago, I practically spit coffee on my monitor when I saw my name mentioned on Instapundit (turned out to be about one of my books.)  The last year I’ve now and then helped out when Glenn is on vacation…  And yet it was only when I decided not to stay away from politics on this blog that people got upset.  And frankly the posts they get REALLY upset about are the anti-Marxist ones.  (All the while assuring me they are NOT Marxist and that Marxism is dead.  Guys, historians are going to have a field day with our time.  If enough civilization survives that there are historians.)

Have doors shut off?  Well, yes.  Though nothing overtly enough that I could tell you “this is because I came out.”  — I think in the modern day, discrimination, whether from the left or right, is more subtle than that, which is why people feel the need to fake overt discriminatory episodes.  They know it’s there, and they can’t prove it, and they go unhinged – and frankly, with the advent of indie at the same time, the couple of doors that shut off were a blessing in disguise – it meant I had SOME time to go indie in, in addition to my work for Baen.

So – a year in, what has my final throwing open of the ideological closet doors meant?

Externally, not much.  Indie gave me the ability to do what a friend had advised and I couldn’t do YEARS ago: a) never work for people I don’t respect.  B) don’t write something just because you can sell it and you need the money.

Even if I hadn’t come out politically, my external demeanor would be the same, because… indie.

Internally…

Internally… it’s a whole other matter.  I didn’t realize, honestly, I didn’t, how much effort it took just to hold up the false front.  Imagine that you have to go through an entire day holding up one of those Greek theater masks in front of your face with your right hand.  Everything you do is with your left, and you can’t shift your arm, you don’t have flexibility to rest that hand, you don’t—

Like that.  But over years and years.  The brain space devoted to playing chess with potential would-be guessers of my real opinion, and more importantly, the brain space required to not say something I couldn’t live with while not openly dissenting, were driving me batty, and I didn’t even know it.

Mind you, I wasn’t even any good at dissembling. I’ve since found that everything I think shows on my face (which explains so much.)

BUT just keeping this side of open opposition was taking so much nervous energy that it’s a miracle I could write at all.

A year later?  A year after being able to admit to my own thoughts in public?  How does it feel?

Well, it feels very strange – you have to remember I grew up in an environment where most of my beliefs are beyond heretical.  It’s the habit of a life time. – Sometimes I put up posts, and this will be one of them (note I’m putting it up the day before Thanksgiving with blog traffic in the tank.  I’m brave, but not crazy.) – and wait for the blow to fall and cringe at the screaming that will surely start.

But it also feels… well… the way to describe it is that I have more room to be myself in.  It’s like I grew up in a little box and now for the first time I can stretch out.

I feel – whole.  That would be the best way to describe it.  Just whole.

So – is that worth it?  I mean, I don’t go out of my way to yell my politics at the hairdressers, in the grocery store, on the street (okay, I do shout at certain bumperstickers, but I always did!  And it’s in the privacy of my own car) or in social occasions.  BUT when I’m having a discussion with someone, I can let my reason go where it will and not be afraid it will endanger my livelihood.

And when I’m writing, I don’t have to think “How does this belief sound if I were a NYC liberal?”  I can let the writing flow, and be what it needs to be.

That alone – that alone is worth it. A thousand times yes.  It’s not a luxury most human beings have been able to have throughout history.

The great artists of the past, and the great writers too, were all hemmed in on politics and had to step carefully.

But we’ve come to a point I couldn’t keep quiet any longer.  We might be playing for all the civilizational chips.  And it feels very good not to be on the sidelines.  And mostly – from a personal point of view – it feels good to be whole and to be myself as hard as I can.

 

Note – There will be a post on Write It Like It’s Hot — on what you can steal, what you can’t, and how to keep safe from copyright infringement over at MGC in half an hour.  Sorry to be so late, but my family has the day off and I was enjoying their company.

160 thoughts on “Whole”

  1. I don’t know what “the definition” of conservative would be. I know I probably ought read Russell Kirk but, well, … I suspect it is encapsulated by Thomas Sowell’s “Tragic Vision” — the idea we live in an imperfect world, enmeshed in constraints, where we will forever be forced to choose between lesser evils. And that the best way to allocate resources to their most desirable use is through crowd-sourcing, allowing the market place to accrue its benefits.

    Sure, it’s messy — but the mess is where we can see it, unlike “Command & Control” economies where they keep the mess behind the curtains to avoid horrifying the audience.

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      1. The left’s definition???? Unlike Humpty-Dumpty, they don’t even pay their words extra for the abuses they inflict upon meaning. A defining characteristic of the Left is that they’re a bunch of cheap bastids with their own money but extremely generous with other people’s $ — until they run out.

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        1. The left’s definition of conservative can be boiled down to “someone I do not like, will therefore caricature, and whom I will subsequently blame for all evil in the world. See: scapegoat, fascist”.

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    2. I’ve watched the hamster jumping off the wheel as certain people tried to put me in a category. It went like this: “She believes in a Judeo-Christian religion and dresses in a feminine way so she’s conservative but she’s an academic who specializes in [subfield] so of course she can’t be a conservative but that’s her [“conservative” vehicle] but she used to drive a [liberal-approved vehicle] and she makes the right noises but she doesn’t want to teach women’s studies this semester but that’s because she needs time to prepare material for the course, and . . .” thin trails of smoke begin wafting from their ears.

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      1. If you compare this, to the ALLEGED thought processes of the Liberal Progressive, you see why theirs can’t work. In a nutshell, “just because it’s ‘new,” doesn’t mean that it’s better.” To paraphrase Frank Kern, they all suffer from “shiny object syndrome.” (Note: I have NO IDEA who he stole it from.)

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    4. Well there are a lot of conflicting definitions of conservative, the political definition of conservative SHOULD be wanting to go back the constitution (then we can argue on how far back, which amendments shouldn’t have been added, etc.). But the left does a fairly good job of painting political conservatives as SOCIAL conservatives. Which… irritates me. I am personally pretty socially conservative, but, politically speaking I believe it is none of my business what you do as long as it doesn’t affect me. Thus why I tend to consider myself libertarian more often than conservative, I may believe many of the same things are wrong as the social conservatives, but I don’t think they should be illegal.

      Thought I would post this link to a post by MadMike because it is germane… and he has a way with words and logic. http://www.michaelzwilliamson.com/blog/item/the-post-in-which-i-piss-off-everybody

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  2. I find guerrilla commentary effective for resisting the Machine. When the register at the store runs slow I make a quip about it using the government healthcare website. A comment while in the checkout line* about “thanks to the Affordable Care Act” I can no longer afford health insurance is my way of publicly observing the Emperor’s skinny thighs. I also opine on this administration’s competency to run a lemonade stand, Obama’s golfing, Michelle’s elitism, Biden’s coherence, Hillary’s honesty …

    *Waiting in line is an excellent opportunity to undermine speak truth about the regime. Everybody there is in a mood to vent, and Americans generally dislike bureaucracy (especially when waiting in line.)

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    1. I noticed that this last month when I had to go to appointments and labs– it was very interesting and enlightening. Obamacare is not liked by anyone– even those who voted for the man.

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              1. I’m supposed to be a liberal because of my job. The reaction when they find out I’m not is always fun.

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    2. A gent was opining about privatization of the Post Office last week, going into numbers and facts about the efficiency and solvency (and lack there of) of the P.O. The young man ahead of me is a local Dem worker and he had steam coming out of his ears, but he couldn’t say anything because the 8 people in line happened to agree with the older gent.

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      1. Interestingly – outside of the fact that it’s in the constitution – I firmly believe that the fedgov should have its own postal service, as well as provide for out-of-the-way airfields, highways, railroads, etc. (which incidentally can all be looked at as extensions enabling the raising and transport of an army, and comms…)

        It comes down to logistics and comms – and not being dependent on an outside entity to do those things needful to do its primary chartered job – protect its citizens from enemies, and treat with other nation states.

        Mind you , it won’t be efficient necessarily, and in some cases, there’s no hope of being commercially/efficiency viable.

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                  1. Not most of it, most if it is ‘slicks’ that won’t hardly burn. Now the non-local grocery store sends out a flyer every week that is made out of regular newspaper, and I always save it as firestarter.

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                3. I kinda like the junk mail. Credit card offers are a good source of book marks (I am especially fond of the AMX “sample” cards, made from sturdy slim plastic) and whenever they include pages with blank sides I can use those to print out coupons from in-line offers, such as B&N.

                  The rest goes in the shredder. Used to we employed it as extra content in the bag of old cat litter, now we just use it to bulk out the trash bags. It is a minor nuisance but naught more.

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      2. I think it’s interesting that so many people want to ditch the postal service when it is one of the few enumerated obligations in the Constitution. Trim and modernize it, yes, but I wouldn’t want the admirable few farm folk and all who live beyond the “profitability boundary” for Fed Ex or whoever to be cut off in that way. The Founders thought it important enough to enumerate it explicitly … so … yeah.

        Then there’s the union issue, which is not part of my above paragraph … bleah …

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        2. At one time, or so I understand, the Postal Service was the only fully self-sufficient agency of the fed.gov. Unionization and unsustainable demands crushed that. But if we could revitalize and reorganize the system, I’d be happy to see ’em stay around.

          I’m not hopeful, however.

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            1. Now you guys are just depressing me. I think I knew of the PCC, but it’s been gone so long I don’t think of it. Not familiar with the finances of the USFS, not a lot of foresty work in my part of Texas, but it makes sense that they could be profitable if run sensibly. And the fact that those monies aren’t coming in anymore because of silly philosphical decisions…just frustrating.

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                  2. I know they say it was an urban legend, but I think it actually was true (living around the area). Anyway, the owner is running it now w/o government interference.

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    3. “If you like your $store loyalty card you can keep your $store loyalty card” was one I used a couple of days ago when someone in the front of the line was having a problem and being asked to get a new one.

      Entire line chuckles and starts making additional jokes on the obamaware.com website etc.

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  4. I admire your ability (or courage) to be so honest. I find myself censoring what I am saying. In part because I get tired of always being told I’m wrong (or verbally cut to shreds) and in part due to a firm feeling that no one cares what I think. -shrug- Self-esteem issues. (Although, there are times I wish my brain would engage that censor just a bit faster, especially when I’m talking.)

    Anyway, just wanted to say I enjoy reading the blog. Not often I run across a writer (in any genre) who I don’t think is a flake. (ah, just in case that didn’t come across right, I did mean it as a compliment.)

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    1. Yes. This happens to me all the time. Especially on FB– or visiting family. I now limit my time there when I’m tired, lest I accidentally express an opinion that might either get my friends flagged or myself banned. The challenges of having a sleeping disorder…

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  6. I’ve since found that everything I think shows on my face…

    Heh. I had my nose rubbed in that over 20 years ago. I was playing a “balance” game that one of our friends had shown us. Basically, two people stand about a foot apart, then slap hands together and try to get in enough shove to make the other person move a foot. Or, you can pull your hands out of the way to make your opponent overbalance. I could not surprise anyone on the “pull away” maneuver, no matter how hard I tried controlling my face.

    And I have never been able to pretend not to be sick. People always take one look and go, “Are you sick?” (No, they don’t do that all the time, just when I’m sick and trying to go on like I’m not, so don’t make it out that I always look sick. :-P)

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  7. I’ve been there, holding that mask, so tired I wished I were dead. But it wasn’t for politics, it was to keep an abusive marriage surviving (I had reasons. Four of them. Also, tired). The reality is that we are abused, bullied, and manipulated by those in power, who self-identify as liberals, despite having no connection in this or any other reality to “liberty.” Part of my family is proudly socialist, and they were beyond horrified when I pointed out that they were advocating theft, and their upper-middle-class selves really oght to go down a notch or three if they seriously believed that. Not them, they aren’t rich, they just want someone else to give them money… I’ve stopped arguing with the ‘liberals’. They can’t be changed, and all they do is abuse. They want the power; over life, liberty, and even happiness, in the form of entertainment, if you look too closely (or even from a distance) at Hollywood and big publishing. I have my life and am no logner tired. I have my freedom, and doesn’t it feel good. And I can have my entertainment, in the form of books written by people like you, who I can admire and respect, but mostly, just because they are fun.

    I’m so happy you feel whole.

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    1. Oddly enough one of the things that makes me hopeful about Hollyweird is the release of the Hunger Games movies which are all about government oppression. There may be some hope there. Maybe.

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        1. Sarah, Sarah, Sarah. It’s not about the intent, it’s about the interpretation. Take a page from the left. Spin control is where it’s at. Point out what is ACTUALLY going on and how it reflects real life.

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          1. This is a point I’ve often made about Joss Whedon, especially Forefly. He is enough of an artist to remain (largely) true to his characters and let the story go where it needs to go. Thus, in spite of his leftish tilt his stories often turn out libertarian or conservative. The need to reconcile these two aspects of his nature will probably eventually drive him insane (although, in Hollywood, it isn’t likely anyone will notice.)

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            1. I have to wonder what’s really underlying Joss Whedon’s worldview – Buffy never developed any sort of “trust in the system” theme, even discrediting the organized good-guy “watchers” group, Firefly/Serenity obviously was anti authority through and through, and it seems like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is building up some underlying distrust of the bureaucracy they work for, especially by the company-man MC.

              I wonder how much of Whedon’s very public leanings are protective coloration?

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              1. The second official newspaper of Communist Cuba is called Juventud Rebelde – Rebel Youth. It is run by old men in a position of absolute totalitarian power, and (as I am told) reads like it. But somewhere in their twisted minds and evacuated souls they still think of themselves as the ‘rebel youth’ who overthrew Batista more than fifty years ago.

                Mao’s Cultural Revolution was a ‘revolution’ imposed from above, because Mao, having attained absolute totalitarian power, still thought of himself as a revolutionary. He wanted to have a revolution, even though there was nobody to revolt against but himself. He was so desperate to relive the glory days he remembered that he could momentarily forget that he was The Man that he himself was rebelling against.

                Mutatis mutandis and all that. Human beings are capable of infinite self-deception. No doubt Whedon really feels that his beloved Left is not in power, has never been in power, is forever glorious in the moment of rebellion against a régime and a generation of old men who, in reality, passed into their graves decades ago. To be the underdog by eternal fiat saves the ego from having to accept responsibility for one’s own failings; it also saves the withered intellect from the effort of recognizing that circumstances change and adjusting its world-view accordingly.

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              3. My gut feeling on a lot of liberals, they’re not political. Their concerns are socio-cultural, and they distrust large organized systems. That they are particularly blind to the governmental ‘fixes’ for those socio-cultural concerns is never-endingly frustrating. But if you sit down and talk with them about authority, government, force, etc. without identifying political tribes? They’re not progressives.

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                1. Surveys have found that many many political positions enjoy significant support, on the two-thirds level, until they are identified with the Republican Party. This suggests that the problem is antipathy toward Republicans. This is why the Democrat-Media Complex went ballistic to libel the TEA Party before the general public actually understood what they represent.

                  The engaged in the same thing with Mitt Romney and will employ such tactics against ANY conservative they can get away with misrepresenting.

                  The fact that the Democrat Party is the one which advocated slavery, ethnic cleansing (see: Cherokee) and voter suppression (see: Jim Crow) is carefully hidden behind a curtain.

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              4. Yeah, sometimes I wonder if Joss is only a liberal because he hasn’t examined his own beliefs.

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        2. Read an interesting article, regarding the movie franchise anyway, about how they’ve been careful not to overtly distinguish one political interpretation or the other. As a result, people of all stripes are looking at the movies as a nice picture of their political fears.

          Not helpful from a conversion standpoint, for anybody. But, probably not as damaging to the brand right of center as some might hope, either.

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          1. If you want to engage in some full-on bugging the Kremlin-level intel gathering on the lefty mindset, get a subscription to Weekly (or Daily) Variety. It’s the most schizophrenic ultra-capitalist yet far left leaning exercise in politically correct avarice you will ever see. Their convoluted rationalizations for the repeated failures of movies that align with their politics, and on the other side for the success of anything that crosses the sacred shibboleths of the left, are truly amazing.

            Hunger Games success, first as books and then again as the first movie, was a shock, and the looking down the nose coverage was pretty much universal until stories and interviews started to appear explaining that the author had all the right opinions, so the stuff they found uncomfortable had to be a trick being played on the unwashed rubes to get their money, something in the finest tradition of the industry.

            Really amazing reading.

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  8. I understand perfectly about hiding my stripes while going to college when I was working for my English degree. I thought I was doing well until one of my favorite professors suggested that I go into CW. She thought that I wouldn’t like getting a higher degree in English. She was right. The professor in question thought it was funny that I hated the literary philosophies for criticism and made my own. lol– turns out I was using Northrup Frye’s mythology type criticism. She finally loaned me an out-of-print so that I didn’t have to invent his criticism out of whole cloth.

    Of course, according to one of my friends who was a raving liberal at the time. (still is) We banded together with a couple of others because we were doing well in school, in our late 30s, and a different generation. She thought that I should be a liberal because of my life experiences– no children, married late, electronics tech, and grew up poor.

    I told her that the government had never done anything to make my life better. It took money from me when I was barely making enough money to pay for food and housing and then gave it to others who didn’t work at all and had TVs. So no, I don’t go for that — you earn what you get–

    I have seen the welfare gamed so many times that I advocate making it private. Okay– maybe I wasn’t good at all with camouflaging. I just tried to keep my mouth shut in class.

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    1. “Earn what you get”

      Yup.

      It’s funny how, as often as the bible exhorts people to be charitable, and the left take that to mean taking someone else’s money whether they wish to contribute or not, the passage often overlooked is:

      For we did not act in a disorderly way among you,
      nor did we eat food received free from anyone.
      On the contrary, in toil and drudgery, night and day
      we worked, so as not to burden any of you.
      Not that we do not have the right.
      Rather, we wanted to present ourselves as a model for you,
      so that you might imitate us.
      In fact, when we were with you,
      we instructed you that if anyone was unwilling to work,
      neither should that one eat.

      So yes, charity is something you should give – to those who are TRYING.

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      2. I’m currently in downtown Portland and there are usually beggars in front of my supermarket. They aren’t blocking the entrance or anything; or being menacing. They are able-bodied adults sitting on the sidewalk asking for money. It bugs me.

        Am I wrong or lacking in charity to feel this way?

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          1. That’s why I tried so hard to give work to this one guy in my neighborhood before I moved. He came around and offered to do pretty much any work you wanted: Mow grass, pick up trash, trim hedges, whatever, and was happy to get his money that way. If I were out of work and needed money, that’s the kind of thing I would do until I got properly employed again.

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        2. Charity my ass. I used to work in a grocery store that had a beggar out front. He made three times what I did and did nothing for it. “Charity” would be them giving out some of what they didn’t earn.

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            1. It burns me now especially to know part of our joint income goes to support these clowns. We’re ok financially now at the cost of my husband working 7 days a week, 16-20 hours a day for months. T-day is his first day off since July.

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  9. Interestingly, a lot of us that you label as “odds” still need to prop up masks.

    I know that talking to almost anyone outside of this crowd here, or crowds similar, I have to run a set of “social/polite” scripts to constantly make sure nothing I’m saying may be interpreted as condescending/etc. even though it’s not. (I don’t TRY to talk over people’s heads. Let’s not go into navigating the mind-fields of those who actually believe “don’t judge” without the full context, and think criticism is “hate”). Or having to filter “no, can’t talk about that, NO-ONE here would understand… I’d look very strange, and eyes would glaze over….damn” for vast areas of interest that come to mind. (I constantly feel like I’ve got myself in a metaphorical straightjacket with only a few subjects allowed free reign when in public)

    Or forgetting that most people don’t jump through 3-5 connections in their head resulting in what look alike a total non-sequitur…..

    Having one less mask or filter to wear and prop up not based on simple human decency to others (not throwing politics in the face of your hairdresser, forex) makes life much much easier. I am glad it’s worked out overall.

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  10. I’ve been living the double life in one respect since school. Not political, though, so it’s not as hard. Only the normal Odd fitting-in type of thing: Pretending to be interested in mundane things like spectator sports (I actually do like watching games, I just don’t like talking about the rankings, or the players, or all that other jive – I barely care who wins any given game), not talking about things like ways of causing mass destruction in public places, not commenting on the apparent intelligence of the group of thug-like individuals who obviously think with their fists, that sort of thing.

    The Internet gave me a relief valve several years ago, though it’s been even better since finding this site, where tons of people share my reading habits (or more so), and finding a much larger group of people to discuss such things with. But I do know a bit of what you’re talking about.

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  11. My writing group isn’t so bad, most of the time. But lately, there’s been a few times when someone is reading their work, and it’s just such predictable Leftist grey goo. I have to glance away, or cover my head and look like I’m concentrating so I don’t blurt out what I really want to say. Sometimes I don’t know if I want to scream or laugh. It can be so hard keeping a neutral face.

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  12. It’s funny how doing the right thing, both for yourself and for others, feels good isn’t it? I’ve been known to have the same reaction. Others have as well. I mean, I get the fact that you were doing what was good for your career and that you have others that you are responsible for, but at the same time it had to hurt to hide who you are.

    I’m known, among my nearest and dearest, as a big mouth who is the son of a big mouth. My aunt in particular has been known to refer to me by my father’s name when discussing politics. I can have a decent debate, but I don’t back down. The reaction from some leftists on that issue can be particularly entertaining. Especially when they notice that I have enough knowledge of subject to cite sources and all of my teeth.

    Putting yourself out there, especially when you hold an unpopular position, can be a stressful thing, but it’s easier long term than denying who you are. At least then you can find others who agree with you and possibly influence a few of the undecideds. Overcoming fear of rejection is rough. Finding acceptance among those like you is not always easy either. I mean, if someone acted like they were on the other side all along why should we trust them when they do come out? Think about that.

    At the end of the day though, it’s important to have an HONEST discussion about the state of the nation/world/town/county/school district/block, etc. and that means being honest. Being honest often means sticking your neck out. It’s that simple.

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    1. One useful trick is to learn to ask awkward questions (e.g., “Just how will Obamacare provide more patient coverage with fewer doctors?” or “How is it fair to raise prices on young people who are just starting to accumulate wealth in order to underwrite coverage for older people so they won’t have to sell assets?”) which tends to expose the Leftoids’ knowledge being a) mostly uninformed opinions and b) a mile wide and a quarter-inch deep.

      There was a good reason Socrates got resolved by the death panel.

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      1. Socratic questions are a very effective technique indeed when debating with hard core lefties. Which is why shortly after you employ the method they predictably resort to ad hominem attacks and cries of raaaacccciissst. It is extremely useful when dealing with folks on the fence however. Once in a while you get the pleasure of seeing a little spark ignite behind their eyes and the lights come on.

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        1. And if you ask the socratic question of the hard core while the “on the fencers” are listening and you’ll get a lot of benefit I think. Nothing like frothing at the mouth when asked a simple question to put people off.

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  13. Can I start the screaming? Huh? Can I?!?

    Wait. What are we screaming about, again?

    I’ve not been forced into hiding my politics, not much anyway. Certainly not to the extent you were. But living behind the mask? That I’m very familiar with. Often several masks, something like the gel rack on a spotlight: Drop this filter in place for this presentation, drop another, pull one, etc. It’s just the way I relate to humans. So I can only look on your revelations after a year and wonder.

    And celebrate. I can definitely celebrate. YAY! HooRAY! And various other celebratory shouts as needed or appropriate.

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  14. “How does this belief sound if I were a NYC liberal?” If you can truthfully say “infuriating,” then you’ve got it just about right.

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  15. Oy. I have sort of a weird problem in that I have a friendslist so diverse that if I speak about politics, I’m bound to offend *somebody*—and not always from the direction I’d expect. (I have several friends for whom I’m the liberal one, mainly because I’m a feminist of the “Oh wow, women are fully realized human beings” stripe* and have several other libertarian aspects.) As I like to tell people, my mother is a strongly religious libertarian and my uncle is an actual godless communist (a description which amuses him, BTW, so it’s not an opprobrious epithet.) Ain’t gonna please anybody with politics, so I mostly stay out of it.

    However, I’m very much against anti-science things like anti-vaccination, so I offend the anti-vaxxers on my list quite a bit. Tough beans. Those beliefs actually kill people, so I’m not going to be quiet about them.

    *I use the word “feminist” because the word “humanist” was already taken.

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  16. Sometimes the mask shatters in your hand. I totally embarrassed my wife one night when she took me into Whole Foods. We were walking to the checkout line when the PA announced that they were turning off half the lights for “Earth Hour”. I just lost it. I set my items down and said in a loud voice “I cannot patronize a store that is so POLITICALLY STUPID!” and walked out. I have been out as a libertarian for ages because I am just lousy at playing the ‘get along, go along’ game.

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    1. Well, that’s sort of what happened, by degrees.

      We turn on EVERY light in the house for Earth hour. Even the ones in the closet. I’ve also been known to hang a banner that says “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

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      2. There is a reason the Prius logo prominently declares it a hybrid vehicle, and it has nothing to do with other drivers’ giving a flying flip.

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          1. Honda’s first mainstream hybrid (a totally normal looking Accord) failed in the US market vs. the Prius because it didn’t look different enough from “normal” cars. Much Prius ownership is based on status, not economy or efficiency, and how can one signal status without status markers?

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            1. One of my friends, who frequently has acerbic comments to make about “mandatory charity”, used to go on all the time about how great the gas mileage was on his Prius. Until I finally found a link to show him how much “mandatory charity” went into lowering the cost of the car. I haven’t heard anything about it since.

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              1. You want great fuel mileage? Buy one of those old diesel Volkswagen Rabbits, a friend of mine had one in high school, and it averaged right around 50 mpg, I’ve yet to be around a hybrid that does that. For that matter my grandmother had a 84 Honda Accord that got right around 40 and that is better than most hybrids. When she thought it was wore out she sold it to my dad and he drove it for another couple hundred thousand. It had just over 400K while still having almost no problems when my dad forgot to put the radiator cap back on after checking the antifreeze and managed to blow it up. The majority of the hybrids get no better gas mileage than the little ‘rice-burners’ like the Geo Metro, and cost four times as much.

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                2. You don’t have to get an old Rabbit. You can get a relatively new Jetta GT. 2003, 2005.. then starting again in 2010, and every year since. If you don’t mind the wait, you can order one new. Admittedly, they don’t come cheap, and they depreciate slower than just about anything else. You can also tow a trailer with the excess torque, and the power is pretty addictive. Old Golfs or Rabbits are hard to find. We lucked out by finding our Jetta on Craig’s list.

                  We drove to New Orleans (from Chicago) on one tank of Diesel. Ours was adapted to burn cooking oil, but that is between $5-8 bucks a gallon. Apparently, the restaraunts want the waste oil more than we do. The sanctimony isn’t worth the price. Diesel at the pump, even price adjusted for passenger cars (annoying but true) is far cheaper. I like having more room for groceries. The only greens I’m familiar with are in the grocery section. They make a fine salad.

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            2. Yep, I was talking to a Lexus salesman one day and he said they have people that come in ask why they don’t have any hybrids. He said, “we do, but they are the same body style as our other cars, and nobody wants to buy them because people who drive a hybrid want people to KNOW they are driving a hybrid.” He said people who deny that and want to look at the hybrid, but in however many years he has been working there he has never sold a hybrid.

              Oh, I read an article in of all things a hunting magazine a year or two ago about Chevy’s new hybrid half-ton pickup. They were bragging on it being ‘eco-friendly’ and what good gas mileage it got. Then they posted table with all the stats, and the hybrid got 1 mpg WORSE than the V6!

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          2. To tie a couple of threads/ideas together, I saw a bumpersticker today, prominently displayed at a jaunty slant on the rear pillar of a Pious (I’m adopting that as appropriate nomenclature):

            A Mama for Obama

            Yep.

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              1. I want one I can slap on Obama-bot cars:

                How’s that working out for ya?

                Except I hate vandalism and I’d end up with a stack I couldn’t use. Kind of like my If you can’t park it, don’t drive it! sticker thought. Lots of folks think they’re in Texas so they need a big truck. But unlike farm and ranch kids that grew up driving large rigs (Ever see somebody park a crew-cab, long-bed, 4×4 truck – and do it unobtrusively? Ranch kid.) they have no idea how to maneuver them. They really-really need to see it, but…

                Maybe magnets?

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                    1. Hm. That could be very useful for the can’t park yayhoos. Smack dab on the windshield, oriented to be read from the inside.

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                    2. Then you should have them printed in reverse print, because the ink will interfere with the static cling properties (yes, I used to have a job printing all sorts of decals*, why do you ask?)

                      I’ve also printed Political signs, Real Estate signs, Convention banners, Fast Food Menu strips, 3-ring binders, backlighted signs, all kinds of stuff. I wish I could get jobs to do it for myself (I tried, once, but the chuckleheads I tried to go into business with were worthless), because that was the one manual labor job that I actually liked.

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                    4. When I was in high school there were these business cards floating around that used to appear under the windshields of yahoos who couldn’t park. They said, “I hope you don’t F@%$ like you park, you’d never get in.”

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        2. If I ever “come out” and do a book signing of the Colplatschki books at a certain local bookstore, I want to borrow/rent a pale grey mule (for kiddie photo ops, natch) and tie it to the “hybrid parking only” sign. :)

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            1. Clandestine, heck. Just get a telephoto lens and hook it up to your laptop, run it on sensor or on delay frame. *grin*

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    2. To give Whole Foods credit, their founder and CEO, John Mackey, has publicly admitted (in a Wall Street Journal OpEd, no less) the idiocy of their founding philosophy and the virtues of Capitalism. While he reportedly regrets his comparison of Obamacare to Fascism, that is (IMO) probably because it is unfair to Fascism.

      The news was taken particularly hard by their customer base who are prone to such silly beliefs as paying needlessly high prices for produce equates to moral superiority.

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      1. What is interesting about Whole Foods is that John Mackey continues to be outspoken about his beliefs, the folks he peeves continue to emote, but with little effect on the WF bottom line.

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  17. Regardless of your reasons, Sarah, I’m glad you’re speaking up, and allowing all of us to speak up as well.

    And please have a Happy Thanksgiving. And the rest of the Huns as well.

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  18. In my humble opinion the writer/publisher relationship should be based on three criteria, and in this order of priority:
    1) Does the writer create product that the ultimate customers are willing to pay for? Or as the Grand Master once put it: “one of my paperback editions is about the same price as a six pack of beer, that’s my competition.” The customer is not and never has been the elite literati or reviewers except in that they traditionally have been a necessary evil in order to get the word out to the reading public.
    2) Is the effort required to get the product to market commensurate with the value received? Or something like: is getting a rough draft like pulling teeth? is the delivery a clean product or does it need serious editing? and too, is the writer a shifty sort who will get themselves and the publisher in dutch with copywrite violations?
    3) Does the publisher have serious moral reservations about the product and its subject matter. I would not expect a religious publisher to do satanic slasher porn. Doubt that an orthodox Jew would have much interest in the Joys of Pork, though as a practical matter perhaps not as Jews tend to respect knowledge whether it’s personally useful or not. (Traif is a sin for a practicing Jew, not for gentiles.)

    So, again my opinion, the traditional publishing establishment is imploding even as we speak because they have put item 3 at the top of their list to the exclusion of everything else. All I can say is thank The Lord for indie and thank Him yet again for Baen.

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  19. ::Looks around:: I’m out here, so I can change this with minimal name changing. As y’all know, I design backstage passes for rock bands. One of my long-term clients is R**h. I work with the tour manager and have for decades. But their production manager is also somebody whom I know from his days with S*g*r. His assistant is his wife. They are both unreconstructed hippies from Ann Arbor from the ’60s.

    I went out for a client-site visit at the local shed this summer and had a grand old time reminiscing about this and that. At one point, my old friend pulled out a black-and-white glossy he had of a bunch of hippies on the front porch of a Victorian house. You could tell from the context it was taken in the late ’60s. The legend in the corner read The White Panthers. And there was a much-younger version of my friend. This is in association with that house in Ann Arbor, the Port Huron Statement, the YIPpies, the SDS (later the Weather Underground), and John Sinclair. Yes. All of them.

    I tell you that to tell you this. Later on, the wife asks me, “Mark, are you a Republican?” And I laughed and gave her my pat answer. “No, I’m a libertarian.” And she said back, “Oh, hell, a libertarian is just a republican who smokes pot.” And I laughed and agreed, because: customer.

    But there’s a lesson. The people on the left — especially in America, but (and you worldly types can reaffirm this) I imagine worldwide — are THE most bigoted people ever. They taxonomize EVERYBODY on the basis of group identity and externalities. NObody is an individual, to be greeted as such and judged solely on the basis of his behavior. And, if you confront them with their bigotry, they’ll backpedal like crazy (if they were in one of those paddleboats, they’d throw a roostertail), and they’ll try to make sounds like they really can see past the skin/eye/hair/clothes color. But you know it’s just because you called them on it.

    I have never cared what any of them think of me, and it’s getting less like it matters to me as I get old. As we used to say back when, “F*ck ’em if they can’t take a joke.”

    M

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    1. Definitely not a phenomenon restricted to the States. It’s darkly amusing to listen to someone from a small European country lecture me on how intolerant and culturally ignorant Americans are. If I really want to flavor my coffee, I let slip I’m from Texas.

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      2. Ran in to this a lot with exchange students, when I was working for LMSU. They thought I was great when I was tutoring them in sociology, anthropology, english, and western civ… Less so when they realized I am a pickup truck driving, flannel wearing, earn-what-you-get believing capitalist, conservative, and not a d*mned bit ashamed to tell them about it when they start spouting thoughtless regurgitated libby crap in my class. *chuckle*

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      3. More than once, I’ve been asked what country I come from. I suspect it’s because I tend to use most of my vocabulary in normal conversation. The person who asks is usually amazed when I say that I was born in University Hospital in Ann Arbor and have never lived outside of Michigan.

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  20. Congratulations on the upcoming aniversary!

    As an aspie, I have never been any good at masks. They offend me especially the idea that I should wear one. I have, over several decades, developed a total indifference to what other people think of me. I will listen to criticism from those that I respect and consider if it is valid with respect to my values. I will laugh at attempts to manipulate me by guilt by those that I do not respect.

    This has enormous costs, but not as much as the alternatives.

    Again, congratulations on your freeing yourself from mental bondage to fools, best wishes for the future and thanks for running a facinating blog.

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  21. As a teacher of college English, still flying Adjunct while looking for a full-time gig, I understand the mask. Heaven forfend that some of my colleagues (or especially hiring committees) realize that they have somebody who DOESN’T believe in the “right” things in their midst! American Federation of Teachers union meetings can be a giggle sometimes, too. I feel like a spy on occasion.
    I know some of the students in my classes are Conservatives, some are Liberal, a few are downright Leftists, and most of them aren’t really sure what they are yet. But I try to show both sides of the political fence in my assignments–not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it’s planting seeds.

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  22. There are homosexuals who, when they plan to “come out”, all their friends have to gather behind their backs in order to conspire to act surprised. (“Look…we’ve all known for years, but this is a big deal for him…pretend like he’s throwing you a birthday party…he was never any good at keeping those a secret, either.”)

    That’s sort of how it felt, to your fans, when you stopped “hiding” your politics.

    It’s been a while now, you may as well know. :)

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      1. They probably just think you’re pandering to your ignorant fans. After all, they couldn’t have been mistaken about you for all that time.

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  23. You have given me a home. I do not have a poker face. And I do not discuss Politics with either of my daughters in Law, though one is a true conservative Democrat.

    I was in the local post office (California) while back when the lady in front of me turned around and said to me “You know we ought to shoot all those republicans, all they do is vote against stuff.” I assumed a puzzled face and asked, Wouldn’t depend what they were voting against?” She gave a shocked look turned around and didn’t speak to me again.

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  24. I can sympathize. Keeping my mouth shut during graduate school was hard. Higher ed is just … horrible.

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    1. I got (and am still) very good at the sympathetic “hmm . . . um huh . . . mmm . . . indeed.” I also tap-dance pretty well, especially while beating around the bush.

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        1. OK, mollusc, what were you doing behind the bushes when I was raking leaves out from under the [redacted] untrimmed pine trees at a small-town house of worship? Although it did give me the chance to observe to the preacher that “they also serve who only stand and rake.” Yes, I got a snowball slipped into my coat’s hood for that.

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            1. Mostly oak and cottonwood and maple leaves that had blown under the low branches of the pine trees, requiring someone short and stupid *cough* to creep back under the trees and remove said leaves. I’d have left them for mulch, but the folks at the church wanted them out, so out they came.

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  26. What I really don’t understand is how you find the time to write all the blogs you do and still find time to write novels. You must be an amazingly prolific writer. Producing as many words a day as you do takes talent.

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    1. Sigh. The only way to end the war on drugs is to some how convince the police departments to get rid of the most lucrative racket they’ve had since prohibition. Though the property seizure laws are patently unconstitutional, I doubt they are going away without a serious regime change. I suppose it could happen. Trouble is, I can more likely see a total regime change that totally keeps this tradition around because it’s cheaper to fund police departments that way.

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  27. The issue is that the fundamental conception of how we think about politics, positions, and political beliefs is wrong, and wrong from both conventional points of view.

    I’m not a conservative, and yet… I’m sure as hell not a liberal. I fall into some kind of netherworld, because I disagree utterly with both groups. Call me a member of the Pragmatist/Traditionalist Party, if you must. I believe in things that work, not some idealized set of conceptions that short-circuit rational thought.

    If I had to sit down and write out my political positions and my beliefs, the single biggest common denominator between all of them would be: Don’t change things for the sake of change, or without thoroughly thinking through and testing the likely effects of making this change.

    Everything else flows from there. Frankly, I’m all for draconian enforcement of the law, and having a lot fewer laws to enforce. Murder? Unprovoked violence against another? Capital crimes. Drug use, with no effect but on the user? Who gives a rip? Is what you put in your body my business? Do I want you telling me what to do?

    We’ve been holding an informal plebiscite in this country on drug use. Despite the denial flowing from the idiots in government and law enforcement, the sad fact is that the vast majority of the American public wants drugs to be available. In general, most people don’t have the animus against them to automatically turn in users or dealers, and the majority turn a blind eye to the trafficking going on around them. Despite all the efforts spent on this “War on Drugs”, there’s more quantity, of a higher quality, and better variety than when I was in high school over thirty years ago. Back then, I could have made a few phone calls, and had whatever I wanted within hours. Now? The same thing is true, and I’d probably get the stuff delivered. From what I can see there’s still a similar rate of addiction, and the same percentage of people who are using, and yet presenting as fully functional members of society.

    My pragmatic opinion? Legalize it all, and do it now. About all we’re really accomplishing is making a bunch of drug lords rich, distorting entire economies in South America, and writing off whole swathes of our civil rights. And, for what? I’m not seeing any material benefit or change to these things. Dopers gonna dope, straights gonna straight, and the whole thing just needs to go the hell away with the rest of the crap the meddlesome do-gooders dreamed up back at the turn of the Twentieth. We’ve written off Prohibition as a bad job, the obscenity laws are a dead letter, and I don’t see that things are any appreciable bit worse than they were.

    That’s how a pragmatist looks at things. If it doesn’t, or isn’t working, abandon it in favor of something that does work. Drugs? Tax ’em just enough to pay for what their abuse costs society, make laws that hold people responsible for their actions while misusing them, and call it good. It’s about all you’re going to be able to accomplish, anyway.

    In the same vein, I’d handle the controversy over gay marriage with similar pragmatism. First, what’s the supposed benefit this is supposed to provide society? What’s going to constitute a marker for whether or not it’s working to provide that benefit? Do enough people want this, for it to be the law of the land?

    With laws like this, I’d first tell the proponents that they needed to think out what they think the unchanged current law is preventing, and what changing it is supposed to do. Can’t articulate it? Go away, chuckles–You’re not really serious.

    Now, let us say that the argument for gay marriage is that its lack is preventing the formation of stable gay couples. The obverse argument might be that by allowing gay marriage, you’re tearing down the sanctity of traditional marriage, and the structure of traditional family structure will be destabilized. Now, the way I’d have this issue approached is this: State the issue, state the benefit, and let’s run a little experiment to see if the premise works out the way you say it does. Given that there are a bunch of states which would love to run the experiment, let that happen. Come back in thirty years, we’ll do an assessment to see if the law is working as intended, and if it is, then we’ll enshrine it in Federal law. If not, then it expires.

    My feeling is that with anything like this, we need to treat it empirically. You believe that your social change is good? Fine, let’s actually think it out, determine what we think the benefit is going to be, and we’ll try it out on a small scale in one of the states that volunteers to do it. If it works? Fine. If not, we leave the folks who tried it grandfathered, in the case of gay marriages engaged in during the test period, and we take the law off the books as a bad idea that didn’t work out as we thought it would be.

    You want to make changes? Fine. I’m all for change, but I’m not in favor of just willy-nilly changing for change’s sake. You had better show me it works, first, and that the benefit outweighs the costs.

    Were it I, this kind of approach would be applied on everything, from health care to tax policy. I want to know as much as possible about the unintended consequences of a new law in an already overly-complex system, and I want to be able to unwind the idiocy quickly if it doesn’t work.

    Obamacare should have been tried out in a state, first, and then scaled up if it worked as intended. You don’t make changes that massive to a system that’s in operation, without doing some smaller-scale tests. Engineers don’t do that with any complex system in the real world, and the idea that we’d try governing that way is absolutely ‘effin mind-boggling. Only an idiot or a Democrat would try something like that. It’s like trying to overhaul a damn V-8–While it’s running.

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    1. “. It’s like trying to overhaul a damn V-8–While it’s running.”

      I don’t know why that line made me think of this, but I’ll never forget when a friend had recently bought a Toyota 4-banger with an overhead cam, and he decided to adjust the valves… while it was running.

      Not sure how he managed to completely remove the valve cover before realizing what an overhead cam does, but I pulled in his driveway about the time he got the truck shut off. He had a nice racing stripe of oil from about brisket high right up his front to his hair, not to mention the stripe on the underside of the hood, the roof of the shop, and the far wall.

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      1. It’s an idea you’ll try, once, when you’re only mildly retarded. The truly stupid will try it again and again.

        Methinks the Democrats are about to have a most foul encounter with this bit of reality. We’ll have to see if they’re only mildly mentally disabled, or if they’re world-class stupid.

        My money is on an April-May moment when the less reality-challenged incumbent Democrats take a look at their poll numbers, realize that they’re ‘effin doomed, and start scheduling private meetings with the President. Who, if he doesn’t listen, is likely to see impeachment proceedings start from within his own party.

        The incumbency, which is really apolitical, is not going to chance living life out of office, and under a Congress that consists of insurrectionists who were elected to upend the status quo. Which is what we’re going to get next November if these idiots don’t get things working, and then fix the rest of the problems.

        Watergate was mostly a theoretical scandal, while this one reaches out into damn near everyone’s pockets. The likely recessionary effects alone are going to be massively unpopular. I’m already hearing clients cancel on projects we’ve been looking at, now that they’ve seen the chaos in the health care market. That, as they say, ain’t good.

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    2. You overlook the effect of civil asset forfeiture laws that the “drug war” provides to police departments and municipalities.

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      1. Something that’s likely to be taken away, very shortly.

        Cops and law enforcement administrators generally fail to appreciate that the laws don’t have to be enforce through them, and when they lose the trust of the public, odds are quite good that they’re going to find themselves out on their collective asses. You’re already seeing the first signs, as cities in California find they can’t afford the pension plans they set with union collusion, and the people in communities are finding that hiring their own private enforcement works better.

        If it doesn’t work, it’s going to change. Count on that. Here in America, if the public agency or politician manages to convince enough people that they aren’t doing the job, they’re going to be replaced.

        Whether it happens through pension overstretch, or whether it happens because the public no longer trusts the existing law enforcement structure with the power of life and death, things will change.

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  28. Humans are creatures of habit. After almost a year of being out politically, I have to wonder if you were merely out of practice at keeping your emotions off your face. For surely, the older and more secure in ourselves we grow, and the less we feel like hostages to the opion of others. .. The harder it is for us to put in all the effort to care enough to work at hiding our thoughts.

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