Month: April 2021

And here we go with IQ again, and how incredibly predictive it is for…. everything.

And here I go saying “Not that you can see it in reality. And anyway, who do you trust?”

Look, it’s not that you know you’re “smarter” than most people. If you’re a regular on this blog, this feeling has been with you forever. It’s more “what does ‘smarter’ mean?”

Most of us on this blog think faster, more accurately, or at least have more tendency to be correct in our analysis (not always. I giggled at the quote Mary put in about the thinking man and the feeling man. As though we’re only one of those. Humans are both, and there are thoughts we can’t think without disintegrating. Different for everyone, of course, but the most addled human is intellectually right sometimes, and the most thoughtful will be wrong. It’s what humans are, right?)

We’ve known — partly because of public schooling, which — btw — has introduced a bunch of distortions into human thinking and civilization some of which worry me greatly, because …. well, sometimes there isn’t a RIGHT answer; there is no way to do the “work right and succeed” in about 90% of life; and heck, no someone more educated and older than you doesn’t always have the “right” answer. I suspect that’s the origin of “trust person in charge” in our psyches. Or at least it has been reinforced. But that’s a whole post, and that’s not this post — anyway, we’ve known since we entered school that we were faster, more creative, more capable than our classmates. (As kids, this probably also had to do with our nervous system developing, not more rapidly but weirdly. So we had capabilities our classmates didn’t have.)

Some of us didn’t have to learn to study until some ridiculous level of education, like college. I did have to learn SOME study skills in 8th grade because they put me in something that was like a proto IB. I later on found out I had more than Freshman-in-college knowledge of math, physics, chemistry and … well, everything we studied which was a lot. This was inflected on two forms, not the entire class. But to stay afloat I had to learn to study. The amount of things they poured into our heads those 2 years saw me through the second year of college IN MY SPECIALTY. To this day I don’t know if the experiment was to see how much you could teach gifted kids, or an attempt to make troublemakers drop out. The one thing I’ll tell you is that my “form” (that’s how you study in Europe, 20 some, or in our case 32 people who go through every class together) and our rival form had all been the best students in their previous forms, forever. Oh, and also that we were all born trouble makers. How much trouble makers? Well…. We broke up sponsored demonstrations (in solidarity with communists in Africa. I wish I were joking.) And we once hacked the electrical system of the school. And other things. Most of them stupid and harmless.

But after that I didn’t really need to study till I hit post-grad levels.

And I don’t think I ever actually stressed at an intellectual task until I had to write a novel in two weeks. And then I realized it was easier — but that’s another story.

So, it’s normal of course for most of us to value IQ — a lot of us do really well at it, and we know we’re smart and capable, so of course we do — but it’s also important to realize how weirdly it fits into patterns of success and failure. And its limitations, as the limitations of EVERYTHING THAT MEASURES HUMANS.

(*A good place as any to say that “Man” above stands for “Human” but “Human” does not sound as good as “Man” and that by ancient and accepted linguistic tradition of our people (though not of all people’s there are languages in which the words used for humans are all sex-neutral. Humans are weird) “Man” stands for all humans. Don’t like it? Too bad, so sad. After bullshit like womyn and latinx and other linguistic abominations, I am done. Not an inch. You’re not going to achieve any kind of equality of women — and why would women want to be equal, anyway? And to whom? — by raping language. You’re just going to achieve a bastardization of concepts. Shut up. Adults are talking. They’re not at home to the tantrums of people who don’t understand symbolism and that symbols aren’t the thing.)

There is a joke — oh, heavens, I HOPE it’s a joke — in Portuguese that goes something like “Could you eat a whole cow?” to which the answer is “Only with a lot of bread to push it down.”

You know, I’m not sure it’s a joke. Like many cultures recently out of agrarian subsistence, Portuguese EAT. Older son says that oncologic patients who have trouble gaining/retaining weight on chemo should be sent on a gastronomic tour of Portugal. You gain weight. you can’t help it.

(Though I’m not sure about that, even. In fact, Portuguese eat on average ten times what we do, and don’t gain weight. No, there is no other way to explain it. These days most of them don’t walk/exercise more than we do. I have a theory. It’s a stupid theory, but it fits facts, like I gained 30lbs in my exchange student year, and couldn’t lose them till I went back to Portugal. I lose weight whenever I go there, even though all we do is sit around and feed our faces. BUT I don’t lose weight if we take the kids and I spend most time speaking English. My theory is that English speaking makes you gain weight. I told you it was stupid, but it fits the available facts.)

One of the tragic things of Portuguese feasts, mostly weddings, the time comes where even with only getting one bite per course, you stop being unable to eat anymore. At this point, people eat bread, to push it down. And then they eat more.

I’ve tried it, it works. Now, does it work because I grew up in the culture and expect it? I don’t know. Does it work because it’s a certain type/composition of bread? I don’t know. Does it work because there’s some magic to Portuguese bread? I don’t know.

Can a Portuguese eat a whole cow? I don’t know. Logically it’s impossible. There simply isn’t enough room. But eat a whole cow over how long a period, and how prepared? And what if he can?

So–

Measuring humans is hard. Oh, you can probably get inches of height and girth right, maybe. And perhaps weight. Unless you’re dealing with young son who has the magical ability of hiding three inches, somehow, so his measurements diverge over 3 inches depending on the day. And as for weight, sure you can measure that. But try translating that to “prescription” and you go seriously arry. When I was young, and you could count every rib THROUGH MY CLOTHES, I weighed 129 lbs. I once dipped to 110 after pneumonia, and I looked ILL. All the charts at the time said my weight should be TOPS 107 lbs. And my classmates my height (not many) ranged between 90 and 107. It might help that dentists and anyone who has occasion to examine my bones for density say my bones are basically dense as granite, even now that I’m menopausal. (We get that from dad’s side. Mom was osteoporotic pre-menopause.)

And this is why the Feds have been wrong every time — assuming humans are widgets — they make prescriptions for what you can eat, how much you should weigh and what you should do about…. anything.

Because it’s hard to measure humans, and the more abstract the measurement, the harder it gets.

For instance, take the nonsense about eating a pound of meat a month, or whatever the heck the Junta has dreamed up.

It will work for some people. I know many, very skinny/healthy people who eat like humming birds: all sugar and carbs. For a lot of us it will be florid disaster and probably kill us.

Heck, I have to be extremely careful with fold meds and supplements. Remember when one of the doctors who comments here recommended ginger to tamp down my auto-immune. I remember because I came across the jar of ginger capsules the other day. I took it for a week and then had to go on prednisone for two weeks, before I died or something, because there was no part of my body with no eczema, I couldn’t breathe, and every joint felt like it was full of ground glass. Now, I eat (and love) Chinese food. But it was the quantity, I think.

Humans are not one-size fits all. We never were. We never will be.

This is mostly forgotten by those who think instructions from above is how everyone should live. Oh, yeah, and btw, I HAD a laugh when people gave me books like “raising the strong willed child” because none of their prescriptions worked on mine. And heck, what worked on older son would not work on younger. Also they weren’t strong willed. They were stubborn. And they reacted badly to attempted manipulation. (They were also fun, but that’s something else.)

The most abstract what you’re trying to measure is, the more you’ll have to fudge, and the less able you are to figure out exact measurements. Throw in things like despotic governments with a vested interest, or leftist governments also with a vested interest, and what you have is a dog’s breakfast of insanity that doesn’t reflect much of anything except the inside of some dreamer’s head.

Heck, we can’t tell what the worldwide population is, or how many widgets are made in x city. But you think we can trust how smart people are in this or that country? And that they’re smart by our definition of “smart”? Ah. Hey, do you happen to be interested in a bridge in Brooklyn? My cousin got it off a guy for a dollar and I’ll sell it to you, today only, for $1000. It’s a bargain, but I need the money to buy books.

So what am I saying? Don’t we have some idea of how smart people are?

Well, no. Worldwide we don’t. Individually and for those we interact with, we usually do.

I’ll confess when I was very young I thought that each human’s intelligence was infinite. That we could do anything, be anything, each of us a renaissance-man/woman.

Ah.

Yes, I was a lunatic and should have known better. I knew very well I had hard limitations. Like, despite the fact that rope-jumping or “the elastic game” (Where you jump, touching or not touching an elastic stretched between two people, and create increasingly elaborate jump-patterns) being essential to social standing growing up, I simply couldn’t do it. Stupid kids could. …. EVERYONE could. But me. It was a relief when I found that neither dad nor brother, nor dad’s mom could ever master even the simplest form of rope jumping or riding a bicycle. All of which, of course, argues for it being genetic. (I now know it runs with the lowest “hit” of autism, which is just sensory/spacial/movement issues.)

I also had trouble coloring within the lines, or doing any craft that required small-movement coordination till my late teens.

So I knew there were hard limits on what I could do, and no amount of trying or effort would fix it. But intellectual effort always paid off and you could learn and do and be anything.

Ah! Pull the other one. It plays jinglebells.

But the thing is I didn’t even realize my own limits until my thirties, and then it was often conditional. Like, I could only do so many things in the day while raising two kids and my husband working 15 to 16 hour days. Or I could only draw/write so well with no time to practice. After I hit my head and got severe concussion, I found limits to what I could remember. I often run into things I’ve forgotten which is amazing, because it never happened before.

Since indie came about, I’ve found I don’t THINK visually. The best way to drive me to incoherence is to make me deal with a MAC interface, which is designed for visual people. And dang it all, some of the self-publishing platforms require visual thinking, too. I usually wait for younger son to be free and make him do it.

BTW this means I can do things like draw or sculpt, but I have to do it/make the error/try again. Takes longer. Which is a problem when you’re busy.

Anyway, the point is, I know I have limits, some of them hard like “My mind just doesn’t “bend” that way.” Some of them “that would take so long I could never do it.” And some of them because there’s a flaw in the brain, which is why I am dyslexic and also transpose digits. Oh, and this thing people can do where they tell which direction they’re facing? Must be magic. Never even came near it.

And I know other people have limits. And that some aren’t the same as mine. This is the biggest issue, btw. Everyone assumes that what they do easily can be done easily. But we’re all very different. And educating kids is heck, btw, because you can’t always tell when they’re being lazy and when they “can’t.” Even your kids can be very different from you in what comes naturally.

I think the biggest strife in my marriage was realizing that. Heck, Dan didn’t realize I didn’t move dishes around the cupboards to mess with him, but because I genuinely didn’t remember where they went. Which brings up another thing: culture. Mom had magically moving dish cupboards. Not drastic, but cups could be in one of three places. So I never thought dishes had to be in ONE place. So–

I mean sure, okay, nowadays my dishes still move, but very slowly and usually the less used ones. Like the collander is in one of five places…..

Again that brings us to another thing when we try to measure people: what did they learn growing up?

Sure, Africa is mired in tribalism. But is that because they aren’t “smart” or is it because tribalism is stunningly successful for pre-industrial societies, and they haven’t been industrial that long (or most places at all?)

Historically, it is eschewing tribalism that is weird. And assuming it is an advantage might be …. premature. After all substituting tribe and tradition with government and state caused the long wars of the twentieth century. And might swallow civilization.

Sure, we are stunningly successful at feeding and making the world wealthy. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m a fan of western civilization and free trade.

But …. But that also means we’re very different from every other polity which makes evaluating them almost impossible. And as for evaluating individuals who are part of them? Forget about it.

Also when measuring Africa, kindly remember we’ve been screwing with them from when we landed, and that some of the worst ravages were done with good intentions, like submerging them in our cheap goods and food, which killed their local production, or taking their brightest young people into our universities, teaching them victimhood and socialism, and then sending them back home.

More germane is that — like people eating a whole cow — humans are stunningly adaptable, and it’s very hard to take acquired-habits and tell if they’re natural or not.

Sure, traits that correlate with IQ are genetic. We know that from animals, though it’s not allowed to be studied in humans. Traits like conscientiousness and application surely affect learning and therefore IQ.

But humans aren’t just brains floating in space.

For instance, and for a strange example: Portugal is a stunningly ADD country. One of the kids said that on a visit, and suddenly I saw it. Fads sweep through it faster and more crazily than through Hollywood, and are then forgotten never to return. It’s considered normal to be obsessive about “new thing” (which can be a book, a song, or a project) and then move on, never having finished and forget all about it. It’s considered impossible to remember to put in PUNCTUATION with any regularity when writing a book (one of the funniest things was my family’s shock that I don’t “have someone” whose job is to punctuate my writing.) Things like building or writing or making something the same way twice are considered beyond the ken of man.

I’ll mention that even for Portugal I was considered too absent minded for words. And both the kids and I are ADD and at times ADD AF. But is it culture or genetics?

I don’t know. I suspect in our case it’s a bunch of genetics, but my having been raised in the culture can’t have helped. And frankly the culture was probably shaped by the genetics. So, there you go.

We know that it’s possible to change someone’s culture (with extreme difficulty, granted) and that people who come from dysfunctional cultures can have highly functional kids in the west. But we can’t tell where it all links up.

Humans are very difficult to measure.

Sure, we all have limits, but our limits might not be immediately obvious. As Bob pointed out — and most people who study the brain agree — there are impairments that come the higher you go in IQ. And some of them are neurological (the sensory thing seems to be one of them, btw. At least it seems to be); and some of them are because our society reveres intelligence and therefore, when you know you are smart you think you can do anything and it takes years to find out you can’t do some things; and some of them are because you don’t exactly understand other people, and they don’t precisely understand you.

So, very, very smart people aren’t stunningly successful because they often socially miscue. The world was built for people who are just slightly smarter than normal. Slightly enough that normal people instinctively think “very smart” instead of “he’s crazy, get the torches and pitchforks” which is what they tend to think of someone very far off-normal.

Of course, some very smart people learn to imitate normal humans to a high degree of perfection. (I used to be able to do it, I did. Then my giveadamn broke.)

And in the end the truly exceptional rarely have much to do with the development of the future. Because, well– It’s not our future. We’re not normal humans. The world wasn’t designed by or for us.

And Foxfier notwithstanding, (Well done, that Fox. We have great hopes for the kits.) we usually make less of a genetic contribution to the future, too. If at all. Don’t believe me? Look up the exceptional people of the past. Not the warriors, but the intellectual ancestors of the west. If Shakespeare left any descendants who are still around with us, they’re illegitimate and never recorded. DaVinci? Well, ditto, if he felt experimental once in a while. Though probably not, he’d have recorded it, somehow.

So does IQ measure something? Sure. It measures a tightly focused grouping of abilities and tendencies which correlate well to academic success….. uh, unless it’s too high, because teachers are human and humans are social apes.

But you really can’t trust it if it’s measured by people with vested interests. And almost everyone has vested interests.

And even if you are an ATH reader, which seems to be a free-form method of IQ measuring, well…. you know better than anyone that it doesn’t correlate with material success. Some of us do okay. Better than we deserve given how scattered we are. But you know…. it’s not exceptional success.

Now would we trade who we are?

Well, given the amount of fun I can have with an internet search or a bunch of very old books, no. But then again I value that kind of fun, I value what I can find in that, because I’m me.

BTW the easiest way to punish me is to force me to be very bored. My parents never discovered time-out (thank heavens. It would have broken me) which is why mom says I’m so stubborn I’d rather break than bend, and that no one yet found a way to make obey.

I like — perhaps need — to verify, learn, do, learn new ways of doing things, discover new things to do. It’s part of who I am. Is it better or worse than the conscientious craftsman who can do the same thing time after time with a great degree of perfection? Depends on the thing, right?

Which is why IQ in the end isn’t highly relevant for humanity. It is highly relevant for an individual human — supposing you know that IQ was well-tested — in terms of figuring out his or her inclinations, interests, blind spots, and the way in which they’ll succeed or not. (Also the way to punish him/her.)

But that’s it.

Because you can’t measure humans. And the persist insanity of believing you can and that you can then force them into the pattern you want, has caused more mass graves than anything else in history. If nothing else, because it’s a major component of the statist philosophies of the 20th century, both of which measured humans and then decreed their death, in batch lots, by the numbers.

True liberty, true civilization begins when you accept humans aren’t widgets. And letting each human find that they can do and be the most productive they can at it.

This is best for families, for couples and for society in general.

Now stop staring at me, and go do your stuff.

Okay, guys. So yesterday that post was…. epic. And really hard to write.
So, today I’m sort of taking the day off.
Post links to anything you want me to see.
And if you can post funny/interesting links.
Or tell me how you’re coping, and what you’re doing to get by.

Because I’m not going to lie, it’s tough right now.

I’m going to try to do some writing. You have the con.

Yesterday I came across an opinion by Michael Yon that violence has already started, this month. I don’t know what he’s referring to specifically, because I’d either put it at a year ago, or perhaps further back. But then I’m not plugged into his networks.

He does see civil war coming, inescapably, and like me he puts the conflagration very close.

Okay, it’s …. right. Like this: I perhaps don’t see it as close as it sounds. Yes, there’s been a ramping up of violence, largely on purpose, because the idiot left thinks they can scare us and cow us into letting them rule “forever.” Those are…. what I’d call the phase of “causes leading up to” I expect that in June (July at the latest) if you’ve read Pratchett’s Night Watch, we’ll get our Morphic Street Conspiracy and our Dolly sisters’ riot. No, the January 6th event wasn’t either of those, though the media and the left (But I repeat myself) has tried to paint it as such. But there will be at least two eruptions, real ones, that will be put down very rapidly.

And if I’m right, what is going to shock, surprise and send the MSM and the Marxists (BIRM) scrambling and foaming at the mouth is that they’re not going to get the buy in from the right that occurred right after they demonized the January 6th demonstrations. And I want to point out right here, that as bad as they painted those, if you’re on the right and you fell for the “must condemn” you might want to revise that tout de suite. You might also want to learn not to be a patsy in the future.

This dance, of the right has something bad attributed to them (mostly lies, or actions definitely not of the “right” in any sense of the word) and all the prominent figures on the right rush to condemn it is how we got to where we are. It is one of the things that is now pushing us to open civil war. Actually, multiple civil wars, worldwide.

Anyway, given how fast the Jan 6th narrative has fallen apart — and no, don’t assume your neighbor, or the guy at your work buys what the MSM is selling. Again, I say onto you, if people were actually buying it, instead of just mouthing the words because it’s safe, they wouldn’t have needed to fraud in pain view on election night — my guess is the next two people will not even mouth the words. People don’t like being patsies.

This, incidentally, is why the criminal media is trying to dox people who donated as much as $10 to the Kyle Rittenshouse defense fund, why they are keeping demonstrators from Jan 6th in solitary confinement, and why they are generally acting like crazed tyrants on steroids.

It won’t work. Sure, they will inflict a lot of pain and damage, but it won’t work long term.

Part of the reason this post is late is that I woke up early, to a snow storm, and I lay in bed thinking through something.

Last night, before going to bed, and I can’t remember where, anymore, I came across a post saying that France is on the verge of a civil war, as well.

Look, France has been unstable since the French revolution, and is several, weird kinds of political colors, so it doesn’t translate directly to us, okay? But we’ve seen the burning, the looking, the throwing of Smart cars at the Arc du Triomphe with catapults, and I’m told that while a lot of these have been put down, it has done nothing to cure the fundamental unrest.

In fact, the only thing that worked to some extent to stop the riots is the covidiocy lockdowns. And if you’re saying “things that make you go um….” you won’t be wrong precisely.

Anyway, the reason I lay in bed trying to work it out is this: I assumed I knew the reason for our turmoil and ferment, and why we’re in fact on the verge of …. well, the Morphic Street Conspiracy, with the rest of it to come shortly thereafter.

I thought it was the passing of the “mass everything.” In a way the “Mass media/mass communication/mass production/mass entertainment” was the culmination of an era, in which it it was just so much cheaper to produce things in quantities. So people did. And the world changed to accommodate it.

This was made easier by the European long war. To what extent the transition itself caused the long wars, I leave to people with more time and more caffeine in their veins to figure out. I will say, though, that mass media helped the rise of the Hitler regime, and a monopoly over communications helped them sell the big lie.

I presumed the reason everything is upside down, sideways and sometimes tiltawhirl is that in the US this has transitioned to the “indie” era. Economies realized by the ability to communicate from private person to mass audience, or to manufacture highly personalized merchandise fast and cheap (this is yet at its beginning, but then so was mass everything when the long war started) is upending a picture of the world and a system of ideas that to most of us who grew up with it is “just the way things are.” (Seriously. We think in clothing sizes. Having been born and raised in a village where those were an innovation in the 70s, I see perhaps more clearly how bizarre this is. (Though I still do it.) And we miss stuff like “It introduced the idea of normal sizes” (Something I’m very conscious of since in Portugal, for my generation, I was “too big and too fat” at 5’6″ and wearing a size 7. They just didn’t make my size. It was abnormal.))

The cognitive dissonance of changing society wide systems usually results in revolution and violence. So, I assumed that’s what it was.

And maybe it is, except for one thing: I have a feeling in my water this isn’t going to be just our civil war. Or the French civil war. This is going to be worldwide, all at once, and — well, if you’re not setting aside food, fabric (a few patterns wouldn’t hurt. Even a monkey can sew clothes with a pattern. Though you can use an old piece that fits you well) and other possible necessities for five years or so, do it, now — very very disruptive, very very bad.

But Europe is far behind us in the Indie revolution. Notably, they’re far, far behind us in blogs and new media. For reasons (and I could speculate but I won’t) those things are mostly in the anglosphere.

So, what gives?

I think I know, but to understand it fully, you have to see it from the other side. It’s not that the conditions have changed for the people on the street — or rather they have, but by fiat — it’s that the structural elites, those with power in government, communication, etc can’t STOP PUSHING. And that the more they push, the more it becomes obvious they’ve become divorced from reality.

Take the covidiocy. A world wide lockdown because “it seemed to have worked in China” (not a reliable reporter) really? I said then, if people don’t see bodies piled in the streets by the end of this, authorities are going to be in real trouble.

From the beginning, my generation was the first to wake up. (Though for a while there, I felt like the writer crying in the forest, who just wasn’t heard.) And follow along why: because we have been through so many doomsday. Though never one that called for this kind of destruction and infringement as an attempt at mitigation.

I mean, I’ve listed them once, and I can’t list them all without forgetting half a dozen, just in my life time: ice age, nuclear destruction, alar, loss of all potable water, global warmng…. it just goes on and on and on.

In the early days of the “pandemic” and before widespread mask mandates, I would see people my age barefaced, and the young kids masked up and looking terrified.

This is not their fault. The left took over the education and those who haven’t gotten very far from it, don’t know how many times their predictions have failed. So of course they were terrified.

However…. There are no corpses on the streets. And even in locked-up Colorado, people are starting to be mostly just really angry at the deception perpetrated on them.

Now, I have this theory the reason the lockdown was embraced with such alacrity, other than of course that a lot of Western leaders are in China’s pay, is that the left saw it as a way to stop the revolution against them. Only approve riots! Everyone else locked up!

They never think things through, you know?

Not only did they mostly scare their own followers out of their minds (what minds they have) but they provided a really big demonstration, even for the kids, of the fact that they’re head-up-ass crazy. That the things they confidently predict not only never work, but make things way worse.

And right now they’re hitting that point again, where they can’t understand why “it” for any given definition of “it” isn’t working.

In the States, they’re becoming alarmed people don’t want to take the vaccine. I actually have a theory why this alarms them, and it’s part of my reason not to get the shot: you see, this was their plan for dismount. Get everyone vaccinated, and after a few months declare they “won” with no questions asked about how bad it would be otherwise.

Except…. it’s not working. And they’re running around like chickens with their heads cut off, acting increasingly more like lunatics in public.

I don’t know what’s — really — happening in other countries, because their media is still controlled by the global left. But the rumblings I get? Whatever is happening, the global Marxist monster is scared. Really scared. And letting its inner bully out to stomp in an attempt to “get power forever.”

But it won’t happen. What we’re seeing is a philosophy that went up its own ass so far that it’s forgotten where reality is.

Marxism in a way was custom made for the “mass everything era.” If you only had a few major sources of information and they sang in the choir, of course you were going to believe them. A lot of what we think we know about the history of the 20th century is therefore Bushwah. Though in the states that is breaking with things like The Forgotten Man.

I often say that if Obama had got power in the eighties, we’d consider him one of our great presidents. Because that’s all you’d ever hear. From everywhere.

As is…. Even their attempt to portray Reagan as really bad for history never “took” and their demonization attempts since just keep falling apart.

But more importantly…. It’s the philosophy.

The left very rapidly captured all the centers of power and mass everything, and started pushing their theories will all their might.

The problem is Marxism isn’t functional to any degree — that’s number one. You can’t run a society on Marxism, unless someone else if feeding you, or you have a world you can plunder — and also that, like its ancestor, the French Revolution, it requires a permanent state of “struggle” against “injustice” by the “oppressed.” So you must find things to topple, and step further and further out on the limb of your theory.

Which is why, as all predictions fail, Marxists find themselves defending things like “you can print money forever, it doesn’t affect anything” or “You can change reality if you believe it’s different.”

And the problem is because they have captured the centers of information that they, themselves listen to and believe, they are completely unaware that the rest of us are looking at reality and going “you’re out of your minds.”

Things like the failure of appeal of their mass entertainment should sound an alarm, and it does, they just can’t figure out why. Because the “class in power” is truly insular and incestuous. They went to the same schools, studied the same (false) information, follow the same fashions, listen to the same “information” and “entertainment” and vacation in the same spots — worldwide. To them, they ARE the world. And they don’t get that from the interior of America to Europe besieged by foreign cultures that don’t even pretend to adapt, and unable to afford to live where their ancestors did, people are looking at their predictions and their actions and going “Well, it doesn’t work that way.”

Reality has a way of breaking through. The elite, however, have insulated themselves from reality so well they’re the court dancing while outside the sullen peasants gather, pitchforks in hand. They know something is wrong. They know they’re not working the way they should. But they can’t understand WHY, and they’re sure just a little more of that good ol’ repression and stomping will fix things forever.

And part of this is that since the USSR (itself not a western power) fell they have had China as their beau ideal. Which means they’re now convinced what works in China — or what China SAYS works. Yes, they believe China. They’re dumb that way — will work here in the same way. So, you know, lockdowns and orders to unperson those who oppose you.

They have no idea.

We’re almost at Morphic Street Conspiracy O’Clock. …. everywhere.

There’s going to be a brief and horrific convulsion. How brief? How horrific? I don’t know. I keep getting “brief” but seriously, in revolution/war terms two years are brief. So are five years. For the record I don’t think it will be as long as five years. Maybe less than two years. I don’t know. Once the ball starts rolling so many things will break, it’s hard to tell.

And keep in mind the “brief” is for the US. In the rest of the world this might be playing out for a generation.

As for horrific? VERY.

Yes, I think the US will unfuck itself faster. Followed by Europe for values of “unfuck.” This is not chauvinism, but the fact we are much younger, in population than the US. And yes, I do realize that at least allegedly we’re not as young as Africa or the Middle East. But beyond the fact that we can’t trust statistics, there is the inevitable theorem that it’s harder to unfuck yourself when you’ve never been in an unfucked state.

I do expect we’ll return to functioning (for values of functioning) society within two or three years. I mean, by that, to the place where you can find most of your necessities reliably, at least at a local level.

Europe…. Well, it’s going to be interesting. And I won’t exclude the idea that they’ll just get right back to where they were when we intervened in their long war.

The third world…. oh, boy. There the horrific is going to result in millions of dead.

And frankly, just about everywhere will be worse than the US outside major cities. I can feel it.

If you’re in a major city and I like you, I beg you, with tears in my eyes to get out as soon as you can (and yes, we’re working on it.) Some neighborhoods and places will be safe-ish, but in the US the brunt of the horrific will be in big cities, because that’s what the left thinks MATTERS and where they’ll concentrate their effort.

Forgive me for corporate speak from the nineties, but in this case it applies: their paradigm is broken and they can’t see it because they’ve done everything possible to insulate themselves from input coming from outside the paradigm.

When this happens and the people of the dead paradigm still have some power, the result is kind of like when you fill a container with gasoline, then drop a match in. It’s best to be in the places they think don’t matter.

Other than that: well, you don’t know how interconnected the world supply chains are, until they break. These last two years have been a lesson and no mistake. When I say we’ll unfuck ourselves relatively fast, it doesn’t mean we’ll reverse disastrous globalization in an eye blink. We won’t.

Try to have the things you think you’ll need for five-ten years. That includes newish computers (the silicon crisis is real) perhaps more expensive than you’re used to buying, and raw materials for what you’ll need, from fabric to…. I don’t know. Probably not clay. But now might be a bad time to downsize and get rid of that “for company” dish set, depending on your rate of breakage of the everyday one. Lay by paper, too. If we start getting electricity brownouts and blackouts, having stuff you want to keep printed might help.

Food. I don’t need to say it. I think I have maybe enough for a year and a half, though at the end our diet would be mighty strange. But we’re already hearing screams of food supply failure. (I want to get us moved, and start laying in more food. The delays and set backs are driving me nuts.)

And what about the stupid laws proscribing wrong thinkers? For now? Nothing. If you’re hidden and submerged stay that way. Look at it this way: if the people who hid Jews in their attics had come out early to defend them, they too would be in the camps and unable to help. We’re already past the point where “a brave stand” will help. The left knows they’re losing. They can’t understand why, but they know they’re losing, and they’re angry and murderous because of it. And they won’t let go, until it all explodes in their faces. So if you are hidden, stay thus, and get ready to hide people in your metaphorical attic. Because those like me who are exposed, if they have a good bit of luck, just might manage to make it there.

Just prepare, prepare as hard as you can.

You’ll be blindsided. We all will be. Seriously. Books that go through this lie. It’s always more complex and more difficult than you can imagine, and you will be caught off guard.

If you’re lucky, the things you’re caught in won’t kill you.

If we’re all lucky we’ll come out the other side alive and well, most of us. Which is good, because we’ll be needed if we want future generations to grow up under a constitutional republic.

The rest of the world? Foggedaboutit. Not a chance. They’re going to try to crawl back to pre-English enlightenment. Some areas will manage it, too.

For us? I don’t know. There is a chance. Honestly. A chance is all we can ask for.

So, let’s survive and be ready to push the odds. Because the destruction will be everywhere. But the re-building must begin in America.

Come On, Take It, a blast from the past from January 2014

Yesterday, on a private forum a friend of mine who here will go under the name Sam Anderson said the following:

Patriotism is good. Nationalism through a patriotic lens, seeing your country as worthwhile, as having prospects and things to be proud of, is not only acceptable but necessary for the health of any nation. But MOST especially the United States, because it’s one thing for the French to be ashamed of being French, but at the end of the day, they’re still going to be French. France is established on ethnic and historical foundations, and even if the French think they suck, there can still be citizens of France. Just not very long, since self-loathing aligns you, first metaphorically, then inevitably in practice, with enemies who ALSO loathe you.

But an American just CAN’T believe in nothing, CAN’T reject the philosophy underpinning America, and be one. Philosophy IS America. There’s nothing else to base it on, and there’s no “philosophy on the side” option. There’s no “shared values” or that bullshit. There’s a piece of paper that lays out precisely how the government functions, tells it what it doesn’t get to do, and tells YOU to go shift for yourself. Now yeah, maybe you can quibble with a point or two of it. Lots of people did then, too. But people who reject, wholesale, that that makes sense as the foundation of a country- who complain about negative rights, who call the constitution outdated- de facto, aren’t American, the same way you couldn’t be a Catholic but not believe in G*d. Aphilosophical American is a contradiction in terms. The most they can do is live somewhere between Mexico and Canada. We’ve got a lot of that kind of “American”.

But nationalism is only a problem when it starts to supersede rather than represent a people. The American people, left mostly to their own devices, with most of their own money and most of their own time, even if they only SORT OF try to adhere to their founding principles, can turn the world upside down. It’s not because of any particular genetic, ethnographic, economic, or so on reason. You could do it with anyone… they’d just have to agree to the challenging but rewarding terms of freedom, which historically much of humanity would rather trade for security. But America, the national body- the government bureaucrats meant to represent the people, who increasingly act in contravention of same- that America cannot find its ass with both hands. It’s just the resurgence of a far inferior product coming back under a much more successful and respected brand.

One of the lines you can draw between right and left is, when a conservative roots for America, they mean the individual entrepreneurs, athletes, artists, and scholars- the millions of little people who even now, every so often, by the grace of determination, judicious risk taking, and hard work, manage to do a few really big things. When a liberal roots for “America”, they back the bully-boys in the government with the private jets… the big institutions that nevertheless manage routinely to fuck up thousands of little things.

THAT’S the form of nationalism that’s toxic.

Let’s go back to what Sam said “Philosophy IS America.”  If you don’t believe in the founding principles, you’re not an American.  You’re at best a permanent resident who grew up here and behaves generally within the law.

We’re a volitional citizenship.  Yes, if you were born here, you are LEGALLY an American.  You can legally be a lot of things that you’re not even close to being in reality.  Take all the college people running around screaming they want to be protected from micro-micro aggressions.  They are legally adults.

My younger kid is also legally an adult, and although closer to an adult than most of the micro-aggressed, he still lives at home and has never had to provide for his daily upkeep.  He’s a legal adult, but not an adult like say any of you who have to work for a living.  (We let him only because he’s taking two stem degrees concurrently and not taking accommodations for his sensory issues.)

Do I think it was a mistake of the founders to allow citizenship of birth in a nation of volition?  You bet your beepy I do.  They got so much right, though, and they were only human.  They couldn’t believe anyone born here, enjoying the blessings of liberty could possibly wish to believe that a system where “we belong to the government” is better.

They were wrong.  In a way, again, understandable, since they’d given their life, their fortunes, their sacred honor for this endeavor and many lost it.  (Read a book called Signing their lives away, if you haven’t yet.)  On the other hand, not understandable, since they knew how revolutionary their system was.  Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness?  You must be mad.  The government as a servant to the sovereign citizen?  Cooee, what world do you come from?  Separation of powers to make it difficult to “get things done”?  Mister, you must be one of them escapees from the asylum.

And yet — and yet — some of us are very much citizens of the volitional nation.  We embrace the vision of the founders, we work to protect the constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic.  We took an oath, and we keep it.

Come on.  Go ahead and take it.  Take it by yourself in the privacy of your heart; take it with your family; take it with a co-worker. Re-take it if you already did it. And mean it now more than ever.
Go on and take it!

Take the oath.  Then keep it.

“I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen [or a moonstruck admirer for those on the right and left who think those people abroad have a better idea- sah]; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.”

I linked this at instapundit some time ago. But from the fact that a friend sent me this link today, I presume it’s not widely known. The link I put at instapundit was from American Thinker. And for once their title was the most accurate thing ever: Executive Order Canceling the Constitution.

If you’re wondering how that is possible, wonder no more. You know how our government freezes assets of enemy governments? Like Iran’s assets that the FICUS is dying to unfreeze ASAP?

Well, the veneer-thin coat of legality on this bullshit relates to that. At the same time that Dementia Joe and The Commie Ho are giving money and actual nuclear tech to declared enemies of the US, they are declaring US citizens who so much as dare talk against them as enemy collaborators and traitors. And because they’re owned by China (though anyone who thinks that stopping fracking and the keystone pipeline is not a big sloppy kiss to Putin needs their heads examined. It’s in fact the kiss of life, since the only thing Russians have worth anything is oil and they were in deep trouble before China stooges stole our elections) they are of course doing it by screaming Russia, Russia Russia!

Contrary to its title, this EO is not about Russia. It is designed to allow the Biden administration to deprive American citizens and organizations of their rights and property by arbitrarily linking those persons to real, imagined, or vaguely defined activities of the Russian government.

The Biden administration unilaterally makes the determination and requires neither criminal acts nor intent. The punishment is blocking assets and a prohibition on any dealing with the accused person. Spouses and adult children of individuals found guilty by accusation under this EO are punished, too.

The EO was preceded by some distracting maneuvers, both diplomatic (hostile rhetoric toward Russia) and military (sending naval ships toward the Black Sea and recalling them back, as if dealing with Russian threats). Thus, many people assumed that the EO was directed at Russia, and completely missed the fact that it is directed at dissent here, at home. 

Over the past four years, the Democrat Party, Fake News, and Big Tech have been frequently portraying their opponents as Russian trolls or Russian misinformation operators. The Russian collusion narrative, initially invented to overthrow the Trump administration, has been used to smear many conservative movements. Now this effort has been crowned by an Executive Order. 

All they have to do is make a list of those they consider to be Russian agents. The executive order itself says you can’t dispute your inclusion in this list.

(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

Oh, yeah, all your property will be impounded, and everyone is forbidden from doing business with you. On the say-so of corrupt agencies and people who have been lying to us for years.

And there’s nothing you can do, and anyone who helps you faces a similar fate.

This is completely fair, because on the FICUS say-so, you become an enemy of the state, and a Russian agent. Totes. Even if there’s no rational reason beyond “Russia ” (And more so China) have an interest in dissension in the US. But if this is the case, the Junta should immediately consider itself Russian agents. (They’re already China’s.)

This was signed on the 15th of April. Do you think there aren’t already things going on to make this work? Do you think that we’re not all already on that list?

Do you think it’s a coincidence you’ve not seen this bullshit anywhere? (And btw the link on top is to the government itself.)

Now, if they were sending goons to collect you, those of you who haven’t lost all your guns in a tragic boating accident would shoot, and it would be on like Donkey Kong.

But that’s not what will happen, and that’s why I’m writing this and asking everyone of you who has a blog and who knows they’re probably already on the list to share it. Or of course if you’re brave enough not to mind if you’re on the list. Note the “your spouse and adult children” too, which is intended to stop you doing anything, for the love of your kids.

I’ve seen this before. Very few people know that the “revolutionary” governments in Portugal froze bank accounts and assets of anyone who spoke out against them. One day you’d go to your bank to remove money, and you couldn’t. Your bank account was frozen as an enemy of the state.

Oh, you have a mortgage? Kids in school? Bills to pay? How terrible and sad it is that you are now functionally a pauper.

As for suddenly finding no one would give you a job, I never even figured out how word went out on that, and I don’t if anyone ever did.

Now, the times we’re living in? Will anyone notice a large number of people becoming suddenly unemployed, and/or having their house foreclosed upon? Help? Well, all they have to do is send a few people who look like government agents to your neighborhood and ask your neighbors (and friends, and associates) questions while strongly implied you’re a traitor working for a foreign power.

Your weapons? Well, then. Surely, you’ll sell them long before it comes time to …. well…. to starve I suppose.

Oh, but surely states will oppose this?

If it’s done the way it was in Portugal, most people won’t even be aware it is going on. Whatever the mechanisms are for flagging foreign enemies in the US — and they are there, and have been, from when our agencies were slightly less corrupt than they are now — will just be deployed, as they have always been, but against anyone who publicly and loudly disapproves of the Junta.

FYI that’s you and me. And anyone who believes in the Constitution and has made this clear in public at any time.

“But that’s a lot of people!”

Well, I imagine right now they’re going for “vocal”. It’s still a ton more people than they can get at gun point (where they can maybe get a 100 TV people and Trump ex-officials.)

And the thing is it will be done behind the scenes, quietly. Through extorsion, and cancelling and whisper campaigns, to discredit and destroy their enemies, and taint them with the label of foreign agents, all without a legal process or any sort of ability to confront their accusers.

At some point, they’ll “notice” the ten million or so new homeless, (hell, the opening of the borders might disguise this, rather neatly, too) and out of their “humane concern,” they’ll create places you can go and be housed and fed.

Do I need to tell you it’s a trap?

This is just a way to round up desperate people. It might also in the end be a way to get rid of the homeless, which rest assured they intend to, once they’re done using it to drive the country’s cities to shit.

Paranoid? Did you read that Executive Order? If not, go do it, I’ll wait.

Now will this be applied ruthlessly and efficiently? Guys, this lot couldn’t shoot a lame fish in a barrel. No, but it will be applied irregularly, annoyingly, and deployed as an instrument of terror to make a large number of people shut up and go along, for fear for their livelihood, their kids, their friends.

It will be, as what they’re already doing to the military and police, a shit show designed to cow people into silence and into fear of losing everything.

Will it work? Oh, for a while at least. I mean, it is working on our military and police.

In my case it puts me in a bit of a pickle, as I don’t like camping, and I’m not young enough to survive long out there. But that’s okay. Personal survival is desirable but not important.

Will it make the left win and rule forever and ever?
Snort. Giggle. They probably think so, but you’re not that stupid. Or at least I hope you aren’t.

These people can’t run the country. They can’t.

The big fatal flaw in their plans of destroying the US is that they can’t survive anywhere else. And they can’t survive in the US after they utterly destroy the economy.

I wrote this at insty yesterday, in this post:

I feel very much about this, as I felt about the early covidiocy, when I was screaming from the rooftops “look at the Diamond Princess numbers. This mostly affects the very old, and even with them it’s not that contagious” while people were coming up with creative reasons that the Diamond Princess wasn’t representative, my favorite of those being “you get the best medical care possible in a cruise ship.”  Uh. No. You don’t. Of course you also don’t in our hospitals, when doctors put you on ventilators without regard for the effects of forced ventilation on the very old, which is why the death toll is what it is, but never mind.

Listen to me now, please: the democrats are not at the beginning of a 1000 year Reich. They’re not even at the beginning of a 70 year USSR. Or at the beginning of the decade-plus of Nazi rule.

What all totalitarian regimes have in common is that they screw up economies beyond belief.  And I mean that. If you haven’t lived through it, you won’t believe me, but let’s say that communists managing the desert will run out of sand. And socialists will too, but slower. (And our current afflictions are not socialists. No. Shut up. Don’t care about the textbook definition which, at any rate, only the Marxists ever cared about. For all practical applications, communists are socialists in a hurry. And boy, is the Junta in a hurry. Because they are scared. And they should be.)

Do you know why the USSR and the other tragic post-World-War II Marxist regimes survived as long as they did?  The US.
Because America is wealthy and can’t stand to see people starve, through humanitarian aid (and the usual traitorous would-be socialists here) we sent aid to those regimes. We kept them afloat.

In doing their best to take over the US all the left is managing is to kill the golden goose. Even if everything they plan came to pass, their regime woud last less than 5 years, because Americans will not starve peacefully.

They don’t understand that because — since China pays a lot of them directly or not — they think China can replace the US in financing their lavish lifestyles and our not-quite-starving.

They don’t get that China is already in American terms close to starvation themselves.

This is because to the left economics is not real. It’s a fantasy they can spin any way they like, and it will keep them going on unicorn farts and dreams.

But if you’re not a leftist, you know economics is “the study of how humans live and eat.” And the democrats are breaking that.

Which means it will get very, very bad in the US. Probably briefly. It will be much worse in the rest of the world.

And the left is bringing this on us, because yes, they believe they can set up the new USSR.

What I can’t understand is why the right also buys into this illusion. Just as I couldn’t understand why no one was looking at the Diamond Princess numbers.

Looking, being scared and buying into apocalyptic scenarios can be fun. Briefly. But we don’t have time for that nonsense. We have a Constitutional Republic we must rebuild. Because otherwise we’re going to be in serious trouble. Not communism, but communism is not the only kind of bad trouble.  And for the rest of the world, civilization will be over.

Be not afraid, and do understand that even if the left gets everything it wants — or rather, for sure if it does — it will lose very fast.  But we still need to win.

So, I know in the long run they can’t win. In fact, the harder they push, the faster they fall.

BUT–

If this goes into action, as stupid and imperfectly as it will be implemented, it will hurt and perhaps kill a lot of people.

If you’re at risk:

1- Have an alternate identity if you can. I don’t even know how to go about that, except perhaps a ring around the rosy of dbas, trusts and corps. Remember, they’re not nearly as efficient or good at tracing things as they think they are. Our secret services were redesigned by a man who can’t figure out how to go through a gate with an umbrella. And he hired people who think he’s smart.

2- Be ready to decamp at the drop of a hat, if it becomes obvious your financial life is frozen, and there’s nothing you can do for money.
Decamp where? Well, not abroad. As I pointed out above, if the wheels come off here, they’ll come off and explode abroad.
If you can own something outright through a trust or a corp or something, this might be a place to go. If you can’t…. have you considered winter camping gear?

3- Don’t leave yourself defenseless. Don’t sell weapons. Don’t consign yourself to the tender mercies of the government.

Oh, yeah, and keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.

4- Other than that? Find a way to keep being heard. If all you can do is paint the words in blood on phone poles do so. But again, they’re not nearly as smart as they think they are. Find new identities and new ways back on line.

All you have to do is survive this for a year, maybe a little more. And the way to survive it is not to act the way the left would, which is the way they expect everyone to act.

Don’t surrender. Don’t give up. Don’t ask for help.

And keep coming back when they least expect it.

If that EO doesn’t show you they’re not Americans, they’re insane, and they mean to be dictators, I don’t know what will.
Make sure people know the powers the Junta is arrogating to itself. Make sure they can’t do this quietly.

And may G-d have mercy on America.

*Yes, I know this is ridiculously late. Nothing catastrophic happened, just after a week of snow we had a ton of stuff we needed to do outside the house. Let’s say I’ve done a full day’s work already. BUT better late than never. – SAH*

Book Promo

*Note these are books sent to us by readers/frequenters of this blog.  Our bringing them to your attention does not imply that we’ve read them and/or endorse them, unless we specifically say so.  As with all such purchases, we recommend you download a sample and make sure it’s to your taste.  If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. I ALSO WISH TO REMIND OUR READERS THAT IF THEY WANT TO TIP THE BLOGGER WITHOUT SPENDING EXTRA MONEY, CLICKING TO AMAZON THROUGH ONE OF THE BOOK LINKS ON THE RIGHT, WILL GIVE US SOME AMOUNT OF MONEY FOR PURCHASES MADE IN THE NEXT 24HOURS, OR UNTIL YOU CLICK ANOTHER ASSOCIATE’S LINK. PLEASE CONSIDER CLICKING THROUGH ONE OF THOSE LINKS BEFORE SEARCHING FOR THAT SHED, BIG SCREEN TV, GAMING COMPUTER OR CONSERVATORY YOU WISH TO BUY. That helps defray my time cost of about 2 hours a day on the blog, time probably better spent on fiction. ;)*

FROM JOSH GRIFFING: Drawing Out the Bestiary. ON SALE FOR 99C

Do you want to draw dragons? Gryffins? Centaurs? Then draw them out with care! Let Leonard tell you how.

FROM JULIE PASCAL: Blue.

Dulcie and Fischer, starry eyed young lovers, jumped at the opportunity to become crew on one of Merchant Shipline’s fleet of starships. To a couple of kids from the sticks “all expenses paid” training was too good to pass up.

But there’s always a catch.

FROM JASON FUESTING: By Dawn’s Early Light (Echoes of Liberty Book 1).

Eric Friedrich was supervising the last ice harvesting shift for his ship’s shot-up environmental systems when they detected an anomalous ice comet drifting by. Investigating the icy tomb, Eric finds a ship that couldn’t exist–a relic from a nation the Protectorate killed billions to erase from history… And will kill even more to keep secret.

When his world explodes, Eric must make allies in the unlikeliest places, and seize even the slimmest chance of survival while unraveling a conspiracy that shattered planets and set off interstellar war!

FROM KAL SPRIGGS: Valor’s Calling.

The past calls you back.

Jiden made the decision to join the Century Military Academy after her attempt at a normal school ended in disaster. She’s embraced this new chapter in her life and she’s ready to do her best.

But this new start isn’t all that she expected. Her relationships with her friends have changed since she’s been away, her classes are harder than she expected, and things aren’t quite what they seem. Jiden learns that she made enemies when she chose to return to the Academy, and those enemies will settle for nothing less than her death.

Jiden is going to have to dig deep, she’s going to have to fight with everything she has, not just to succeed, but to stay alive. Jiden isn’t afraid of the challenge, because the military life isn’t just a simple decision, it’s her calling in life.

FROM DOROTHY GRANT: Going Ballistic.

When her plane tries to come apart at apogee during a hijack, ballistic airline pilot Michelle Lauden handles the worst day she could imagine. After getting down without losing any passengers or crew, though, she finds her troubles have just begun!

The country she’s landed in has just declared independence from the Federation. The Feds intended her passengers to be the first casualties in the impending war – and they’re not happy she’s survived to contradict their official narrative in the news.

The local government wants to find her to give her a medal. The Feds are hunting her to give her an unmarked grave. As they both close in, Michelle’s running out of options and time. The only people able to protect her are an accident investigation team on loan from the Federation’s enemies… the same enemies who sent her hijackers in the first place.

And they have their own plans for her, and the country she’s in!

FROM MARGARET BALL: A Pocketful of Stars.

Thalia Kostis will be the first to tell you it’s not magic, it’s theoretical math when she walks a Möbius strip through walls to her office at the Institute for Applied Topology. CIA Case Officer Bradislav Lensky doesn’t care what it is, as long as she can help track down a smuggling ring and the terrorists in their safe house in Austin. The other magicians nearby don’t agree, and don’t care for new rivals either!

Now Thalia and the rest of her misfit crew are in a race against time, terrorists, common sense, grackles, and their graduate advisor to save the day!

FROM ALMA BOYKIN: Hopling and Pouchling.

Trouble moves on Shikhari…

Auriga “Rigi” Bernardi-Prananda and her husband have their hands full of children, his military career, and their duties to the native Staré. The last thing they need are predators (four footed) in the back yard, and old enemies opening old wounds. When Dr. De Groet invites them to participate in an archaeological dig far from the woes of civilization, the Pranandas accept.

Instead of a quiet dig, they observe the wombeast migration, insanity among the local Staré, and something decidedly alien that should not be. The Great Game swirls closer and closer, forcing Rigi to make a choice she never, ever wanted to face.

Shikhari’s enemies are about to discover that females of all species are more deadly than the males!

FROM BRAD TORGERSEN: Lights in the Deep.

Ten astounding tales by triple award nominee Brad R. Torgersen. Go on fantastic new adventures at the bottom of Earth’s oceans and at the edge of the solar system. Meet humans who are utterly alien and aliens who are all too human. Originally featured in the pages of Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine as well as Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show, these stories are gathered here for the first time, along with anecdotes and other commentary from the author.

Features the stories Ray of Light (2012 Hugo & Nebula nominee), Outbound (2011 Analog Readers Choice Award winner), and Exanastasis (2010 Writers of the Future Award winner).

Introductions by Stanley Schmidt, Mike Resnick and Allan Cole.

FROM C.V.WALTER: Bound to the Alien Engineer.

Mindy’s best friend Molly was a maintenance technician on the Bradbury 12. When Molly went missing, Mindy started looking for answers but all she found were more questions. They were supposed to meet up at Geniuscon, a science fiction convention that attracts people from every walk of life, and she knows Molly’s son Aidan is going to be there. Determined to get in touch with her friend, Mindy tracks down Aidan and meets some of his new friends, the guys cosplaying as big, blue aliens.

The first time he heard her voice, Alvola knew Mindy was the one. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t understand the language or touch her skin, the sound of her voice made his body sing. Determined to meet his mate, Alvola volunteers for the mission to Earth to pick up Aidan and meet with the scientists and engineers that will be their first official contacts with humanity. When Alvola actually meets Mindy in person, his mission becomes to keep her by his side, no matter the cost.

FROM ANNA FERREIRA: A Summer in Scarborough: A Pride & Prejudice Sequel.

Miss Anne de Bourgh was delighted to receive a letter from her cousin Georgiana, explaining that she would be spending the summer by the sea, and requesting the pleasure of her company. A glorious few months of balls, shopping, and walking by the sea awaits- a wonderfully diverting holiday for Anne, who has rarely left Rosings before.

But Anne is a de Bourgh, and life is never simple. Before long, she finds herself caught between the attentions of two very different men, and must choose if she will follow her heart or disoblige her family. One must be disappointed, and Anne has never been very practiced in the art of disobedience. Must she give up everything she has ever known, will she find the strength to search for happiness elsewhere?

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

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

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

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: CRABBY

Around the end of 2020, I got an email. Believe it or not these emails aren’t unusual. They also usually come to nothing. It goes something like We’d like to buy x rights to your short story/novel/series and/or we’d like you write for our awesome comic/movie/game.

Usually these are students, or young people, and they are trying to start something on shoestring, are not prepared to pay, and I’m not prepared to either give them a property I then have tied up (I might be willing to give short stories, limited rights, but so far it’s either never happened or I didn’t understand what they wanted) forever, or do work for no pay. (The money flows to the writer, d*mn it.)

So, I got this email saying, “Hey, would you write a script for our comic?” and I pretty much ignored it. I paid a little more attention when I got the email that said, “Hey, we’re willing to pay!” but — I don’t remember why — I was in the middle of personal drama, so I didn’t answer.

Next day I got an amusingly sullen “Okay, we’re not the biggest company but…”

At which point I looked at who the email was from and started paying attention.

Would I have chosen Barbarella as a place to make my debut in comics? What, the woman who doesn’t even have her characters kiss, because she forgets?

BUT– But of its kind, Barbarella is great fun, it being a space ranger/ambassador, and I could put my own imprint on it. Besides, in the climate we’re living in, writing a sexy girl comic is something a bit revolutionary and daring.

Doing the actual comic was more fun than I ever thought. For one, the editors are much nicer — or at least mine was — than any traditional book editor and far more respectful of the author’s opinions and time. Second, my particular editor was awesome and taught me so much about how to do comics. And just thinking in a different/visual way was fun, and a new thing.

Still, you guys know me, right? I’m really skittish. I’ve been burned. So I wasn’t going to announce ANY of this ever until it was set in stone.

They announced it, so I guess it’s safe. It comes out in July.

Barbarella Finds Love & Mystery in New Spacefaring Adventures

April 23, Mt. Laurel, NJ: Barbarella, the sensual siren of space returns for a series of all-new adventures by a dynamic new creative team! Dynamite is proud to welcome writer Sarah Hoyt for her big debut in comic books with the new series starting in July. The longtime author has written over 34 novels in science fiction, fantasy, mystery and more, including her fan-favorite Darkship Thieves, and garnering Prometheus and Dragon Awards. For this space-faring journey, she’s joined by rising star artist Madibek Musabekov (Vampirella vs Purgatori). Colorist Ivan Nunes and letterer Carlos Mangual round out the crew at the controls. In this exciting new series, Barbarella sets out on a mission filled with danger, duplicity, and a dose of romance as she travels through multiple inventive sci-fi locales. Fans of the character and genre can expect deep dives on questions of class, romance, sexuality, and more in the classic Barbarella style. “Writing the Barbarella stories was more fun than is probably legal in most states,” said writer Sarah Hoyt. “The work of learning a new format was overshadowed by the fun of being able to think big and play with someone else’s no-holds-barred character. I’ve also loved the art I’ve seen so far from Madibek!”     Traveling from planet to planet, the tale starts in Camelot, home to the rich and powerful class seeking escape from a crowded and decaying galactic empire. Intercepting desperate transmissions from the underclass, Barbarella sets off to investigate, unravelling a string of secrets. Along the way she will visit the underwater world of Encantado, the carnival-like Rio, and even more. All painstakingly designed by Musabekov. On her escapade, Barbarella is joined by two fun new characters that readers will love to meet. Her shiny new ship comes packed with an advanced A.I. named Taln, and their relationship may be more complicated than it seems… While Vyx is her new fennec fox-like talking pet. Who may have a few twists of her own… Not only is Hoyt making her Dynamite debut, so is legendary artist Brian Bolland! The Batman: The Killing Joke and Wonder Woman master is a long overdue perfect match for this iconic character. For such a beloved and beautiful character, a diverse range of talented cover artists is needed. Bolland and Musabekov are joined by Lucio Parrillo, Derrick Chew, Dani, and cosplayer Rachel Hollon.       BARBARELLA #1 is solicited in Diamond Comic Distributors’ May 2021 Previews catalog, the premier source of merchandise for the comic book specialty market, and slated for release in July 2021. Comic book fans are encouraged to preorder copies of the issue with their local comic book retailers. It will also be available for individual customer purchase through digital platforms courtesy of Comixology, Kindle, iBooks, Google Play, Dynamite Digital, ComicsPlus, and more! ### About Dynamite Entertainment Dynamite was founded in 2004 and is home to several best-selling comic book titles and properties, including The Boys, The Shadow, Red Sonja, Warlord of Mars, Bionic Man, A Game of Thrones, and more. Dynamite owns and controls an extensive library with over 3,000 characters (which includes the Harris Comics and Chaos Comics properties), such as Vampirella, Pantha, Evil Ernie, Smiley the Psychotic Button, Chastity, and Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt. In addition to their critically-acclaimed titles and bestselling comics, Dynamite works with some of the most high-profile creators in comics and entertainment, including Gail Simone, Christopher Priest, Leah Moore, Kevin Smith, David Walker, Vita Ayala, Danny Lore, Neil Gaiman, Garth Ennis, Darick Robertson, Mark Russell, Brandon Thomas, Amy Chu, Reginald Hudlin, Nancy Collins, David Walker, Steve Orlando, Greg Pak, Jenny Frison, Matt Wagner, and a host of up-and-coming new talent. Dynamite is consistently ranked in the upper tiers of comic book publishers and several of their titles – including Alex Ross and Jim Krueger’s Project Superpowers – have debuted in the Top Ten lists produced by Diamond Comics Distributors. In 2005, Diamond awarded the company a GEM award for Best New Publisher and another GEM in 2006 for Comics Publisher of the Year (under 5%) and again in 2011. The company has also been nominated for and won several industry awards, including the prestigious Harvey and Eisner Awards.

This is not a literal injunction, though — looks around her zoo of a house — by all means, clean your house/room if you need to. For us, I’m packing stuff I won’t use for a while, until we settle, so we can move it to storage and finish flooring this house, and getting it ready to go up.

But one thing that 2020 and 2020 Won have done for me is make my principles and my options clear as crystal. And I think it is important to do that. You need to be very clear on what matters to you, what’s important, and where your time and effort should be, or how can you decide where you’ll go?

How can you “tell the truth” if you’re not sure what YOUR truth is. And I don’t mean “your truth” in the airy fairy way the left does “the important thing is to believe in something” type bullshit. I mean it in the sense of “if you don’t know what’s important to you, you might spend your entire life chasing something that is not what you want.”

To give an example, when we were very young, we befriended another couple, partly because they were also Odds, he worked with Dan and we were all going through infertility issues. (Their daughter is about our older son’s age. I don’t know if they ever had another. We lost contact slowly after we moved across the country.)

I’m not going to say anything bad about that couple; on the contrary. The gentleman helped us sell our first house, while we were across the country and our real estate agent threw a hissy fit and quit. And honestly, all he took in payment was the workbench I’d been forced to abandon in the garage.

The couple were kind, generous people. They were trying to help, and honestly if we’d followed their plan we’d probably be wealthy now.

They were part of an investors’ group, and they bought and sold properties. This was the early days of flipping. Because I do a lot of stuff in remodeling and enjoy it, they thought this would be a great way to make money. It would have been (they’re not the last to suggest it to us. When we sold the house in Manitou, our handyman at the time tried to convince us to go into a house-flipping partnership. Our design, his handymanning and some of mine.)

But we attended a few of the meetings, and something became very clear. The first is that using other people’s money and going into a mountain of debt, however temporarily, was a hell of a fit for two people with massive security issues. I probably would have learned to overcome that, though frankly I haven’t yet. But heck, I overcame it in writing, where there was no security. Because writing is what I wanted to do.

The second and more important is that it would eat my life and all our time together would have to be devoted to properties: acquisition, identification, fixing, selling.

…. My problem is that I wanted to write, unproductive as it is. And I wanted to take nice walks with my husband. And I wanted to go to museums, and day-dream about history.

Which you might interpret as wanting to be lazy, but what I did first and last, to even get published, was a mountain of work, it was just different work, and work I wanted to do.

Also my mind at the time — weirdly in the last thirty years I’ve acquired this — didn’t “bend” the way necessary to identify properties that would sell well with a bit of spit and polish, or be able to zero in on what would make a great profit. Judging by the hash we made buying our first house (where the rejected one would have doubled in the six years we owned it) I’m going to guess we’d have learned the other way and hit our heads against the wall a lot.

Which is what we did in our chosen careers. But they were things we wanted to do, or at least didn’t hate with a blazing purple passion.

Ultimately that was my problem. Having listened to courses on how to do the flipping thing, attended a workshop, and talked to people we’d need to go into partnership with at least to begin with, our problem was that other than the initial couple, we didn’t like anyone involved in the endeavor. We didn’t dislike them, as such, we just didn’t like interacting with them, since every conversation was about making money, maximizing profits, etc.

I am not an idiot. I like money, because it can be converted into so many things I like. And I think the lack of money is the root of all evil or at least a great deal of it. But–

But it dismayed me to find I was more dad’s daughter than mom’s and couldn’t be “hard headed and practical” about this. It was a good way to make money. We could learn to do it. I could (and eventually did) train my mind to think that way.

But I couldn’t imagine doing it for ten years much less the rest of my life. And after ten years what else could I do? And I could see us getting into arguments and having problems because of the stress of debt and pressure to get things sold.

So I talked to Dan, and though both our “um…. no” feelings were very, very vague, we just couldn’t see continuing down that road. It would require us to be people we weren’t and do things we at best had absolutely no interest in.

So– we turned down making a great deal of money, because it just wasn’t us.

We’d have ended up in “This is not my beautiful house/this is not my beautiful car” territory.

Years and years later, when the kids were little, and in a more clear choice, Dan was working for a company where he was away from home 5 days a week.

We thought we could take this, because honestly as a computer person he worked such long hours before we only did things on the weekend.

And then our life was upended in ways we didn’t foresee: like sure, he was home two days, but mostly he slept for one. And our evening phone calls because spotty, because how do you convey all the little things that happened in a day? And our younger son started failing first grade (of all things) and crying all the time, because he was always daddy’s boy (because he’s more like me, which makes perfect sense.) And on Sunday it would all be oriented to helping him pack for the week ahead.

So– We were both feeling discontented — but it was such GOOD money — and then we went to the company party. Where we found that most of the employees had multiple divorces, and those that didn’t were frankly heading that way.

On the way home we talked about it, and it turned out despite the money both of us were profoundly unhappy. He was missing his time with the boys and the cats; I wasn’t sleeping…. pretty much at all. Everything was wrong. So we formulated an exit plan.

At this point I guess we’re sounding like “we just don’t care about money.” Actually we do. We’ve sacrificed and saved and done what we could to have savings and prospects, but there are things more important, and in both cases it was family, even if we didn’t have kids yet on the first one.

I mean, I’d love the money, I just wasn’t willing to sacrifice time with my husband who is also my best friend for the money.

In life, I think, we get more or less what we want in the long run. I can’t think of anything more improbable than my making a living as a novelist, when I came to this country with no contacts in the field and hampered by ESL. But one way or another and mostly sideways and backwards, I worked my way to it.

What these last two years have done is try the …. limits of what I want — no, need — in my room. What is important. What makes sense.

I’ve described the experience to a friend as being scoured with a jet of sand, which strips away all the paint and leaves only the essential structure.

Actually the process started somewhere around 2015 when I came to the end of “what will you do to continue being traditionally published? What will you put up with? What parts of you will you give up permanently?” Or earlier, in 2012 when I felt forced to come out of the political closet, even though politics was never something I WANTED to do or be involved in.

But there are things more important than “want.” There are cores of ourselves and our character that we can’t give up, no matter how much we try. (For that matter I never really “Wanted” to write, much less do the business stuff necessary to remain published. But– Well, whenever I tried to give up writing, it would mean becoming someone else, and while that might be possible I wasn’t ready to chop off pieces of me.)

I hadn’t thought through any of that, so this process has been painful as heck. It’s the “Is this important? I’m not sure.”

We’re going down into evil times. I feel it will be short, but I also feel it will be exceptionally evil.

Yesterday on the blog we had two people throw out nonsense about “this isn’t worth/it will never work.”

Perhaps I do them a disservice in thinking they’re paid disinformation agents, but after the last year surely all of us realize disinformation is the strong point of this country’s enemies.

Though one of them made a semi-cogent point — semi-cogent because I don’t feel he/she has thought through all the implications of the point — that if called upon to make a sacrifice that involved destroying his family, he’d refuse the sacrifice, even if the right thing to do, so that his family might live.

It’s semi-cogent, because those of us who have kids — or close younger kin — know that impulse. “I’d sacrifice my life ten times over, only leave my kids alone.”

But what you have to ask is, by refusing to do the right thing, will it be worse for your family in the long run? Will you be helping create a world that will destroy your kids and grandkids?

I can’t make that determination for you. It’s yours to make, because you know your kids, you know your priorities, and you know your point of unendurable “I WILL NOT.”

For the record, as a writer, I’ve been aware (all of us are) of the …. shem in the character’s head. There are words and principles in a character’s head that you can’t break without breaking the character. The writer is aware of this, and the reader usually senses it. (Giving examples would make this 10k words long.)

Real people aren’t that different. There are things that if you had to do would break you. And they’re different for each of us. For me, as I found in 12, it turned out mouthing Marxist platitudes and historical inaccuracies was selling my soul away in pieces. I could do it, but I’d be someone different at the end. Not someone nice.

And you have to be aware of where you are, what you are, what you’ll do.

It’s important because as we head down into exceptionally evil times, you’re sometimes going to have to make a decision in a split second. You have to know what is essential to your “room” and what isn’t. What you can sacrifice, and what will break you.

I can’t tell you what that is.

I have long ago though arrived at the certainty that I can’t give up on the Constitutional Republic. Even if it is occupied, abased and destroyed at this point.

It’s a hell of a time to find I’m my dad’s daughter. I held it against him for decades that he refused to abandon Portugal and therefore made me grow up in exceptionally messy times which were at times dangerous. Turns out I know exactly how he felt, even if my particular devotion, the “homeland” in my heart that I cannot betray is not Portugal. Well, I can’t fault him for that. I too will not give up the land that’s part of me in some inexplicable way. Because that would break my shem, and after it I’d just be an empty clay vessel, incapable of self-animation.

And since I think it’s the best thing for my descendants, well…. If I go down I go down. If I take them with me, I take them with me, but I will do what I can to secure the blessings of liberty for me and my descendants be they of the body or the heart. That choice has long ago been made, and it’s already cost me more than I care to detail in a blog post open to the world. I will personally gum my way through the boot stomping on the human face, if they have kicked all my teeth out. Maybe I’ll only soften the leather for the next person, but even that is worth it.

I have three times in my life been in a position where the wrong move could kill me. (Well, probably more than that, but those are the ones in mind right now.) Twice I froze and that was absolutely the right move, bizarrely. And once I charged, and that too was the right move. Did I do them by accident? I don’t know. But I know I’d run through scenarios for these things in my head several times, and I knew what led to survival. I also knew what I could do and remain me.

In the days we’re going to this is important. I know people who would be destroyed if they had to kill someone, so that alternative is unthinkable, even if the other alternative is death. (And there are many ways of being destroyed. I have a friend who is terrified of enjoying it too much.)

I could never, even to survive, do what Ukranian peasants did, and trade away your kids as meat, or eat the neighbors’ kids. Oh, I could, but what would emerge on the other side wouldn’t be me, or anyone I wanted to be. Ever. The best alternative would be “going insane.” Heck, I’m not sure I could eat a pet, unless I KNEW I only needed another day and that would earn me real survival. To die in a day knowing the last thing I did was to betray the trust of a creature who had reason to expect good from me would not be worth it.

Humans “though shalt not go past this point” aren’t rational. And they are, in a way, inflexible.

I couldn’t live with myself if I voted to convict someone I wasn’t sure deserved it, for instance, even if the alternative meant death for me and my families. I couldn’t look in the mirror ever again.

Your points might be different.

Clean your room. Make the decision now. Run through scenarios in your head. Oh, I grant you when the real thing comes, your reactions will shock you. They always do. People who think they’re cowards become heroes, and tough men and women tuck tail and run.

But it will help, it will set parameters for you. And you should at least be able to establish “this far and no further.”

In the time we’re going to and going to have to go through, decisions will be too fast, and often there will be no good choice. Probably more often than not.

Decide now, ahead of time, the rough parameters of that which you can even conceive of doing.

Then prepare to make the most of it, whatever it is.

And while you’re at it, figure out your ideal life, the things you’ve been doing that you don’t want to do, and which no longer apply, and the things you’d like to do, that maybe you can after the mess.

Most of us will come through this, I think. We’ll come through scarred, and leaner in more ways than one. But life on the other end will have changed. A lot of it will have to be rebuilt. Make now the decision of how you want that life to be: just in case you get the chance.

In the meantime, plan, prepare, be honest with yourself.

And keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark: in reality and metaphorically.

Believing In The Future – A Guest Post By James Cambias

I’ve got a new book coming out from Baen, called The Godel Operation. It’s an attempt to do far-future, hard-SF space opera. The story is set at the end of the Tenth Millennium, when a billion worlds circle the Sun. It’s full of Big Stuff: giant space habitats! An exawatt laser powered by black holes! The planet Mercury dismantled and turned into a titanic computer ring around the Sun! It was a lot of fun to write, and I’m working on a second novel in the same setting.

That second book is a lot harder to write. The problem isn’t the story or the characters. I think it’s a good solid book and I expect I’ll be pleased with it when I’m done. But I’m having a lot more difficulty making myself believe it.

Despite a genocidal war in the Fourth Millennium, and various tyrants, menaces, and perils, my Billion Worlds setting is fundamentally optimistic. We will spread beyond Earth, we will build great things. The people of the Tenth Millennium aren’t looking back, they’re facing ahead: a mature Dyson Sphere civilization ready to spread across the Galaxy.

I could believe that last year as I wrote The Godel Operation. The first year of the “Lockdown” was no handicap for a self-employed writer. I just spent more time on my porch and less time in coffeeshops. (It probably made me more productive, to be honest.)

But now . . . four months into 2021 it’s a lot harder to be optimistic. At times I honestly believe I am watching the end of America, possibly the end of civilization. How can I write about remaking the Solar System when science is being turned into propaganda and technophobes shut down powerplants and eviscerate space exploration?

It’s worthwhile to look back and remember what the legendary writers who built the science fiction genre had to live through. The darkest time of the Second World War was probably 1941-1942. Britain’s survival hung by a thread; Russia was reeling under German attacks; unprepared America saw its navy wrecked in a single morning.

And in those dark times Heinlein wrote “Universe” and “Methuselah’s Children” and “Requiem.” Immortality! Space travel! Voyages to the stars! Asimov wrote “Robbie” and “Homo Sol” and “Foundation.” Artificial intelligence! Galactic federations! Planet-spanning cities! Jack Williamson wrote “Collision Orbit.” Terraforming! Antimatter!

In the worst years of the 20th Century they looked ahead. When “serious” and “realistic” thinkers in government and the academy assumed democracy and freedom were obsolete, crazy dreamers wrote trashy pulp stories . . . which inspired the men who went to the Moon a generation later.

When the armies of ignorance and fanaticism are chanting dirges of despair, science fiction writers have a duty to refuse to sing along. Our job is to remind people that it doesn’t have to be like this. Remind them that their children can reach for the stars instead of grubbing in the sustainable manure pile. Keep the flame burning, even if it has to be through self-published books and samizdat fanzines. When the Empire of lies falls, our Foundation will endure and inspire the ones who will colonize the Solar System.

So that’s our job now: we have to make ourselves believe in an optimistic future, because that’s the only way that future will ever come about. Now, if you all will excuse me, I have to get back to work. There’s a future to build.

Justice is either the same for everyone, or it’s not justice.

People are either punished according to their deeds and those deeds injuriousness to society, or they aren’t. But even the most lax of systems, in which everyone is left to defend themselves as best they can is better than one in which the law plays favorites.

I was thinking of this yesterday when I read this news article: Columbus Ohio Release Body Cam Footage of Police Officer Shooting 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant Just Before She Stabbed a Woman.

Yes, the sixteen year old was black. (Though trust me, these days the name doesn’t mean she’d be. But she was.) And the police is releasing bodycam footage before she can become another “martyr” and “hero” in the struggle against “unfair police treatment.”

The fact, weirdly, is that no, police have never shot more black people than white. There are (or were, this might change. For one the police is going to have trouble recruiting men and women of any worth or moral fiber) very few police shootings of unarmed citizens, and those shot are actually more likely to be white.

This will probably become more so as it becomes obvious justice in America, when imposed from above, is not in any way, shape or form equal. Witness the black teens who killed the immigrant uber eats driver. They were let go with absolutely no punishment. Because their bright futures shouldn’t be sullied.

And this chick, who was trying to stab someone? well, without body cam footage, she would have been lionized. There would be murals painted of her. Nancy Pelosi would thank her for her “sacrifice.” Her family would become rich.

You ask why most of the people the left lionizes are psychopaths who have never done a single thing in their whole lives that wasn’t injurious to themselves and others?

Well, because families that aren’t crazy of victims that aren’t psychos don’t go along for the circus ride.

I read, shortly after the whole Trayvon Martin bullshit of one of those cases that would absolutely break your heart, particularly if you’re the mother of kids who tan and who are built like brick shithouses.

College student, scholarship and honors, and also star football player. Happened to be black. His car broke down on a lonely road. He approached the first house, knocked, asked to use the phone. Sole woman in the house told him he couldn’t. I don’t know if there was hearing impairment on her side. I also don’t know why the kid didn’t walk to the next house. I know he asked woman to call someone to help him. Instead she went in the house, called the police and said he was trying to break in. I don’t remember the details, but when police parked, he ran towards them (because rescue, you know? He was VERY young.) Police panicked and shot him.

Why didn’t they use this young man as their cause and martyr? well…. They tried. The family said not only no, but hell no. They wanted to mourn their son in peace, and not see him plastered everywhere. And they understood it wasn’t so much a case of racial discrimination but of a very large, intimidating-looking guy who didn’t remember people would be scared of him.

Again, knowing the size and general appearance of my kids, talks have been had about this, and about “how to approach strangers so you don’t scare them.” If younger son were to meet someone right now, in those circumstances, he’d be in serious trouble, because he looks like an outlaw biker (which he ain’t.) Because people don’t see themselves from the outside.

But the cases the left has blazoned abroad are very bad. Both in the truth and in the lie. They’re very bad in the truth because they’re destroying people’s lives for resisting career criminals. Both career criminals and normal human beings know that.

Which means the career criminals being psychopaths will think they can now do whatever they want and the authorities and victims will be afraid to resist them. They’re not wrong. For a little while.

And meanwhile the normal, young black people who believe the left’s lie are more likely to believe the world is against them, effort is not rewarded and they might as well become criminals. Which is a slide that’s not easy to revert. They’ll also be angry, because why are they being picked on just because of their color.

I heard some recording of a young black activist saying that black people should loot everything for 200 years and it wouldn’t repay what they “suffered.”

The problem is two fold: most of the people today haven’t suffered diddly. They’ve been told people who looked like them suffered and were mistreated. And they’ve been sold the lie they’re still being mistreated and are “hated.”

The other part of this, of course, is that she’s going on color. She thinks black people suffered because they were black.

Oh, hell. They suffered because they were second class citizens. In other times and places it was white people who were second class citizens (still is, places in the world.)

Did whites behave very badly when crimes against blacks weren’t punished, or at least weren’t punished nearly as they should be.

Yeah. OF COURSE they did. Because white people are human and humans behave very badly when they know they won’t be punished and have nothing to lose from it. Sure some of us try not to. But those of us who succeed in not going completely monster are aware of the monster and have principles that refrain from unleashing it.

Those who have no principles and no fear of external punishment? Oh, dear. Yes, white people in the past, in areas where they were immune from the law behaved very badly.

But it’s important to know this was not because they were white. Whatever myth you’ve been fed about devilish white blood, and no matter how much you feed it, it was because they were human.

In the same way, we’re starting to see black people behave very badly. Beating up nursing home patients, pushing and beating people on the street, killing uber drivers, etc.

Why? Because they’re human. Every race and variety of humanity has psychos and horrible people. If they know they can gambol with no punishment, the things they do will be horrific.

Yes, they are a small minority. They are a small minority in every race. BUT they exist. And the only way to contain them is knowing there will be punishment for their crimes.

“But Sarah,” the left will wail “the legacy of racism, poverty, discrimination. They’re not responsible for what they do.”

Perhaps. I mean, not because of those, but the legacy of the great society and leftism has turned black people in America into the perpetual designated victim class: fatherless, skilless, hopeless and absolved of every responsibility, and told every day in school, media, culture that they’re victims and will always be victims.

It will certainly make psychos of everyone who is even mildly vulnerable and doesn’t have a modicum of a moral compass.

So, maybe, in the macro sense they’re not responsible for what they do. But going down that line of thought, is anyone really ever responsible? When the Bible says that a sin works itself through a family in seven generations, they’re not far off. There are traumas so horrific that multiple generations are needed to expunge their legacy. And almost every family has at least one, on one side. And many have multiple.

But this is not a salon, or a freshman lounge at a university.

This is a matter of justice. And either wrong done is punished. Or not.

Perfect divine justice that takes in account the centuries of dysfunction on some family line, or how deprived they were or whatever has to wait for the afterlife, if there is one. In this world what we’re concerned with is justice that makes potential criminals afraid they’ll be caught and punihsed and therefore keeps the non-criminal citizens somewhat safe of being preyed upon.

That’s all. We’re not trying to balance some karmic scale. We couldn’t. We’re trying to stop more crimes from happening.

And when I say “we” I say sane people, who understand how humans and societies work.

But the victims of our educational system think humans can dispense divine justice, that makes everything “right.” They also think that if they balance things just right evil and crime will go away forever.

This is a tragic mistake, one that will rebound on those they think they’re helping.

When an entire class of people think they’re immune from punishment, no matter the reason — skin color, features, size, or whatever — those people will naturally supply the vast majority of criminals.

In fact, being human, they’ll let their inner demons out to play. The more so if everyone has told them others hate them and are “keeping them down.” They will unleash a reign of terror on everyone else.

And while the idiot activists and the left will cross their arms and nod and say it’s deserved…. well, no. Because people today haven’t done anything to unleash this.

But even if it were balancing some eternal scale, it would still be stupid. Because that’s not the way humanity works.

Sure, in the short term, they’re going to run every competent policeman out of a job, and those that remain will let black people get away with whatever. Which means the psychos who happen to be black will feel empowered and be even more blatant and obvious. The lack of police will also mean more vigilantism.

It also means you bring back, in the mid term, real racism. Because you know that black people won’t be punished if they kill you, how long till truck drivers refuse to enter black neighborhoods? How long before every store closes? How long before a black person in any setting is watched very carefully and with suspicion, because you know they have license to do whatever they want and no one will call them on it or punish them? Some of this is already happening.

In the long term, it’s going to lead to genocide. And not the say the left thinks it’s inciting it. The left assumes that it’s empowering black people and in the long run they’ll kill a majority of whites, or something.

This is because the left understands neither demographics, nor humans.

They grew up hearing that white people would soon (like 20 years ago) be a minority, and they don’t think what this means, or that a lot of people with fractional Latin or Asian blood claim to be ethnic, because right now society favors it.

In their heads there’s only black and white, and if you’re not white, you’re black. So by now blacks have to be a majority, right? And if you live in a city you might think so, particularly a democrat-run city.

But in fact black people are somewhere between 12 and 14% of the population.

And what the stupid policies of the left are doing is convincing people black people are dangerous and not quite “normal human.”

We do know how this ends up, because we’ve seen it.

Every primitive society that the Western Culture contacted thought of white people as just another tribe, about the size of their own tribe. So they practiced tribal warfare. You go to the village or settlement that has encroached on your territory and you kill everyone in HORRIBLE WAYS. This is important, because it shows how savage you are. The other tribe then backs off. Everyone is happy, and more bloodshed is spared.

The problem of course was that Western Civ wasn’t tribal; had a lot more people; and had the printing press. Which in turn caused them to read about the horror and decide these people weren’t QUITE human. Which led to a lot of the racism of the 19th and 20th century. It also led to the effective genocide of the Amerindians and the colonial subjugation of Africans.

So, the left, ignorant of history and thinking that being an oppressor is somehow a quality of being white is repeating very, very old errors.

At some point the majority becomes racist. And then it snaps. And then you have genocide of the minority by the majority.

And this country, in appearance and culture is still majority white.

What they’ve managed to do so far is encourage the worst of the black elements. And convince whites that they’re a threatened tribe. All is proceeding as they wish towards racial warfare. Very brief, violent racial warfare. That doesn’t go even vaguely as they expects. And which results in a genuinely white supremacist country, where even people like me are considered suspect and held back.

They can’t win, but we can lose.

And short of unseating them and restoring some sort of sanity to our courts and institutions tout de suite, I don’t know what we can do about it.