Born Free
Will be AFK doing life stuff.
Don’t break the blog and please, please, please, I beg you, don’t feed Fluffy sardines again. You think it’s lots of fun, but I’m the one cleaning scale-balls all day long the next day.
Be good. Or at least don’t be google.
See you tomorrow.
As we watch the increasingly ridiculous and try-to-be shocking antics of the would-be leading edge leftists, one question keeps coming up: who are they trying to shock?
No, seriously. Look, guys, I’m sixty. That’s grandmother age, even if I’m not one except via duct-tape yet.
Yeah, sure, both my parents and Dan’s parents are still alive, but look, my mom is a boomer, okay? And so was Dan’s mom. And our fathers are only slightly older. They got married in the fifties, raised kids in the sixties, and though they might have projected a stern image to them, neither of our parents’ were particularly conventional people. (No, not science fiction. But I don’t think science fiction would have shocked them.)
Heck guys, I’ve read books written by people my grandparents’ age.
Pseudo-satanism on stage? Dear Lord, people. That would have been old by the 20s. The 1920s. The early Victorians were already into all kinds of insanely stupid mysticism often shading into satanism. Racy novels with lots of sex? I believe Agatha Christie mocked those in the thirties. And everything from sexual communes to drug use, to New Age to Witchcraft were already old hat in the twenties. Naked Shakespeare was tediously common when I was kid. Naked anything really.
The seventies … Well, for all you kids not born then, the seventies normalized a lot of things that are considered far more outre now than they were then. Including drug parties and orgies and– Well, you know, I hung out at the fringes of seventies parties, observing and not participating because even back then I had the idea a lot of these things were a very stupid idea. Which didn’t stop full grown men propositioning me, or trying to get my clothes off, because in the seventies it was thought to grow up healthy children needed to have sex early. It wasnt just the music that was bad, or the fashion that was laughable. The seventies were pretty much insanity all the way.
So when some young woman’s greatest contribution to “art” is to knit with string coming from a ball shoved her up her twat, she deserves the respect such “art”: to be laughed off stage, have her knitting get the “ew, this is soppy” it deserves, and to be sent to her room with milk and cookies until she has an idea worthy of attention by adults.
But no, our art scene is under the impression that they’re being “shocked” or “paradigm breaking” and that they are doing things “pour epater les bourgeois.”
The only people likely to be shocked by this are the exceedingly well brought up children of the left who have swallowed a lot of stupid ideas about how most of the country — particularly those people in flyover countries — are complete cardboard cutouts of morality, existing in an eternal 1950s that never existed, who will be completely shocked and surprised by all of this.
Instead, most of the world is only shocked by how unshocking and uncreative they are.
It’s kind of like in science fiction, where they decided what people like me — you know, grew up reading Heinlein, but also a lot of New Wave in the seventies (of course) — wanted a return to the “pulps” which were published in our grandparents’ time. To be fair, I did read a lot of pulp. But that’s because I read a lot of everything. And there were never enough books.
However, by the time I was reading science fiction, well…. there were some very strange ideas being floated. Some were strange in the Phillip K. Dick sense. Some were out there sexual ideas (Eh. The Left Hand of Darkness was tame) and those of us who were reading it as kids read all of it. (Sometimes in foreign languages, so our parents didn’t catch us.) In fact a lot of us had such strange ideas that we had no idea how disruptive our written assignments in middle school were to our teachers’ sanity.
I might want a return to science fiction and fantasy that have plots, and have more than screeds against whatever the current bette noir of the left is, but I wouldn’t want a return to the pulps. For one, as amusing as some were, most of them weren’t exactly very well written. I’m frankly more interested in “the new pulps” which take everything we have learned and done, and integrate it in new pulse-pounding adventures.
The illusions of the left that we live in these out-of-time, eternal, fictional fifties, make them see all of life upside down and sideways.
Hence their idea that my friends and I were also “fighting” to keep science fiction white and male. (Rolls eyes.) Let alone that most of us aren’t white and male, when I was attempting to break into science fiction in the eighties and nineties, most of the editors were already women, and most of the new writers breaking in, ditto. Generally speaking, the male authors my age had as much trouble breaking in or more than I did. (And I went uphill, in a snow storm, under fire from my own stupidity.)
Of course, you know, the left has a point.
Breaking real rules, becoming a real iconoclast, opposing the current powers that be? That’s dangerous. You stand real chances of shocking real people who have the power to cancel you and destroying your career. (Thank heavens for indie, no?)
At the very least, the establishment will try to side line you by ignoring you, shutting you out and deriding you. (Okay, so I was called a bad writer in Teh Grauniad, possibly the least credible source for literary criticism. And yet, I bet there are idiots who believe it.) It is not… profitable. It won’t get you the TV interviews, or the gigs teaching in University.
No, those are at the command of the people who attack the FAKE establishment and try to shock people who don’t exist. The real rewards are given to those who speak power to truth, and lave the feet of the corruptocracy with willing tongues. Giving themselves the palms of martyrs for truth and shocking revelations is just an additional perk. I mean, who would question them?
Other than us. And anyone not part of the corruptocracy. And anyone with two brain cells.
I just wonder if they — in their collective multitude — can ever admit that they’re not shocking anyone. And if the assembled multitude of them can come up with a single surprising idea.
Not even shocking. Just surprising. You know, enough creativity to fill a thimble sized for a toddler.
My bet is that they can’t.
I collect expressions like other people collect stuff for their scrap book, and I’m very fond of the British expression “Well, that’s after the fair.”
I also know exactly what it means, because I grew up with fairs. They’re open air markets (except when they’re roofed over) where everything is available for sale, and often the fish is right next to the pottery, which is right next to– And some of them are annual, or monthly, most are weekly and some are permanent, like the one in Downtown Porto, in a multi-story building.
They’re basically markets that attract people from the entire region. Think of them as year-around farmer markets that, sure also have knock off Disney merchandise, books, permanent stalls for the local butcher, and some really good linen sellers and you’re kind of there.
When we visit there is usually an attempt to go to one or two depending on how long we’re there for. In fact I need to go to one urgently next time (?) I visit, because I need pottery, my son having accidentally broken my oven-going-red-clay-roaster in the move. (I forgot to mark the box fragile. I was SO tired.) And anyway, these are massively useful and so expensive in the US (from Amazon.) and there they’re much cheaper (of course you then have to bring them over. Sigh.) And there is often some consternation, because we came in say June or July and therefore missed the “fair” for whatever it is we’re looking for. So, we’re after the fair.
But recently I’ve been under — I thin it’s spam, unless they’re the world’s dumbest — a barrage of emails for another kind of fair.
I’ve been emailed from the “Fairtax” initiative.
Here I should confess that it hit me at a very bad time. I was feeling weird all day yesterday, and it turned into excruciating pain in all my joints by evening. This is one of the rare manifestations of my auto-immune, and usually comes when the other two are very bad which is not the case right now, so it’s a little puzzling. I’m going to assume it has something to do with weather, but what I don’t know, since our weather is okay just now. (But I know these things are usually at a weirder level than what I see. Barometic pressure or something. My last few years in CO I’d have blinding headaches two days before snow, and it didn’t show in anything outside.)
Anyway, I sent back an all caps thing saying fairtax was like fairtheft. I don’t care how fair it is, it’s still morally imbecilic and I want nothing to do with it.
I don’t know if these are the highly specialized “right” idiots who want a national sales tax (possibly less intrusive thing of all) but also a VAT. And for that last, they should be held by their heels with the rest of their body under water until they get over the stupidity or bubbles stop coming up, whichever comes first.
VAT is not just a horrible Marxist “tax” but it is particularly poisonous due to becoming “invisible.” I.e. every product is taxed at every step from rawest of materials through distribution for assumed “added value” so that when it gets to the consumer it’s massively more expensive, but you cant’ tell it’s because of the government dipping in. I saw how this worked in Europe, and of all theft, value added theft is the one I hate the most. Killing is too kind for people who advocate this. They should be kept alive and forced to eat live scorpions for their sustenance while being beaten with sticks with nails in them all the days of their lives. Compared to them rapists and murderers are relative innocents, because they don’t wish to blight the lives of every single innocent stranger within reach of their polity and make future generations poorer and less free world without end.
But let’s discuss the concept of taxes as theft.
I know some of you think I’m joking when I put those memes up, but I’m not. And yes, I am conversant with “it’s a fee you pay to be a citizen.” BAH.
Taxes are an involuntary taking from citizens who might or might not have voted against and whose vote in the present crazy is irrelevant anyway. I mean, I don’t think enough Americans — real, living ones — voted for the regime that bragged about how they were going to raise our taxes during campaign to make them have a mandate.
At any rate, given the speed at which they’re running the printing presses, one wonders why raise taxes, except to make us hurt.
We are in for real “taxation without representation” territory, but to an extent we always were. Why? Well, guys, let’s talk about it. WHY in heavens in name do they come to me and take money to buy hardware to give to the Taliban? Or to distribute to their favorite aggrieved victim class du jour. Or any of that. Do you think I have voted FOR THIS? Or that any of this makes any sense? Why are they taking money from people who are fiscally responsible to house and educate aliens who are then encouraged to consider themselves victims, after breaking into the country? Does any of this make sense to you?
But it never did. There was never any sane justification for taking money from people against their will and under threat of imprisonment to do things that some vague “collective” — but mostly — government wanted to do.
Let’s stipulate that money is needed for those things that the Federal Government (Feral Government) HAS to do by constitutional mandate, like you know, defend the borders (Oh, hello!) or provide for the common defense (under which you can, yes, slide military defense founding) or avoid inter-state war (I leave as an exercise whether the highway system slides under this or the common defense) or any of that. So, the federal government needs SOME money to function, even if not the crazy bunchaton amounts for all their favorite insane projects, such as donating to their friend lefties and/or financing the boondoggle of “green energy.”
Even if you stipulate they need money — why does it have to be taxes?
And don’t tell me it’s how it has always been done. We know. But until the US it had also always been done that nations were blood and soil and that your “betters” had power over you.
We are a radical experiment. Why are we borrowing any trash from the stupidity of the past?
There are ways to finance the government other than taxes. One that comes to mind is a federal lottery. Yes, yes, sure. That isn’t “fair” because it takes from the poorest. But note it’s voluntary. On a scale of theft, is it more or less moral than going to little old ladies and demanding money to pay for housing illegals who have no skills and no reason to be here?
“At least it’s voluntary” and “The odds are printed right there. If people choose to believe they’ll win, it’s their problem” are two good beginnings to stop taxes being theft.
Heck, we could have the lottery fund different branches of government, so if you disagreed with something, you didn’t buy their lottery. Say “welfare lottery” or “armed services lottery” or “green energy lottery” or whatever. Lotteries at least have an upside. You can buy the ticket for the right to dream for two or three days. (Which I’ve been known to do, knowing that’s what I was doing) at the most depressive and broke phases of our lives. Because I could spend all those days dreaming of how I’d spend the jackpot. (And I knew how unlikely it was.)
In addition to that concerned citizens could do other things. There could be bake sales and clubs in every small town in America to provide for the armed forces (or illegals. Snort. Giggle. better luck with the Opera exhibits for that, in NYC and the like.)
Point being it wouldn’t be theft. It wouldn’t be the government assuming they’re entitled to your money and are benevolent for letting you keep any. It wouldn’t foster the idea that it’s their right to spend your money and that they’ll do it better than you.
It won’t be funding the government by sticking a gun in the faces of every productive citizen and demanding their rightfully earned property. (Or unrightfully, for that matter. Probably still less theft than what the government is doing. Private citizens don’t have the same guns.)
Above all — ABOVE ALL — I want people to stop buying into the Marxist idea of progressive taxation: the idea the rich owe more and that’s “their fair share.”
The entire bullshit of “You didn’t earn that” is just that. And it stinks. Sure, it would be really hard to sell my books without an internet, but you know what, Darpanet might have started the ball rolling, but if you looked deep into it, you’d find it also retarded other, private initiatives. Because the government always does.
The idea that if you make more you owe more is an abomination that ignores the fact that most people who make something of themselves worked much harder than those who don’t.
Sure, there are exceptions, and luck (and assets other than work) must be taken into account. But generally those who make more work harder, smarter, and more assiduously.
However, beyond that, the entire idea of taxation as constituted and used in the rest of the world is the idea that you owe the government money for existing, and you can ‘sign’ into this compact simply by being born or living in a country.
This is clearly stupid for a country where we’re supposed to own the government. We need another way to do this.
There is no fair tax, for the same reason that there is no fair theft.
We’ve all heard that democracy is two wolves and a sheep discussing what’s for dinner.
There’s no need to make this even stupider by having the sheep try to make it fair by arguing which cuts are tenderer and should be taken first, okay?
Stop it, just stop it. There is no fair tax, for the same reason there is no fair theft.
And all you do when you try things like this is make statists think they’re justified.
You’re after the fair. We see through the game and we’re not amused.
When I was a kid in the village, I could tell what the oldest walls around fields or houses were.
You see, in the sixties the new, nice houses being built, would have very short walls. Maybe four feet. Walls more for decoration than for anything else.
This didn’t mean there was no theft, of course. I mean, the smart woman brought in the wash from the line at night, and henhouses and rabbit hutches had as good a locking mechanism as a house’s. Sometimes someone got over the little walls and took all your just-grown lemons, or whatever else. That wasn’t unusual. BUT no one would get over the walls and kill you and your entire family in your sleep, and the stories I heard from my grandmother about second-story men who engaged in home invasion were just that — stories that were safely in the past (to be fair, I think most of them were from her mother’s or grandmother’s time) and not at all scary, because they could never happen to us.
But the REALLY old houses in the village, the ones that probably dated back to the eighteenth century, not only had eight foot walls around them, but the walls were topped with bits of broken bottles so anyone trying to scale them would hurt himself badly.
More interestingly, the old fields (the village had clearly expanded greatly in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, mostly with migrants from the mountains, like my grandmother’s family) which again, I’d estimate had been farmed since about the eighteenth century, not only had the eight or ten foot tall walls topped with broken glass, but also gates at least as high and — importantly — faced with smooth sheets of metal in the front, so you couldn’t get a foothold to climb.
This makes sense in retrospect. In that time it made sense only in light of grandma’s stories of bandits, but I’ve now read a lot about the Napoleonic wars. I didn’t realize how devastating they’d been to people in Portugal. Oh, sure, you heard stories like the boat bridge, which sank under the weight of people escaping Napoleon, and that’s one thing — the kind of tales that exist here about the civil war, say.
But then I read some memoirs of the peninsular war from British soldiers, and hey, well… Stuff like all the cows in the country (even work oxen) being eaten, or stuff like the troops scouring entire regions for anything edible. It appears neither the French nor the British were well provisioned as we think of it in the 21st century. To an extent troops were expected to live off the land. But Portugal was very close to the bone, and … well, I now know why the broken bottles on top of very tall walls. I suspect it was the only thing protecting one’s vineyards or fruit trees, very often. It also explained why most of those were along the old Roman roads, still in use when I was a kid (of course.) Because further in, in fields amid woods or whatever, there would often be no walls at all, or just bits of broken, knee-high wall (and sometimes just boundary stones written in Latin). Apparently further in where invaders or counter invaders (sometimes I understand it was hard to tell the difference for peasants on the ground) didn’t reach, or were afraid to go lest they be ambushed, the local trust amid families that had been there forever, (and most of those family were old local families, at the time) kept the walls low.
Then came the nineteenth century, more prosperous, but still not great, and amid civil war and revolution and counter revolution, the walls were a little lower, and the gates might be wrought iron, and you could climb them. But still, to get to grandma’s back patio where the door was open all day, you had to go past two gates, one of which had a lock (though I never saw it locked.) And even though the big kitchen window gave out on the side patio, past a set of gates, grandma would put a big board into the frame at night, to block off anyone who might break the window and try to get in.
By the time my parents built their house in sixty eight, it had four foot tall walls and gates the same height, more of a symbolic barrier than a real one. Of course all the windows had roll-down shutters of the kind here associated with store fronts.
Then the security measures started increasing. First there was a gate between the garage and the house, locking, and keeping away anyone who might think to surprise us in the back patio. (Which happened a couple of times before that, and could have got ugly if dad hadn’t been able to stop any intruder.)
And then… well, every time I go back, the walls have climbed a bit more, and are now slick marble-panels on the outside, and the gates are smooth and locking. I’m half afraid next time I go back there will be broken glass (or more aesthetic spikes) atop the walls. The last time there were bars in the windows, behind the shutters.
I honestly don’t know if crime is that bad, or if it’s a matter of my parents getting older and less able to defend themselves, plus living in a neighborhood where more people are older and less alert, so the neighbors hearing a disturbance won’t save you. And also, of course, such neighborhoods attract bad elements as they tend to be easy prey.
But I do know that when I first came to the states it utterly blew my mind that people had decorations in their front yard, with not even a symbolic gate to protect them and NO ONE STOLE THEM.
In Portugal someone would steal these things even if they had no use at all for them. By leaving them outside, you’re inviting someone to take them.
This morning we bought pumpkins (at last) to carve, and noted the vast bins of pumpkins outside the store, the trust it implies in people taking them inside to pay.
Someone here said something about Arab countries being full of people who want freedom/the blessings of liberty.
I believe them. Portugal is too. Many people will express disgust with the Shenanigans of governance, with corrupt authorities, with the general anything goes atmosphere, and will make comments about how much better it would be if–
But what you have to understand is that these people don’t know anything more about America than a cat knows of a king. They will admire the results of American can-do and entrepreneurship, then commiserate with me when unemployment leaves us without health insurance, and tell me how much better they have it because the government takes care of them; they will talk about how it would be great to have honest policemen, but will expect to get out of a minor fine with a minor bribe; they will decry nepotism but be quite happy when their godfather gets them a job or a good deal on something.
In Arab countries (and in some regions in Portugal) this would extend to things like “there ought to be a law keeping these shameless women from going around in short skirts/short sleeves/etc.”
It’s easy to want liberty in the abstract, but in societies where individual rights, including the individual right to property are not a gut-level belief, it’s almost impossible to implement it. You need to have citizens who have a minimum of trust among themselves, who view others’ property as sacred, who view others’ rights as inviolable to be able to have people truly govern themselves, without its rapidly devolving to the stuff of nightmares.
As our kids have been taught for the last forty years that the collective is more important, that those willing to hold on to their property or the fruits of their labors are greedy, and that (as Bernie supporters keep saying) one must care for “the people’ in great unwashed collective form, we are at risk of losing the ability to have that mutual trust and respect which is essential to self governance, too.
Cultures change very slowly, and it seems more so when it’s in the direction of liberty and trust.
One of the great flaws in classical SF was the assumption that the whole world could become a sort of extended America without those prerequisites.
It was a beautiful dream, but it’s not how things work.
And when the west welcomes large groups of immigrants who don’t understand the rule of law or the meaning of civic trust, it becomes very hard to keep self-government going.
It is essential immigrants assimilate or leave. Oh, not in things like food and modes of dress. That is not important. But the assimilation of the principles of trust and individual rights? That is essential.
Teach your children well, and explain to those who would be like us what it actually entails.
Aesop Fan linked this from Gerard Vanderleun’s blog in blogs.
He noted that the original has about 5 links per stanza.
https://americandigest.org/mt-archives/005117.php
What he didn’t note is that most of those are now broken or lead to nothing and I don’t even remember what it was.
May 5, 2006 The [Linknotated] Law of the Blogger
NOW this is the Law of the Blogger – as old and as true as the sky;
And the blogger that keeps it may prosper , but the blogger that breaks it must die.
Like the visits that pump up your hit count , Blogger Law runneth forward and back —
For the strength of all blogs is the Blogger that never cuts anyone slack.
Blog daily from news tip and hat-tip; blog long , but blog not too deep, ;
And remember the Pundit’s for linking, and forget not that he has to sleep.
The new blog may free flame the Bozos, but, Cub, when thy archives have grown,
Remember the Big Blogs are hunters — go forth and make Scoops of Thine Own.
Keep peace with the Lords of the Blogsphere — the Pundit , the Malkin, The Bear;
And trouble not Lileks the Bleater , but always mock Kos in his lair.
When Pack meets with Pack in the Blogsphere , and neither will put down the flame,
Lie down till the Spewers have Blathered — it always will save you from shame.
When ye flame on a Prince of the Pack , ye must fight him alone and afar,
Lest others take part in the Blog-Pile , and all Blogs be diminished by War .
The URL of the Blogger’s his refuge, and where he has made him his home,
Not even the Pundit may post, not even the Hewitt may come.
The URL of the Blogger’s his Castle , but when he has blown it too plain,
The Lileks shall send him a Fisking , and so he shall blow it again.
If ye post after midnight , be patient , and wait for the next working day.
Your readers are reading from cube farms and commenting only for play.
Ye may post for yourself , or your country, blog your cats if you must, and ye can;
But post not for the pleasure of Flaming lest you be but a flash in your pan!
If ye plunder a post from a weaker, remember to link for his pride;
Link-Right is the right of the smaller; if you’re wrong it’ll be him that lied.
Now these are the Laws of the Blogger, and as true and as blue as the sky;
You can link , you can wink , you can blather , but in the end you can’t lie.
I was both charmed by the well… pilk? (Is it filk if it’s not sung. Poetry, so Pilk) and things like calling Roger L. Simon A Prince of the Pack, which he undoubtedly was. And so was Gerard, and in a different front, so was Jerry.
And I’ve been feeling maudlin all day. I was on the blogs back then, but hidden and under deep cover. By the time I dared to come out, I was told the age of the blog was done and I’d never get a following.
I’ll note I have, and also that in 12 or 14 years (depending on which you consider: my early blogging, or blogging after coming out of the political closet) of blogging I broke every one of these rules, except the lying (I’ve been wrong. Very wrong, but never knowingly) and the blogging every day (more or less.)
I once went to war with Esquire because they p*ssed me off. In fact, going to inadvisable war seems to be one of my trademarks. (There is a a reason my husband has a t-shirt that says “I am with the excitable Latina.”)
One of my last interactions with Gerard was taking exception to someone he quoted who thought too well of Europe and too lowly of the US. But he emailed, and we talked, instead of turning it into a full blown blow up. (A gentleman, you know.)
This combined with the Super Bowl, which as a rule we don’t really watch, but we used to go to a party with friends from Dan’s old working place, starting in the seventies. Some have died, some have moved a away, some have gone (or always were woke) and that landscape is blasted for good and all.
And I was thinking…. How beautiful we were.
You know, for people my generation the 90s were a golden age of stupidity. We had grown up learning we’d be blown up when “the hammer fell” And suddenly the Soviet Union just crumbled away and fell. And everything was possible.
Most people went soft-liberal. I went full on Libertarian. (Yeah, I do like going to war against everything in general. Your point is?)
It took 9/11 to rock me back into contact with reality. And for a while I even trusted our government to at least defend us.
The last two years… Between realizing our intelligence agencies are a pack of ill-intentioned morons (I always knew they weren’t too bright, but seriously) whose true allegiance is to their erstwhile ivy league masters, and realizing that our military too will lie to the commander in chief, in the interest of continuing stupid wars… Well–
I suspect from here on that’s it. We’re going to plumb new depths of disillusionment and cynicism.
It’s better to know than to not know, but —
But I’m glad we had our age of illusion and dreaming. The time we were beautiful and stupid.
Oh, and looking at my blogging career, I’m going to tell you what people say isn’t necessarily so. I managed to make it when everything was already lost and the age of blogging is past.
Let that be a lesson to it. DO IT YOUR WAY. It’s more likely to work than all the opinions of the experts.
I’m old. That’s a given. Okay, so mom says I’m now middle aged. But she’s 87 almost 88 so, you know? She might be somewhat biased.
But here’s the thing, I know all the things that don’t work on writing and publishing, at least the traditional version of those, but like everyone else, I kept deluding myself that other fields worked fine.
You kind of have to, if you want to sleep at night.
Only it’s become more and more obvious that other things don’t work either. Take academia and scholarship. Sure, the soft sciences/social sciences are worse, but the whole publish or perish has not only led to a lot of “scholarship” that isn’t — look, guys, I was shocked when in class we were told to write a poem. Not everyone can write a poem, okay? Asking for one written on command is like asking for “an advance to mankind’s knowledge” on command. Just because you can teach, doesn’t mean you can do THAT — but worse it has led to the government subsidizing a lot of this research which in the soft (and sometimes hard) sciences means your results have to conform to the government expectations. Which leads to false science and reproducibility issues. Worse, it leads to universities hiring because they think you’ll do “research” which in turn, you know, means sweet, sweet government money.
Now, you can survive some of that. Like you can survive a few hyper-pushed books no one reads but everyone talks about how great it is. It just, over time, accumulates into an erroneous and counterproductive idea of what the whole field does and what it should do, and how to achieve it.
Now sit back for a moment and realize this isn’t just hitting things like writing, or you know dance like that sorry spectacle yesterday at mid-time in Superbowl (who knew that “spazing out” qualified as a dance to quote a certain literal video.)
It’s also hitting medicine. Psychology. Education. And you start seeing the full length and breadth of the problem we have.
This is when I get black pilled, btw, because things are so bad that the left’s efforts at DIE and other nonsense almost can’t make it worse.
And it’s easy to — and frankly I like to — blame it all on “Because they hire leftists” which they do. But you know that’s not the problem. The problem is “government being administer by ‘experts’ far away (both physically and mentally) and that has been with us since the creation of vast nation states in the 14th century.
Which is the other side of the black pill, btw, it took this long to break things, and we’re still doing okay, really. I mean better than we were, though the line might be reversing around here if not already.
AND along the way we managed to create a constitution which, if followed would obviate most of the problem.
If followed….
It’s my full belief it’s going to get to a point we’ll have no choice but to follow it.
However things are going to get very dire not just for us but for all of mankind in the mean time. Right now, like in the picture above, the glass is shattered but holding together. But that only lasts so long before the inevitable kaboom which leaves everything in shards.
The everything includes every human life, and all the ways we do things.
And all we can do is keep working and pushing for the outcome from this mess that allows civilization to grow and thrive.
…. Even if it will take a good long while, and a lot of work on civilizational health to get us over mid-game spaz shows.
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. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. – SAH
FROM SABRINA CHASE: Red Wolf: Exile Part 2
Surviving the sudden shift to a parallel Earth, Nic finds a refuge in the not-quite-Ancient China she finds herself in, the fortress of Shanmen – and a new identity as the idiot water-carrier Niu. But when Nic defends the fortress against an enemy attack in the night and nearly dies, the general in charge uncovers her disguise.
Will he welcome this uncanny foreign woman, or join the others calling her a demon? And will the forces involved in the river massacre track her down and threaten them all?
FROM BONNIE RAMTHUN: The Turtle of Ultimate Power: Book One of the Centerville Chronicles
Ray thought magic only existed in books and movies–not in real life!
On the first day of seventh grade, twelve-year-old Ray Sebastian discovers his home town, Centerville, is the most dangerous place on Earth. Buried in caves underneath the town is a treasure-trove of ancient and powerful artifacts that were kept secret–until now.
Ray and Clancy Jones, the fearless new girl at school, uncover a magical stone turtle that gives them amazing power over others. Together with Clancy’s eccentric grandfather, the three join forces to prevent the turtle from falling into the hands of a deadly sorcerer who wants the ultimate power for himself.
From the streets of Centerville to the dangerous caves beneath, can Ray and his friends protect the magical artifacts and defeat the villains before it’s too late?
FROM STEPHEN KRUEGER: Law Future
The anthology has 25 original legal science-fiction stories: 3 short-short stories, 18 short stories, 2 novelettes, and 2 novellas. Plus 1 original preface, 1 original essay, and 1 original Post Scriptum.“Science fiction” intends a recital, the foundation of which is a yet-to-be technology. Usual yet-to-be technologies are space travel, time travel, and terraforming.
“Legal” intends that a substantive law matter is central to a recital.
The target audiences are lawyers and sci-fi readers. To that end, excellent writing prevails. There is not a single blasphemous, scatological, or reproductive word in the anthology. An aficionado or aficionada of quality legal fiction and of first-rate science fiction will be happy with the anthology.
BY MAX BRAND, WITH INTRODUCTION BY D. JASON FLEMING: Train’s Trust (Annotated): The classic pulp western adventure
Steve Train, gambler, adventurer, clever rogue, didn’t care much for work. But then he was offered a job with no work, but plenty of danger. The job: track down outlaw Jim Nair — and hand him a pile of money!
This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction by indie author D. Jason Fleming giving historical and genre context to the novel.
FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Margins of Mundania.
A tween boy’s Christmas gift opens a world of wonder and brings joy to a whole town fallen on hard times. A young New Englander in the early Twentieth Century discovers that some parts of human history don’t bear too close examination. A literary critic in the old Soviet Union must confront his own moral cowardice.
These stories, along with a multitude of bite-sized works of flash fiction, carry you from the most prosaic of events to the moments of awe that offer glimpses of matters larger than ourselves.
FROM DALE COZORT: Earth Swap: The Stone Library of Venus
Near-future Earth suddenly finds itself in a different version of the solar system, one where human civilizations trade and war between planets. Lurking behind those humans: the long-vanished non-human “Builders,” who colonized the solar system long ago, seeding it with Earth life. Ward Parke, astronomy enthusiast and presidential advisor, wants to explore this new solar system, but the planets here are on the verge of a genocidal, civilization-ending interplanetary war.
Our Earth is caught in the middle of that looming war, with technology hundreds of years behind the other powers. Its only advantage is an ancient stone library preserved by a now-vanished human civilization from Venus and a mysterious woman called Pandora who may be that civilization’s only survivor.Near-future Earth suddenly finds itself in a different version of the solar system, one where human civilizations trade and war between planets. Lurking behind those humans: the long-vanished non-human “Builders,” who colonized the solar system long ago, seeding it with Earth life. Ward Parke, astronomy enthusiast and presidential advisor, wants to explore this new solar system, but the planets here are on the verge of a genocidal, civilization-ending interplanetary war.
Our Earth is caught in the middle of that looming war, with technology hundreds of years behind the other powers. Its only advantage is an ancient stone library preserved by a now-vanished human civilization from Venus and a mysterious woman called Pandora who may be that civilization’s only survivor.
FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Darkship Thieves
Athena Hera Sinistra never wanted to go to space.
Never wanted see the eerie glow of the Powerpods. Never wanted to visit Circum Terra. She never had any interest in finding out the truth about the Darkships.
You always get what you don’t ask for. Which must have been why she woke up in the dark of shipnight, within the greater night of space in her father’s space cruiser, knowing that there was a stranger in her room. In a short time, after taking out the stranger—who turned out to be one of her father’s bodyguards up to no good, she was hurtling away from the ship in a lifeboat to get help.
But what she got instead would be the adventure of a lifetime and perhaps a whole new world—if she managed to survive….
A Prometheus Award Winning Novel, written by a USA Today Bestseller.
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: FUEL
I’m desperately trying to work, not that successfully she adds, but I MUST finish novella in Shifters world today, if I want it proof-read at all.
Over the last few years I’ve taken part in more than a dozen panels in science fiction conventions where the question came up “Why is there no sense of wonder in science fiction?” Or “Where have all the young people gone? Why aren’t they reading science fiction?”
The excuses are always the same. The foremost and most favorite is “The age of wonder in SF is between 12 and 14.” The second is “They’re living in a science fiction world. They don’t need to read it.”
On this I’m going to call bullsheep and oh, yeah, bullsheep again.
If the age of wonder is between 12 and 14, then YA SF should be healthy and thriving, right? Instead of non-existent in comparison to YA fantasy. And while there’s something to say for that, psychologically – I remember reading sf as a young kid and being filled with a sense of amazement, but actually my most fervent reading age for SF was between fourteen and about twenty five or so. Partly because at 22 I came to the states, and I found a whole plethora of work that had never been translated.
As for the “they’re living in science fiction.” Oh, PLEASE. This is the part of the blog in which we say “your age is showing,” and also “Get over yourself.” Admittedly the age at which sf/f was most popular was around the forties and fifties. Not respectable, but popular. Well, it could be far more accurate to say that they lived in science fiction, at least by their lights. Most twenty year olds then, probably remembered a world where cars were very few, and where oil lamps and candles still had a place in many houses, but they were living in a world with an interstate system and electrical lighting and indoor plumbing, and the beginnings of computers. Compared to that jump, the one from the seventies to today is nothing. Oh, yeah, the computer is starting to make it different, but it’s not the thing that people DREAM of. In fact, it’s so unromantic, and came on so slowly that most of us have trouble realizing how fundamentally transformational it is.
Recently two more excuses have been brought in. One is “the boys don’t read. They’re watching TV and playing games.” We’ll go into this again later. And one that is almost right (almost) which is “We had all these great things, but we didn’t pay up. There are no flying cars, or moon rockets.”
They’re almost right on that one, but not quite. The people saying this are ten to twenty years older than I, and they’re right that there’s a generation that is disgusted at this – but that’s my generation. And those of us who still read sf tend to read off beat stuff, or older stuff, not the stuff that’s “pushed” or considered “high quality” by most of the houses. (Baen, as usual is its own little world and therefore exempt from these discussions.)
The kids alive today don’t know about those broken promises. Though I’m here to tell you they still get excited about going to space and the future. It’s just that this is no longer what SF is about. And (see what I did here) this means that they go play games, which do have mega fighting robots, and space colonies, and the other things that once made them read SF.
This is not even particularly important, except insofar as there are things you can learn from written stories that are harder to come by in games. I think empathy is one. And good reading skills is another. Both of these are useful in life, and we’re shutting a generation out of them. Beyond that, science fiction has the chance to make kids THINK about the future before it gets here, and also to have them try on new ideas.
So, who killed the sense of wonder?
You’ll forgive me, since I know a lot of my readers belong to this generation, but it was boomers moving into the publishing houses.
I understand WHY it happened. I just don’t have to like it. Boomers came of age at a time when population was supposed to keep expanding indefinitely (note to the brainless bunnies who commented on my war is Hell post, no it’s no longer doing that. It might actually be contracting. We only have highly dubious counts, from countries who get aid per capita to believe it is still expanding. We also thought the USSR was expanding, until it collapsed. There’s lies, damn lies and statistics.) Youth was the way of the future. You only have to re-read the Heinlein of the sixties and seventies to get this feeling. The older people were kowtowing because they expected to be vastly out-numbered. So between that and a bunch of other cultural things, that one generation grew up thinking they were something special and that they should make everything different.
Also for some reason and I honestly can’t think why, unless it is a combination of their parents’ experiences in WWII AND Soviet Agit Prop (yeah, I know. I blame a lot of things on it. But they were GOOD), the boomers thought that they could create a perfect world.
Unfortunately this meant that when they moved into SF, right after Heinlein had exploded out of the ghetto of crudely colored magazines, they decided it was their mission in life to make SF accurate, respectable and, above all RELEVANT.
This is when the problems came in. They came in because every generation’s idea of “relevant” freezes at around the time they come of age. The burning issues of the day get resolved and gotten over, but they’re still the ones that formed them. And some of those issues weren’t even, really, issues by the time they came of age, but they were part of what was being struggled with while they were growing up.
When the boomers swept away the old order of SF and brought their stuff in, suddenly SF became obsessed with gender issues (mostly defined as a rather pat feminism), race issues (the burning issue of their day), and misunderstood economics (that to be honest is still relevant. their kids fail to grasp economics in exactly the same way.) The idea of being “cool” made them worship “literary” only since most of them wouldn’t know literary if it bit them in the fleshy part of the arse, “incoherent” “hallucinatory” and “pointless” had to do the turn.
Then came my generation who, btw, are not boomers, though we often get aggregated onto the end of it. We’re also not gen xers, sorry. Some people call us the lost generation, though we were mostly found – at work, trying to claw a space for ourselves while being told we weren’t cool or “socially conscious.” We’re the band of kids born somewhere between 59 and 68 or so, though these things are fluid, and I’ve met “us” stretching all the way back to 51 and them stretching all the way up to 70. A lot of this had to do with how old your parents were when you were born. Our current president, for instance, despite being only a year older than I is very much fully integrated in boomer culture, being the child of a very young mother and raised mostly by her parents, and therefore more as her little brother than her son. Also, for some of us on the cusp, we CHOSE.
I’m not saying all the boomers did was bad. Largely I’d rather praise them than bury them. But in SF they’ve been an unmitigated disaster.
Not as readers, as such. Readers still wanted the same thing – fun. Not as writers, so much. Some of the still readable writers – Dave Drake, possibly Weber (I don’t know his age) and many others in the Baen stable ARE boomers. Connie Willis is also a boomer. I think so is F. Paul Wilson (though he looks about my age.) – are boomers, but as editors and critics and the people who set the culture. Maybe it has something to do with the liberal arts culture of the time.
I didn’t notice, because my exposure to SF was limited by what was translated into Portuguese, what was going on until about five years after coming to the US – five years spent catching up on favorites’ books that hadn’t been translated.
And then after a while, I started realizing that these books were… odd. The new stuff coming out, in the ever-shrinking SF shelf at the local bookstore in Charlotte NC, was… strange. Not the SF/F I remembered at all. Well, the fantasy was mostly quest, this being the mid eighties. I can take or leave quest. It doesn’t do a thing for me. A lot of the SF was cyber punk which bored me. The more serious works were… uh…
And by “Uh” I mean, I’d get to the end and either not remember the book at all or throw it against the wall.
And please understand that while in Portugal, in despair I had resorted to reading NOT JUST typical seventies SF of the “We all have tons of odd sex and then we die” or French SF (check out Pierre Barbet sometime.) Or even French SF Romance (which was very funny, as it was written by people who’d never read SF. the one thing I remember, for whatever reason, was the woman being showered by a floating ball-robot that sprayed her with water. I’m still trying to figure out WHY. World building was always funnier than heck, as tech made no sense.) I even got hold of a mag called Panspermia which was French SF and I THOUGHT was devoted to the theories of Fred Hoyle. Turns out I was wrong. Who knew? The fact it came in a plain brown wrapper should have given me a clue, but I was innocent.
So, my tolerance for bad is very high.
But these books were POINTLESS. They either had meandering non-plots, or they had an endless repetition, of the hit-over-the-head type with … not even social controversy but social markers of that time and class. You know “Women are better than men.” “Every culture is better than Western” (or what I call Ashram anthropology… or more likely hashram anthropology.) These were soon joined by newer and stranger talking points as boomers realized that the world was more difficult to make perfect than they thought, “The human species is a blight upon the Earth.” and “We should go back to eighteenth century tech and die out.”
Sometimes, rarely, you came across a book that bowled you over all the way to the end when, I guess in an effort to stay relevant or interesting, the author killed every character.
Like Amanda who talks about his over at MGC today, I thought that people simply weren’t writing the good stuff, anymore. And then I wrote it. And I sent it out. Do you know the MOST common rejection for DST, back thirteen years ago, was that I had “illogical world building.” No one could ever explain to me WHY this was so, but mumbled explanations ranged from the fact that “In five hundred years we won’t even be human anymore, and we’ll have all sorts of computer augmentation.” (Rolls eyes. Why if we get better at bio?) And “it’s too cheerful” or “It ends well” or “The state will be far more efficient and everyone will be happy” or… I SWEAR I’m NOT MAKING THIS UP, from my agent at the time, “Perhaps you can make it believable if instead of the Good Men, you have the Catholic Church rule the world.” (WHAT? No, seriously, WHAT? I’d never talked about any religion to this man, so I can only assume that the Catholic Church was his own personal bete noir. Who knows why?) And yes, most of the time my sf was rejected by agent and never sent out because “no one wants to read that” and “you lack a big idea.”
At that point I did what everyone else seemed to have been doing since the seventies, and moved over to fantasy. Only fantasy was even then falling victim to the same nonsense. It seemed, for instance, that having heroic males was out. And you had to have a certain amount of allotted whine per page about the evils of patriarchy or praise of the great goddess.
So I took refuge in the past and wrote historical stuff – fantasy and mystery. I’ll note at this time both time travel and alternate history were getting very popular, I think for the same reasons. But there’s only so much you can do in the past, and most people don’t want to work that hard (Regencies, arguably the most successful historical subgenre – of romance – aren’t really. They have a few historical details, but, by and large, are modern people in costumes and following outdated rules.) Also, well… going into the past might be a sense of wonder of a sort, but not the kind likely to appeal to young people. Particularly since, with few exceptions (Frankowski, S.M. Sterling, Flint) people didn’t do Connecticut Yankee things in the past, making it modern. Instead, they just struggled along there, and more likely than not died in the end. (I’m not casting aspersions on Doomsday Book where the death is natural and makes sense and it’s NOT the main character.)
And Fantasy went the same way, till it became “unbearably long feminist screed on the evils of men.” Look, I’ll take some of this. Mercedes Lackey and a bevy of other fantasy writers of the eighties did a bit of this. The father was always wicked (eh. I have that too Which is weird since I’m very close to my dad.) There were some evil guys. BUT most of the men were still decent, and even if the main character was female (and that wasn’t always) she would find either love or decent male friends. But then that changed. I actually had a book rejected for being “insufficiently female centric” despite the fact the main character is female AND she’s a take charge female (a police woman) AND she rescues her man (Think Athena’s little sister in urban fantasy.) Why? Well the explanation had something to do with her falling in love with a MAN. (The horrors! Shudder.)
And that’s when I started realizing what was wrong – though it took Amanda to solidify the thought into words – the thoughts we were getting for lack of a better word “pushed at us from the over culture.” This was the way they wanted us to think, the way that not only were news stories slanted, and narratives framed, (the Duke Lacrosse case) BUT the stuff they were teaching our kids in school.
Was my biggest problem with it, then, that it was blantantly a-historical and counter-factual. Well, no. I lie for a living. My morals are weak.
My problem with it was IN FACT that it was boring. If I wanted to get these points pounded into me until I got sick, I’d read the newspaper, the advice columns, the fashion mags or watched sitcoms. There was nothing new THERE.
Meanwhile, btw, TV and movie sf continued doing very well by bringing in much of the feel of the pulp era to the screen. For instance, you couldn’t SELL Stargate (though I wrote a short story which even called them stargates back a year before it came out. It’s okay, it’s a very bad story) as a book or a story. Why not? Not plausible. We know humans evolved on Earth. You can’t violate what we know in science.
Between the bands of political correctness, the bands of “relevance” and the bands of “we want to be literary” science fiction was strangled in the crib by people who didn’t care if sales numbers kept falling because, well “kids aren’t reading. They live in science fiction.” And their bosses believed them.
But this is neither a dirge nor a despairing article. And I MIGHT write dystopian societies now and then, but my characters still manage, by and large, to fight through.
This is to tell you it doesn’t have to be that way. Ric Locke’s book is full of the sense of wonder. I haven’t read much else recently, because I’m busy trying to finish contracts so I can put some stuff up myself, but I have a feeling if there aren’t other books like his out yet, there will be. I’m looking forward to being delighted, shocked and titillated (get mind out of gutter. You’re leaving me no space) by heretical notions of human history, strange thoughts on human future, and fun rides along the way.
The readers now have control, and I think they want their sense of wonder back. Do you have a space opera you wrote years ago, which got rejected everywhere? Dust it off, look it over, unmuzzle it if you tried to make it acceptable to the establishment.
And then put it up. The future is free.*
(*With the purchase of another future. Said purchase, as all purchases of liberty might entail the pledge or actual payment of your life your fortune and your sacred honor. You will only keep the liberty you’re willing to fight for. The establishment is always the enemy of the future. You have been warned.)
While Heinlein was correct that those who don’t know history have no past and no future, knowing history is not enough. In some cases, it might be worse.
While travel is generally believed to broaden the mind, travel by itself is not sufficient, or even particularly helpful, depending on what you’re doing.
Both of the recommendations are designed to give you patterns of what could happen that you haven’t lived through; and patterns of how people live who aren’t you.
The problem is that humans are very, very — did I mention very — resistant to breaking out of the space behind their eyes and see that other people might actually be different.
I see it time and time again, for good and ill: very good people falling prey to very bad ones because they assume everyone is like them, just “misinformed” or “needs help”; very bad people doing horrific things to others because “obviously they would do it to me first if they could.” And everything in between.
I also see every country, regardless of their history making the assumption that the modus operandi and motives of other cultures and organizations is exactly the same as theirs. I’ve now mentioned about a million times the idiots who went over as Human Shields to Iraq because “they can’t even provide drinking water for their people, how would they have missiles” thereby completely missing the fact that other countries — dictatorships at that — have different priorities than say the US or England, even. In the same way, Portugal assumes that every country is as fraught as corruption as they are. Which works fine for other Latin countries, but fails them when it comes to other places, because as corrupt as we are… yeah. It’s nowhere near there yet. Russia assumes everyone moves, breathes and thinks only about them, and that everyone’s intention is to threaten them or conquer them, because they are obsessed with their dreams of national glory, and they think they should rule the world. And the US by and large goes around like a large vaguely autistic child who really, really, really doesn’t understand how different it is from other nations, or if it does assumes it’s worse.
Look, it’s part of the reason our intelligence services are so sucky. To completely understand what other countries are doing and why, you have to know they have very different cultures. They’re not you. Most countries can sort of extrapolate other countries, but America is so different we suck at it. This is why we tend to think places like the USSR (Russia’s party mask) were totes super powers. Because for America to do and say the things they did and said, we’d have to be very sure of our power. But other countries aren’t America. So we go through the world acting like gullible giants.
In fact Americans have one of the weirder cultures in the world. It’s just not in your face weird as China (whose history reads like they should be extra-terrestrials.) It’s subtle and more in the mental furniture.
Because of this, and because we’re a continent-sized nation, born and bred Americans (as opposed to imports like me) read not just the rest of the world but history hilariously wrong. (The history part is because at least when I went through school here — one year — American schools suck at teaching history. It’s all names and dates, not “Why did France do that?” Yeah, probably not worse than the rest of the world, now that all the books have just-so Marxist explanations, but still stupid.)
I had friends in my writers’ group back when who were writing, say, ancient Egyptian families and couldn’t understand in most of them the teens wouldn’t be/act the same as American teens now. Heck, my dad’s generation in Portugal, less than 100 years ago weren’t “teens” really. Their equivalent was under ten. Because by 12 most of the boys in the village were apprenticed in the job they’d have for life. (And dad was in school, yes, but it was way tougher than even I had.) They didn’t have time. And even I — and you guys know my basic disposition — didn’t sass my parents as American teens do, because there was a deep “fund” of “respect the elders” in the culture. I still have trouble calling people older than I — even colleagues — by their first name.
And then there’s the hilarious — or sad — misunderstandings like the Human Shields mentioned above. It’s sad, because they will buy other countries at face value, but are willing to entertain their own country might be evil. Which is why we have a large contingent of open-mouth guppies who think that the US invented slavery. Even though places around the world still have slavery. Including China, where everyone is a slave, it’s the degree that varies, of course.
The problem is made worse — not better — by idiotic travel abroad.
To understand the differences in a country, you need to live with them, as one of them, for a while. You need to speak the language well enough you understand overheard conversations. Etc.
My experience coming over as an exchange student for 12th grade was about ideal. I lived with an American family, as one of their kids, and attended a school nowhere USA (okay, a suburb of Akron, Ohio) and yeah, I had slight celebrity status in the school — being one of three foreign exchange students — but not that much. So I got to experience the normal life of normal people in normal circumstances, which was an eye-opener.
I always wanted my kids to follow me in this experience, but you know, things got complicated around the time they were of age to do it. So they didn’t. They still have experienced life as an every day foreigner when we visit my parents. In fact the issue there is that they never get past the irritation “What do you mean we can’t do that” and towards “oh, it’s just different. Still sucky, but different.”
Going over for two weeks, with or without the guided tour, staying in nice hotels and associating only with people at your social level and not past the level of polite interaction does not enlarge the mind. Instead, it gives a false sense of knowing what the world is like. This is where we get the “socialists” who know it’s good, because look at all the magnificent buildings in Europe, and the fact everyone has time to sit in the coffee shop and socialize with friends. And look at all the amazing public transportation. And and and. If you lived there, or knew history, you’d know most of the buildings created by socialists in the 20th and 21st century are already crumbling. (Some start before being finished.) You’d know people sit around in coffee shops either because they are unemployed, they pretend to work and their boss pretends to pay them, or all of the above. And all of it is paid for in a significant reduction in lifestyle and just the general comfort of life. (Take it from me. Their lifestyle is two social economic levels down from us, for the same relative “income level.” So, you know, upper class is middle-middle class here.) And you’d know the frustration of waiting for the bus on a rainy, windy day, getting soaked, but the bus is late because all the bus drivers went out for a pint together. And suddenly there’s five of them in a row, but you’re already soaked and starting to cough. More importantly you’d know the public transport only works because everyone works in the city and lives in crowded suburbs, in stack a prol apartments, while the countryside is relatively empty. And the people who live there need to buy gas at ridiculous prices, so they can barely afford it.
And sometimes customs that seem cruel just mean you didn’t understand any of it. Like, I was joking recently, with friends that I suck as a mother in law and would be shunned in Portugal. I rather love the girls my sons picked; have no intention of conducting low-level psychological warfare on them, and see no point in keeping them under my thumb. Which is the normal thing in Portugal, still.
BUT you see, there is a reason. When mom came to the village, grandma had to more or less make sure she fit in and didn’t disgrace the family. (It was indifferently successful.) Because villages were TIGHT communities, and the way to be helped, not hurt by them is to fit in completely. Which most people had trouble learning.
Normally integration took two to three generations. UNLESS you were a woman coming in, in which case it was your mother in law’s job to do to you what bootcamp instructors do to raw recruits, until you behaved like a “native.” (And yes, there was enormous variation between places even 10 miles apart, even when I was a kid in the seventies.)
So, it’s an evil custom, unless you know why it was being done. Most Americans don’t. And most American authors can’t write other cultures convincingly. Which, frankly, is one of the most amusing things about the left with their obsession with writing ‘the other.’ They’re so locked into the space behind the eyes that the only thing they understand as “other” is different languages, skin colors, or clothing. And those are the superficial, stupid differences without a distinction. Now, there’s nothing wrong with them that wouldn’t be fixed by dropping them naked in the middle of the Amazon rain forest and coming back in a year to collect them, but I understand the SPCA would be upset. And some of them might die. Or something.
Anyway, the point of this: When you naively assume everyone is like you, do try to think through it again. Because, well, most people aren’t. Even your siblings are likely to be somewhat different.
It’s difficult to believe in real difference — motivation, thought, etc — but if you manage to even approximate that belief it will save you grief and make you a better writer too, if you choose to write.
BUT more importantly, stop projecting what will happen to this country (or won’t) from both the history you learned, and the history OF OTHER COUNTRIES you learned.
The first might or might not work, depending on how much you really studied the time period, and whether you understand the differences. Like, yeah, no, the American revolution wasn’t instant upon the offenses of George III. Took forever, and up to the moment of shooting (And a little after) people you’d now stigmatize as sell outs were trying to reconcile without the need for a revolution. In that we’re not even slightly different, and we’d still have a road ahead before it came to being serious about an armed solution. (And we might not need it. That prudence, demonstrated by the funding fathers, should be emulated. Because war sucks and breaks all the things.)
The second never works. Partly because of the arithmetic. America can’t take the USSR option and keep itself going by looting other countries. We have no real empire partly because its against the fundamental nature of the country, but partly because it wouldn’t work. Given how much we consume/create/etc we just end up supporting any territories we claim. And that’s the opposite of what an empire should be. (And the idiots who think that buying and selling from someone is “imperialism” can exit the room now, on their own or under a succession of kicks from the regulars. You choose.) Even if we went full on evil, we couldn’t support ourselves that way. The other countries don’t have enough to keep us going, and would have less if we stop buying from them.
But then there is the fact we are weird. Unless you moved a lot within the country, you have no idea how different we are even inside the country. I’ve lived now in five states and eight different cities. It’s like a foreign country even moving between cities, much less states. The fact we speak one language (kind of) masks that somewhat, but it’s still a big difference in day to day life.
If you know one state/city/culture/class…. you know one of them. You don’t know America.
Most of the “problems” the left rails about might be true SOMEWHERE — we’re a country of 300 million, after all — but they’re not true everywhere, and they might not even be true in a significant majority of the country. The same is true of the problems the right rails about too. They seem more prevalent because of mass media being lefty, but really, no.
So when you’re anticipating what will happen “They put us all in jail” when you realize we are the majority of the country, and how large the country is, is laugh out loud funny to most people outside the big cities. As is the idea of “We just march on them and–” because lefties don’t all conveniently live in one place. (Nor are all of them disarmed.)
Most of the projections based on other countries will make you a doomer. Which is to say “A sleep walking enemy agent, demoralizing those who are still fighting to avoid war, but who are really on your side.” Don’t do that.
They might also — depending on where you live — make you unreasonably cocky.
We are in America. We are in uncharted land. You can’t know how it will turn out for good or ill.
All you know is the indications. And the indications are good for the side of freedom. (They don’t work at all in math terms for the totalitarians.) And more and more people are getting fed up with the left nonsense, mostly because the left can’t leave anyone or anything alone. Ever.
Oh, yeah, also despair is a sin.
Put your shoulder to the wheel. Don’t be entranced by false models.
It’s not that it can’t happen here. They’re trying very hard to make it happen here. It’s that the rest of us are working very hard so it doesn’t. And we have reality on our side.
It’s still going to suck like a hoover, for a while. Let’s make it a short while.
In the end, we win, they lose.
Be not afraid. And go work.
According To Hoyt 