I have lived through curious shifts, some of them due to the fact that I moved to a country, where things were already shifted, and then they shifted more.

Portugal is still in many ways way more “sexist” against women than the US.

When I was a kid it was openly so. Women were just believed to be a lesser form of human. Period. full stop. Even when you were a female acknowledged as not being lesser in some characteristic, this didn’t absolve you from the flaws of your sex.

I could whip most men in mental contest with half a brain tied behind my back, but I was often congratulated on keeping my emotional nature in check, or considered fragile emotionally for reasons that were, more often than not, baffling to me. I was also of course congratulated on being “unusually smart FOR A WOMAN.

Rest assured I wasn’t injured by this. Perhaps it is a factor of being Odd, but mostly it amused me no end. I collected funny disparaging comments, not because they were hurtful but because they were funny.

The country and the culture has changed, under the influence of feminism, but here’s the thing: culture doesn’t really change. Not that fast. It changes very slowly if at all. The external forms have changed, and women are now expected to excel above men in school, same as here (part of it being of course that the game is rigged) but women are still expected to excel in female accomplishments, from cooking to crafts to child care. The result is overburdened women, and men who still are expected to dominate all public life, other than specialized professions.

That’s fine. They’ll change, or not, and it’s their problem.

But here–

Ah, here. By the time I came over, women ten years older than I were convinced the world was against them. By the time I came over, in the mid eighties, it really no longer was. Absent some bizarre pockets and strange sub cultures (which exist, given how huge and widepread this country is) women in the eighties were already expected to excel in school and business, and sometimes non subtly given legs up by “affirmative action.”

I didn’t realize how crazy things had got till my kids entered public school in the mid-nineties.

In the early to mid-nineties, when I joined the MOB — Mothers of Boys, of course — there was a already a surplus of women wanting to birth only girls.This is very much a US phenomenon and back then it was pushed hard in sitcoms and movies, where a pregnant woman referred to her “daughter” while the husband wanted a “son.” And even back then, this was viewed as chauvinism on the MAN’S PART.

This entire interplay baffled me. In Portugal there was a preference for boys, though after two or three both parents might want a girl. But if anyone wanted a girl, it was usually the dad. So, the idea that each parent wanted to reproduce only his/her kind, that there was some kind of competition was BAFFLING.

And then my kids entered elementary school.

And it quickly became obvious boys were treated as a kind of defective girl. Which got worse and worse until it culminated in puberty, where boys — later developing than girls, were asked to keep pace with them, even though neurologically they were incapable to do so.

We see a lot of victims of the trans fad pushing on people immature enough to not know what they are and believe they really can change and be fertile as the other sex. (Believe it or not they’re telling kids this will soon be possible.)

And we’re aware of the girls who have their breasts cut off. Of the hysterectomies. Of biological men displacing women in sports and other fronts.

But few people are aware there are just as many — maybe more. I don’t know how exact the statistics are — males who get castrated, sterilized, given medical problems for life by being “transitioned” when they are too young to even know what male means.

But beyond all that, we have men being raised being told from the youngest age possible that they are defective because they are male. That they need to be punished because they are male. That their deepest instincts, to pair-bond and protect a woman are wrong and evil and bad. That wanting to father children, wanting to father sons, is wrong and evil and bad.

They are told that women were oppressed for six thousand years because of males. (Not that everyone was differently oppressed because of biology.) That they are guilty of all that, somehow, though their entire life they’ve been discriminated against — hard or soft — for being male. They’ve had to learn in environments not tailored for males. They’ve had to excel — if they do — despite being taught by women who believe the only reason women aren’t perfect and perfectly happy is that males exist.

…. And then people are surprised sperm counts are down. That men aren’t engaging in family formation. That more and more young men are become psychological basket cases, unable to engage in real life. And they’re ridiculed by it. The term incel is applied almost exclusively to men. And there’s assumed to be something wrong with them, if they aren’t out there, spreading their seed irresponsibly.

We see female fantasies on the screen all the time. And in books. Romance novels are female fantasies. But James Bond was a pure male fantasy. And those early movies, literally could not — COULD NOT — be made today. The Ree of sexist, etc. would start one minute in.

The problem is that none of this is the way that idiots in charge assume it is. Societal organization and status is not a a zero sum game.

You don’t elevate women by destroying men. You don’t elevate men by destroying women.

Willing or not, we are yoked together, as partners. Even single people function better in a society where men and women are individually able to chose their profession, and their course in life, and be their best selves without men being told their defective women, and women being turned into sort of men manque, which their biology doesn’t suit them to.

And no one is happiest being told that their sole and most important focus should be their career. Yes, some very driven or very crazy individuals will focus on their careers to the exclusion of a family life. These tend to be what you’d expect: scientists, doctors, artists, writers. (I mean, I’d write, anyway, even if I had half a dozen kids, because I had to write.)

But for most people a job is not a career. It’s simply a way to earn your way, so you can live. And what gives meaning to life are relationships: familial, marital, parental, amicable.

All of which require a healthy relationship where men and women can each pursue their happiness without crazy people telling them they’re doing it wrong.

So, you know, the people who want to be housewives and mothers? So what? What business is it of anyone else? Seamstress is mostly a female word? So, what? There are gifted ones, as there are in any profession. The people who want to be corporate raiders? So what? There are more males than females who want to do that? So what? What business is it of anyone? More boys want to be engineers than girls? So what? More woman want to be romance writers than men? So what? More men want to write science fiction than women? So what?

The world is not a game of proportional representation. Who you are and what you do is determined by more than your sex, your skin color, or for that matter who you like to sleep with.

You are not a widget with certain characteristics, and you shouldn’t be aggrieved if people who share one or two of you characteristics don’t do as well in x or y as people with other characteristics.

If you want to do the thing, and people like you traditionally don’t? So what? Yeah, some people will look at you funny. If you can’t withstand funny looks (oh, the micro-injustice) the problem is with you, not society. Your answer to that type of thing should be “Shrug. So what?” And then do what you feel you must.

And stop paying attention to number games.

Right now we’re destroying both men and women by the numbers.

And society cannot survive this. Because society is not a number game, but a chaotic system of individuals, each striving for individual happiness.

Stop destroying the future. By the numbers.

Hark, What is this Abomination Monday Two Weeks Late Book Promo

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

SOME AUTHORS AND THEIR SELF PROMOTION:

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Barbarella: The Center Cannot Hold #3

Having met the Innumerable and joined their cause against the Architects, Barbarella must clandestinely return to the home of the Architects in order to retrieve Vix, left behind when Barbarella was extracted by an agent of the Innumerable. See? We’ve come full circle! As is often the case, it’s not what you see that’s the danger, it’s what you can’t see, and Barbarella sees plenty of that wherever she sees an Architect. And lest we forget, there is the small matter of the Unnamable out there…

FROM DAVID COLLINS: The Second War (Wars Without End Book 2)

After leaving the medical chamber, Keith thought the long war was over. He had united two warring factions and identified the culprit behind the earlier devastating war. A xenophobic race that was out to destroy all the other races.

The problem was that they didn’t like that he had uncovered their deception, and they were out for revenge.

Then the Earth sent their “secret weapon” out to him. Something that could possibly beat the Meduala at their own game. Unfortunately, her daughter insisted on coming out too.

Much of his earlier success was based on help from the AI on his patched-up former delict spacecraft. Getting it updated seemed like a good idea. Adding more processing power to an unlocked AI should make it even better. That was the idea. What could go wrong? (he soon finds out)

Then they went out exploring the area in the new and improved ship. They found some unexpected aliens. And then some different aliens found them. They discovered that the Meduala were terrified of the new aliens.… It turns out that they had a reason to be…

FROM BONNIE RAMTHUN: The Stone of Excellent Luck: Book Three of the Centerville Chronicles

Saving the world just got tricky

Ray knows he has to save the world this coming summer, since he’s supposed to be “The Shining One.” But then the mysterious new bully in town, Finn, tells Ray that he’s the true one of the prophecies, not Ray. Finn has taken the Stone of Excellent Luck from the deadly caverns underneath the town, the first magical artifact needed to stop the Awful Solstice.
Finn is now after the great sword Excalibur, and once he’s got it, he’s going to be unstoppable. Worst of all, Finn doesn’t want to save the world. He wants to see everything fall apart!

Ray and Clancy must brave the deadly traps in the caverns, find Excalibur first, and convince Finn to play a desperate game of winner-takes-all. Their adventure takes them to the windswept moors of Scotland, the oceans of the Caribbean, and a final confrontation that will give them a way to save the world, or lose their chance forever.

BY MAX BRAND, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: Jim Curry’s Test (Annotated): The classic pulp western

Jim Curry was a loafer, but never did anybody any harm. Until his gun accidentally went off, and killed the most beloved old-timer in the area. It was an accident, but the sheriff isn’t overly sympathetic, and when Curry breaks the sheriff’s jaw escaping, the townsfolk decide that due process just won’t do…

    This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction giving genre and historical context to the novel.

BY CHARLES ALDEN SELTZER REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: Men of the West (Annotated): A pulp western omnibus of: Riddle Gawne, Beau Rand, and West!

iktaPOP Media brings you an omnibus of three classic westerns by Charles Alden Seltzer, featuring Seltzer’s characteristic western heroes, each with his own unique nickname.
Riddle Gawne
Jefferson Gawne has a low opinion of people, and an even lower one of women. After his brother was murdered by Watt Hyat, in complicity with his brother’s wife, Gawne followed Hyat’s trail across the west.
But the trail went cold, and Gawne, nicknamed Riddle behind his back, found himself the guardian of an orphan girl, and the only man in the territory who dares stand up to Hame Bozzam, founder of the dirty and lawless Bozzam City. Bozzam is too smart to challenge Gawne directly, and Gawne is too honorable to act against Bozzam without cause.
So an uneasy truce has held between the two men. A truce that is about to be broken, with the arrival of the beautiful Miss Kathleen Harkless. Every man wants her, and the men of Bozzam City don’t particularly care if she wants them back.
Beau Rand
Amos Seddon has a secret and Beau Rand knows it.
When someone starts rustling cattle, it doesn’t take long for the whispers against Rand to start. To save himself and his young son, Rand has to prove his innocence and find the real rustlers.
West!
Josephine Hamilton’s first impression of the west was stopping the hanging of a supposed horse thief. From that moment, she decided that the west needed her principles imposed upon it.
And the man who personified that west, and most needed dominating, was Steel Brannon, a man who was merely amused that she stopped him from giving justice to a horse thief. And intrigued by a woman so willful, and so misguided.
    This iktaPOP Media omnibus includes Introductions and Afterwords by indie author and editor D. Jason Fleming, putting the novels into historical, cultural, and genre context.

FROM MARY CATELLI: A Diabolical Bargain

Growing up between the Wizards’ Wood and its marvels, and the finest university of wizardry in the world, Nick Briarwood always thought that he wanted to learn wizardry.

When his father attempts to offer him to a demon in a deal, the deal rebounded on him, and Nick survives — but all the evidence points to his having made the deal.

Now he really wants to learn wizardry. Even though the university, the best place to master it, is also the place where he is most likely to be discovered.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Love in the Time of Campaigning

As Frank Correra brings his family to a lunar settlement to get them away from a worsening political situation on Earth, he reminisces about how he and his wife met.

Frank had always dreamed of the skies. As a clone of an astronaut who subsequently became a US Senator, Frank thought he had a clear path ahead of him. But when it comes time to apply for the Air Force Academy, it is an election year. His ur-brother can’t promise a nomination until he’s won another term, and this year promises a hard race to run. When the other side puts up an ugly attack ad, can Frank find a way to discredit it before it destroys his ur-brother’s chance of re-election, and with it Frank’s slot at an Academy appointment?

A Gus on the Moon story.

FROM CHRISTOPHER WERNER: 202303 The Ideas of Marchhttps://amzn.to/3mjyVMx

The monthly booklet, collecting essays on current events and whatever else comes to mind. Mostly current events but that’s natural. The masters are pushing down on us harder and harder and making our lives worse. Like many other people, I’m trying to fight back and inspire others to do the same. How long will it take?

The B-side is a collection of The Struggling comic strips I made this month. Just random jokes and observations that are essentially the sort of thing I write about on Side A, but hopefully more entertaining. This booklet is an edited collection of the previous month’s worth of pamphlets so now you can read it twice!!!

FROM FRANK HOOD: A Hearth for Ulysses

The sky was blue, and snow covered the tops of the mountains. Jack Burns hadn’t realized until he saw it how much he’d missed snow–real, honest-to-goodness, earth-water snow. Even the cement under his boots felt good. Things had changed however. Houses were creeping up the sides of the Andes. The small launching area had turned into a huge spaceport, complete with enormous corporate buildings and a mammoth city to surround it. “Is this the house that Jack built?” Burns thought but couldn’t bring himself to laugh at his own joke.

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: HAMMER

To those who believe in living after death, to those who walked across the sea dry shod from slavery to freedom and to those who (just?) believe in Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness which no government can thwart: Go live and build and refuse to let evildoers thwart you.

I’m taking the day off. Promo tomorrow.

*I’m finally feeling more or less human. Not well-well, but way, way better. Let’s just have some memes, shall we?*

AND BTW, NO LIE DETECTED:

AND NOW LEAVING BEHIND THE FILTHY POLITICAL STUFF, AND FOR MORE FUN STUFF. THOUGH THE FIRST IS STILL CLOWN WORLD.

*It seems like there’s a need to repeat this every April. Not sure why. Perhaps, to mangle Jorge Luis Borges, the idea must return every spring as return the numbers in a periodical cypher. I just felt a need to remind myself of this. And perhaps you have a need too. – SAH*

But The Lizard Will Surely Die -A Blast From The Past From April 2021

Yeah, okay, so we’re back to Rango.

You see, when I was sitting here (minding my own (or at least my characters’) business), what caught my attention FIRST was the owls saying “But the lizard will certainly die” as the poor domesticated chameleon is running through the desert facing a million perils.

There is something…. awfully familiar about those owls.

Oh, yeah, okay, Greek Chorus — though I’ll note those didn’t always predict misfortune, sometimes they predicted great honor, which is I guess next door to it, as far as ancient Greeks were concerned — look, I grew up with the classical forms, to the point that when I first wrote a novel I couldn’t remember any of the novels I’d read, not structure wise, but I remembered the tri-part structure, how scenes were defined, how acts were defined. Oh, and that I needed catharsis. To be fair, I still think you should have catharsis in a book. I’m forever amused by people who tell me their books shouldn’t have feelings. Or the ones who complain of “internal monologue” in first person. Yeah? You think you don’t have internal monologue going on 24/7? What do you think that voice behind the eyes is. Being ADD (AF) all I try to do is prevent my characters thought stream from interrupting itself. Sometimes not particularly successfully. (True story: Copy editor: you can’t end a thought with a dash. The character wasn’t interrupted. There’s no one else there. Me: The heck. You’ve never interrupted yourself?… I guess it should have been an indication I wasn’t QUITE normal.)

Anyway, beyond the Greek choir, it was familiar because — honestly — I’m getting sick and tired of the “Abandon all hope” stream. No, seriously. If I wanted that, I’d be hanging out at Zero Hedge or other sites known to be Russian dizinformazia.

(Gee, I wonder why Russia — or China — would want us to give up, buckle under and just give in to the current invaders’ demands and/or kill ourselves in despair. Either or– I mean the insanity of the left was being capable of believing that Russia would back someone who wanted to “Make America Great Again.” HOW fricking stupid do you have to be about how nations work, and history to believe that shit?)

Even people who know better write long articles about how China is going to win and be the big hegemon forever, world without end. And now that the left stole — remember, they HAD to cheat — their way into power, we’re going to turn into China, and woe, woe, woe.

No matter how often I tell them — and I’m not alone, and frankly like looking at the Diamond Princess numbers when the “pandemic” started, this is only sense — that yes, that’s what China thinks. It might be what the left thinks too (the dumber ones, at least. The smarter/not crazy/not stoned our of their minds ones are just trying to get rich and run out the clock and not get a la lanterned). But their thinking it doesn’t MAKE it so. Yes, that’s what their moves trend to. BUT have you seen their idea of reality and how far it is from, you know, real reality? What makes you think that what they think is the perfect move is in fact a perfect move? They’re not playing 3 dimensional chess. They’re playing 3 dimensional tiddly winks on an invisible chess board that exists only in their minds, while using live frogs as tiddly wink pieces.

Sure, China is going to be the world hegemon forever…. In defiance of their very long history of in point of fact not having a clue other cultures EXIST or that other people are different from them. An history that, back when they were the most advanced people in the world meant they often turned tail and isolated themselves, rather than deal with those icky, icky foreign devils who were so utterly irrational.

But let’s go with that. Tell me, oh, wise ones, how does China feed her people, once they take down the US? Because without us buying their (mostly crap, TBH) products, out of our abundance of wealth, and feeding them with our cheap agricultural produce out of our abundance of production, China can’t in point of fact support itself. It collapses very fast and goes into one of their warring states periods.

Can that happen? Yeah, sure it can because Chinese blind spots mean they don’t understand they can’t stop the wheel of the world’s production and innovation and go on their merry way. They’re the Middle Kingdom. They need no barbarian power, and life would be much better without the barbarian power.

So yes, China will try to grind our bones to make their bread.

But my guess is LONG before they get to the point we’re there, they collapse. However, that’s neither here nor there. The truth is if they try to do that, they collapse.

And what are we doing then, under their heel? Sitting with our thumbs up our butts? Because why? We suffered a paralytic stroke? For one, once the left stops getting loads of Chinese monopoly money, THEY collapse. And probably run away, though you know what, I wouldn’t put it past them trying to rule from a bunker. They almost are right now.

This is the same with “It’s 1984, and the left will rule us forever.” What? Like all the other great totalitarian regimes in history, which within years couldn’t feed themselves? Sure, they’ll rule us forever, because we’re going to live on air and unicorn farts.

Also I’ll remind you that we’re bigger in landmass than Germany, bigger in population than Russia, and that even there the resistance in the form of a black market and various f*ck-f*ck games not only existed but arguably were the only thing that functioned.

I mentioned that I’d watched Le Roi Danse, in French for the love of heaven — though not precisely true. I watched various parts of it — and part of what struck me was that the insane man — he invented bureaucracy, you know? — was trying to build the model of the industrial totalitarian state. Except things weren’t to where he could yet. And now they’re well past it.

The 1930s were the ideal world for 1984. Since then? Not so much.

Yes, sure, But spying devices, they know everything about us, and reeeeeeee.

I know, I know, running around with your head on fire is great fun isn’t it? And believing things are hopeless absolves you from trying to do anything.

But if those spying devices/ubiquitous data gathering were so d*mn effective, they wouldn’t have NEEDED to fraud at the last minute, in plain view.

One thing the left can never process is that other people lie to them. It’s part of their conceit of themselves that they are the smartest people in any room, so they know they can lie to us, but us? Effectively lie to them? That’s not possible.

The other thing that none of the people running around with their heads on fire get is that no tech, none can process the masses of information these ass clowns are gathering.

Information gathering ALWAYS exceeds the ability to process it. Sure, they can process more now, but they can gather exponentially more. I recommend you watch The Lives of Others to understand this discrepancy.

This is why, ultimately, totalitarian states are ineffective and starve. Because their terror is ultimately always arbitrary which personally scares the crap out of me, but it doesn’t mean it scares the crap out of me HISTORICALLY. Sure, their random bullshit could kill me and mine. Meh. We all die sometime. But America will come back and go on. ALMOST for sure.

Look, we’re in a pickle and no mistake, and the bullshit we’re letting these idiots get away with is going to make my great grandkids (if I ever have any eh) work ten times as hard to have a decent life, and innovate.

But you know what? We don’t have an America to bail us out and enable us in our stupidity. By our sheer size, and the fact we’ve been the engine of the world for so long, if we fall nothing replaces us. Which is good, because it means we can’t go on playing at socialism while someone else grows the wheat and sends it over to feed us.

In the end, America will have to unf*ck itself, because there’s no America to come bail us out.

Or, you know, we go down into the stonnnnnnne ageeeeee forever. REEEEEE.

Except that’s never happened. Ever. Correction: It’s absolutely possible, if you’re a small tribe, and your place gets covered with a volcano. But with a world-wide civilization?

Bah.

The Lizard will surely die, yeah.

Just like it was surely going to die when the “hammer” of the Soviet Union fell. Except because the Soviet Union was a totalitarian state, its might was mostly smoke and mirrors, and could only persist so long as people like Jimmah Carter enabled them because they were so scared of this “vaunted might.” And the fact the Soviet Union would “inevitably” eventually win.

I grew up with this shit. No one who lived through it can imagine how all the serious people stroked their chins and told us about the great efficiency of the soviet union, and how they were going to win the cold war, or send the whole world into the stone age.

And then Reagan stood up to it. And told them “We win, you lose” and the whole thing crumbled, like the rotten illusion it was.

So, having been there? This whole “China will ruuuuuuuule us foreeeeeever” is awfully familiar.

Look, the lizard in the Diamond Princess is sunning itself on deck and laughing, while you run around screaming of doom. Just as they were back a year ago. AND YEAH I TOLD YOU SO.

But yeah, we’re in trouble and no mistake, with a Junta having taken over and hating us with a burning passion.

And? It’s not even the stupidest thing we’ve ever done. Tell me another country who ever banned alcohol. ALCOHOL for the love of Bob. And another government who went around poisoning alcohol.

FDR was a greater menace than these assholes. His every instinct was totalitarian and thanks to mass media, he was not even suspected of the shit he puled and thanks to the perilous knowledge/control of history he fooled a good 85% of the people. And those he didn’t fool thought they were alone.

Yes, yes, yes, I know. The Lizard will SURELY die. But not today. Probably tomorrow, by slipping in the shower. Maybe.
But you know what? Yeah, every human civilization is mortal.

But we’re not ready to be eaten by a hawk, or even a blinkered dragon yet. And we won’t be.

Unless, of course, the lizard convinces itself to lie down and die.

In which case, China still won’t win and certainly not forever. The left won’t win and certainly not forever.

But we can CHOOSE to lose.

The question is: WHY WOULD YOU?

F*ck that noise.

To quote President Reagan: In the end we win, they lose.

Be not afraid.

Today I’m going to do something incredibly distasteful. I’m going to teach you to be paranoid.

It’s been obvious to me — well before it was to anyone else — that while not living precisely in the Truman show, we lived in a carefully manufactured reality.

Oh, it’s not a conspiracy, though it contains conspiracies. It’s a prospiracy. Meaning that everyone having been indoctrinated in the same “verities” (which ain’t) and taught to see the world through a Marxist lens (if I had a dime for every journalist whom I heard say their job was to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted! I’d never worry about money again) they all want to be on the side of those they perceive as angels, and manufacture consensus “truth” like one manufactures sausages.

Oh, they have to maneuver around some hard shoals of truth, because it’s hard to tell the empty belly it’s full, or the unemployed that he has a job. But they come up with excuses for that to protect presidents they love. They couldn’t make Obama’s misrule into a great new beginning or an era of plenty, but they tried. How many “Summers of Recovery” did we have, with even the Wall Street Journal joining into singing hosannas? And how many times did they make excuses, based on the state of the world, and what Bush had done, and this and that and the other thing. And now he’s in the rearview mirror they’re little by little burnishing his memory, talking about how great he was at this and that. In twenty years they’ll have it in the history books that his presidency was a time of joy and plenty, with the country united, and the only hardships were caused by Trump, who of course, knew nothing of management or money. No? Watch them.

If we continue lending them credence, that’s exactly where they’ll have us.

I’ve been aware of it since at least Carter, when I watched not only the press explain away the catastrophically high gas prices he inflicted on the country by saying we were coming to the end of oil, but the science fiction community, even, swing into step, and instead of bright futures of space exploration, start to write of miserable futures of scarcity and rust, where everyone behaved like villains. Because when the president is a miserable failure who shoots cats for sport, the only way to make him look good is to make every Jack and Jill a villain.

And then I watched the burnishing of the Carter years in the rearview mirror, the same as I watched them painting the Reagan years as miserable years of want and struggle and greed.

They lie to us, because they lie to themselves. Because their cult demands they be right, and history must be adjusted to fit.

As they used to say in the Soviet Union, we always know the future, because it’s dictated by the party and it’s the glorious dictatorship of the proletariat, ahem you’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy. It is the past that keeps changing, to retcon history to make the idiots in control always and forever heroes, instead of the scurrying rat villains that they are.

Their power is diminished now, this is true. The only people still reading the increasingly detached from reality newspapers or watching the official news (and don’t fool yourself that Fox isn’t converged) are people who are very busy or very old and usually the very busy are at least my age.

The cult of the “acceptable source” has diminished. Or at least it has split to acceptable sources on the right and acceptable sources on the left. Oh, and perhaps still acceptable establishment sources, but that’s smaller.

However, it is important to realize all those sources are still influenced by the big megaphone of main stream press, and still come through if diluted.

Yesterday at Power Line (Yeah, I know. Note I rarely link them anymore) I found myself reading a baffling article in which they talked of how Chicago and Wisconsin and whatever the other race was had gone left, and analyzing the causes. As if causes beyond “the vote is rigged” made any sense. They immediately fell into line with the big megaphone of the left, and accused those “agitating against abortion” of being guilty for the losses. Which frankly is why the left keeps agitating for abortion. Not because it’s an immensely popular topic or that the right talks about it much, after being quietly glad the national mandate was overturned, but because it gives them coverage for the massive, rank, obvious fraud.

And our side knows there was fraud. Impossible not to know in 2020, and those who paid close attention to important contests in 2022 saw it too, the same impossible numbers cropping up, as the automated fraud kicked in from the machines.

But because the mainstream press keeps treating those elections as legitimate, we eventually fall into treating them as such, and looking for causes for them.

It made me feel like someone watching people look for their glasses with them on their faces. Or carefully ponder what happened to the eggs, and ignoring the frying pan and oil, and the dirty plates.

None of this is unfamiliar to me. I was fortunate, at a very young age, to be present at historical events, and then read them described in the press, and finding no resemblance whatsoever. I’ve also been fortunate to realize that whether I was there or not, and no matter the verisimilitude, people will remember the lie oft told over the truth.

In fact, I will tell you it was easier for my parents to see the lie when reading the press under the national socialist government which fell when I was 11 — because they knew it was a lie and under censorship, and knew to read “pravda” by reading its entrails — than afterwards, under the succession of socialist and one or two outright communist regimes, and the lies became even harder to discern later after 78, under supposed “freedom of the press” where it became a prospiracy as what we have, and the directives from above more or a “Of course we should talk of x to advance y.”

Do you remember when Alaskan cruises were all the rage, because the left wanted to kill the Alaskan pipeline, and so they must go on and on about this pristine wilderness that would be “destroyed” and take as many influential lefties as possible through it, people who never asked how the pipeline would in fact harm this natural environment?

Right now the rage is all in cool electric cars. Because of course, the left wants to push the carbon free bullshit, as though it were possible, and didn’t cause more environmental destruction — unless you don’t count Africa.

And for a while they were trying to push the poor, oppressed illegals, though I think they found it hard going. But these themes will be everywhere at once, startlingly, because all of them rush to be the “good people” the (im)moral crusader no one needs.

The fact that now their big thing is to teach children weird sex is both baffling and a measure of how out of control their message machine is.

At the same time it’s a massive distraction. You should of course be outraged about it. And about the fact they’re trying to careen us into war. And and and

But you shouldn’t lose sight of the important thing: They’re doing all this because they’ve corrupted our voting system.

The only way to fight it that doesn’t involve blood up to our ankles is to fight it on that front. To do everything possible and impossible to restore voting integrity. The big things like repealing that fraud machine, Motor Voter, must be done once in power.

Meanwhile, it behooves us to not use machines. To vote late and on paper. (And raise holy hell on all fronts if someone has already voted for us) and above all to sound the tocsin and remind everyone that there is election theft, and it will continue until made to stop.

At this point no election can be assumed to be clean. To assume so is to give them power and legitimacy they don’t have.

Sound the tocsin. Sometimes it’s all you can do. Refuse to forget the theft.

And when you read the news stay alert for “why is everyone talking of THIS now?” and stay alert to discontinuities in the story, things that made no sense. They will describe x as leading inevitably to y, but there is no connection, either in fact or even — often — in Marxist fables.

Take the current rise in crime. They will tell you it’s because people are poorer and therefore are committing more crime. But that connection only exists in the minds of Marxists. Poor people are not likely to steal because they’re poor. The crime rate is probably the same, rich or poor. It’s only the crimes that are different. However, the left letting murderers, rapists and thieves out of jail (or into the country through the wide open border) has indeed increased the crime.

When they talk of increased automation, and “AI” causing unemployment, remember they used the same excuse under Carter. It is no such thing, but their onerous regulations (Biden signed a boatload last week) and taxes and instability causing the economy to buckle.

Pay attention to those explanations that make no sense, to the events that disappear from the front pages or are never mentioned, to the lacunae and omissions or outright obvious lies.

By remembering the Diamond Princess Covid-19 numbers, I stayed clear-eyed about the rather minor impact of the virus and how out of proportion the response was.

What are the facts? Again and again and again – what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable “verdict of history” – what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!

Robert A. Heinlein

There is no truth in pravda, but there is truth in the lacuna, the omissions, the “wait a minute, that ain’t right” in the “it was there, and it was nothing like that.”

Find those. And hold them. No matter how tempting it is to forget and join the consensus. No matter how easy it is to think “I must be wrong, because they all say that–“

Find the facts, and hold them. And steer by them. We need people aware of the truth, as the gaslighting machine that our overculture has become spins us further and further from reality.

Because reality is that which will kill you, even if you deny it. Reality is what you must live with, even if you’re away with the fairies in your mind.

Reality is a stone cold bitch. It never forgives.

But if you live by her, if enough of us lives by her, there is a chance, slim but possible, that we can get through this and emerge on the other side as the free nation we were meant to be.

Again and again, what are the facts? Go find them.

The Audacious Masculine – or – The Devil Went Down to Georgia On the Railroad– by maryh10000

The audacious masculine is taking extreme, foolhardy, risks simply for the right to say, “I can SO do it!”

In “The Devil Goes Down to Georgia”, a Georgia musician bets with the Devil. Now there’s someone you can count on to keep his word! The contest: who is the better fiddle player?

The stakes for the musician could not be higher – he loses everything, his very soul. To win gains him a fiddle made of gold. But it is clear that this contest, for the musician, is not about money. A gold fiddle is useless for making music. The reason for winning is for bragging rights. It would prove that the musician is so good that even the most evil being in existence, an inveterate liar, cannot help but acknowledge him.

For the Devil, if he wins, he destroys another soul. If he loses (and why would he admit to loss anyway?) he loses only a meaningless bit of matter – a fiddle made of gold.

The modern folk song by The Longest Johns, “On the Railroad,” imagines a work song that could have been sung by the workmen, including freed slaves, whose back breaking labor built the transcontinental railway in the second half of the nineteenth century in the United States. “Sweat and blood gonna earn my pay,” they sing, and the grunts punctuate a tune that evokes a visceral sense of the immense physical exertion required; labor so hard that although the workman “ain’t no slave” he must “slave away,” where they “spare no quarter and… spare no man,” and each instructs the others that “if I should fall, leave me where I lay on the railway.” Grim, dirty, blood-soaked.

But in one of the middle verses, an audacious boast. The boss man has set a pace of a mile of railroad laid per day. And the workman sings back his boast: “I’ll make two for the look on his face.”

A stupid boast. Everything about the song says that a mile a day is already excruciatingly back-breaking labor. Why would the workman even try for two miles? What would he get for it except the boss’s expectation that he could try for twice the work per day that he had planned? And a more deadly pace for the workmen?

But the purpose of the audacious boast isn’t to win any material reward, just as it wasn’t for the musician. The musician must get even the devil to admit that he is the best musician, even should it cost him his soul. The railroad worker must stun the boss man with his sheer physical prowess, even should it cost him more sweat and blood and leave him fallen on the railway.

Why the audacious boast? What does each man gain by risking everything on something so meaningless?

In the end, each man triumphs over his opponent, who never had anything to lose, or even, actually, much to win.

The musician walks away from the devil, risking everything to play the fiddle the best that it can be played. And so, in risking everything in the boast, he becomes what he has boasted – the best. His music is better for his boast, and he has expanded what “best” means.

The railroad worker doesn’t walk away from the boss man. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Maybe he will fall on the railway to Frisco Bay. But he has given his sweat and blood and he has been paid. Even if he “slaves away,” this time he is “no slave.” He may have a boss man, but he does not have a master. If he makes it to Frisco Bay, he will have earned his pay, and while he has “dirt on his brow,” he also has “steel in his soul.” The boss man may only require a mile a day. But he knows he can do two. Because he is a free man and he chooses to so dispose of his labor.

The boast of the audacious masculine is that he will risk everything to go past what he has done before. If he fails, the price is catastrophic. But if he succeeds….

Through a mutual friend, I got something ESR said, and it struck me as profound:

“Voltaire can be inverted. If you’re willing to commit atrocities, this is a sign that you believe absurdities.” –

Eric S. Raymond

The context was a discussion of AI and AI advancements but that is not important right now.

The important thing is the actual meaning of those words.

We’re surrounded by not particularly bright or educated (though a lot of them are very credentialed and confuse that for intelligence), but very passionate people causally saying things like We need to reduce Earth population by several billion, or We must all stop eating meat, or We must stop using fossil fuels.

Each of those involves atrocities that would make Pol Pot blanch. Whatever they imagine, they have no idea what it would entail.

They might think all we need to do is stop reproducing. Say, sterilize most of mankind, and let population reduce quietly. But it’s never that way, of course. Even if you managed that, do you have any idea what removing people’s hope of connection to the future — most people’s only way to matter — and making them feel they don’t count? Ooh, boy. I could write an entire dystopian novel on the death and destruction that will follow. Entire industries would collapse, and the ability to feed those humans they left able to reproduce. The end of civilization comes shortly after.

Or let’s make meat too expensive and/or unavailable. Turns out — conversationally — children need a certain amount of animal protein to develop properly. And you have no idea what parents of a dying child will do. None. Again, I could write entire dystopian novels.

Stop using fossil fuels, this might sound very good if you are wealthy and live in an enclave where you can drive your electrical car everywhere and charge it everywhere and, oh, yeah, if you don’t know where electricity comes from. Not only is renewable negligible for electricity production, in the current state of tech, but to mine the materials for batteries is destroying (of course, poor continent) Africa and its children. And electric will never do for the transport of goods and materials that take to support a civilization. Not in current tech. And no, tech development is not something you an just create out of thin air by wishing it. The cold equations of physics are bitches that won’t move.

So, the various cities, states and countries happily jumping aboard the ban fossil fuels bandwagon are all on board to kill millions of people of famine and cold or heat. Atrocities.

And do they believe absurdities?

Ooh, boy, do they ever. Their minds are a collection of things that were never true with all the depth of a comic book for toddlers.

• They believe that the great god science (not the process of inquiry and proof/disproof that goes under the same name) has said the Earth will boil in 12 years if we don’t stop using evilbad fossil fuels. They are shallow enough not to check about all the other failed doomsday predictions. (To be fair, some of them are actually children, in so far as college students these days are children.)
  
• They believe there are too many people in the world. They never ask too many people for what. Or too many people where specifically. Or even How do we know there are too many people? because in absolute terms the data collection is mostly Pull From Air. No. They believe there are too many people in the world. Because they were told there are too many people. And if there are any more people, we’re all going to starve and destroy the Earth and offend science. Or whatever.

• They believe we shouldn’t eat animal protein because…It varies, doesn’t it? Many of them it’s because “it’s bad to have to kill to live.” Which only means they haven’t looked around at the vaunted circle of life. Or they believe killing an animal is the same as killing a human. Or they believe that it’s somehow bad to be human and eat animals. Or farming causes global warming, and we’re all going to burn in 12 years. Or–
  The idiocy is gibberingly insane and none of these people has ever so much as visited a model farm, let alone lived near one.
  

All of these people, who look at normal humans with hatred — humans are a plague upon the Earth, you know — and do acts of casual destruction, like pour out milk in the grocery store, or destroy art, or glue themselves to roads, or pass legislation forbidding fossil fuel want to kill you and yours. In their minds, the perfect world starts with destroying humanity.

Some delude themselves about the extent of the destruction it would entail, but a lot — I have in mind an elderly, seemingly kindly SF fan, who once started talking glowingly about “Earth changes” and his eyes shone, and he became animated about how billions needed to die, so we could have a better humanity and a better future — do and rejoice in this.

The absurdities this hatred for humanity rests on, are puerile, even stupider than “if only everyone.”

When someone starts talking about the necessity to eliminate most of humanity, interrogate their motives. Chances are they are inane, a tissue of lies and wishful thinking.

Resting on nothing but an unearned assumption of superiority.

*Look, I’m an old woman, so let me get the health talk out of the way first. This one is definitely not auto-immune as younger son had it first — and is just getting over it after two weeks — and now Dan has caught it from me. I’m better today. Yesterday the thought of crossing the room to get a book, say, was too much effort. Today I managed the dishes, a load of laundry and intend to sort clothes. The house is a screaming pigsty, but it will wait till tomorrow. Yes, I feel like I can, but I won’t. I know better. I roasted a chicken yesterday, and we’ll eat on it for three days easy, (It’s a roaster) then make the leftover into pot pie. So…. we’re fine, and I think head is clear enough to write, as opposed to yesterday. There will be nappage. FIL still lingers between life and death. Dan saw him on his last lucid day, so that’s good. Some deaths are difficult, just as some births are. Prayers requested.– SAH*

Please, when reading this post, take in account that I’m just on the very beginning of coming back from a URI, which means depressive is a state of being.

However, over the last few months, I’ve come to observe something strange.

To give a little blog history: one of the first commenters here was BobtheRegisteredFool. I’ve come to actually think well of him over the years, and these days his comments, except for the occasional slip, not only make sense but are often amazingly insightful.

However, when he first came to us — he now admits — he wasn’t doing well mentally, emotionally and perhaps spiritually. He’s dealt with it overtime, so this is not a put down, but I’m wondering if when he came to us he was a good sensor for clown car meeting dumpster fire ahead.

I mean, when he first got here, Bob often tried to incite war with Canada. Supposing — ! — we deal with ourselves, and restore freedom, this is now almost inevitable, as they sink deeper into the morass of New and Improved Cuba! (Who knew the illusions of sixties hippies could lead to this, eh? Castro’s bastard trying to emulate daddy in the great North?) Considering that communism created starvation in tropical Cuba, surrounded by an ocean full of edibles, imagine what it will do to Canada. By the time we uncluster ourselves, it might not be so much a war, as a mercy invasion.

He also urged war with Mexico, partly to stop the drug trade. I’ll note war on the cartels is now on the agenda should Trump get elected again and this time make it stick. (I’ll note that I don’t even disagree with this. One of my last days in Denver, we got stuck behind a car with custom body work that declared the driver’s allegiance to the Sinaloa cartel. When that is out in public, imagine how bad it is.)

I don’t see where a war on cartels, doesn’t involve a war with Mexico, considering the cartels hold on Mexico.

Whether that will lead to also giving junkies the death penalty, I don’t know, I wouldn’t think so, but in Bob’s world, anything is possible.

Also, whether or not we’re going to preemptively nuke other countries, is a mystery. I mean, we probably wouldn’t do it under a Republican admin, but under this one? Your guess is as good as mine.

In fact, ladies and gentlemen, this being Bob’s world, I advise you to drink a bottle of Scotch then hit yourself on the head with a mallet, then consider what comes next.

That’s probably the truth.

I woke up this morning and looked at the Bongino Report and…. well….

With the understanding this is half in jest, half in WTF World? and a realization that this illness might indeed have come to me at the right time, because I can’t do much more than this stuff…..

Lean back and enjoy the ride. Be ready to react if some glimmer of sanity presents.

Meanwhile:

It’s Bob’s World. We just live in it.

Or at least not dead. I’m not even — really == worse I just had a really bad cough over night, so didn’t sleep much, (mostly because I’d forgotten to buy cough syrup after the great coughening induced by blood pressure meds.)

And this morning I was really, really odd. I felt I couldn’t even. So this is the first time I got online all day.

I’m assured from watching this crud progress with younger son that the cough is the last stage and might drag three days, but I’ll be sure to have cough syrup on hand so I can sleep tonight.

Please forgive me. Worst part, I didn’t even write. Just grumpy and blah, and coughing.

I will do promo post tomorrow.