Shouldering It Up

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Oh, I want to shrug. Don’t you?

I even understand that book and the impulse that drives it, and I’m not deriding it. Once or twice, I might have stomped around the house yelling “Who is John Galt?” Or if you prefer “Who is Jung Alt” (from a vanished comic some of you might remember.)

But ultimately…

Today is a day I didn’t want to get up. before you worry overly, let me assure you that I’m better, but with the current crud, better seems to be process. Yesterday I was better than the day before, in that it took me till after I’d put up the promo post to feel like I really needed a nap. And today I don’t feel tired, but I slept something like 12 hours. And let me tell you, that worried the kitten unduly. Indy started at 7 am, the hour he’s sure we should both be up, by proffering belly for wake-up pets, which is the normal routine. When I ignored him, he escalated and in order, opened the light-excluding curtains, opened the bathroom door and turned the light inside. Brought me the squeak mouse. When that failed, played with the squeak mouse on top of me. And finally jumped into the office, turned on Dan’s synthesizer (Why are you going to ask. Obviously the mathematician has one 90 degrees from his work desk. Sometimes a problem needs to be played out, and unlike Sherlock Holmes, he never learned the violin) and danced on it. By then it was close on to eleven and it worked. Since then he’s been following me around in some worry, because I shouldn’t still be dragging tail.

The point is, while the ginger beasty is silly, and bears watching, because there are too many brains in that wedge-shaped head, and enough thought to get him into trouble, he wasn’t wrong.

While in Ayn Rand’s elaborate setup — and a society that articulated its aims to exploit the productive more than ours does. Ours is just zombie-stumbling to collectivist ghost dance — withdrawing from society works… Does it really?

When I was young and suicidal — did I say that changed? I just learned to control it. Which is why references to my unremitting sunny optimism make me giggle or cry depending on the mood. What you call optimism is called “reality checking”. Someone with my disposition HAS to learn it to survive her teens — I used to imagine that if I killed myself everyone would realize how terribly they wronged me, and everyone would miss me forever, and lament the wonderful person they lost.

I’m told by someone who should know that this is as much bullshit as I started suspecting, about the time I learned reality-checking. What happens — particularly during the holidays, when suicides are endemic — is that (at least in a largish town) — you’ll be in the coroner’s lab the next morning, and the pathologists will be bopping to hard metal under bright lights, while they autopsy you and the rest of the despair harvest.

And then you’ll be buried — or these days likely cremated — and the world creaks on. Oh, you’ll make an immense impact on some people: those who love you. Your parents, your siblings, your children. You’ll scar them forever and increase the chances they’ll follow you. But those aren’t the people you want to “show” their mistakes, are they? Oh, okay, maybe some, if you’re young, but–

Let me put it this way, my own familiar issues, had I killed myself, would have given the person most likely to have driven me to it (in retrospect because we’re like chalk and cheese and still, these many years later, totally opaque to each other) a heroic-tragic story forever. Which is not what I wanted. Hey, I was young, it was supposed to be all about me.

The world creaks on. The world adapts. It will shock you and amaze you how quickly and thoroughly the world heals over your loss.

I know this, because though I never committed suicide, I very thoroughly removed myself. I got married, crossed the ocean, and once the kids came had less and less money/time to go over. So yearly visits (honestly, mostly, while grandma was alive) turned to three year spacing, then, as the kids grew and had school and stuff, five.

I had a shock, eight years ago, going back. Remember, I grew up in a very small place, where my family had been forever, and therefore it was well known and to an extent looked up to. When grandad died, it was like being under the microscope, with the village examining all our expressions and interactions.

Yes, the place has been eaten by the city. Stack-a-prol apartments moved in. This means the population is 10 times bigger, and most came from far away. (All those abandonned villages, in the mountains.) My brother says he can walk up main street, and no one knows him from Adam. I took younger son for a walk, 13 years ago, and we got lost. (He’s hilarious when he gets lost. For some reason, in the middle of an urban landscape, he always assumes he’s going to starve to death.)

That’s all fine. But the thing is, you know? Mom’s circle is not that. With one or two exceptions, mom’s circle are maybe up to 20 years younger than her (she turns 90 next year, so…) but all of them village old-timers. They were all there for my first communion (well, the older ones) and my wedding. Mom probably shared with them my dating misadventures. etc. etc.

…. as of eight years ago, they’d forgotten me. Thoroughly. Completely. In their heads, my mom had only one child, a son. they knew my brother, his sons, their spouses. Me? I was a ghost. I didn’t exist.

If that seems completely insane — it does to me honest, but it was true — I had experienced it before: I moved to the Us before finishing my degree, and went back a year later for my finals. (Then came back, leaving my mom to walk some of my graduations if she wished. She went to the one for the BA in Italian, because the party afterwards had gourmet ice cream. Mom has her priorities right, people.) But going back was a shock. Look, I wasn’t big on the college social scene, partly because I was on a very demanding schedule; tutored; and took external courses. but I was active in the Shakespeare club, the American Culture club, and had various friends and groups and associations.

Gone. Like, one of the Stalinist pictures where you just get removed. Seriously. No one had any idea who I was. There was great shock when I had one of the four (of 200 or so) passing exams, because “I didn’t know you were smart.” (Said by one of the midwits who’d been with me since high school and who, to be a dim bulb would need to borrow someone else’s light.) It was astounding.

So I knew this was possible, I’d seen it. But because we are each the character of our novel, it’s hard to believe our not being there won’t be remarked on, of felt.

Trust me on this, it won’t.

So — Galt’s Gulch… Unless it forms its own country, patents its inventions, etc, and btw is ready to defend them with force? The world will heal over it. No one will remember. (That’s besides and beyond getting every creative/productive person. I mean, even in associations that have obviously crossed the threshold of irrecoverable, some Boxer will still be in there, giving it his all, trying to build up. (And not all boxers are dimwitted, at that. Just, hopeful.)) The world will go on without them.

And the Gulchers? Well…. We are social animals. We who comment here listen to the other side — how could we not? They’re the dominant opinion/flavor — We know their version of things, their idea of history, their motives, their beliefs. They have no clue of ours. Some of the reason they’re struggling, despite dominating the institutions, and a lot of the reason I believe that in the end we win they lose, (besides their being at war with reality) is that they’ve isolated themselves. They not only have no idea how the other 3/4 lives. They have no clue how we think.

Galt’s Gulch, geographical or philosophical means the same for us. We’d be isolated. Separated. We’d have no idea. It’s like deliberately blinding yourself and expecting the other person to be lost. As much as their ideas make our head hurt and we often want to stop listening, it’s worth it to know why they think what they’re doing makes sense/will work.

And then there’s just…. the market.

Look, some of this happens normally when we’re living under an hostile regime. It was what Rand saw/tried to describe, with the added fantasy of a place where you could keep producing/be engaged. (She wasn’t wrong. My most productive years are/were when surrounded by sharp minded creatives, against whom I could sharpen my intellectual blades and my creative sword.)

But under any regime where creation and work aren’t rewarded, people go inside, stop working. Why make that extra 10% when it means another 25% in taxes? Why market your invention when you won’t have half the price it’s worth? Why write another book, when no trad pub will touch it.

We saw that under Carter. We are seeing it now.

But the terminal form of this, when the regime changes after 70 years or so is not some great flowering of suppressed creativity, force and invention.

The terminal form of this is visible in the old ex-communist countries. They’ve forgotten. They’ve forgotten you can create and build. They’ve forgotten you can engage with each other in mutually profitable exchanges. The very mode of innovation is lost, gone, fallen down a well.

Will it come back? Probably. Humans create. It’s a thing we do. But it will take time. How much time? I don’t know. It’s not just the repressive mechanisms being removed. The forges of creation need to be rebuilt and the pathways of dissemination re-created. We who make and build tend to forget distribution and commerce are just as vital, just as important. Perhaps more so, for a healthy society. They are also the first to withdraw and the last to come back, when a society is whacked with a totalitarian stick. And it’s needed for creativity to fully bloom and innovation to flower. Because innovation and creativity have to pay off, and be seen to pay off for people to feel the drive, the consistent need to keep at it, instead of a one-off, a hobby.

In the end our fantasies of Galt’s Gulch — not in the book, and how it worked, but in real life — are a suicide fantasy. “I’ll withdraw! They’ll be sorry!” (Note again this is not a criticism of the book. The book was an anti-collectivist fable, which is needed in our culture.) They won’t be sorry. They’ll forget you. And eventually they’ll forget that creativity and productivity are even possible. And society tumbles into a morass. As with suicide, the ones you hurt are the ones who most need you.

It is the same for your belief in liberty; your belief in the individual; your knowledge of the constitutional republic which, maimed and thwarted almost from the beginning, has been the greatest engine of creation, innovation and wealth the world has ever seen. Withdraw it from public discourse; give up; decide it’s time to burn it all down.

That’s not a suicide fantasy — though it is, really, think on it! — it’s a revenge fantasy. Only it doesn’t work. You withdraw the idea, and people forget it. The world heals over it. You’re banking on a day when it will spontaneously come back. You think we’re natural and normal and inevitable and that this our Republic — under attack, wounded, limping, in the control of its enemies — isn’t, still, the greatest miracle this tired, bleeding old world has ever seen.

It’s not that I don’t understand wanting to shrug. It’s not that at times my fingers don’t itch for a flame thrower. You’d have to be more than human — or considerably less — to not understand both of those impulses.

It’s just that they don’t work. But working quietly does. We’ve seen in in the gun rights movement. We’ve seen it in the fact that computers has removed the left’s ability to utterly control our discourse, and that this is hurting them every day. We’ve seen it in Indy books that stoke the idea of liberty, all wrapped up in fun and amusement.

And if you tell me it’s impossible to win that way, I invite you to study the history of Christianity. Easy? No. Always growing from victory to victory? No. That’s not human. That’s not how any of this works.

But not taking your ball and going home keeps you in the game.

And as Heinlein said (I used to have this hanging over my desk, but it disappeared in the move): “Surely the game is rigged. Don’t let that stop you. If you don’t bet, you can’t win.”

173 thoughts on “Shouldering It Up”

    2. It took roughly 100 years to get to this point. Don’t be surprised if it takes that amount of time to undo it. 40 years or 100 years, I’m unlikely to still be alive to see it. Regardless, it’s worth working for, much like planting a tree for your grandchildren to enjoy.

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      1. As the old saying goes…

        “Amateurs study tactics. Professionals study logistics.”

        It’s something that’s been coming to mind a lot over the last few years.

        On a somewhat related note, someone in the comments at Ace’s blog mentioned that there’s apparently some new commission to improve the country’s screwed up logistics. I guess Mayor Pete is hoping that he can burnish his image in the public’s eyes. But I’m afraid to ask what might happen as a result.

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        1. The answer will be

          “More Government Control and Central Planning”.

          Whatever the question. However asked, or not asked. The answer is

          “More Government Control and Central Planning”.

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        2. My husband’s job is, loosely, logistics. By which I mean it is both more and less complicated than that.

          He said that it would take roughly five years to train someone to do his job. And there isn’t currently anyone in a position to be trained. Just so you know how difficult it is to do *logistics*.

          (On a side note, he keeps maxing out his vacation days, which means he has to take days off. And when he does, there is *nobody* doing his job. Absolutely zero people. We’re hoping that somebody in a position to relax the arbitrary cap on his (tiny) division’s size notices this effect and does something about it, because they really do need another person in training.)

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          1. Typically with most organizations the Powers That Be will notice a critical employee’s importance only after they leave, and then only after several business cycles. The folks who depend on that employee’s skills almost immediately, but it takes time for the loss to percolate upwards in the management chain until the bean counters become aware. The situation then becomes a PROBLEM THAT MUST BE SOLVED IMMEDIATELY! Seen it time and time again.

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            1. I took some pleasure in noting that after I left they divvied up my work among four or five people. Mind you I was “officially,” doing the work of three….and didn’t have enough to do. (Technical writing/editing on the Arsenal, so it was boom or bust; either next to nothing to do or drown in submissions).

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              1. Yep. I was training my 5 replacements the day before I left. Apparently, in spite of my resignation letter and official withdrawal of my application, management decided I was using leaving as a ploy in salary negotiations for a management job I had applied for.

                Nope.

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                1. I was both training/mentoring my replacement the last two weeks (okay, last 4 full days, and 4 half days) while I finalized the “how to and why” documents for everyone to have access to on the major changes (sanctioned) only I knew how to do. Only one other person knew the underlying process changed (he wrote, we designed together), but even he couldn’t figure out how I implemented it all (surprised the heck out of me, really did). I was the only one who knew how it was all used in the system, plus the other major rewrite changes required for other reasons (i.e if this has a major retouch, must do it this way, which was not my call). The boss complained I hadn’t given enough notice.

                  Come on already. I gave him 7 1/2 weeks, Dec 5 for Jan 31. Of coarse I still had enough earned vacation to be gone from Monday before Christmas through the first two weeks January, plus 4 days (thus 3 day weekends, and the last 4 half days). Says something that I was willing to take the days off VS just get paid for them (and yes, I muted their calls. Told them we were “dial a tree” out of touch). Once I decided to be done. I was done. Working. Very careful to not get too buried (forget time and work extra, something I did too easily). Not my fault none of the new employees (finally hired), started < two weeks before I left. They still got more than the required two weeks notice of working days. Come on. I was retiring. Not like I cared about references. I was done.

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                  1. I wrote up instructions for the gov, and for my beloved’s office, so whoever had to do 1099s had a step by step procedure.

                    And I just realized that’s another reason why being let go without even being told (I had to ask if I had a start date for last year) hurt. But my honor demanded no less.

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                2. Hmm, the two times I was laid off, there was no replacement, because the project I’d been working on each time crashed and burned. (Well, for the second, the client went bankrupt, but sameo-sameo.)

                  The first project was a rather fancy chip designed in Agilent (formerly HP) Labs. The designer was the son of a fairly famous H’wood comic actor (who apparently was a cast iron arschloch IRL) who was decidedly unhappy to have that noticed. (See above.) We got first silicon for the chip and It Didn’t Work. Nothing to develop, and this was as the Dot Com bubble (V1.0) was imploding, so the project was put on indefinite hold. So, nobody to train, no fresh projects in the pipeline, and I was the second oldest engineer in our department. #s 1 and 2 both got laid off.

                  OTOH, we got the sweet deal. When the second and third round of downsizing (I misspelled “preparation to sell the semiconductor operations to the carrion-eating company”) happened, they didn’t get as good a severance pay as I did. (When the second job collapsed, no severance, but the pay was good while it lasted. No hard feelings on my part. I won’t speak for the client and friends; they got screwed royally.)

                  On the gripping hand, I had ample opportunity and incentive to leave Silicon Valley & vicinity before it got overwhelmed by FaceGoogTwitBay and the Wokists. Am very happy I took advantage of it.

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            3. Three jobs ago, just after the dot-com bubble, my own layoff also zapped the entire group which I managed, but they kept two people: One hourly employee to actually box up and ship the stuff (software burned on optical media) we still shipped physically, and one young programmer, tasked with both maintaining the 5+ million lines of code my entire 10 person group maintained and used that put together and tracked the shipments, and also creating an entire new system to replace it. They basically burned that kid right down past the nub right to the ground.

              I noted one peer manager’s group, who used every possible microsecond in staff meetings to complain how hard his software dev team’s job was, how horribly hard his people were working, and by the way did he say how hard his job was? rather than what I did, report accomplishments and note where issues I was dealing with crossed org boundaries across my bosses level, had very few layoffs.

              I guess I was doing it wrong. Squeaky wheel and all that.

              There was also a huge internal backchannel reaction to the prior RIF along the lines of “Oh noes, the indentured servitude people on green cards from India that got riffed have to <i>move back home</i> if they can’t find another green card job! And even if they do their green card clock starts over! How horribly horrible for them!” with that peer group including a lot of subcontinent green card programmers. And across the company there was one group that was oddly underrepresented in my layoff. Amazing coincidence, that.

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              1. I found when my trad career was coming to an end that other writers — particularly female — brainstorm with their publisher, editor and agent before writing line one of a proposal.
                I thought my job was to present htem with product. Apparently they promote things better if they feel they had a say.
                Or to quote Robert A. Heinlein “They like the taste of their own piss better.”

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              2. That’s bureaucracy for you. Do your job? You will get cuts to fund Joe, who constantly complains he needs more people/funding.

                I had one boss who was quite open about. “I’m working to get more assignments than you can possibly handle so I can complain, get more funds and people, and justify my promotion.” It didn’t work, can’t imagine why.

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                1. One is also well served to determine the backchannel influence structure at a workplace. At the job after the one described above, at my first outplacement training meeting after my RIF there (which included the departing CEO and my org’s senior VP, as that RIF was due to the board selling off the company), one of the layed off high level engineers from China, explaining his long-term employee take on who from the technical side was sitting in that meeting vs. who was trying to pick up the pieces back at the office, described that company’s backchannel power structure as “The Arab League.”

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                2. It didn’t work, can’t imagine why.

                  Something about people resenting that you are openly declaring your intention to sneakily game the system, I guess.

                  I dunno, seems like reasonable strategy to me…

                  Liked by 1 person

                  1. It got back to higher, I think, and they disapproved of someone being that open about it.

                    That division was always a red-headed stepchild in the larger organization and had consistently….less than stellar management. We did what we could in spite of management, not because of it. I wasn’t surprised to hear it finally got disbanded after yet another episode of dishonest-manager-got-caught.

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              3. The job I lost in 2002 (also .dot com era), the company had been RIF-ing for almost a year. Our department (one of two R&D sections) was so understaffed that it had been spared all RIF’s to that point. Until they got to the 10%, minimum of 3, every department, no exceptions. Department core R&D was hardware and embedded OS software. Which left the 6 of us in the application software side at risk. Which one was on family leave (not a headache TBTB wanted to deal with). One just off of family leave (she’d had triplets and spouse was not working, so … yea). The intern (who left for MS). And the remaining two (waves hand). Even then another and engineer, and the intern. were willing to trade with me to keep me on (wouldn’t have lasted a whole lot longer, but still another few *months) because engineer was leaving voluntarily. Heck even the person on family leave was waving her hands saying “pick me”. Manager tried. But nope. Company attitude was “Oh. Good. Three layoffs. Three voluntary quit. Double required and more than a 33% departmental cut.”

                ((*)) Silver lining is if I’d had those extra months, might not have been desperate enough to apply to a news paper ad with just “Entry level programmer + PO Box” in it. No company to research. Which was sketchy. Plus I was 20 years past an entry level programmer. The job I got.

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            4. takes time for the loss to percolate upwards in the management chain until the bean counters become aware. The situation then becomes a PROBLEM THAT MUST BE SOLVED IMMEDIATELY! Seen it time and time again.
              Uncle Lar

              (I am quoting a prior block dang it! Anyway …)

              Seen it personally at 3x’s. Not that I got rehired by the ones complaining (technically first two companies in question had been parted out, and those left behind/purchasing, called, but I wasn’t “critical”). Then by the time they came calling, first two, I’d moved on to new challenges. So much for “you picked it up, anyone else can”. True. Eventually (evil grin).

              Even the job I retired from (if I’d been allowed to work from home, 2015, I’d have stayed another *few years) the boss had forgotten how difficult it was to find someone to want to stick out the process (sink or swim). Not like I didn’t look the first 6 years after I was hired. I even got offers. Just nothing I was willing to jump for. Wasn’t changing jobs for a lateral move (salary and benefits), or even a little salary bump. Was also well aware of the lack of deadline fighting at the current job (as in none). Been there done that. Knew the clue words given in interviews. A huge jump in pay was required for that nonsense.

              ((*)) Just would have delayed the problem a few years.

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  3. The biggest issue with Galt’s Gulch is, as you quite properly point out, the isolation. I’ve been rewatching James Burke’s Connections on the tubes of you and the notion that you have no idea where your idea will lead nor where it began. That’s the issue with the more intelligent lefties, they can’t learn because they’ve sealed themselves off from anything that might cause them to question. Denying reality requires an awful lot of work.

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    1. IIRC (it’s been a long time since I read the book), we see one entrepreneur finally leave for the Gulch after the government takes away everything that he’s built up. I can see it work in that instance. It’s a sort of “You’ve made it clear that I won’t be permitted to exist except as your slave. So I’m leaving to save myself.” In that case, the isolation is the point. Your enemies can’t find you there.

      But as noted, that isolation goes both ways. You can’t stay hidden if you’re constantly reaching out to the rest of the world for news. And the Gulch never fully cuts itself off from the rest of the world, as there are individuals who are part of the Gulch community, but not physically in it.

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  4. I think the funniest thing in the world is the fact that the mobs they created for political purpose are now starting to feed upon the liberals. Watching them be fed upon by the very mobs they created is revenge enough for now. Businesses are fleeing faster than the people. The tax revenues are starting to take a hit, so with less money, less money they can steal. More and more people are turning against the promise of utopia and towards reality. Pass the popcorn, I can’t wait for the funerals of the rich politicians children, paid for by their own greed. Revenge, Vengeance, I can hold my demon back for now, just don’t feed him anymore Liberals.

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  5. I was with you right until the final paragraph and the Heinlein quotation. Those words set my brain on edge, because what I hear from them is: “Be a sucker. Be a willing sucker.” It offends against an innate sense of justice that I’ve been seeing more clearly within myself over the last, oh, four years or so. Cheating other people is hateful to me; seeing it done on a societal scale, even a global one, raises this to a level I do not trust myself to describe.

    (I may also have imbibed prob-stat lessons about expected value too well. And with a casino, not only can you figure out the odds they’re stacking against you, they’ll at least give you some fun while you’re losing your shirt. You’ve got none of that with the big games going on.)

    I don’t want to play a rigged game, offered as the only chance I have. I want to find a fair game. If it’s not available, I want to make (is it too starry-eyed of me to say “remake”?) a fair game. I can do that in fiction, perhaps. I’d prefer to do it in real life.

    If I can get some decent odds, at least.

    <i>Republica restituendae, et, Hamas delenda est</i>

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      1. It’s like walking into a trap that you know is a trap, because it is the least bad of the available options. Yes, it’s rigged, but you’re not supposed to know that going in, and you may yet come through the other side.

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          1. Much as the pen is mightier than the sword, the radio is mightier than the rifle. Calling in artillery or an air strike is always easier then shooting them one at a time.

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          2. And apropos directly to forward via HE, it always astonishes me how every single time we get in urban fights, the lesson “don’t go down the street – go through the walls” has to be relearned.

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    2. Perhaps understand it in the context of one of John Paul Jones’s quotes: “He who will not risk, cannot win.” There is no other table, no other casino. If you want to repair the odds, make the game more fair, you have to step up to the table, see the game as it is, then nudge it more honest. Then nudge it again. Then nudge it again. It’s slow. It’s moving a mountain with a tablespoon. Keep at it long enough you’ll make a dent. Get enough people with their spoons and you’ll see the mountain start to erode.

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    3. As Harry says, it’s a trap, and you walk in knowing it’s a trap, but then, the danger is not to you anymore. As the wisdom goes, the only thing worse than an ambush, is when the ambushed knew it was coming and then are able to turn the tables on those who thought they were the ambushers. The rigged game is all you can play, because showing it is rigged makes it harder to rig as successfully. Not playing the rigged game only allows those rigging it free reign, and they will then win every time, easy peasy. Making them work for it makes them sloppy.

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  6. “The only way to win is not to play.” I always took that to be a different way of saying what Captain Kirk tells Spock in “The Corbomite Maneuver.” Spock compares the situation to chess, giving Kirk his lightbulb moment: “Wrong game, Spock. It’s poker.”

    The only way to win is not to play the game they’re playing. They play chess, you play poker. They play poker, you play Fizzbin. If they switch to Monopoly, go to Parcheesi, and on and on and on.

    The only way to win is to alter the rules of the game – by playing a different game altogether. ;)

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      2. Well … I haven’t read Heinlein recently, save for “The Year of the Jackpot” that I stumbled across a year or two ago.

        I’m feeling rather like Scotty when he had to admit he wasn’t conversant with Milton.

        I’ll go rectify that soon.

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          1. After those two, perhaps Time Enough for Love. I think Methuselah’s Children isn’t essential for TEfL, but hey, it’s a good read and decent background for it.

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                1. Eh. I viewed it as a thought experiment. Look, I’m sometimes startled 50 years later, by pictures of my parents. They look NOTHING like they did to me, in my head.
                  Imagine thousands of years….
                  I mean, it did nothing for me, one way or another, but millennia. Yes, of course he was poking taboos. Honestly his generation did it reflexively. But still, it bears thinking.

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                  1. Yes, the classic “what if?” question – the prime ingredient in science fiction.

                    Does the incest taboo last in a society where there are no physical consequences? If it doesn’t, how long does it last? Opinion by RAH – it won’t last, but it will be around for a long, long time. Even Ira (not Woody’s grandfather, but his long-range namesake) has serious issues with the idea of sex with his own daughter.

                    Question for extra credit: If the parties are clones of each other – is it incest, or is it just a rather complicated form of onanism?

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                    1. <blockquote>Question for extra credit: If the parties are clones of each other – is it incest, or is it just a rather complicated form of onanism?</blockquote>

                      It is exactly what it would be in the case of identical twins–because that’s what clones are, after all.

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                    2. Not quite. Actually, I can find no case where “twincest” has been decided (in fact, there was a pair from Europe that had a rather celebrated visit to the US, with no consequences). I’m not sure any prosecutor wishes to touch the subject, either – as such relationships are, by necessity, homosexual – and would set off multiple political bombs for them.

                      I am waiting for the court case (although I may or may not see it) where a wealthy person dies intestate – and his or her clone attempts to claim the estate. Are they a child of the decedent – with a right to inherit? Or are they a sibling – who usually has no inherent right to inherit? (Yes, I’m pretty sure this has been addressed in SF somewhere by someone – but obviously not in a court of law.)

                      Oh, and you have to use the little widgets on top of the comment box. And use the little widget on the bottom to log in before commenting. And refresh the page after commenting.

                      WPDE – in the original meaning. Kill all inhabitants, burn it, salt the ground.

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                    4. Probably will quickly be the subject of laws that a clone is the responsibility of the person who ordered the clone, not the original. On the grounds that it’s the only way to protect innocent children from being manufactured by a criminal for such inheritances. Just think how the poor kids would be treated!

                      Like

                    7. Testing block quotes:

                      Traditional:

                      And apparently the tag I was used to using doesn’t work anymore.

                      Square brackets [blockquote]And apparently the tag I was used to using doesn’t work anymore.[/blockquote]

                      We’ll see if either of them works. (I don’t have an account with WP.

                      Like

                  2. Sarah, my impression always was and still is that he followed the logic of “complete genetic knowledge” to it’s conclusion: that we would be able to extend the taboo to people who can’t have kids without lethal / crippling recessive reinforcements — but he considered that there are other considerations beyond the physical which the sickos ignored.

                    Liked by 1 person

                2. Oh, woke up thinking about this. This and a time travel noir, but that’s not important right now.
                  If I ever get a time machine, I’m going to go back and tell Heinlein about how corrupt the soft sciences are, and the reproducibility crisis.
                  I keep telling you guys — and missing explaining — that their push to legitimize pedophilia almost succeeded in Europe in the 70s. Well, when I was in high school then all our books talked about how incest wasn’t bad and it was all social and blah blah blah.
                  So, that’s it. That man relied on “studies” and never understood that soft sciences are BULLSHIT.

                  Like

                  1. Yep, the Greek thing. Older man mentoring younger man/boy, etc. Ick.

                    Somewhat related, someone on Twitter was pointing out that the ” first gay mayor,” was actually a lesbian, but that gets ignored. Mind you, getting assassinated does tend to get you attention, but…(that being Harvey Milk).

                    Liked by 1 person

                    2. FWIW, Milk was a city/county supervisor. George Moscone was the mayor, and if he was gay, it wasn’t mentioned in the local news.

                      But yeah, Milk got all the wider news coverage.

                      Liked by 1 person

          2. Read those two, but it’s been a quarter century or so. Likewise with Stranger. Troopers is more recent, and I know I still have that book after the moves. I’ll have to figure out what earlier stuff to get to in what order. The later novels are … less alluring to me.

            Like

      3. Example, the Jewish doctor who has allegedly trademarked, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” so he can now sue folks for trademark infringement.

        Like

        1. They hate it when you play Calvinball on them. They think that’s THEIR own special thing, so when you veto their rule change and substitute your own, they go nuts.

          The media since October 7th. They still don’t understand the rule change.

          Liked by 1 person

    3. “The only way to win is to alter the rules of the game – by playing a different game altogether.”

      I keep seeing people questioning Apple’s market dominance, and it’s exactly because of this. They altered the rules of the game—mainly starting with the iPod, though the iPhone was where the biggest effect was seen. Back in the 90s, they were on a death watch because they were playing other people’s games. Once they changed the rules to favor their gear, they started to win and win big.

      It wasn’t that their products were the best. It was that they moved on to selling deelyboppers when everybody else was trying to gain market share in the tapped out widget market, and suddenly there was a deelybopper market that nobody else was positioned to take advantage of.

      Sometimes you have to think sideways, and that’s hard. Unless you’re Odd.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I’ve heard that the success of the iPod was unexpected. According to the person who told me the story, it was originally only supposed to be offered to people who had Macs. Buy a Mac, and you could use an iPod. It was an inducement to buy Apple’s overpriced computer.

        But then it took off in popularity, and Apple decided – albeit reluctantly – to let anyone buy an iPod.

        Or at least that’s what I was told many years ago.

        Liked by 1 person

        2. That is not true. We happened to be involved with the Apple stores at the time, including the launch events, and there was no indication that there were to be any restrictions whatsoever.

          They also had those launch events, so they were prepared for the popularity.

          Like

  7. I always read Galt’s Gulch and its isolation as a way to protect the innovative from the howling wilderness into which the world outside was descending. They’d wait a generation or two, until in fact they had been forgotten, and then they (or their descendants, though at the end Galt himself says it’s time to go back to the world) go back out and quietly start to rebuild. I never thought of it as, for instance, “we’ll go back out as rulers and be welcomed by those we left.”

    On the other hand I grew up in my late teens and 20s after having read all of Rand in high school, and realized Galt’s Gulch and the whole world described in Atlas Shrugged was a fable, too. The solution isn’t to hide. The solution is to confront the wreckers head on.

    Liked by 2 people

  8. My parents fled Los Angeles after the Watts riots of 1965. They settled in Central City, Colorado because my Dad loved Atlas Shrugged. Why not move to the state Ayn Rand picked out for Galt’s Gulch? They’d also lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 so the old gold mining town might be the best location if the nukes dropped. And people say I’m a worst-case-scenario planner, heh.

    Because of this, I had the pleasure of spending my childhood in the alpine forests and rushing streams of Colorado. There’s something to be said for finding a refuge without giving up on the world.

    Liked by 2 people

  9. It’s interesting watching the now fairly hot culture war proceed. The scum in entertainment were determined to stuff THE MESSAGE down our throats with every movie. Now we’re simply not watching that shit while we watch literally hours of videos from our favorite content creators smacking Disney upside the head for fucking EVERYTHING up. Well, the fuckers wanted to go to war with us over THE MESSAGE, so here we are Disney, enjoy your bombs (wars have lotsa bombs doncha know).

    Small tribes of us are gathering together and airing our grievances and finding other like minded people and expanding. Time to take THE MESSAGE and shove it up your ass sideways til you choke Hollywood. We’re going to be telling our own stories now, and you can burn in the hell you deserve. Oh and we’re not done making the culture war hurt, we’re just getting started.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Hollywood looks at people like Kevin Sorbo and gnash their teeth. Small budget, good writing, solid positive story, and they make large profits. How dare they?!?

      Liked by 1 person

          1. “So what do people want from Disney? Every single movie seems to be struggling at the box office even if it is a high quality. Is it because of Disney+ or does the right-wing political aisle just hate Disney now?

            Well, honey, a bunch of people have finally realized that money is fungible and anything they spend on Disney stuff supports Disney’s ability to inflict sexual perversion on kids. So the only solution is to spend nothing on Disney, regardless of the quality.

            Liked by 2 people

              2. Right?

                “Hold still so I can hit you again!”

                “No, I think I’ll run away, thanks.”

                “How dare you!”

                Like

              3. Honestly, the way progressives talk about entertainment they’d tie it to social credit scores and implement it here if they could. “You didn’t watch enough LGBTWTFBBQ content or black voices, no groceries for you this week!”

                Liked by 1 person

            2. First, Re: “High Quality”, I think those words do not mean what you think they mean..

              Second, embrace the power of ‘and’ (though I understand D+ is also tanking).

              Like

        2. Related to some commentary below, Disney has been talking up how they are producing the biggest grossers in the industry, conveniently leaving out the costs, which are astronomical, mostly from reshoots and lack of anything resembling discipline, They need to make billion dollar movies now just to break even. So, Disney is not just a problem with woke, it’s a basic failure of competence.

          China sales covered for a multitude and the demographics were very favorable for Disney in particular., but that’s all gone now and now, as the tide goes out, we’re finding out who’s swimming naked.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. “So, Disney is not just a problem with woke, it’s a basic failure of competence.”

            Which is also traceable to “woke Uber Alles!”

            Liked by 1 person

              1. There is a large part of “if the OG people did it, it must be easy.” Just turn the crank, right? Easy to just “fix” all that icky unwoke stuff by just pasting whatever you want in on top of the stuff the audience will automatically show up for and pay to watch anyway, because the fans of this stuff are morons who need the enlightenment being added.

                It’s possibly generational to some extent – under Disney at Lucasfilm, KK finally got the sole power she obviously always truly deserved to be the creative head, even though her prior creative input while working for Spielberg and then Lucas was fetching coffee. And at Marvel it sounds like there was one OG still being a stick in the mud on the Disney board about making Marvel stuff the audience wanted, but Feige and Iger eventually got rid of him. And they ditched the creative OG at Pixar during the BaW purges.

                So that leaves Disney-level detailed oversight, which boils down to Iger, who led the acquisitions of Pixar, Lucasfilm and Marvel but seems to have no idea what made them valuable.

                This whole disaster of value destruction across their IP portfolio will no doubt be studied along with Enron and Lehman Brothers in business schools for decades to come.

                Like

            2. Up to a point. We ought to consider that many of these people were never actually competent in the first place but, rather, carried forward by factors they had nothing to do with.

              Liked by 1 person

    2. The Reader notes this gem buried in Disney’s latest 10K report. “Further, consumers’ perceptions of our position on matters of public interest, including our efforts to achieve certain of our environmental and social goals, often differ widely and present risks to our reputation and brands.” From https://thatparkplace.com/the-disney-10k-annual-report-reveals-disney-may-be-very-worried-about-their-place-in-the-culture-war/

      Hopefully BGE will weigh in on this. It seems to the Reader that this could be the basis for some interesting shareholder suits.

      Liked by 1 person

      2. weighing in.

        This is classic 10k a— covering. Disclosure is necessary to cover the management’s behind, so this is to avoid suits rather than grounds for one. Further, It normalIzes the notion that management can have goals that are outside making money legally while insulating them from regulatory scrutiny, “we disclosed it so there’s no issue.” It might actually work.

        Why Disney has environmental and social goals is a question for another day. Social points down the country club are a good start.

        WTF is wrong with comments?

        Like

      3. Nice. “The way we as the board of a publicly traded company are neglecting our basic responsibilities to shareholder value also present yet further risks to our reputation and brands.“

        Like

      4. Sounds very similar to Phizer’s internal documents. “If people believe the truth, it will damage our reputation! Cue the censors!”

        Like

    3. Spoke briefly to to a physician specializing in mental health and holistic medicine yesterday in a socializing environment. (Man, I hate socializing. So much, omg.)

      Despite the friendly and social nature of the interaction, this woman could not let the occasion pass without some comments on how -appalling- so many people in her circle of acquaintances had become. Her example was some doctor in the east coast USA who declared there was no discussion about Israel, and that anyone who did not support Palestine was [evilbad word here] and how can you have a proper collegial relationship with people like that?

      Offered unprompted, while just talking about stuff as one does, by a woman trained to keep things cool with crazy people. She was -pissed- about it.

      (I of course said absolutely nothing. Merely nodded encouragingly, because I may be old but I am not stupid. My dearly held opinions would have made her cry, and we didn’t want that.)

      Tucker Carlson has a youtube talk up that he gave in Las Vegas last week or something. I didn’t watch the whole thing, just the opening, because I am not a huge Carlson fan. [I don’t do fan of media people.] However, he said something I thought was interesting. On the flight to Las Vegas he spent five hours texting people and doing Twitter. On the whole the people he talked to he described as 1) angry and 2) paranoid. And he said “when you talk to as many people as I do, and the caliber of people I do, business guys and other important types, and they’re ALL angry and paranoid? Something’s up.”

      For myself, I look at the comments of people who know stuff. I know about a wide variety of things, but not everything. Trucking for example, I know nothing. So when trucking guys start FREAKING OUT that everything is f-ed in the trucking world, but I see -nothing- in the news, I take that as a data point.

      I read yesterday that the North East United States centered on New York very nearly had a natural gas system collapse last Christmas, which would have led to an electricity blackout, which would have meant fuel stations were offline, and municipal water would stop, and so forth.

      https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/bone-chilling

      I’ve read many times that the electrical grid is sketchy already, but not that the natural gas supply system is too. Suddenly the new media war against gas stoves makes sense. They’re trying to reduce the load on natural gas because if they don’t it’ll break, and everyone will find out they stole the maintenance money.

      Other things like mass immigration and the war in Ukraine, I don’t know anything about that stuff. But then October 7th happened, and all the people I already think are -idiots- because of all the other data-points started screaming “Palestine Palestine!!!”

      So yeah. Something’s up. Okay then, how best to manage that?

      Don’t be dependent on mass distribution systems. Have some on-site storage of food/fuel/water, enough to weather a several week long breakdown of systems. You don’t have to drop out of life, but having the -large- propane tank might be a good call.

      Don’t be a jackass with your neighbors. You never know when you might need to borrow a cup of sugar, right?

      More and more over the years I really don’t like going out in public. They just BOTHER me, really. I do anyway, but I don’t like it. I’m pretty happy typing on my keyboard. I have no illusions that everyone will miss me when I’m gone, they won’t even know I was ever here. ~:D But I am here, beavering away, undermining all those imbeciles out there flying the HamAss flag in my own little way.

      One never knows which pebble will start the avalanche. So you just keep tossing pebbles at a nice, easy, sustainable rate. Eventually, that pile will roll down the hill and squash ’em. Maybe your pebble will start it, maybe someone else’s, but one day, off it’ll go.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I have no illusions that everyone will miss me when I’m gone, they won’t even know I was ever here.
        Phantom

        We’d definitely know if our Canadian expert disappeared. :-)

        (FWIW the new WP abilities are kind of nice. But will make me forget the codes. That is never good.)

        Liked by 2 people

        1. I absolutely HATE the “ribbon” interface. I’m typing – and I do NOT have a third hand for the mouse. (This one is even worse than, say, the one over on Watts Up With That – I am not brave enough to find out what the “Lock” or “Rename” widgets do. Don’t want to be the one responsible for crashing Sarah’s blog!)

          Liked by 1 person

      2. The natural gas problem is as follows:

        Natural gas pipelines require booster pumps every few dozen miles to keep the gas moving. In the Good Old Days, the pumps were powered by natural gas engines that drew their fuel from the pipeline.

        ‘Green Activists’ determined that powering the pumps with electric motors would be more energy-efficient — and it is, by around 50%. Infernal combustion engines are woefully inefficient. They made Laws mandating that all gas pipeline pumps had to be converted to electric. We’re Saving The Planet! Yay!

        Everything is fine until there’s a blackout. All the natural gas pumps stop — and can’t be restarted until their electrical power is restored. But, around 40% of our electricity is generated by burning natural gas. The pipelines can’t deliver gas to the generating plants because there’s no power to the pumps, and the power plants can’t generate electricity because they have no gas. Hello Catch-22!

        It’s exactly what happened in the Great Texas Freeze a couple of years ago.

        ———————————

        The government can mandate stupidity, but they can’t make it not be stupid.

        Liked by 1 person

        2. Reliability of the grid (rather, lack thereof for our locality) is why our pumphouse has an oversized solar system (off grid, though a backup electric heater is on mains–our propane wall heater developed an unfixable blockage. I think mud dauber wasps clogged the air intake and the insufficiently damned heater doesn’t allow access to that point). In an extreme situation, I can take some power from that system for a few items in the house.

          There’s a smaller system that was the prototype that is used for refrigeration if we get a long outage (usually every few years) or CPAP for shorter outages at night (1-3 times a year). Living where the electric grid is sparse has some drawbacks.

          Like

          1. “Building off the Grid” Discovery Ch. Had a father/son build on the side of a mountain, that they installed both a home solar and a home wind (spiral scoops, not windmill style) to generate power. Knowing full well, wherever they were, that whiteout with wind was just a likely as still air and solar (if not bright blue sky). Huge bank of batteries, and control system, in the house basement. Um, control system – okay. Battery banks – were they nuts?.

            Like

            1. Huge bank of batteries, and control system, in the house basement. Um, control system – okay. Battery banks – were they nuts?.

              Whoof. Yeah, you want the batteries in a shed far away from the house.

              Liked by 1 person

              1. Whoof. Yeah, you want the batteries in a shed far away from the house.
                Featherblade

                That is what I’ve come to determine. Another off grid build had the batteries in a shed attached to the house or across a covered breeze way (forget which). Again. Too close.

                Like

            2. IMHO, it depends on the technology.

              tl;dr Lead Acid is OK in a dwelling. I’d not do such for lithium packs.

              I have the battery bank for the pumphouse in the building for a couple-three reasons:
              0) They’re lead acid, and with care can cohabit civilized rooms.
              1) I can pump a theoretical 75A into the batteries. Even with the garden hose cables, the shorter the better.
              2) The batteries are at the same temperature as the control electronics and most of the load (the pump is submerged, but not a problem). This is a minor issue for Lead Acid; my power trailer uses a separate box and does OK.
              3) There are known issues with lead acid, and they are easy to deal with. They’re in a closed battery box, with a vent line to the outside world, and there’s sufficient weather stripping so that any gasses don’t go the the room. The box is lined with thick vinyl (shower pan material) so any minor acid spills aren’t an issue.

              The NEC doesn’t mind an installation such as mine, and the electrical inspector was happy.

              On the other hand, if these were lithium batteries, I’d put them in another box. (Perhaps a different county. I’m not fond of them in large sizes. I gather they’d need heat, too. (I suspect that’s the main reason to put the Li system in a garage. Word is that cold temps while charging is bad news for that chemistry. Doesn’t seem to be a problem for conventional car batteries, which are pretty similar to what I have. (Different thicknesses of the metallic grid; I don’t need the huge amperage that a starting bettary delivers.)

              As a side note, when I did the first solar system (I’m on the 4th one now), I used absorbed glass mat batteries in our tent trailer. They were under seats and electrically isolated, but the batteries are very well sealed. Hell, I got them shipped via UPS and they did fine.

              Like

      3. Spoke to relative who is northeastern to her toenails: she simply can’t imagine any other way to be. She has been rubbing elbows with expatriate Canadians and *she* is appalled at what they’re reporting out of Canada.

        Liked by 1 person

      4. “Have some on-site storage of food/fuel/water”

        And now would be a good time to rotate said supplies – new water for old, a trip to bigbox for new dated canned goods, rotate the fuel. The advantage of doing cab rotation now is you’ll have double for a bit until you can get it to the local food banks, who do in fact need it this time of year, and reportedly especially this year.

        Liked by 2 people

          2. We’re far enough from the stores that we have sufficient for a severe weather (geophysical or political) problem. Stock rotation is SOP, and we’ll keep [redacted] $TIME_UNITS worth on hand.

            Canned goods have to stay in a heated environment (no-salt-added veggies + cold weather makes for some ruined food), but stuff like dried beans and kibble can go in the mouse proof resistant shed. (They’ve never gotten in, no idea why they haven’t tried. OTOH, it’s not warm and the food has little odor in storage.)

            Don’t donate to the food bank, per se (modulo the “round up the grocery bill for the bank”), but the Gospel Mission gets a monthly delivery. Many times, I’ve been greeted with sheer joy when they see that the rice & beans is accompanied by a few large jars of peanut butter. (We’ve answered prayers a few times. Looks for wings and halo. Nope. Go figure.) Of course, this takes some of the pressure off the food bank, and the GM does meals for anybody in need. That PB goes to a lot of kids in the summer. OTOH, I don’t see the homeless druggies heading there. Perhaps an allergy to the Gospel and/or an expectation to do some work.

            Like

        3. advantage of doing cab rotation now is you’ll have double for a bit until you can get it to the local food banks, who do in fact need it this time of year, and reportedly especially this year.

          FM

          (Not sure how did double quote, but oh, well).

          That is the only way can justify nonperishable supplies. Unless forced to, we won’t eat most nonperishable foods.

          Liked by 1 person

  10. One must remember they don’t create bureaucracy to control us as much as to employ their idiot offspring, the control part happens on accident when junior demands to be taken seriously and given some real responsibility. Since he is an idiot educated by Marxists he tends that way. Their halfway intelligent children run for office. The ones, the few, who actually have two brain cells to rub together smooze there way in to business. Happens when you are so inbred in culture as well as genetically. But of course the ones who suffer through this life making society work are the inferior ones. At least I ain’t related to them, I got that going for me… In the immortal words of Bill Murry gugala mugala

    Liked by 2 people

  12. Pingback: Not “gone Galt” | Dio's Workshop

    1. I’m disgusted. This is even more broken and stupid than previously, clearly designed by English majors.

      Also the fun of entering my handle, email address and web site -every-single-time- is getting very old. I’m signed in, I have to sign in -again- for every comment? Whose good idea was this?

      Liked by 1 person

      3. “Log in or provide your name and email to leave a reply” but my avatar is showing, and top bar appears to be signed in (or at least not signed out). So, just been using email and “name” with comments. This works. Would be a PIA, but at least I get drop down to select and it is fast.

        Like

      1. After several decades using lots of gui interfaces, it still took me a fair amount of tries to figure out what to click/tap and then click/tap again, and then where I could possibly attempt to type, even though there’s text there already with a useless “tip” half greyed out.

        Their “enhancement” is very weird.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Enhancement is very weird.
          FM

          Yes it is. Didn’t take long. I don’t use many user interfaces so have learned to figure out basics quickly. Figuring out anything else in depth OTOH, not until, if (and that is rare these days) I need to. Irritating to have to use the “+” to get comment started. That and the learned codes are now ignored.

          Like

  14. “But because we are each the character of our novel, it’s hard to believe our not being there won’t be remarked on, of felt.”

    Convincing yourself that very few people actually pay attention to what you do and say is enormously freeing for the introvert given to morbid introspection. Makes for a lot less “post-social interaction review of how stupid everything I said was”.

    Of course one can go too far with it in several different directions. Personally, I’ve gone so far in my direction that I’m honestly surprised when anyone remembers me <i>at all</i>, to say nothing of remembering me favorably.

    Like

    1. Personally, I’ve gone so far in my direction that I’m honestly surprised when anyone remembers me at all, to say nothing of remembering me favorably.
      Featherblade

      Same.

      I am surprised if I am missed, by anyone (other than family), let alone a blog that only knows me by a handle.

      Liked by 1 person

        1. I know.Why when I am going to go digital silence, here anyway, I mention I am. Also why when WP went cranky and I had to create an account, I mentioned the name switch, and why. Also to save you work. Figured you’d recognize the same email, and similar to the FB email, but why should you have to?

          Reminds me. Should anything happen need to add to the digital directive to have someone post, rather than just disappear. (To be clear. Don’t expect. No medical issues. More of the “If dad and I drive off a cliff together … Do this. Directives.”)

          Liked by 1 person

            1. Digital silence means we are traveling, by vehicle. Digital silence means we are out of cell service. I am not going anywhere outside of the US. We’d talked about Canada, again. Still could. Canada year park passes are still good (through end of May 2024). Depends on what happens between now and then. Right now thought is for me to fly, one way, to meet hubby at the end of the winter golf trip, then work our way home, slowly through the national parks. This trip has been talked about being done for the last 5 years. Hasn’t happened yet. Won’t hold my breath.

              Like

    2. “Personally, I’ve gone so far in my direction that I’m honestly surprised when anyone remembers me <i>at all</i>, to say nothing of remembering me favorably.”

      Likewise.

      Liked by 1 person

  15. Funny how the presstitutes keep calling the Israeli army a bunch of baby-killers — but not Ham-Ass, which actually <b>IS</b> a gang of degenerate baby-killers.

    Well, now WPDE has introduced some sort of forced formatting to its text blocks. I can format my own damn text! And when I drag text from an editor window, the source text is REMOVED from the editor. How the hell does it do that?

    ———————————

    If your reputation can be ruined by the truth, it should be.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. It is irritating to have the text entry box NOT be all for TEXT ENTRY but instead be crufted up with “editing tools” I do not need. And cannot, it seems, be rid of.

      Like

          1. Very strange. (THIS is why I have not upgraded my word processor since Office 2003. Widgets on a ribbon bar that do not do what they seem to say they do, if you happen to use English as your mother tongue.)

            Like

  16. Right now, I’m doing all that I can. I’m keeping my particular patch of the world as clean as possible. I’m trying to treat people how I wanted to be treated. And I’m trying to eat every sandwich.

    Beyond that…I’m just going to stand over here, far outside the blast zone, when most of the Western entertainment industry falls apart. And I’m going to get in as quickly as possible to see what I can salvage.

    Liked by 1 person

  17. “I used to imagine that if I killed myself everyone would realize how terribly they wronged me, and everyone would miss me forever, and lament the wonderful person they lost.”

    This is interesting to me because my suicidal ideation always takes the form of improving things for those left behind. Removing a burden, a problem, etc… So the different perspective is enlightening.

    Like

    3. I’ve always been fond of “No you can’t so that, it would leave a mess behind for other people to clean up and that would be rude.”

      Liked by 1 person

  18. I find myself torn by this article, Sarah. On the one hand, I completely understand what you are saying.

    And yet…

    And yet I find myself irked by the fact that The Looters (to use Rand’s title) continue to benefit off the labor and creative power of the productive. I find myself wondering if I am enabling the very people that have effectively sworn my banishment to the realm of Seen (and Tax Burdened) but not heard.

    I agree there is a lot of good work going out there in fringes; the question is when it will be enough to tip the scale, or even if?

    Like

  19. I checked with Chris Sciabarra, who wrote one of the better studies of Ayn Rand, and he confirmed that Rand’s college work included a course on Roman history. I suspect that one of the inspirations for Atlas Shrugged might have been the Plebeian Secessions, incidents when the plebeians decided that the patricians were giving them a bad deal, and walked out of Rome, refusing to grow or harvest crops until concessions were made.

    It’s worth noting that, on one hand, John Galt eventually made a speech presenting his demands and those of the other strikers (which was also the villain’s classic speech in a pulp novel—since structurally Galt is the villain of Atlas Shrugged). But on the other hand, when he first went on strike, he neither had a secret refuge nor had any expectation of how rapid the effects would be; he was prepared to live in poverty the rest of his life rather than support parasites. In fact it’s a key point of the plot that he went to work as a track laborer at Taggart Transcontinental. (Though seemingly he liked railroad work; he had a similar job when he was in college. He and Dagny Taggart were destined for each other.)

    Liked by 1 person

  21. So if they are playing games with the election, which of course they will, what game are they going to play, and what game shall we play in return?

    I HOPE we don’t play thermonuclear war. That game stinks.

    Also civil war, or any of the war games, really.

    Like

      1. I am really curious about what the response to them faking 400 million votes would be.

        Will people figure out they’ve been cheating? I mean the people who don’t already know that.

        Will judges actually get involved? Will there be any recourse at all for the cheated?

        I expect things to go sideways, but how? And what will people actually do? If we have, for the most part, passively sat by while they allow 10+ million invaders waltz across the border, what will we do about this?

        I have no idea, what, if anything will be done.

        Like

        2. There are four boxes of liberty. They are harming the soapbox with their vile censorship. The ballot box may be destroyed by cheating again and if the jury box fails to address that box 4 will be opened.

          If they steal the 2024 election Civil War will be unavoidable and massively brutal. It may not happen right away, but if they steal it all, it will happen and the sadistic twisted left will have tons of blood on its hands.

          We have warned them. They steal 2024 and it will get very very bad.

          Liked by 1 person

        3. Oh, this new interface is festive. I’ve also just noticed that I have tons of email from this blog in my spam folder. I have never checked the box and it is unchecked, below. Oh well. I also see a new button-ish thing below that lets me be WP-me, not email-me. Let’s see how that works.

          In any case, it’s not going to be the 400 million fake votes that sets things off. That’s far too obvious. It may be some sub-incident of whatever happens in that case, but it will be something minor and non-unique that suddenly becomes a “cause”. I’m rather surprised the J6 fiasco (not the event, itself, but the ongoing insanity) didn’t become that.

          It will be yet another “straw” that breaks the camel’s back. It won’t be a new load. Beyond that, I have no idea. (And why things happen that way I also do not know, but they tend to.)

          Liked by 1 person

          1. The button-ish thing worked. I didn’t have to login, yet again. However, posting the comment only resulted in “Comment sent successfully”. It didn’t refresh the page. Doing that manually, everything seems fine. FWIW.

            Liked by 1 person

  22. So what do we think will happen if the margin of fraud is too great and Trump wins?

    Last time we got Russia, Russia, Russia, rioting around during the inauguration, and 4 years of hysteria from the Democrats. Culminating in the St. Floyd riots and COVID.

    Will it be possible for them to up the ante? I don’t see them going quietly to their corners to plot and plan for the next election.

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        1. Yeah I’m kinda wondering what minds they have left to lose.

          Maybe if they pull their COVID masks a little tighter around their heads they can keep it together.

          Like

  24. Y’know, the reason I never committed suicide when I was in my suicidal place was not because I thought anybody would miss me. It was because I was 100% convinced that no matter what I did, how I did it, how foolproof it was, I’d screw it up and leave myself alive but a vegetable. I honestly believe(d) that I could put a 9mm Glock up to my temple and pull the trigger…and live, just sticking my wife and kid with taking care of a bedridden loser for the rest of my life.

    Yes. My incredibly low self-esteem has quite possibly saved my life.

    Also, one time, the fact that I wanted to drown myself in a friend’s pool while I was alone and it was dark (no lights) and everybody else was with their significant other making out…but I’m fat so I float.

    Liked by 1 person

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