Month: June 2026

The Still Small Voice of Trumpets by Lloyd Biggle Jr. had what was probably a disproportionate influence on my writing, simply because it was the first “fun science fiction high jinks in a different world” and possibly because I was always a culture nerd to an extent.

Thing is I still remember reading it when I was 13 or 14 and being immediately sucked into it and into the wonder of it.

If you haven’t read it and are going to object to spoilers, do not continue. Though I’ll say it still reads very well if you know how the problem is solved/how it ends. If you suddenly go “Oh, it had an outsized influence on NML”, well, yes, since it and the precipitating event that led to NML ever forming in my head came close together. Though they’re very different kind of books, in a way.)

Okay if you don’t mind the spoilers, TSSVOT is a “clever trick” novel. A distant ancestor of Captain Kirk on the mind-side.

The ambassador is supposed to precipitate a “democratic” revolution (in the sense of for representative government) in an absolute hereditary monarchical planet. The culture is obsessed with beauty. The most revered people in the culture are harpists. Whenever the king gets tired of one of them, or thinks the harpist has gone too far, or because the king has a toothache, he has the harpist’s arm amputated. Then the harpist becomes a thing of horror for the people. They hate deformity and handicaps, as the reverse of loving beauty. Also, of course, they can no longer play, so once they’re in the one-armed camps (to be fair, all sorts of people end up there, including king’s valets, etc. But the harpists are the ones that go from idolized to outcasts) people completely forget them. To the people, they’re dead.

Our hero (TM) finds a way to bring the harpists back to public consciousness and thereby precipitate a revolution by inventing a trumpet that can be played one handed, having them magnificently dressed and having them parade while playing. All their former fans remember them and the injustice of how they were treated creates general dissatisfaction.

There are — probably — several errors in this, including the fact that it takes way more than simply being aware of tyranny to precipitate revolution. However, for a single book, it works. And mind you, as we’re finding in Great Britain, being aware of tyranny is half the battle. (Here too, for that matter.)

So why is this on my mind again?

Well, because some years ago I was struck by how much the one-armed harpers situation paralleled that of writers in traditional publishing. No matter how adored you were — at least up to a threshold — you could be simply “cancelled” — i.e. they could refuse to publish you for any reason or none — and you might as well be dead.

The pressure on writers — all artists really since under the entertainment/news industrial complex, they were all subjected to this possibility of being cancelled — was enormous. You tried not do what would lead to being cancelled well ahead of it. As someone who lived it: it controlled what you did and how you did it well before you might come to anyone’s attention. And because it was (yes, political in SOME cases, but also political in the way of Woke “new directive came down. You’re now double plus ungood.” Often crazily and arbitrarily. They’re now of course cancelling the SSVOT for “sexism”. Will someone get my eyes? they rolled under the sofa.) largely arbitrary what this did was get inside your head and fester.

Okay, it didn’t help that I was almost fired after my first trilogy — a trilogy that EARNED OUT and was taken out of print the day after it earned out — for reasons that still make no sense to me (unless my glass-front face had betrayed me or someone had found my spicy letters to Analog a few years earlier. Which is likely it.) But all the same, what this system did was not only set me up for massive neurotic burn out, as I expected to be cancelled out of the blue any minute for reasons I had no control over, but messed up my relationship with my editors, even the one that had a chance of being halfway decent. I adopted a policy of hiding and not being seen, save for randomly sending books in (increasingly more randomly and utterly detached from contract due date as the burn out made itself felt.) This wasn’t particularly good for my career, but it was me trying to cope with the situation was was.

I also for a while tried to “say the right” (left) things as a shield, until I woke up one morning from a nightmare of seeing myself morph in the mirror, and realized it was a true dream, and that I was in danger of losing my soul (even though at the time I wasn’t 100% sure I had one) and JUST for continued publication, which seemed like an insufficient payment, if you know what I mean. That’s when I started (slowly) taking the mask off, and thereafter was only publishable by ONE house which made me feel even more precarious and–

One bizarre manifestation of this was my hobby room, which I am in the process of dismantling and dispersing, and which had grown to the level of insanity. I was hoarding how to books and craft supplies for things I’ve never done, with the same fervor that people hoard #10 20-year-stable cans of food. (Who are these people, you say? Well, I’m also one of them, at times.) WHY? because crafts hit the same mental/emotional spot as writing. And I expected to be well, technically “laid off” at any minute, which meant I needed to do something with the rest of my life. I’m dismantling it, because honestly, in the time I have remaining, however long, I’d rather write the things cluttering up my head.

But that was some amazing neurosis.

So why am I saying this? Well, not to complain, particularly, though yes, I’d like it recognized widely that I might be crazier than a March hare, but I came by the madness naturally and not just through genetics, and also that some systems are DESIGNED to make everyone insane.

A lot of systems these days, because the left has been intentionally breaking them in just this way for a while. Look, in a way, it is because their system requires that society/thinkers/creatives/everyone be broken in this way. The cancelling and the gulags are necessary because communism cannot survive in a society where people fight back. And don’t be deceived by “progressivism isn’t communism” or “socialism isn’t communism.” The goal, the tactics and the objectives are ALWAYS communism. The way there is a sliding scale to hell, on a greased chute, in a flaming hand basket.

So the left creates that system anywhere they get control, because their ideas are laughably ridiculous and obviously evil, and people who are free to say so will do it, and they’ll never get more power, which their ultimate goal and kink, an unclean lust for power over others.

Part of the poison of the system is, as in The Still Small Voice of Trumpets the fact it is secret. It happens behind the scenes, where no one can see it, and the cancelling is always explained other ways. “Oh, we don’t publish so and so because the numbers were bad.” Or my favorite “We can’t publish them because they’re difficult to work with.” (Which was true, even, since difficult to work with is defined as “will not submit” and “insists on having his/her own opinions.”) This led to writing but also the arts, teaching (particularly at the college level but at this point all the way to elementary school, theater, film, Hollywood, news readers, reporters, in short all the “liberal” arts fields (though they’re now pushing into STEM fields as well.) becoming fiefdoms of the left where only one opinion was heard.

It also lead to lots of fights with me on one side and everyone on the right on the other, where people tried to figure out why the right wasn’t “creative.” The funniest of this was my fight with Roger L. Simon (Whom I LIKE) where he insisted that no, the right wasn’t creative. Why was this funny? People, he had already written Blacklisting Myself, but was apparently unaware that EVERY field was under that same boot.

As a rule of thumb, if only one (broad) side of the spectrum is heard in any profession (or country for that matter) that is not organic, and opinions aren’t free there. BECAUSE THAT’S NOT HOW FREE PEOPLE BEHAVE. (The same as the left raging against inequality. Inequality (economic, of behavior, of education, etc. etc. etc.) is the mark of freedom. The only way humans are equal is if someone is over them making sure all the peasants are the same.)

So why is this relevant again? Two reasons.

First, writing is largely — if only most writers knew it/admitted it — free to romp in indie, and the pay (at least for me, tovarich, I don’t know about the rest of them. I have no visibility into their income — comparable or slightly superior to trad pub (even if the penetration is theoretically smaller. Note I said theoretically, because… who knows? Like all numbers, it’s hard to be sure either way.)

The reason I encourage anyone going indie/trying new ways to go indie is not that I have a hard-on against publishers. My last publisher was largely (within limits) okay, and I think well of Rac press. It is because I want the system so dispersed that it’s impossible to gate keep it again. To that end, yes, we need work arounds for Amazon, and there are ideas, but mostly writers seem to be going to their own shops, at least after they have any following at all. And that’s better, because even more distributed. But yes, it’s a work in progress and I gleefully support the decentralization with time, talent and treasure as much as I can.

That’s writing. News too to an extent. It occurred to me some years ago that for given values (if you squint) I’d come to realize my early-ambition (like before 12) of being a journalist AND magazine owner. Eh. It’s weird but it works, so….

However, not everyone has got the memo, and a lot of people are still trapped in a system that has gotten way crazier and more arbitrary. (This might or might not explain Maher who has had red-pill moments throwing behind Platner. In fact, Maher himself might not be aware of why he did it. As I said the system gets inside your head.)

And then there is Hollywood. Hats off to any actor who dares not be woke. HATS WAY OFF. Even if they beg, shimmy and try to have it both ways, they’re running a huge risk. Bigger than writers because writers aren’t that well paid. Same for professional athletes. Same for– well, anyone in a controlled field.

HATS WAY OFF. And for the rest of the right, keep in mind these people aren’t free. Heck, they might be double thinking so hard they don’t know where they are. Don’t judge them too harshly, even as you make it easier for them to be able to think clearly and say what they really think.

Second: while on that: This is what makes it so difficult to distinguish people who were faking/true converts from the weasels who suddenly are on the dominant side. I bet at the fall of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia a lot of people came over to the other side, and honestly? It’s impossible to tell who is who. You can’t tell if this person was undercover and finally free to be him/herself, or if the person is a weasel chasing power. Or a baddy wanting to corrupt your movement. We’re already running into some of this in politics, (And much as I like Marco Rubio I wonder if he himself knows which of those he is. Yes, I know, but think on it.)

This is why a civil war would be so costly and why a lot of people on our side would succumb to friendly fire, even as a lot of weasels and baddies survive.

Third: what we need is the equivalent of indie for EVERYONE that it is remotely possible to do that.

(This is one of the reasons I’m strenuously for just calling student loans a bad bet and cancelling them. Most doctors never pay theirs off, and not the way you think. At least for those graduating (my urologist tells me) in the last fifteen years, not just the loans but the terms, and the fact that it’s under government aegis and things change without warning about what is due, when, and what the interest is, even, are so huge and unmanageable and unpredictable that the best doctors can do, even at the salaries they eventually make (after residency, fellowship, whatever) is pay on them in some amount till sixty five when the loans are forgiven (And taxes due for the amount forgiven.) Now you might flap gums about how that’s fair (I have opinions, and most of you won’t like them, including for ex. the fact that it’s the government loaning the money, which means the money has been printed and spent. it was already stolen from you via inflation. Because fiat currencies are fungible.) BUT the fact is those loans, hanging over the heads of highly skilled people who are already highly controlled by government licensing (Seriously) amounts to slavery. If you don’t like that your doctors lied to you about Covid and the Covid vax you should be for the forgiveness of student loans. People whose survival depends on saying what they’re told, will. Unless they have independent means which most don’t.
It’s not just doctors. Lawyers fall under the same heading. As do a lot of other, expensive, requires-graduate-degree professions that are government licensed.)

This includes of necessity Hollywood — in case you wonder why I am AI-positive — and of course news reporting, and frankly everything you can think of, which I’m sure includes thousands of things that aren’t coming to my sleep-and-caffeine deprived brain. (Not to mention paint fummy. I’m refinishing some stuff.)

And this is where “what can you do” comes in. In any way you can think of where you can support a field’s diversification (real diversification), free-form-dealing, and decentralization, DO IT.

Chaos (in this case) is on the side of freedom. And the system that keeps things “organized” is ultimately an iniquitous system for gagging and controlling people.

Build over, build under, build around. Refuse to be controlled.

Take up your trumpet and play the best music you can.

There are very bizarre ideas stalking abroad in daylight unashamed. And they should be ashamed, because they’re bad ideas and quite frankly ideas that are antithetical to what America is. At least an America distinct from Europe. (And if you don’t want to be distinct from Europe, your understanding of history leaves much to be desired, but we recommend a trip over there, living as the natives for a month. Just a month It will cure you, I betcha.)

Oh, yeah, the poor kid who got stabbed by a black kid is a problem, and a bunch of black people and academics coming out to say that just touching the poor oppression flower was worthy of being killed is a problem.

What it doesn’t have anything to do is with the color of the people doing it, except insofar as the US has spent the last several decades weaponizing people who tan into a dysfunctional culture. Yes, that is specifically one political side in the US, but it doesn’t make it any less real, and it is a shame for all of us. Also, if it makes you feel better that side of the political spectrum wants to do it to every single American, not just people who tan.

None of which is an excuse to run around being idiots. I’m particularly fascinated — in the way one is fascinated by a poisonous snake: from a distance and preferably from behind glass — by the bright idea that suddenly only Northern Europeans are white, or only Northern Europeans understand freedom and representative government. You know, the form of government inspired by the Mediterranean people — Greek and Roman, mostly — and which frankly had a hell of a time in the Norse countries where the harsh climate has always inspired more communitarian solutions. It is not a fluke that the Scandinavians and frankly the Germans took to socialism like ducklings finding their long lost mother (National socialism is, duh, socialism) or that the parts of the US colonized mostly by Scandinavians tend to be the most easily seduced by socialist solutions. Pfui. It would help if people engaged their brains before running their mouths.

All this to say that, no, I also don’t have anything against light eyed blonds. Despite the fact my husband has dark hair I’ve always had a weakness for redheaded men. (Actually forget the despite. The problem, gentle readers, is that from the age of 14 or so I became incapable of speaking or even moving much near red-headed men. Which is fine. I caught a mathematician, which honestly is my sexual orientation.) Note what I said THE CLIMATE encourages a certain type of CULTURE. In areas where they were the primary colonizers, the culture LINGERED, but individuals who moved away are as capable of loving liberty as the rest of humanity (You know, that means not a lot. Though Americans seem more predisposed to it and I suspect it’s nature AND nurture.)

Oh, but but but AFRICA. Yes, poor fucked up Africa, thank you for noticing. Yes, it does have a lot in common with our blighted urban areas (but then again no, if you look granularly. In fact very no.) Um… has it occurred to you it is because it suffers from the same bullshit from the top down? Look, there is much flapping about colonialism, and that’s as it may be. Colonialism is the only way humans have found to communicate a superior culture to a dysfunctional one that doesn’t involve killing every adult over the age of 3. In that sense Africa didn’t so much suffer from colonialism as from lack thereof. Yes, atrocities and all. Calm your tits. Did they kill everyone over the age of three? No? Then by the standards by which their own ancestors — as mired in tribalism as Africa, when they got colonized by Greeks and Romans and an endless succession of various peoples who were to an extent more functional (meaning their tribes were larger and almost nation sized) — what Africa got was soft colonization. (Which happened in Europe too. Even the Romans rarely killed every adult. Only on occasion.)

What truly and completely fucked up Africa was that the colonizers lost confidence in themselves and their culture before they brought the colonized to the level where people started going “I don’t care what color his skin is, so and so is an Englishman/Frenchman.” Which takes a lot of centuries, the sort of centuries which made the wild Celtiberians “Romans” and sometimes even Good Romans.

Instead Europe got the softs and started examining its conscience — colonialism done right requires you have none, just the certainty of your purpose — and asking itself whether the tribal cultures were better — no, if they were they would have got out of the neolithic on their own and colonized Europe — and all sorts of daft things.

And then they started treating Africans the exact same way as America treats its urban underclass (which is largely but by no means exclusively dark skinned. I won’t say African, because they ain’t. They’re not even African American. Most of them have slightly more African blood than I do, and mine is very little. They just are sometimes darker and mostly have the African hair. (Sometimes.)) I.e. they started “respecting their culture” and treating them as covalent partners in the whole civilization thing. And then when that didn’t work, they brought the African leaders over to educate in Marxism and resentment — see the Patrice Lumumba “University” in Moscow and our ivy leagues which might outstrip it in both silliness and Marxism. (BIRM.)

As a result Africa remains tribal, has no clue why it can’t succeed, but KNOWS it is because they were colonized and are exploited. They’re not sure what they’re exploited for, though those who went to college in the west will tell you that the colonizers took all their raw materials (A triumph of the narrative over their lying eyes.)

In that, btw, Africans are still saner than inner city government dependents. Most of them — the uneducated ones — know the whole resentment and oppression schtick is eye wash to impress the people giving them freebies. Beneath it the operational (just not civilized, and in fact anti-innovation/development/wealth) tribal structures remain, so that the money coming in gets stolen precisely according to tribe and hierarchy. And at that level they don’t so much … well, they just act like tribe-members. PEOPLE WHO BELONG TO THE TRIBE. Not as a club, but as ownership. Which is dysfunctional, but it’s also the natural state of mankind. Yes, your ancestors too, gentle reader, were owned by tribes. How long ago depends on where you came from, but honestly the structure lingers still even in Europe. It just has less power. Except for where socialists use it to divide and conquer. Or introduce other tribes to do the conquering. Whichever.

What we have in the US with people who tan — and some who don’t tan — is different. It is the — deliberate? — creation of a culture that s’welp me, is less functional than tribal culture, bizarre as that might seem. Partly because at least tribes survive. They’re mechanisms to survive, in a way. While the dependent culture of the welfare class is not survivable long term. Or, individually, short term.

What it has nothing to do with is Africa. (And anyone whining about IQ just proved theirs is room temperature, if that. Yeah, Africans, even in tests not administered by racists in SA have issues with IQ tests. Because, you know, what IQ tests test is ACADEMIC aptitude. This is notoriously hard to test in people for whom academics are a foreign language. Believe it or not even pictures on a paper aren’t instantly identifiable if you’ve not been trained in interpreting them. Look, the IQs bandied about means 90% of those people would die, just in the environment they live in. This is not real. (I have doubts about ANY IQ measurements being real, because I studied the tests and administered them and though I do rather well in them, I know all the begs and the loopholes that cause freakish and unwarranted highs and lows. But that’s something else. If you prefer, yes, IQ tests are real, we’re just unsure what they’re real about.)

Africa suffers from being mollycoddled, flooded with money and goods that discourage any local enterprise, and on top of that has its brightest lights indoctrinated in socialism. (Look, when the brightest kids aspire to growing up and be chauffeurs for an NGO big wig, the problem is not the long dismantled top-down colonialism. It’s soft undermining and Europe exporting its neuroticism.)

The inner cities in the US (and most other western countries, even before those western countries had any group of people who could even vaguely tan.) suffer from being welfare clients. It has some things in common with Africa, yeah: A perverse education that teaches them all their problems are due to oppression and that other people are scheming to keep them down all the time. And also that they can’t do anything on their own. And also being given big gobs of cash for doing bloody nothing.

They are worse off than Africa because they don’t even have a tribal structure. In fact, due to the perversity of Welfare structures, they don’t really have families, just a generational matriarchy that discards men and boys into a culture of macho posturing and competition.

What they also don’t have that their ancestors did, even when just freed from slavery, is Christianity. Which frankly is what made the West what it is. The knowledge that all humans are fundamentally human. And that individuals matter.

At some point, the West decided that Christianity was uncool and we shouldn’t impose its values on anyone, including those little barbarians in our schools.

Look, I’m not going to tell you you have to believe in Christianity. OR in any G-d. What I’m going to tell you is that removing those VALUES and the culture from our culture has benefited no one. To the extent the self sufficient, self feeding classes retain them, they are protective against the virus of socialism.

And the virus of socialism is what has destroyed those dependent on government and created a culture where “How dare you touch me” is reason enough to kill. This incident isn’t even rare. It’s just normally it doesn’t involve white people. After KC won the Super Bowl a Kansas City resident told me the morgues filled with skinny black kids full of holes, because looking at someone funny is reason enough to be shot. (Or being suspected of looking at someone funny. Or walking the wrong way on the street.)

The left looks at that and sees a vibrant culture that needs just more money to flourish and build rockets or something. But the left is full of shit. Giving more money to people who have no internal ability for self improvement or frankly to live in civilization doesn’t make them more functional. Arguably, it goes the other way.

And before you think that’s because these people are black, kindly go read Theodore Dalrymple. Long before England got invaded by people who tan, their welfare class was INDISTINGUISHABLE from the vibrant goblin neighborhoods in our urban centers. They might be blond and blue eyed, but they acted exactly like their darker cousins across the pond. I’m here to tell you it was the same with the welfare class of the country I was born and raised in.

It’s not the skin color, you see. If it were Abigail Spanberger would be a firebrand for freedom and Clarence Thomas would be communist. Or if you prefer, replace those with Bernie Sanders and Thomas Sowell. The parallel stands. And it remains crazy. (I want to point out right now that in terms of defending freedom, you could give me a million Spanbergers for a single Sensurround (https://x.com/ShamashAran on X) and you’d still have to give me change of around a million Spanbergers.) It’s socialism.

Socialism, in the absence of any moderating cultural influence — say Christianity or America’s civic religion based on our funding documents — will turn ANY POPULATION into worthless goblins. In fact, even with moderating influences, the longer socialism is applied the more worthless the population becomes.

No, this doesn’t mean that we should just seal off or worse exterminate vast portions of our population. (The place you’re looking for is in Europe and almost 100 years ago now. Go.)

It means we need to stop lying to the young. I DO recommend as a beginning point stop telling kids who tan that slavery was invented by white people to enslave black people. It’s a stupid and ridiculous lie, (and the reason I was told this was told them was “so they have something to be proud of.” Because apparently being the weakest people in history is something to be proud of. What?) and we shouldn’t subsidize the telling of lies to the young.

Then teach them history. Real history. If you’re going to teach them American history, warts and all, teach them all of the world’s history WARTS AND ALL. Because while it’s true that the US is not perfect, boy oh boy, at least we have tried.

Then get rid of welfare and the soft soppy idea that people who have fallen so far as to need the collective to keep them from dying are in any way doing something right, or “shouldn’t be preached to.” In fact, for the love of all that is human and worth saving, PLEASE go and preach to these people. Yes, I know it will be taking your life in your hands, but I’ll point out missionaries went and preached in places where they might (and did) become dinner (and before you kick on that, yes they did. Cannibalism is just something humans do.) Just make sure what you’re preaching is REAL Christian doctrine (or USAian doctrine. I don’t kick either) not the passing fancy of college professors drunk on socialism. Because that later doesn’t help anything.

We do have a problem. A massive one. Fortunately it doesn’t require us to get rid of everyone who tans. Or even most people who tan. What it does require us is to stop poisoning our citizens (all of them, really) against our own country, its history and its people.

And it requires a willingness which I know doesn’t exist, to turn off the money spigot corrupting people here and abroad. And it might not exist but it NEEDS to. So if all you do is convince others that this stupidity needs to stop you won’t have lived in vain.

Socialism kills, fast or slow. But on the way there, it makes people into dumb animals posturing and killing for no good reason.

The enemy is collectivism. The enemy is welfare. The enemy is turning humans into dependent zoo animals.

None of which will be solved by doing the same, but harder, and with different colors of skin as the all precious must be coddled.

All it will do is destroy the little that is still functioning. And make it harder to come back.

I beg you with tears in my eyes to believe civilization is worth saving. It is socialism that must be torn down.

Please start working towards civilization.

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, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. By clicking through and buying (anything book-related, 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. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion. Remember though all of these submissions are from people willing to be associated with this blog. So if you’re trying to buy from people who don’t hate you, this is a good place to start.– SAH

FROM PAM UPHOFF: Sweeper (Chronicles of the Fall Book 22)

A novella in the Three part Alliance A science fantasy about house repairs and family.

A badly mentally damaged boy, living on the street. Sweeping sidewalks. Living on charity, scrounging and kicks.

Lord Volodya Ignorov, newly transferred into the Bureau of Intelligence in Nova Moskva inherits a rundown house, and a runaway servant. “Probably dead by now.”

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: I’m the Beautiful But Evil Space Princess Who Rules A Galactic Empire But Really Wants To Leave People Ruthlessly Alone!: Volume 4

Imperial Princess Regnant Alice and her fiancé, Crown Prince Daniel of Xeros, and the plucky crew of the Imperial Space Yacht Aurora, with the assistance of the Goddess Eireala, have traveled tens of millions of light-years from the Milky Way Galaxy to mend a rift in space.

Once that’s fixed, they’ll head home – and Alice and Daniel will finally be wed!

But nothing ever goes according to plan . . . not even an Imperial wedding.

You’re all invited to the nuptials, regardless . . .

The fourth volume of the BBESP light novel!

FROM JULIE FROST: Smuggling Spaces

Beagles
And dragons
And bears
OH MY

Russell Fisk, the owner/operator of the interplanetary tramp freighter Inquisitive Tamandua, really hates transporting live cargo. But when money’s tight and jobs are hard to find, he’ll take what he can get.

Sometimes the client’s paperwork is iffy. Sometimes the live cargo is unpredictable. And sometimes the dead cargo is even more unpredictable.

Whether the meerkats are engaged in a blood feud, the graveyard is haunted, or the miniature multicolored glow-in-the-dark capybaras might spontaneously combust, Russ has one simple (ha) mission:

Getting his cargo and crew from Point A to Point B in one piece, while staying a step ahead of the feds.

FROM ROBERT MILLER: Sword of the Hopeful King

In a realm forged by ancient legends, twelve-year-old Eofor refuses to mourn his dragon-rider father—because the magical amulet at his chest still pulses with a living heartbeat.

Running to the mountains to find the father he knows still lives, Eofor discovers that his father was hunting rogue dragon riders allied with a monster from an age long past. Beneath the kingdom, something far older lurks, but so does the blade that will save the kingdom if Eofor can wield it.

One impossible rescue. One four-winged flight. One chance to claim the Sword of the Hopeful King… or watch the kingdom fall.

Sword of the Hopeful King — Where a child’s faith meets dragon fire and destiny takes wing.

FROM STEPHANIE OSBORN: Eclectic Osborn: The Many Worlds of Stephanie Osborn

Many of Stephanie Osborn’s avid readers have requested her short works be collected and put in print. It took some time for her to write enough to make it economically worthwhile, simply because she usually writes novels.

But the time has arrived! Eclectic Osborn is that collection. Between its covers, you will find fantasy, mystery, horror, satire, and more, many of which have never seen publication before this volume. Sate your appetite for great stories with this diverse plate of tales!

EDITED BY CHRIS KENNEDY: Anthromech

Fifteen new science fiction series. One shared principle: Humanity must never surrender the final choice to the machine.

Welcome to “Anthromech” where technology may serve, amplify, and even merge with humanity, but it must never rule it; these stories push back against the tired assumption that machines will inevitably inherit the future.

This isn’t your traditional anthology, though; it is a Simultaneous Series Launch, introducing fifteen new series in one explosive volume. Readers won’t just discover new worlds here; they’ll help decide which of them march forward into production as full series. Which ones will succeed? You make the call on which ones you want to see more of.

Even more unusual, over half the stories pair veteran, bestselling Chris Kennedy Publishing authors with newer writers, turning the book itself into an act of mentorship as well as an imagination of the future. So climb aboard “Anthromech;” after all, the machine is nothing without you!

With stories by:
S.W. Swoope II & Chris Kennedy
Craig Bell & Kevin Steverson
Richard Cartwright & William S. Frisbee, Jr.
Joseph Hower & William Alan Webb
Charli Cox & John E. Siers
Jay Burr & Mark Stallings
David Appleby & Robert E. Hampson
Abigail Jenkins & April Kelley Jones
M.D. Boncher
Russ Tilton
Michael LaVoice
C.A. Waldron

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: No Man’s Land: Volume 1 (Chronicles of Lost Elly)

Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.

On a lost colony world, mad geneticists thought they could eliminate inequality by making everyone hermaphrodite. They were wrong. Catastrophically wrong.
Now technology indistinguishable from magic courses through the veins of the inhabitants, making their barbaric civilization survivable—and Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Kayel Hayden, Viscount Webson, Envoy of the Star Empire—Skip to his friends— has just crash-landed through a time-space rift into the middle of it all.
Dodging assassins and plummeting from high windows was just the beginning. With a desperate king and an archmagician as his only allies, Scipio must outrun death itself while battling beasts, traitors, and infiltrators bent on finishing what the founders started: total destruction.
Two worlds. One chance. No time to lose.

FROM STEPHEN PALMER: Americans Abroad: A Novel of Western Europe’s Surrender to Islam

Americans Abroad takes the reader to London, Paris, Berlin, and beyond. The novel explores the seemingly peaceful Islamic invasion of Europe, the feckless responses of Western European politicians, the intolerance of those preaching tolerance, and the weaponization of accusations of Islamophobia and racism. Can Muslims co-exist with Western democracy? Do they even want to? Or is co-existence merely a steppingstone on the path to domination? Americans Abroad probes these issues and makes the case for Christianity in a fast-paced, entertaining read, mixing humor with thought-provoking questions of religion and culture.

Six Americans travel to Europe—two go for work, two for fun, and two for Christian ministry opportunities. As they travel about the Continent, they encounter each other, as well as the effects of Muslim mass migration. The Americans commit the politically incorrect sin of noticing the downsides to “cultural enrichment” from third-world immigrants.

Americans Abroad follows Stephen Palmer’s successful three-book Unlikely series. In his fourth novel, Stephen shifts focus from American politics to broader issues of Western culture and religion.

After a successful twenty-year legal career, Stephen Palmer retired from Big Law at age 46 to focus on writing, public speaking, and volunteer Christian ministry activities. Stephen and his wife, Jennifer, live in Starkville, Mississippi after thirty years in the Atlanta area.

FROM BRIAN HEMING: Monster Girl Evolution: Tournament of the Smart: An illustrated tournament battle litRPG

“AN ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT SATIRE” “a fun read and not to mention hilarious” “Peak fiction.””this is ironically genius level.”

After the Kingdom of Dumb was attacked across the dimensional barrier by the Empire of the Smart, Amy led her team to take the fight to the Empire, along the way levelling up and evolving into a Luminous Fount of Dumbness, alongside Mizuno’s evolution into a Techno-Mage Evolved Smart Girl, Misty’s into an Armored Evolved Horse Girl, and Sassy’s into a Hyperactive Omega Puppy Girl. After taking over a machine-controlled world of the Empire using Mizuno’s hacking powers, the girls entered the Tournament of the Smart, a team fighting tournament that will determine the next ruler of the Empire.

Now they must fight increasingly powerful opponents, giving every match their all as they seek the throne. But can the Empire of the Smart accept a Dumb ruler, or will shadowy forces succeed at rigging the tournament and crushing the girls and their hopes to make a place for dumbness in the universe?

32 illustrations, full color if your device supports it.

FROM DANIEL WILLARD: The Mobster’s Daughter

Danny couldn’t understand why he was so attracted to Carly, because they didn’t have a lot in common. Danny was quiet; Carly couldn’t stop talking. Danny loved science and math; Carly was terrified of them. Danny read science fiction; Carly read Harlequin romances. Danny’s favorite band was Pink Floyd; Carly had never heard of Pink Floyd.

It was only later that Danny found out that Carly’s father was a Mafia boss. That made things complicated, because Danny’s father was an FBI agent.

The Mobster’s Daughter is a tale set in Youngstown, Ohio, a blue collar city of giant steel mills and back-room bookie joints, close-knit families and unsolved disappearances, church festivals and car bombs.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Catch That Thought

Skid Milliken has a problem. Rent’s due, clients are scarce, and he can’t afford to be picky when he’s on a space station a long way from Earth. So when a Chongu scientist walks into his office claiming she’s being pursued by an unseen cabal, he grabs the job.

Now Skid has a real problem. Someone’s chasing him, and is willing to kill. His scientist is carrying a deadly secret from a distant planet — and someone in her circle of students is a traitor, but no one knows who.

Can he sort out this tangled yarn of lies and half-truths before it kills him, even as an ancient enemy closes in?

A short story of the Chongu Empire.

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: ADAPTABLE.

Only four Sarah And The Clankers songs this week, because I REALLY had a crazy day yesterday.

Last week’s The Week In Clankers

The full list up to two weeks ago: The Clankers did Sing.

Sorry. I haven’t been sleeping, yesterday was brutal (just scheduling. Nothing BAD happened.) And I’ve sat here staring at the screen for two hours now, while my thoughts run in every direction like stray sheep.

So, treat this as an open thread: Europeans discovering America while coming for the world cup; the latest cray cray on the left (spoiled for choice); the IPO for space x.

I’m going to nap so I can write. Because staring at the screen is not productive.

I’ve been trawling the wilds of X again. In my defense it’s the only way to find out what is actually going on in the rest of the world that the press wishes to hide.

Anyway, I fell into a talk about the reflecting pool where the title was Decay is a Choice. Like this: apparently, as far as I understand (I don’t have the history on hand just now) the story goes like this: the Obama administration spent something like 300 million to have the reflecting pool be “ecologically minded.” Meaning it was either filling from a river or from grey water (I don’t remember which) and it was lined in a “natural” way or some crap. (I honestly can’t remember, though the post I read two weeks ago described what was done in oh so green sounding words, and all sorts of eco-techno nonsense (most eco-techno is nonsense because they don’t understand engineering and don’t know reality from a hole in the ground. They’re frankly iffy on reality beyond wordage.)

On the surface, this was done for ecological and green reasons, and of course all the usual suspects applauded, but what actually happened was that within two weeks — predictably — the reflecting pool was basically open sewage with algae and goose poop. AND THEY LET IT STAY LIKE THAT.

Now you can argue that this was because they couldn’t admit failure. Sure, you could. And it probably was part of it. Heaven knows the Little Man Who Wasn’t There (Obama) was absolutely loathe to admit he might fail/have failed at anything. Or done anything wrong.

But given his not-so-hidden hate-on for our country, you know and I know he got a secret (?) frisson from the fact that the reflecting pool, supposed to reflect a monument to America’s past, was in fact open sewage. In his tiny (not a reflection of intelligence but of pettiness) mind, this reflected the true state of our country and all that jazz. In fact, at the same time they were tearing down monuments to our past and covering others in graffiti.

A post on ex, the one entitled “Decay is a Choice” was in fact hypothesizing that the left does this stuff on purpose.

I know it sounds far-fetched, but I’m sure he’s right. It’s a combination of four things:

1- They’re Marxist who think that wealth is a finite pie and somehow bringing America down will automagically bring everyone else up. (This is the opposite of reality. There should be a term for that. Not just false, but the actual opposite of reality. But Marxism is a reductionist and stupid lens to view things through.)

2- They are straight up oikophobes, imagining that places abroad, particularly those with people who tan are full of natural communists. America isn’t so America must be eeeevil. And therefore they hate us and want us to suffer.

3- They genuinely straight up love decay, filth and nastiness. You see, they are upper class keyboard muffins (thank you shesellsseashells for the lovely term) who have never experienced nastiness. To them this is what “authentic” means as opposed to their lives which they experience as plastic and too nice. For some it might be a cover for guilt for their unearned riches. For others it’s simply a kink. Nostalgie de la boue.

4- They are despicable sadists who get off on making everyone suffer. This goes with their illusion of being “elite” and wanting the “peasants” to be humiliated.

At this point you guys are looking at me like I’m nuts, but really cast your mind on the administration of the autopen and tell me if those points don’t unify everything they did, from the open border bringing in the dregs of the third world (not sending their best is the best case scenario. Most places were sending their utter worst), to letting gangs run rampant, to defunding the police, to indoctrinating kiddies on the stupid idea that slavery was the point of the country, to taking our money and giving it to people who hate our country, to not letting us have the energy we need as an industrial society, to– Everything they did really.

From the outside, it looked like America was decaying, but the decay was not organic. Decay was a choice and the choice wasn’t ours, but imposed from above.

Decay is a choice.

And it only goes on until the people decide enough is enough. Let me put it this way, as the um…. spicy stuff going on the other side of the pond shows? Decay only goes on until the governed decide they’ve had enough.

And we’ve had just about enough. We’re not getting spicy because FOR NOW our government is combating the decay.

However, California should take notice of what’s going on the other side of the pond. Because not only is decay a choice, IT IS NEVER THE CHOICE OF NORMAL HUMAN BEINGS. And it is never the choice for people who live in it. People prefer living in clean surroundings and being safe. Most normal people want to work, have a home, have a stable relationship and raise fat babies.

Anything else is being imposed upon them by a plague of academics who, for the reasons listed above (and probably others) decided that the West and PARTICULARLY America deserved decay and decline. And since they’d actually never understood decay and decline, they decided to impose it from above. Which means it’s not real. It’s Kay-fab decay and decline. Which–

People don’t like. The encoprofication of reality is not the preference of normal, healthy human beings. Of which, thank the good Lord, the US still has plenty, whatever the news tell you. (I didn’t even list above the decay of our education, which is very much a choice. There’s nothing wrong with the minds of the young. Our education establishment has worked really hard at preventing them from learning, is all.)

It is important for everyone — yes, particularly you, doomer 23900 in your dungeon — to realize that encoprofication (From coprolite) is not real. It’s a choice. It’s a mod on reality. There is no reason for it to exist. Just like there was never any real reason to stop building nuclear plants; there was never any real reason for not producing oil in the US; there was never any reason to let mentally ill and drug addicts turn our cities into cesspools; there was never any reason to destroy and spit on our past.

It is the choice of a cultural minority, which has installed itself in the seats of power and for whom this is an aesthetic and possibly sexual choice.

It is NOT OURS. And there’s no reason to allow the small group of shit-aesthetes any power.

It’s time to push their noses in. Before the necessity comes to us that came to people across the pond. Because that necessity comes with a lot of horrible choices and also inevitable pain I don’t wish on our land.

So go forth. Build under, build over, build around. Make things beautiful, shining, prosperous. There’s nothiing wrong with that, and no reason to feel ashamed of preferring it.

And annoy a Marxist today. Yes, I now it’s easy. But also every time a Marxist cries an angel gets its wings. And I don’t care if you don’t believe in angels, just do it anyway.

Go be clean and happy. And if you still can, raise fat babies. If you can’t, help someone else raise fat babies.

There’s a lot of angels needing wings.

I was there. I remember. All through the early oughts, we, the insufferably, terminally plugged in wondered when this amazing new means of communication, this thing that allowed all of us to become “journalists” would pay off in elections, in public opinion, in everything.

In 2016 and definitely in the reaction to 2020 and the ridiculous gaslighting and prosecution not just of Trump but of anyone who said what we all saw happen “the results of 2020 were impossible and, oh, btw, the king is so senile he talks to invisible people and no longer knows who or what he is” we saw the first fruits.

The left brought everything they had to bear. EVERYTHING. Starting in 2016 they were a locked-in-step chorus, not just the news, but every “artist” (pardon me if I scoff) from writers to producers to everyone, all spoke with the same voice trying to convince us they had already won, resistance was futile and we were just the remnants of the lost world where truth mattered.

Ten years earlier it would have worked. Arguably it worked, in crowning Obama and whoever was really ruling for him.

In 2016 it sputtered and died. If you think it wasn’t a big surprise, go look at the news from that election, as the results came in (Always advisable if you’re down anyway.) They threw everything they could at it, in 2020. Everything. From the — What did Joe call it. I can’t remember the exact wording anymore. Besides it’s early, and I haven’t had coffee (I might not finish this before ten, but let the record show it’s six am. Gah. It’s a day like that) — the most comprehensive and inclusive fraud machine ever deployed in American politics (and hooo, boy, that’s a lot) and they managed it. Nothing short of a revolution. Then they started dismantling everything.

And yet…. and yet we’re still here, and 2024 didn’t go the way they were so sure they’d set it up to go.

Also the fraud has become — as it was for those of us who watched it all the time — obvious, glaring, in your face. (Hi, California!)

And now, now suddenly, it seems the whole world is wakening and seeing and demanding sanity, not the crazy stuff that our self-proclaimed betters force down our throats every day and claim is for our own good while making the world into hell.

What changed? Well, some of it really was just more people reading their news online, till mainstream news are the domain of the very young, the very old and the very busy and naive.

But more importantly, I realized last night, we keyboard journalists in our pajamas (to coin a phrase. Eh.) stopped simply reacting to and amplifying or picking and choosing among the main stream.

In my early blogging days almost all my blogs (and my posts at instapundit) were inspired or took from main stream news sources.

There’s still a bit of that, of course, but Epoch Times and other smaller players are a breath of fresh air. And there’s genuine individual reporting from people who are there, or involved with the thing, or know about the thing. We’ve even done some (Thank you to Larry Good for his posts on the water that Data Centers actually use, not the scary weirdness we’re being propagandized with. And thank you to other guests over the years who brought their expertise to my blog.)

However, the turbo charge is so new most of us haven’t processed the change: Twitter/x not being just an echo of the narrative and amplifier of main stream news but a genuinely free speech platform (with hickups, of course, but getting better.)

Without twitter, we wouldn’t know that Ireland is actually reacting to the outrage perpetrated on it. Or that England is taking things passively. Or that we, who aren’t on the left in the US, exist and are still fighting. Without twitter, we would be like most of Europe, where our MSM seems almost fair and balanced by comparison tot he leftist bilge inflicted on them.

And — hear me out — this is just the start. There is also, as someone has noted, a great change in the air, a great change in Latin America (of all places) and a great change in the world in general which honestly can be traced to USAID stopping financing every leftist cause around the world.

Turns out that the great and invincible left that kept pushing for world communism and fighting America as it was founded and making us feel like we couldn’t win was actually a vast paper tiger founded by our very own tax money.

We were being robbed to fund our enemies, while the media at home lied and told us to give it all up.

This, where we stand now, is just the start. The villains have started being unamasked. Some of their funding was removed. But we are only at the very beginning of a great big change.

When I was little and a young woman all the leftists said “Come the revolution.” because of course, part of their heretical beliefs is that in the end there is a communist revolution everywhere that puts them in power.

Turns out they couldn’t be more wrong. Yes, there is a revolution coming. There is a revolution, in fact, under way. But it is against the false creed the left has blared in our ears while keeping us gagged so we couldn’t protest.

This is just the beginning.

In the end, we win, they lose.

A lot of people have said we’re approaching the 250th anniversary in a very muted way. And they’re not wrong.

Though to an extent it’s not fair to compare it to the centennial, because it’s a half-centennial, it’s still a noteworthy occasion for the Republic and we definitely should celebrate it. And I won’t lie and say that it wasn’t part of the reason I voted for Trump — way down the list of reasons, guys — because I didn’t want the 250th to be “celebrated” by accusing us of racism, sexism, homophobia and pillorying the founding fathers in effigy.

But I’d also be lying if I said that I’m not somewhat disappointed that I haven’t see more official celebration noise from Washington DC. I suspect it’s because, let’s face it, the president is busier fixing more important things, and also that when the left fights you to the ground on things like cleaning goose shit and algae from the reflecting pool and adding a ballroom to the White House, they’re going to fight you for every play, every firework display, every flag waving.

Heck, we know they are since they already went after the performers for the concert and basically mau-maued them into dropping out. Something those performers are going to find/are finding is a very bad idea, because the left neither buys nor supports art. But they are noisy and artists are sensitive. (Unless they’re on the right. Skin like rhinoceros we had to grow, people. And even so some of us get discouraged at times. Those of you on whose shoulders I’ve cried (not very often) KNOW this.) And the left is willing to do this to SPOIL A CELEBRATION OF AMERICA. Because to them this is political. Loving America is political. Think on that. “I love my country” is political.

It is political because they imagine themselves as something other than belonging to a nation, as sort of like gods, floating around the petty sphere of national politics. Which they’re not. Instead they’re weaponized fools destroying that which gives them the ability to speak freely. Never mind…

People have said even at the private level, there’s less celebrating and decorating. They think this is because the economy is bad. I don’t THINK so.

Look, first of all, as hard as things are just now, I don’t think the economy is bad as such. Note this is an opinion, because our numbers are and have been completely monkeyed with. But my opinion comes from things like: I don’t feel like crying at the grocery store checkout anymore. I find a lot less dairy and meat on sale, which is a bummer, since we more or less live from that. OTOH the prices are lower, and obviously people are able to afford it more, since less or it goes into sale. Other stuff. Like our friends are complaining less of catastrophic need for money. Oh, it still happens, but far less. Like…. have you noticed I’ve run a lot fewer give send go requests for emergency help from my circle on instapundit?

Now am I saying it’s all bread and skittles? Well, no. Because you see things got very very bad. By election 24 we were seriously considering some retrenching that would materially hurt our lives. Because we couldn’t figure out where to find the money. BUT–

The feeling I get now, at least from my circles, is that EVERYONE is hustling as hard as they can. Like everyone has another job, on top of their job, another hobby-that-pays, another something. Everyone is working super-hard.

This is something that started under the autopen administration, because everyone was working more than one job JUST to keep their heads above water. (I guess I’m working two. Here and fiction. Oh, and instapundit. I guess …. well, the Little Pickle while on a trip with me, watching me keep up with things, pointed out I SHOULD sleep sometime. At least occasionally.) But now we’re still doing it, and sometimes doing it harder because we’re trying to recover. The looming mid-terms and the next presidential election are all too close. We remember how close we came to crashing. And we’re afraid of getting back there with no preparation. So we’re preparing. By working like crazy people.

We haven’t seen our local friends in forever, because they’ve been working like mad people. And so have we, except when I get sick (yes, yes, I should sleep sometime. Look, I hear you. Also if you need the info, I’m on a maintenance antibiotic which seems to be working and have a CT scan and a scope scheduled for July 15th. Yes, I have to wait that long because then I can have it done by a specialist and it’s one step less. I won’t lie and say it’s not nervous making. Now shut up.) Oh. Now I think about it, Dan has three jobs too, except one of them is strictly seasonal. But still. Then he wonders why he doesn’t have time for music and writing. Okay. Something will have to be done.

So, even I, who live and breathe the fourth — the High Holy Usaian Holidays! — have not done much yet, and we’re less than a month off.

In other words, I think every one of us, who are patriots and want to celebrate, starting at the White House and on down, are so d*mn busy we haven’t had time for the frivolous but fun celebration of our beloved Republic.

Another bit is that we’re all contrarian as cats. Remember when the covidiocy tried to forbid celebrating the fourth and even LA was a sea to shining sea of fireworks? Well, we feel less of a need to spite the left because they’re not in fact in power right now. HOWEVER–

Look, it still spites them. And those of you younger than I who will be alive if very old at the tri-centennial will want to tell your kids your remember the 250th and what you did to celebrate it.

So, let’s plot and plan. What can you do to celebrate our great nation’s 250th anniversary? What do you think will make the left squirm the worst?

Me? I’m going to try to write some tales. Now, I don’t know how many or when, but I’d like to start in about a week. Tales of the USAians, maybe. Or maybe something else. It’s not much, but it’s what I can do.

What can you do? Make a joyful noise. We’ve survived — warts, stumbles and all — for 250 years. Yes, the work to restore will be immense, but for now let’s celebrate the simple survival. Sit down. take a load off and make a joyful noise.

The work will wait. For now it’s time to celebrate.

Recently there have been a lot of days I glance and the headlines, then shut the browser and dive into writing. Because honestly even some of the things happening here, I AT BEST don’t understand and hope sincerely there is something going on behind the scenes to make it more hopeful. Also, I don’t want to ponder questions such as “Will California ever be a representative state again, even slightly influenced by the will of its inhabitants?” Not that I particularly care about California, but I know what happened to my beloved Colorado. And then there’s abroad. Don’t go abroad. They do things stupidly there. From the latest nonsense of our neighbors to the North to Spain killing trouble teens and deeding their kids future to the Muslim invaders whose ass their ancestors’ kicked all the way to Africa, to… Well, we’ll just say under no circumstances should I have done a deep dive into the Henry Nowak’s case. More is still coming out and I stumbled on a piece this morning about how the lesson the British establishment took from this was “We need to fight disinformation.” By which they, like the Autopen Administration mean “We must stop people telling the truth in a way other people hear it.” And then I get very angry and have trouble writing fiction or blog posts or much of anything.

I am slowly coming to the conclusion that Heinlein was right during WWII to only read the papers two weeks late, when it was pointless to get angry about old news.

However of the many things that enrage me — why is your blood pressure so high? asks my doctor. We must put you on meds. No, they must not. I must curate what I read, is all — right up there, at the top, under the tab marked “I’m getting sick because I can’t kick the *ss of people who righteously need it” are a bunch of naturalized Americans talking about what a terrible place America is and how ashamed they are of our history. PARTICULARLY some *sshole in the news talking about how there was nothing worth celebrating for the 250th anniversary.

This is when I start stomping around the house screaming “America, love it or leave it.” Or “Terrible compared to what? (with a choice of profane adjectives afterwards)” Or “If you hate us why did you come here?” Most of all though, I basically want to grab them by the shoulders and shake them till all their teeth fall out. And then I can help them pack, hold a whip around for their return ticket to whatever sh*thole they came from, and they can go back to the place they really love. Or, alternately, we can save money and time, put them in a large packing box and mark it “return to sender. Content not up to standard.” I promise we’ll put holes on top of the box. We’re not monsters.

If you’re looking at that and raising your eyebrows, let me make things clear: No, I’m not saying we can’t criticize our nation or our government. Look, I’m still me. I looked, just this morning (Okay, I was trying to figure out where the heck I put the kleenex store. I swear our basement is arranged according to a schizophrenic hoarder’s dream) and there was no pod in the basement. If I go an entire year without criticizing the government, even when they’re the guys I vote for — which honestly, usually means I wanted to vote AGAINST the other guys — I strongly advise to come rescue me, because it’s a sign I’ve been kidnapped and am under duress.

But criticizing our government or particularly aspects of our nation, even the parts we can’t change, like climate or fauna — y’all, Texas is lovely, but could it be SLIGHTLY less lizardy? Shudder. — is not the same as criticizing the nation. And it’s definitely not the same as hating the nation, saying there’s nothing to celebrate, or pretending that our history is particularly terrible or scandalous compared to the rest of the world.

Those of you, if we have any reading this, who are recent graduates from our factories of mass industrial “education” let me assure you that if you think that America is “The worst” you’ve been the victims of a scam that maleducated you and gave you a skewed view of the world.

Briefly, every nation in the world is composed of humans. Humans — though this was said originally of Americans in another form — can be counted on to sometimes do the right thing, after they’ve tried everything else. This is particularly true when it comes to humans in the thrall of a newfangled idea that all the experts say is true. So, if you flinch at stuff like slavery, or eugenics, or even witch trials, rest assured that all these ideas were, at the time, considered “actually compassionate” and endorsed by all the best experts of the time. Which is also a caution towards assuming your opinions and the way we live now are the right and correct ones. Because I guarantee that not very far in the future, people will be looking at the 21st century and saying “Ew, they were the worst.” (And I could give you guesses at the things they’ll say, some of which will shock the living daylights out of you. Though I bet they’ll come up with new fads that make me want to shake them to.)

It is the temptation of the young and poorly educated to think that what we “know” now was always known and that the things our ancestors did that horrify us they did KNOWING they were wrong and from evil motives, instead of their being merely human, doing the best they could in their times.

In that sense, the US does more self-examining and chest-beating than any nation ever, except for ancient Israel. Also, because your teachers were themselves maleducated and dreaded above anything seeming TOO patriotic (quelle horreur) they didn’t tell you that for all the bone headed stupidity this nation has achieved (Hey, we elected Woodrow Wilson and FDR and let them run around doing stupid sh&t to their heart’s content, blatantly against he constitution, okay?) we’re still a shining line among the nations of the world.

Take slavery, for instance: it’s still a defacto occurrence in most nations in the world, particularly Africa and China (ooh, boy, China) not to mention every single Muslim country. It might fly under other names, but it’s still there. Oh, here too. You’ll be happy to know the stunning brave people attacking ICE are fighting for the perpetuation of slavery. What? Oh, yes, WHY DID YOU THINK THEY WANTED TO BRING IN PEOPLE IN BATCH LOTS WHO HAD NO DEFENSE AND NO CONTACTS HERE? Sure, there’s also an army of them brought in to plunder the social net programs (which honestly should not exist, not here of all places) but a lot of them were brought in simply to work for no or very low wages and to be in positions they couldn’t complain. Do you think the vast numbers of kids apprehended in California pot farms were there on a field trip? And don’t get us started on the unaccompanied minors (a lot of them kidnapped from their families) released to the first person who claimed them who subsequently disappeared. Pretend they’re all JUST being exploited in sweatshops. No, really, by far the preferable fate, and you’ll sleep better tonight.

But the point is this is not a “American guilt.” Yes, absolutely it is something we should be working on, which is why good border control and a pruning back of H1B visas to about 1% of current would be a really good idea. No bringing in of the vulnerable to exploit and no displacement of American workers by what amounts to slave labor is a good idea, but more importantly, it removes the incentives to enslave people one way or another. Because wanting to enslave people is a defect of the human heart. Yes, yours too, gentle reader. (Though some of us consider telling people what to do a chore and are therefore slightly immune to THAT one issue.)

On every score just about, America is better off than most of the nations of the world. Yes, even Europe, whose patina of history and beauty has been cracking in truly ugly ways recently.

Which is why so many people, including yours truly, was always attracted to the US and came here to live and to become as American as possible. (98% or so. There’s some that will never conform, but that’s for anyone raised abroad, even Americans.)

Yes, becoming American after coming here was work. Yes, some of it pretty much amounted to chasing myself around my own brain rooting out “everybody knows” most of them things I learned with mother’s milk and before I could examine what I was being taught. I’ve described it as being akin to self-brainwashing. Rooting out as much of my previous culture as I could find and identify and correcting it.

Now a lot of it — maybe 25% — wasn’t so much rooting out wrong things for right ones, as rooting out “habits of how we do things” for new ones, that fit better with the US. It wasn’t a moral thing, just a fitting in thing.

So, why do it? Why undertake that painful process if there was no moral issue involved? Well, because there was a moral issue. Having undertaken to come and live here, I owed it to my hosts (and later my co-citizens) to respect their habits, traditions and beliefs as much as humanly possible. I.e. to become as much like them as possible.

Because by coming here to form a family and have children raised as Americans, I was in fact marrying my fortune (in the sense of fate) and future to America’s, and uniting my progeny to hers. It is nothing else than a marriage. And as in a marriage, you adapt as best you can to your spouse’s habits and way of doing things (and he/she to yours) so I was duty bound to adapt to America. Only since I am one person, and relatively unimportant, in all but matters of morals, I am the one who should adapt, because standing by yourself and telling the world to move is cute, but very ineffective, and a nation of at least 300 million is the world, compared to me.

And, this is very important: if you’re going to marry your fortunes and your fate and your descendants to a place WHY WOULD YOU DO IT IF YOU DON’T BELIEVE IT’S THE BEST PLACE ON EARTH? (Warts and all?)

If you are moving to a place you think it’s terrible, particularly if that place is a foreign country, WHY MOVE? Why not stay where you are?

Now, there are times and movements of utter necessity. Sometimes people have to abandon a place they love and to which their ancestors gave blood and money, for the sake of preserving their lives (salutes Dave Freer across the ocean) but even then…. EVEN IN THOSE CASES why would you move to a place you consider worse? Why not escape to the best place you can find, one you’re prepared to adapt to and love with all your heart and all your mind and all your will power?

And yes, some people come here for money, same as many people marry for material considerations. There’s nothing dishonorable in a marriage of convenience. That was most marriages throughout history. However, as a matter of morals and attitude, once you decide on the marriage of convenience you’re still honor bound to cleave to your spouse and defend them right or wrong to the best of your ability (even if slowly and carefully trying to influence their less than admirable qualities.) BECAUSE you wed your future to them. Your descendants are part of them. If you find you can’t love them, it behooves you to leave.

Of course, what we’re facing is the international would-be elites, who view themselves as supra-national. They think that they can move anywhere, and they don’t need to fit in because they’re above us, the common folk.

In fact, what they have done, in their ignorance and vaunting ambition is ignore that culture always exists and there’s no such thing as a human who is above culture. What they’ve fallen for the is “international” illusion that was part of the supposed international socialism, aka communism. It was never true. At the root it was always Russian nationalism projected on the whole world.

And what they have done by trying to mold themselves that way is turned themselves into a culture of international parasites. They remind me of the line in Independence Day “They’re like locusts….”

There is only one remedy for those people. If you hate this country so much that you can’t celebrate 250 years of survival against all odds?

My offer to help you pack stands. And I’m sure all Americans of good will — and ooh, do we have a will! — will contribute to your return ticket.

Or, you know, postage. And we promise to punch air-holes on top of the box.