(A Blast from the Past from https://accordingtohoyt.com/2024/09/25/pebbles-and-votes/ Just about two years ago.)
As some of you know I watch very little TV. Even very little SF TV. I’ve assumed for QUITE a while this means I’m extensively broken and not normal. I mean my father used to tell people I didn’t watch TV in the same tone that you warn someone your kid has a handicap. It’s not exactly wrong. I work around it just like I work around the driving phobia.
Mostly, if a series makes enough impact, you guys will eventually tell me all the highlights and important points with references over time. But also eventually Dan will be in a hard project — coff, the last five years — which doesn’t leave him mind space to do anything after work, but sit vegetating in front of the TV. These days, with streaming available, he usually catches up on old tv series. All of them. At once. And I sit in the next chair, usually doing blog posts or reading. So, I kind of get a bit of it and some visuals. Sometimes I get enough for the politics to p*ss me off. Other times, as with Star Gate, I get a general impression of it, but would be hard pressed to name a character, much less an episode.
Anyway, for a while there, I’ve heard a quote going around. “The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.” – Ambassador Kosh (Vorlon on Babylon 5)” Straczynski J. Michael.
Note, I only figured out it was Babylon 5 when I looked to attribute. I thought it was some commie. (Looks at Hollywood politics, snaps mouth shut.)
You see, there are two versions of history and how it happens. There is the “great man” version of history. And then there is the “popular movement” version of history. I was taught both, because the culture in Portugal is “Great Man” or if you prefer “People are born special and fated to lead and they change history.” And I was raised in the sixties and seventies, and after the revolution it was all Marx all the way down, so I was taught a lot of “The inevitable forces of history, blah.”
Of the two, I’d say the first is more correct. The second is typical Marxist autism, trying to reduce humans to widgets and history to economic pressures. Something like “Given 26 inHg of economic pressure per capita, the people all together, at once, rise and blah blah blah.”
Some of it takes in account things like propaganda which then puts the cart before the horse and assumes Nationalism and Militarism caused WWI, instead of WWI required a ramp up of nationalistic and militarist propaganda. Particular kudos to the idiots who convinced us that fashions that imitated military uniforms led to WWI. Instead of their being inspired from the Napoleonic wars and– (BTW WWI was the LEAST stylish of ALL wars. So no.)
Note I said the first is more correct, not that the first is correct. There needs to be what I’d call the “one guy who had about enough” version of history.
Note even we fall into the Great Man version when talking of the founding fathers. And indeed, they were cultured, and relatively smart and– But the thing is, for their time and place they were only slightly above average. People just thought and studied a lot more, partly because they didn’t have as many distractions, to be fair but also because life was harder, and you needed to be better to survive it.
But to an extent the American revolution happened when a few guys (and gals) had had about enough. It was never the Marxist “if only everyone.” And it was never just great man leading. Apparently 3% engaged in fighting, and they were probably supported by 15%, opposed by double that, and the rest of the people were trying to survive in the maelstrom.
Not that I’m saying we’ll get a second American revolution. That is not where likelihood lies if people don Hawaiian shirts and organize a big luau. Most revolutions consume themselves and end badly.
But there is something building, all over the world. And the quote above keeps coming through my mind.
A friend this week told me that something seems to have changed in Israel — which weirdly has more bleeding hearts than even we do, despite the proximity to danger — with 10/7 and the response to it. Something material. In the past, they would have stopped in response to the usual ginned up “international outrage” about nine months ago. But they’re not.
I told him I think it’s because 10/7 rubbed their noses in the fact that it’s fight or die. And it might be both, but at least you have a chance.
Mind you, for all that, they’re still being civilized people, who aren’t killing indiscriminately and take care not to destroy more than they must. In fact, almost unearthly careful in waging their war. (And brilliant. The page thing. Chef’s kiss.) It makes me think of the motto of the kosher hotdog brand (National Hebrew? I think?) “We answer to a higher authority.” (I prefer them, because I like hotdogs, but most give me heartburn.)
ANYWAY…. The rest of the world doesn’t answer to a higher authority. America sort of does, to the extent we’ve internalized our founding documents. I don’t know how many of us have.
But… bear with me. This is the feeling I get. You can hit me with cudgels later.
For a hundred years, and a little more, the “elites” and “the educated” have been trying to shape a future that made sense with the story in their heads. You know that future as well as I do, because it was the thing of all the early SF: centrally controlled everything by enlightened rulers, with people who are “educated” en mass to all behave like polite automatons. A world government. Humans being almost superfluous while machines do everything for them.
Yes, 1984 and Brave New World were the dark side of this, but most of the books sold it as the desirable thing, or if not desirable inevitable.
Communism — mostly the USSR — piled on top of that, because the ethos suited their politics to the ground.
But the problem is, like communism, none of it works like those fantasies. The “international elites” are not actually educated. They go to important schools that accept them because daddy has money. In fact, most of our “big schools” internationally were taken over by communists very early (There is a reason for this. Psychologically communism appeals to slightly autistic idea people.) They teach, but other than practical things, most of the teaching is not for this particular time line. Or reality. It’s stuff you learn by rote, which lets you signal you were very well educated.
The “International elites” are ultimately rich and connected elites who do not understand even slightly where food comes from, or how a huge, chaotic world keeps functioning. They think they can direct what you eat — eat the bugs! — what you drive — bicycles — and what you own — nothing — without realizing if they inflicted that on the masses their own world would break.
…. And they’ve been running with their program for about 100 years. Listening to the “experts”, reading approved books, and running in possession of bright ideas. (Which are much more dangerous than scissors, if left unchecked.)
Which means right now the world is on fire. If you think we have it bad here, you haven’t looked at the rest of the world beyond the headlines.
I fully expect our government junta to hold on by fraud, because people like them, the delusional elite, have been doing that everywhere in the world. Fraud or force, from Brazil to France to Venezuela.
The problem is that they can hold on, but they can’t do anything functional. At this point, I don’t think they’re even trying to. They know their ideas don’t work, and are breaking everything (“We can’t afford four more years of this- Tim Walz”) but they are trying to stay in power to avoid the reckoning AND to avoid being PROVEN WRONG. Because that means their entire life was in vain. People will do anything to avoid admitting that.
The other problem is that the longer they stay in power, the worse things get, and the more a lot of common guys get close to saying “Screw THAT.”
I think most of the world is really close to a final snap, like what happened in Israel. I think the US is more so, due to our scheduled supposed to be peaceful revolution this November.
The problem with being in this state is that it can last forever or seem to. Look at the last forty years and Israel. But eventually there is something that just snaps it. There always is.
Here, the way I see it, and trust me, I hope I’m wrong — not hoping for any of this — there are two potential breaks and then we tip in the pot.
One, they fraud themselves in, then feel super-confident and do what Brazil or Venezuela have been doing: start randomly rounding up people in batch lots. People who talk against them. People related to people who talk against them. Random people they don’t like, like say Jews (particularly observant Jews) or Catholics, or PTA moms, or homeschoolers, or well, yes, bloggers. But in the end, when you get to the “batch lot” stage these things are always more or less random. (Even in Nazi Germany they swept up non Jews as Jews, and some Jews managed to avoid attention, the same way that they also rounded up random Catholics, gypsies, Poles, etc. etc. etc.) And yes, I’m aware there are people under unjust arrest right now, and that they’ve been arresting pro-life people almost at random. Just not batch lot stuff yet.
It’s just I predict they’ll be even more jumpy if they fraud themselves in this time, partly because they’ll know the REAL numbers. And that’s a heck of a lot of jumpy, considering last time they had barbed wire and National Guard units. So I predict batch lot rounding up AND weaponizing the people they brought in to “demonstrate” and commit violence. Sort of a combination antifa and illegals. Because that scares them, so it will scare us.
If they do that, it will tip in the pot. Not right away, I think. It will take six months for the outrage to penetrate and pile up. And then it tips in the pot.
Or they don’t fraud themselves in, and Trump wins. And they activate their antifa brown shirts and incentivize illegals to cause mayhem. That tips in the pot overnight, because I think the result will be so much like 10/7 in a significant number of town — and I don’t mean just sanctuary cities like NYC or Denver or Seattle or …. — I mean I’m not sure MY town will be safe, because there’s been an increase in obvious third worlders homeless, hanging around.
Keep in mind this doesn’t work as they expect. The third worlders aren’t an army. They’re not even a rabble in arms. They’re a bunch of mutually warring groups. It will be rape and pillage.
And that happens almost immediately if Trump wins.
I suspect the response will be a lot of average guys just losing it, utterly, with the whole “elite” project.
After that…. After that I don’t know.
I suspect that if the US goes up like a Roman candle in that sort of thing, it will carry the world with us. Look at it this way, Israel already changed a lot of us. 10/7 marks a worldwide inflection point. The US will be more so.
If we’re lucky we’ll break the same way Israel did: remaining essentially ourselves, but relentlessly getting rid of the stupidity and evil we’ve tolerated for far too long.
Will we be that lucky? I don’t know. Hence why I don’t wish for any of it. Also, I know, even if we’re lucky, those of us who survive will be different. Call it hardened. Call it bitter. Call it broken. An entire generation will bear scars, and the marks won’t pass away for at least a hundred years.
But–
What I know is that while the quote about pebbles voting is essentially right, it’s also fundamentally wrong.
Take Covid. I drove myself nuts, because I kept trying to find a way to stop the insanity. I couldn’t, of course. Some events are too large for an individual to stop or change.
But I flatter myself I kept a significant number of you sane, and perhaps alive. Not that I was alone in this, and that’s important, too. There were a number of us doing that work. And overall, maybe society came apart less than it would have. It certainly came together again faster than the “elites” expected. And has resisted attempts at locking us down again, etc.
So, the pebbles do have some vote.
There is nothing you can do about the macro event. Oh, vote, for the love of heaven. Even though I think war will happen faster if they don’t fraud themselves in, there is a very narrow chance we’ll escape it. Can we overwhelm the fraud? Probably not. But it’s worth a try given the alternative.
But that probably won’t do enough. We’re caught in things larger than ourselves.
However, we’re not insignificant. Keep yourself sane as possible. Keep yourself healthy as possible. Prepare to look after yourself and those you can help in circumstances that you can barely imagine.
Try to make arrangements to keep in touch with those who matter to you who are further away. Have a place to run to and go to ground if your area is one that goes up in flames.
Most of all, study history. Become as informed as possible about how we got here.
And if needed, if that’s the only hope we have? Teach the children well.
For now, keep clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.
Be not afraid. These pebbles ain’t getting ground up.
The Reader always considered the Vorlons to be commies. They did want all the younger races to be their proles. For that matter, the Shadows were simply the other side of the totalitarian coin.
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I’ve often wondered if the real goals of the Vorlons and the Shadows was the exact opposite of what Sheridan was told:
The Shadows must have figured out, after a few million years of doing this, that once they start splashing around in the galactic pool and scaring the crap out of everyone, someone always unites the younger races against them. So either they’re really, really stupid and keep sticking with the same plan that hasn’t worked the last thousand times they tried, or their plan IS working: their goal is to get the younger races to work together, force them to ally against the Big Bad Evil, and hope that alliance lasts at least a couple centuries after the Shadows go back to sleep.
The Vorlons, meanwhile, are supposedly all about peaceful cooperation between the younger races, but they didn’t intervene to stop the Dilgar War or the Narn-Centauri War or the Green-Purple War or… (the Earth-Mimbari War is at least debatable, so we’ll leave that one out of it). It seems to me that they’re more into “survival of the fittest,” and realize that, as long as people like them and the Shadows and the Walkers stay out of it, the younger races will come up with plenty of reasons for conflict on their own.
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The Vorlons weren’t really the bad guys as much as they were indifferent. They had no concern about any but their own kind, and if that meant regularly wrecking entire interstallar civilizations, they didn’t much care.
They liked to put on their “elder statesmen” mask when dealing with the new species, but they dealt with them strictly as tools.
“Less bad than the Drakh” didn’t mean “good”, though.
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They were not Evil For Evil’s Sake, but Pride is the first of the Deadly Sins for a reason.
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c4c
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Big difference between now and two years ago. They were not able to fraud themselves into office. Nor have they been able to rally their paid lackeys into riots thanks to shutting down the lackeys payments.
That said, we need to vote this November. Do not stay home complacent. We will vote here in Oregon. For all the good it will do. Vote-by-mail-fraud is in full force. But may the Oregon representatives be the part of the minor party in both legislative houses in DC!
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If it breaks post-election from a conservative/MAGA win next month, then a relentless getting rid of the stupidity and evil will certainly be a major change in the social structure of America. Frankly, I don’t see it happening with this midterm. Doesn’t mean there won’t be spots of violence, but I don’t think the entire country is going up in flames. That said, I still recommend everyone buy another case of ammo.
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Kosh shouldn’t have used ‘pebbles’.
“The avalanche has already begun. It is too late for the snowflakes to vote.”
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“Landslide, avalanche, pebbles, snow — isn’t it all about the same?” ((Sigh.) No!)
And the best complement to the original line I know, as it’s often used far outside its Babylon 5 context to imply helpless personal immersion, is this, from about the same time as the OP:
“Once the preference-cascade avalanche has begun, it’s too late for the snowflakes to register their grievances from downhill.”
Look back on such things as that recent Holly The Assistant post on how things have changed on both home-schooling and as-applied firearms rights — and then ask: are you a helpless passenger, or an active (if still relatively very small) participant, in these large-scale movements?
In so many things (not nearly all and not yet enough, of course), we are the avalanche today.
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I’m not sure “snowflakes” was in common cultural use in the early-mid 1990s. I don’t recall coming across it until the mid-oughts.
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I remember this from two years ago. I too was expecting the left to go all molotov cocktail on us after Trump won.
DOGE going after the USAID money and rolling up as much of the government fraud that was funding such mostly peaceful festivities was a masterstroke on the part of the current administration.
So, now, the left has had to resort to going full on commie and run DSA comrades funded by China and let the Chinese psy-ops run even more blatantly out in the open. Because China is funding them almost exclusively after domestic supply lines have been severely compromised so China is calling the shots, but they don’t get Americans at all. So their candidates and messaging become increasingly ridiculous as time goes on.
The polls (heh) tell us that socialism is the hot new thing that all the cool kids are voting for…but…they seem awful desperate in their assertions this is so. The stench of flop sweat wafts over the fruited plains.
The midterms may go badly, but Trump doesn’t, and never has had, congress on his side and STILL has managed to get things done even with partisan judges, his party, and the media dogging him every step of the way.
So, definitely prepare for the worst, vote like the wind, and pray the prayers of foxhole inhabitants everywhere.
Then don’t worry.
In the end, we win, they lose.
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The problem with governance by EO is they are ephemeral. The minute he is out of office, his successor can do away with all of them. That’s why getting legislation passed by Congress is so important. It’s why we NEED the SAVE Act in place, even if it takes another 2 years to push it through.
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Because of course the Supreme Court’s refusing to let him revoke Obama’s EO was — different.
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We didn’t fall apart then, primarily I think because of how fast Trump moved after being sworn in. In hindsight the desperation can be seen clearly as Bidet’s handlers tried their best to empty the treasury and tuck the money away where they thought it wouldn’t be noticed. I’m pretty sure that some of that money hasn’t been traced yet, and it’s what is keeping the insanity going.
This time? I feel something big coming, but I can’t tell what direction it will come from or what form it will take. There’s very little available funding left for their brownshirts, and brownshirts do not work for free, so whatever it is almost has to be organic.
It seems that many people feel it without knowing what it means. Open gates are now closed. Money is being moved. People who never talked before are talking, and acting.
And yet, with the sheer number and variety of psyops being run, I wonder if the elites doubt their ability to fraud it this time. They’re so busy trying to convince us that our cause is lost, that they’re stepping on each others’ lines. Russia, China, Iran, media, DSA, Democrats, FBI, CIA, Britain, I’m sure I’ve missed some.
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Here in Kalifornistan, they won’t get their Proposition 40 ‘billionaire tax’ without massive fraud. I have more hope for Proposition 39 which puts voter ID requirements into the state constitution. In an honest vote (I know, I know, but let’s pretend) that one would pass with 80% or more. Either P-39 will pass, or the fraud required should break the Democrat machine wide open.
In 5 weeks we will see.
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I still have hopes for Kali. But the pessimist in me whispers “the fraud in Kali has no bottom.” No depth to which they won’t plumb.
The zealots of the Incas were still sacrificing whilst they were dying of plague and bullets. I see the Communists in Kali much the same.
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The People’s Democratic Republic of California is a failed state.
It was home, long ago. But other than some place names, there’s nothing recognizable from back then.
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Trump has now got an executive branch he can (mostly) trust. He’s going after the Left’s money machine, which means he is bleeding the Subversion Engine dry. The commies (“scientific” fascist Elect elites) are coming out into the open because they have lost much of their power to shape the battlefield in secret.
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Don’t be fooled by the quote in isolation. Babylon 5 is very much about the person in the right place doing the right thing and derailing events that were in motion.
It’s also free on YouTube, courtesy of the series creator. I would encourage anyone who hasn’t seen it to check it out. JMS is a lefty like most of Hollywood, but it’s still an enjoyable show (especially after Season One).
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Agreed. That arc ends with “Get the hell out of our galaxy, the both of you!”
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We should also mention here that there’s an episode with a scene set 100 years after the main series, where we get a group of pundits arguing against the “Great Man” theory, or at least doubting that Sheridan was such a man. And then Delenn shows up and says essentially (in the most polite, Mimbari religious-caste language), “F— all of you and the star furies you rode in on.”
Season 1 was a bit iffy, but after that, there isn’t too much that’s recognizable as modern day politics.
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One of Sheridan’s guards when he’s a prisoner on Earth has a thing about, “main stream media,” which rings a little like, “Let’s dig at Rush Limbaugh,” but other than that JMS was fairly even-handed.
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OTOH, his episode on how “journalists,” can manipulate data into propaganda ought to be shown in schools.
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There was also “The Rush Act”, which was also a dig at Rush Limbaugh. Funny, I always thought that Rush would approve of the solution in that episode.
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I liked season one more than season five. Byron had us ready to quit the show.
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It’s easy to tell that Byron was originally supposed to be a B or even C plot. But then the network told JMS they weren’t going to give him a season 5, and he pulled all of season 5’s A plot, and most of its B plots, into season 4. Which is why Byron’s plot drags: once JMS found out there would be a season 5 after all, his plot had to be fleshed out to fill the gap left by what should have been there, and there just wasn’t enough there to do much with. It picks up again once Byron’s plot finally resolves, and the second half of season 5 is finally back up to B5’s normal (excellent) standard.
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Yeah, and the actor playing Byron was a little too into the character, from what I saw of him when I attended a DragonCon he was a guest at.
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I’d put Seasons 1 and 2 up against almost any SF show.
You can pretty much skip Season 5, though.
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They have fraud, we have datarepublican, bless her.
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Bless datarepublican. Long may she analyze.
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Psychologically communism appeals to slightly autistic idea people.
And more generally idealists; usually and especially in the sense of stubbornly-not-realists.
Listening to the “experts”, reading approved books, and running in possession of bright ideas.
And some of those bright ideas are ones nobody not — possessed — would have thought of, not in a thousand years.
Here’s a specific, if rather obscure, example from what the age of “Progress!” in the early 1900s liked to call “calendar reform” (our 1400s-vintage Gregorian calendar not being ‘shiny’ enough for them, and especially, sinfully having a different calendar page for each month in different years).
This runs into the massive problem that a (tropical, by-the-seasons) year is 365 1/4 days or a bit less (actually about 365.2422). Which is 52 weeks of 7 days (making 13 uniform months of 28 days in one version, all starting on the same day of the week), plus almost a day and a quarter. (IIRC this was the “World Calendar”.)
So, what do you do with that ‘extra’ day, or two (depending on the year)? Their specific visitation from the Clever Idea Fairy had the extra day (or about 1 in 4 times, two) being ‘extracalary’ in the rarer sense, or (cough!) ‘epagomenal’ — days outside of a month, or (here) even outside the week.
Yes, you heard that right: …Saturday, Not-a-Day, Sunday… (“Can’t count to 7 too well, huh?”)
Now fast-forward to the late 1900s, and Thomas Gangale cooks up the ‘Darian’ calendar for Mars (a matter I’ve been tussling with some again, recently), which does the same thing only in reverse. Months all look the same, except for maybe missing a day. 24 months of 28 days gives you 672 days, a few more than the Martian tropical year of 668.5921 mean solar days. So some months need to have 27 instead of 28 — four in a ‘short’ year, three in a ‘long’ year — to average out right.
Okay; but when you ‘lose a day’ from that, the same next calendar page comes up, giving you (I forget which days) something like: …Monday, Tuesday, Thursday… the same thing only in reverse. It can be fun, but also a bit painful, to read his arguments on Why This Is A Good Idea After All.
Only a true “progressive reformer” would think not-a-day or missing-day calendars were a ‘good’ idea. Or would ever even have imagined them at all, much less proposed them seriously.
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I am an idealist. My default reply to injustice is, “That’s not fair.” Well, the first step to finding a solution is to acknowledge that the problem exists. Then you have to run around asking people, “How is that fair?” to get them to think about it and justify it or not in their own heads.
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THES. Do be quiet. He’s a very intelligent young man and knows what he is about. So you abolished Saturday. And how did you find it answer?
CYM. Admirably.
THES. You hear? He found it answer admirably.
CYM. Yes, only Sunday refused to take its place.
THES. Sunday refused to take its place?
CYM. Sunday comes after Saturday – Sunday won’t go on duty after Friday. Sunday’s principles are very strict. That’s where my experiment sticks.
From the very first Gilbert & Sullivan production, Thespis, or The Gods Grown Old
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The ancient stargazers and philosophers were extremely put out by the motions of the heavenly bodies. The year wasn’t evenly divisble by 360, which irritated the base-12 and base-20 civilizations to no end. (yes, some European cultures used base 20; the French vingt-et-un, etc., are relics of that). Just about everyone was annoyed that the lunar cycle almost, but not quite, matched various annual divisions. And the days themselves varied in length, once they got clocks to measure it.
Almost everything *almost* fit, but no amount of calculation could make everything come out even.
Apparently, the gods were a bit sloppy when assembling the heavens…
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Just ran across my favorite saying for this month watching Daemons of the Shadow Realm anime.
“I’ve been confused for so long that I’ve gotten used to being confused.”
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Sometimes experience in a disability translates to increasing adaptability. I’ve experience in being gaslighted, lied to, psyop’d, and straight up screamed at by blithering idiots. Somehow this translates well into spotting commiesimps. And there are a murthering lot of the latter, apparently.
Less now, it must be admitted, since many of them got their funding removed. The Venn diagram of coincidence becomes virtually indistinguishable when you get to noticing how the quiet spread once certain fraud factories got found out.
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Incidentally, the word psephology was coined a while back to mean the subject that studies voting. The word is derived from the classic Greek word for ‘pebble’, since colored pebbles were used to cast votes!
So maybe it should be “It’s too late for the pebbles to be voted.
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I saw on X that one of our dear friends lost one of her dear friends and I hope we can all just take care of each other through the rest of the year.
Science and technology cannot replace the loss, not heal the wounded place in our hearts when that happens. We need to show love and concern and support.
Hug the people you love. Call those outside hugging distance.
May the Lord grantbus all the ability to lift up the hearts and minds of those around us.
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Everything E.E. Smith ever wrote, basically.
Last time I re-read the Lensman series, I was halfway rooting for the Boskonians. The Skylark and Subspace Explorers books weren’t any better. The genetically superior Super-Elite, and the serfs, with nothing in between.
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I think I’ve mentioned it before, but I saw the original “Independence Day” (the original 1996 one) in the theater. When the aliens attacked DC, a big chunk of the audience stood and cheered.
Most countries revolve around their capitols. Take Moscow, Peking, Mexico City, or Gabarone out, and there would be chaos. But DC doesn’t run America, and most Americans don’t like it much, and most things would carry on with little change if it vanished.
“Sweet Meteor of Doom, are you accepting targeting suggestions?”
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