I am a novelist with work published in science fiction, fantasy, mystery and historical "novelized biography". I've won the Prometheus award and the Dragon award. I also write under the names Elise Hyatt and Sarah D'Almeida. http://sarahahoyt.com/
I was thinking, never mind why, about large countries eating small ones next to them, or small ones surviving, and I thought, in the way that human cultures work next to each other, it’s quite possible the US will eventually eat Mexico.
Oh, not soon. 200 or 300 years. I think the idiots in power are trying to speed it up by opening the borders, but they are idiots, and their ideas rarely yield what they want.
And yes, I think right now at least, given the cultures involved, this is a dangerously stupid idea, so any Mexicans reading this, no I don’t think we should annex you. (I know I have Portuguese readers. I don’t think we have any Mexican ones, but who knows?) I really, really don’t. The merger of the cultures would truly suck. And yours would probably win, because y’all are atavistic.
But in 200 or 300 years, who knows?
Why merge? It’s that long UNPROTECTED border. There is no big obstacle. And a wall won’t be a big enough obstacle, no.
England and Scotland at a larger scale.
But there are exceptions, of course. Portugal is the only stand out from the general unification of the peninsula, probably because Portuguese are very contrary. (Though that might be in the process of being diluted by communications and travel.)
Anyway, when I was thinking of that — because I’m not a well woman. Also, I was doing laundry. Dishes are for plotting. Laundry is for thinking about history — I thought about what would remain of the culture that works in such an event.
Of course I’m not sure. There’s no way to be sure. As is, our idiots in power think they can replace the population and get themselves more compliant people, and that only means they never actually dealt with Latin culture (which is mostly what they THINK they’re importing. Never mind.) Yes, sure, there’s a lot of going along with the “betters” but revolution is also a way of life. They’re just blinded by the stupid assumption communism is the future so all revolutions will be “for” them. This was Obama’s mental issue, too, when he planted OWS and thought the people would naturally support it, because people are “naturally communist.” (Rolls eyes.)
Anyway– getting back on track (sadly it’s one of my Adderal days.) — as I was thinking of that, I thought what remained was likely to be a straight up dislike of authority.
Why, you ask? Well, because it seems like we have inherited that all the way from the early British, though how I don’t know since most of us almost for sure don’t have enough English genetics to do that.
In 2012 I wrote a post called We King Killers. I ran it by Toni Weisskopf before I put it up, because something about it felt funny, and she advised me not to publish it, because it might be construed as incitement. (It wasn’t. It was mostly me running down an historical rabbit hole, but yes, she was right. And I don’t need more paid agents provocateurs flocking. So, it was good advice.)
The gist of the article is that the English, throughout their history are addicted to king killing. Which is kind of funny, because the French did it once, and get the bad reputation. No wonder they hate the English.
And the trend seems to have transferred to America, on more or less the same cycle of presidents either killed or attempted against. Seems to be a deep set cultural thing.
I didn’t realize how deep it went, though. I’ve been reading a mystery series set in the time of Edward I (I won’t post the name here, because I’ve met the author long ago, and he’d be very upset to be mentioned on this blog. But the books are decent. All his books are.)
Apparently around that time (and a hundred years before that,) the merchants of London rebelled and wanted… well, self-government and a republic.
This amused me no end because the earliest record of husband’s of family are as merchants in silks and luxury goods in London. (Probably where our lines connect and responsible for his tiny percentage of Portuguese: you see, dad’s paternal line were merchants in luxury goods.) And I could totally see them involved in that. We know for a fact they were involved in the glorious (failed) revolution, etc. And of course, an ancestor fought in the civil war.
Yes, his family is mostly (MOST of it) on the other side, but that’s…. the puritan character, right? And the belief they’ll emerge on top, like every smart person who falls for communism. (I wish they’d get a grip on reality, but hey.)
I suspect though that should we swing to a real tyranny (look, no. It’s not. They’d like it to be, but they can’t get enough of a grip. They have the institutions but not the people. It’s like the only way to precipitate a famine for real would be to confiscate food door to door. And while they’d love to do that, they can’t because we have guns. Like that.) they’d find their “king toppling” ways again. Because it’s part genes, part family culture.
And I think that part is so strong, it has survived the dilution of the original stock. (The blood and soil people who want only pure blood from revolutionary times would be able to round up maybe one or two pure Americans. With luck. The other part of the American character — like my dad’s family — is to marry the most exotic they can find, so there have been a lot of …. ah…. integrated imports. Even “born here for three generations” would be a stretch for most people.) Weirdly, most of my kids’ friends who were most aggressively don’t tread on me American had at least one foreign parent. (I know that didn’t use to be the norm, but I think in the eighties and nineties we drew an anti-authoritarian pool of immigrants.)
I don’t even know why, but I think it’s partly our image, and therefore the bend of character of those who throw in with us. “Nae Kings, Nae Queens, Nae Lords, Nae Ladies. We’ll never be fooled again.”
I think in the end that will remain. In fact, I’m almost sure of it, as much as it’s possible to be sure of something my grandkids likely won’t see.
I’m not sure where it comes from, how it attaches to our culture. And yes, I know you’re going to say Great Britain seems to have lost it, and so do the other anglo-descended cultures. I’m not sure that’s true. There were lulls and periods of “good kings” whose PR enabled them to sound like they cared for the people, etc. (Most of them didn’t.) But the characteristic always surfaces. More violent when it’s been repressed for a while. (Salutes in the general direction of Australia and Great Britain.)
In the same way that the French tend to be wordy and chaotic, no matter what actual genetics fall in THAT pool, the English tend to be “practical anti authority” and trying to limit the power of the state.
I suspect the aberrations of the 20th century, which haven’s played out in the rest of the anglosphere have to do with monopoly of very persuasive means of communication and story telling. More than ever before in human history. Or pre-history.
But hey, we’re shaking that off, and I suspect it will get to the rest of the world. Just later, and unpredictably. (Because the future comes to America.)
But that’s for the future. For now, we have to deal with our own issues.
It will happen, because the trend of history is that it will. And mind the “king killing” isn’t always — or most of the time — literal. We didn’t kill George III, but we most definitely “killed” him in these shores. And a lot of it, from John Lackland on involves clipping governments little ugly sticky wings.
There is, let us put this way, in anglo-descended cultures a marked self-government bend.
Now go forth and exert your natural cultural tendency.
If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo,please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months(unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH
When Saxo smeared herbs onto the great-hauler’s leg, he just wanted to ease the bird’s pain, not turn his world upside-down.
Saxo, called Birdson, has no family, friends, or skills, aside from caring for Master Agri’s great-haulers, the birds of burden in the Northern Empire. A beast healer priest discovers Saxo’s secret—the boy is an herb healer with a beast calming magic.
Now, Master Jeaspe wants to train Saxo to heal. Master Agri wants Saxo’s gifts—and income—for his own use. Yoorst, Lord of the Beasts, has other plans.
To save the future, sometimes you have to reach to the past. Thomas Sutton was not your average fourteen year old, not even in an Ark City. Born in one of the three refuges of the last remnants of life on earth, deep underground, he knows his history. A century after an asteroid shattered and struck the earth, they have been trapped below by volcanic eruptions, toxic gasses, and radioactive dust. But what if he could…change things? What if he could reach the past, to prevent the asteroid’s impact?
After as much as the company has practiced bugging out, you wouldn’t think that loading up a few hundred folks and their belongings would be that tough, would you? Well, if that’s what you think, you haven’t met our shepherd. Tag along and see how they come up with solutions to problems they didn’t even know they had.
The Moon is a dead world, airless and desolate. Emmaline Waite has known this fact since childhood, when she watched the Apollo landings.
But here she sits on the shores of the Sea of Tranquillity, looking up at the gibbous Earth as the waves roll in. What madness can this be?
She gets no time to contemplate that question, for she is not alone. She is about to enter a realm of love and fear, of mindbending secrets that change her understanding of human history, and of self-sacrifice.
When George Washington was 21 years old, he went on a dangerous mission into the wilds of the Ohio River Valley to deliver a message from the Virginia colonial governor to a French military base, Fort Le Boeuf, a message to prevent war between England and France. The journey was harrowing and dangerous as Washington, joined by frontiersman Christopher Gist and Iroquois leader Tanacharison, also called the Half-King, braved the bitter cold of an unforgiving winter.
Washington wrote of his journey as a report to the governor, but he gave an incomplete portrait of the goings on of his journey, for he was attacked. He was attacked by something he could not explain. Something not of the New World but of the Old. Something that had preyed upon innocent for centuries. Something that scared him so much that he refused to report it to anyone.
Here, for the first time, is the full account of the colonial major’s journey. Far more than an act to prevent conflict between nations, it became a conflict that pitted evil against a man unlike any other, a man who had to potential within him to lead a nation.
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.
As the armies range on the side of Trump or the side of DeSantis; as heated words flow; as each side is incredulous the other can be in earnest — other than finding myself vaguely amused at American Greatness and their attempt at running equal and countering editorials for one or the other — all I can do is shake my head and think that the game isn’t worth the candle.
Look, I have a mild preference for Trump, simply because I’ve seen how he governed. And because DeSantis is a career politician. Yes, you can be shocked at that, but not if you understand what I view as the only function a President not sold to China can perform in the present place and time to be a lance to the heart of the status quo.
You shouldn’t be shocked at this. I know I try to be a voice for calm, and perhaps more than any of you I am aware of the price one pays for civil disorder. But I also know better than any of you what international socialists can do to a country, and there is a very angry part of me that wants to burn it all down.
That’s not what I am for though, when I say I want a lance to the heart of the status quo. A president as such a lance has the enormous advantage of exposing the rot and the corruption, of removing masks and doing it without overt violence. It gives people a chance to wake up and maybe stir us off the rocks. I think we were headed towards that and a less apocalyptic convulsion in 2020 when the left played their most evil game yet.
And before you tell me that Trump isn’t who he was, or that his 2016 campaign was much better than today’s, let me PSHAW loudly. LOUDLY. Have you forgotten his alleged twitter tweeting out a Nazi symbol on the fourth. Have you forgotten the message tweeted out saying that he loved Mexican food, and had got some from the restaurant on Trump tower, showing a badly Photoshop photograph of his eating a taco salad. There is no such restaurant and the Photoshop was so bad he had three hands.
Those were almost certainly the result of his campaign being infiltrated in the same way that his later administration was infiltrated. And those who say “Why can’t he hire good people?” Well, because he has to hire from a pool of people who do political campaigns, and trust me on this, all of those are at least soft left. Also for the “He hires people and then he fires them” — well yes. His training is in business. That’s what one does in business. It is in fact something we could use more of in politics.
However his campaign in 16 was such a sh*tshow I was sure it was a front and even more sure that if he were elected he would be only slightly better than Hilary Clinton.
His own words didn’t help. I’m told that throwing out hot words and crazy accusations is the New York state of mind, to coin a phrase, but seriously. Has every one of you forgotten Trump himself accusing the Ted Cruz’s father of killing JFK? Because I haven’t.
I finally decided to vote for him on the day before the election and only because of three things: Two of them were earnest talks by L. Neil Smith and Jerry Pournelle who told me I should. Look, if those two agreed, it was time.
The other was an earnest analysis that told me he was SLIGHTLY less likely to have me shot on the back of the head than Hillary Clinton would. Note, I didn’t expect it to be UNLIKELY. Only slightly less likely.
However, his presidency was glorious in many ways, even with all the resistance he faced, and that’s enough to give me a very weak preference for Trump. Very weak, in fact, because I’ve not forgiven him for falling for the Covidiocy yet. He should have pulled a Reagan and gone to the people. Let the intelligentsia pillory him, but go to the people and scream from the rooftops that this was nothing. Keep hammering the numbers and how hollow they were, and how this was a psi-ops from China.
Would he have sounded crazy? Possibly. But if I could take the people — even people I liked — coming by to tell me I was crazy or evil, certainly he could. He should have shouted the truth and shamed the devil.
Except that he FELL FOR THE SCAM and remains convinced.
I don’t understand it, except that in talking to friends the other day, we realized in our group, the ones that believed in the covidiocy wholesale are for lack of a better term, the Paladins. The people who can’t conceptualize utter evil.
Because the covidiocy psi ops, as it becomes obvious that the death rate didn’t really go up, that no one died of it who wasn’t going to die of any flu or other rampant virus, and that all the measures deployed for it did nothing and were often counterproductive, does nothing — nothing — but convince me it was an evil plan by the Democrats in conjunction with Chinese idiots. (Idiots because they don’t understand, even now, that if America falls they starve. What Marxist education does for you.)
Perhaps I am the only person who remembers how desperate, in Jan of 2020 the left was for something to wreck the economy or they couldn’t defeat Trump. Well, they found it. I don’t know if on purpose or not but they were clearly willing to extend an economy-killing lock down which btw destroyed the economies of other countries as well, just to get their vote by mail and fraud their hag-ridden, brain dead zombie in. (They knew vote by mail and machines could do it, because that’s how they took over Colorado, which they admit is their model for taking over the rest of the country.)
The sheer evil of the operation, even without getting to pumping an experimental vaccine of a type that had never worked into as many veins as they could by mandate, is simply impossible for the good people of the world to conceive of.
And trust me, this is not in Trump’s favor as I say it: that man must be the most unlikely Simon-Pure-Paladin to walk the Earth. I’ve already been floored at how friggin’ clean he is that all their digging has not found anything terrible in his past. But his inability to grasp the sheer unmitigated evil of the psi-ops run against him puts the cap on it. I salute him, and I wish he’d grow a little more suspicious and paranoid, because this is ridiculous.
DeSantis? Yeah, he has done well for Florida. But how most of you view him has had a good bit of help from adversarial media. Or is the media truly adversarial? Have they learned — or think they learned — that we’ll run towards whomever they attack? Because I’ll note their attacks gave DeSantis credit for not locking down and challenging the Covidiocy but lots of other states did it. In fact there might be more states that did it than not. People from Iowa are known to huff when Florida is extolled in this respect, and heck, people, in crossing the country by car in the fall of 2020 I found most people weren’t actually locked down. They only had an iron grip on the states they meant to steal (and which mostly had leftist governors.)
Now, what do I have against him?
Not a lot. He’s a career politician. Is that enough to damn him? Probably. Look, we’ve had mostly career politicians as presidents in the 20th and early 21st, and look where they have taken us. Look, I can’t be the only conservative looking at all the wars — in the face of how “easy” it was for Trump to get the Abraham accords and start clipping China’s wings — and wonder if we were rooked for over 100 years. Yes, I know it’s not that simple.
But it’s entirely possible that the politician way of thinking is…. towards the kind of cycle we’ve endured for a century.
And then there’s “he does things”. He does. He flexes his muscles. He goes after — mostly — targets for social conservatives. Look, I’m not even kicking too hard on this. The left has gone far enough that social conservatism is needed.
On the other hand, on the other hand…. That’s in Florida. So, say we send DeSantis to DC….
I must ask, clearly: What pool do you think DeSantis will hire from? No, seriously. Very seriously. “Oh, he’ll bring his own people” — snort giggle — those will have fun against the permanent bureaucracy in DC. Those who can’t be corrupted will be destroyed, but there’s a lot of money and favors in DC which will buy most of them. They will be eaten.
And he’s already hiring from the GWB school of election consultants. And he’s getting donations from establishment Republicans. Now, he can no more control that than I can control who reads me and reviews me.
But…. but it worries me. They are donating because they either think they can control him, or they can use him to explain away the loss in the elections as not fraud. (And if you think they wouldn’t like to do that….)
And if they control him, if the establishment succeeds in using him, the best we can hope for him is the jackboot in the other foot. Authoritarianism for causes we like. It’s still Spinach, and it should still go to heck.
Against him, personally, I have but one thing: He’s engaged in underhanded attacks, to get Trump to respond and SEEM to be attacking him for no reason. Yes, I do realize it’s a good strategy to raise his profile. It’s also unspeakably SLIMY.
And if you’re going to say I can’t be against one of them for being a G-d blessed paladin and the other for using slimy tactics? Watch me. Yes, I can.
In many ways yes, DeSantis would be a better manager for what the American State has become.
But that’s not why we voted for Trump. We didn’t want a manager, we want an IED in the heart of the establishment.
I will submit to you we can’t have Trump without the negative stuff. Heck, do you remember what they said about milquetoast Pierre Delecto during the campaign? They’ll find things to say about DeSantis if he’s the nominee. And they will be horrifying.
And if he actually DOES oppose the establishment on the right? Yeah, you’ll find really quick that he’s mean, evil and has tons of things they can attack.
HOWEVER AND THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT: if DeSantis is the nominee, I’ll crawl over broken glass smeared with lemon juice to vote for him.
Because I’m not sure my beloved country can take much more of the international socialists.
There are people supposedly running I won’t vote for because I don’t trust them even against the international socialists. Yes, I’m looking at Pence and Chris Christie. But I’ll vote for DeSantis without blinking.
And yet the game isn’t worth the candle.
Why? Because you know and I know that all this fighting will just give the left an excuse for when the zombie wins with four hundred million votes.
America has electile dysfunction. And until we fix that, none of this — none of this — matters.
Until we get the fraud out, we can vote to make us feel better, but it will make no difference. It just gives them excuses.
Until we get the fraud out, all we can do is build under, build over, build around.
Oh, sure, vote. Make them work for the fraud. But don’t get too excited about who’s running on our side.
Chances are we won’t be voting for a champion sans peur and sans reproche, but for someone who is slightly less repulsive than Zhoe Bai Den, by the grace of Hell Xi the Poo’s vice-roi in the USA.
And that it won’t do us any good. We must do it nonetheless. Force to fraud ridiculously, in front of G-d and everybody. AGAIN.
Meanwhile…. Meanwhile be not afraid, and do your best so we might, maybe, get our republic back, if not in our lifetime, in the lifetime of our kids.
Q: What’s the difference between Hunter Biden, Konstantin Kisin and you?
A: Access to banks
Let me explain.
Recently Konstantin Kisin (a UK comedian/commentator) got a message from the company that was acting as his bank for a podcast he does with some other people.
There then followed a certain amount of hilarity as Mr Kisin asked (not unreasonably) for a reason why and received a number of non-answers.
TRIGGERNOMETRY BANK ACCOUNT SHUT DOWN
Dear @OliverPrill, could you please explain why your bank, @TideBusiness, is shutting down our bank account with no explanation despite a healthy balance and transaction history? pic.twitter.com/kL0ibpgWZN
There are some interesting curlicues to this case though.
Starting with the fact that the “bank” isn’t actually a bank. There’s nothing wrong with that, what they’ve done is partnered with a couple of actual banks to offer a banking service that is more convenient for small businesses than that offered by a traditional bank. This is no doubt one reason why Mr Kisin decided to use them. However it probably gives them rather more flexibility to discriminate that they would have if they were an actual bank.
So it would seem that the lack of initial explanation means there’s a “legal, regulatory or security reason” for the decision. Now, as someone who works in cyber-security, I can say that this vagueness is typically there so that the company has a get out when closing an account for a “Nigerian Prince” that offers exciting opportunities to for suckers to work from home while enriching some Eastern European cyber-criminals. BUT short of Mr Kisin running a scam, which seems unlikely given his relatively high public profile in the UK, and given that the account seems to be tied explicitly to a locals account where he and a colleague do video interviews for subscribers the “involved in (cyber)crime” excuse seems highly unlikely.
So the more likely reason is that the “bank” doesn’t like Mr Kisin’s generally unwoke and skeptical viewpoint on matters and is now desperately trying to retcon a reason. Quite possibly the root cause is that some SJW activists figured out that Kisin used Tide as a banker and caused some regulatorily complex work to be done on his account which meant that Tide was spending a lot more money responding to them than it could possibly make from Kisin’s account.
I should note that the excuse about third party payment processors and validation simply doesn’t pass the giggle test. TRIGGERnometry uses Stripe (as part of its locals based subscription service) and Paypal (linked from twitter and youtube for donations and in the shop part of the website) and as far as I can tell that’s it. Lets start with Paypal, which has had its own free speech issues (see this for example), and which seems more likely to be the source of donations. Paypal knows the email address and credit card (or bank account) details (including the address) of everyone using it and there is no effective difference (to the recipient’s bank) to a payment made for a purchase of goods/services and a donation. Moreover it stretches credibility that no other Tide customers are using Paypal to receive payments.
That’s the very slightly more plausible 3PPP. If Tide has problems with Stripe then I guarantee that TRIGGERnometry is far from the only organization that banks with Tide that uses Stripe. Stripe is ubiquitous and one of the reasons for this is that it is very good at reducing fraud, which it does by precisely the sort of validation that Tide says it can’t trust. Now I suppose there’s the vague possibility that somewhere on an older website that I can’t find the TRIGGERnometry people have a different payment processor, but that seems unlikely. Aside from anything else if one particular 3PPP was problematic, the obvious thing for Tide to do is to mention that they have a problem with 3PPP X.
Since, rather than say that, they originally gave notice of closing the account and only a week or so later came up with 3rd Party Payment excuse we can be almost certain that Tide simply don’t want TRIGGERnometry’s custom but aren’t willing to come out and say so.
Anyway, moving on. In one of the threads on twitter discussing this there was reference to an excellent, but older, thread by Patrick McKenzie (of Bits About Money):
Unfortunately the way this is usually implemented is “X stamps and we fire you as a customer.”
In much of the world, banks are not obligated to continue doing business with people who cause them lots of headaches or cost, and the headaches/cost are not evenly distributed. https://t.co/tufbFyRitG
You should read the whole thread, but one key point is that banks dislike having to put expensive legal/financial expert time into managing a particular account and will typically decide to stop doing business with a customer if the customer’s business results in too much of them. What is worse since banks will share information about such things, if bank A decides that you are too much effort to provide service to then it is likely that banks B,C, D… X will also decline your business leaving you at the mercy of a couple of exceedingly shady and expensive providers Y & Z and running the risk that your new bank will be unable to find correspondent banks for some transactions. This is a problem that has worsened as governments (and particularly the US government) have passed more and more regulations to prevent money laundering, sanctions busting (and increased massively the number of entities sanctioned) and so on. What this means is that banks have to employ office buildings full of expensive lawyers, compliance officers and the like and they can track what accounts they work on and how much money they earn from those account holders. Since most checking/savings accounts earn the bank a few dozen dollars a year, the handling cost of generating a single Suspicious Acitivity Report (SAR) can wipe out a decade or more of income. Effectively if your bank has to do anything manual and out of the ordinary because of a possible problem with your account they will put a strike on it and, unlike baseball, in banking it’s usually two strikes and you’re out. Unless, it seems, your name is Biden Hunter Biden, or a combination of Hunter, Joe and James and their various associated companies, has accumulated 150 SARs most (all?) since 2008 – so an average of about 10 a year. Now it is undoubtedly true that some of these are simply because the amounts being transferred are in the $millions range from foreign entities and are somewhat routine but others almost certainly are not. And the fact is that not all $million transactions from places like Romania or China generate SARs in the first place – or at least they used not to. But one might wonder why banks seemed willing to continue to allow the Biden family to do business with them when random gentlemen called Mohammed (name per McKenzie – one suspects that the problem is limited to people with such names) are invited to take their business elsewhere after just one or two such interactions. Of course actually we don’t wonder at all. We know why. It’s because not doing business with a Biden would result in even more expensive legal work as Biden and his fellow democrat and deep state allies would cause banks to appear before congressional committees, respond to regulatory questions from the SEC and so on. This is not the case if you are some random Tom, Konstantin or Mohammed who lacks the connections to the government and bureaucracy. In these days of ubiquitous electronic payments, not having a bank account and/or credit/debit card is a big problem. In Kisin’s case it seems other banks have stepped forward who are quite willing to accept his business but that may not always be the case. As people like the FSU found out with Paypal, or the Canadian truckers found out with various platforms, if any part of the payment process decides they don’t like you then you can be out a lot of money. Worse the byzantine T&Cs that you have to accept to get any kind of money may allow the company to keep the money in limbo for a few months and even levy a fine for doing/saying something they disagree with. In many cases getting a satisfactory resolution or even any kind of answer requires the glare of publicity rather than calling someone to find out what the problem is. Indeed many internet companies make it extremey difficult to talk to an actual human. let alone one who can give you a straight answer. Effectively, unless you happen to have a senior politician like an MP or US senator who can ask questions for you, your money can be arbitrarily withheld and you will be unable to get anyone to tell you why or give you your money back in a timely manner. On the other hand if you do have friends in high political places you can get a pass on transfers that do in fact raise precisely the sorts of questions that the vague “validation” phrases refer to. The financial system has become, in effect, weaponized against people who rock the boat and in favor of people who are well connected. This is a problem. Possibly Musk’s X corp will include payment processing that is not limited to particular points of view and the like, but it’s dangerous to rely on a single billionaire to keep the world free, even if he is probably the richest man in the world.
Assume everything you’ve been taught about the 20th century is wrong. Okay, so most of it isn’t if you’re going with facts and figures.
But if you look at the conclusions drawn from events, at the bigger movements you were told were behind things, everything you were told is a lie. Pretty much. Except, of course, that sometimes the people telling you the lies thought they were telling you the truth. Either because they, themselves, had been lead up the garden path by philosophers or (and often and) because they couldn’t endure the truth. It didn’t fit with some incredibly appealing theory they had been sold, and which demanded the plainly obvious reason for something not, in fact, be true. Even when it was.
Yes, we’re back again to the vexed topic of World War I. And thereby to the topic of all the wars of the twentieth century. And the vexed topic of military service for “your country right or wrong.”
In the comments on memorial day someone left a comment saying “Whatever your politics, thank the war dead for your freedom.” Or something like.
Look, I’ve been surer or that than I am now.
Um… I am okay with thanking the war dead, because at the very least they thought they were defending freedom and the principles of our constitution, but as a friend (who is a veteran) said in his memorial day post, it is hard to imagine any of our honored military dead coming back and seeing what’s happening in our land and not being profoundly confused, if not disappointed. Because in fact our own — corrupted, frauded in — government is indulging in the sins of the Kaiser and often — sorry — using the tactics of the German National Socialists.
They’re doing this despite the Americans who shed their blood to stop crazy globalism, and partly because their government, their education and, oh, yeah, definitely their bureaucracy is running a program resting on the wrong conclusions taken from the clashes of cultures of the 19th and 20th century.
Look, I can never do this as a scientific theory, not because I can’t develop methods to test it (though those would be mostly examining history) or accept or reject my hypothesis, but because the “science” of sociology currently is caca, and I’m not going to give any college my head for washing to get the right credentials.
So, instead, I’ll write it into science fiction books, and maybe sometime in the future someone can codify it.
This is the thing, though: As far as I can tell, both from observation and experience (acculturating (twice)) and from reading history, cultures are not just the assemblage of a bunch of people under more or less arbitrary rules, which they follow because they’re conformists or stupid or something. Cultures are also not (rolls eyes) born with the person, nor do they transmit genetically. Yes, we do know from animal husbandry that individuals can be born more docile or rebellious, more people-oriented or introverted, etc. and that those traits are inheritable within reason. (There are always sports.)
However, humans are not just creatures of nature, and on the nature nurture puts a veneer that puts limitations on or enhances traits, that rewards certain behaviors or suppresses others. So, even though most people in culture x might be docile if a baby is brought to a highly rebellious culture, like the US and raised in it, he or she will “conform” by being rebellious.
I, myself, had no idea I was introverted. Not a clue. Why? Because Portuguese culture is highly gregarious and group oriented. So, even though I was considered weird and standoffish for there, once I got to the US everyone thought I was very gregarious and people oriented. The one and only tell is that I’m utterly wiped out by being around people too much — the definition of too much being way more than I’m used to — and I either have to get some time away (when I disappear from a con, I’ve usually run to my room to read or listen to music, or do not much of anything. And Dan and I have been known to run away and have dinner by ourselves) or I start showing weird symptoms, like losing my voice. Until I figured that, I thought I always got sick after cons. Actually most of the time I don’t. I’m just wiped out. This is because my natural introversion was shaped by the overlay of a culture where everyone lives in everyone’s pockets, all the time.
Anyway, though, I have come to the conclusion from observation, that while individual humans are plastic to a certain extent, humans in a group, all belonging to the same culture are harder to mold and shape arbitrarily.
It is probably part of human evolution, that cultures react like sentient group entities when attacked, destroyed or occupied.
There is only one way — known for sure — of destroying a culture utterly without killing every member of that culture, meaning it’s eradicated and doesn’t surface again, ever. That is to kill everyone over the age of 3, adopt the surviving children and raise them as yours with no awareness of a separate entity.
Even our savage ancestors didn’t do that, that we know. Oh, in pre-history — even modern primitives (for lack of a better term. Cultures with no writing, and sometimes no future verb tenses or a limited language. Yes, they exist. Mostly tiny tribes in remote places — it was fairly common, as far as we can tell, entire bands and tribes were completely wiped out, their culture leaving absolutely no trace in the future except maybe as a fragment of much-distorted myth. And probably there were times when only the babies were taken and adopted. (Or eaten. Look, there are no noble savages, okay?)
Most of the time, though, throughout most of history, fighting men (or all males) were killed and women, children and non-fighting men (maybe) enslaved.
Because of this, cultures developed what I can only call evolutionary adaptations to survive those events: the women become whores (usually for he conquerors), the men become submissive, and children learn the new language and lose the old, oh, and full blooded children of the old culture stop being born.
In fact most of the symptoms of what we believe are “decadent cultures” aren’t. They’re wounded cultures. Cultures which, sometimes wrongly, assume they’ve been conquered, and therefore go into “survive conquest” mode. This is the mode that will allow some (or most) of its traits to survive, by being passed on in stories, in what you teach the children, in “this is how we do things” even when a majority of those who carried the culture are killed or enslaved.
Now, when I talk of cultures deciding something it sounds like I’m going to break in paens of the Ashkantic records (sp) or perhaps start talking of the collective unconscious. It’s not. It’s a short hand. Because, you know, we are social creatures (even those of us who prefer to make friends over the internet and only see our close family on a regular basis.) This means when your subconscious adds two plus two and gets aardvark, you give certain signals most of them non-verbal. And when everyone does that, the culture acts like a collective entity. I refuse to explain this every single time, so I’ll say the culture does this or that. You will most assuredly deal.
Our culture, yes, is acting like a conquered culture. This is because through most of history for someone to come in and impose on you “new ways of doing things” and trying to shape you into something different, meant that you had lost a war and a lot of you were laying dead.
In our times this is because our intelligentsia was converted against its own culture (while still being part of the culture, which makes them funny. Or they would be funny if this were happening to someone else long ago) by Marxist and “progressive” theories that purport that both humans and cultures are infinitely plastic. Being part of the ruling bureaucracy and class, they imposed arbitrary rules from above, which felt to our subconscious like conquerors giving commands.
Which brings us back to colonialism. As we all know the left considers colonialism evil. It probably is, at least when engaged in from above and arbitrarily. What I mean is, if you conquer a people and impose your ways on them, they’re going to suffer and their culture is going to become corrupted in weird ways. Sometimes…. sometimes that’s an improvement. For all their — many — faults, the Spaniards did stop human sacrifice to the South of (and in some portions of the Western states of) the US.
But it is strong medicine and a high price to pay. Also the reason why all the dreams of the early science fiction writers (and the retarded would-be techno lords of today) of a world government are not just impossible but utterly and unspeakably evil.
Because if you try to impose a culture (and the current idiots it’s not even a culture, just the Marxist virus) on the whole world, it’s going to …. change. And what it will become is not what you set out to impose, but this weird, bizarre amalgam. When you take in account all the cultures of the world, that means what results will be … uh… alien is a good way to put it. And probably mostly Chinese. (Because their culture is older, and frankly while judged in terms of comfort to humans and ability to provide completely nonfunctional, nonfunctional in a way that has created mechanisms to increase the cyclic dysfunction. And those mechanisms will survive and infect everything.) And on the way to installing this maimed and maiming thing, you’re going to kill most of the population of the world, and only a few outright. Most of them with depression and internal destruction.
And here we come back to the age of Empires from oh, the mid-fourteenth but more obvious from the mid-19th century to World War I. That was straight up internationalism.
Cultures that were in the industrial revolution and needed resources, but more importantly, cultures that were absolutely convinced they had the right way to live stomped around the globe showing everyone else how to live, and sometimes hard-enforcing it.
“But Sarah, that’s nationalism,” you’ll say. Oh, is it? Because what they were trying to do was create international empires, all over the world, and enforce the one culture, with, in some cases (hi, Germany) the idea that eventually the whole world would be like them.
I don’t care what they call it. Particularly when you look at the alliances of the ruling families (kings, queens, emperors, empresses, and princes and princesses) it becomes obvious that it was an overarching supra-national elite trying to add more regions to their already vast domains, and make their dominance world wide if possible.
They were not, despite the nationalism of those in the trenches, fighting to preserve their own tiny countries, but their vast international alliances and empires.
Yes, the Germans were the most rampant case of this and they were stopped by the sacrifices of those in World War One and World War Two. And we’re grateful for that.
Our degree of gratitude doesn’t change, but their wasted sacrifice might make us furious when we see the global elite has either achieved their objectives through other means (We’re looking at you EU) or are trying to achieve the rest of it by even stupider means (We’re looking at you WEF.) Oh, and let their buddies in the Soviet Union go a-colonizing for most of the 20th century, and would do it again (the Soviet Union never really existed. It was always Russian colonialism) given half a chance. And are now trying to distract us with a fun proxy make-believe war.
World War I was not caused by nationalism. Though it shocked various internationalists, including the Marxists, that individuals would fight to preserve their countries against internationalism, rather than the workers of the world uniting.
It was caused by colonialist impulses and imperial land grabs.
We — nationalists — have been at war with internationalism for a long time, and it’s time we recognized it, shedding the wrong stuff we were taught.
Yes some cultures are appalling judged on the only standard that counts: Do they promote human productivity happiness and health?
Yes, cultures can change. What they can’t is “directed change.” America has infiltrated more cultures than I care to mention from the beginning, purely by example. Yep, some of the results — I’m looking at you, French revolution — were appalling, because they were the result of our principles being taken up by an entirely different culture, that couldn’t process them as we did. (Not wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Note this is what I mean that a world-culture would be unspeakably alien.)
It’s entirely possible overtime we can change most cultures into being more functional and better for their members. But we can’t do that by imposing it from above. (Is looking seriously at the EU where most of the members are behaving like conquered cultures. And therefore becoming increasingly more dysfunctional.)
Colonialism is evil because it wounds existing cultures, and often imposes more dysfunctional ones. But even functional cultures, as colonizers, can cause splintering they don’t understand and can’t prevent. It might be needed but it’s always a form of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Imperialism, the formation of vast international empires, is a form of colonialism, whether under the banner of the Soviet Union, the WEF or Kaiser Wilhelm.
Cultures evolve in isolation. In our hyper connected world, they’ll change and meld through contact. The best we can do is denounce the bad changes. And keep the local identities as much as possible.
Because in the end, nationalism is good. Despite our fantasies — and I often have them — both a culture imposed from above — whether a real or synthetic one — and a world in which our physical location doesn’t matter are unworkable. And if they worked, they’d be nightmares.
Even as we live and work across borders, even as we borrow each other’s food and clothing, it is important to remember that the national culture evolved for a reason, and that everything we experience of other cultures must be experienced through our culture.
It is important to remember other cultures we come in contact with are intrinsically different and shaped through millennia (or in our case centuries. Hey, we’re the annoying genius kid) of different evolution. Evolution suited to the needs and location of the majority of people.
It is important to remember that every immigrant-group will bring culture with them, and that they will process their acculturation through their culture. (For individuals acculturation is more complete and faster. Not to say that it’s always 100%. It’s not. See my figuring out I was not an extrovert.) This is one of the reasons open borders is stupid. (Sorry. Yes, I badly wanted to believe in a borderless world. But that just guarantees the least functional, most predatory culture wins over all. No.) It is also one of the reasons that countries should be able to vet who comes in, and keep it — if possible — to individuals. And countries must demand and enforce acculturation and integration.
Because cultures will war with each other, openly or not. And because there are no noble savages, and the deep background of our culture was formed in a time of utter savagery, if you let cultures war, the least functional will win.
Cherish your national culture. Protect your national borders.
The dream of a borderless world is a nightmare, where elites completely divorced from the regional beliefs and needs rule all, according to their arbitrary will and their philosophical illusions.
Think of the different cultures as the founders thought of states: Little laboratories of humanity, competing (but not warring. Not if we limit immigration and don’t try to grab each other’s land and people) to see which is best for humanity. The best at achieving prosperity freedom and innovation will spread naturally.
Which is why all over the world, the future already comes from America.
Let’s make it a functional future. Let’s make it an American future.
June is supposed to be Pride month. I was told I’d need to apply for a religious exemption to avoid being mandated to celebrate it. I shouldn’t be suprised: Corporate is also keen on Greed, Gluttony, and Wrath year-round.
It’s tragic. It’s horrifying that virtues like self-mastery, charity, or humility are opaque to these perverted aristos. Who do we little people think we are, wanting honesty or dignity? It’s “See deer, point horse, peon.” We’re supposed to know our place as demoralized consuming/producing mules in their economic fiefdoms. Up is down, down is up, cruelty is kind, and decency is perverted: All the better to enslave you with, my dear.
I ran across a suggestion a commenter I know posted over at Rod Dreher’s blog:
This year, let’s kick off a general economic strike on June 1st. Don’t buy anything not absolutely necessary. Buy your groceries: That’s it. Whatever you can buy from farm stands with cash, do that. Planning a major purchase? Punt it to July. We’ll be washing dishes by hand for thirty days. Make do with clothes, shoes, what have you, until after June 30th. Find ways to avoid all but your most essential purchases.
I think a sudden drop of 10 – 15% in expected earnings could really drive the point home, especially since June is the end of the quarter. I’m told these sociopathic pool noodles live and die by their earnings reports.
If enough of us #GoGaltJune maybe the oligarchs will get it through their thick heads to just quit with the whole patronizing proselytizing Pride malarky* already and leave us alone. Leave our kids alone.
*This is Sarah. I’m not overgrown hobbit, the author of the guest post above. And I didn’t originally have a problem with Pride parades. Look, in most cities it was rather dorky people shouting “We exist and are allowed to.” That’s …. whatever. HOWEVER the “Pride month” and “Mandatory celebration” have stepped on my LAST NERVE. People are what they are, and being gay is not the worst thing, but why the heck would we “celebrate” it for a whole month? Even motherhood is celebrated ONE DAY a year. And corporate-mandated celebration? No. I realize they want a fascist state, but just no. These are my middle fingers. I endorse this here hobbit’s suggestion. – SAH*
If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo,please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months(unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH
Prepare to enter the ultimate unknown! Barbarella, Vix and Taln know where to go to discover the galactic secrets of the Unnamable. Unfortunately, that means travelling beyond the edge of our galaxy and into the next — assuming they survive the termination shock on the way through! It’s a massive risk, but the chance to avert a galactic war that would kill trillions makes the lives of two females and a male hologram seem small by comparison — though maybe not to them!
Adelaide Taylor has survived her first semester at school and as a Dawn Empire Solist. She’s found her first Companion, Sayuri Suisha. Sayuri’s grandfather wants to meet his only grand-daughter’s new friend. In Japan, just before New Years. Along with that, she’s gotten a warning-one of the High Fae is hunting her and is planning to ensnare Adelaide in her schemes. There’s a girl in her school that has been set up as a tethered goat for Solists. Her local and very Catholic high school is putting her into places that shouldn’t happen at a Catholic high school. And there’s a monster eating prostitutes in Queens. Nobody ever said being a Solist would be easy…
The rules of the game were simple: one image. Fifty words.
Twenty authors met the challenge and excelled, and this volume records their efforts. Between these covers are complete stories that will take a moment to read, and ages to forget. If your appetite is whetted, you’ll also find that images have been provided for you to practice your wordsmithing skills. So that you, too, can try the next Postcards challenge.
For eighty million years, the Tourists have taken Snapshots of Earth, creating living replicas of continents. Life in the Snapshots quickly diverges from the real world, creating a universe where humans and animals from Earth’s history fly between Snapshots, exploring, fighting, and sometimes meeting their alternate history selves. In 2014, the Tourists create a Snapshot of North America in a snow-globe shaped artificial universe, linked like pearls on a necklace to other copied times and places. In that timeline, Simon Royale—a.k.a. Simon-2014— is a legendary best-selling author. When he was only seven-years-old, his sister mysteriously vanished. Simon-14’s writing—and the power in it—is born from his obsession with discovering what happened to her. But now, cut off from the life he’d known, he may never find out.US-53 isn’t really the past. Thanks to the Tourists, it’s a mutant off-shoot, the 1950s grown up and sneaky, with sharp elbows. In this version of the timeline, Simon Royale—a.k.a. Simon-53—is just an aspiring author with a trunk full of unpublished novels. Then the two worlds connect. For an ambitious publishing company, it looks like a golden opportunity for Simon-53 to leverage Simon-2014’s fame.Can the clashing versions of Simon Royale coexist in the unnaturally linked timelines? Simon-2014’s legal battle over the right to his own work and identity are the least of his worries. In the 1953 timeline, his sister is still alive. What made her disappear in one reality but survive in the other? Is something dangerous hidden in his memories or his first novel? As Simon inches closer to the truth, one thing is clear: it’s a secret someone is willing to kill to keep.
Who would put a ceiling on humanity’s expansion into space?
That’s what Gus Grissom wants to know. While fishing offshore from Cape Canaveral, he glimpses a mysterious undersea city of unearthly geometries, marked with a strange three-armed cross symbol.
His efforts to research it bring him veiled threats from strangers at his door. Trouble blights an exemplary career. However, Gus refuses to be cowed into silence, and pursues every lead he can find.
HP Lovecraft wrote that we live on a placid island of ignorance and were not meant to travel far. This is the Space Race in a world where the Soviet Union is not our only adversary.
Avenge the fallen. Restore honor to her people. Someone else can be inspired to liberate the kingdom.
Fourteen years after Sarbotel fell to the armies of a mad alien mage, Ilse is the last surviving member of her resistance cell. When she’s offered a chance to return to her homeland, she chooses vengeance instead. Allying with an immortal Guardian who has reasons of his own to want the mage slain, she’s out to put an end the Tyrant’s despotic rule.
The stakes are higher than she knows, for if Ilse fails to defeat the Tyrant, the entire planet may be destroyed…
A Science Fiction Story Bundle from the collection There’s a Sword for That
MONSTERS – Xenoarchaeologist Vartan has promised his young daughter Liza one of the many enigmatic lamedh objects that litter the site of a vanished alien civilization.
No one can figure out what they’re good for, but Liza finds a use for one.
ADAPTABILITY – The Webster Marble Deluxe Woodsman, Model 820-E, has been offline for quite some time. Quite some time indeed.
Good thing Webster has a manual to consult, and a great many special functions.
A wizard must produce justice enough to satisfy a dragon.
A young man tries to rob a tiger’s lair.
An enchantress tries to keep a court safe while they ignore the perils of misusing her magic.
A lady finds that court intrigues can spread even to the countryside.
And more tales.
Includes “Over the Sea To Me,” “Dragonfire and Time”, “The Maze, the Manor, and the Unicorn”, “The White Menagerie”, “The Dragon’s Cottage,” “Jewel of the Tiger,” and “The Sword Breaks.”
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.
According To Hoyt 