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/
Have you ever been in a car crash? I have. It was a nothing thing — okay, it totaled the car, but I walked away — but it’s at the basis of my driving anxiety. Sometimes I manage the anxiety. Sometimes I’m incapable to and don’t drive for years at a time.
Which is stupid, because I know what caused that crash. We’d moved an hour and a half away. We’d left my car at the old place, and drove back to get it on Saturday morning very early. So early I forgot my glasses on the bedside table. I have hellish astigmatism. In fact, back then I wasn’t nearsighted. I only wore glasses because of the astigmatism. I became aware I didn’t have my glasses on halfway there, and I drove back fine, being extra careful. Except ten minutes from the new home, a bunch of cars had got between Dan and I, and I was afraid he’d turn, and I wouldn’t make the turn at a light. So I rushed. And the experience of it is that a telephone pole jumped in front of the car. Of course, it was the astigmatism giving that illusion.
But the experience was everything is fine, everything is fine, oh, sh*t! And by then it was too late to do anything about it. In my mind, it is hours between realizing I was going to hit and there was nothing I could do, and actually hitting and destroying the car.
Sounds stopped, there was an unnatural silence, and time became taffy, extending indefinitely.
As a country, we’ve been locked there since 2020. Which probably also explains how you feel. Tired and anxious, and often hopeless.
Because you can tap the brakes and try to turn the wheel all you want to. It’s too late to change. There’s nothing you can do except anticipate how bad it will be, and hoping you walk away.
Only it’s more like a crash in WWI, which, yes, sometimes you could walk away from, but not often. And you could burn to death in the crash far more than in the car.
If you feel like what happened this week makes it more likely that we’ll be consumed by fire in the wreckage, you wouldn’t be wrong.
But there’s not much you can do. Except anticipate the crash and maybe make it more survivable by positioning yourself slightly differently, clenching or not clenching, moving slightly back so the airbag doesn’t kill you.
All you can do is think through likely — remember LIKELY. No, going back to the middle ages is not likely, unless we get hit by the Sweet Meteor of Doom — scenarios and anticipate what you’ll need, and what to do.
Looking at my experience with a car crash, above, some other things to take from it:
There is nothing you can do. There was nothing you could do due to the initial condition. In my case driving without glasses. In our case, FDR highjacked our system and made it vulnerable to this. This was done before most of us were born, let alone voted.
Time seems unusually lengthened. All those memes — the ones not made by glowies trying to get you to do something stupid — about the Founding Fathers and “Me and my homies would be stacking bodies” is because your sense of time is way telescoped. You’ve been aware of what’s going on before anyone “normal” was, because you’re a political junkie (the diagnostic circumstances are “you read this blog.”) The funding fathers were political junkies in their time too, granted. But they didn’t jump hot for a loooooong time. And they kept a toe in diplomacy to the end, so when war broke out they were still trying to petition the king.
As with a car crash, the tempo is ‘excruciatingly slow, then very fast.’ Once you hit that pole, you’re back to normal time, and you experience it as everything moving very fast, suddenly. Like coming out from a dark room into the light, you’ll be startled and blinded by the fact the light is magnified by your eyes being unprepared. Remember that, metaphorically, so you don’t lose your bearings/feel as if the world has gone mad.
Prepare, prepare, prepare. Sure, physically. But also mentally and emotionally. Prepare for what will be very hard though possibly/probably brief times when you might very well have to do what is for you unthinkable. We’ve lived ridiculously comfortable, easy lives compared to our ancestors. I don’t expect it to get to even 19th century level. But it will get tough. It has been noted in studies that people who think through possibilities experience less disorientation in a disaster or disruption, and are less likely to experience shock/depression. So prepare mentally. Prepare, prepare, prepare.
Until then, hang lose. And pray the Republic doesn’t catch fire in the crash. And we don’t all perish in it.
There will be a post after this, but not April Fools.
This one is a brief update on everything: FIL still lingering, though at the stage that you have to check the monitor to make sure he’s still breathing. He stopped being responsive, etc. once husband had left. We don’t wish him death, but there is pain involved and he’s doped out of his mind, and it’s just…. lingering.
Meanwhile cold/flu/wtf I got from younger son (he’s such a SHARING boy) has progressed past the fever stage, which means I slept…. uh…. a lot. I’m sitting here in my nightgown contemplating showering. Right now, the big issue is coughing and my voice going away.
I’m not 100% but writing SHOULD happen today. Fortunately it’s a sitting down and moving only fingers position. So not exactly tiring. And before you all yell at me yes, ma’ams and sirs and aardvarks, I will be taking a midday nap.
Of course, the crazy brain went “No fever! Let’s clean and finish unpacking!”
To be fair both need to be done before the kittens get here, but also I’m not stupid, so no.
I’ll finish this not an April Fool’s Post with links to April Fools of Yesteryear for those with an insatiable apetite.
*First to get the update out of the way: My FIL did in fact start accellarating towards death, once Dan had said goodbye. He’s not expected to live till tonight. We’d thought he was waiting to say goodbye to his only living son, and that seems to have been it. We are coping as best we can. It is, of course, very hard on Dan.
No, it’s no peaches for me either, (Note I skipped Insty posting last night) but it’s orders of magnitude easier.
Meanwhile I either managed to catch younger son’s … whatever it is that gave him walking pneumonia (He’s recovering) or I’m suffering from emotional reaction to the turmoil of the last few days. Six of one half a dozen of the other, but I’m tired and dragging and it’s entirely possible that I won’t accomplish anything but some administrivia today. Though I slept well, a nap is on the schedule.*
If you must walk on thin ice, you might as well learn to dance!
Which mostly is the art of the writer in these our “changing times.” (I love that expression because it implies other times didn’t change. Though i do agree our times are changing in some weird ways.)
And it might very well be the art of everyone. The art of living in the present as is. (Clown car, on fire, in a dumpster, but also a time of deep technology driven changes that might even be called a singularity, though not the singularity of fevered dreams.)
I’m coming to the end of many cycles, professional and life, all the same time. Very different cycles, both in roles, and in how much they’ve lasted and the impression they’ve left in my mind and life. But a lot of them, some expected, some sudden, dead-ending this week or the next couple of weeks.
It prompted my husband, Dan, to say over breakfast “It’s starting to feel like one of those things, like Repairman Jack’s (a series by F. Paul Wilson) “the spear has no branches.”
Since this is a process over several books in which all of the main characters close relatives and those he cherishes get killed off one by one, in order to forge him into the ultimate weapon (hence spear and having no branches) I was mildly alarmed. I pointed out if someone starts killing off those I love, the close in ones, I won’t be a spear, I’ll be dead.
But he said, “No, but more like the game table is being cleared for a new play.” Which… well, this is happening to both of us, at the same time. A lot of things that took a lot of our time, attention and concentration are being removed suddenly.
I choose to believe this is so I can write. Looks skyward: note if that’s the purpose I’d best get over this cruddy condition soon.
However, for various reasons, I’ve become aware of how fast and how much writing, as a field has changed these last 10 years, and how fast everything that goes into getting that book in your hands has changed.
To analogize (I like that, because it’s easier, and I feel cruddy) it is as though you were a guy who makes craft pencils out of little fallen branches. (Never mind, roll with it.)
11 years ago, before indie came on, you worked piecemeal for a company who sold these, and put them in stores. You gathered branches of the right side, cut them to the appropriate length and polished them so no one got a splinter, then sent them to the company which then drilled a hole in it, put in a lead and place them in stores. For this they took 90% of the income, and you lumped it, because without them you couldn’t get the pencils actually to be pencils, much less place them in stores, so the public could buy them.
Worse, there were only 4 companies nationally that sold these pencils; they all had their quirks and in general if you worked with one of them no one else would buy you. They told you how many branches they wanted from you that year and the specifications. And if you pissed off the company you worked for no one else would hire you, and you’d be unemployed. There were thousands of people who wanted to do this work, after all. (Again, roll with it.)
Sure, sure, there were those loonies who made the pencils in their garage, but they had to show them off the back of their car or at local craft fairs, and few were profitable, let alone making a living. Most of the self-drilled pencils sucked, which was worse.
Then the market opened through Amazon. You could sell your pencils directly to the public. But you didn’t have the equipment to drill (and it was expensive and had a learning curb) and you couldn’t buy the lead, except in bulk, so it was easier to get a subcontractor.
Your job was the same. You cut and polished the branch, then you subcontracted people to drill and insert the lead. Some people also paid someone to put it on Amazon and other online stores.
Nowadays, there are affordable widgets that drill the hole, you can buy small packs of lead and there’s a really cheap machine that inserts it. Then you bundle it up in a pretty ribbon, and put it up for sale in minutes. (I can’t find an analogy for copyediting, which sane indies still hire out, and which are, ultimately, pretty cheap.)
I feel pretty comfortable with things as they are right now, but of course there’s already rumbles of change. Amazon is doing strange things, so we have to find ways to sidestep. (What Ringo is doing with substack is brilliant. And it opens the door to other things, like real time writing competitions.) After all 12 years ago Smashwords was a major competitor in ebooks, and now they’re a punchline.
The only thing sure is that we don’t know what comes next. And that everything can change very fast.
To a great extent this applies to everyone. The technology innovations that allow for work from home and a highly distributed team were already there at the great lockdown of 2020. But the lockdown accelerated it very fast and in ways everyone running around screaming “This is the new normal” failed to understand.
There’s a new normal, indeed, but the new normal is not what they thought they were instituting.
In the new normal, working from home allows for more flextime and more distributed residence. Homeschooling might suddenly have become the new normal too. There is naturally a lot less driving, if you’re working from home (Husband and I are not feeling the pinch of the high gas prices like we did in 08, because largely our drives are jaunts to the grocery store, a drive to church and a longer trip once a month or sometimes once every two months. We grumble about it, but it’s not the hair on fire thing it was 08 through 16.
I honestly don’t think most people have fully processed this. There has been a great migration, but I think it’s a fraction of what it will be.
Just like in 11 when I started publishing indie even though I felt I was coming at it very late, it was still the wild frontier, with most writers not even registering it existed. Heck, even now, only about half do. The perennial advice to someone who has a book that doesn’t fit their house, or who wants to do something different is “Go to x small press.” When in fact, you no longer need it. Great advice for 1999.
People process change far slower than things are actually changing. And those of us who went “Oh, so this means we can–” are way ahead of the curve.
Even now, companies having realized their beautiful offices are useless are trying to force the workforce back into them. And failing, as work from home has opened the work market to the entire country and in some cases the world, so forced employees escape faster than nomads forced into government housing in Africa.
The outlines of all the echoes of this massive change are only barely visible. Our institutions aren’t even vaguely prepared. Heck, they’re not aware of any of this. Look at how the idiots in charge are trying to find ways to force people to drive less that include moving to large cities. Bah. As well flow the water back into the faucet.
I can see many things coming, from perhaps clusters of decent restaurants appearing wherever little towns are close together that the work from home populace can go to one or the other at will, but I can see a ton more interest in cooking from home as well. I can see delivery services from places like Sam’s club becoming super-popular, if their customer base is more widespread. I can see services catering to homeschoolers. And I can see in the not so distant future dating sites that list your resume, because hey, if you’re both coders — or writers, or editors — having one fill in for the other, or even having someone who understands your work is a great enhancement to a marriage, and makes things far more flexible. (Yes, that sounds weird. But more or less weird than picking up someone because they dance well, or whatever?) I can see more age-integrted environments, as the young stop heading to the cities for dating opportunities and beginning jobs.
Will all of them come through? Probably not. We’re dealing with second and third and fourth order effects in a very complex environment, but some of them will. Along with a lot of others I can’t anticipate.
And the inner Libertarian would like me to remind you that the reason it all feels stressful and apocalyptic is that over the 20th century we concentrated power and regulation as much as possible in the largest possible body of government.
Since the innovations are by nature distributed, I keep seeing these institutions behave exactly like traditional publishers when indie came in. Only with guns, lawyers, and armies of rioters on the shady side.
They’re trying as crazily and desperately possible to hold onto power that is flowing or has already flowed away from their grasp. And everything they do to hold on (What DO you think the lockdowns were really for? Well, okay, to also do shady election things, but that was all part of it. Trying to force us to obey, d*mn it.) backfires and accelerates the change, because that’s the nature of great changes. You can see this after the Black Death too. But they weren’t as centralized, so the crazy stuff was mostly local.
Anyway, we’re dancing on logs floating down the river. It’s taking us where we want to go, but boy is it a balance act.
Or if you prefer, what a long, strange trip it’s been.
Because my life is a novel, there is an overarching theme playing itself out throughout all the events right now. I’m not going to rewrite the report of it, because I just did it over at Mad Genius Club.
If you want a detailed-ish report of what is going on, head over, I’ll wait.
Back? Cool.
I feel a bit like I was hit on the head with a spar today. Now a great part of this is that I have slept about 3 hours, and unfortunately that’s been going on for a couple of weeks, because of ongoing death in the family and its affecting Dan’s sleep and work cycles, which in turn affect mine.
I feel like I should be telling you something deep, profound, earth-shaking about all of this, but mostly I just feel loopy.
On the other hand, years ago — Dear Lord, my kids who are now thirty something and closing in on thirty, when did that happen, were toddler and pre-schooler — Kris Rusch told me that staying alive in writing is a matter of rolling with the punches and reinventing yourself.
And in a way, I was born for this. I grew up in unstable, sometimes outrageous times, and came of age — in my thirties — at the beginning of the age of catastrophic change.
I’ll let Deej hit it in the comments, but yeah, I’ve seen empires fall and a new age be born. I’ve seen promising beginnings brought to nothing, and things despaired of return, stronger than ever.
And we all know what I’m hoping for for the Republic, right?
I’d link the Ragehaolic’s rant on Lincoln, but since it’s a forbidden topic in the comments, I won’t. Let’s say that the Republic has been dying since it was born, and it’s gone through worse times than this. Again find good contemporary writing on Woodrow Wilson and FDR. Someone who has more time than I do and doesn’t have his/her mind eaten by worlds trying to come to life that have waited far too long should do the research and write something about how bad and how dark it got — governance and freedoms wise — during that time.
In many ways we’ve been clawing the republic back since FDR. And our progress has accelerated the last thirty years, partly due to catastrophic technological innovation.
But catastrophic is there for a reason. It feels like our world is ending. And in a way it is. It’s just not OUR world. It’s the world we grew up with; the constraints we accepted and thought were eternal.
This throws us in a soup of possibilities that’s both exhilarating and terrifying.
As I pointed out in Mad Genius Club, it’s weird being considered an old woman of the field. Particularly since in many ways I’m just starting out.
Heck, I’m only now writing a series that I conceived of at 14.
Human life on this Earth is a blink. Life is eternal. The movement of humanity is slow and very long.
What we do today, even though it might not look like it, even some little things, echoes into forever.
And all we can do is make the moment count, and make those echoes ring loud with freedom and joy and humanity.
Let’s live forever!
*The images are copyright by me, and are released under CC BY to anyone who wishes to use them. Have fun.
I’m tired. Today, while trying to write I was struck by a weird combination of anxiety and mourning, for no reason I can figure out, except perhaps exhaustion. It kept me checking the news every 2 minutes, also for no discernible reason.
And when I sat down to write a post, it seemed like I couldn’t find a theme, until started searching for a post to use as a blast from the past. And then I ran across this post from 2015 which I excerpted bellow.
I was suddenly and startlingly aware that this must be said (again) and that it explains why we’re all exhausted, and why even people of good will on the left can’t seem to understand they’re not fighting the monsters that exist only in their imaginations, and why if we engage them and they’re at risk of having their world view upended they become hysterically defensive.
And why they, so often, rewrite overnight.
It’s not that they’re NPCs. It’s not that they’re less human than we are. It is that they belong to a culture, they were taught a history, and given a mission. Their mission, their view of themselves in this world history makes them who they are and gives their world meaning.
We’re humans. None of us sees the world unaided by the lenses of our culture. This is why acculturation is so difficult, and will leave scars, and why it feels like going insane. In many ways it is like going insane. Your entire view of the world dissolves, and another replaces it. It’s like reality dissolving before your eyes.
Which is why the human solution to absorbing another culture — and perhaps the most human solution. Stop staring at me like I’m crazy. I’ve been thinking really strange things all day, and perhaps I am — is to kill the adults and raise the kids in the winning culture. No, I’m not suggesting anyone do that, but it is what was done throughout history. (Sometimes women were kept too, but that wasn’t the kinder fate.)
[I can see in my future a sword and sorcery story from early times, that I don’t want to write, but probably will. Because I’m trying to puzzle these mechanics out and I think in fiction. I think by running imaginary scenarios.]
THIS is the excerpt that gelled my thoughts such as they are, on our national moment. It is from deep in the puppy years, and it…. feels like it. I’m cutting out the name of the person I’m talking about, not to ressurrect old fights, because this is NOT about that.
BEGINNING OF EXCERPT:
But one thing is to know it instinctively – and even then when I write about it, people email me to tell me that I am wrong and “paranoid” and yeah, one is always afraid – and another to have one’s nose rubbed in it in the form of a supposed adult saying with the simplicity of a 12 year old that the people who oppose her are “racist, sexist, homophobic” and “bad to reprehensible” even before the “poopy-head” level classification of “neo-nazis.”
Look, it is the fact that [NAME OMITTED] is sincere and, in her own mind, fighting on the side of angels, that is shocking and scary. And it fits perfectly with what I’ve seen in the publishing world (other than Baen, natch) in my years working as a professional writer.
These people don’t live in the world we live in.
Most of us – well, some of us – went through excellent universities, and read voraciously, and were subjected to the barrage of media that projected the same mental picture [NAME OMITTED] has: the left is eternally right (when they were wrong, their mistakes – like segregation – are now attributed to the right) and the future is a bright socialist utopia (really communist, but we’ll call it socialist so as not to scare the squares) and anyone who stands against it is an evil right winger, a fascist, a neo nazi and by definition racist, sexist, homophobic.
The thing is that this view was propagated pretty uniformly from the academic/media/entertainment complex for most of the twentieth century and people absorbed it to some extent. But most people in the real world come across enough stuff that doesn’t fit, or perhaps read enough about the fall of the Soviet Union to know it’s not just “this time it will be different” but the system itself is flawed.
And some of us come to view individual rights, individual conscience and individual freedom as the only best system (not perfect. No system is perfect.)
But that’s because the places we work in, the world we move in isn’t a unified front. Those who stay in academia, those who go into the arts or into publishing, though, move from a world of being fed a message into a world of being fed the same message. Not only is there no incentive to doubt, but doubting or showing any wobbling of belief will be detrimental to you. You stay within that world because it’s safe and because it’s what everyone around you believes. How can everything you know be wrong.
This was particularly emphasized by the fact that the Second World War was excised entirely from East German education at the time, and they were only taught about ‘The Great War’ – what the rest of the world was calling World War I. Socialist Germany was a big exercise in erasing the past and reconstructing it in a great big lie – and somewhat inconveniently, there were still people who remembered WWII. It was a verboten subject, and the younger generation knew nothing of it. They didn’t believe that someone as evil as Hitler could have ever existed.
Dad, the Aristotlean gadfly that he was, liked to smuggle in copies of Mein Kampf and give it away as gifts, his own little subversive fight for the truth. I know he horrified one of our babysitters with it, who was a college student and an avowed Marxist who enjoyed being able to pit wills and philosophical arguments with ‘someone unfortunate enough not to be educated in Socialist education.’ It was her awakening into questioning what she knew.
One of the people working at the consulate fell in love with an East German woman. The only way they could marry was if she escaped East Berlin, and so he smuggled her out. The details of that I don’t know, but I remember my dad saying she was struck dumb for three days from sheer culture shock after she saw West Berlin for the first time – and realized that everything she’d been raised to believe, and had known as truth was in fact a carefully manufactured and maintained lie that was possible only through total control of information. Everything had to be spoon fed. They had to develop a disdain, to instill contempt, pity and aversion to Capitalism, America and other countries on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
In a way [NAME OMITTED] lives in a similar world. A world in which some verities are so absolute they can’t ever be questioned.
END OF EXCERPT
Other people have said this. Other people have talked about the “two different movies” in the head of the left and the right.
Would that it was only that; that it was only superficial indoctrination. But it’s not. It’s something more than that, something that reaches far, far back, and that in the west, in the current time and place, had hardened into a complete encasing reality and culture that can’t and won’t be challenged. Because if it’s challenged, people defend it harder. It’s the only way they can stay sane within their own views, their culture.
This is why in the culture wars when we call out gross and horrifying evil from the other side, we find ourselves accused of things that don’t even make sense.
Take the whole puppy thing, (Please, not actually, because Larry has threatened anyone who picks it up under that name with the wrath of Larry) but look at it.
We were a gonzo band of idealists, half of us — more or less. I never actually counted, partly because there was the inner ring, the outer ring, the outer, outer ring, and the ululating multitudes — women, the other half … well, men of such varied backgrounds that they can’t be lumped as anything in particular. However, one thing is sure certain: not a single one of us was an editor. Not a single one of us was a publisher. Not a single one of us — even — was wealthy. I don’t know the background of every single one of the 100 or so people I interacted with that year, and at any rate those three years or so are very foggy because I had major surgery that had problems healing, and took more painkillers than at any other time in my life (Not opiates, which make me ill, but pain and pain killers are both exhausting.) However, I don’t think a single one of them was born wealthy or from a powerful family, though some were bestselling authors and doing relatively well. (In a profession where you can make a lot of money one year and none the next, mind.)
In our simple and frankly simple-minded way we tried to rally the fans themselves to rescue an award that had been won by people we respected from thralldom to pseudo literary pretentiousness.
Against us, everything was marshaled, from international publications, to whispers in private gatherings. From claims of our origins which made no sense, to weirder things, including threats to our children and spouses. The truth which we didn’t realize at the time, is that we were threatening people’s paychecks. You see we, innocents that we were, were all workers in the word vineyards, creating something for the masses to consume, for which we wanted to be paid. But the top tiers of our field, the revered ones, were those who were writing not to be read, but to receive awards for their correct world view, which in turns translated into either amazingly well paid academia and consultant jobs and/or Hollywood jobs.
We were chumps who believed in writing for readers’ enjoyment. But our insanity in trying to give awards to people we enjoyed reading was threatening their livelihood.
NOTE that all of them were powerful people, with contacts well beyond ours. They might not make much money from writing, but they all had well known names as “smart” (leftism is a positional good) defenders of leftist ideology. They COULD get us slandered in international publications. We mostly took to our blogs.
If this starts to look like our current political situation, you’re not wrong.
However, over all, and still subsisting in many official pages the most bizarre and strangest thing is the narrative they peddled, and which people believed:
That we were powerful people, afraid to lose our power, and therefore we were trying to keep “women, gays, people of color” (some of which were in our number, some even in the inner circles) from writing science fiction. And that our entire effort was this repressive attempt to keep minorities down, so we could remain powerful.
It is bizarre that this narrative was ever accepted, since we were writers, who in the general run of the publishing world have the right to only two things: sell the work of their minds, and get paid for it.
One of the amusing after-shots of this whole mess was the writer who accused me of getting him blacklisted at Baen (this after I was dumped by Baen, incidentally.) This was someone nominally on our side, and I could only stare at the level of sheer insanity.
Sure, maybe Larry who makes most of their money could get someone blacklisted at Baen. Frankly, I doubt it. I doubt it, because publishers don’t like it when you dictate to them. I mean, not that Larry would do that to anyone, but if they had another, less scrupulous bestseller who tried to do it, I doubt it would work.
But except for Larry, the rest of us were at best midlisters. maybe midlisters with some following, but you know, none of us was a major figure.
So what power were we afraid to lose? Supposing we were racist, sexist and homophobic (the people who read me and can say that with a straight face need their heads examined) and wanted to keep minorities from being published, what were we intending to do to bring this about? Stop them getting awards? Shit, honeychild, none of us at that point had got any awards. If not getting awards kept you from getting published, none of us would be published. (Oh, sorry, I’d got the Prometheus. And I love my Prometheus win. But it wasn’t the make or break for “I’ll continue writing” or I’d have given up in the 12 years since.)
The idea that we were these powerful beings, jealous of our power and wanting to keep it, was so crazy bizarro — particularly when one of our major opponents was the largest publishing house in the business — that it should have been laughed out of the room.
That it wasn’t tells you how deep the indoctrination is.
We were saying that preachy lefty fiction is not the best fiction, and therefore in the culture of the left, honed and polished over a century in all institutions of learning and in all arts and publishing and mass communication, we must be on the side of oppressors. We must be racist/sexist/homophobic. HAD TO BE. Because otherwise reality would dissolve.
And so people, good bad and indifferent, and of all levels of intelligence, piously repeated a story which rationally, on the face of it wouldn’t fool my cat Havelock, who is, frankly, mentally disabled.
They had to. Because if they didn’t, the world was not what they thought, and they couldn’t go on. They just couldn’t.
And if you’re thinking of all the people, good bad and indifferent and everything in between who piously believe that BLM really was about black lives — and who also, despite video evidence — believe Kyle Rittenhouse killed black men, not white psychopaths. Or piously believe a guided tour of the Capitol by unarmed people was “an insurrection.” Or who really, piously believe that Covid 19 was the worst thing ever, fully deserving the Covidiocy treatment. Or–
Yeah. That’s what it is. They have to believe the institutions and means of information they always trusted, otherwise their world will dissolve. And they’ll swallow the most ridiculous lies to keep their world and their guideposts intact. Because otherwise they’ll undergo a mental experience much like a primitive whose tribe has lost a war and who is unfortunate enough not to be killed: he’ll have to change everything about himself involuntarily.
This is not invincible. It’s getting broken little by little.
What level of cognitive dissonance does it take for it to break?
Well, it didn’t break for the Germans when they could smell the smoke of the burning human bodies down the road. It didn’t break for them when their nation became desperate enough to recruit old, broken down men and beardless youths.
They still believed in the glorious Reich of a 1000 years. It’s just fewer believed it every day, and that the daily breakdown of civilization was exposing more and more of them to the fact they believed a lie.
Now, some never stopped believing it. I heard them mutter darkly in German about the horrible Americans who had destroyed the German dream. Not shaved-head neo-nazis, but normal guys, in a pub, after hours.
But the problem isn’t that. The vast majority of them did give it up. The problem rather is what they boomeranged into, because of the underpinnings of their culture.
They still believed in their own superiority. As well go back to the Germanic tribes, and uproot that. They still believed in strong-man government. They just fell into soft and increasingly hardening socialism.
Now, we’re not quite as bad as the Germans were, and the underpinning of our culture are different — thank heavens — and more and more people are waking every day — thank heavens on that too — because the people who took over in the color revolution are the most bumbling, bizarrely incompetent bunch of aspiring-morons in the history of humanity.
We used to marvel at some of the Roman Emperors and how they managed to stay in power, but the Romans didn’t have fast means to distribute individual opinion. We do. And yet we’re suffering through the reign of someone more imbecile and self-adoring than Commodus.
People are waking up.
Again, calm the effe down, they’re not the majority. if they were the majority, they would not have bothered developing the most exhaustive means of stealing elections ever known or turned our elections into a mockery of the word. My best estimate is that they are about 20 to 25% of the population. Because if they were any more than that they wouldn’t need so many crazy ways to circumvent our voting.
But 20 to 25% is a huge number, given what we know, what we’ve seen. It’s a massive number of people who believe a narrative that’s patently and obviously false.
In this war we’re fighting to save our nation, people who otherwise would be on our side, are fighting on the other side, convinced we’re some kind of ogre coming to devour everything good and worth fighting for. They see us through a deep fog of lies and distortions. Many of the, perhaps, are aware of what they’ve become and assume we must be the same only worse.
Imagine how hard you’d fight someone who had all of your worst characteristics magnified.
In the end we win they lose.
But Lord, the magnitude of destruction that will be needed to lift that fog of lies.
And Lord, how many good people we will lose fighting on both sides.
And even so, may the fog be lifted. May we see clearly.
And may we have the courage not to close our eyes.
“Of course,” you’ll say, “You have to be. It’s your job.” Meh. It is and it isn’t.
Being good with words is a good bonus for a fiction writer. Though honestly, it is not only not needed but it’s a double edged blessing. I mean, it makes it easier to produce readable wordage relatively quickly and easily, but on the other hand, you can get tempted to use too many of them and make them way too important for the book. So your story gets submerged in words, gasping for air.
But I like words. I will read something in a language I speak, but a different dialect or time-slang, like say regency thieves cant, and will cheerfully absorb it with no effort at all.
So it annoys me very much that the left both attributes impossible power to words. They think “As we say it, so it will be” and earnestly believe that words can control reality and the world.
They keep changing the meaning of words, and demanding we use the words they want us to, because they think if only everyone is using the same words, it will control everyone’s thoughts, and then automagically the world will change and be a paradise.
In case you have missed this about the left, they have a lot of these hare-brained ideas that go something like:
Crazy theory or idea that was never that way, ever, in the story of ever — ????– paradise.
I think, personally, the whole problem is that they think that paradise is obtainable with “this one simple trick” and that the only reason not everything is perfect all the time is that someone is fighting them. And the people who oppose them must be educated or re-educated or thwarted by all possible means.
Of all their crusades nothing is funnier and more tragic than their war with language.
Take their war on “retarded” — “retarded” was supposed to be the kinder, gentler word. I’m not sure what the words for those who simply weren’t developing properly were before but I think it was “defective” and the like while “retarded” merely implies that people are slow in developing and will slowly catch up and be normal or close to it (which to be fair applies to some real developmental issues). But of course, retarded started being used as the equivalent of “stupid.” It started with kids, but people of course picked it up.
So now we’re not supposed to use that. We’re supposed to use “developmentally disabled” because that will fix everything. Give it a nicer, kinder name, and unfortunate people will stop being born with issues, and other humans will stop being mean about it. Sure. Why not?
Or take handicapped. Remember the silly thing about “handicapable?”
That was supposed to eliminate any disability. Automagically. When it didn’t catch on, because of course handicapped people are handicapped and it doesn’t make any difference if you call them “capable.” Some will be QUITE CAPABLE of course. Particularly in this day and age, when there are various aids to and helps for your problems, and you can live a full and useful life, but you need to work harder. You have a handicap. It doesn’t mean you’re incapable, just that they don’t have as easy a time as other people. It certainly isn’t an insult.
But when the handicapable silliness didn’t catch on, they changed to “disabled” which is terrible. We went from handicapped, but potentially functional to people being disabled, and forever in need of assistance or having things done for them. They’re not able. They’re disabled, like a software function turned off.
Then we have the whole nonsense of Privileged. Privilege is private law, that is a law that treats you better than other people. I don’t know about you, but unless you are a maven of the democratic party or the relation of one — coughs in “Hunter” — you are going to have the law brought down on you with all the power possible.
So when they fling privileged around to mean anything from education to you having a little more money than you need to survive, to the ability to do math, to saving money instead of spending it all, it is meaningless, and merely sort of an incantation to tell us why we should all be equal and if we’re not, if we have an ounce more of gumption or intelligence or will power, then we’re privileged and should feel guilty and use it all in the service of others.
And please, don’t get me started on advantaged and disadvantaged. You see, sure, some of us have something more than others in terms of brain or agility or imagination or even physical strength.
But when you say someone is “advantaged” you imply that they have all the advantages. this is bullshit. If you want to see me completely helpless, present me with a plumbing problem. Of course my plumber can’t write a novel. (And why should he want to? He makes more.)
The same way when you say someone is disadvantaged usually to mean they’re criminal or broke, you imply it was these disadvantages that led them there. Now someone being a ridiculous-ass aggressive idiot, or a drug or alcohol addict who will murder for his vice, or a murderous SOB MIGHT be a disadvantage, but it doesn’t mean someone inflicted it on them. There’s usually volition and a choice to take that path because it’s easy or enjoyable.
Calling them disadvantaged implies someone advantaged others. It’s ridiculous.
And don’t get me started on calling the merely poor “disadvantaged.” Some of the greatest achieving people in the word grew up unimaginably poor. Heinlein might have been right that the worst you can do to your kids is make their lives too easy.
And you all know I find the inanity of pronouns — third person, so never used to you! — completely ridiculous.
Most of all, though, I’m offended. I’m offended on behalf of the words they insist on torturing. I’m offended by their half baked ideas. Good Lord. I could come up with better world building and plot on three hours of sleep, while dead drunk.
Do they really believe if they call seamstresses sewists or — heaven help us and defend us — sewers (I swear I’ve seen it) women who sew will feel all important and empowered? Why? WHY Would ERASING THE NAME OF A FEMALE PROFESSION BE EMPOWERING? Have they gone after taylor? I mean it’s a profession that comes in two gender varieties. Why would they eliminate the female one? How does that empower women?
It doesn’t. In fact eliminating women across the board seems to be a great trick of the equalizers. Also any minorities in any brand image need to be eliminated to free minorities, apparently.
And don’t get me started on why People of Color is fine and Colored People isn’t, and heaven forfend I ever meet a colorless person. I mean, they’d be transparent, I’d never see them coming.
On behalf of the language I want to protest. Words are lovely things and they shouldn’t be raped.
Yes, language changes, but it shouldn’t be changed as the instrument of a deranged utopian sect who can’t tell its ass from chocolate ice cream with candy sprinkles and doesn’t know if it’s ass or breakfast time.
I fell in love with the English language, before I fell in love with America, before I fell in love with my husband.
It is my language of choice, my own. Stop playing with it.
If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo,please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months(unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying.– SAH
AGAIN, SOME AUTHORS AND THEIR SELF PROMO! WITH STORIES BY BOTH DANIEL M. HOYT AND SARAH A. HOYT: both of which are probably the start of series, and Sarah’s being one that you maniacs wished on her. (The muse murder mysteries. I blame you.):
FROM ROB HOWELL WITH STORIES BY DANIEL HOYT AND SARAH HOYT:Bonds of Valor
A private eye saves his dead friend.
The Black Company deals with something fishy.
Deathmages, space mages, and forgotten magic.
It’s all here in fourteen stories of valor, heroism, and bonds that tie folk together, for good or ill. There are bonds of love, oaths to gods, and life-long friends.
Will the old, crusty worn-out veteran find his new partner just might be something? Will the knight learn humility from those who serve him? Will Indrajit and Fix restore the path of true love?
Or will the bonds between characters break under the pressure of evil wizards, ancient enemies, or massive dragons?
The Continuing adventures of Texas Ranger Jim Reade and his blood-brother Toby Shaw in the days of the Republic of Texas! A pair of eccentric English explorers ask for a guide into a dangerous country, seeking not a fortune … but something more! There is the mystery of a haunted house on Galveston Island to unravel, and the safety of a beneficiary to an unusual will — and more! The old wild west rides again in this continuing set of adventures from the pen of historical novelist Celia Hayes!
Life at the Frog Pond Bar was usually quiet, aside from a few Marine versus SEAL fights. Its owner, Hal Gleason, referred to it as the best way for him to slowly go broke in retirement.
But trouble doesn’t just happen on deployment, and when the wife of an active duty SEAL comes to him after some toughs try to kidnap her daughter, he starts getting the team back together again.
The more he digs, the more he finds that the kidnapping attempt was just the tip of a star-spanning criminal cartel. They have untold money, guns, and drugs… and Hal has old age, treachery, connections, and more than a few tricks up his sleeve.
A short novel and a short story exploring two very different effects of the feminine element on Legionnaires, told by the master of Foreign Legion adventure!
Lady of the Legion
She came in over the wall of a lonely French fort in the Sahara one night. And the commander decided to sacrifice himself and his men, rather than give her up to an Arab bridegroom.
Madame Takes Over
Rules Of Engagement don’t apply to the widow of a Legionnaire…
This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction giving the stories genre and historical context.
Something about the rugged individualism of the cowboy strikes a chord in us all. A certain romanticism exists in the feeling that cowboys inhabit a simpler world; one that’s clearer, brighter and makes more sense than our day to day existence.
Cowboys have a certain reckless reputation and that doesn’t fade away when you move them into space and onto alien worlds. Men and women who face hardships and rope a living out of an unforgiving landscape without waiting for orders from a distant authority. They do what needs to be done and take care of their animals, their people, and themselves.
Join us for ten more stories about cowboys who have headed for the stars and distant planets.
In a brutal cross-dimensional Empire where everything is about ownership and control, and the strongest mentalists rule . . . Karl Traeger has a problem.
His elderly father has died, and sixteen-year-old Karl is going to be at the mercy of very unsavory relatives. And since he’s the oldest of his generation—ahead of his cousins in the line of inheritance—he knows his uncle will never Present him: never allow him to demonstrate his fitness for the title of Lord. No, he’ll be one more brain-chipped servant. But maybe if he moves quickly, before anyone knows his father is dead . . . he can save himself, then get to work saving the people he cares about—maybe even save his budding antiques business.
A stand alone novella in the Fall of the Alliance Series.
Antalia — Where queens and Huntresses rule. Antalia — Where magic is anathema and men obey women. Antalia — Where land, water, and people tremble at the break-point!
Since the Conquest, queens and their Hunters rule Antalia, banishing all magic in favor of technology—steam and sparks. Men, too impulsive and irrational to govern, live in respectful obedience lest more disasters befall their people. Andre Kalisson, an engineer and hydrologist by trade and dutiful royal employee, tumbles into a secret that could unmake his world. The people who once lived in Antalia used magic, magic that threatens to break its bounds and destroy the land in the process.
Antalia — Where an unwilling mage, a printer, and an archivist can change everything!
Captain Michael LaGrange and Damina have been negotiating over their future together since the day they met. Both stubborn, both cautious, neither wants to make a decision either of them will regret. Desire and friendship build into a need they can’t ignore any longer. Unfortunately, duty has to come first and they find themselves on a good will tour prior to the Prince’s wedding. When something goes wrong at an event, they’re forced apart, and into the machinations of a shadowy conspiracy. Kidnapping, injury and a mysterious illness conspire to keep them apart. To get together they’ll have to get away but they’re surrounded by enemies and good allies are hard to find.
Fiera’s victories angered the Censor into deploying the force needed to retake his lost worlds. Marcus Landry is now trapped on an occupied world, trying to fight back against the Censorate. Can he win without hurting the innocent civilians trapped in the crossfire, including his wife and child?
Life has been a nightmare for Mitya ever since he was arrested on trumped-up charges and exiled to Siberia. But this labor camp in the far north of Magadan Oblast hides a secret far more terrible than the merely human evils of the Great Terror. For the universe we know is not the only one, and there are places where it interpenetrates with universes where the laws of nature as we know them do not operate, where humanity has no place. Worlds inhabited by beings ancient and terrible, to whom humanity are slaves, playthings, food.
Five years ago, astronaut Jack Templeton took the spacecraft Magellan to the farthest reaches of our solar system, never to be heard from again.
Until now.
When the Magellan suddenly reappears where an undiscovered planet was suspected to be, it poses more questions than answers. How did Jack survive all this time? Can he make it back to Earth before his life support runs out? And what is the object long thought to be the elusive “Planet Nine”?
In a race against time, Jack’s former crewmate Traci Keene spearheads a desperate effort to outfit a rescue mission. But she has competition. Agencies of both American and foreign governments have their own agendas, and saving rogue astronauts isn’t among them.
And at the edge of all that is known, a gateway to the unknown awaits.
Jetay must destroy the Spiderstar…with or without his new allies! The psychic warrior Jetay has freed himself and his brother from slavery, and joined Lady Lanati and the Partisans in their interstellar war against the evil Red Knights. Unfortunately the Partisan military is an undisciplined, poorly led force, and the Red Knights grow ever closer to their goal of unleashing the ancient, deadly weapon known as the Spiderstar. Lanati has a plan to destroy the Spiderstar, but it would force Jetay to choose between love and duty. Even worse, he might have to use the same memory removal techniques which were once used against him….
In a land where ten thousand fairy tales come true, Alissandra knows she is in one when an encounter with a strange woman gives her magical gifts, and another gives her sisters a curse.
And she knows that despite the prospects of enchantments, cursed dances, marvelous birds, and work as a scullery maid, it is wise of her to set out, and seek her fortune.
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:DIVERGENT*
*I swear I thought I’d put it up, but I’m on four hours of sleep and things slid. Of course you can carry on with silliness!
Yeah, yeah, I know, but for various reasons I’m late on everything and developing a sore throat too. (Mostly because the guy I sleep with has been keeping crazy hours, and after 37 years, I’m really bad at sleeping when he’s not in bed, BUT I personally don’t function well on less than 6 hours a night.)
So, I’m stealing this explanation:
And now, some news from clown world, in which the Babylon Bee is the best paper:
When I was younger I had a lot of friends who used the i-ching (a Chinese divination book, also called The Book of Changes.) It is believed also that Phillip K. Dick used it plotting the Man in the High Castle.
Anyway, there is one line that keeps surfacing in there. It will predict/describe a bunch of horrible things and end with “no blame.”
Which goes to prove that an ancient Chinese oracle is saner than the Marxism that’s been inculcated into most of the minds in the West since the turn of the twentieth century, just about.
And if you’re going to tell me there’s no Marxism in your head, think again. I still keep finding bits of it in my own head, though I’ve done all I can to clear it out. It’s in the history you were taught, it’s in the reasoning of various agencies that have power over us, and a bit of it trickles into our head also.
The Marxism I keep finding on the right is the bizarre idea that the elaborate plans of the planners are coming through perfectly; that something planned by he Soviet Union in the sixties is now coming to fruition. For the love of Bob, give me a break. Those people could never make anything they wanted happen, which is why life in the Soviet union was brutal and miserable. Yeah, some of the breakage might look sort of kind of like that, but it’s not. Not if you dig behind. What you’re seeing is people on the left taking credit for the working of their plan.
They work that way. They might be learning to do it ahead of time Now there’s something calling itself a name I can’t recall but which amounts to “Market ruin socialism.”
The other thing that infects the right, and honestly probably is amplified by connecting to some of the more miserable Christian puritan strains, is the bizarre idea that being wealthy is bad and leads to ruin and downfall.
Rome fell not because it was wealthy, but because it had a large, oppressive, centralized state that trampled all over citizens. No, that’s not what they taught you. Because the Soviet Union put out the idea that wealth itself was bad and would destroy a country. They did it to defend themselves against the accusation we were more wealthy. You’re not required to believe it. And you shouldn’t. Because frankly we’ve been crazy-wealthy for about 100 years. And by Roman, or medieval, or even current Chinese standards, even the Soviet Union was wealthy. None of which had anything to do with any kind of decadence. Equaling wealth with decadence ties in with making envy a virtue, which is pure Marxism.
However, the Marxism running rampant through our society and creating strife, and driving most of us insane is the idea that “there always has to be someone to blame.”
No, I’m not going to tell you that no one is to blame for the mess that the Bidentia has made of the nation and world. We were all here, we all know the blame. And we know who the blame lies with for the stolen election too. That’s not the point.
The point is the big movements of history. Equity makes sense to the left, because, if someone had it badly in the past, some other group — not an individual or a small group, not a system of belief but another group, definable as a group by some characteristic the left gives a hang about, like skin color, or sex, or who you like to sleep with — has to have been oppressing them.
This is crazy cakes.
Instead of seeing humans who at times, in some places, had a terrible time due to this or that, they see that if a group — say black people — were enslaved the fault must be of another group, as Americans in the 20th century would identify a different group.
So, for instance, slavery, they’re convinced was invented by white people to enslave black people. Because– I don’t know. Because the only way to triumph is to drive someone else down?
This ignores the fact slaves were abundant when they were because of vast tribal wars and movements in Africa. As in most tribal societies, the people taken prisoner were either enslaved or killed. So, arguably black people were enslaving black people in Africa. The fact that there was some place to sell them after might have saved their lives. (Though mostly slaves only survived well in the US and maybe parts of Europe. Being sent to South America or the Caribbean was a death sentence, just slower like being sent to Siberia would be later.)
So while there were massive injustices committed, the worst were committed by the group that the left identifies as all one, against itself. These things happen. Again, from the top, every race has enslaved every other race at some time. And it is only in our country right now and in other parts of the west that it’s illegal. (Which doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. That wide open border is very useful for human trafficking, as well as drugs. And it’s not any particular race, even.)
Or take the “women have been oppressed throughout history.” I agree. Women have. But the problem here is that men were oppressed too.
Most of the things they point to as female oppression came from the fact that there was no way to stop a woman of fertile age from getting pregnant — by rape even — except by circumscribing her to a small circle of people who knew and cared for her. Women didn’t go to war (yes, a few did under cover, and yes, there were always camp followers, and yes, those sometimes fought in ancient and medieval battles, but it’s not the same thing) because a battalion of women if captured became breeders for the enemy, something that people didn’t want happening to their wives and daughters. Women didn’t go to war, because pregnant women are not as functional as men. Women didn’t go to war because our upper body strength is smaller. Etc. Etc. Etc. Women could command in war, and often did, if born to a position that enabled them to do so. But they were profoundly unsuited to the scrum.
Women didn’t learn in general. There were exceptions. But yeah, the vast majority of women weren’t educated.
Here’s the secret: neither were the vast majority of men.
Even in the early twentieth century in Portugal a lot of older adults had never been taught to read and write. They had jobs that didn’t involve writing, and women in particularly were often almost bizarrely busy, because minding the baby, cooking (not to mention gathering the food and often growing it) and weaving it were all activities of normal every day women, in addition to brewing (water not being safe most people drank alcohol all the time, even if “just” beer.) In addition, wives of craftsmen often helped in the craft in various ways.
Yes, women were oppressed.
But the left, infected with Marxism, imagines that this is because men stood around, twirling their moustaches and plotting the next point of oppression.
I can’t tell you how many times, when I was in lefty chat groups, some woman would wring her hands and wonder how we could keep men from “taking us back there again”, “back there” being some hell of submission and un-personhood.
When I’d started to open the door to the political closet, I’d say things like “by giving as much freedom and rights to each individual regardless of sex and making everyone equal under the law.” You know that cartoon where the guy saying the obvious thing gets tossed out the window? That’s what happened.
Because in Marxism, due to the fact Marx’s mind was small, and probably rat infested, In his small, grifty (totally a word) if someone was a victim, someone else was victimizing them. And the someone was a different class. (Which in the hands of Gramsci became a skin color or being female. And in the hands of the current craziness extended to sexual preference or coming from a country they approve of or–)
And our educational institutions being soaked with it have taught generations to think “Women had it bad in the past because men were oppressed. Then heroic feminists marched shoulder to shoulder, and now we’re free, but those evil men are gathering and plotting and will enslave us again any minute.”
The problem with this type of thought is that it works in a movie (maybe. Barely) but it can’t work in reality. It’s like that stupid meme on facebook saying that since the middle ages women’s garments were forbidden to have pockets, because men were afraid the women would put spells in them!
People with an education. People who read and think and try to have a life of the mind share that meme and piously believe it. Now think about it for two seconds.
The middle ages WHERE? because even if you restrict it to Europe, culture and clothing were radically different. Also WHO forbid it? Not “men”. In the middle ages the average man as much say in governance as the average cat. And suppose a king was crazy enough to dictate women’s garments should be made without pockets. How is he going to enforce it? the fabric was spun, cut and sewn by women. It was mostly a private activity of women for women, often themselves and their families. Sure, there were fashions, but they might actually be hyper-local. If a fashion spread it was usually because of an advance in either fabric or dress making technique that made the clothes more becoming, more comfortable, or preferably both.
Also, most women had pockets. The pockets were usually tie-on and hanging from a belt. Also, if you read anything written by pre-modern women (yeah, some knew how to write.) they carried stuff in their sleeves, and … well…. between their boobs a lot, depending on the level of security they wanted. If they really were carrying spells, (or poisons, or whatever) that’s where they’d put them, not their pockets. The pockets were for money, keys, a drop loom, or knitting or whatever they were doing at the time.
But women who are educated and smarter than the average rock share that meme and feel so smart, because it plays to the idea “women were oppressed” (or are, due to the lack of pockets in most modern female clothing) so it must be the men’s fault. REEEEEEEEE.
In point of fact, the lack of pockets in most female clothing is because most women don’t like their silhouette with bulges. I’m old enough and fat enough I couldn’t care less, and I’m also ADD AF and have locked myself out of the house enough that I carry my keys in my pockets everywhere. I also carry my phone, because if I grabbed the wrong keys (say) that way I can call Dan.
However, I remember being young and attractive and not wanting bulges on my person.
So in the matter of pockets, the people oppressing women are mostly women.
For a lot of the other stuff, from the fact that we’re more likely to get raped, to the fact that we give birth in pain, etc. the culprit is biology. And you can rail and scream about biology all you want to. The only modifications you can do are after-market and they don’t work.
Thinking that in the middle ages or at any time, women were enslaved by a male conspiracy is both hilarious and sad. Do they imagine all men know each other? communicate through mental telegraph? Send notes to each other? “Bob, we understand you haven’t beaten your wife in three months. Do better.”
Yeah, women had fewer of the rights we consider important — not necessarily them, though — because their functions were less public, and more having to do with keeping the household running, and keeping the kids alive. If you value the public stuff over the household stuff, it’s because you’re living in a post-contraceptive world of such abundance that you know you can birth a single child and your odds he’ll outlive you are enormous. It wasn’t so. Arguably women had the more important job.
Were they beaten and treated like chattel?
Oh, you sweet summer child. Everyone was beaten and treated like chattel. Maybe not the king or the prince heir. (Even then depended where and when.) Men who worked for others could and did get beaten and abused. So did apprentices who were basically sold to their masters and if they got a bad one were treated like little better than slaves.
It is the sad tendency of humans to hurt other humans. Not all humans, of course, but a significant enough majority to cause untold tragedy. And when life was closer to the bone and resources scarcer, the tendency to abuse others was higher. But this wasn’t something done or decided as a group; it’s not passed on by some corruption of the blood; and ALL of us are descended from victims and perpetrators, who were all races, sexes, creeds and orientations.
So… Sometimes things suck. No blame.
Take the places where the Marxist thinking is outright insane today.
Take science fiction. (Remember to give it back. I’m running a month late, so still doing mystery, but sf will be next.)
We hear much about how women were/are terribly discriminated against because the percentage of them who are published/do well is tiny, compared to 51% of the population.
But I was the weird girl who read science fiction, before I wrote it. I wanted to talk about space travel and the best way to create space colonies, and the pitfalls, and– I wanted to discuss if time travel was even possible, and how it could be implemented, and– I wanted to discuss robots and artificial intelligence. I wanted to discuss how if aliens existed we might not even know they were there, because they’d be so different…
Yep, it’s the cartoon with the guy being tossed out the window again. Most of the women in my classes — and I was in gifted classes from 7th grade on — read either romances or historical fiction. Sometimes mystery. Keep in mind that reading for pleasure was already a minority thing (still is. Has always been.) Most of them actually only read newspapers, magazines and non-fiction in their subjects. So the ones who read for fun were already considered weird. But those of us — who am I kidding, for most of that time it was one of me — who read science fiction were the weirdos own weirdos, looked at as though we’d spontaneously grown extra heads and tentacles.
Most of my science fiction reading friends were male, and for a while older. Most of them I met waiting outside book stores on Heinlein release day, but I’ve seen pictures of that time. It wasn’t as stark in the Us, because it’s a huge country, so even a small interest group is big enough to make a showing, but most SF conventions until I want to say the eighties or so were mostly guys.
And even today, you find most women are fans of the TV shows, or of anime, or of fantasy. If you had an SF only con, written only con, it would still be 75% male. And a few of us weirdos.
My question is: why should people who have no interest in reading the stuff be well represented among its writers? What sense does that make?
Well, because if there’s fewer women, they’re oppressed. And that means that someone is oppressing them.
… Because Marxism is a binary and infantile view of reality, and therefore it doesn’t realize that “no blame” exists.
What set me on this path of thought was some disabled activist claiming that difficulties the disabled face would be much less without the normal people.
Think about this for a moment. it’s a group that’s literally defined by being less able to move/do stuff in the real world. But of course, if they are a group, and things aren’t wonderful for them, someone has to be to blame, and it must be their polar opposite. So, if the disabled (differently abled is a lie) have problems, it must, perforce be because the able-bodied are conspiring to keep them down.
Only a mind exquisitely indoctrinated in Marxism can think that way.
Sometimes life just sucks. Sometimes there’s no blame. In fact, probably most of the time.
Every time you come across one of these, ask them in logical steps how this can be the other group’s fault, and what evidence they have.
Because it’s important to get at the cult programing of Marxism and dig under.
According To Hoyt 