Socialism and the Democratic Dictatorship – by Matthew Bowman

So there I was, minding my own business, and a Munchkin who refused to go to sleep at the usual bedtime. Really, I’m not sure what he was expecting to accomplish by staying up late.

But it meant I came across this particular gem of myopic intelligence looking for a handout, shared into the Secret Headquarters of All Things Insane on an obscure website called something like Bookface. Now, I’m going to cover every single word of it, so if you’re not used to the kind of statist idiocy you can find online, please shield your eyes lest it burn a permanent afterimage into your retinas.

Now, being tired and a bit strung out from Munchkin’s antics (really, child, you have to be at least three years old before building a proper death ray out of nothing but Lego bricks, it’s a choking hazard), I decided to do the smart thing and just walk away from it.

Ha. No. I fisked it. And Sarah liked it, so she said she’d be all “disappointed” if I didn’t write a blog post for her.

I know what that means, and I am not prepared for a visit from Greebo’s minions. So here’s the blog post.

If you’re not already familiar with the Asymmetric Bullshit Rule, please familiarize yourself:

Yes, that’s right. That tiny little socialist screed has a lot of words that mean nothing, but I’m about to write many, many more words about them, because the problem is that even more people actually live under the delusion that these words in this kind of configuration are Profound, Meaningful, and Wise.

“But, Mr. Bowman, you’re a religious man. Socialism is a religion. Why are you persecuting them?”

Hell. No, really, because hell. Not the Big-H hot place that’s somewhere in excess of 200 C (the ignition range of sulfur, AKA brimstone), but the living, mortal hell that socialists bring to every country where it gets tried. Just ask Sarah’s cousin in Venezuela. Oh, wait, you can’t. Good thing for socialists that there were a lot of other “disappeared,” so it goes from tragedy to statistic. Whew! Break out the Che Guevera shirts!

“But Mr. Bowman, what about Scandinavia?”

That should be another shirt. “What about Scandinavia?” with a picture of Europe on fire. Scandinavia isn’t socialist. They used to be headed in that direction, but they saw the writing on the wall and have been rolling back many of their programs. That’s beyond the scope of this fisk, so please, go ahead, ask in the comments. I’m sure you’ll come across someone who will give you lots of good, hard facts you’ll be able to safely ignore.

Okay, let’s get into the fisk. The original will be in italics, and my commentary from this point on will be in bold.

“Socialism: The government owns most of the major industries.”

Try “all.” This is helped out by the way that many of them die out anyway. That’s what happens when you choke the life out of someone in order to give life to someone else. There’s always something lost along the way. But keep going, I’m sure someday you’ll get it right.

“This is an extreme system that seems to fail.”

Okay, so this type of socialism is pure socialism, so it’s extreme? If extreme is bad, then clearly there must be something about it that fails. But what does that mean?

Let’s look at liberty instead. What’s extreme liberty? Well, a logical examination would indicate that “extreme liberty” is either anarchism or so close as to be indistinguishable. I don’t want anarchy, but if your goal is liberty and nothing else, then true, pure anarchy solves that. Society falls apart, but that’s a feature, not a bug. You could also argue that extreme liberty is ultimate isolation, being the only human you will ever meet. No society seems to me even worse than a broken society, but even if the drawbacks aren’t worth it to me, I can’t deny that it is still liberating.

Yet can socialism deliver on its promise even at great cost?

When socialism falls apart, you have a failure of the very thing it promises to preserve: equality and well-being. Taken to its logical conclusion, you wind up with the same destruction of society as you have under anarchy, with no industry or agriculture to support large populations or making the tools necessary to efficiently defend against one group raiding the supplies of another. You have all the disadvantages of anarchy without any of the benefits of individual freedom, because all that’s left is the enforcement of the party leaders directing The People — and The People become no better than serfs.

This might, theoretically, not result in a plutocracy; but that doesn’t mean it’s ever actually happened. EVERY instance of pure socialism has resulted in a ruling class concentrating all the wealth in the name of defending the people. That’s feudalism repackaged.

We’re talking about something that was defeated by the HORSE COLLAR, and yet people keep trying to bring it back its essence under another name.

Sheesh. Already I have so freaking many words, and I’m only two lines in. Bullshit be asymmetrical.

“Corporate Socialism: (our current system)”

If everything is socialism, then nothing is. You just want to talk about corporations now.

“The government mostly benefits wealthy corporations.”

How so? Bailouts?

Since this is directed at disguising the Democrat Party agenda, we have to assume that this is an attempt to paint the status quo as being held up by conservatives. When’s the last time you saw a conservative saying we needed more bailouts?

SHUT UP, GEORGE. I asked for a conservative. And while Bush was not all bad, it is absolutely unbelievable to me that a Texan president’s eight years has been outdone by three years of a NEW YORK LIBERAL. If anyone managed to win those odds in Vegas, my hat’s off to you, because no one could have predicted that.

No conservative politician has ever wanted the government to bail out any company. This isn’t even a No True Scotsman moment; it just simply hasn’t happened. The closest you get is government-backed insurance, which most conservatives (grudgingly) accept because the companies have to pay into them in the first place.

Now, frequently the Democrats have reached for the idea that tax breaks equal bailouts, and this statement from the original post so vague (“benefits”) that we can safely assume the original author is trying the same here. There are two issues with that.

First, “not raising taxes” is only the same thing as “benefiting” if you assume that the money belongs to the government in the first place; in which case it’s not a tax, and we all work for one giant corporation. Wait, isn’t that what you hate?

Second, the statist left has loved to say that corporations aren’t people, but they also love to have it both ways. Here, they act like corporations get away scot-free (ironically, when’s the last time you saw a Scot free of England? But I digress). However, if corporations aren’t people, then the people who run AND work for corporations get taxed twice. First they have to pay corporate taxes (monthly, unless it’s quarterly, unless they’re nonprofit, unless they still have to pay certain taxes anyway — don’t blame me, the IRS rules are written by hyperactive German engineers snorting Pixie Stix), and THEN they have to use their remaining money to pay their employees, who THEN have to pay taxes on taxed money. So if corporations aren’t people, then why tax these people twice?

Ugh. I have to speed up. BUT THERE’S SO MUCH WRONG.

“Most major industries are privately owned (capitalism),”

The only way they can get away with this “most” statement is by saying that the military is an industry. Really. If you’ve been lucky enough to have not encountered that argument so far, then I’m sorry to break your cherry. The socialist left loves claiming that the military is “the means of production of war,” and therefore the military is socialist, and therefore the government is socialist. They weren’t getting anywhere with the roads-and-bridges argument, so I guess they thought this would work out for them.

There are private military contractors who might get involved in warfare, but under international law that’s not the same thing, so that’s really all they have. I think it’s just because they think we’re so brainwashed into loving the military that they want to either convince us we’re already socialist or they think we might turn anti-military under the weight of their impeccable logic. (I threw up a little in my mouth writing those last few words.)

They can’t say that about firefighters and police, because there are private companies that do the same job. I haven’t seen anyone say that “prosecuting criminal defenses” is socialism, but give it time; technically, no one does that other than the state.

“but still receive massive handouts, bailouts, and other benefits at the expense of the taxpayer.”

At the hands of the party promoting socialism, doofus.

Yes, the Republicans have experimented with that, and it’s always a disaster; and the experiments normally extend only to tariffs, which I think are stupid (it’s just another tax and impacts the economy accordingly), with very few actual bailouts. As I said before, those are always decried by the conservatives. Hell, most conservatives who lose their livelihoods would rather claw their way up out of poverty rather than accept charity, and those who do usually limit it only to family.

“It is driven by corporations’ ability to influence the laws with large amounts of money that results in legislation that favors their ability to make even larger amounts of money.”

Do you even know what a run-on sentence is, you grammarless insult to an already-bastard tongue?

That’s called crony capitalism, and the left has been promising to get rid of that for CENTURIES now. Yes, just pass this next law! It’ll work THIS TIME! That’s how we got the 16th and 17th amendments, and the underlying promise of utopia through government regulation also got us the 18th as well. (Yes, Prohibition was pushed by progressives and socialists; look it up, dumbass.)

“In this system the wealthy become more wealthy at the expense of the lower classes. This system is essentially a Plutocracy (ruled by the wealthy).”

I already covered this point responding to Socialism. Moving on! Oh, hey, we’re finally to the next section.

“Democratic Socialism: The government mostly benefits the citizens.”

Yay! Excellent! That’s the whole concept behind the three purposes of government!

Wait, “mostly”? What’s this “mostly” crap? If you’re instituting a government that isn’t 100% intended to benefit its citizens, then what in the name of Ginsberg’s taxidermist are you ACTUALLY DOING?

See, I’m going to take a moment in the vain hope that someone, somewhere, will read this post with an open mind and think about what the actual purposes of government might be. The following is as concise a summary of conservative and small-L libertarian philosophy as I can manage.

1) Secure and facilitate voluntary agreements and cooperation among its citizens and serve as impartial arbiter, because you can’t have a cohesive society without enforcing agreements.

2) To defend citizens against threats both foreign and domestic, because you can’t keep a society without protecting it.

3) To aid citizens in disaster situations and take steps to prevent public disaster situations, because you can’t maintain society without planning for the worst.

Government action beyond these three purposes is best avoided, which is why we support small government, low tax burdens, cutting or removing government programs that can be handled by private enterprise, and moving government agencies to the smallest and most local level possible for their function.

Will “democratic socialism” give this to us? Considering that everyone who supports and promotes it wants MORE government, HIGHER taxes, REDUCED private enterprise, and CENTRALIZED government, I highly doubt it. But what do I know? I’m just a knuckle-dragging conservative who actually read books in college without red covers.

“Most major industries are privately owned (capitalism),”

Fisked above.

“but they have to stand on their own without handouts from the government.”

This is so obviously an attempt to appeal to conservatives that I’m not even insulted. I’m just amused. You REALLY think that a rightist is going to fall for the claim that socialism increases personal responsibility and fiscal solvency? Really?

“The tax burden previously funneled to the wealthy corporations is used to improve the lives of citizens instead.”

Again, this only works if you believe that all money belongs to The State, and we all work for a giant corporation called The State. A tax that does not exist does not equal government support.

“This enables the government to help fund improvements to public services such as: Police, Firemen, Libraries, Roads and Interstates, Education, and Healthcare.”

Every single one of those things is currently funded by government, and two of them absolutely should not be. Can you guess which ones?

“The system is driven by people working together and lifting each other up.”

Haha.

Oh, wait, you’re serious. Let me laugh harder.

“In this system the middle class thrives and poverty decreases.”

This has already happened under what you called corporate socialism. Even the statist left, masters of goalpost movement, can’t move the goalposts fast enough to keep up with the growth of middle class wealth in the United States over the last hundred years alone. When you add in England and go back nine hundred years to the document that is the most direct ancestor of the Constitution (the Coronation Charter of 1100, look it up), you can see so clearly that middle class growth is directly due to the freedom to perform private business that you’ll briefly think you have the necessary clarity of vision to read a map revealing the location of your gluteus overly maximus.

“This system is more Democratic (ruled by the people) than our current system.”

How so? Because you’ve increased the regulatory burden on ordinary citizens? Because you’ve made them more dependent on government handouts? Because you’ve driven everyone who can leave to get out, leaving only those who have no choice but to accept a 100% voter return for El Dictadora? (And yes, I do understand Spanish pronouns better than any current Democrat presidential candidate.) You can call it a democratic dictatorship, but it has to be one or the other.

Go back and caress your tear-and-other-stained copy of The Communist Manifesto, you pompous dick-nosed slimy idiotic syphilitic camel-infested bundle of shameless quarter-witted monkey-twisting puny nosehairs. You’re about as useful as a condom dispenser in a Vatican toilet.

Now I just need to get my Munchkin to sleep.

Matthew Bowman can be found at his apolitical Novel Ninja blog (desperately in need of new blog posts but still open for business and accepting manuscripts for editing), where he is frequently confused for a moderate by the ill-prepared; and at Write of Center Authors on Facebook, where he is in the process of setting up a writing-support organization for freedom-loving authors, editors, publishers, and cover artists. He’s not normally this caustically creative, but baby-induced tiredness makes him loopy and Sarah assured him it would be, on occasion, hilarious.

Part of the problem with humans is that we tend to get used to “how things have always been.”

And when those “things” are comfortable for us, it’s hard to imagine them changing.

Sure, the human animal is adaptable, but sometimes it takes us a while to figure out how to work around when things change. For instance, say we move the furniture in the house: if I come downstairs in the middle of the night to get water or deal with screaming cats (it happens) I will walk carefully around where the sofa used to be and then walk right into where it is, or perhaps trip over the coffee table and fall on the cat. (In addition to my being completely night blind, I’m usually without my glasses in these excursions.)

And then there’s the bigger patterns. I mean, you eventually learn to walk around the new place for the sofa.

But if you read fiction — or non-fiction — written around big historical transitions you’ll hear a great lament for “how things used to be.”  For instance Agatha Christie’s people often lament the quality of something “post war” (and that the first world war.)

However, I think right now we’re in the middle of such a large and…. strange change, not immediately obvious that most people who were comfortable in the previous conformation are having trouble adapting.

What do I mean by the nature of the change?  Take blogs, or ebooks. Same thing really.  When they were first considered, talked about, everyone was full of “this is the new thing now.”

Only it wasn’t. I attended and sat at the most panels on how ebooks would change the industry back in the early nineties.  And then nothing happened. Because reading ebooks on your computer was cumbersome, and as a friend put it, “Who wants to carry even a laptop (they were bigger then too) to the bathroom to read their novel?”

As for blogs, those of us who were on them right after 9/11 expected them to have this huge impact on the elections and… well, everything. Because this new distributed media was so self-obviously better than the clearly biased and lying newspapers and networks.

Only, nothing happened.  Until it did.

I think they call this the mechanics of the sand pile, where the grains of sand are shifting slowly, inside, but the outside looks completely immobile, and steady.  And then suddenly the whole pile shifts over.

I understand it’s how a lot of social change occurs.  And though in this case the change was partly technological, it was still a social change, a breaking of habits and ways of doing things.  For instance, I used to subscribe to three newspapers which I read religiously every morning before getting to work. (The Gazette, the Denver Post and the Wall Street Journal.)  And honestly, I dropped them one by one, more because I hadn’t got around to renewing, and then realized I was reading my news on line and didn’t need them.

Kind of like that but society wide.

Ebooks finally started coming into their own in 2010. I’m not 100% sure we’re done with their peak yet. I think there are things to come that will make all this seem like early days.

And the first revolution in which the traditional media showed their impotence was 2016.  And even then I’m not going to say it was blogs. Might not have been. Europe seems to be caught in the middle of the same thing, and as far as I can tell, for various social reasons, they don’t have blogs like we have blogs. (Explaining to my mom what’s now a big part of my life is nigh impossible.)

Anyway, I think this is causing some confusion, blindness and otherwise inexplicably stupid behavior in people who never seemed stupid before.  This is what I call The Years the Masks Fell off.

Look, take a just-now thing: the DNC says that all precincts in Iowa WERE counted. The app recorded every vote, they say. They just need to tally them.

Turns out that’s probably not precisely true.

As a friend noticed, that’s not precisely a lie, that’s just ‘making sh*t up.’

We’re seeing that a lot from the other side of the isle suddenly. Unbelievably stupid behavior like the sham wow impeachment.

They keep telling us “Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?” and being shocked and appalled when we choose our lying eyes.

In the non-political side, my calling, as it were, writing and publishing, we’re seeing equally unbelievably stupid behavior from publishers: from trying to play the same old “push” games and being shocked and appalled when they don’t work, (even though Barnes and Noble is a spent force, and the traditional reviewers eclipsed by Joe Schmo with a blog.)  They heed the once a year (at most three times) schedule, even though indie has changed expectations and people expect at least four to six books in a series a year.  But more importantly they do crazy stuff like overprice ebooks because that will SURELY force us to buy hardcovers. Or, my absolute favorite, they will scream at us how ignorant and what terrible people we are for not reading their precious pushed Polly.

And then they’re shocked, nay astonished, when these tactics don’t work.  While we who are standing outside this look at them and go “Who would think that would work? Some two year old?”

I mean half of the bizarre behavior of our government and its agencies falls under that heading too.  “Who could think that would work/wouldn’t be found out/made any sense?”

But the thing you have to understand is that you’re not dealing with stupid people. Not by half. You’re dealing with people who were very competent and comfortable in — for lack of a better term — the previous paradigm of politics, or publishing or whatever.

The more comfortable they were; the easier it was for them, the harder it is to accept that it’s gone and it’s not coming back

For instance, the dems could trust the media would cover for them absolutely and completely, and that their pettiness, idiocy or outright corruption would never be revealed.

They got used to it, they got comfortable. They got to believing it was their natural right. It was just the way things were. They were the good people. Their hearts were pure. No one would ever look into their behavior outside the limelight.

If some psychological tests are correct, they grew to believe they were entitled to corruption and unethical behavior for all the “good” they did, such as Clinton thinking he was entitled to all the women he wanted for “fighting for women’s rights” (Which for men like him always mean abortion, but never mind.)

They can’t adapt. They can’t believe things have changed.

In the same way editors and publishers in traditional publishing were in a privileged position. They didn’t even have to be nice. Writers would still be nice and subservient to them. Because, well… it was the only game in town.  And they didn’t need to be THAT good at their jobs. There were enough super readers out there with an habit to feed, that unless they published dud after dud after dud (some of them managed it) sooner or later, they buy a big hit, and make their reputation.

In their heads this is still the world they live in. They can ignore writers and what writers want, because, well, what are writers going to do?  And they can kick you out and your career is over, right? And if they want a book to do well, they just do a lot of publicity and get all the right reviewers to praise it, because what are the readers going to read.

If they could for a moment forget the experience of a life time, and see how things are done now, past the noise of twitter for the left, past the still-fawning authors-who-hope-for-validation for publishers and editors, they’d see not only has the world changed completely, but the old world is not coming back. Not ever.

No matter how many reassuring, whistling past the graveyard articles Publishers Weekly and the other rags write, we’re not all going back to buy our stories in paper bricks, from a limited selection of publishers, and waiting a year for the next opus. Not. Gonna. Happen. Not ever.

But these people can’t move on past their lived experience, their ‘it’s always been this way.’ and “it should be this way.” And the “We deserve it to be this way.”

Like deposed kings in the late nineteenth and twentieth century, they walk through packed rooms wearing their crowns, trailing their robes, and they can’t understand why no one is bowing and scraping, except maybe a few sycophants.

But the rest of the crowd is moving on, creating the future. And if they look at them at all, it’s either with mockery and pity.

It tells you something about where the “me” lives that I feel much better and more focused mentally, and therefore I’m very happy. Even though doing stuff like, Oh, showering, still takes me forever and leaves me exhausted.

I don’t even care, provided I can write and maybe finish my web site and set up the newsletter at last.  Which as I said tells you where I live.  As a friend of mine says, sometimes I need to remember to take care of the meat suit.

I’m hoping I’ve turned the corner on the “clear head” thing, because I DID have the flu vaccine (though son says it’s a poor fit) they said this should last five to seven days, and since symptoms started on Thursday, I hope to be okay on Thursday. Fingers crossed.

One thing that being sick does — I am very fond of Giovanni Guareschi’s Don Camillo books to whom, when he was about to do something inadvisable, the Lord would prostrate him with such a fever he couldn’t leave his bed — is strip away all the unnecessary stuff. Or at least stuff that can be postponed.

I mean, I’m not about to claim cleaning the house is unnecessary. When I start seeing grains of cat littler — carried in the reprobates’ paws from the laundry room — on the dark living room carpet I go a little crazy, so yeah, cleaning at least once a week is needed. But this last week it didn’t happen, and ain’t nobody going to die from that.  In the same way, when I’m in a hurry to finish books and put up revised covers, and finish work, and and and being sick allows to just sit and pretty much not do much of anything.

One of the things it allows me not to do is worry too much about the Democrat primary.

Why should I worry about a dumpster fire that just got hist by a clown car, you ask? Well, because I’m terrified that Bernie Sanders will win the nomination. You guys can be sure that he won’t win the election, and I grant you that a free and fair election would be hard for him to win, but seriously when have we had that, in my lifetime? We all know how Kennedy won, after all.

The fury on the left when they lose is that they failed to cheat enough.

And anyone who doubts that Bernie Sanders will have the full support of what remains of the international communist movement and their money is a fool. Yeah, they’re a much diminished thing, since they lost the cash cow of the USSR, but it worth it to them to put all their money into this, because if they manage it, they’ll have America’s money to finance — finally — communist revolution around the world. If they did that much with the USSR, imagine what they could do with as much as they could extract from us.

I can see the logic from their point of view, though honestly I think it would blow up in their faces in ways they can’t even imagine, from quite likely igniting the boogaloo at the first crazy authoritarian thing Bernie does, to their ruining the country so fast that there is no money for their fun and games.

But no matter how badly it would go for us, there’s a good chance none of us would survive it. And even if we did, the Constitution would for the foreseeable future live only in our hearts and the USA, the last best thing on Earth, would be gone.

I can write about it. I’d rather not live through it. I joined the glorious experiment of my own free will, and I’d rather not see it crash in my lifetime.

Of course we still don’t know if Bernie swept the stakes.  The app the democrats have been assuring us is totally fine for general voting in the late great state of California, couldn’t handle the caucus in Iowa.

Yesterday a friend posted on facebook that he didn’t understand how anyone could look at what is going on in China and believe that centralized government is a good thing.

Of course, he’s missing several things, including the essential goodness and a basic innocence of natural-born Americans, who take certain things for granted, such as that a government works for the good of their people, and that news coming out of a country or region are NEWS and not so tightly controlled that nothing the centralized government thinks bad will come out.

This is ridiculous, since the left in the US knows — or should know — to what extent they manipulate the news. Particularly those leftists at the top. And yet, the assumption of a government existing FOR the people is so baked into the fundamental genes of Americans, that even Mini-Mike (I hear he hates that, so Mini-Mike he is now forever) Bloombug thinks that China’s government is doing things to ingratiate itself with the people, as if they could be arsed.

The other thing he’s missing is the vaunting hubris of kids who were educated in such a way they were continuously told they were the best and brightest and the smartest generation to ever grace the world.  And all the while they’re maleducated, taught a lot of things that just aren’t so, and taught to avoid thinking, since thinking might lead them to step out of the herd and be cut off forever.  The problem with our youthful socialists is that they can look unblinking on the wreckage and stinking graves the regime left strewn throughout the 20th century and think this time it will be different, because, well…. it’s them.

And no, the fact that the app — with which, of course, they hoped to cheat in California, which actually if you think about it makes both eyebrows go up, because if California is  not fully under control, what is? — blew up in their faces will not correct their hubris.

Instead, it will fill them with certainty that next time they’ll do it better and infallibly.

You’ve heard the thing about people dreaming of life extension who don’t know what to do with themselves on a Sunday afternoon?

These people dream of total technocratic control over the world and can’t manage a small caucus in one US state.

May the Lord protect us and save us from the Self Esteem Children.

We’re going to need it.

Last night I realized I DEFINITELY HAVE THE FLU, not “just” an autoimmune attack because the “crushing depression out of nowhere” fell on me.

It isn’t that we don’t have reason to be anxious and depressed right now (long story) but THAT I knew and was dealing with.  It’s more like in the middle of making dinner all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I felt like the world was ending tomorrow. (Yes, I know that can be a symptom of a heart attack. And if I had no other symptoms, I’d go get checked. But I have other symptoms.)

The problem is that, being autoimmune, feeling suddenly exhausted, unable to move above a crawl, feeling like your whole body hurts, having a crushing headache and wanting to sleep the clock around aren’t really symptoms to rush to the doctor.  Instead you take an antihistamine, rest a bit, and check again.  In my case, being all clogged up isn’t even a reason of being actually ill beyond the auto-immune, since part of my auto-immune is asthma.

Unfortunately since I started having symptoms Thursday, there’s no point going in and getting formally tested.  They can’t give me anti-virals which won’t do anything.

Also unfortunately this is presenting exactly like the flu that put me in the hospital with pneumonia, as I’m not coughing at all.  When this happened before, of course, I decided I didn’t have the flu and let it go so long I ended up in ICU for 11 days.

I know better. I’m going to push liquids and see if I can loosen stuff enough I will cough. No guarantees, but I’m going to try.

Also I’m going to find or buy another of the GOOD blood ox meter so that if my oxygen goes down, I will go to doctor.  Right now I have the unreliable oxymeter (note, found the good one. Oxygen is fine.)

I have slept twelve hours. I have almost passed out in the kitchen while making myself tea. No, I don’t know why since blood ox is actually high.

I’m going to push liquids, particularly warm liquids, so I’m on tea and broth for a while.

The problem is this: even though I’ve taken the aderall, my mind is working on 2 minute cycles. If you’re waiting for anything from me that requires any braining (you know, not “Do you like ice cream and chocolate”) be it critiques, image manipulation or writing, please, please, please abide in patience until I’m over this carp.

I can’t tell you how annoying it is for someone of my disposition to not even be able to do the administrivia that comes with writing.  I have a ton of it waiting, from setting up the newsletter at last, to finishing setting up the writing website and blog, to putting the newsletter at the bottom of every published book, to designing new covers for books where they’re dated/inappropriate, to putting out paper editions.

I don’t know which I can do of those, but right now reading the instructions for how to set up the newsletter (in a different site, since the one I first did didn’t work) doesn’t even work, because it’s a paragraph at a time, and then I forget what I just read.

This drives me insane, because if I can’t write, at least I want to do the other stuff.  I might try to set up the writer’s blog, since honestly most of it is just copy pasting text and doing auxiliary pages.

Yes, I know “Woman, you feel like crap, but your main issue is that you can’t work?”  If you saw my schedule, and saw that I wasted most of January on various stupid illnesses and other issues, you’d understand.

Meanwhile I’m going to ask you to please pray (yes, even if you’re a non-believer. Just talk into that telephone. There might or might not be someone on the other side, but it can’t hurt) for my family, because January was a shower of carp, and February has amped it up and if the trend continues we’re just going to be crushed.

Meanwhile, forgive me for whining about my health like an old woman. I know I’m not old enough for that.

If I miss any posts, unless Dan puts up the pre-written, years ago “If you’re reading this” assume I’m not dead, just imitating the vegetable kingdom by drinking a lot and doing not much.

Sorry abouut the non-post-post.

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FROM EDWARD THOMAS:   Unfair Advantage (The Troubles of George McIntyre Book 1).

George McIntyre has a problem.
He caught a nanotechnological disease that turned him into a ten-foot-tall monster. He has scales, fur, horns, big teeth, claws, a face like a pony and a barbed tail. He got an upgrade in strength, speed and intelligence that is so profound it is terrifying him. But that’s not his problem.
He’s been shot, stabbed, blown up and thrown in jail. But that’s not his problem.
He’s created an intelligent robot assistant. But while she is proving to be a lot more than he bargained for, she is not his problem.
There is an alien machine that is trying to turn every human alive into a mindless, remote controlled zombie. That’s his problem.

MACKEY CHANDLER:  April (Paper Edition)

April is an exceptional young lady and something of a snoop. After a chance encounter with a spy, she finds herself involved with political intrigues that stretch her abilities. There is a terrible danger she, and her friends and family, will lose the only home she has ever known, and be forced to live on the slum ball Earth below. It’s more than an almost fourteen year old should have to deal with. Fortunately she has a lot of smart friends and allies. It’s a good thing because things get very rough and dicey. They challenge the political status quo, and with a small population the only advantage they have in war is a thin technological edge.The “April” series of books works towards a merge with the “Family Law” series set further in the future.

FROM ALMA T. C. BOYKIN:  Called to the Council: Shikari Book .

Auriga “Rigi” Bernardi-Prananda wants only to do her duty as wife and mother. The Staré natives of Shikhari call her guardian, Healer, and one of the Wise. With the leaders of the people divided, more and more lower Stamm Staré look to her for guidance.

A hunting trip turned war forces her hand. Trapped by Shikhari’s ancient enemy, Rigi must lead her people to safety. But who are her people? And how can she protect her children, both Human and Staré, from an enemy that hunts from shadow?

Rigi must call on all her resources as secrets in high places combine with low treachery to endanger the world she calls home. Artist, mother, huntress, Wise, Rigi navigates interstellar intrigue (and sibling spats, and wildlife with a dreadful sense of timing.)

FROM MARY CATELLI:  The Book of Bone.

A novelette of curses and journeys.

Avice’s dreams of settling at Clearwater are dashed. The lawsuit had ended, and the lands were made over to her, but a bone wizard lays a curse on the land, and blight begins to spread. All will die before the curse as it spreads.

Neither her family nor her king are willing to help. She is left alone with only the knowledge that the mysterious Book of Bone may have the lore that she needs — if only she can find it.

FROM JULIE PASCAL:  WYRM

“Complete your tasks and you will be released. We have summoned you and you must serve us.”

“Never.” The word caught against the fangs in her lengthening jaw and became a growl. She looked down at her tormentors below her and knew them. Fox ears and cat eyes.

“Never!” She bellowed defiance that started deep within her scaled body and expanded with her to fill the sky.

I woke up today with the flu (but not the Kung Flu, because you know, I haven’t even ordered Chinese take out in the last six months, because low carb. Um…. wonder if the Chinese restaurants are feeling the bite) having done a you turn and run me over again.
So, I’m going to do some writing and maybe some intensive napping, because I’m really low on sleep and have been.

It would help, truly, if my immune system did anything besides attacking ME. If anyone knows how to communicate this to it, tell me.  At this point I’d probably be better off without one, as insane as that sounds.

I do wonder how the coronavirus will play out not as an illness, but as an economic impactor.

One of the things to consider is that most illnesses that originate in the third world, and even those that create considerable panic/high death rates (which if China is reporting even semi-accurately* this one isn’t REALLY doing) tend to fizz out when they reach developed countries, because even the basics of washing yourself/your hands and disposing of bodily waste with some consideration to not causing illness seems to make a lot of difference.  While on that, let’s remember that the population explosion of the west in the eighteenth century was mostly predicated on improvements in hygiene.  A sub-though on this is whether the “progressives” (they name themselves by opposites) bringing medieval hygiene to our sidewalks are trying to eliminate the West’s immune advantage.

Anyway, as an illness this would seem to be a non-event being LESS lethal than normal flu, at least in the West. *In China we have to go with the caveat that they lie or massage the truth ALL THE TIME since their concept of reality is not the same as ours. So, who knows. It could be very bad there, but how much will that affect our economy?

Which brings us to: Does the Wahun virus give the left the edge they need to propagandize us into a recession, which in turn will place a commie in power?

Other things running through my sleep deprived brain include “Does G-d give us extra challenges when we’re main characters?  And does being main characters mean our payoff will be better, or has He become a dystopian literary writer, and does it mean we just die more meaningfully?”

That last thought is probably insane, and I probably should go to bed with two aspirin.

Anyway, see you tomorrow. Just wanted you to know I’m really not dead. I have just off and on wished I were, in the last 12 hours.

Yes this post is in homage to Bribem’s crazy utterance int he 2012 race, which by itself should disqualify him from the presidency, because he’s either stupid or thinks other people are when he says to black Americans that “The Republicans want to put you back in chains.”

This is so much bullshit it only makes sense from standpoint that the left always accuses their opponents of what they want to do or are actually doing.

Though in fairness to leftists, it is not just American blacks they wish to enslave. It’s all of us. They want us chained to an all powerful centralized government who will decide what we need, what we can say, what we can do, what we can eat and what we can think and how we should spend what lives we have, and when those lives will end. And it’s not even just Americans. They just think the resources they’ll get if they take over America will help them take over the rest of the world, till the seething, purposeless pile of humanity ahs a new purpose: to provide those at the top (and they all think they’ll be at the top, Uncle Joe with some justification, given his life experience) with all their dreams and desires, no matter how crazy or perverse.

Historians will one day be baffled by how the mass education/entertainment/news establishment of 20th century America (and therefore of much of the world) managed to neatly turn two issues in which the left was soundly defeated — slavery and racism — into issues they hung around the neck of their political enemies, who in America are always distinguished by wishing to increase individual freedom.  It’s utterly baffling how young people believe it was Republicans (the party of Lincoln!) who were for slavery and against civil rights for everyone.  All I have to say is that it took a complete lock down on public communications and several movies and book series that put that in, offhandedly as a throw away background.  Without that complete and utter ownership and propagandizing of all storytelling in the society the bizarre and completely disprovable “the parties changed sides” they use to hide the obvious lie when it’s discovered wouldn’t hold for a second.

This will one day be studied along with the Marxist alternate realities created by the same control in several countries (the ones where, say, the rest of the world was starving, and the USSR as bad as it was had the best lifestyle. Or the one from the Nazis where the Jews were responsible for everything bad that had happened to a crazy-imperialist country.)  It is no coincidence that all these lies are created by believers in totalitarian systems.  (Right? Left? Let’s call the whole thing off. They’re statists and totalitarians, and wish to put all of mankind in chains.)

But there is an additional sting in the tail of this insanity. The same people who pretend they were always for the “downtrodden” and claim to themselves the crown of liberators are in fact putting those people in chains, right here, right now.

Not just black people or — puts hand in air and waves it wildly around — people who can tan and might have an accent.  I mean, those are probably their first and easiest victims. By claiming these “minorities” are being kept down and therefore need the left to “liberate them” the left simultaneously undermines any chance these people have at success, and claims they need continuous and permanent help from an ever glutting state.

I don’t understand how other people don’t get the insult implied in this attitude. I did and still do. As an immigrant-of-tan I was told all the time how I couldn’t make it in America unless “liberals” (leftists) defended me and came to my help and made special laws to make sure I got a fair shake.

Look, I even fell for it for a while. (It would be hard not to when some people were stupid enough to convey that a) I was obviously Mexican b) I was both stupid and untrustworthy because of it. I.e. my first boss in the US.) But not for long. Because I saw what it was doing to my friends.

What believing that everyone around is trying to keep you down does to you is give you an excuse never to learn from failure.

And since none of us is perfect, and all of us learn best by failing at whatever we’re trying and then redirecting, what this belief that “everyone is naturally against all minorities” does is destroy people’s ability to self correct, at the same time embittering them, turning them against the freest, best society in the world, AND “putting them in chains” by causing them to support and vote for policies that will reduce both freedom and prosperity.

The smartest minorities get this too. But by the point they’re fully under the boot of the left, they hate the US and everything it stands for and are willing to suffer if it makes us suffer along with them.

If you can envision how horrible that state is, I submit to you that even physical chains — and keep in mind I hate all restriction — would be easier to bear.

When I turned my back on that neat package of propaganda, I turned it know that yes, some people are racist. And even back in the eighties many people believed Latins were another race. And yes, some people hate immigrants. And yes, some people hate women.

In a free society, you can’t get rid of all the assholes. People will think all sorts of strange things. Heck, a lot of people discriminate against me because I’m married and have children.

So what? Unless you are in a profession wholly owned by a mono-culture (not anymore. Thank G-d for indie) in which case, have a plan of escape, you can always find a way to evade and get around the racissss, sexissss, homophobes (the real ones, not the ones our fellows on the left gift with those names.  The real ones, btw, are both on the right and the left, and many times are just plain defective.)  And usually getting around is more rewarding.

The thing is, the lasso that the leftist propaganda has thrown against their “victim minorities” (which now includes not only everyone with same sex attraction, everyone who likes to cross dress — let alone being really transsexual. They’ve completely blurred those lines — but also every female. Since females are in fact a majority, this is some feat) is so strong, that even the rare member of those who fights against the sense of being done wrong, and learns and climbs the ladder can be sabotaged by policies of racial preference (which cause “quotas”) so no matter how meritocratic the system they climbed, no matter how praiseworthy their achievements, at least half the people (who’ve met others raised by fiat) will assume they’re ineffective or dangerous incompetents. (Ask me how I know. Or don’t. You can probably guess.)

These chains are near unbreakable. Because it’s impossible for one of the designated minorities not to have met someone who really does discriminate against them.  And those who are actually strong and capable know how many people treat them like incompetent lay abouts.  And all this reinforces the lie.

In the end the only way to break free from this — and the very real pathologies, both social and mental — it brings, is to set yourself free.

It’s to accept that yes, sometimes you’ll be discriminated against — everyone is. Some just more obviously than others — because in a free society prejudices are allowed and can’t be eradicated. But that this is not worth it, and never will be, putting yourself and others in chains, and destroying freedom and prosperity, while giving power to people who have filled society with lies for the purpose of keeping you under their control and doing their bidding.

A society in which all agree (or pretend to) is a totalitarian society. And none of those — NOT ONE, regardless of what they tell you — was good for minorities, of race or orientation, or really any other, or even for women.  In societies where the the “enforced truth” must be repeated, there’s lots of room for the vilest of tortures, the basest of humiliations under the rug and behind the (iron) curtain. And they always happened, with stomach-churning frequency, to the point that getting to a book on, say, the real history of communism, takes someone with a good stomach a long, long time. You need to pause in between. And sometimes scream and punch something.

The only thing that can break people out of chains is for them to decide to break them. To believe in yourself and others as individuals. To hold yourself both harmless and immune from whatever was done to people in the past who might have looked somewhat like you.  To ignore the bigots and work so hard and be so good at what you do that  most people — sometimes even the bigots — will go “Oh, no, he/she is completely qualified.”

Yes, it’s very hard to do that right now. Yes, the game is rigged against you in ways that people who aren’t you won’t even see.

So?

Do you think other people glide through life on rose beds, while being fanned by obsequious serfs?  If you do, you are wrong. Even leftist privilege doesn’t whisk away every obstacle.

Being human is to fail and to struggle, to fall and to get up again, to be wounded and to heal. None of us is what we really want to be. None of us is born knowing how to achieve what we aspire to.

The trick is to keep trying, to aim high, and to get up one more time than you’re knocked down. That’s all it takes, just one more time.

They can’t put you in chains when you shed them and refuse to wear them, and keep on keeping on.

Because you can’t enslave a free man. You can only kill him  (And yes, the same applies to us with vaginas. Whatever the grammar abusers tell you.)

Get up one more time. Come on. I believe in you.

Freedom is vile and hurts and stinks and you’ll never get as much credit as you deserve.

It is also completely worth it.

Give it a try.

We have no clue what Odd is, we just know we are it.

It doesn’t seem to correlate particularly well with intelligence, not that any of us knows precisely how to measure intelligence ( which has been used to disqualify all IQ tests and is stupid. Treated as “aptitude” tests, and not used as a guide of human worth — because high IQ is not — we should be able to use them for hiring and higher education. Which might clear some of the fug.)

There is some indication we’re more creative, but it depends on what you mean by creative. Look, I know some of our people who can’t draw a straight line, never wanted to write a line of fiction, couldn’t design a new anything if their lives depended on it.  Though I’ll admit they are exceptions and there might be a reason for that. Hold on to that thought.

There is a temptation there to go down a really deep genetic rabbit hole too, because with genetic sequencing, we’re finding that most of us are heavy on the Neanderthal. (It seems weird that only 20 years ago reputable scientists argued that homo sap and Neanderthal had never interbred.)  But I want everyone to remember that genetics at the level we’re now doing them is a relative new science, and that the only reason to think Neanderthals were more creative is that we’ve found all the “inventive” primitive camps were theirs. But we’re probably dealing with a really SMALL sample.

What we do know is that “we who stick out” — Odds for short — are the sort of kids who get singled out in kindergarten/elementary, when instinct is at its strongest. I got on okay, because I was huge for my place and time, and built like the proverbial brick sh*thouse.  But I aggregated to me the small, the lame, the halting, everyone of them also singled out and everyone of them Odd.

Humans are an amazing thing.  No, seriously. One of our strange abilities is to identify things for which there is no sane definition.  Take art. “I’ll know it when I see it.”

To some extent the same is true of “Odds” and the population correlates pretty closely — creative or not — with what I’d call “Geeks.”  I’d call it that, before Geekdom took over the culture and we were surrounded on all sides by pretend geeks.

Geek if you extend it “Obsessed with subject or mission he/she has devoted life to” is a pretty good cognate for what we are. I used to be a language geek, and now I’m a writing geek. I geek out on ways to write things, new tricks, ways of creating story so it fools most people, etc. etc.  Recall — if you’ve been around a while — Foxfier saying in comments that Pope Benedict was a “religion geek”?  It’s like that. You can be a geek for anything, you can have multiple areas of geeking, and your geeking might change over time. BUT WHEREVER you’re interest and work at the time lies (and work can be a hobby that is really really important to you while work is just how you pay the bills) this is the important thing to do.  You’re a Geek. Or an Odd.

“But Sarah,” you’ll say “Doesn’t everyone care most about the thing they’re supposed to be doing, whether it’s a hobby or work, or whatever it is? Isn’t that what companies, hobby groups, jobs are all about.”

Sure, you’ll say that if you’ve never worked with other humans or, to be fair, if you’re a very nice person who tries to ignore and/or excuse what everyone else does.

Because, no, it’s not. Whenever two humans (or more, heaven help us, more) who aren’t Odds get together, the mission stops being “the thing” that is supposed to be the mission, and it becomes “Monkey power games.”  (Yes, I know we’re apes. Shut up you.)

I’m not sure what the overlap is between “autistic” and “odd” and I don’t think anyone else knows either, honestly. I think a lot of us who are odd would get diagnosed as autistic (the psychologists who have studied sf/f conventions say we have autistic cuing, etc.) But here’s the thing, I don’t think it MATTERS. Because I don’t think there’s anything wrong with my brain, or anything inherently organically wrong. I can and do perceive emotions (often better than the normals) and read the mental states of others just fine, thank you so much, with ice cream on top, please.

The thing is that normally I DON’T BOTHER and could care less.  Not because I don’t care about people, but because I’m obsessive about “the thing we’re supposed to be doing.” And mostly the monkey games just annoy the living crap out of me, because they get in the way of that. So I tune them out, and my behavior becomes close to “on the spectrum.”

I’d guess for most odds this is the case. We’re interested/fascinated/working at the THING THAT MATTERS so much that in the end we let the monkeys-games stab us in the back and block us from “the thing that matters.”

And that is part of the problem. Whether it’s organic or not, most of us read as “threat” to normal human beings.  We read as threat on two levels: we ignore the monkey games, without even acknowledging them, much less responding/parrying.  And this scares them, because it means we’re unpredictable. Also, we are obsessed with THE THING and they don’t much care about the “thing” and are afraid we’ll steal a march on them and look better.

Or of course, we get in the way of the plans they have to use the work on the thing (without ever doing what they’re supposed to) to get more group power.

This is evolutionary and part of the way humans just are, having been built on a frame of great (or at least pretty good) apes.  The group cohesion and group power trump everything else for normal apes. Which makes a certain sense when you’re a band of naked simians roaming the savanna, but sucks when you’re supposed to be a technological civilization building and achieving new things that help the species survive and get out of this mud ball, so we’re secure as a species.

And this is the point at which I find myself screaming at the ceiling (I’m usually indoors) “Lord, WHY apes? Why not, say cats.”  Answer there comes none, and I’m sure there would be other drawbacks. If you believe in Him that is, and not just that random chance picked us poor apes for intelligence (whatever the hell that is) and sentience.

At any rate, one of my friends was listening to Dr. Peterson (the fact that the left has identified him as “right wing” is one of those things that tells you they’re just monkeys trying to beat down the odd. And he is ODD.) and said something about a something or other ratio, where in every enterprise 20% of the people do 80% of the actual work.

This holds right, but what he isn’t saying is that those 80% aren’t just passively standing by. They’re actively trying to make the work more difficult and take down whoever is doing the work. Because Odds are threatening.

And of course, right now we live in interesting times, my friends. Very interesting times.

You see, even though it allowed great advance (by allowing judicious freedom to those who could do stuff – though not necessarilly top spot –) the era of mass manufacturing also allowed Monkey games on an unprecedented level.  I.e. it allowed those who are really power-oriented to get power like never before. Power to control what people say and even what people think. Power to change the language so that people can’t think clearly.  And of course power to “broadcast the one truth” so that all of those who disagree are “crazy and heretics.”

Only while they were playing their…. copulation-copulation games to make the power permanent, the people who cared about The Thing (And who usually when successful, yes, get browbeaten by the power monkeys and start spouting the same inanity.) created stuff.  Stuff they weren’t expecting (I mean, they did block off space, so we couldn’t escape, but they never thought of the net as a danger.)

And now things are tilting/shifting, and various fields they made non-functional are changing so much they have no power and no control.  Or are losing what they have.

Which, of course, makes them much more controlling and much more likely to try to destroy anyone who ever had an original thought, ever.

Which brings us to where we are.  We who are Odd by nature as well as by politics.  (Yes, there are a lot of Odds on the other side. A lot of them become scared and just want the attacks to stop. Others willingly join, because they want to “belong” and think this will give them — finally — a large group who loves them. Paradoxically when that doesn’t work, they become more convinced and work harder at getting everyone to knuckle under.)

Which puts us all in a bind. We who are for the cause of human freedom, individual dignity and real progress (not the bastardized use of the world.) We who are of the tribe of Heinlein and want the future to be better than the past, and also who are loyal to the human species, because they’re our species. (We hold no malice towards slime molds, provided they’re not in our way, but we will not commit suicide for the good of slime molds.)

Most of us are being hemmed in and beaten on all sides, no matter what our field of endeavor.  And it’s not that our kind was ever popular. We were after all the ones who stick out. It takes desperate times to bring us to positions of leadership.

And I understand, guys, I DO understand, those who want to go kinetic.  They see the games being played and they’re tired. They care about “the thing.”

But sometimes you need to pay attention to the games.  Not only should you yeet before you art yoten upon have we already lost; not only is the result in either case going to be “the same, with a different mask” and more monkey games than you can imagine, BUT the truth is we haven’t tried everything before that.

Our magnificent Odd President (What? You haven’t looked very closely, if you don’t see that.) has shown we can still fight with words, and speeches, and organizing. He has shown the enemy has gotten so used to winning monkey games that they’re in many ways a paper tiger.

I hear your frustration. Dear Lord, I even share it. Part of it is frustration with our peculiar moment, and part of it is frustration of having been beaten and hemmed in my whole life, and the attempts to control us getting worse every day.

But if you care about liberty and the individual, if that’s one of your things, you have to focus on the monkey games at least a little, and figure out when they’re stampeding you towards what THEY want you to do, while making it sound it’s what you need to do.

This is a critical moment. There’s many ways to fail, only one way to win.  Look, the monkey games, powered by the crazy Marxist theology which is all Monkey Games, have gotten to such a point that many of our institutions and enterprises are doing the opposite of what they should be doing.

If we don’t win this, the dark falls. And it falls for a long, long while.

So what can you do?  Well, you care about many, many things. And almost all of them are threatened by uber-monkey-games right now (Even knitting. KNITTING.) So you need to fight back.  You need to concentrate on the thing you do, and make it so much obviously better that even the monkey games can’t take it down. Look, I hate to say it, but Trump is showing the way.  They scream and they fling poo, and he does the things he cares about. Ruthlessly.  (While periodically hitting them where it hurts with his words. Learn to do that. Good Lord, they HATE to be laughed at. And they have no defense against it.)

Whatever you are, you Odd Geeks, you mass of strangeness, you nails that stick up, you goats amid the sheep, you are needed.

It won’t be easy, and it won’t be pleasant, but we need you to build. We need you to fight to stay in the game, and build and write and do.

You are the yeast and the leaven. Without it, humanity is just monkeys playing games, and sinking more and more into the morass of conformity.

Sure, you’ve been beaten so much you have no confidence. You’ve tuned the rest of the idiots out so much, you don’t even remember your way back to giving a f*ck.

But if you care about civilization, it’s time to make an effort. It’s time to fight. For you, or for the future, or just for humanity.

Fight with words, with art, with tech, with what matters.

Be not afraid. If we actually try and stop being scared and depressed, no one can stop us. The monkey game players know that and it’s why they work so hard at stopping us.

Don’t let them.

*Forgive me for running blasts from the past on both blogs today, but for various reasons — okay, mostly cats and doctors. Someday I’ll tell you the story, it’s hilarious — I only slept 3 hours last night, which came on top of spending the afternoon/evening very worried.  Then today (Tuesday, late night) was a round of doctors. I managed to finish ONE grossly overdue short story, which is nothing short of a miracle as exhausted as I am. Tomorrow I finish the LAST overdue short story and can at last return to the novels. So forgive me for this one, but honestly it’s so old you probably don’t remember it. -SAH*

Earth Needs Women – a blast from the past from November 2010

No, this is not the obligatory ecological post. Today, in the car on the way from dinner (not cooking at Thanksgiving is logical when you have only four people) I was talking to the kids about a book I read when I was maybe 12/13.

This book – whose name I (unfortunately) can’t remember – came amid a trio of “fairytale books.” At twelve or so, I decided that I hadn’t read enough fairytales and was trying to round out my education. This one looked like a nineteenth century book with woodcuts, was written by some unknown Portuguese author and the title was something like “The Foundling.”

It started with a baby girl found abandoned in a forest. She’s taken in by an older woman who gathers wood and who makes a good – if unloving – foster mother.

Half-bored, I felt I knew where this was going, but continued reading, expecting the more or less obligatory hidden princess story.

I was wrong. Though I no longer remember the details of the book – yes, I read it a good hundred times, as it became one of my favorites, but it was a long time ago and memory gets blunted – I know that the parentage of the girl is never revealed. The old woman dies, the girl is turned out of the house, she ends up working as a maid and some other menial jobs. Her work ethic and (what my friend Dave Freer calls) battler spirit get her through. She helps an old lady who is dying and whom no one looks after and, in return, is given an old book of recipes.

She starts her own little business selling cakes and pastries at fairs and meets a young man of very good family who – however – does not marry her because of course, she’s a foundling of unknown parentage. Eventually her little business becomes a successful pastry shop and later she meets another young man, a pastry chef, and this time it all works out and they marry and have a happy family and a successful business.

If you’d asked me at twelve, I’d have told you I had no idea why the story charmed me as it did. I only knew I liked re-reading it and it became one of my favorite books. It felt good and somehow “right” in a way that fairytales and romances didn’t.

Today, when I telling the kids about it, I realized why. It was because the character was a strong woman. Born with the ultimate disadvantage, the ultimate lack of support, she doesn’t – like fairytale princesses – either get rescued by a strong knight nor even by fate that reveals her to be a hidden princess. Also, she never complains; she never repines – she takes the situation she finds herself in and makes the best out of it, all the while looking out for those who are weaker or in more need than her. This last characteristic nets her the all-important recipe book (supposedly created by a medieval convent, which rings true for Portugal, and which had been lost for centuries.) When her romance doesn’t work because her very conventional suitor wants a girl of suitable family, she doesn’t go into a decline, she just goes on with life.

She is, in fact, what editors so often say they want “a strong woman, self sufficient, a good role model for growing girls.” Only, from my observation and reading, by this they usually mean mouthy, aggressive, foolhardy and complains a lot about men till one wonders if said character has an issue with being born female. There are exceptions, of course, but complaining about fate and men and being bitter seems to be obligatory.

And yet, it is true that the type of character in my long-lost book is not only a great role model for young women, she is the type of role model we do need. Earth needs women (yes, and men, but we’re talking women here) who take care of the weak and helpless. Earth needs women who don’t whine. Earth needs women who cheerfully shoulder the burden of what needs to be done.

Earth does not need women who complain about men all the while neurotically obsessing on clothes and jewelry to attract said men and pursuing the highest-status males they can possibly get. There is nothing wrong with these activities, in moderation, but when they become the focus of existence they create a generation of infantile harpies. [Earth needs even less — and how innocent I was — “Strong women” who want to destroy men in order to feel powerful – SAH 2020]  Now, I don’t think any women in real life are as bad as that, but almost all “strong” women characters in books and movies are just like that.

Young women who read/watch these characters end up feeling they must APPEAR like them or they’ll be thought weak. And this is wrong. Strength in women – and men – can be defined not as throwing weight around but in doing what must be done for oneself and those who depend on one.

Earth needs grown up women.

I very much hate to tell people what to do, much less what to be, but I wish we could set about writing – and living – role models for the women Earth needs.