Born Free
And everything is okay.
Today is younger son’s moving day and I kept watch on his u haul while they were loading it. It’s not a lot, but I’m glad I could do something.
Unfortunately, since he’s moving from the springs, we had to leave early enough I couldn’t write a post.
This is just the “I”m okay, don’t worry.” post.
Why is it always Hitler?
The left is off on another of their half-cocked bits of insanity comparing Trump to Hitler, because Trump used an eagle on a campaign t-shirt. The Washington Post, in the article about it, kind of admitted that the eagle was also an American symbol, but they did it reluctantly and hidden, because of course it ruins the comparison.
But seriously, why Hitler? There have been countless other bad men since the failed painter committed suicide in his bunker. Heck, on body count alone he was kind of a piker.
So, why is the left always and forever obsessed with Hitler.
Yes, yes, the second world war. Well, there have been other wars since then.
BUT, you’ll say, Hitler is the only one of the state-mass-murderers who didn’t do it in the name of communism. Waggles hand. Kind of. He did it in the name of socialism, the nationalistic kind, and yet, the left has no trouble ignoring that.
With the help of their captive press corps, in fact, they have spent a considerable amount of time convincing the world that Hitler wasn’t a socialist, not harf.
Hell and damnation, I heard a communist in my field, who passes for an educated man, claiming that Hitler/Stalin was the ultimate confrontation of capitalism and communism. Because, you know, Hitler is to capitalism as– I don’t know? Chalk to cheese?
If you assume capitalism is “free trade” (and not a made up word of the left) that was the one thing that Nazis definitely didn’t have or encourage. In fact, like the international socialists of Europe, and like our own left, people were nominally allowed to keep their wealth and business, but the government told them what to do with them, and picked winners and losers.
So, surely the left could have picked someone else: Mao or Pol Pot, or someone and proclaimed them totally not communist and then obsessed about them as the monster to watch out for. (To give kudos to a random complete idiot leftist (BIRM) she did compare Trump to Mao but that was only a facebook post, in which she showed more creativity than the Washington Post and the New York Times combined (tied together and thrown in the deep blue sea).)
Today I was watching Foyle’s War. I have been “reading” Agatha Christie books (audio) while working. And it hit me.
The left obsesses about Hitler because they’re nostalgic for WWII.
It’s the last time the world made sense to them.
No one openly challenged the principle that government, the bigger the better, should do everything and control everything, from news to food distribution (and growing.) In many things, in fact, there was hardly any difference between the allies and Hitler. Well, the allies in what would become the other side of the iron curtain were doing … well, just as awful stuff as Hitler was doing.
And even here, in the land of the free, that utter bastard, FDR, was busily putting people in camps, and interfering with private business and doing everything he could possibly do to make people miserable and to bring about the glorious triumph of the state over the individual.
Which brings to WHY the left are so nostalgic.
At the root of it, fundamentally, they have to know their policies, their initiatives, their grand plans are wrong at the level and by the only metric that counts: that of impoverishing society and destroying lives, and making people miserable who would otherwise be fine, really.
But during WWII they had an excuse: everyone was doing it. EVERYONE. The only difference is that Hitler went in bigger than the other guys for ethnic cleansing. (Which is also why racism is now the left’s only and obsessively confessed sins.) And did it by the numbers and to horrifying levels.
Am I defending the bastard? Of course not.
Because the world is NOT a dispute between complete light and utter darkness, ever, yeah at the time the allies defeated the worst possible of the alternatives. BUT they did it at the cost of convincing their population that the government had the right to enslave them, to curtail their lives, to make the individual count for nothing. Which goes a long way to explain the mess Europe has become since then. (Well, again, they should have turned around and gone after Stalin next, but you can’t have everything. where would you put it? Who would dust it?)
So why does the left go back there like a dog to its vomit, from their obsession with comparing every single Republican president to Hitler, to trying to revive WWII rationing and programs, in response to various things that are to be declared the moral equivalent of war: the latest one being the “climate crisis.”
So–
Well, other than the fact that it’s fitting they’re running a demented elder for the presidency, what is the point of that?
The point is that it’s nostalgia. Nostalgia is the sin of dying philosophies. Of those who know their time has passed.
The left is involved in a ghost dance. It doesn’t mean they can’t do a lot of damage before they die, but they’ve entered that phase into which their maldaptive image of the world leads them to dig themselves deeper and deeper, every time they hit bottom. They’re now reduced to Wile E. Coyote and his clever plots, which always backfire, because he fails to account for the other side not simply going along with his imaginings.
They are, in the end, headed to the trash heap of history.
Our job is to make sure they don’t drag us along.
Be not afraid, and keep working.
*This one is dedicated to Occasional Cortex who thinks that, after releasing criminals indiscriminately and refusing to enforce the law, the reason that NYC (and everywhere, really) has more crime is because “people are starving and need to feed their children.”
The level of stupidity involved in believing that is aided by a good bit of Marxist indoctrination and the fact that ultimately she’s a rich bitch who never had to do any real work or employ her mind in any way. (Bartender? Yeah. She probably was a lousy one. And we know she did no work in school.) Even so it is amazing that people believe this cr*p. But they do. Particularly people like Sandy Cortez, who find that they can use these stories to fashion saddles that they may ride us.
Of course the rise in crime is — as always — the result of letting people wedded to power and a dysfunctional philosophy (not to mention their own unearned sense of superiority) have any power at all. Stay frosty. Ça Irá! – SAH
There is a peculiar strangeness to virtues, to those things we strive to practice and which are good for us and society in general: you have to know when to stop.
An excess of virtue seems to turn to vice and derange the mind just enough that it doesn’t realize what it’s doing.
Perhaps part of it is that we’re a less religious society, so some people have never been warned of the dangers of keeping the form but forgetting the purpose. Or perhaps because so many people have forgotten the idea of “virtue” as such and just have these left over, ingrained reflexes of a post-Christian society. These people can usually be recognized by saying quite the most stupid things about who Jesus was or what he believed, while running down those who have any religious belief in the mean time. You’ve run into these critters, for instance, deploying memes on compassion to claim Jesus was an illegal immigrant (as though the forms and borders of the 21st century applied to the 1st) or deploying memes to say Jesus expelled the “capitalists” from the temple, (ignoring that the sin was doing it under the aegis of the temple, aka, confusing the market place with religion and vice versa which is not, usually, a sin of capitalists, except in those places corrupted by socialism,) or oh, telling us that we should be willing to pay more taxes because we ere enjoined to look after the poor, or perhaps my favorite from the party of abortion-on-demandTM reminding us that Mary was a single mother, (again completely missing that the forms of the society in 21st century America and 1st century Judea couldn’t be more different. She risked stoning, had someone not stood by her, and yeah, for the record I completely oppose stoning single mothers, even without divine intervention. OTOH I don’t remember her asking for government benefits for her baby. Must be a different translation of the New Testament I read.)
But this is not a religious blog, and at least one third of my readers aren’t Christians, as far as I can track. This was just to explain that the society retains the “form” of Christianity and a lot of the impulses, while having lost the why.
Which allows virtues to morph into truly repulsive behavior, which destroys lives while going unchecked, because it’s hiding under cover of something “we all know to be a virtue.”
Take charity, or if you prefer compassion — caritas, by any other name — which in many ways is unraveling society and destroying lives.
Charity, as practiced by all the Abrahamic religions is supposed to be a PERSONAL virtue. Sure you can band together with people of your faith or others to extend the reach of your charity. BUT you are not supposed to force other people to participate by force. That might be organized crime, or perhaps just extortion, and like some organized criminals, you might have the best intentions in the world, but it does not sanctify the arm twisting. Because you’re still “causing harm to do good” and that’s always bad. Because your knowledge of others is limited, you won’t know the unintended consequences of your actions, or even if you’re extorting from the “right” people. (Not that there’s any “right” people to extort from but people delude themselves about the “rich” paying their “fair share.”
Government is particularly bad about this.
Take us, for ex. I pay an unreasonably high tax rate, because I fall under a category that is meant to catch under-reporting lawyers and doctors, not free-lance writers. For the government, though, we’re exactly the same thing and if some government drone noticed that we fall into it too, he’d probably assume all moderately-successful writers are exactly like the series “Castle.”
And even programs supposed to be more discriminating (in the right sense) do very weird stuff. Keeping in mind I’m a writer: we learned earlier that when our kids applied for student loans, we had to make sure my money from writing was in another account, neatly labeled business and locked away by being part of a corporation. Because suppose I go a few advances, and had been doing well indie for six months, and had 40k in the bank the month the kids applied: the program ASSUMES all of it is available to pay for their tuition (we paid half of each) and none of it would go to taxes or other business obligations. Nor did it seem to understand the money might be there for some other reason: a new computer, or whatever the need for making more money was. There were a couple of years we had to shoulder the full thing, because my not unusual situation was completely opaque to what is supposed to be a fairly sophisticated ah “ability and needs” judging program, led them to believe we had a year’s income sitting around in the bank, waiting to be spent on tiddly winks and chocolate milk, and that the kids were only applying for loans out of joi de vivre.
In the same way, many a family business goes bankrupt when the main owner dies, because even though the business’s worth is invested (particularly in the case of farms or restaurants) in things that are neither convenient to sell nor can be sold without destroying the ability to make more money, the government expects the heirs to pay full tax on their WORTH. It’s amazing how many small businesses (not ours, though some of my colleagues got books seized when the copyright passed to heirs, and the assumption of the copyright value was… interesting to say the least) have a worth of a million or so, while barely making enough for a family of four, once you run it and pay employees.
The thing is this is all done in the name of compassion, which has been outsourced to the government and therefore is going after the — on paper — rich to give to the — on paper — poor. This is a lot like the left’s conception of Robin Hood (they have him as wrong as they have Jesus. Mostly Robin Hood stole from tax collectors and gave back to the people.) And they think it’s a good thing.
But the repercussions or our… ah, developmentally disabled tax system has destroyed many many lives. And not those of the plutocrats the left imagines it’s taking undeserved money from (they should know about undeserved money, since those of them who work work entirely on the parasitic mechanism of the state “equalization”machine.) It has taken the money from family businesses that had sometimes taken generations of patient work to build, it has made it harder to survive as a middle class working person than an indigent lay-about, and it has made it harder for families to climb out of government assistance, because after taxes the proceeds of honest labor are much lower than what you can get milking the system.
To the extent that generations on welfare stunts the ability to be a contributing member of society this false compassion based on extortion has destroyed entire generations of people and might have done irreparable harm by creating a tribe of anti-socials in our midst, who consider themselves entitled to living as they wish while not working. I’m not sure how many of those a functioning society can support. I suppose at some time we’ll find out.
That’s the macro level.
The local level…. Ah, compassion.
Look, I do realize that some people, at times, are homeless through no fault of their own. We’ve never quite hit that point but after some exceptionally bad years, I won’t say we weren’t close. We stayed off soup kitchens by eating a lot of rice and frozen vegetables for years.
But you have to understand just like our “hunger in America” count dieting people (the question is “did you ever go to bed hungry” or “Do you normally eat all you want.”) so does homelessness in America count your kid who is between jobs and staying in your guest room, or your friend who just moved to town and crashed on your sofa for a week. The most common time someone in America is “homeless” is 1 day. Second most common is 2 days, etc.
But there is real homelessness. Of course there is. When Acacia Park, downtown Colorado Springs was infested with them (is it still?) I used to hear them talking candidly among themselves during my morning walk.
Do you know what I never heard them say “I can’t find a job.”
Do you know what I heard them talk about? Drugs, mostly. The young ones would talk about not going home, because their parents (gasp) would require them to stop doing whatever it is they were doing, drug wise.
There were also complaints about cities making it hard to beg, talk of having “dropped out” 30 years ago, and the injustice of even thinking of finding a job.
Were a lot of these people drug addicted or mentally ill. A-yup. Were a lot of the mentally ill drug addicts who were trying to self medicate? A-yup. Were a lot of them on the run from legally prescribed drugs that would control that mental illness? A-yup. Do a lot of drugs, when used over time, have the uncomfortable side effect of bringing on mental illness which might have been latent? Seem to. The relation hasn’t been very well documented or studied, but anyone who knows people who did a lot of drugs in the sixties has noted a difference before and after.
The one thing that’s certain is that encouraging (with money and freebies and that famous “compassion”) the homeless to continue in their destructive lifestyle has horrendous social consequences.
Those shelters and soup kitchens that cater to all without demanding sobriety will turn teens who left home because parents objected to their pot use into hardened street people who will not have any skills and fall, rung by rung into being utterly useless and unable to integrate in normal society.
But they do worse. Around these soup kitchens and shelters, if near residential areas, there grows an area of crime and desolation, because you know, these people still have to pay for drugs somehow. If near commercial areas, they blight the tendency of shoppers to come to that area, because no one wants to be followed/accosted or screamed at by people who are acting crazy (whatever the real reason.)
The do gooders then claim the fault is of “normal society”, of those horrible bourgeois who don’t want to live or shop in an area where they’re likely to be assaulted, insulted or mistreated, not mention robbed from.
But of course, there are very few (some of course) middle class people who are that by virtue of having inherited all their money. Most of us stay out of homelessness by working daily, sometimes brutal hours, so we can pay our taxes and still live and build a future for our children.
When you make the work and our limited enjoyments more difficult we move on.
Now the “compassion” in the more “progressive” locales has reached the point of if not outright encouraging, not discouraging “homeless” — which really should be “barbarians” because they’re actually not just homeless. The habitual ones are people who live outside our civilization as effectively as though they were the nearby tribe who lives from raiding us — from defecating on the street.
You know, I come from a society where many many illnesses were endemic that shouldn’t be: from cholera to TB to typhoid. They were finally controlled not by modern medicine but by a rigorous program of public hygiene; by making people buy shoes and wear them on public streets and spaces (in my mom’s time, though there was still a law forbidding going barefoot, which I fell afoul of when boarding the train to school on a day I had forgotten to put shoes on. Shut up. It was in finals.) Other things it discouraged included spitting or on ground. Or pooping on the ground, where it could contaminate ground water.
In the densities of people in cities, it is very easy for one barbarian to infect the entire tribe and I look forward to seeing what sort of new epidemics develop in one particular city. Or I would, if our society weren’t so interconnected and people didn’t travel all over taking their germs.
And ultimately that’s it. Like a gap in our immune system — or an exploit-worthy flaw in a computer system — this “outsourced compassion” and this non-judging charity without paying attention to when it actually becomes harmful, is a gaping and growing wound through which barbarism is invading civilization.
The idea that instead of people being secure in their possessions and in the enjoyment of their space, anyone who has anything is somehow beholden to those who don’t is a Marxist lunacy, (not Christian) and a part of that whole fixed pie economics fallacy. It’s the idea that whatever you have, you stole from someone, and if you wish to enjoy a clean and safe walk through your neighborhood, you’re some sort of despoiling ogre who caused the filth and the aggression of your neighbor, and therefore must have your nose rubbed in his (never learned to restrain it) anger and filth.
It destroys decent life, enjoyment of the fruits of one labor and the safety that civilization is supposed to provide.
It’s not Charity. It’s the “Marxist virtue” of envy dressed in charity garb and strutting and dancing to fool children and idiots.
And unless we start combating it, it is enough, by itself, to undo civilization.
The rest of the house still looks like a screaming disaster zone /construction area, and for that matter so do I, from weird bruises and cuts to the fact that my hands look like I’ve been wrestling something with fan-blade hands. I was telling my husband I have performed sacrifices of blood on every inch of every new floor. I don’t know if he was impressed or appalled. The expressions are so similar.
BTW you’re not looking at the side of a refrigerator on the right, but at the side of some very old cube-shelves we’ve had since the kids were little. (Look, buying the same shelves all now would set us back $500. We have too much stuff to do to waste that kind of money. I do need to get cubes for my eventual sewing area, (When we get there) but I’m half tempted to get the cheap plastic ones, so as not to put the knife in the account QUITE that deeply.) Of course, before putting them up I spray painted all of them (After saying I wasn’t going to do it because it’s so much work, of course, but I note that I need to bring in one of the little paint bottles and cover up those glaring screws. Although that’s not a big deal in the long run (right?) and the office looks largely as it will look, pending my arranging files and such properly.
Which means I have a place to hide in, when things get to be too much for me. Well, to hide and hopefully to write and resume normal life.
Besides the fact that it’s a relief to have ONE room that looks as it should, it is a much needed reminder of why we’re killing ourselves doing all this work. Because when we’re done the house will (hopefully) look like this, and we can have our life on a more organized and productive pattern. It is the bait for when I don’t feel like doing anything.
Of course, yes, I want to fast forward to when all this is done, and the house all looks like this (well, not exactly like this, since this is a highly personal space with Boris Valejo on the walls, and pictures of the kids growing up, but you know what I mean.)
Sometimes I think it is like that with our polity.
Look, for a good 100 years our supposed elites have been playing footsie with totalitarian Marxism. To an extent you could say that we, as we came along, purchased a nation in need of some renovation and fix up. (We definitely need to find that rot in the attic and clean it out.) I mean, it’s in better shape than other nations, but it does need renovation.
It’s just that you can’t do everything at once, even if you try. There are limits to what you can accomplish in a month — or a life time — and while we’re attempting to fix the most glaring issues, it makes the whole thing look worse (like replacing truly ratty carpet means everything is out of place and you trip on crowbars in the hallway.)
This is not an excuse, metaphorically speaking, to just run off, soak the whole thing with gasoline and set it on fire. Everything looks worse when you’re fixing it, be it a house or a nation. And much as we’d like to fast forward to when we’re all done with this, that’s not the way it works.
OUR house should be done in another month, two at most.
The nation? Well, maybe our grand-kids will live in the land of the free. It’s better than the alternative, at any rate.
Be not afraid. And keep working. Even if you have to bleed over every inch of the project.
*Sorry this is so late. The GOOD NEWS is that I am almost done setting my office up. YAY! – SAH*
*Note these are books sent to us by readers/frequenters of this blog. Our bringing them to your attention does not imply that we’ve read them and/or endorse them, unless we specifically say so. As with all such purchases, we recommend you download a sample and make sure it’s to your taste. 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. I ALSO WISH TO REMIND OUR READERS THAT IF THEY WANT TO TIP THE BLOGGER WITHOUT SPENDING EXTRA MONEY, CLICKING TO AMAZON THROUGH ONE OF THE BOOK LINKS ON THE RIGHT, WILL GIVE US SOME AMOUNT OF MONEY FOR PURCHASES MADE IN THE NEXT 24HOURS, OR UNTIL YOU CLICK ANOTHER ASSOCIATE’S LINK. PLEASE CONSIDER CLICKING THROUGH ONE OF THOSE LINKS BEFORE SEARCHING FOR THAT SHED, BIG SCREEN TV, GAMING COMPUTER OR CONSERVATORY YOU WISH TO BUY. That helps defray my time cost of about 2 hours a day on the blog, time probably better spent on fiction. ;)*
FROM MARY CATELLI: The Lion and the Library.
The library holds many marvels. Lena and her betrothed Erion had found things that helped the beleaguered Celestians of the city.But when the king’s caprice decides to sacrifice Erion to protect himself, Lena can only hope a legend can help her. A legend of just kings. And lions.
FROM SABRINA CHASE: Rogues and Heroes.
…with a young woman desperate to leave her dusty planet for space … a British boy determined to end WWII all by himself … a cop in a dark world willing to do anything for a good read… an old cowboy with a final, heavy burden
…and more, in this collection of short stories from SF author Sabrina Chase.
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: UPPITY
It is highly unlikely I’ll write a full post today. You see I’m still putting the pieces of my office back together.
Yeah, I spent yesterday at it, and I’m still working at it.
Part of it is that I haven’t yet unpacked the boxes from the last house, even though we moved four years ago. I wanted to get to work, so I shoved them in the closet and carried on.
Part of it is that I suspect some of the boxes are from Manitou or even from Cache la Poudre…. (calculates) 26 years ago.
Sometimes I wonder if Americans, a highly mobile and very busy society, move through life accumulating more and more boxes they never open. I think we unpacked everything when we lived in Manitou. At least one of the boxes we opened there had been packed by the movers when we moved from Columbia, SC, and contained what had been in the trash can, including one of son’s infant diapers. He was thirteen when we found that. No wonder we hadn’t noticed it was missing….
There’s other stuff. For the last ten years, things have been weird, mostly health wise, but also because I’ve been dealing with crisis not of my own making (and the ones I make are bad enough.) Also, I’ve been trying new ways of doing things, mostly because I was sick and hoped SOME method would work to be more productive. They didn’t work, and I’m culling them and donating them to someone who maybe can use them.
I’m not going all “get rid of what doesn’t spark joy” because if I got rid of my old contracts IP lawyers would have nothing to work with (for instance.) BUT I am trying to cut down on the sheer volume of crap that I carry house to house without having any use for it.
It has become somewhat obvious that at some point in the future — should I live that long, of course — we’ll HAVE to move low altitude. When we do, we’ll have enough of our stuff to carry (200 and some boxes of books, and that’s having got rid of almost all fiction and keeping only the research books. Fiction is now electronic.) without paying for movers to take things I’m never even going to look at much less use.
So the unpacking and organizing has become…. really, an archeological dig. A very weird one.
Some of the things that were in my office (as opposed to downstairs in the library) are puzzling in the extreme, like books on the evolution of sexual reproduction (not titillating. Highly detailed, chromosome talk. (Yes, yes, I know. People pay good money. I think I did in fact.) To explain, I’m only supposed to have books for the current two or three projects in my office.
I do know why I have a pile of books on the war of the roses in my office, as opposed to the library, but only because recently I came across THAT out outline. It’s called Bone Deep, and it’s about a woman who rebuilds faces from ancient skulls. (“she tries this one thing, and you’ll never believe what happens next!” Dear Lord, to catch up with my backlog in the next couple of years I’d need to do a book a week, sustained.)
But other stuff…. Shrugs.
And the note pads, including a plethora of embassy suites complimentary pads scribbled with beginnings, with ends, with ideas, with what appears to be darn near full novels…. I got nothing.
I’m not looking too closely at those. Because then I’d be a month unpacking and have a million new ideas. Right now any notebook that has stuff goes in a pile. Okay three piles. Five feet tall. At some point, in my copious spare time, I’m going to rip out the filled pages and file them in three boxes: ideas, plots and novels.
But some of them get my attention, and I read parts of it.
WHY in heaven’s name — and WHEN — did I write half of a mil sf with a character named Patience Bach? And why is it called Patience Abides? From the pad it’s on, it was LONG before I read Honor Harrington (I was a late comer to it) so it wasn’t an attempt at imitating it, but it’s WEIRD. Also probably very bad. I haven’t done more than skim.
I mean, it has pages and pages of RANKS — who WAS I when I wrote this? I don’t even think that way. (Shoves the maps of Eden, and schematics of the Cathouse under the sofa with her toe) — and ship schematics.
And what in heavens name possessed me to sketch cozy mysteries in which the male protagonist has the help of a very proper lady ghost from the revolutionary war era?
And what, in the holy name of Ned is a long and complicated worldbuilding on a world that seems to be all mud and floods?
I almost feel like doing a day a week with “Discoveries from Sarah’s packed boxes” only you guys would expect me to finish them, even the very bad ones, for the LULZ.
All of these seem to have come and gone, leaving no trace behind and no wish to write them.
It’s very weird. Like looking at notebooks of a stranger who has my handwriting.
As I said, they will gradually be organized and filed and become someone else’s problem long after I’m gone, unless the boys are sensible and get a dumpster to take it all.
Anyway….. I find it very weird to have to deal with my thirty-something year old self. She might have been stranger than I am.
And now, back to the unpacking.
We wear masks at work. Surgical masks were originally used to keep us from contaminating a surgical wound. Nowadays, we wear surgical masks to supposedly keep us from unknowingly passing on COVID while we are not having symptoms. I wear a mask for a few patients, then get a new one, because it gets moist and contaminated. Masks do not keep me from getting the virus, it’s too small for the common surgical masks. N95s possibly could keep me from catching the virus, but there is no study confirming that. Again, they are used for one patient, then changed out. I have to take a fit test each year to prove that the N95s fit correctly. What I don’t do, is wear the same mask all day, leave it in my car, stick it in my purse, touch it over and over, and get whatever is on there on my fingers. (Don’t get me started on wearing gloves all day. How do you pee and wash your hands?!?) People wearing masks around outside are unlikely to have changed them several times a day, and washed them, or wear them properly (cover both mouth and nose, and don’t touch or adjust them once on, and wash hands every time you put it on or take it off, or touch it for any reason).
So why are we pushing masks on everyone? There are no definitive studies showing that it stops the spread of the virus. We have differing recommendations from differing “experts”. I’ve searched the medical literature to find any good studies that show it stops the spread of the virus. Most studies are quoted from Wuhan, and we know what that information is worth. (Don’t believe China. China is asshole!) Some studies suggest that wearing masks in a family if one member is infected, decreases the rate of transmission in the family. That’s the most definite one I saw. Says nothing about masking in public, or outside of the house.
There must be another reason for the mask fetish.
The Mark of Cain was placed by God on Cain after Cain killed his brother, to prevent anyone from killing Cain. It is assumed that the mark was easily visible and gave information about the person it was on.
Masks are being mandated to place the Mark of COVID on all of us. It is an easily seen mark that says we are compliant with what our betters tell us is good for us. They have no scientific evidence, but they can force us to wear one to show that we will do what they say. If we want to go to the grocery store, wear the Mark! If we want to go to exercise, wear the Mark! We are to take it on faith that a smarter, more omnipotent person who is employed by our government knows best.
The Mark of COVID is the warning that we have no rights. We walk around feeling the mark. Others can see that we are adhering to the mark. We walk outside and are defiant because we are not wearing the mark, or we are tacitly or actively agreeing to the mark rule if we wear a mask. Do we dislike or despise the person next to us who is not wearing a mask, or do we nod in agreement and feel more comfortable with not wearing a mask?
We have the right to make our own decisions. If a 95 year old grandmother wants to go to her great grand daughter’s wedding, she should have that right. And if her choice results in her illness, it was a known risk which she chose freely, and she will pay the price. If someone comes to the Emergency Room with chest pain that looks like a heart attack, our role is to give them the best advice we can based on the science we know. And if they tell us they disagree and want to leave, we do the best sell job we can. We try to be very persuasive, including telling them death and disability is a possibility. If they still want to leave, they are free to go and free to face the consequences. I don’t want to live in a world where its my choice, not theirs.
With no good studies to show that wearing a cloth mask protects others, we are left with a mandate based on faith that someone deemed important feels it might help lower the risk of COVID spread. In medicine our choices are based on risks and benefits. Does the benefit of what we are doing outweigh the risks? We are told the possible benefits of wearing a mask outweigh the negligible risks of covering our faces for a large part of the day in various environmental conditions is worth it. For an unproven benefit, and at least some risk, why should we listen? Can we at least look into the risks and benefits before mass masking?
“When you wear a mask, whether you’re walking on a busy street, whether you’re inside a grocery store or riding transportation, that is a sign to the whole community that we are in this together.” Rachel Levine, Pennsylvania Health Secretary. This is the actual reason for the masking orders. They want the community to all buy into the story. Having to wear that mask, at least outwardly, says there is no dissent.
The Mark of COVID is psychologically damaging. Every time we sigh and pull on a mask, it is a reminder that we are not allowed to decide for ourselves or disagree with the “best and the brightest” (GAG!).
How did we get here? And most importantly, how do we get out of here?
Lately I’ve got interested in stereotypes. Oh, not racial or cultural. Not gender either. More like the old stereotypes of our field, the stories you think you know where they’re going (the stereotypical — or should I say archetypal) characters and stories are so old you mind starts filling in stuff just from reading a few lines. Which btw means the author needs to do a lot less work…. and more work, at least if we don’t want to make it paint by the numbers boring. Though I’ll note in the new era, the paint by numbers pulpish stereotypes sell better than the “so innovative, so literary, so relevant” stuff. (Mostly because those are usually wrong on three counts.)
OTOH I know myself, and things would get interesting/sideways/subverted. Because I’m me. What they probably wouldn’t get is pulled down into the mud and rolled in with the pigs. Because, yeah, some humans are terrible, but if you live in the real world and pay attention, you’ll find more heroism and glory in anyone’s life than petty self-betrayal and amoral vacuousness.
I haven’t had time. We’re halfway, in number of rooms (in size of rooms it’s different, though as husband pointed out most of the large rooms remaining ARE very straightforward with no weird angles) in flooring the house. Three to go. One very small, but….
And I have a million stories ahead to write, anyway, all planned, laid out, some started some almost finished. But I’ve been grabbing almost randomly old stories (and filk) when I sit down. (Old stories in paper. Part of the job is shelving stuff in the library, where the new and improved (my old rendering computer almost 10 years old) publishing computer is going, so younger son can use it, and make me paper editions of everything, and run the new, upcoming, wonderful (look, I need to sit down and edit, and — if she signs/agrees to the contracts — republish Kate Paulk, including her new one. And we have a dozen anthologies in the works too) inkstain publishing (shared worlds, anthologies, and perhaps Kate Paulk, if she so wishes.) Thing is the thing needs management, and I haven’t even been managing myself well. Younger son will take it up while he’s looking for work. And hopefully when he finds it and likely moves out of state, there MIGHT be enough money to hire someone for the job — gulp — I hope.
So anyway, I’ve been grabbing old books, the ones whose covers were in primary colors and whose pages sometimes crumble at the touch. Not all SF/F. I have a collection of pulp mysteries as well, mostly picked up when I was depressed and needed comfort.
Look that type of space opera is barely science fiction unless you extend the definition to mean “Man faced with strange situations.” I mean, the science is usually cursory and/or waved at. Yes, Heinlein did it better by injecting real science. (I try, okay. A part of the science is handwavium — well, isn’t it always? — but in the part that is essential to my premise I bug all my contacts. Yes, including sons.)
But Heinlein leaned heavily on the pulp stereotypes, the stereotypes of the human mind that go back to — if you could verify it — the campfires of the indo-European culture (whose main strength was apparently multilayered endless sagas. They worked to draw other tribes to the culture apparently. Or at least that’s one of the speculations. Not so much by the force of arms but by story they conquered. Um….. Nice work if you can get it.
If you don’t believe he leaned on those, go read the opening to Citizen of the Galaxy. Or the first chapter of Starman Jones. Or the scene when Star appears to Oscar for the first time.
I’m not Heinlein. I couldn’t even play Heinlein on TV (though if I don’t wax, the mustache could pass.)
But those old stereotypes have been rolling through my mind like thunder. I’m not sure what the hell to do with them, but they’re there, and maybe something will come of it eventually.
Tell me you don’t get hooked, and sense the surprises hidden in each of these. (And it’s me. The surprises would probably surprise you.)
There was a laughing devil in his eyes. He was a disreputable, scarred man of middle years, sliding reluctantly into old age, kicking and screaming the whole way. Flesh hung loose on his broad frame. His left eye was missing. What remained of his hair was red and looked like he’d given himself a haircut using metal cutters.
But his remaining eye was the dark blue of space. He walked with the rolling gait of a spaceman, too long in free fall.
There might be another reason for his walk. In the bars of Far Itravine, in the Blind Seer system, he told stories of his fighting pirates in Antares and barely piloting away from a black hole in High Mauritius. People bought him drinks.
But if you waited around after you left, someone would come and tell you, “Bless your heart, sir. No. He was a stevedore down in the spaceport locks. The eye and the scars are where an AI loader’s grappling hook hit. His mother was a spaceport whore. I don’t think he ever spaced.”
Or,
“Need some company, spaceman?”
I looked her over. You never know, in these far ports. She looked eighteen, maybe twenty. And she was pretty. Pretty enough to hit close to the uncanny valley.
Instinctively I looked for those seams that join head to neck and neck to body. Look, none of the comfort women are real humans. Humans are spread too thin over the universe to waste on that kind of thing. Particularly when androids do it better, and you don’t need to worry over their feelings.
To my surprise I found none. And yet her greeting was straight from historical hollos, and she was wearing something shimmery and so light I could see the shape of her rosy flesh beneath.
I looked at her eyes, improbably spring green, and she smiled back.
That did it. No one smiles that willingly at a guy with my mug. She was either an assassin — since when did I rate assassins, though? — or an alien in human disguise.
Or
Things were rolling along pretty good in Myroclady. Well, as good they could be, in the middle of the war.
Conscripted laborers had settled down to building the new shiny war ships. Engineers — male and female — worked overtime at the designs, and laborers slapped them on frames as far as they would go.
And then people started talking of seeing the Invictus.
Yes, that Invictus, the ship blown up with all hands at the beginning of the confrontation with the Alliance. The one that had aboard the best regarded of our commanders, and his son the Young Hope. And the best brains the human race had ever thrown out. At least on the side of free men.
It started with one of the women assembling the shipskin in the molecular vats. She was walking home, late at night, and swore she’d seen the Invictus — “As I remember, sir, from a hollo at school” — materialize in the skies. So close she could see the faces of the lost at the viewports. She said she saw Vir Hopewell — Young Hope — at one of them. “His hair was just like in the holo, but he looked sad. And he lifted his hand at me. Not quite a wave, you know, but like he knew me.” And then she burst into tears.
Now, these could be set — with modifications — any time from the ancient agean to the present. Why set them in space?
Well, obviously, because that’s the frontier we instinctively know we must colonize. It beacons and calls to us, and our dreams are there.
In the nineteenth century, people told stories of Africa that had very little to do with the real Africa, but they sold to the restless. I think it’s something-like with pulp.
And why some people are so invested in making sure we never dream of that frontier.
They will yell how colonization is bad, even if you colonize emptiness.
Unfortunately all species, at least on Earth (though if it’s not the same in other worlds we don’t need to worry about alien competition) either colonize or die. A niche species is an endangered species. It endangers itself.
Sure, we can choose to commit sepoku and die in your cradle. Or …. or we can go find out what’s there.
And stories pave the way. Which, I think, is why evolutionary we’re attracted to them. They make us human.
And humans, by definition want to push ever onward, into the infinity which calls to us.
Of all the traps a culture can fall into, the fact that Americans tend to fall into Noblesse Oblige traps says very good things about us. It also doesn’t make the trap any less dangerous.
Noblesse Oblige, aka “nobility obligates” was a way that the excesses of a hierarchical society was kept in check. While the peasants were obligated to obey the nobleman, the nobleman was obligated to look after them/not put extreme demands on them/behave in certain paternalistic ways. (One of these days I need to do a post on paternalistic versus patriarchal. remind me.)
It is what is notably lacking from ideologically driven totalitarianisms and hierarchies, probably because their basis being atheistic they don’t seem the humans they have power over as being worth anything or commanding any duty from them. This is why in places like Cuba, Venezuela or China, the officials of the “democratic” government give themselves airs as long-suffering public servants while treating the people under their power worse than any of us would treat a stray animal (let alone a pet.)
In the US — where the citizen is king! — we have evolved a form of noblesse oblige best described as “Them who can, do what they can for those who can’t.”
It is part of our cohesive response to disasters. The neighbors who can/are less hit will go out of their way to help others. It is also why that guy who tried to write a book about how the poor stayed poor forever found that moving to a new city with his girlfriend and $5, he had trouble STAYING poor.
The problem is that it’s exploitable. To a great extent the homeless invading our big cities and camping on our sidewalks are a perversion of this. Yes, the mayors of those city are lefties, but they’re still actuated by a feeling they should “help the needy” and of course buying into the narrative that capitalism inherently creates a lot of needy, and therefore they have to mitigate it.
I don’t need to tell you how that gets weaponized against the common citizen of these cities, who find themselves confronted with unimaginable inconvenience or even danger around the corner, without warning.
I should probably point out it’s also getting weaponized against the governors and mayors. They might be too stupid to notice it, but mostly instead of thinking “look at the terrible results of capitalism” people are starting to suspect their local government is against them and FOR indigent drug addicted and aggressive grifters. (And they aren’t wrong.) A lot of the anger boiling over in our society is from being inconvenienced by the “elites” ideas of noblesse oblige.
But the noblesse oblige that affects the common individual in America is the foundation of worse traps.
Most of the idiotic compliance with ridiculous Winnie the Flu rules and restrictions hooked directly into Noblesse Oblige. For instance, the brilliant idea that you should wear masks to show you care even though we pretty much know they are completely ineffective and quite deleterious for a vast swath of people.
The idea that our kids should be forced to perform “volunteer” labor to graduate school, to “teach them to care for others.” The idea that you can always do a little more/sacrifice a little more for “those worse off” (Who often aren’t.)
When Noblesse Oblige turns into toxic altruism, it can take society apart.
Much of the “Green” mania is part of the noblesse oblige trap. They’re trying to convince us that if we just do these little things — most of them counterproductive, like, say recycling, which uses more resources and causes more issues than just using stuff — we’ll make it better for everyone.
In a bigger sense, they’re trying to make it so that we commit polite suicide so that “others live better.”
It can result in truly horrible racism, too. A great part of the left’s being convinced, say, that meritocracy is white supremacy comes from the fact that, being white, (and racist) they assume that they’re more competent than any other race, and therefore following “merit” causes white people to rise to the top.
When this spreads into society wide rules and our education, it results in minorities being indoctrinated with helplessness, and white people subconsciously absorbing the racism of low expectations (of others.)
All of this is completely crazy and distorting.
Noblesse Oblige is a great sentiment for your circle of friends and among people you know. Sure, if you can do. For your friends, for your family, for those you know are in true need.
But if you start extending that to strangers, you can commit some absolutely horrible injustices.
For instance, if you try to be kind to addicted/aggressive homeless, you end up being unkind to those who have to walk or live in the same area. You destroy real estate value.
In the same way, if you ditch meritocracy you’re going to hurt the most capable to favor the less capable, and you’ll also end up hurting society because the less capable also don’t run things in a way that is best.
Noblesse Oblige should have limits. And you should always make sure you’re not hurting others with it.
Yes, if you can DO but don’t do too much. Respect others’ ability and their noblesse oblige.
Don’t fall into the trap.
*Some perspective for 2020- SAH*
Many years ago, in a library sale, I came across a booklet of … well, science fiction scenarios. From the context — not being absolutely stupid — I could get that it had been commissioned before the election in 80, and had probably been distributed for free by the Democratic party. I am afraid to look it up, first because it’s the sort of quest that could take me something like three years (and be lots of fun, but no work would happen) and second because I’d hate to see which ones of my colleagues lent themselves to that rather preposterous effort. Fortunately I lost the book in one of our many, many moves since then, so I don’t have to know.
Now, when I bought it, I was thirty, just about, but younger than that in craft, as I hadn’t started seriously thinking about world building and scenarios of world building till 22 or so, and I wasn’t yet… fully immersed in American culture. For instance, how preposterous the scenarios were didn’t hit me at all. (Yes, I used to be an innocent. I actually thought anthologies about the coming Ice Age or about how we needed to disarm had no ulterior motives. Probably self defense. It allowed me to enjoy some art and literature, while, if I’d been fully conscious of its intent, I’d have thrown it across the room. More on that later.)
So I read it and re-read it, admiring the extrapolation and trying to figure out how to do this in my own writing. (Rest easy, I know better now.)
They really were preposterous scenarios. For instance the one where Reagan had gone elected went (Natch) into this scenario of endless war and of American soldiers sent home in sealed caskets which, if the grieving mothers dared open them showed corpses killed by a weapon beyond our comprehension. (Which makes perfect sense, because you know, the USSR was so much more advan– Oh, wait, no, it was complete and unadulterated BS.)
Some of the scenarios I liked. At this time I had virtually no political sophistication, and though I’d started reading Reason had no clue what “libertarianism” was. And yet, instinctively I liked the scenario that I THINK was called “The center cannot hold.”
I think, so help me Bog, I was supposed to recoil from it. Partly because it also started with Reagan’ s election. But then DC and all the great cities get nuked, and the US devolves to a regional-centered organization. First, this scenario was about as likely as feathers on a horse — because there was no invasion from outside following on the destruction of our centers of political organization — and second I think the picture the author was striving for was something out of mad max, or something. Instead, what I saw was small, decentralized, and less regulation. I saw thriving small centers of civilization. I saw more individual freedom. I ignored the rest.
Again, this scenario (All of them, really) was completely impractical, not to say impossible. There is no way — no way at all — that kind of destruction would have led to regionally centered anything. Yeah, I know a lot of dreams on the right and left start that way, but right now, the way we are, it’s more likely that widespread famine and invasion, and the other horsemen of the apocalypse would follow.
So it is funny that these days, looking at this great fractured polity of ours I keep thinking “The Center Cannot Hold” and it evokes both Yeats great mythical poem, and the scenario above, which means I end up dissolving in giggle fits at the unlikelihood of the scenario and missing the … ominous thoughts that the line should provoke.
And there are omens enough in the line. And for a long time, I’ve been listening to that poem at the back of my mind as I read the news or think over some recent event.
Because if there is something that describes our current days it is exactly “The center cannot hold.” And yea, anyone who trolls twitter can agree that
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity
And yet, just like the future scenario that was supposed to scare me spitless and make me not vote for Reagan (I didn’t, of course. I was only an exchange student. I did, however, work for his campaign) I look at this shattering and I listen to the ominous lines rolling in the back of my mind, and then I start grinning.
I’m not a nihilist. I don’t smile at the end of the world.
But what is very important to remember is that his is not the end of the world. It’s the end of a world. (And if any of you ever read Ray Bradbury’s Almost The End of the World, that was closer to what is happening in terms of major movements, than any apocalyptic scenarios. Oh, not in WHAT happened, but in the metaphor of it.) However, behind that dying world, around it, beneath it, over it, unsuspected, unseen by the glitterati and the gatekeepers, another world is being born.
Okay, so our major cities didn’t get hit, thanks be to all divinities, since I think the result would be chaos and destruction. Also, because I have friends in almost every large US city.
But the center is losing its grip anyway. Mostly in culture. But that culture is starting to influence politics, which is why there is this appearance of total chaos and the establishment (both sides) aren’t having it all their own ways. Granted, the left still gets more compliance than the right. It’s the nature of the beast and also part of how the culture fractured.
Which bring us to why we do have this impression everything is fracturing, and the “center cannot hold.”
This is a scenario not one of those big brains came up with. Not a big stain on them, mind, since even after the computer revolution was well under way, even as Amazon was starting to take the pillars out from under the pillars of the publishing push model (the model according to which you could only find in the bookstore shelves, not what you might want to read but the books that the publishers had thought worth it to “push” onto the distributors.), most of the people whose job it was to foretell the future were saying that Amazon was maybe like one large brick and mortar shop, and it would make no difference.
As for ebooks, we got the whole thing about how books are a tactile and scent experience. (Yes, I know some of you agree, but for the love of teardrops, I can’t see it.) And how ebooks would never displace “Real books” (listen, sonny, the scroll is here to stay and the printing press is a fad. Shut up and copy.)
Blogs? Some unwashed people in their pajamas. Not like those newspapers with layers and layers of fact checkers. You know, the newspapers who were wrong so many times they’re bleeding money faster than they can plug it. The newspapers no one under fifty really subscribes to anymore. THOSE newspapers.
And the TV stations… Yes, yes, Dan Rather. Fake but accurate. Or something.
And then there’s the universities. Oh, they’re holding on. But the competition is coming up fast. And I think they’re the next industry to truly get overwhelmed by catastrophic change.
Now, before we start dancing around the witch with the farmhouse planted on her snout, let’s be clear: none of these systems are dead yet. It is a mistake to underestimate the enemy, particularly the wounded enemy.
There are still people — I know some of them — for whom the mainstream media is still the main means of information. These are smart, thoughtful people, but they believe the weirdest things. And that same media can do as much damage by ignoring stories as by beating the drum wrongly. Benghazi, for instance. It should be a shock and a horror, particularly the way that government officials lied to us and said it was all about a video. But the media has refused to report on it.
And if you’re looking at that stuff, at the power still left in the mainstream institutions, you might get desperate. You might think it’s all lost.
Except that the reason you feel that way is… that things are getting better.
Yes, I know that’s paradoxical. But here’s the thing — cast your mind back to the time before we had internet — there were rumbles that, say, during Clinton’s time, the militias weren’t the big bad problem he painted it as, and there are more holes in the stories of incidents during that administration than there are — to paraphrase Heinlein — bastards in an European royal line.
BUT the point is you couldn’t know. There wasn’t a web. There wasn’t reporting first person what was happening.
In those days, the barrage would have held and we STILL WOULD THINK that Benghazi was the result of a bad video on youtube (only there wouldn’t be youtube.) We would have no idea — as weird as this is — that there was anything wrong with Fast and Furious. We’d just think that guns were being sold from the US down there.
In fact, you could say the reason their cunning plans keep misfiring is that they still control the media and therefore think they control everything.
Like publishers with the “paper books are coming back” fetish, most of the rest of the gatekeepers everywhere from publishing, to education, to politics are stuck in that place where they control all the means of communication, all the media, all the education and of course all government. Because politics comes from culture.
They are so focused on the traditional way they don’t see that things have changed.
And so they miss one important thing. We no longer feel alone. We’re as disorganized as cats. We’re as fractured as shattered glass, but we know we’re not alone. And we know that the facade they have built — probably not as a big conspiracy; probably just because they all want to advance the “progressive” future-that’s-supposed-to-be so badly — is broken.
And that’s enough. It’s enough for us to start talking about alternate solutions, to start building alternate structures, to network, to create, to keep our jobs even when we speak out.
Look, it only looks like everything is falling apart because the false consensus has been broken. But at the same time that break is what allows us to build under, to build around, to build over.
One thing we know is that the structures they’ve taken over are no longer in contact with reality at any level. Yeah, things look scary out there, and I’m not going to lie to you, they are scary, particularly on the international level.
Because the so called consensus was unchecked by dissenting voices, it has spun well away from reality.
But the new tech has given us a means of correcting that. It might be almost too late. And unless we have a miracle, there’s going to be the devil to pay for this.
Still, the correction is already in progress. Their way is passing. Our way is just starting out.
Funny how believers in dialectical systems didn’t see that coming.
Work. Create. Build under, build around, build over. It’s all going to come apart more before some sort of sense can be made of this mess. But the sense that’s coming, the ah spirit of the age embodied in its technology is moving away from big organizations and towards the individual.
And the individual? That we’re fine with.
In the end we win, they lose.
Be not afraid.
