I think it was during my exchange student year that I first heard the American joke about how you had to vote for one of the lizards, because otherwise the other lizard would win.

I believe the joke originates in either a book or a science fiction story, in which a human finds himself in a country where all the humans are governed by lizards. Every so often there’s an election, and humans will vote for a faction of lizards, even though the lizards are horrible (and eat them or something.) When asked why they vote for a faction the answer is “otherwise the other faction will win!”

This joke both charmed me and horrified me, and in a way encompassed everything I then — remember for all my love of America and Americans I was still mostly European — loved and dreaded about America.

What charmed me was the irreverence towards politicians. To understand why, you’d have to understand Europe as I’d guess few of you do. I mean, really understand it, bone deep.

In Europe the revolutions against the aristocracy ended up being skin deep. Yes, I know what happened in France, but what they really wanted was the ability for the bourgeois to more easily penetrate the noble ranks. I’m not sure it was even that deep in Portugal. My father informs me that one of my ancestresses was a devout constitutional-monarchist, which honestly I think — sorry guys from Portugal who read this — is where the Portuguese soul still is. Being mostly a country of oppositional defiant loons (I actually say this with love) Portuguese mostly ignore authority unless there is reason to believe these people deserve some kind of respect.  And the truth is, none of them is ever fully convinced birth isn’t as good a reason as any to to respect people. Possibly a better reason, as all other achievements can be cut down to size with sarcasm, irony and sheer defiance.

The convulsion of the Republican revolution, while violent was brief. And the crazy idealists (probably Marxists, or at least proto-Marxists.  I have no idea. Portuguese history is notoriously hard to study INSIDE Portugal. When I lived there, works of history were rare and mostly one collected what one could from the memories of living people, inference from contemporary sources and that was about it. In the US I’ve found actual works of Portuguese history, but most of it is notoriously unreliable and full of errors even I can spot) who took over rapidly proved themselves worse than the nobility.

What they have now is well… “rule by good families” which aren’t so different than noble families. Oh, and the bluer the blood the redder the politics.

Conversations with friends all over Europe have led me to believe the same. All the sons and daughters of “good families” are very very leftist, intuiting in their heart of hearts this is the only way they’ll have their feudal rule back. It is definitely, due to the positional good that leftism has become (partly due to the propaganda efforts of the erstwhile Soviet Union and perhaps the present Russians) the way to power and wealth, both of which those with long blood lines of power want and desperately need, really. It is their family culture.

Anyway, the point is you don’t make jokes about the elite, those who know the corridors of power and how to get their way.  That Americans do is one of my greatest inducements for having fallen in love with America.

What horrified me, and to an extent still does, was that Americans born and bred — you’ll forgive me, my friends? — have absolutely not a blathering clue about world politics, or how much power governments not fettered by the constitution have, or the havoc they can wreak on a peaceable nation.

Recall when I first heard this it was during the cold war.  Having heard Jimmy Carter talk and pontificate I was very well aware of how the Soviet Union viewed him, and how he’d roll before them.  What was at stake was in fact whether the world at large would become a farm for the Soviets to harvest to disguise the fact their vaunted empire couldn’t even support itself, and a future reminiscent of 1984.

Also, whatever else one said, and honestly he was a man, like others — and we shall not see his like again — Ronald Reagan LOVED America.  Meanwhile Jimmy Carter could barely tolerate our stench on him, as he toured European capitals.  (Yes, he didn’t despise us as openly as Obama, but it was there.)

It seemed to me only a fool would continue putting himself in the power of one who hated him, when one who loved him was available.

Lizards, yes, surely, but not equivalent. One lizard is more likely to kill you than the other.

Well, we know how that went.

We know how I went too. And as one of you I must say, I don’t like politicians. I don’t trust them. I know even the best of them are not only human, but likely to make the sort of compromise I wouldn’t make, or to have quaint notions that the other side can be negotiated with. And even those notions I agree with are likely to founder on a morass of dealing and deal-breaking.

Bah. They’re all lizards.

I was struck yesterday by the fact that some of you are so attached to this that — more on Facebook than here — you must protest one should not under any circumstances defend Trump. That he was whateverist or merely — who knows? — crazy or stupid, and that Tom spoke with forked tongue when he defended him.

I’ll be honest with you and say that I don’t even know who Tom voted for. He’s never volunteered the information. We were both very skeptical of both lizards, and honestly, I don’t know if he ever chose.

I eventually chose the lizard who didn’t hate America and who, for all his many many faults was the least likely to shoot me in the back of the head given the totality of who I am and what I believe.

Was he defending Trump? I don’t know. What I got from both his post and his rambling phone call was “I don’t like that lizard. But he’s saying something that needs to be said.”

Which honestly is what I believe too.

Did he say it in the best way possible? I don’t know. Maybe his calling everyone immigrants was his way of directing the discussion to the horrors of mass immigrants who form enclaves.

I’ll be honest: Trump is not Reagan. Trump is honestly a democrat. (In fact in one of my last conversations with Tom before the election in 2016 his comment on Trump was “I can’t vote for him. I don’t vote for democrats.”) But he’s a democrat his party has left behind.

Which brings us to the lizards again. See above, where I said in Europe the choice is between socialists? Given that I often voted for the socialists who at least seemed to love their country. Because they were less likely to deliver me and mine bound and gagged to our foes.

And it brings us to a choice of lizards.

Trump is… odd at best. For all his oddness, he’s not served us badly. He’s failed to stanch the invasion down south (Immigration without assimilation is an invasion- Jerry Pournelle) and he’s failed to clean up our voter roles, through which our representative government is bleeding.  But honestly, given where we are and what we are, I don’t know if anyone could have done THAT.

There are other problems, yes, but I’ll tell you the honest truth, as opposed to tariffs as I am, I’m not doctrinaire, and we are at a unique techno-historical moment. If we don’t have some sort of cushion to bolster us while the rest of the world comes up to us in standards and cost of living (or close enough) we’ll go the way of Portugal shortly after the discoveries, where nothing is made in country, and the people sink into a culture of indolence and pride. Which you could say is already happening and already destroying us. And I don’t know the answer to bringing back manufacturing, jobs and preserving the American spirit. And neither do you.  I’d like the answer to be my ideologically favored one, of course. I just don’t know if it is.

And I’m starting to suspect the internationalism of the 20th century was not just a very bad idea, but poison too, at least to any culture worth its name. Open the borders, or send out a casting call for the most afflicted in the world and what you’ll get in is the most dysfunctional cultural elements. All of them. Which in turn will undermine and destroy your culture.

We don’t need to make this experiment. The Scandinavian countries, Germany and France stand as awful examples.

But beyond that, international leaders don’t give a flying fig for how the population in their countries live. Go ask the Yellow Jackets.

It seems to me if you’re electing lizards, it’s a good idea to elect the ones who don’t hate you. It’s not enough but it’s a good start.

Which brings me to both what Trump said — and we all know exactly what he meant, which was that if people came here to complain about the country, they should go back (Californians taking over Colorado, I’m looking at you too) and show us how it was done. Note that he said they could come back afterwards — however badly expressed, and what the other side says.

We won’t even go into the sad spectacle of the Queen Bee Squad being unable to say that Al Qaeda are bad actors. I mean Ilhan Omar seemed to think that a request to separate herself from the enemies of America was a trick question.

And we’ll leave aside Lizard Occasional Cortex’s grasping ambition which is inversely proportional to her IQ.

Let’s look at the clown car of Democrat candidates:

All of whom embrace open borders, seemingly incapable of realizing that the land will eventually belong to those who defend them, and that those people might not be willing to be ruled by THEM.

All of whom view Emma Lazarus’ blather on the statue of Liberty as the writ of law and completely ignoring “Yearning to breathe free” think America is a sort of charity, which SHOULD by rights turn all its wealth and generational capital over to the wretched of the Earth. (Most of them think America stole it from the wretched of the Earth, because never having run anything not even a lemonade stand, they think wealth is closed pie.)

All of whom want to control the economy, and beyond that the thoughts, feelings and everyday interactions of normal Americans in their lawful pursuits. And I mean, control. These are all totalitarian larvae.

And then look at those who follow them. Yesterday I was treated to a farrago of nonsense on my Facebook page. This included being called a “monster” whose words (yes, that post here yesterday) made one’s “blood run cold.” I was also called racist and accused of white privilege. Oh, and a host of other equally daft attacks that boiled down to “if you hate socialism you must be a white supremacist.”

The last is the truly depressing thing, because you can’t fail to realize that these poor indoctrinated bunnies, while possibly incapable of expressing it (because they’re incapable of expressing most things) have been indoctrinated to believe that all races but whites are naturally socialist, and therefore to oppose socialism is to be racist.

They’ve also been indoctrinated to believe America OWES the world. Which means that you get blather about “children in cages.” And yeah, they refuse to believe those photos are from under Obama, but let’s leave that aside for a moment: NEVER in my entire life have I seen so much malignant altruism deployed on behalf of people coming into a country with neither invitation nor a desire to belong.

These people, who have no clue how other countries operate, have been made ashamed that America HAS borders, and feel vaguely embarrassed by those of us who approve of borders, in the same way a nobleman feels embarrassed by commoners farting in the king’s court.

We are at a very perilous moment. I’ll tell you right now — I’ve told you before — that I don’t think it will pass without serious civil unrest.

If we’re lucky, we’ll escape without the sort of serious civil unrest that persists for generations and destroys the land and the people.  I believe there is just a chance we’ll get lucky.

But the thing is unless these misguided notions of the followers of the lunatic open-borders socialist lizards are countered, and hit hard on the face with rebar (the notions, not the followers or the lizards) repeatedly, while they can’t win, we’ll also lose.

To the generation raised on racial nonsense and accused at every turn of being “white supremacist” white supremacy will become the norm. They are as innocent of cultural differences as a cow is of a palace. All they’ll see is the superficial difference. And what they’ll do is turn the idiocy they’ve been taught on its head.

The result will be much what the European right wing is. It will also be, if not impossible, very uncomfortable for myself and my descendants.

And it will not be America.

Which is why I put Tom’s post up. And why I think we need to stop quibbling over “If only Trump were perfect.”

Great idea. Let’s arrange for a perfect politician who never misspeaks as soon as possible. Hell, I’d settle for human and not a lizard.

However, since the other lizards are for destroying us through a combination of open borders and complete control economy… How about we, for now, stop declaring the sky is falling because the lizard we have misspoke, maybe? Or maybe created a cunning trap for the other lizards?

Yeah, sure. They’re all lizards. But if one set of lizards wants to annihilate you no less absolutely than during the years of the soviet union, and the other lizard is MERELY an embarrassment to those of us who love words, and frankly not to be trusted further than I can throw him, I know which side I’m on.

Let me add I don’t think the left CAN create Venezuelization here. I think none of them even understands how diverse, varied and resourceful Americans are, much less the vastness of the land.

But I do know if they get hold of the levers of power, even once, in the next ten years, or until their love affair with communism and internationalism is purged, and a new generation raised, they will so far corrupt the voting that they will never be dislodged.  And when the worm does turn — and it will — another totalitarian regime will take the place of theirs.

So. It is important to change the culture. It is important to debate things like “immigration to what end?” and “If the purpose is welfare why not assist them in their own lands?” and “Shouldn’t Americans love their own country?” (Note this is not the same as not wishing to change anything about it. But if you want to change EVERYTHING about it, including the principles on which it was founded, why not leave? There are bound to be countries you like better, no?) and “what do we actually owe the wretched of the world?” and “What does culture contribute to prosperity and/or wretchedness?” And also “How does one change culture?” (Because en masse we don’t actually know how. Yes, Japan, kind of but what actually has resulted is the disease of conquered people, who fail to reproduce.)

We must debate these questions, or they will be “decided” by the indoctrinated who have been taught not to think at all.

Lizards? Sure. They’re lizards.  But one set of lizards hates America, the west, and in fact all humans.

Do you want to deliver yourselves into their power?

*I had the first night of decent sleep in several days (Yes, Dan is home.) And woke up to my friend whose middle name might or might not be Jefferson (he claims it’s not) burning up the phone line.
I had NO EARTHLY what he was talking about, since the last days have been rather busy with household/family stuff. Hence forgetting to blog yesterday.  He had a post for me.  When I realized what it was about I said “Yes, please.”
I know. AOC was born “American” so, yeah, Trump misspoke. Is this worse than 57 states? He’s right in the main. That woman loves the country as she wants it to be, with HER in charge. The country as it is? Not so much.
Can’t she just go to one of those countries she identifies with? (They probably wouldn’t let her in, but–)  As for the others? Two also have birthright citizenship. But they are not even remotely American. Which is the problem with taking “refugees” who don’t want to be American, but to get stuff from America.
As for me — first generation immigrant, thank you so much — and my house, we’ll be American.
People who are here and want to talk about how terrible America is? LEAVE. Vamoose. Go. We’re not a socialist state that restricts your ability to leave. That’s the whole point.
Fit in or F*ck off.  I’ll help you pack your bags. – SAH*

Trump Points Out The Obvious. Everybody Apparently Loses Their Damned Minds by Thomas Kendall

Blah, blah, blah, unforced error, whatever.

1. A) Take an antidepressant
2. B) Look, honestly I’m glad he said it, already.

Let’s start with some basic sh*t. Yes, the only person of AOC’s infamous “squad” to personally come here from another country is Ilhan Omar. Ilhan Omar was born in Mogadishu and she came here around 9 or 10 years old. She is the only first-generation immigrant. It’s kind of an academic point. Honestly, like she booked the travel herself. She’s from an immigrant family, that’s the point.

And Ocasio-Cortez is the daughter of a Puerto Rican [Sure, it’s a “territory” so she was technically born American. Have you ever been there? Looked at how people live there? Look at what she IDENTIFIES with? Yeah.] She is, in fact, a second-generation immigrant [Very Latin. Much minority. What she never identifies as is… one of us]. This is a common term. So is Rashida Tlaib. Her parents were “Palestinian” immigrants (I myself like to indentify as Prussian and Zairian). She is also a second-generation immigrant. Let’s be real here, people trying to attack Trump on this are really working a technicality for all it’s worth. It is entirely reasonable to refer to all three of them as immigrants. It was a key part of their formative experiences. Every single one was raised by, at minimum, one person who did not come from the US originally. We can probably infer something about what that upbringing emphasized from their actions. In particular, the rather key lack of things we would very much like people coming here to have. If you want to be pedantic then fine, they’re from immigrant families. If the distinction makes you happy, whatever. And hey speaking of which…

Since the Democratic party is suddenly the party of open borders, I feel like it’s maybe important to the discussion that three of their battiest socialist yahoos are, in fact, from immigrant families. For those who are behind on the issue, the Democrats want unchecked illegal immigration because… supposedly… it’s fair and just that we let literally anybody who shows up at the border become an American. All they need to do is come from, oh, what’s a good term for it…  a shithole. Their home country has to suck. That’s the only qualification. Which really means, given our neighbors, that if they have a pulse and can cross the border, then they’re just as American as the next person. Probably that border will be the Southern border that you might recall we’d asked for a wall across, mostly for this exact reason (Because somehow I doubt the impoverished masses of Canadians are straining to come down here? Not until they need timely medical treatment, anyway.). If you question the wisdom of letting all comers in, you’re wrong because… ah, I just got the argument back from the professional logicians… ahem…  “shut up racist”. I hope that clears things up.

Now hang on! Just look at all the societal benefits to be reaped from this policy. After all, the proof is in the pudding, right? Why, look at these three American success stories, every one of them from, I think we agreed, an immigrant family. And every one of them is a vitriolic, America-hating, openly socialist, race-baiting pain-in-the-ever-loving-ass. Just imagine how many more families just like theirs we could bring in with an open-borders policy that had an even lower bar for… say, where are you going? Come back, damn it! Diversity is our strength, I tell you!

So, genuine question… why shouldn’t we call them on their bullshit? Somalia and Puerto Rico are shitholes. So are the pieces of land around Israel still occupied by “Palestinians”. Two of those are occasionally explosive shitholes, arguably the worst kind. Their families came from places that are objectively worse, compared to the United States. But, uh, boy, you’d never know it listening to them. They sure have a lot of problems with us, considering. Why the Hell should we suffer in silence while these wanna-be commies back-seat drive our government?

Look, you saw what AOC’s chief of staff said about the Green New Deal? “It wasn’t originally a climate thing at all … we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing”. Jesus, that’s a headline, isn’t it? Okay, genius. I completely believe that your central-planned nightmare concocted by tinting the communist manifesto green is a better economic system than the one that has made us the pre-eminent world economy and byword for societal stability for the last century and change. But on the distant off-chance that there might possibly be a flaw somewhere in there, how about this? How about you and your dumb-ass boss pack your hipster glasses, and both of her brain-cells, in an eco-friendly hemp-woven case, buy plane tickets South of the Border, and show us how it’s done? You now have official presidential sanction to do so. Oh, wait. That’s right. Silly me. I just checked. It looks like they already have a crippling debt crisis. Hmm. Now I’m afraid AOC’s ideas might not be so fresh after all. Looks like they already tried one of the big ones.

Well, maybe Ilhan Omar can step up. Mr. Trump has offered, ma’am, now’s your big chance. Here’s a plane ticket to Mogadishu, let’s see your world-class concepts for solving Balkanization. If it’ll work there it’ll work anywhere, since as best as I can tell Somalia is a whole bag of permanent clan warfare wrapped up in borders. Needless to say, it’ll be a glorious thing to see it solved, and I can hardly… um, say, lady, you seem to have the wrong idea. I said fix the Balkanization, not demonstrate it. What’s with the race baiting? Oh, sure, and the socialism too. How could I forget? Why not? Your experiences with Somalia consist of running from it as a failed state, so in practical terms, the government was largely imaginary anyway. You, uh, didn’t actually happen to learn anything from the negative example set by the country your parents ran from, did you? Yeah, I didn’t think so, I just had hopes.

Okay, well, maybe Rashida Tlaib can salvage this. Being “Palestinian”, her family likely bears grievances against Jews. Absent an actual land-mass, it’s basically all the term means anymore. But the duty of an immigrant is to re-forge themselves into the image of their new people, and that means letting the old-world grievances go. Doubtlessly, mindful of this burden, she’s careful to leave the old racial animosity behind her and focus only on loftier things by… er… criticizing Israel endlessly and supporting the BDS movement. Oh, and she too is a socialist? But hey, just so we’re clear, though, she is a socialist who hates Jews, but she is not a Nazi. She is emphatic that Trump is the Nazi. Not her. Or Ilhan Omar, who helps her out when hating jews is too big a job for just one congresswoman. You see, she’s not a nationalist. She’s not even particularly fond of the country, frankly. None of them are. Just ask them. And that makes it… better? She should try it as a campaign sign. “I hate America but my family came from elsewhere, so I’m magically entitled to your vote”.

Hell, they could all use that slogan.

Which is sort of the point, really. I want legal immigration. I really do. Sarah is a good friend and a legal immigrant. We need a thousand more like her. A million. What I…  and most other people who don’t possess the kind of insane mentality that plays with matches on a power keg…  do not want, is more Ocasio-Cortezes, Tlaibs, and Omars. They aren’t doing us any favors. In fact, despite their young age, they have already perfected the single most obnoxious quality of the worst kind of mother-in-law. They invade your home, start asinine political arguments that make you suspect they maybe come from another planet, and criticize every little thing you do, while counting, basically, on you being too polite to tell them to go bite… something besides the Christmas turkey, put it that way.

So you know what? Good on Trump for bloody well saying it already. And what better time, since the “squad” generally is probably at a relative peak in their visibility. These three in particular have some real nerve. Given how they act, I can only imagine what their parents taught them, but a basic love of America doesn’t seem to have been part of it. That’s a touch disturbing considering that should be one of the first requirements of people coming here. Put it this way, how would you feel if this was what every immigration story looked like? We’ll just ignore generation one for a moment and focus completely on their kids. Imagine that from now on, the attitude towards the country of the average immigrant’s kid will peak somewhere between AOC and Ilhan Omar. On a scale of 1-10, how good an idea is any immigration in those terms? Don’t you think we’ve already got enough problems?

Thankfully, things aren’t really as bad as that. These three are merely a reminder that some prominent minority of immigrants, of unknown size and scale, are actively malignant. The Left isn’t even keen on us actually counting how many immigrants we currently have, so they’re certainly not about to let us quantify it. Still, the activities of these three are a key reminder that everybody we take in gets a say, and their idiot kids could even end up running the country if we aren’t careful, so taking in people with zero filtration is probably not a very great idea. I’m reminded of the article on the migrant caravan I read on this very blog where the migrants marched under the flags of other countries and stopped by a river to sing another country’s national anthem.

So, yeah, I’m happy I’m not the only one who’s had it with them. Maybe if the Democrats want to sell the country on unlimited immigration, they should think about not having three of the most prominent immigrants in their party be people who make immigrants look like ungrateful pricks. Because, you know, I don’t especially care if it’s politically correct to ask…  If they dislike America so much why do they stay? It’s like if you join a club and your friend joins a while later and all he talks about is how much it sucks.

Dude. Fucking… leave. What’s the problem, here?

By all means, languish not in this intolerable Hellhole, ladies. The rolling sands of Mogadishu await. Well, await one of you at any rate. But AOC and Tlaib can take the long way round, assuming they survive landing in Mogadishu. Call it girl’s night out (of the country). If you aren’t just here to try to crawl to the top, institute radical redistributionist schemes, and then mysteriously have a lot of the wealth redistributed to you in the process of it being passed around “fairly”, the places your families ran from are available. Send us a post-card. You may need to institute a functioning postal system first, but damn it, I believe in you. If those countries won’t do, there are also dozens of countries where people have already crawled to the top, instituted radical redistributionist schemes, and mysteriously had a lot of that wealth redistributed to themselves, and… I can’t help noticing… they are also mainly shitholes. There would be a lesson there for you three, but I’m not sure I can break it down into the requisite monosyllabic words. I’d have to maybe find a way to express half a syllable in AOC’s case, which explains a lot about her, really.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. What will we do without you? Well, don’t worry. Brace for life-changing news as I reveal this— we don’t need you three. And we don’t particularly need any more like you three. We can find probably about a billion people just as stupid and un-American right outside [or inside] the border. In fact that’s kind of the problem (Or…  as the traitorous elements of the Democratic party that see non-functioning borders as their own personal ticket to dissolve the people, elect another, and crawl to the top to yadda, yadda, yadda, would call it…  the opportunity). Frankly I’m not sure any nation needs vacuous anti-nationalist Marxism-gargling moppets clogging its political houses, but we especially don’t. Yes we know you hate the wallpaper and the stuffing is too dry for your tastes. Enough. Pick another country to annoy already, would you? I hear France is… used to be nice this time of year.

Not that the “squad” has nothing useful to tell us about immigration, mind you. Just one day reading the news tells you, the immigration system that let their families in? Too. Lax. By all means, let’s finally start talking about how to let in people who actually like America, not just people who want to loot America. We deserve patriots, not pirates.

*Sorry to leave you hanging this long.  Woke up and did a lot of work in the garden, before it got really hot, and then realized I’d been postponing a few household repairs that needed doing and… time got away from me.  Which is why this short story appeals to me as a blast from the past.  Yes, there will be something new soon, as well as a new novel, which I need to work on on.  Hence fobbing you guys off this way.  I hope you don’t mind – SAH*

So Little and So Light

Sarah A. Hoyt

©Sarah A. Hoyt 2015

I landed with a stumble at the foot of Calbeck Hill in England in 1066, during the Battle of Hastings when the English routed the Normans for good and all out of England.

The landing was rough, as it sometimes is. I half fell and my feet squelched as I instinctively spread them apart seeking for purchase in the marshy ground. No one saw me appear. The human mind is very good at censoring out the impossible.

I was dressed as a man. Not difficult for a woman of the 23 century transported back to the eleventh. More likely to pass as a man than as a woman. Wearing the uniform of a housecarl—a professional soldier—in woolen tunic, and trousers, with a straw padded surcoat under the chain mail hauberk, my breasts, never all that noticeable, were wholly invisible. The conical hat with face shield hid my features and my lack of beard. And the kite-shaped shield, the battle ax in my hand made sure no one got very close to me.

The man next to me made a sound at my stumble, something like, “Hey there, watch it,” but then turned forward.

Forward, as all the history books had taught, the forces of William the Bastard fled our side, their mounted cavalry decamping in ground that had never been suited for cavalry. As a trainee time-Hunter, in history of war, I’d heard all about the mistakes William had made. Still, wasn’t prepared to see them enacted before my eyes.

Few Breachers make it for battles and confrontations. The romantic mind that thinks the past a better place always goes for parades, for grand events, for triumph and celebration. But this was not a common Breacher. He’d been, before his transgression, a Satrap, a member of a good family, of an hierarchy unbroken for ten generations. And a director of the Time Corps.

Ahead of me, Harold’s forces were moving and presently we too started running, chasing the Normans as they fled. Before I’d arrived, already half the forces had abandoned the safety of Caldebeck Hill for the plain where the Normans were fleeing. I joined in the pursuit, excited to finally be in an event we’d studied so often.

For a while it was all a blur as I met the enemy, and had to counter their sword thrusts with my ax blows.

It used to be, back in the beginning, that people were afraid of time travel. They thought any misstep, any foot laid wrong, any butterfly trampled, made us all Breachers and changed history forever.

We’ve found of course that history is more elastic than that. It takes willful intent and major changes to make history take a different course.

So I lay about with my ax and a clear conscience. It’s hard to explain without believing in predestination, but I couldn’t kill anyone who hadn’t died. Not in a chaotic event like battle.

And to me they weren’t quite real, these men I fought.

What was real was the tracker and the time-tagger. The arrows and flashes, in lights, atop my shield, could pass by mere play of light, but I knew what they told me.

The Breacher was here. Very close.

And then the man facing me spoke, in Panlanguage, in a soft throaty voice that barely rose above a whisper, “Ah, Hunter. You’ve found me.” A chuckle. “But too late.”

I looked up and for a moment caught a glimpse of the Norman whose heavy sword knocked my ax blow aside. An impression of red hair, of soft red beard, of laughing blue eyes shining from either side of his helmet’s nose-piece.

I was so stunned at Panlanguage and at the smile on his eyes that I lowered my ax. He could have killed me then, but he didn’t. He only laughed, and then vanished, the bone scales of his armor making a sound as a soft rain while the time-current grabbed him and pulled.

I came to myself as another Norman rushed towards me, and I pushed at the pendant at my neck, the aten that disguised my retrieval mechanism, and which would have become inactive in the absence of the nanites in my living blood, so if I died or lost it, no one could use it.

There was the time current grabbing me like invisible claws, and pulling me, with force that made my teeth rattle.

And then I was in the mission room.

#

“You failed,” Alvin Windham said, even as I dropped my helm and weapon, and started tearing out of the sweat soaked, uncomfortable clothes.

I undressed completely, and went into the delousing room, saying to the room in general, knowing the pickups would relay the words to Time Command Center, “It was a bloody battle. And he faced me directly, instead of running. And he spoke to me in Panlanguage.”

I got out of the delousing room, my body stinging from the short shower of the disinfecting/cleansing solution. The Hunters called it delousing, but I knew it was something else, including inoculating against any virus, any bacteria, anything of the time that might hitch a ride back to the real, present world.

It used to be believed that nothing could attach in the short times a Hunter spent in the past, and then someone who had spent a day in ancient Egypt had brought back the first epidemic flu and killed half of the Hunters. Now we deloused.

The room I entered as I left the delousing was a dressing room, circular, with pegs on the wall. On one of the pegs hung my everyday clothes: short tunic and leggings in a fabric that neither scratched nor clung to your body with sweat. I wanted them so badly. I wanted nothing better than to put them on, to walk out the door into the world where I didn’t have to find a dangerous maniac bent on destroying history.

But then I read the words emblazoned around the room, “Time Hunter Corps. Saving the past for the future,” and I stayed naked, ready to put on whatever clothes I needed for wherever the Breacher had gone now.

Alvin stood in front of me, in his dark brown uniform, the clipboard in his hands. “We’re not faulting you, understand! This is not a common Breacher and this is why we chose you to catch him. We knew it wouldn’t be easy.” He frowned slightly. “The problem is that he could be anywhere. This is not a home-made time jumper. He stole our best.”

I grunted understanding and pulled back at my shoulder-length dark hair and glowered at Alvin. “How did I fail?” I’m nothing special to look at and he’d seen me – and every other Hunter – naked too often for it to occasion any surprise or any appreciation. Not that there was much to appreciate, as I was no fashion plate. Few Hunters are. Too memorable can kill you when you’re back in the past, and we can only take so many legends of the beautiful fairy up the hill.

But he noticed my frown.

He shook his head a little. “We are not quite sure how, but we think he got the ear of William the Bastard. He must have been in the time and place for years, without us seeing it. He must have confounded our tracers. And he … he advised William on the use of Archers, on the use of ambush. The retreat was a deception. Your momentary comrades were ambushed and massacred.”

“The Normans won England?” I said. “But that—”

“For now,” Alvin said. “For now. Inside the command we don’t change, of course, so we know the truth, and once history settles we will change it again. Ten years. Twenty. But first we need to catch him. We think he’s trying to create so many break points, so much instability that we can’t repair it; that even within Time Time Command Center the memories change.”

“Can that happen?” I asked.

He shrugged. “We’d think not. But Seth is a Cowden. Not only was he an expert in time and time-disruptions, but his family have been time-experts forever. He might know something we don’t.” Alvin consulted something on his clipboard. “Ah, there. We found him again.”

#

We were sliding down the Nile on a boat filled with dancers and servers. I was in the boat of Queen Nefertiti, principal wife of the great innovating pharaoh Akhenaten. Above us the stars shone on a velvet sky. I wore a linen dress with precise pleats, and a wig, having taken the part of a serving lady in the throng of the followers of the queen. Not a real server, but one of the daughters of provincial nobles sent to the court with the pretext of attending the queen and the real aim of perhaps finding an advantageous alliance.

All night my jewelry – the heavy lapis-lazuli looking necklace around my neck – had been communicating through slight shakes that the Breacher was near. But how near?

We were headed for the Heb-Sed of Akhenaten. He had many, having started in the third year of his reign with the Heb-Sed normally reserved by other pharaohs to celebrate thirty years in power.

It was generally acknowledged among historians that it had been such a bold move in celebrating the Heb-Sed, the festival of the tail, that had helped Akhenaten establish a monotheistic religion. And it had been that monotheistic religion that helped consolidate the Egyptian Empire under his son, Tutankhaten, and his sons’ sons.

Such a strong empire had Egypt funded that neither Greece nor Rome could dislodge it and little by little their confusing polytheism had been subsumed into the worship of Aten, which in turn had propelled the world into the new era.

Twice during the night, someone had touched me where my back was bare and I’d felt the necklace vibrate. But every time I turned around, I saw only Egyptians. Not the Breacher. And I doubted the tall, redheaded man I’d seen at Hastings could have disappeared in this dark crowd, even if he’d worn a wig.

Presently the boat docked where the preparations had been made for the Pharaoh to run the ritual course and do the dance that would prove both his ability to still rule the country and to have the approval of the gods to do so.

His boat had already docked and his retinue had disappeared past a series of refreshment tents set up to receive him. I had to wait until the Queen and her close attendants left the boat. From where I stood I could see her exquisite profile as she stood.

Near me a voice said, “You, girl,” and thrust a linen cushion fringed in gold at me. “Carry this.”

I took it. I hadn’t had time to establish an identity. Even my command of Egyptian was limited. My goal was not to intrigue, nor to carry on a careful subversion, but to find the Breacher, to neutralize him, to take him back with him or kill him, if I could not take him back for judgment.

Judgment of Breachers was always preferable, but in this case it might not be possible. The Breacher was far too clever and at any rate, if he died before being dragged to the twenty third century, it would spare his powerful family embarrassment.

On my turn I processed off the boat, holding the cushion to my chest, as though it were precious, which it was, since I’d be severely punished, I was sure, if I lost one of the Queen’s possessions. Worse than displeasing one of the Satraps.

We processed past the refreshment tables, and to stand under an awning while the priests pinned a tail to the king, since Heb-Sed or the festival of the tail related to an obscure wolf god. Akhenaten had said the wolf god didn’t exist, that all power belonged to Aten. But he still wore the tail.

Just before the run, he stumbled, as though he’d lost balance, and I thought that the sun must be exceptionally hot. After all, Akhenaten was supposed to reign another fifteen years.

A finger caressed my dress at the top. A voice said, speaking throatily in Panlanguage, so that anyone hearing him would think he was making mere, random noises. “He will be dead within the year.”

I jumped and tried to turn around, but couldn’t. Somehow the cushion – and I couldn’t imagine how – was holding me in position, holding me turned forward.

“That is right,” he said. “That cushion is a neutralizing device for your necklace and it has… other effects. You will neither be able to let go of it nor to turn, till I let you.”

I cleared my throat. I wanted to shout, but instead, I spoke in a whisper too, the whisper that prevented us from disturbing those around us. It was no part of the mission of a Time Hunter to create time disturbances. And I would not. “You are mad, Seth Cowden.”

He took a deep breath. His finger continued to trace the width of my shoulders, the dip between my shoulder blades. “Perhaps I am, Lady… what is your name? Your real name, not the assume Egyptian one?”

“Iset,” I said. “Iset Creuly. But I am not a lady. Not from a Satrap family.”

“Ah,” he said. “No. You wouldn’t be. They don’t risk their daughters in these runs.”

“I was sent because I’ve dealt with difficult Breachers before. If you return and turn yourself in,” I said, “we’ll make accommodations.”

This time it was a soft laugh that answered me, “Don’t lie to me, Lady Creuly. There are no accommodations for a Breacher who has succeeded. Oh…” He paused and seemed to think. “I suppose my family will make sure my death is painless.”

I should have told him that he could escape death, that he would be considered mentally disturbed and not fully in control. Surely he was mentally disturbed. Had to be. Why else would someone of a Satrap family run into the past to change it?

But I knew he had been in command, and probably knew the truth better than I did. He was right. Crimes such as his couldn’t be forgiven, not even in the Satrap families. And at any rate Akhenaten had stumbled again and I made an involuntary exclamation, lost in the sounds of those around me.

“I wonder,” he said, in the tone of a man who dreamed, “What your name was originally. And also why they made such a beautiful woman a Hunter. I thought they chose for lack of memorability?”

I opened my mouth to protest that I was unmemorable, but he only said, “Goodbye Iset. I wonder what that will be when I next see you. Iset is such a perfect name upon the tongue. Little Isis, a perfect miniature goddess.” He laughed softly. “No matter. Akhenaten is done. I have been in his court for years, slowly poisoning all his family in a way undetectable. Even Tutankhaten, soon to become Tutankhamun will die young and without descendants. If my calculations are right, Greece and Rome will supplant them and some other religion will give the world names that we can only imagine. And perhaps—”

I couldn’t breathe. I wished to believe he was bluffing, but something told me he wasn’t. I wished to believe his finger on my skin was an imposition and a boorish trespass, but I felt it was both the taunt of a man who knows in the end he’s doomed and the indulgence of a man who found me beautiful. Which was strange and miraculous both.

“Perhaps?” I said, curtly, trying to make him stop tracing arabesques on my skin with his fingertip.

“Perhaps we’ll meet again, Iset Creuly. In a freer world.”

#

I stood in the hall of Greenwich Palace, outside the queen’s bedroom. This time I had been there for three months, and managed to establish myself as Mary Wingfield, a relation to the Wingfield’s of Kimbolton Castle.

Alvin, after dressing me down, asking me, “What could you have been thinking, Mary Creuly? You should never have taken that cushion. Did it not occur to you it might contain a nefarious device?” had talked to me about how the Breacher had been traced to the time of Henry VIII, to be precise to 1535, when the king shared the crown with the beautiful and impetuous Anne Boleyn, his second and final wife, the ancestress of the Tudor dynasty which would retain the English throne until the twenty second century.

She’d given him a daughter, but no son, and in October 1535 she’d miscarried a son. Mid 1636 she’d have her second son, Henry, who would reign as Henry IX. Before he ascended the throne, England would reconcile with the Catholic church. Swayed by the health and vigor of the English heir, and by more material concerns, if the historians were to be believed, Pope Paul III would come to believe Henry VIII’s crisis of conscience over his too near relation to Queen Catherine was correct and had been based in divine inspiration.

Everything forgiven, by the time Henry IX climbed the throne on his father’s death, he’d be a most Catholic subject. Carefully juggling alliances with Spain and France, the ninth Henry had created the basis of a stable empire.

Queen Anne had given the king two more sons and another daughter, all of whom had been used as marriage fodder around the world. She was sometimes called the mother of kings, and it was true that everyone of royal blood, even all the Satraps in our time, had her blood.

For months I’d watched over her health. I’d managed to get assigned as a lady’s maid, and endured endless games of cards to make sure nothing was eaten by the queen, nothing came near her that wasn’t carefully monitored by my various disguised apparatus.

If the queen were poisoned, if she died, that would destabilize the future enough that the pieces would be hard enough to put together again. But not on my watch.

As for the Breacher, all my various tracers told me, time and again that he was nearby, but never close enough to the queen to make a difference. Never close enough to hurt her.

The only times I left her alone at all were while she was sleeping, usually watched over by her women, or when she ordered me away. And even then I kept my tracers on her to make sure the Breacher didn’t come near.

It was during one of those times, while I walked in the courtyard at Greenwich palace, my tracer telling me the Breacher was nowhere near the queen, and was in fact quite near me, that I realized he was walking towards me.

As at the Battle of Hastings, he was tall and redheaded, with grey-blue eyes and the shadow of a smile on his lips.

That he recognized me was obvious. I reached under my kirtle for the burner that I kept handy if I came across him. I’d shot men before. No. I’d shot simulations of men before, in exercises. I’d brought in all my captured Breachers alive. I didn’t want to shoot him. I wanted to capture him. But he was a difficult one.

“Seth Cowden,” I said. “You are under arrest for stealing a time device, for violating the ban on unauthorized time travel, for trying to change the past in order to—”

He grinned at me. He made no effort at all to go for his burner. “Am I, Iset? Is that your name?”

“I am Mary,” I said. “Mary Deven.”

He smiled a little. “Ah, Mary,” he said, testing out my name as though it were an exotic confection upon his tongue. “I must have forgotten.”

His smile, his lack of concern with my trying to arrest him disturbed me. “Seth Cowden,” I repeated. “You are under arrest. You can let me hold your wrist for transport, or else I will terminate—”

“Yes, yes,” he said. He made a gesture with his hand as though dismissing the burner I was pointing at him from under the folds of my kirtle. He had to know it was there, and also that I could shoot through fabric and burn him through the heart. But his eyes were unconcerned. And though I was tall for an Elizabethan woman, he was a giant, as he was tall even for the twenty third century. He was in fact every bit a Satrap, tall and broad shouldered, with perfect teeth and a look of complete self-possession. “But first let’s walk in this garden. Let me tell you why I did it.”

I hesitated. “Tell me—” I said, and then, decidedly. “I don’t need to know!”

He shrugged. “Oh, perhaps not. But don’t you want to know? You know who I am. The Cowdens have been in charge of the government of Earth and the twenty worlds for centuries. Why would I throw it all away?

“You are disturbed. Your mind—”

“Do I look like a madman to you? Give me your arm, Mary, and I shall walk with you in the garden.”

“It is raining!”

“So, you are not a real Elizabethan, whose clothes will be ruined by a little rain, and who can be killed by a cold. Walk with me, Mary. I will tell you why I did what I did, and if you still think I deserve arrest, you can take me back. Or shoot me for all I care. If I still exist when we’re done talking.”

“If you still exist?”

“Ah, in the multi universe each individual’s life is such a small thing, isn’t it? So little and so light. It counts for very little even under the empire, does it not? And the slightest shift can make it vanish.”

#

It was madness of course. What can I tell you, but that Hunters are human too? Aye, and in my case a woman. A woman who had never been rich or connected or, for that matter, beautiful.

I’d been born to a clerk in the Imperial administration, and my rank in life was restricted. That a Satrap wished to speak to me was a little intoxicating. That he’d called me beautiful had to be a ruse, or a trap. But there are traps so seductive we would fall into them willingly. I followed him to the garden, under the fine rain, and he put my arm in his. I could have held his wrist. I could have activated the transport. To this day I don’t know why I didn’t.

The garden was sad under the rain, but you could tell where things had been planted that when green would make the place delightful. We walked down paths I didn’t very well mark, and he talked. “Have you never thought, Mary, that the Empire perhaps cares a little too little about people? About each person?”

“The empire preserves people,” I said. “Lines, families, groups of people. Surely individuals are preserved too as part of it.”

“But only as part,” he said. “And only in their proper ranks.”

“The empire is stable,” I said. “Over the generations, the families have perfected their peculiar specialties. Each of them is good at what it was born to do, clerks and Satraps, commanders and planners.”

He gave me a look, sly, out of the corner of the soft grey eyes. “So, Mary, how many Hunters in your family?”

I shrugged and blushed. “Does it matter then?” I said. “The Hunters are not a clan nor a family specialty. They come from every family and every class, provided a taste for adventure, an interest in history, a quick mind.”

He grinned. “Aye, then, Mary, from every class. And have you thought, perhaps, that in every class, in every specialized family, there are individuals born whose talents differ from that of their family, that if they were allowed to use their talents, to create their own path, the world might be unimaginably richer?”

“No,” I said. “That is madness. Anarchy.”

“When I was younger,” he said. “I was a Hunter. And on a field mission after a Breacher, I pursued a man who created so much instability that for a few… moments? Days? Years? However you measure inexistent time, a society was allowed to exist where the empire had never come about. In it, men were free. Individuals. It was a beautiful— Oh, it was scary,” he said, probably having seen my expression, “and maddening and fast and chaotic, but that world, as it was, was also beautiful. No ordered ranks, no classes, no exams for advancement.” He sighed. “Their interactions were mad things, with no rhyme or reason. Then the repairers and tracers from headquarters got to cleaning up the time line, and reestablishing it, and I was brought back, and I became one of the planners, and I never saw—” He paused suddenly, both in speech and as though his feet had brought him to an unexpected place. “We,” he said. Then stopped again, as though that beginning had no end. He sighed. “When I saw you, the first time you came into the center, a Hunter, newly minted, I realized—” He paused again. “But no, I could never explain it to you, could I?”

And I realized we were standing in the middle of the kitchen garden, where vegetables, stunted by the cold of winter still remained enough to see what they had been. “I didn’t know there was a kitchen garden here,” I said

Which was when the screams echoed, loud, from the main part of the palace, and suddenly, as suddenly as my startled wheeling around to look at him, Seth wasn’t there, and there was just me, standing, under the fine rain, my French hood plastered to my hair, my gown sodden, my heart thudding, thudding, thudding.

He’d done something. He’d evaded my careful surveillance. He’d—

I ran. I ran in the direction of the screams, to stand outside the Queen’s bedroom. From inside came the screams, the sound of a woman sobbing.

Suddenly the crowd parted, and the king, King Henry VIII in all his majesty came thundering down the corridors of Greenwich, and into the door of the Queen’s room before we had so much as time to curtsey. From inside the crying of a woman stopped, and now came the voice of a man – the king – raised in scolding.

Minutes only, and he came out, saying at the door, “You’ll get no more boys from me.”

The crying resumed then, quieter. And then minutes later a woman came, carrying something in a folded towel. She looked at us, and she looked at the floor, and she said, “Queen Anne has had a miscarriage of her savior.”

I blinked, realizing in shock this was Henry IX, the Great Harry of English history, the ancestor of most of our Satraps. And he’d died. He’d died unborn.

History was tilting on its axis, and I knew the Breacher had done it, but I didn’t know how, and I reached for my bracelet and pressed to return to control center.

#

I was in a room. A broad room, wide round, that looked a little like Time Time Command Center, and yet wasn’t. I looked up, and there was no inscription around the door.

And then Seth Cowden appeared, from an internal door, and smiled at me, “Back so soon, my darling,” he said. He extended both hands to me, and took me in his arms. “How was the expedition? Did you find what you wished?”

I was mute for a moment because my first thought was to tell him I knew how he’d done it. Henry IX had died in utero due to something added to his mother’s food. I’d monitored the food itself, from the kitchens on, but not what had grown in the kitchen garden. Some fruit, some herb, some winter vegetable had grown with the nanites already upon them that would stop that life, before it was born, that would send history into a different path.

The other part of my brain told me it was all no sense. There was no Time Time Command Center. There was no Henry IX. England had remained the excommunicated child of Europe, separate. Because of its less rigid adherence to religion, it had spawned a much different culture, one that tolerated different kinds of thought.

The empire that united all the lands of Europe had never coalesced. There was some thought too that a certain rigidity of Egyptian religion, encased in millennia of tradition had never occurred, and the thought that the England itself was very different from the land of Saxons. It all flitted through my mind, like a whirlwind, like scraps of a dream half-remembered. And then it crashed into the thought that I’d been sent to retrieve Seth, that Seth—

But there was no Time Time Command Center. Time travel was regulated, in a way, in the sense that it was overseen by several scientific bodies, and that people had to be trained before going back. But the time stream was free to archeologists and sociologists, to investigators and historians.

I was an historian. I’d just gone back to study the Tudor period and to copy some documents relating to Anne Boleyn’s trial for witchcraft.

Looking up at Seth, my world solidified. He was my husband of three years, and a chair of history in the University of New America, a planet in Alpha Centauri. It was a new colony, funded after the old Earth country, a free colony that took all those wishing to join it from the heart, and willing to contribute to its mad whirlwind of invention and innovation.

“I found the documents,” I said. “And copied them.” I removed the French hood and the dress. This was our very own antechamber. Seth was quite wealthy, being older than I and famous in his field, and he had built a time-travel-chamber onto our house.

Naked, I allowed Seth to envelope me into his arms, feeling his red beard tickle my face. “I’m so glad we live in a world where I can’t have arbitrary charges brought against me, and everyone will go along with a despotic king. I’m so glad that the rights of the individual count for more.” I frowned, as a feeling of uneasiness persisted. “It could so easily have been different,” I said.

“Very easily,” he said, and gently kissed my forehead.

“And in a different world, I might never have met you, even,” I said. “Our families being from so different a level of wealth.”

“Oh, what does wealth matter, or class,” he said, and kissed me again, this time intently, as though kissing me were the only thing of importance in the universe.

Then he took me within, by the hand, into our chamber.

Hours later, we were lying together on our bed, dozing. “I had a dream,” I told him. “I think it was a dream. But it is so strange. And the world was quite different. I was hunting you down because you were bent on…”

“On?”

“Disrupting the time stream.”

He laughed. “Foolishness. Disruptions tend to heal.”

“Yes, but not for a while, and I remember it was odd that you… I have an idea you killed your own ancestor, in that dream.”

“That is madness,” he said. Amusement made him narrow his eyes, an expression I knew well. “And quite impossible. Given that women are women, which man can be sure who his ancestor was?”

Just then the communicator played a sharp note, calling our attention. Seth groaned. “Alvin,” he said.

Alvin was his assistant, the man who kept all the paperwork in order, the man who made sure that all the events of the day happened on time. Not brilliant, not innovative, but faithful and exact. I had a feeling he bored Seth a little.

Seth pressed a button and a hologram of Alvin appeared in the middle of the room. He was dressed very oddly, in a golden tunic, and strange molding pants, not at all like the loose, informal clothes favored in New America.

He glared at Seth, too, for what I’m sure must be the first time. “You thought you’d been so clever,” he said.

Seth sat up straighter, and said, in a tone of deep loathing, “Oh, it is you!” and I got a feeling he wasn’t talking about Alvin or not the Alvin I knew at all. “Very clever sending her after me. You knew I would not hurt her.”

“And very poor planning, very unworthy of a Satrap,” Alvin said. “To change the whole world for a woman. And a common, low born woman at that.”

I opened my mouth to protest, and I might have said something about Alvin needing counseling. But neither of the men paid attention to me.

Alvin said, “Fortunately I found your real ancestor, the Lute player. Did you think I didn’t know? Your ancestor looked just like him.” He spoke in a low, vicious tone, and I remembered a lute player accused of consorting with Queen Anne, but Queen Anne had been executed and—

Seth grabbed at my wrist. “Whatever happens,” he said. “Remember that I love you.” He put something in my hand. It felt solid and small. And he closed my fist over it.

Alvin didn’t notice the small gesture, he was ranting, “Fortunately I retain my memory. It will take centuries for us to clean up the time stream, but until we do, you will be punished for your actions. Even now, the assassins are destroying your true ancestor, before he can—”

#

There had been as though a sick twist in my guts, a momentary dizziness. I lay in bed in my small apartment, which overlooked Kansas, the capital city of New America. Outside my window the bustle of the largest city in the system went on. A reflection of light from a passing flyer sent lights chasing into my room.

And I opened my hand and found I was clutching a ring. It was so wide, it would only fit my thumb. I slid it on, hesitantly.

Suddenly I remembered. Hastings and Egypt and Tudor England. But with it came a feeling of Seth, too. And I realized he’d worn this ring that created a bubble of stability in the time stream, a mental barrier against the changes to the past, and allowed you to remember all the adjustments.

An expensive bauble, but then, in the original world we both came from, Seth had been a Satrap. Wealthy beyond the dreams of common people.

And he’d had this bubble, and he’d become a Breacher . . . for love of me.

The memory came with the ring, of the world accidentally created in which we were lovers, and of his despair, until he’d seen me again, in the real? Original world.

I got up from bed and went to the window, and looked out at the tumultuous world outside that would never have happened but for Seth’s meddling.

In that first world, it had been ordered, with palaces and slums in very different areas, with castes, with rituals, with rigid control of every individual action.

Individuals. So little and so light in the stream of time, in the pageant of history, in the swirl of the worlds.

But he had roiled time and history for me.

And I remembered too, this world, and our three years together, and the way he laughed, and his teasing look, and the sudden, unexpectedly vulnerable glances he gave me, that spoke of love.

So little and so light.

I clutched my hand in a fist around the ring on my thumb. Alvin had missed something when he’d not destroyed me, when he’d not seen this ring being given to me.

I remembered.

How hard could it be to go back in time and save a man from death? Oh, sure, I knew that scanners and fixers, planners and reweavers of time would all be at work even as I spoke.

But there was a good chance Alvin himself was gone, and any number of his helpers. Satraps had all been descended from Henry IX and who knew how many times Henry IX’s wife, Queen Catherine, had been unfaithful.

And yet, even if they all still existed and arrayed themselves against me, they couldn’t stop me. Sure, there were many of them, but that just meant I must fight them all.

I remembered our love and our marriage that had only existed in that world created by Breaching the past. Our love for which he had sacrificed all.

I must plunge into the time stream and from it rescue and bring back the one life that mattered and to me.

So little and so light. It outweighed all the possible worlds.

*Amanda had a bad week after a bad week, so she’s not able to write a post today. She promises one next week. Yes, I probably should write one, but I DO have a book to write. – SAH*

Fear – by Amanda S. Green – a Blast From The Past from September 2017

Fear.

It is alive and well and living in the United States. No, I’m not talking about fear of walking down the street at night because something bad might happen. I’m not even talking about a parent’s fear of letting her child play outside or walk home from school by himself because someone might report the child as being neglected. There is another type of fear rearing its ugly head right now. It’s not new but, thanks to the media and social media, it is more pervasive.

The fear I’m talking about is the fear of speaking your mind. No, I’m not talking about those on the extreme ends of the political spectrum. Yes, both sides have their extremists, whether they want to admit it or not. Those folks don’t seem to have any fear of letting their voices be heard long and hard. The ones I’m talking about are those who tend to fall in the middle of the political spectrum. It doesn’t matter if they identify themselves as liberal or conservative, libertarian or something else. These are the folks who don’t buy into either side lock and smoking barrel.

These are the people who would, in many cases, be the voices of reason. We might not agree with them, but we could discuss our differences without the conversation turning into a shouting match. Unfortunately, they are being silenced. No, not by the government but by those zealots on either side of the argument – and it doesn’t matter which argument.

At first, it was simply easier to walk away from the so-called discussions because it quickly became clear that those who said they wanted to discuss an issue didn’t. What they wanted was an echo chamber. There comes a point when you have to realize that no matter how well thought out your points might be, no matter how many facts you have to back your stance, there are people who aren’t interested.

But there are some issues where we can’t just step back. We remember Martin Niemöller and his words about the Nazis:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Right now, if you take to social media, you will most often see the above verse cited in response to what happened in Charlottesville. Those condemning the Neo-Nazis who marched that day, especially the ass who drove his car into the crowd, recite it in support of their cries to take away the right of those same Nazis to march or wear the swastika or, in some instances, to even speak their beliefs.

These same people have taken to social media to crow about how they have identified and “outed” those they identify as being “Nazis” in the march. In some instances, they have cost people their jobs. In another, Professor Kyle Quinn of the University of Arkansas was wrongly identified as one of the “torch bearers” in Charlottesville. He was attacked in social media, especially Twitter. His life was threatened. Fortunately for Quinn, not only was he NOT at the protest, those he worked with knew it. Even when it was shown he wasn’t there, the accusations that he is a racist continued, as did calls for him to be fired from his post with the university. Facts, you see, didn’t matter to those attacking him. Someone on their side said he was guilty so, by God, he was guilty and he needed to pay.

But it gets worse. We are told over and over again not to judge someone by their appearance. How many times have we heard this? So where is the condemnation from the Left for what to happened Joshua Witt from Colorado? Mr. Witt was stabbed because of his haircut. [This seems to have been a smolleting, but the idea there’s a “White supremacist haircut” is out there, and it’s bizarre. – SAH 2019] Yes, you read that right. His haircut. Witt had the misfortune of styling his hair in a way some of the Neo-Nazis do. His crime, other than having the offending hair cut? None. He was, according to his version of events, getting out of his car when someone came up, asked if he was a Nazi. Then the guy stabbed him.

Witt isn’t the only one to be called out – or worse – for that particular hairstyle since Charlottesville. Singer Macklemore found himself being called out on social media for the same hairstyle. The kicker here? He’d changed his style months ago. But those attacking him couldn’t be bothered to check before striking out.

Am I saying I support the Neo-Nazis or any other white supremacy group? Not on your life. However, much as I hate it, they do have the right to assemble – as long as they follow the law. They have the right to say what they want, within some very limited legal definitions. We have the right to point and laugh.

Where myself, and so many others, get uncomfortable is when we see people advocating taking those rights away. It is a very slippery slope they are proposing we get on. If the government decides today to silence the Nazis, they have started on the road to silencing others. That is not what this country is about. If we silence the Nazis, the skinheads, the KKK or similar groups, who next?

This is where the fear comes in. It is much more than the fear of the slippery slope should the government decide it needs to start shutting down free speech, no matter how heinous the group might be. It is the fear of what our neighbors might do, be it through ignorance or misunderstanding or something much worse. We have a group of people who seem to think it is their duty – their right, if you will – to “out” those they don’t agree with. They don’t consider the consequences of their actions. All that matters to them is that they are on the “right” side.

They don’t consider what happens when they publicly proclaim someone is a Nazi and then that person loses their job. What if that person has a family and is the only one employed? What if that person, or someone in their family, has a serious illness and the insurance he had through that employer was what was helping keep them alive until they could receive the surgery or other treatment necessary to cure them?

Or, as in the case of Professor Quinn, what if they were innocent?

In so many ways, the actions of these anti-white supremacists remind me of what happened in Nazi Germany – and in the Soviet Union. Neighbors reported their neighbors for not being good little Nazis or Communists. An air of suspicion and paranoia ruled both Germany and the Soviet Union because you had to watch what you said and did, no matter where you were.

I don’t know about you, but I would much rather have free speech and allow those I don’t agree with the right to spout their hate and stupidity than to face the possibility of the government going the way of Germany and Italy in the 1930’s and 1940’s or the Soviet Union. For those who have so gleefully been pointing fingers and calling names – and I don’t care what side of the argument you’re on – consider this. What are you going to do when those fingers are pointed at you? Because, the time will come if you keep this up. Just as that snowball grows as it rolls down the side of the mountain and shit flows downhill, as one group is silenced, fingers will point to another and then another and then another until you find yourself the target.

*I hate the fact I slept very badly, but I’ve been meaning to reprint this post, anyway- SAH*

Don’t You HATE it?- a blast from the past from 8-13-1012

This is the part of the blog when we reclaim words.  The word I want to reclaim here is “hate.”

Look, I hate my hair today — Sunday —  and I hated the way I felt this morning, with a sore throat and headache.  And I hated having to run first thing in the morning, but I did it in the hopes it would set things right which it didn’t.  So, I’ve sat here through all of Sunday, feeling like a lump and hating it.

All of which is utterly wrong.  Hate as I understand it is as absorbing, as all-powerful, as charged an emotion as love.  People throughout history have had loves and hates.  And just as they wished to achieve bliss with/for their loved ones (depending on the type of love) they wished to DESTROY those they hate.

“Peace, I hate the very word, as I hate Hell, all Montagues and Thee” – Montagues and Capulets are all about the unreasoning hatred: strong all consuming, absorbing, and will be led by it inexorably to destroy or be destroyed.

Hate is a great emotion to use in a book, because it’s big, red and pulsing.  (Stop giggling.  Don’t make me come out there.)  It’s an all or nothing sort of emotion.  Of course, if that’s the only emotion you use in your book, it will be a diminished book.  As Agatha Christie said of Elsa Dittisham in Murder In Retrospect (aka Five Little Pigs) if all you know is hate and love, you’re not quite grown up.  Grown up human beings know emotions with more shadings.

I wonder what it means about us as a society that we’re now all “hate” or “love”?  Is it a result of that delayed adulthood that has been referenced here by various commenters?  Or the result of our being, more than any other society in the past, a society permeated by entertainment and story?  It’s not just that on the page emotions must be bigger than they’d be in real life – the same effect applies on screen, where most people experience their story telling and through which most people absorb their idea of how the world and human interaction should be.

I will confess right now that I have an odd relationship with visual entertainment.  I view it only as a palliative to the extreme boredom of a repetitive task that doesn’t engage my visual attention.  Blame it on my parents, who didn’t get a TV till I was 8, or perhaps on a genetic disposition, who knows.  (It’s a war wound, g’venor.  I took an arrow to the knee.)  So I can go for years without watching TV and then, either because some monumental task looms (usually ironing, which can go on for DAYS) or because I’m sick with the flu or something (the type of illness where one doesn’t feel like working but is tired of sleeping) I end up in front of the TV for a week or so, and catch up on years of potential watching (thank you Amazon Prime and Hulu.)

So, I have seen soap operas maybe twice in my life, and the second time shocked me more than the first.  The first time was when I was very new to the US and everything was strange.  The next time was ten years later, while talking to someone who had a soap opera on – and at that time what hit me was how odd the acting was.

I don’t know if any of you have thought of this, but Shakespeare, to feel “right” must be played at a frantic, exaggerated pace.  Then it matches the words and the emotions.  Well, I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, but words, gestures and even voice level, Soap Opera makes Shakespeare look as stayed as a whisper while sitting in church.

I suspect, though I haven’t watched soap operas again to check, that some of that acting style has migrated to sitcoms and other shows.  (Of course, I only very occasionally watch those, either, but I seem to remember some joke about the exaggerated expressions of the lead actor in CSI Miami.)

And I suspect, raised on shows, with that acting permeating our consciousness to a level never before experienced in history, we’ve slid the scale right up.

Did I spend the day thinking how much I hated my hair?  Do I experience for my hair one of those emotions that will destroy one or the other of us?

Uh…  No.  I got up in the morning and was disappointed with how limp and odd it looked, and my attempts with a curling iron were fruitless and since I felt blah, I went “whatever.”  That’s the extent of my grand passion for my hair.

As with a lot of things I’d say I hated – beans, I hate… wait.  I might actually hate beans.  I just lack the ability to eradicate them from the world, and I’m aware innocent people would die if they disappeared, since they’re the diet base of various other American countries and I hear an excellent (if repulsive) source of protein. – I don’t actually hate them.  I dislike them.  They pain me.  They annoy me.

I don’t hate being stuck in traffic – it annoys me, though and puts me out of temper.  I didn’t hate the woman ahead of me on a one lane road, putting on her makeup and pressing the brake erratically.  Even if both of us stopped and I got out, I wouldn’t want to fight her to the death.  I might scream impolite things at her and tell her to stop being an idiot, but I never even got close enough to anger to want to slap her, much less kill her.  And once I was out from behind her (every single day on my way out of Manitou to drop the kids of at the school in Colorado Springs, the last year we lived in Manitou, why?) I didn’t think about her the rest of the day.  And now, ten years later, I remember her idiocy, but not her name, or even the color of her hair.  I don’t wish her ill.  I just wish someone would have taken her mascara wand away.

Are there things and people I hate?  I’m not sure.  Those people and things that put my family in danger, I dislike very intensely, but I don’t think I want to destroy them, just to stop them doing what they do.  Yes, in some cases that might mean killing them, in which case it must be done without regret or hesitation, but also, probably without hate.  Because in real life, you can see the motives of even the worst of people and with very rare exceptions, they’re not ALL evil.  (And on those rare exceptions, we tend to assume they’re crazy.  Which is silly, but it means they’ve gone that far beyond our scope.)

I don’t think I’m a particularly nice person.  And I don’t think I’m that unusual.  I don’t think most people go around consumed with hates and unreasoning passions that demand either they self-destruct or destruct the object of their obsessive negative passion.

A few, perhaps, (And not really) but if you think about it, most of the people you know who could genuinely be said to hate someone aren’t people at all.  They’re characters in books or movies.  (And often – Shakespeare excepted – though note even in Romeo and Juliet that’s not the moving force of the main characters, rather of the secondary characters (or perhaps it is a secondary character) – hatred is put in there as a cop out, an easy way to plotting, a way to cram a whole story in an hour with commercial breaks.  “He hated her that much” or worse “he hated some group or other” is the plot equivalent of “and then he went mad and murdered a multitude.)

Is this a problem?  To an extent, though it’s more a reflection of an issue brought on by technology – the prevalence of make-believe stories, emotions and motives in our lives to an extent our ancestors didn’t know – than the cause of the problem.

It only worries me when we use it to close discussion.  Like the commenter who said I hated him, or something of the sort.  (How absurd.  I still don’t hate him, even though he apparently lives under a bridge.  I don’t know him well enough to hate him.  His comments annoyed me, and I blocked him.  I’m not sitting here plotting his death, not even fictionally.)  At the time he said I hated him and was projecting, he was commenting for the first time, and I’d said nothing about hating anyone (well, not in that post.)

I do hate Marxism.  I hate it out of reasoned study.  And I’m ready to explain why I hate it – beyond the death and misery it always brings in its wake. It’s because before it destroys it maims the human spirit, and leaves behind trendrils that might take generations to clean up.

And it worries me that, like the Christie character, we’ve become able to understand only the big emotions, and not the smaller, more shaded ones. This hate and love, and calling others “haters” if they disagree with us (a favorite trick of the left, as are the various ists they accuse us of being)aren’t real. They’re just a tantrum. Having to respond to the tantrum in terms that penetrate means we also abuse words.

This ridiculous quarrel makes us all, even those of us playing defensive, emotional toddlers, carrying in on in a global nursery.

Like all toddler tantrums it will end in tears.

How do we become grown ups? I don’t know. But it starts with reclaiming words.

Are there humans I hate? Well, there are politicians and corruptions of our journalistic profession I despise. Hate?  I hate their actions. I spend a lot of time figuring how to erase those actions. But not how to destroy or kill the people who did them. Because I don’t hate them. I’m just intensely annoyed by them.

I’d like to give them a piece of my mind, not to plunge a dagger in their hearts.

I hate communism (As I hate hell….), but I strongly dislike the way I’m rambling on, seemingly unable to close this post.  I blame it on the slight fever and the headache.  Which truly bothers me. And I hate it. Because I want it to be over.

No, not that one.  I mean, the idea that anyone or anyone in great numbers is particularly outraged because the actress hired to play The Little Mermaid is black is honestly ridiculous.

The fact that that “controversy” was started by a “troll account” and more people slapped it down than not, leads me to believe Disney was counting on controversy to push the film, and when they didn’t get it they made it up. Pfui.

Sure, there are people who are outraged about the casting, but for most of them it has absolutely zero to do with race. For most it has to do with the fact that the live version won’t look like the “real” i.e. animated Ariel. And never mind that to look like that, most live women would have to carry their guts in a handbag.

That’s not a race, or even a really rational thing. It’s the way you defend the memories of your childhood.  I’m fortunate in that I didn’t have a TV till I was 8 and other than little improving movies shown by our church, I didn’t watch a movie in a theater till I was 14. (Asterix the Gaul.) So it’s really, really hard to “break” the memories of childhood for me.  Though honestly, given my druthers, I’d take ALL the “improved and updated” Enid Blyton books and make a big bonfire. That stuff is just wrong.  As wrong as J. K. Rowling’s Tweets that drive my boys insane. (“Wizards poop how? Just shut up, lady.”)

No, for me what happened to the Little Mermaid when the movie was made was the REAL tragedy.  Btw, it’s not even a memory of childhood, that.  I only read the fairy tales during a weird folklore-interest period somewhere around 12 or 16. (I don’t remember. Also, there might have been two periods.)

The thing is, it struck me, at the time, as very weird that Disney was doing The Little Mermaid, because it’s not, like Cinderella or Snow White a love story. It’s a growing up story. (Yes, it also has very strong Christian undertones, but most of all it’s a growing up story.)

So, of course Disney changed it into a romance. Which made it all wrong.

Recently Peterson was giving some explanation of how females grow up based on the little mermaid and used the Disney version which made me yell. A friend reminded me 99.9% of people in the US know ONLY the movie version.

But the thing is that the original story is such a perfect allegory of a girl growing up.  This is somewhat obscured in our day of idols and celebrities. Girls often develop a crush on a celebrity or a fictional character, so things don’t work the same.

Due to growing up in pre-history, I had an emotional arc that was exactly like the little mermaid, and my guess is when the story was codified it matched most early adollescent girls.

For those not informed: the mermaid falls in love with the prince, rescues him from drowning but he never knows.  She then trades her aquatic kingdom for land and every step on land feels like walking on knives. Also she’s mute. With those handicaps she can’t attract his love, but there’s also indications she’s too young: he treats her as a pretty child, not a woman. If she can marry him, she’ll become fully human and acquire a soul (which merfolk don’t have.)
The prince marries someone else, and she faces dissolving into foam. Her sisters give her a magical knife. If she kills the prince with it, she’ll be allowed to return to her former life. Instead she throws the knife away and becomes a “daughter of the air.” (some kind of benevolent spirit.)  If she does well at that, she’ll then have a soul.

Now this strikes many people as a not at all happy ending, but it is.

To anyone who’s been a young girl in a traditional society, we know d*mn well what it’s like to fall in love with someone completely our of our reach: a creature from another world.

Young girls, fourteen or so, fall in love with older boys.  Not terribly older, but those we perceive as “men.”  In my case he was 4 years older, which might as well have been 20. Our worlds were completely different, and he viewed me as a little kid.

For that man’s sake, the girl transitions between the comfortable world of childhood and the world of a young woman.  She walks on knives and loses her voice. (Seriously. It felt like that. It’s a sort of acculturation, which is always painful.)  And if she’s lucky, she gets treated like a sort of pet.  As in, what young men do when faced with a child of either sex who adores them.

If she’s very lucky, she also overcomes her jealousy of the woman that man picks, and embraces her destiny as a full grown up being, one who will eventually have a soul of her own, and contract an alliance with a man more suited. Or not. As she pleases, being a grown up with her own soul.

Perhaps that story makes absolutely no sense in this day and age, as between movie-crushes and the fact that sexual-emotional maturity is pushed on girls earlier and earlier there is no dreaming ‘underwater’ garden of childhood for them, and no innocent early teen crushes. In fact, they’ll be encouraged to date boys their own age, by the age-segregated schools.

Maybe the little mermaid, the original, is a memory of a process that no longer happens.  (Whether it’s good or bad that it doesn’t happen is something else. I think it made for more solid, grown up women than the current frantic pseudo adulthood. But maybe I’m just yelling for the youngsters to get off my lawn.) And maybe Disney made the right decision when they turned it into a somewhat juvenile love story.

But to me the movie lost the power and sweet-sadness of the original story, the understanding you can’t always get what you want; that obsession doesn’t give you any right to another person’s love; and that it’s part of growing up to love and lose.

I think that’s what made the story so strong and poignant.  It’s something you can sort of read in the statue of the little mermaid.  A growing up girl, looking back with nostalgia but also understanding on the childhood she lost.

As we all do.

There are moments — how can I deny it? — when my Roman ancestors get up and march through my mind, sandal-shod feet echoing off newly built roads and pointing everywhere going “Ist, ist, ist” (the indicative pronoun for something foreign and disgusting, and incidentally close to the Portuguese for “this” “isto”.  Which tells you everything you need to know about what the first Romans to come to the Peninsula found and thought.)

And somewhere behind that is the idea that we’re going to need crosses lining every major highway in the West before this is solved and the barbarians pacified.

Believe it or not this is not a political post. It doesn’t even begin to be a political post, unless you consider the matter of incentives and punishments, which, like everything else these days goes into politics.

What I’m talking about is the recent outbreak of young people filming themselves licking, spitting into or otherwise tainting food afterwards returned to the grocery shelves.

I first came across this in a report of prize idiot alleged entertainer Ariana Grande who filmed herself licking doughnuts on a display and returning them to the case, while talking about how much she hated America.

Since then, in the manner of all destructive pastimes of monkey-see monkey-do peculiar to our species, it has gone generalized.

In a way the alleged entertainer was correct. It is a way to hate America. More fundamentally, it is a way to hate and destroy civilization. And humans. And really, everything humans care for.

Civilization could be considered the way that humans changed — tamed — themselves so we can live in vast quantities, close together.  The city requires a different discipline from the ape band, which had maybe fifteen individuals, whose lives were brutish, nasty, short and infinitely dirty. To improve that, it started with behavior that allowed us to live in larger groups: software in the head that allowed to consider ever more extended family and eventually strangers part of the ‘band’, and ways to keep food clean, and ways to control our tempers so that we didn’t all spend all of our time killing each other.  Ways to share, and ways to behave that increased trust between total strangers.  This included trusting those who handled and sold your food.

We can argue forever on the matters of population, ecology, or even whether too much cleanliness is a good thing.

The thing we can’t argue aoubt is that civilization is what allows us to live in the numbers we do, the long lives we do, the relatively healthy/productive lives we do.

And we can’t argue that sharing your body fluids with strangers is a good way to transmit illness.  Nor that doing it when the strangers are unaware is a violation of others’ rights and frankly biological terrorism.

If you hate all that, if you hate humans that much, if you hate civilization that much, if you’re one of those who talks about culling the Earth and reducing the population of humans to sustainable levels? My answer is always “you first.”

If you think you’re so special that you’ll take this kind of action to bring it about? My answer is again “you first.” (Possibly very first, if I catch you at it. At the very least, if male, you’ll sing soprano the rest of your miserable life.)

Look, we shouldn’t NEED tamper proof packaging. Yes, I know we do. But we shouldn’t. Part of the tenets of civilization is that something like this should be unthinkable. You don’t taint water and food. Even cats don’t shit where they eat.

But if we’re going to need ALL tamper proof everything? You’re adding to the cost of it. And also this type of prize-idiot will find a way to get around it.

You need to civilize humans. Because you can’t barbarian-proof civilization, unless you take out the barbarians.

Civilization is that state in which you trust strangers will observe minimal rules designed for the survival of all.

Part of where the wheels come off this is when you don’t civilize your own kids. EVERY civilization that handed off kids to be raised by strangers not their parents has regretted it. Some have collapsed and been replaced by others that DO civilize their kids.

As for us? Sooner or later this will have to be corrected.  The sooner we correct it, the less violent the correction.

If we don’t act now, with courts, with social disapproval, with disgust, yes, it will take crosses. Or stakes. Or unimaginably worse punishments before this type of action becomes unthinkable again.

And we’ll get there.  We’ll get there, sooner or later, because what’s not going to happen is for humanity to go quietly into that good night. Never did, never will. If we fall, something else will rise up, which deals with the barbarians swiftly and decisively.  If you’re a barbarian you should note the West is not your worst option. Not even close.

If you think you are, you lack the imagination to forecast what might come after.

Trust me, it will be worse.

Be told.

*Sorry this is so late. I came home mildly con-crudded but it took the turn for the much worse overnight and I think I might need a nap to get through the day. I’m slow and stupid today, and trying to finish short stories that are grossly overdue.  This post by DR Loss is fascinating, or at least I found it so. Back tomorrow – SAH*

From Generation Unto Generation by Douglas R. Loss

A philosopher friend of mine, Jim Schwartz, gave a presentation at the Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop’s 5^th Interstellar Symposium in Huntsville, AL, in October, 2017.  In it, he asked some probing questions about the morality of forcing future generations into prescribed lives and roles aboard interstellar generation ships: https://youtu.be/5pfZkGSE1WM.

A couple of months ago Jim and some others had a section in Futures about space colonization, in which philosophers and social scientists supposedly debated the question, “Should humans seek to exploit and/or colonize space? If so, how should this be done?”  To my mind this was in irrevocably flawed question to start the debate with, as it assumed that any human expansion into long-term settlement of space would necessarily be exploitative and would be colonial in nature.  Predictably, at least half of the academic respondents didn’t even bother with the proposed question but just used the “debate” to ride their hobby horses de jour.

Still, the philosophical and moral questions they ignored are interesting ones.  Another philosopher friend of mine, Nick Nielsen, and I decided to start an email dialog roughly about how this might all work out.  Nick’s initial thoughts were that we might make an attempt to revive some of the original meanings of the term when colonization in classical antiquity meant the splitting of a wealthy city by the creation of a new city which was thought of as a “daughter” city (the original wealthy and populated city being the “mother”). This was the Greek model of colonization around the Mediterranean. When the Romans controlled the Mediterranean Basin, the meaning of colonization changed, as the Romans would settle retired soldiers, often in purpose-built cities. Such cities could, by definition, defend themselves as they were populated by former soldiers. In neither of these ancient instances did any negative connotation attach to the idea of a colony.

The above ideas could be combined with ideas taken from Fustel de Coulanges’ famous monograph on ancient cities, in which he makes a sharp distinction between the ancient cities of the early Greek period and the cities of later classical antiquity. This theme could be elaborated to note further mutations in the role of cities since the ancient world. Cities founded in artificial settlements in space or on the moon or other planets would represent another stage in the mutation of the theory and practice of the city.

Nick considered these to be much better models of what will happen with human expansion beyond Earth than that oft-invoked cautionary tale of 19th century European colonialism during the Great Game.   He also noted that a roundtable called “No Planet B” is scheduled for CASCA-AAA (A joint Canadian Anthropology Society and American Anthropological Association conference) in Vancouver this November with this as its premise:

As a planetary species we live together among the rising seas and blazing fires of climate catastrophe. Meanwhile techno-capitalism is birthing a new space race out of an emergent Silicon Valley Military Industrial Space Settlement Complex.

Rather than face up to the reality of many-species suffering, climate refugees, wars, colonialism, and artificial scarcity of capitalism, globalizing Silicon Valley elites work on plans to leave the Earth and “colonize” other worlds or flee to their heavily secured bunkers on our planet.

As Nick said, this pretty much ticks all the boxes of the emerging anti-space settlement sentiment in elite discourse. Of course, these folks see themselves as rebels against any and all elites. He said he  could rant about this, but that that wouldn’t be as productive as answering a couple of questions:

1. Is it possible to talk to people like this?
2. Will any of this matter, or will boots-on-the-ground establish the facts that we will later rationalize?

I replied that I thought that the concept of off-world permanent settlements is being colored very strongly by the terminology being used.  Calling such settlements “colonies” is triggering an autonomic response among the unthinking ideologues.  Of course, their denigration of their conception of colonization is based on the exploiting of indigenous humans in the areas colonized, which wouldn’t be the case in the settlements we’re talking about.  To maintain their outrage, they have to find something else to putatively be exploited.  That’s why we’re seeing them complain about the possibility of exterminating extraterrestrial lifeforms, even though no such lifeforms have been identified, and about the possibility of making scientific investigation of non-living materials and locals impossible (or even just less possible).

So my answer to his question #1 was “No.” As to question #2, I’ve always felt that the elite whining about all this is fairly meaningless as they won’t be the ones going or the ones deciding to go. If off-world settlements become feasible and economically and socially desirable, they’ll happen and all the academic caterwauling won’t be any more effective at stopping them than spitting into the wind.

I thought it might be useful to try to guide the terminology away from “colonization” and toward “community construction.”  There’s a somewhat long history of intentional communities, constructed communities, etc., that might give us a more rational perspective on off-world settlements, as they’ll be just that, and won’t be nearly as analogous to terrestrial colonization as they are to intentional community creation.

I lived for a few years in Columbia, Maryland, which is an intentional community.  I’m sure there are some folks there who like the place, but I found it sterile and barely a community at all.  To my way of thinking, the designers of said community really hadn’t studied and didn’t understand how functional, organic communities start, grow, and succeed.  I hadn’t actually studied the variety of intentional communities to see what has worked and what hasn’t, but I suspect there would be a good deal of valuable information to be gleaned from such a study.

There are other intentional community movements underway that could be considered analogous to off-world settlements, such as seasteading.  There’s also Asgardia, although I’m inclined to view that as either a hobby by the originators or a scam.

Nick wrote back that he found it interesting that there are so few successful intentional communities (once called communes, and no doubt there have been other names as well), fewer still that endure for a significant period of time and cover a  large geographical area. While in countries with a reasonable degree of freedom there is no legal regime that prevents the creation of intentional communities, nevertheless few are created, and fewer still are successful. One might argue that very small nation-states (say, Monaco or Vatican City) are something like intentional communities, and that our nation-state system of political organization today forces them into the mold of nation-states. He wasn’t sure if this is accurate, but there is no reason that a successful intentional community could not iterate its social and economic model and grow to a great size within a given nation-state. However, this hasn’t happened. Why hasn’t it happened, and would the fact that intentional communities haven’t been successful have consequences for building communities off world?

The artificiality of intentional communities may be an important component of this. While a top-down plan is being awkwardly imposed, people are responding to the actual conditions of life and creating a community from the bottom up that reflects the ordinary business of life, and intentional communities get stuck when the bottom-up reality comes into conflict with the top-down model. We can easily see this happening off world, when a government or commercial enterprise seeks to establish a presence according to the model approved by the higher ups, which works well on paper but which clashes with conditions on the ground. Governments and companies can impose their will (something intentional communities usually try to avoid), but this, too, leads to conflict, and often also leads to independence movements.

Following the foregoing, one could say that a colony, in the narrow sense, is a community in which the top-down model prevails, while a settlement is a community in which the bottom-up model prevails. Civilization has its ultimate origins in bottom-up social organization, but the later stages of a civilization (once a social, political, and economic model has reached maturity) tends toward the top-down. Nick said this is how he would define it, but whether anyone else would want to adopt these usages is another matter (and not likely).

Part of the problem with terminology surrounding “colony” and “colonization” is a peculiarly American obsession with language. We all know that governments and large companies in the contemporary world hire consultants to try to arrive at linguistic formulations that serve their interests while alienating as few as possible, though it was Nick’s observation that this surface-level debate has little traction outside the western world. People usually know they are being sold a bill of goods.

He agreed that, when the technology is available and the enterprise can be financed, off world enterprises and associated human communities will happen, regardless of the language used to describe them, and regardless of how they are conceptualized, and when society changes enough over historical time there becomes a real question of identifying institutions of the past with institutions of the present. He mentioned again the differences between Greek and Roman colonies and the European colonies established in the course of the Great Game. One could say that the linguistic continuity masks a multiplicity of differences that matter. Any future communities that might also be called colonies would also have this linguistic continuity covering over substantive differences on the ground.

It is human, all-too-human to want the linguistic continuity because this gives us some orientation in the midst of a changing world, and it is similarly human to engage in more-or-less similar enterprises over time, even under changed conditions, so there is justification for the extension of traditional language to new activities. By definition, off world human communities will be historically unprecedented, but we will talk about them using established language and think about them in terms of our existing conceptual framework, though our language and our concepts will slowly shift to accommodate our behavior. Top-down linguistic and conceptual revisions are about as artificial as top-down social organization. Esperanto has its enthusiasts as well as its critics; it is the intentional community of languages. Nick would bet on the success of spontaneous and fragmentary innovations of language and conceptual framework that change our way of thinking on an evolutionary scale, scarcely noticeable within a human lifetime, but adding up to substantive changes over historical time.

I did a bit more investigation into what I’d called “intentional communities.”  At the time I hadn’t realized that that was a term of art for artificial communities created with specific social purposes as their defining raisons d’etre.  What I was thinking of was more what’s often called “planned communities,” like Columbia, MD or Reston, VA.  Or come to that, the great majority of retirement communities or gated communities that are springing up these days, or even the company towns of yore.  As I live just a stone’s throw (almost literally) from Alcoa, TN and a short drive from Oak Ridge, TN, company towns are pretty familiar to me.

It seemed to me that a major difference between intentional communities and planned communities is that intentional community membership is generally based on an acceptance of the social raison d’etre while planned community membership is based on a contractual agreement between the member and the controlling organization.  Whether the planned community be a company town, a gated community, or a retirement community, an individual or family will only be allowed to reside there by agreeing to fulfill contractual commitments.

This seems to me to be a likely organizational tool for off-world settlements too, as the local environments in which the settlements exist will not be forgiving of casual modifications of, or abandonment of, agreed-upon facilities.

I recognize that this sort of organization might be chafing to many.  But if there are multiple settlements with somewhat varying contracts for membership, self-sorting may occur.

Again, I’m drawn to the literature on “seasteading,” even though seasteading is only at the very edge of nascency.

The balance between top-down organization, which at some level will be an absolute requirement if the settlement is to be able to sustain human life and a continuing biosphere, and bottom-up organization, which will be an absolute requirement if any true sense of community is to develop, will be interesting to observe.  I wouldn’t pretend to be able to design a feasible and functional interface between these two organizational modes, but I think such an interface will become one of the necessary and defining characteristics of any successful off-world settlement.  Or any seasteading, for that matter.

Nick replied that one can think of intentional communities as civilizations in miniature, with the pretext for the community being analogous to the central project (the social raison d’etre) of a civilization. The pretext for a community can be a pretty low bar, such as a single interest. For example, a nudist colony has as its central project nudity in the public spaces of the colony. That’s a single-interest central project. Other intentional communities might have a more complex central project, like people who participate in renaissance fairs and seek to reproduce past ways of living.

If we look at it like this, the low success rate of intentional communities can be considered equivalent to the claim that civilizations don’t scale. When you make a civilization and its central project too small, it just doesn’t work well. However, the problem with this is that it would place a big question mark on the origins of civilization. If civilization doesn’t scale well, then how did they get started? And we can’t consider the origins of civilization to be a rare or unusual thing, because multiple civilizations independently emerged in widely separated geographical regions. So there’s an idea, and a problem with the same idea. The imperative of survival is probably key. If a nudist colony fails, usually no one dies.

Nick said he considered company towns as particular instances of intentional communities with a low bar to pass: employment in the company whose town it is. The social raison d’etre is the success of the company. A contractual arrangement may be thought of as a formalization of a social raison d’etre, much as the law is a formalization of some baseline social agreement on what is acceptable and what is unacceptable within a given community.

He agreed about the self-sorting of membership in various off world settlements, and if off world company towns exhibit sufficient diversity and variety, that might be sufficient. Any one company town has the motivation to pull together when it is in rivalry with another company town. When a company town fails, the former residents usually distribute themselves among nearby company towns at a lower level of status, or leave the area entirely. That in itself is a motivation for everyone to be successful in their first choice of company town. The balance of this calculation changes, however, depending upon the supply of labor. If labor is tight, conditions will be good, and individuals will be incentivized to leave for another company town. This mean less loyalty and less likelihood of pulling together. If labor is abundant, conditions will be worse and individuals will be incentivized to stay where they are at.

This observation suggested an interesting tension: moving people off world will be expensive, so labor will be tight. Companies will be incentivized to move enough people off world that they can be more choosy about their labor and not be completely at the mercy of a workforce (which could, for example, unionize, and bring work to a halt in an economically disastrous way).

To return to the example of law, with Roman law and constitutional law we have a top-down model of jurisprudence; with common law we have a bottom-up model of jurisprudence. To this day, England has no constitution, so its legal system is primarily bottom-up, but the tradition of monarchy, and the borrowings from Roman law inject some top-down concerns. The US began with a constitution (if one doesn’t count the Articles of Confederation) so its legal structure is primarily top-down, but the tradition of popular sovereignty injects some bottom-up concerns. This is what we see in most societies: a primary model that is supplemented by subsequent revisions. Nick expects we will see the same in the future, with off world settlements starting out as top-down entities that are later supplemented by bottom-up concerns.

Once there is a critical mass of a human population off planet (and we don’t know what this critical mass will be), then there will be the possibility of alternative forms of social organization coming into their own. Given the incentive by companies to move more people off world in order to assure an ample labor supply, the very action taken to retain top-down control could lead to passing the critical mass after which top-down control will become impossible.

This discussion was a lot of fun, but I realized that we hadn’t actually addressed either Jim Schwartz’s morality questions in the above-referenced presentation at the TVIW symposium, or the question about whether or not to “colonize” space that was raised in Futures.

The question of the morality of committing future generations to lives aboard generation ships or other extraterrestrial settlement from which they have little or no possibility of leaving is one worth examining on its own.  As to whether humanity “should” “colonize” space, that’s just academics virtue signaling to each other.  If and when it will make sense economically and technologically, it will happen, and all the whining in the world won’t make a bit of difference.

Nick commented that anything that we do in the present to set up a world for the future commits future generations to living in that world without their consent. This is true if we put them on generation ships, and it is true if we confine them to Earth. An argument could be made (though he would not maintain that this is a definitive argument) that we have a moral obligation to follow out all the possibilities of the first “pulse” of industrial civilization, as we may not get a second chance. If we don’t open the door to the universe to our descendants, they may not be confined to Earth, which may be seen as a greater error than being confined to a generation ship.

Nick’s greatest concern for existential risk is what he has come to call “sustainable dystopia” (https://geopolicraticus.tumblr.com/post/182270083427/sustainable-dystopia-a-form-of-permanent) in which we ensure that things can go on indefinitely, but there is no possibility of broadening horizons or any hope for the future other than more of the same.

As to the future generation question, I’m drawn to pioneer movements of all types in the past.  When poor people took passage from Europe to the New World in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, they knew it was virtually impossible for them to ever return, or for their progeny to go back should they want to.  The lure of freedom and economic betterment convinced them to make the voyage, in the belief that whatever the consequences for them and their offspring, their lives would still be better than if they’d stayed in Europe.

Nick said that if memory serves, Edward Glaeser in his book The Triumph of the City characterized moving to a city as making an investment in discomfort in order for the children of those experiencing the discomfort to have better lives. This was true for pioneers in the 19th century, it is true for people moving from city to country in the 21st century, and it will be true for people moving into space in the coming century.

This moral question isn’t one of absolutes, but of probabilities.  If the lives of future generations must be taken into consideration when making such decisions, the only reasonable way to phrase the question is, “Will doing this make my progeny better off than if I don’t do it?”  If the question is phrased, “Do I have the moral right to compel future generations to live with the consequences of my actions?” and the answer is “No,” then there is no moral justification for any action, ever.  If the answer is “Yes,” then any action is justified.

As I mentioned a while ago in a comment to an earlier post by Sarah, Professor Randy E. Barnett of Georgetown University wrote an 80-page section on “Constitutional Legitimacy” in his 2004 book, “Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty.”  In it, he examines the concept of “consent of the governed,” and whether and why the Constitution is binding on us who were born to citizenship in the US.  Naturalized citizens have in fact consented to be governed by the Constitution, but natural-born US citizens have in general not affirmatively consented to be governed by the Constitution.  I mention this all just to let you know about it; there’s no way I can summarize 80 pages of closely reasoned legal philosophy here.  Just be aware that such questions are not being ignored, and that they are somewhat analogous to the question of the moral responsibilities to future worldship generations.

I hope this intrigued you, and would love to hear your responses to it.

Book Promo

*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.  One book per author per week. Amazon links only.-SAH*

FROM BLAKE SMITH:  A Capital Whip: A Pride and Prejudice Sequel

An invalid for much of her life, Miss Anne de Bourgh has precisely one accomplishment: carriage driving. She is proud of her skill with reins and whip, and justifiably so.

But when another young lady moves into the neighborhood, and challenges Anne’s place as the most accomplished driver in Hunsford, Anne must prove to herself, to her beloved horses, and to her family that she is worthy of the name de Bourgh, and she does not shrink away from a challenge.

FROM ALMA BOYKIN:  Clearly Familiar: Familiar Tales Book Five.

Wandering wolverines, catfish in the sky, owls that can’t fly straight… Welcome back to the Familiar world, where magic and the mundane coexist (and collide).

These short stories introduce some new characters and revisit familiar (and Familiar) ones, including Morgana and Smiley Lorraine, Dr. William Lewis and Blackwell, and Shoshana Langtree. Sorcerers gone mad, heavy weather, and the thin line between insanity and magic, all standard fare in this Familiar place and time.

CEDAR SANDERSON:  Possum Creek Massacre (Witchward Book 2).

Renowned for her witch hunting skills, Detective Amaya Lombard knew that being summoned from the coastal rainforest of Oregon to the backwoods hollers of Kentucky meant the case was something special. From the moment she arrived at the magic soaked scene in an abandoned farmhouse she knew how bad it was going to be. She had no idea just how complicated it was going to get, professionally and personally. Now she must catch a killer before they catch her. The roots of evil plunge deeply into the past, and the blood soaked history of Kentucky’s witch warded houses and barns may hold the key to keeping her alive in the present.

FROM J. M. ANJEWIERDEN: Armored Heart

May returned home from the Second Augment War having left parts of herself behind, emotionally and literally. An inventor at heart, she built herself cybernetic legs to regain her mobility, and then a suit of powered armor to regain a purpose in her life as the superhero Escuda.
But can she balance being a superhero with a love life?
The country’s most celebrated superhero, Steel Patriot, has moved to her town. Sure, Escuda will be able to work with him easily enough, but can May get his attention, while also dealing with a new breed of supervillain on the rise?

FROM CHRIS CHANCY: Tell No Tales.

Some nights it just doesn’t pay to rise from the grave….Corbin wants to uncover the truth behind her death at a demon’s hands. But her memories have been shattered by the grave, and even with footloose Sighted mechanic Devon Fortunato helping her search for answers, a restless ghost is up against the darkest spells and lies of the living. If they can’t unravel who sabotaged the Cunning Folk circle’s spellcast defenses, the child Corbin meant to protect will suffer a fate worse than death. Corbin’s notes hold clues, but the broken circle would rather die than admit the truth….

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: time

(And yes, with illustration, because FB takes last illu and I don’t like giving some promo advantage for no reason.)

I woke up this morning to no clothes for lack of laundry…
So, this post is being typed by a woman in a voluminous robe.
House needs cleaning and short stories are late as heck.

So discuss California doing the Tilt Boogie. Between that and weird reports from yellowstone, are we going to catch the big one, actually?  Or is Denver just going to become beach front property?

Anyway, have fun. All the posts in mind are too complex to do RIGHT NOW.

I’ll be back.