If This Isn’t Danger, Then WHAT THE HECK IS?!? or Loosening the (Nearly) Impossible Standard-by Alpheus Madsen.

This Guest Blog Post started off its life as a comment to Sarah’s previous post from a few days ago, But! It’s Madness! – According to Hoyt, where she expresses the conflict between two very important, and very valid concerns: 

(1) the need to help the obviously mental ill who are on the streets, and who are obviously impacting society in harmful ways, and

(2) the need to protect mostly-sane people (to the extent that any of us are sane, to be sure!) from being committed, when the reason for that commitment isn’t really mental health, but disagreements over politics, religion, inheritances, and so forth. 

While it’s true that many mental institutions were abusive to their patients, they nonetheless served an important role in providing a places where the severely mentally ill could be helped, and while it’s true that it was Soviets who locked up and drugged anyone they disagreed with, we unfortunately have plenty of stories where, in our America, of individuals who were able to do the same thing.  So, without further ado …

This has been something that has been on my mind for several years now — both because I have read “My Brother Ron”, and also because well before that book was finished, my sister was diagnosed schizophrenic.

One of the biggest take-aways from that book is the “Danger to self or others” — and about how pretty much the only way you could be deemed a “danger” if if you’ve just stabbed or killed someone.

That woman who believes she is dead and is slowly starving herself? (An example given in “My Brother Ron”.) According to the current “standard” she’s not a danger somehow. In the case of this woman, she starved herself to death. (This is something particularly relevant to me, because that’s how my sister started out with her diagnosis — fortunately she got to a point where she voluntarily accepted treatment!)

That homeless guy who rants at passers-by, who threatens them, and who occasionally punches someone? Somehow it is justifiable to periodically put him in jail for a few days, and then release him, over and over again — until he goes and pushes a young woman onto the tracks of an incoming train.

That guy who can’t stay in a homeless shelter, even though it’s freezing (and heck, even though he has an apartment that, between social security and auto-payment, remains paid for even when empty, but isn’t used because he’s convinced it’s bugged — another example from “My Brother Ron”) either because he’s paranoid to go inside, or between drug use and angry tirades, he has to be kicked out — how is this not a danger to self, even putting aside others? How many homeless froze to death because of this?

So I would propose that a simple starting point for fixing the homeless problem, helping the mentally ill, and preventing the system from getting out of hand, is to expand “Danger to self or others” to include people who are, indeed, a danger to self or others! But it doesn’t have to be expanded greatly to have an enormous effect in both reducing homelessness and helping the mentally ill.

I would propose that being homeless and not able to hold a job should be a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for committing people against their will. If someone can wander the streets without accosting strangers, and can stay in shelters without getting kicked out (whether for using drugs or for being actively hostile to others), then that person shouldn’t be committed. A homeless, jobless person who does start doing these things — particularly if they’re getting arrested for these things, is a danger to self or others, and thus needs intervention.

Now, for purposes of removing people off the street, I kind of don’t care whether the individual is mentally unstable because of insanity, or due to a drug-addled brain — but the first step for treating someone committed should be to check for underlying physical conditions. As Sarah has pointed out, the mind is connected to the body in funny ways. I recently encountered a story of a meth addict who had been used for “before” and “after” pictures to show how awful meth can be … only to have her appearance continue to deteriorate, even after a year of sobriety … because it turned out that she had Lupus, and her meth addiction may have been partly self-medication for that. Whether the person has schizophrenia, is drug-addled, or just has other issues, it should be considered important to find and try to treat underlying conditions first, because other treatments won’t work as well without that!

Also, another random thought: commitment rooms should be comfortable to live in, should be “homey”, and inmates should be treated kindly. I can’t remember where I saw it, but I recently saw a study that suggests that, regardless of the mental issue, it’s far better to treat the patient in a nice environment than it is to put the person in a small, sterile, white room, which is apparently the current standard practice.

Should someone be forced into treatment? I’m not entirely sure I can say for sure — however, I will say this: if someone is belligerent, treatment should be a requirement for transfer to a half-way house — and if the person can stop taking medication (maybe he’s come to terms with his schizophrenia, for example, and has learned what his hallucinations are, and could learn to ignore them) and still function reasonably well, then I doubt it would be productive to force the individual to continue medication. But if the person goes back to being a danger, whether or not the person is still on meds, the person should be re-committed.

If someone is living in a home, and maybe even holding down a job, and is starting fights with strangers or making threats, that person should be considered sane, and should be charged with assault in these cases. It might be a good idea to check for underlying conditions for that individual too, though, particularly if it’s a clear personality change. But commitment should be off the table completely, unless an underlying mental illness has been clearly identified and it’s to the point where his new aggression is both related to the disease and is rising to the danger of self or others.

Now, this is by no means a perfect solution — in particular, the people on the boundary of insanity and intelligence, who are far enough gone to decide to kill people in crowds, but still have enough sanity to plot, plan, and acquire the means to do so, will inevitably fall through the cracks — because they will usually be just outside this strengthened standard of danger of self or others.

This is also going to miss people who lose their mind and go crazy, but don’t do so at a level to qualify as a danger to self or others — and may even refuse treatment that would be extremely helpful. Such individuals, so long as they are being cared for and have a place to stay, and aren’t hurting other people, will almost certainly slip through the cracks.

Perhaps there is a way to forcibly treat such an individual without going down a route that would be easily hijacked by evil people to drug innocents — whether it’s forced by family or by bureaucrats, it’s easy to see how such can be abused by greedy and/or power-hungry people — but it may very well be the case that these people would be a “sacrifice” we have to make, to be able to commit people who clearly need committing and to leave unmolested people who are clearly sane.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk! I am just a lone mathematician pretending to be a software engineer, so I don’t expect this proposal to reach the halls where it needs to be heard, but I figured that if I vented here, this proposal could at least get into a few more minds.

And come to think of it, this post was a lot longer than I expected. Heck, if anyone else thinks this would be a good blog post, don’t bother to ask me for permission, just use it: I think this is an important enough idea that it should be spread as far and wide as possible. Perhaps it’s not the best solution to both helping our mentally ill and preventing our psychiatric institutions from being hijacked by evil people, but I think it’s at least a good starting point!

There was a time in the late seventies or early eighties (I think early eighties because I was in college) when a terrorist group of broadly commie tendencies (Italian) was “fighting” industrialists, which was actually an euphemism for threatening/kidnapping/etc rich people for cash.

Dad wasn’t one (mom and dad did okay considering where they started, but they never went past mid-mid while they had kids in the house) but he worked for one. As in, he managed factories. Which I guess looked close enough to the commies, because we had threats.

And since one of their things was car bombs, and our car was parked in the (gated off, but the gate and walls were four feet tall) garden, (mom used the garage as a workshop) every morning, when dad gave me a lift to college (which cut about an hour and a half of public transportation out of my day) dad asked me to look under the car.

Yes, I broadly knew what to look for. IF they were all thumbs, at least. If they were subtle, no one was going to see it.

So, morning routine was: shower, get dressed, have coffee, grab books, go out to garden with flashlight and look under car to make sure dad and I weren’t going to go out with a bang.

I don’t actually know how long this went on. In my head the shenanigans of Mano Rossa (sp? It’s been years since I used Italian) in Portugal went on for a couple of years, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a month or two. Things tend to either stretch or shrink in my memory.

BUT what was weird was how fast it all became routine, and also what a relief it was to drop it when the danger passed. It was routine, and yet, it ate at the back brain.

These things are more onerous than we think, and take more time for the scars to fade than we think. Actually, from my experience, the time of scars fading might be “never.”

After 9/11 I thought I had it all together, until I found myself driving back from the grocery store with the Expedition as packed as possible with groceries and canned stuff. (Friends, we ate on it for five years. Maybe ten.)

I realized something in the back of my brain had activated the stars of “unstable times” from the seventies in Portugal and translated it, so I MUST HAVE FOOD STORAGE as the shelves might inexplicably be empty tomorrow.

In the same way, yesterday, when I heard that two bright sparks of the left had tried to car-bomb a Fox news truck (Fox News, people, I ask you. It’s actually left on left violence, but the left likes its stereotypes and imagined opponents and will never get how much Fox News has nothing to do with the real right) I remembered the story above and I got … well, I’m typing this when I am because despite going to bed on time, I didn’t sleep much.

Look, I don’t know what’s going through the heads of our leftist… morons, really, but … no I didn’t sleep enough to come up with a more diplomatic description, and the ones doing this stuff ARE morons, but they seem to think that killing Charlie Kirk was a major win and some number of them are all excited and trying to strike while the iron is hot.

If you have leftist friends or family, DO try to convince them it’s more akin to committing suicide with a blunt knife. It’s going to take a while to kill you, but it will hurt the whole time. No, I don’t expect they’ll listen, but in common charity you must try.

And if you fly on the internet under your own name and are even as opinionated as I am, let alone some of my friends on the right, be aware we’ve entered “Careful times.” Don’t open the door to people you don’t know. Don’t post pictures of your kids or pets if they spend time outside your direct supervision (or your entire family are hermits.) Don’t let repairmen into the house you haven’t vetted extensively, particularly if they approach you. Don’t go for long walks alone. And for the love of Bob, don’t spend a ton of time outside unsupervised. And don’t stand in front of windows with the light behind you.

Sorry. It’s really impacting my ability to get exercise. But there’s nothing for it. And it makes you feel silly and paranoid. Which, I’ll point out is miles and miles better than dead.

You’re probably safe. I’m certainly probably safe. I work in text which means I largely fly under the radar. But you never know. You just don’t. Like my dad was probably safe and his boss was the one who should worry, but you only need to be wrong once to die.

Oh, yeah, if you park your car on the street or in an insecure location, familiarize yourself with what it looks like now, and do a quick inspection. Yes, your co-workers will think you’re nuts. Make up something. You have an oil leak you’re trying to track down. Something. It’s better than their saying “Well, good old Bob sure was a bright spark at the end.”

And while we’re being careful, remember life goes on. The kids need looking after. They need feeding. They need clothing. Heck, even now I don’t have kids in the house I need feeding and clothing. And I will have to come up with some alternative for exercise, or the sleep will JUST get worse.

My dad didn’t stop going to work or taking me to school because commie insano-idiots were running around killing people. He just took precautions.

Yes, we’re all sitting at the edge of our seats afraid the idiots are going to call up something they can’t put down.

But while we’re doing so, remember to look after yourself as though you were someone you love for whose well being you’re responsible. Take your meds. Try to eat decently. Read a good book (Have you tried No Man’s Land, the link is on the side bar? Guaranteed no real-world politics!) hug your spouse, love your kids, make your doctor’s appointments.

Because you can’t stop living just because the worst might happen. Years from now you’ll have trouble remembering how long we spent waiting for the other shoe to drop, and the scars will only show up when something else brings it up.

And we might brush through this okay — yes, it would take a miracle, but the USA IS a miracle — and come out okay on the other side. You can’t give up living, because what life will you pick up on the other side.

Sure, beef up your apocalypse-pantry. Buy one of those crank radios (I have no idea where ours ended up) and a whole house battery. Prepare as you would for a big storm. Also be as careful as you’d be if your area were subjected to home invasions.

Other than that, carry on. Life must still be lived.

Even through these very unsettling careful times.

A friend and I used to joke that when we’re very old — considering she’s much younger than I, but we both come from long-lived families — we’ll be considered raging left wing extremist, while having changed absolutely nothing about our beliefs.

Is she right? I don’t know, but I can tell you I get the feeling she might be. And that scares the living spit out of me. And it should scare the living spit out of you. And I don’t care how right wing you consider yourself to be.

First because change that fast, even if it were for the best, will kill a lot of people. Some of them directly as they find themselves the target of mobs on one side, the other and neither (once the mobbing and mob violence get started, people get killed because someone else envies them and riles up a crowd against them as much as for anything else.) Second because when a movement starts going, particularly a “we’ve had enough” movement it’s really easy for the power hungry to hijack and take control, and a lot of the extremely power hungry are … um…. poisonous. At the present moment there are leftists moving right fast and bringing all their assumptions of what the right is with them. So they think they’re being right wingers by hating everyone who tans deeper than blue and also the Jews, (of course.) This is not what the American right is or has ever been, but like states getting overwhelmed by Californians, the right could be overwhelmed by these people. And that would mean our destination would frankly be very similar with where we are, just with the groups of people in power inverted. Third because dislocations on this level will utterly destroy every institution, every job market, everything–

So, what chance do we have of to get through this without it all falling in the pot?

I don’t know.

Someone at powerline stated, as if it were a great discovery, that we’re in a cold civil war now. Sigh. We’ve been in a cold civil war for the last … well, at least for four decades. Ever since I’ve been here.

The reason most of us didn’t know it is because the left had control of the media. So back in the stone age, aka, the eighties, we were surrounded by leftist propaganda, and we thought we were the only ones of us who kept everything bottled up and secret. It’s hard to have a cold civil war when you think you’re a side of one.

By the oughts though, with the net, it became obvious there were two sides, and we were in a cold civil war, with occasional outbreaks of violence, always from the left. (Or some crazy people, okay?)

And then … well, here we are.

And what an awful day the morning light disclosed. Are we in a cold civil war? Dear Lord, I hope we are. because the alternative is awful.

This morning I saw something that scared me spitless. More than anything in this horror show we’ve been on. It was in this article: Fired MSNBC analyst Matthew Dowd defends twisted remarks about Charlie Kirk killing that got him axed.

It was the remarks. It wasn’t that they were crude and gross. You expect that. it’s how they completely depart from reality.

“I said in the moment that we needed to get the facts because we have no idea what this could be and that it could easily be someone firing a gun in the air to celebrate the event. Remember Kirk is a diehard advocate of the 2nd amendment.”

Yes, guys. they thought “Right wingers” were either Muslims, or rooting tooting rednecks of the sort that no one has seen outside Snuffy Smith comics, and those aren’t even exactly popular now.

They thought that we would “celebrate” a very mild mannered man who was center-right coming to a college campus to talk to people by…. firing guns in the air.

I have no clue how it’s even possible to imagine this. I feel like we are talking to people in the thrall of an evil spell and unable to see what’s actually before their eyes.

And that’s a problem. Charlie was trying to reach them. He was trying to get them to see reality.

We can continue trying.

But we’re clog dancing on on a powder keg. I pray a lot. And of course we are a country of miracles.

Let’s hope we’ve not exhausted our share of those miracles. I’m very proud of how measured the striking back has been. People on our side are behaving better than I thought possible in the face of extreme provocation.

Maybe just maybe we’ll squeak through somehow….

Keep moving and don’t look down.

Book Promo

If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH

HEY, YES, I’M GOING TO SELF PROMOTE. AHEM:

If you are looking for the science fiction of your youth, with all its wildly strange lost colony worlds and barbaric glory, Sarah Hoyt’s No Man’s Land is the book for you. If you—like Glory Road’s Oscar Gordon—are looking for a roc’s egg, the hurtling moons of Barsoom, and Excalibur held by a moon-white arm, this is the book for you. And, if you want a romance, and a dash of baking and domesticity sprinkled on top, this is the book for you. –Laura Montgomery

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: No Man’s Land: Volume 1 (Chronicles of Lost Elly)

Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.

On a lost colony world, mad geneticists thought they could eliminate inequality by making everyone hermaphrodite. They were wrong. Catastrophically wrong.
Now technology indistinguishable from magic courses through the veins of the inhabitants, making their barbaric civilization survivable—and Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Kayel Hayden, Viscount Webson, Envoy of the Star Empire—Skip to his friends— has just crash-landed through a time-space rift into the middle of it all.
Dodging assassins and plummeting from high windows was just the beginning. With a desperate king and an archmagician as his only allies, Scipio must outrun death itself while battling beasts, traitors, and infiltrators bent on finishing what the founders started: total destruction.
Two worlds. One chance. No time to lose.

Volume 1
The Ambassador Corps has rules: you cannot know everything, don’t get horizontal with the natives, don’t make promises you can’t keep.
They’re a lot harder to follow when assassins are hunting you, your barbarian allies could kill you for the wrong word, and death lurks around every corner.
The unwritten rule? Never identify with the natives.
Skip’s already broken that one.
Now he’s racing against time to save his new friends from slavery—or worse—while dodging energy blasts and political intrigue. One crash-landed diplomat. A world of deadly secrets. And absolutely no backup.

Some rules are meant to be broken. Others will get you killed.

https://amzn.to/4n5SJNwEDITED BY BEN YALOW: Best of 2024: Presented by Raconteur Press

Short stories contain an idea. Ask a question, then begin to answer it. In a short story, you can contain a perfect narrative, it may be short in the time it will take you to read, but not in the time it will linger with you provoking you to thought. These are those stories.

Have you ever wanted to try out the very best stories published by Raconteur Press? Well, after their author peers nominated, Ben Yalow himself chose the top ten stories for this very special collection. Truly the cream of the crop, and a perfect selection to sample the wares of the Press, or to introduce a friend into reading Indie SFF.

FROM LISA DOLAN: THE BROOKLYN WITCH: The Battle for Brooklyn

HARRY POTTER MEETS THE SOPRANOS IN A MAGICAL BROOKLYN SHOWDOWN.

The Brooklyn Witch, Speranza O’Rourke, operates a spiritual shop amid the bakeries and bodegas of Carroll Gardens. Raised by her feuding grandmothers, Nonna and Grannie Meg, who only agree on their love for her. Speranza is the fiery fusion of Irish charm and Italian drama, armed with spells, street smarts, and an unshakable loyalty to her family and neighborhood that runs bone deep.

Speranza navigates the secret realm of the Never-Never, where faeries lurk just beyond mortal sight. When Queen Mab, the ruthless Queen of the Sidhe, claims her as a vassal, Speranza must choose between power and her family’s legacy.
With a murder mystery, a legendary monster, a magical haunting linked to Al Capone, and a deadly Warlock threatening Brooklyn’s Magical balance, she’s drawn into a battle royale that could tear open the veil between realms.

This is the first in a series chronicling the adventures of The Brooklyn Witch. A gritty, mystical tale where neighborhood loyalty, Old World Magic, and Mafia sensibilities collide.

Come with us on this Wild Ride as we Take the Cannoli and Leave the Magic.

FROM JOHN BAILEY: The Grey Gentleman Appears: Nine Continental Mysteries (The Detective Stories)

The Grey Gentleman Appears: Nine Continental Mysteries
A Collection of Unsolved Crimes and the Man Who Asked the Right Question

A shadow passes across Europe at the turn of the century. Wherever secrets lie buried, wherever silence carries more weight than speech, a solitary figure in grey is seen—never announced, never explained. Some call him a guardian, others a harbinger, but none can deny his presence when mysteries deepen beyond reason.

The Grey Gentleman collects a series of haunting cases, each unravelled through the eyes of Julian Ashcroft, a reluctant witness drawn into a world where theatre becomes tomb, silence becomes judgment, and the boundary between the living and the unseen grows perilously thin.

Blending elements of detective fiction, Gothic atmosphere, and moral parable, these stories unfold under the constraints of the old Hays Code: suggestive but restrained, dark but never lurid, always circling the eternal questions of guilt, redemption, and unseen judgment.

For readers of Arthur Machen, M. R. James, and G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown, The Grey Gentleman offers a tapestry of uncanny tales that linger long after the curtain falls.

EDITED BY RITA BEEMAN: Moggies of Mars (Raconteur Press Anthologies Book 60)

---

Felines rule the universe, just ask them. These stories pay homage to the greatness that was portrayed by a master of sword-and-planet, only there are a lot more tails than there were in a Princess of Mars! Tales of derring-do, claws sharp as steel, soft cheeks smoothing ruffled warriors, and these cats back down from no-one. Read on, Fair Human! You will like what you find in these covers!

BY ED LACEY, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: Enter Without Desire (Annotated): The pulp noir classic

Marshall Jameson was an aspiring artist at the end of his rope. On New Year’s Eve he wandered into New York City on his last pennies, and stumbled onto a radio game show, won it… and found the perfect girl.

How could he know his good luck would lead him step by step into murder? But Elma was worth it, worth murder, and more!

• This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction giving genre and historical context to the novel.

FROM EDWARD WILLET: Fireboy

“I knew things were getting weird when I saw my best friend’s face in the campfire. I didn’t realize how weird until the campfire followed me home . . .”

Thirteen-year-old Samantha “Sam” MacReady is nervous about the start of Grade 8, especially science class, which isn’t too surprising: last year, her Grade 7 science class mysteriously disappeared on the way to a field trip she missed out on.

But when her best friend, Lorenzo—who no one has seen since he got on the bus with the rest of that class—suddenly appears in a campfire, she moves from nervous to freaked out. She teams up with Meg LeBlanc, the sole student survivor of what all adults refer to as “The Tragedy,” to uncover just what went on that day and why Lorenzo is now showing up in her back yard made entirely of flames.

What the two girls find out is far freakier and scarier than they ever imagined. Sam and Meg must use all their grit and intelligence to save the day and free their friends from magical enslavement . . . or fall victim to the very same fate.

FROM NATHAN BRINDLE: The Tale of the Crane Princess (Timelines Universe Book 6)

Ordinary, everyday shopkeeper Horiuchi Tsurue is running a little general store and mini-café on a small island in Japan’s inland sea, two centuries after mankind was nearly wiped out by a virus.

One day, Yamaguchi Yukiko, the kamaitachi of legend (The Cross-Time Kamaitachi), and her daughter Mikoko, appear in front of Tsurue’s shop, and she invites them in for tea.

That’s when Tsurue discovers she is anything but ordinary. And in the end, the island she is sworn to protect will depend upon it.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Whine in a Box (Liquid Diet Chronicles Book 3)

Maybe chasing murderers wasn’t so bad after all…

Meg Turner, vampire, accountant, and investments advisor…is a political radical. By vampire standards, at least. She’s young, American, and wasn’t inducted into the unlife in the usual way. Which means she’s not a European feudalist. So, when other vampires started asking to move into her territory, she wasn’t sure how to react, other than to welcome some of them. She has a chance to shape an entire territory, if she wants.

(She doesn’t)

Her allies have other plans, though. And, between those plans being sprung on her without much warning, her nearest neighbor coming under attack (and sending his helpless civilians to her for shelter), her mother showing up on her doorstep, looking for answers to why she’d not gotten in contact in the last twenty years…yeah. She’s got a reason to whine.

And that’s not even counting the rising panic over a brand new virus…that shouldn’t affect her people, but will anyway.

EDITED BY WILLIAM JOSEPH ROBERTS: Convoy of Chaos : A Car Warriors: Autoduel Chronicles Anthology

Despite the grain blight, fuel shortages, and wasteland raiders, supplies still need to get through.

Ride along with the big rig convoys, road crews, and race teams of the wasteland, keeping civilization civilized one delivery at a time.

Convoy of Chaos— where every mile is an unforgiving battlefield, and survival rides shotgun.

FROM BLAKE SMITH: In Pursuit of Justice: A Novel of The Garia Cycle

When love sparks a war, can four hearts survive the flames?

Zara thought escaping to freedom with Téo was the end of her story. She was wrong—it was only the beginning.

Their forbidden love has ignited a war between two kingdoms, and now they’re refugees fighting for survival in a hostile land where every shadow could hide an assassin and every stranger might be the end.

Meanwhile, back in the marble halls of the East Morlans, Prince Hanri races against time to contain his father’s burning thirst for revenge before it consumes everything in its path. And in the glittering palace where whispers are weapons, Alia must navigate a maze of deadly rumors and half-truths to uncover the secrets that could save them all—or destroy everyone she loves.

With armies gathering and alliances crumbling, four young hearts must learn that sometimes the greatest battles aren’t fought with swords, but with courage, loyalty, and the unbreakable bonds of love.

In a world where kingdoms clash and hearts collide, who will you trust when everything falls apart?

War changes everything. But love? Love endures.

Perfect for readers who crave epic romance, political intrigue, and characters who will fight to the end for what they believe in.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Shadow over Leningrad

In Stalin’s Soviet Union, Tikhon Grigoriev lives a precarious life. He knows too much. He’s seen too much. A single misstep could destroy him, and if he stumbles, he will take his family down with him. With Leningrad besieged by Nazi armies, the danger has only increased.

He’s not a man who wants to come to the notice of those in high places. But when he solved a murder that seemed supernatural, impossible, he attracted the attention of Leningrad’s First Party Secretary.

So when a plot of land grows vegetables of unusual size and vigor, and anyone who eats them goes mad, who should be called upon to solve the mystery but Tikhon Grigoriev. However, these secrets could get him far worse than a bullet in the head. For during the White Nights the boundaries between worlds grow thin, and in some of those worlds humanity can have no place.

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: RISK

Do Not Go Silent! by Todd R. Maxwell

Charlie Kirk’s courage demands our own

Charlie Kirk was murdered over words.

That is unacceptable, and that should be all there is to say.

Sadly, it’s not.

Political violence is indefensible. Full stop. No matter the ideology, no matter the target, no matter the moment—murder is not debate. Assassination is not argument. And silencing a voice with a bullet is not winning. But let’s be equally clear: political violence cannot be met with political silence.

In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, calls to “tone down the rhetoric” are predictable. They’re also misguided. Charlie wasn’t a provocateur. He was a rhetorician—sharp, composed, and relentlessly logical. He invited questions, answered critics, and modeled rare restraint. To say his death should prompt a softening of speech is to misread both the man and the moment.

Some have called Charlie a grifter and a liar. But faking belief is psychologically grueling—especially when your brand hinges on your opinions. You may not have shared or even understood Charlie’s views, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t sincere. He didn’t posture. He believed. And that belief made him dangerous to those who prefer silence over disagreement.

Let’s be clear: the assassin didn’t want softer speech. He wanted silence. He wanted Charlie gone. It’s hauntingly symbolic that a man who believed dialogue could prevent violence was silenced by a bullet to the throat. If our response is to mute ourselves—to retreat from conviction, to dilute our public voice—then that bullet may as well hit every one of us. That’s not healing. That’s surrender.

Political violence thrives on the illusion that speech is the problem.

It isn’t.

The problem is the belief that disagreement justifies violence.

One way that justification rears up is through what I call bothsidesism. Both-siding tragic events has always bothered me, but it took this moment for me to finally figure out why. It’s not the above-it-all smugness of the gesture, or even the unjust spreading-around of blame. Short-skirt logic at least blames the victim for their own actions. Bothsides admits innocence, but dismisses it as balancing some cosmic scales.

But contrary to bothsides, there exists a real asymmetry when it comes to both speech and action. It starts, as always, with finger wagging directed at the right for objecting to leftist behavior. In the present moment, we are sternly reminded that the shooter and his beliefs haven’t been identified yet. Well, we may not know who the shooter is yet, but we already know who is celebrating.

It follows with accusations that the right is looking for a pretext to shut down opposing voices while ignoring that the left has hardly considered a pretext for censorship, cancellation, assaults, and even bloodshed apart from “racist, bigot, homophobe, sexist, fascist!” Right wing warnings that, should violence begin, they are prepared, are held as equal to left wing cheers when the violence erupts.

Some will point to the recent murders of a Minnesota Democratic politician and her husband as evidence of equivalency. Again: no one should be murdered for their views. But in this case, the shooter’s own statements explicitly reject “Trump stuff” as motive. And while it may seem distasteful to compare tragedies, one great distinction matters. Killing a politician in her home is a different kind of violence from publicly executing an activist in front of a crowd. The former is skulking evil. The latter is a terroristic spectacle meant to intimidate not just officeholders, but an entire political side. Equating the two—pretending the spectacle wasn’t part of the point—is terror working its will.

And then there’s the most glaring asymmetry: If the right were as violent as the left, every downtown business would be smoldering this morning.

So don’t go quiet. Speak your mind—even to those who disagree. I’m more hard-nosed than most about this, even if I don’t always go there myself, but the legal lines are clear: threats, incitement, defamation, solicitation. Everything else is protected. So protect it. Say your piece. Say it plainly. Say it while you still can.

Also, speak to each other. Now would be a good time to unblock those former mutuals who didn’t see eye-to-eye on how best to win the last election or oppose lockdowns or whatever. You’re going to need them. Iron sharpens iron.

The antidote isn’t rhetorical retreat—it’s rhetorical courage. More clarity. More conviction. More Charlie.

Todd’s Twitter.

Normally I hold 9/11 for memory and thought and for missing, maybe, that other timeline, where perhaps things would be better. Or at least we’d be more innocent and trusting.

Today I must write this. And the reason I must write this is another reason to miss yet another timeline where I might have been more innocent and trusting. Though perhaps it’s more fair to say: where a lot of us wouldn’t be so angry.

I had a brief dip through twitter, because No Man’s Land hit #3 in Galactic Empire. (Behind Brandon Sanderson and…. a zombie romance????) and I don’t want to anymore.

But I must say this. And do please understand it’s a very difficult post to write. Oh, not because what I have to say is unpleasant, but because I have to choose my words. And I’m sick. And apparently this feeling like you’re hollow and whatever batteries were powering you have completely died down is grief? (I don’t recommend this grief thing. It sucks, and I would return it to Amazon if I’d bought it there.)

What I must say is this: I understand your anger. I’m also slightly puzzled by it, but that’s because I come from a different time and place.

I always knew the left was violent and unreasoningly so. It’s in their philosophical DNA. They can’t help themselves. They were born of the French Revolution, hatched by Lenin, and they’ve been fed blood and innocents ever since.

When you believe history comes with an arrow and leads to your inevitable win, and also that your win equals the actual return to the Earthly paradise you place somewhere in pre-history (without realizing this is just a rewriting of Eden) before the “invention” of private property, any murder, any violence, any horror is justified, if it will get you there. If you could bring about paradise by a few murders, wouldn’t you? After all, it’s for the good of humanity.

That’s their well spring and what moves them.

More importantly their most basic “virtue” is envy. If you’re “downtrodden” and “held down” because “others have more” and that’s what radicalizes you, you’re going to be predisposed to revenge. After all, them over there are oppressing you all the time, by having more than you do. Or in the current incarnation, for being more normal than you are, for having better families, for being happier than you are.

So the murder didn’t shock me. The choice of victim did a little, but then again no. You see, they’ve convinced themselves that religious people hate them and want them dead (this is bizarre to the point of “what even?”) and therefore they’ve been on a rampage against the religious. Mostly a rampage of words and screeching, but there are a lot of unbalanced people on that side and that inevitably leads to murder.

They also piously believe the news and broadcasts, and the news apparently was obsessed with Charlie Kirk. I have a theory as to why, and it will come. But mostly because he worked in audio and appearances, and these people can’t read.

To the rest of us, he was a little milk toast, sometimes to the point of having fights with us, as well as with the left. G-d rest his soul. He was fighting with all he had. Just not the same as us.

But to me nothing of this is shocking, because I saw the communists firebomb the headquarters of all parties to the right of them (which included socialists) by the time I was 16.

“Oh, but not in America.” Pardon me for being David Brin, but “bet me.” Look, mostly you don’t remember how violent the left here is, because the media buried that deep. And history books never mentioned it.

I will grant you though that it’s not just we have social media now. They’ve gotten crazier and more blatant.

And that’s what I wish to talk about, so please listen.

That they murdered Charlie Kirk is not a sign that they are not in charge, or on the verge of winning, or that they will now start killing every one of us one by one. That’s movie reasoning and not real.

Oh, I’m not saying a bunch of us (I type us advisedly) aren’t at risk. Not much to be done about that and I knew what I was doing when I first spoke out. We all owe G-d a death, and cowards die many times before their time, as the Bard would say. I don’t hanker for martyrdom, nor am I rushing to meet the end, but if it comes because I spoke out, it comes because I spoke out. (Mom used to worry obsessively about this.) There are things that are more important than safety. (And to be fair, I think I’m at more risk or at least as high when I attend mass on a Sunday, or worse weekday mass as I am for having this blog. They are functionally illiterate and also ineradicably convinced that religious people want to murder them. Because some vlogger says so. In fact, anyone on our side working in video or appearing on the news is at much higher risk than myself, as has been proven, yet again.)

But it’s entirely possible they’ll go after a few more of us, maybe a lot more of us. They have lists, which in the way of all of these are more personal revenge than how important a person or cause is politically.

That’s almost irrelevant. I mean it’s relevant and tragic and horrible for those who die, but in the long run and for what matters it’s almost irrelevant.

What you must understand is the reason they are on a tear. And it’s not because they’re strong. It’s because they’re losing. They’re losing hard.

Yesterday I was ambushed by a doomer on X, telling me that they could just install world communism tomorrow, they were on the verge of winning.

That’s what’s known as “historical blindness and movie-thinking and also where has this person been the last fifty years?”

First of all, global communism was ALWAYS a pipe dream. We just didn’t realize it because our media, our establishment, our spy agencies are all so frigging bad. But communism can’t feed itself. Without the free world to parasite on, it dies. (Keep in mind that dying means a sort of general anarchy, but from that there’s hope of something emerging. And what’s there is NOT EVER world communism.)

But we didn’t know it fifty years ago. We didn’t know it, because no one would report fairly on communist countries.

Now? Now that’s stupid.

What we’ve seen since the USSR fell is not the triumph of communism, but the desperate grasping of a dying ideology to control power by any means necessary.

Think back to 2020. We weren’t the only ones where the left frauded or couped itself in. It was a trend all over the world, starting around 2018.

It’s just that unlike the triumphal take overs of the early 20th century, they couldn’t EAT what they chewed. As here, they could do a damn lot of damage, but they couldn’t really implement their agenda.

After yesterday, maybe you’ll believe me that if they could the left would have seen us all in camps or before firing squads. They just couldn’t do it.

Even in the hardest dictatorship there’s always the consent of the governed. If the people on the street are in White Mutiny, you can’t do it. You just can’t. You can do some things, but not impose the boot on neck you want to.

As I suspect the British are about to demonstrate. In spades.

They can’t. They no longer have something enticing to point out to. They no longer can keep the horrors of communism hidden. Yeah, I know “But more people believe in socialism than ever.” Yeah, no. Did that poll dig down to what they think socialism is? Because that’s the main thing. No one younger than me, I swear, has a firm grasp on what socialism is or for that matter that “capitalism” is just “the free market.”

They think socialism is anything done communally, like libraries or roads — and let me tell you, the fact the left has needed to redefine socialism to that ridiculous degree tells you they’re losing, too. — not confiscation of bank accounts and state apartments, shared with your local mad bum. And they think corporatism is “capitalism.”

So that poll is worthless.

In point of fact, on real things, the left is losing. If they weren’t aware of being a minority (I’m going to bet 25% at the most. And it might be lower today) they wouldn’t be so invested in opening the borders and vote fraud.

And they wouldn’t be so violent.

I’ve known since before 16 too that when communists lose an argument they try to kill you.

More importantly, they’re losing the demonstration. Milei is cleaning up Argentina (ARGENTINA people!) and Trump is — more than you think — quietly, behind the scenes, removing their sources of power.

Turns out a lot of international leftism subsisted because you and I were paying for it out of our tax dollars. Even billionaires like Soros aren’t commies for free, it turns out (You shouldn’t be surprised EVERY communist I’ve ever known has been grasping. Every single one. Just not openly and often very under the table.) Trump hasn’t fully removed that, but he has taken a substantial chunk out. And now he’s turned his attention to elections. And he’s putting the spotlight on how insecure vote by mail is. And, and, and–

They feel the doors closing. If they don’t do something RIGHT NOW they’re done.

And what they’ve come up with to do is of course murder. As I said, it’s in their DNA. They are an ancient beast out of nightmares, a Trex with a brain barely large enough to move its tail, but sharp and bloody teeth.

I’m not lying, and please understand I know this: they can do a lot of damage.

But they’re already dead. Once it enters this phase, an ideology is ALREADY DEAD.

I know you’re furious, I know you want revenge, but honestly THE WORST WE CAN DO TO THEM IS LET TRUMP DO HIS WORK and support the clean up of elections and tax money distribution with everything we are and everything we can.

And tell the truth. Telling the truth is the most lethal power of all. Tell the truth. About history about society. Yes, they might kill you for it. Take no risks you’re not prepared to take, but tell the truth.

Look, I too want blood. I have three axes which were given to me by the Minotaur (No. I haven’t lost my mind. If you’re in fandom, you know who he is). The axes would very much like to be taken for a spin.

And it’s not even that I’m old, and I’m tired. Or that I am bound by my religion to believe the most ridiculous of these blood-lusters are human.

It’s that I know the end result of that. It will start as “They put one of ours in the hospital, we put two of them in the morgue” but it always widens. It always goes local, personal.

If you don’t think so you need to study history more.

I’m at risk, yes, because I speak with an accent. Dr. Sowell, to name someone off the top of my head, is at risk because he’s black. A lot of my friends are at risk for being Jewish, because the young people think the opposite of the left is …. endorsing leftist hatred of Israel. A lot of my friends are at risk because they look like (they are, largely) old hippies. And then comes the personal. You’re at risk because your neighbor though nominally on the same side, once hear you say something he thought sounded like “Bernie Sanders has the right idea.” And besides, your lawn is a mess and he hates you for it.

This dance starts it doesn’t stop till the music stops on judgement day. I point you at Rwanda, Zimbabwe. I point you at the Balkans.

We are winning. Yes, we might have to pay in blood, but it will be less blood than if the dance starts.

Note, though, that I heartily endorse bringing to room temperature ANYONE trying to attack you, or trying to attack anyone in your sight. That’s not a joke.

Other than that: The beast is dead. It just hasn’t fallen over.

The most deadly phase of a war is the mop up. That’s when you take the most casualties. The enemy has nothing left to lose and can give vent.

I won’t tell you that we won’t have more of these. I have the uncomfortable feeling that they tried with a lot of other people before hitting Charlie.

I won’t tell you that you’re perfectly safe at church (and for some reason they seem to hate Catholics particularly just now. No idea why even.) I won’t tell you you’re safe at a demonstration.

You’re not safe. Life isn’t safe. The world isn’t safe. But you can’t live hiding under the rug. And some things are worth doing. Square your shoulders, decide what you have to do. Then do it. Death will come either from it or from merely living. Death is the price of being alive.

But I can tell you with absolute certainty that in the end we win they lose. Yes, even if this ends in strife and blood. I’d just like to win before 100 years. I have children. I might have grandchildren. (And I have ducttape ones.)

As for “We can’t reconcile.” and “We can’t share a nation with people like this.” Well, your ancestors did.

After the revolution, after the civil war, wounds were bound, and people learned to live together, even though each had done horrible things to the others.

You will too. And most of them not-media-personalities are mostly dumb, lied to and histrionic. Which is bad enough, but not evil incarnate.

That’s all I have for you today.

If this must fall into an endless war of revenge, then it must. But I believe — I hope, I pray– America is better than that. I won’t answer for the rest of the world. But I believe America is better than that.

And that when the smoke clears, our flag is still there.

May G-d bless you and keep you. And may His hand be upon us these perilous days.

Lest we fall.

We remember the clear morn.

We remember the surprise.

We remember the death.

We remember.

The wound gaping in our hearts

The change in who we are

And who we’d be

We remember the clear morn

And death that came

Uninvited

Unwarned

We cry a little

We hang out our memorial flag

With every name of the dead

And we pray with desperate need

That today won’t be a clear morn

Bright and promising

An untroubled future

That never came.

I try to keep this blog non-religious. And I will again tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Save for emergencies. This feels like an emergency.

If you’re a believer whose belief allows it, say it with. Say it with me NOW.

St. Michael the Archangel, 
defend us in battle. 
Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil. 
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, 
and do thou, 
O Prince of the heavenly hosts, 
by the power of God, 
thrust into hell Satan, 
and all the evil spirits, 
who prowl about the world 
seeking the ruin of souls. Amen. .

O glorious prince St. Michael, 
chief and commander of the heavenly hosts, 
guardian of souls, vanquisher of rebel spirits, 
servant in the house of the Divine King
and our admirable conductor, 
you who shine with excellence
and superhuman virtue deliver us from all evil,
who turn to you with confidence
and enable us by your gracious protection
to serve God more and more faithfully every day.

I often quote Leonard Cohen “You don’t want to lie, not to the young.”

And in this one thing I’m going to point out we particularly shouldn’t lie to girls. For two reasons. Because they are more vulnerable than boys, more attuned to the social zeitgeist and more likely to go along with it, no matter how crazy the zeitgeist is, or how manufactured. And girls who are killed or emotionally destroyed are future denied, since their ability and interest in the future determine whether there are humans in that future.

Don’t get me wrong. We need boys too — duh — and as the mother of (exclusively) boys, I am very aware of their vulnerabilities and the deep cracks that hide under the “strong and silent” exterior. And also of how hard it is to pull boys out of a depressive spin.

And we need boys to grow into men to be husbands and fathers and protectors, now more than ever.

(As it turns out the situation in mind right now reveals a deep crack in both boys and girls or in this case men and women.)

This article has a beautiful title The Girl on the Train.

And you expect it to be something that Agatha Christie wrote. In fact she has a story about a girl on a train called What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw! or, in England 4.50 from Paddington. In the book, a young woman is lured out to the countryside and killed on the train.

I won’t spoiler it for you. It’s not one of my favorites, but it is worthy of being read on its own.

However the article is not about an intricate crime which we need Poirot’s Little Brain Cells to solve. It’s about a sordid, desolate and senseless crime that snuffed out a young and promising life in the name of nothing but the delusions of a schizophrenic.

And it exposes layers and layers of lying to the young. Which blossoms in this kind of thing in the full grown.

It is about the murder of Iryna Zarutska, and if you’re my husband, or have been living under a rock for the last few days, here’s a link.

Basically this girl, a Ukranian refugee was in the rapid transit train in Charlotte, NC, when the homeless man sitting right behind her stood up and stabbed her in the neck killing her. He then walked around in the tone of someone who was vindicated “I stabbed that white girl.”

First let me tell you that this thing puts the peep in me. When I was 23 years old, I also lived in Charlotte and worked at a mall (in a store, not a pizza place) and because I didn’t drive, I took the bus home if my husband couldn’t pick me up.

The parallels are weird and make me feel like I’m probably dead in some other universe.

Second let me tell you I’m very happy I grew up in a fairly mono-racial society (yes, that has changed now, but not then.) and went to school in a large and dangerous city starting at 12. And then lived most of my life in Colorado, which has a lot of Latins but practically no black people. (Or did. I think that too has changed.)

I’m happy not because I think that black people are uniquely scary/evil/dangerous but on the contrary, because I can identify the pathologies around/beyond race.

I will point out the man being black is relevant, because of where he is black and what I know about the black population in that city: I was friends with a lot of them when I lived there. And I found out that however much people might have been racist against them in the 80s, they were just as racist back. In fact, the black community in Charlotte, NC at the time could give a friend grief because we dropped her off in the heart of her neighborhood. What was she doing consorting with honkies?

I’ve lived in many places since then, and that was the worst I’ve experienced. Now, it’s been 40 years, so I don’t know if it’s gotten better, worse or more tubular. And I’m not going to speculate, except to say there are a lot of people very invested in making the races hate each other and some of them were mildly good at it, like Barrack Obama.

Also that I eventually broke most of those friendships, not because I didn’t like the people but because they were stuck in a vicious cycle of everything bad that happened to them was because of racism.

Now, for real, at that time there was racism and sometimes vicious racism. Usually from people whose IQ wouldn’t keep a mouse warm. Not just my black friends, but myself as well.

But I realized that if you attribute everything bad that happens to you to racism and forces you can’t control, you’ll never do anything. You’ll become a crying puddle on the floor. Or hate everyone. But you’ll never DO anything. So I decided to behave as though racism and prejudice didn’t exist, even though it did.

And to do that, I had to get away from the echoing reinforcing chorus of “They hate me and done me wrong.”

Again, this was my personal experience and 40 years ago, but I can easily see race mattering in this. Not because black people are uniquely dangerous but because — let’s face it, through our schools and institutions — we’ve taught them that they’re uniquely done wrong by and that white people are always to blame. And if there’s a big enough black community, they’ll pass the tales of woe around and reinforce the resentment, so when one of them goes off the rails, it will take a racial tone. Let’s however remember that the murder, earlier on, attacked his own sister, whom I doubt was white.

While on that, black people in America aren’t uniquely violent, or uniquely anything. You can think whatever you want about black people in Africa (I know Africa well enough that my opinions go by regions, which tells you it’s mostly culture) but black people in America are ultimately Caucasians. Most of them have more Northern European blood than I do. And a lot of them are lighter, even though the thyroid deficiency has bleached me.

BUT they are uniquely farmed into resentment, envy and a belief of being done wrong by by the government/media/democrat-industrial complex. I’ll grant you that.

The way back from that is not lying to the young. Including not lying about slavery and telling them no other slavery was as bad and that white people enslaved them because they’re black. That’s bullshit. Their ancestors (and my one singular ancestress) won the lottery because the Dahomey who trafficked most African slaves to slavers killed some portion of them over the tombs of their ancestors on arrival to their villages. On top of that compared to my one ancestress, they came here, not to Portugal, which, honestly!

We need to have the courage to teach the truth to the young.

You know other truths we need to teach to the young? The “homeless” or “unhoused” aren’t in fact normal human beings in need of a house. The names are a lie.

Naming them that, pretending that, just points at the wrong problem and calls for the wrong action.

Yes there are a lot of people in the US who can’t afford a place to live, or are in trouble house wise, because times are hard right now, particularly for the young.

BUT–

But that doesn’t mean that people who have any skills/ability to navigate the normal world are living on the streets. Oh, there will be some: orphans without friends exist. But they’re rarer than hen’s teeth.

Most people on the street are mental health tragedies, and/or criminal and/or willfull mooches, or some combinations of all three.

And I’m torn on this, because mental health is a slippery thing, but on the other hand there’s such a thing as an obvious danger to himself and others.

The poor girl being the focus of his anger was maybe because of incipient racism, or because the numbers in his head added up just the wrong way, but those numbers in his head were scrambled. His mother threw him out of the house because he was a danger to his family, but he remained a danger. Unexploded ordinance about to go off.

We shouldn’t lie about that. Not all humans are safe. And some humans are not human.

Part of that being grateful Colorado Springs was so white I was dark was that until people accused me of racism for talking about homelessness, I had no idea that race had ANYTHING to do with homelessness. I still don’t think it does, though in certain places there are probably a lot more black homeless people. And with the influx over the border, it’s probably a multicolored sh*tfest.

BUT when I describe encounters like the guy that didn’t even feel human, these were white homeless. And just as disturbing and potentially dangerous as that guy on the light rail.

And speaking of that, reading that article about The Girl On The Train, I realized she went in and sat in front of the homeless guy in the hoodie, and put her earbuds on and….

Guys!

That’s something I wouldn’t have done even in my early twenties. The person in the article thinks it was because she didn’t want to appear racist. This is possible, since the first years in the US as an European you, OF COURSE, buy the media narrative.

But I suspect it was just cluelessness. Just a general belief that homeless people are just poor things, and not dangeours.

I didn’t have that. Not by the time I was in my 20s. I knew humans were dangerous, and I was wary of them, knowing I weighed 120 lbs soaking wet with my pockets full of lead.

I always had a knife on me. Alright, usually more than one.

And I’d not sit with my back to anyone, particularly not anyone looking menacing. And if possible, I sat between other people, particularly women.

Why did Iryna do that? Who knows?

My guess though is that she’d been sold on one of the many lies we tell young people. Like, women can fight men with no problem at all. The media sells it, the movies sell it, very, very stupid feminists sell it. Why shouldn’t she buy it?

She was probably sold on the idea that people don’t attack you unless you’ve done something to deserve it and that minorities are sort of cute, adorable little fluffy pets, incapable of hurting anyone. Why shouldn’t she? The media sells it, government sells it, everyone sells it.

So, of course, that’s what she bought.

And the price was her life.

Right now, right here, while the idiots on twitter are escalating that everyone who tans is dangerous or some insanity, (it’s curious many of them assume anyone with dark hair is Mexican. The only people who think that are, weirdly, Chinese. Like, from China. That’s their idea of the US,) it’s time to look at the real truths.

The truth is that it’s not that easy and not that difficult.

The truth is that telling the truth to the young is difficult. They’ve been lied to so much.

It is also essential.

If you want them to live.