Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

Even if husband has told me I’m not writing for the next three days, and I’m not even going to complain.  2 cons in 2 weeks is REALLY tiring, particularly when the first was a teaching con.  Teaching is fun but takes it out of you.

So for the next two days I’m going to hang out, sleep and imitate the vegetable kingdom.

Some random thoughts:

I didn’t get to see Emily Nelson — not that I remember at least (most of the con is a blur) — which makes it one year out of 7 I’ve actually seen her.  Worse, when Steve said hi, I was plotting with Jeff Greason (you’d only LIKE to know why) so I couldn’t talk.

Next year at Liberty con!

Other passing thoughts: two cons, two weekends? Too much. I got there pre-exhausted.

More serious thoughts: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE if you’re talking to amuse yourself on an airplane, no matter how much your seat mate likes it, try to keep your voice down. Seriously. And you might think you know a lot about some subject, but if there is some controversy, still keep your voice down.

Being stuck in front of a gal for almost four hours, who wouldn’t STOP and lectured CONTINUOUSLY on history (she knew nothing about) and the theology of MY religion (Which she knew a lot of things about that just weren’t so. As in, yeah, she’s one of us, but one of those who read from the little red book, not the 2k yo one. I could only imagine her holding forth on either Portugal or SF/F as a more annoying thing) is something very akin to torture, particularly if this person is PROJECTING her voice.  The idiot seat companion who encouraged her (judging from after-landing conversation) couldn’t be heard as long as he was sitting.  (I mean I could hear him rumble, but… who cares if you can’t hear the words.) She OTOH.

It interfered with my attempts at reading. Wouldn’t allow me to sleep. And she wouldn’t ZIP IT.

My annoyance went from a great desire to turn back and tell her “Lady, if you want to hold forth professorially on your ill-formed opinions, get a blog like the rest of us, and then people can ignore you.”  to a desire to turn back and stuff my entire jacket in her mouth. And if the flight had gone on another thirty minutes, it would TOTALLY have happened. I’d be in jail now, but I’d never be convicted by a jury of the tired, jet lagged and annoyed. It might have turned into Murder on the Airplane Express.

And then we had to wait to debark, and the guy who’d been sitting next to her started extolling her intelligence while she patted herself on the back for reviving the “forgotten art of conversations on planes.” The sheer lack of self-awareness.  Don’t be that gal. Or guy. Or small furry animal.

My cats… my cats have been trying to figure out how to surgically attach themselves to me.

Greebo continue scolding me in my sleep and — I THINK — his, as he mutter-mutter-muttered all night long.

As soon as I have a firm writing schedule, I shall talk to him about it, and give him Martin Shoemaker’s bribe-tuna.  So he can concentrate on keeping me on schedule.

And now I’m going to go er… not-write.  Looks over shoulder.  Someone tell my husband I’m definitely NOT writing.

Sorry, I didn’t post yesterday or Saturday. Turns out this Guest of Honoring is hard work.  I kept seeing things my friends were doing, on Facebook, and going “Seems like a great con, wish I were there.”

But it was good. It was very good. As always my friends at Liberty con were very nice and very sweet, and I had a great time.

I’m three quarters asleep as I write this, and there might or might not be con crud in the offing, but I’ll be home by late afternoon (anyone want to join us for dinner at Pete’s?  No, that’s not serious. We probably won’t be awake enough for it, and anyway, who wants to have dinner with a zombie author?)

Oh, there is a Portuguese Restaurant, in Chattanooga, and because they chose the name Bela Lisboa (the city that is the rival and enemy of the one I was born in) it pains me to say that they’re quite good. They have a few dishes that I make differently, but you know… If you’re in the area, give it a try. (They are slow on the service if you show up with a contingent of your closest friends,which we did yesterday dinner  (I think there were 32 of us.)

I probably won’t resume my duties at instapundit tonight, but I should be back on tomorrow.  I should also be able to do a real post tomorrow, but if not I’ll put up the writing challenge and something fun.

And now it’s time to close the bags, hug whoever is still in the lobby goodbye, and head home.

Except for TVIW (which is not exactly a con) I’m done with conventions for the year.

A Few Uncomfortable Truths by Amanda S. Green

It is no secret that I’m a Thomas Sowell fangirl. I have been for a long time. But, over the course of the last few years, I’ve read everything by him I could get my hands on. If I could, I’d make him required reading for everyone, especially for every student in public school and in college. Unfortunately, I don’t have that power. The best I can do is share my love for his work and hope you do the same.

I plan to do a series of posts about his newest book, Discrimination and Disparities, over the next few weeks. Before I do, however, I want to share with you a site I discovered this morning as well as a few of my favorite Sowell quotes (and my thoughts on them).

Before I get to the site, let me start with this: I hate Twitter with a purple passion. I do my best to avoid it, using it only to share links to blogs and books. I don’t Tweet “discussions” or get into debates over there. There are better things to do with my time.

So imagine my utter joy and disbelief to find a Twitter account that is dedicated to posting a quote every day from Professor Sowell. Part of me was stunned to find the site—and to know Twitter hasn’t yet taken it down. After all, Professor Sowell does Not fit the narrative most social media platforms are dedicated to. He tells it like it is, using facts and data to tear down the “approved” narrative.

If you haven’t discovered “Daily Quotes from Thomas Sowell” bookmark the page now. You won’t be sorry.

The pinned post has one of my favorite quotes from Sowell:

If there is not equality of outcomes among people born to the same parents and raised under the same roof, why should equality of outcomes be expected—or assumed—when conditions are not nearly so comparable?

Think about that for a moment. I have no doubt we all know families where children were raised together and turned out very differently. I’m not talking merely having different personalities but different drives, moral compasses, etc.

For example, when I was born, my mother worked at the hospital in the small Oklahoma town she and my dad lived it. Dad grew up there (and I’m forever grateful they moved to TX as soon as they could). One of the women Mom knew was a sweet little lady who worked in “Housekeeping”. She and her husband didn’t have much but they made sure they provided their two sons with a safe and loving home. They worked hard to insure the boys went to school and, when the time came, had every opportunity to go to college if they wanted.

But, from early on, there were differences between the boys, no matter what their parents did to give them the same opportunities and love. One was the son every parent wants: kind, loving, dedicated, hard-working, will to step up and answer the call to serve his country. The other, well, wasn’t. He was lazy, unmotivated, wanted everything handed to him and stole from those closest to him.

One son didn’t wait for his draft number to come up (this was in the midst of the Vietnam War). He went down to the Army recruitment office and enlisted. He proved to be as dedicated and motivated in the Army as he had in school and at home.

His brother, not so much. He did everything he could to avoid the draft.

Guess which son ended up making the ultimate sacrifice?

These two were raised under the same roof, with the same values and expectations, the same love and discipline. Yet they were very definitely not equal on so many different levels.

So, as Professor Sowell asked, how can we expect equality of outcomes when circumstances between people are different?

Economics, home life, education, moral compass, intellectual ability, natural talent are all factors that will impact that so-called “equality”, something those preaching such a need for uniformity forget. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have that inequality of outcomes, warts and all, instead of the Stepford Wives sort of society the progressives seem to prefer.

Another of my favorite Sowell quotes was posted the other day:

Increasing numbers of educators and the intelligentsia seem to have devoted themselves to undermining or destroying a sense of personal responsibility and making “society” responsible instead.

Going hand-in-hand with it is this quote:

Demagogues have always aimed their messages at the unthinking and the uninformed. Unfortunately, today that includes many of our college students.

Think about those two quotes and what we’ve been seeing, especially in public education, over the last few decades. We’ve witnessed a move away from teaching our children there are consequences to their actions—or inactions. We’ve seen them being taught that “every child is special” and “every child is a winner”. While the sentiment behind those statements is good, the reality is it has turned out a generation or more of young adults and teens who believe they should be allowed to do or say whatever they want when they want. They haven’t been taught there are times when they won’t be the best at something or won’t be able to get what they want.

By failing to teach them how to fail, and how to then pick themselves up and move on, we have done them a great disservice. We are reaping the consequences now. Want an example? Just look at some of our newer members of Congress. Ocasio-Cortez wants everything to be free, forgetting that if the government funds it, we are the ones footing the bill. There are others who would have us abandon our allies and embrace those who want to see our country not just fail but be totally defeated. When those who know better push back, these special little darlings cry “foul” and accuse us of being “bullies” or prejudiced.

And why? Because we dare remind them of the reality of their desires.

Sowell also doesn’t shy away from topics that have made him no friends in most liberal circles. Here’s another quote I wish the other side would not only read but consider with an open mind.

Dependence was seen as the key to holding the slaves down. It’s ironic that same principle comes up in the welfare state a hundred years later.

You can hear the cries of outrage now, can’t you? The liberals who continue to perpetuate the welfare state refuse to recognize that they are simply perpetuating the problem and, in many ways, making it worse. There is little to no incentive for too many “in the system” to get out. When states try to limit assistance or tie it to actively taking steps to get “off the dole”, the cries of outrage ring out loud and long. The media picks up the outrage and amplify it.

There is so much Sowell writes about that not only makes sense but points out how we have to stop the downward spiral certain parts of our political leadership has put us on. It is up to us to figure out the best way to do so. But the first hurdle is recognizing the problem. Then we need to understand the history of the problem. After that, we can start to determine the best way to undo the damage that has already been done.

Sowell isn’t afraid to speak the hard truths. I wish there were more like him, willing to step out of the shadows and face the attacks from the “right thinkers” because he refuses to walk in lock-step to their narrative.

I’m on the road on the way to Liberty con, and things I’ve heard over the last few days, a lot of it in private discussions with friends, wove themselves with the news caught earlier today (we’ve been on the road since three thirty am, and not a second to spare as we got off the highway at the wrong exit and then found that it being high road work season — Denver has two seasons, snow and road work — we couldn’t get back on and had to spend sometime lost at the distant edge of Denver).

In my fitful dozing on the plane, I woke up with a Leonard Cohen quote running through my head: “I couldn’t move to warn all the other soldiers, that we had been betrayed from above.”

But being betrayed from above is not something that warrants warning in our present situation.  We know it. All of the west knows it. And when the betrayal grows so deep and undeniable that you have to do something, and that the means of correction are taken from your hands, you find yourself donning a yellow vest and catapulting flaming Smart Cars at the arc du triomphe.  Mutatis mutandi, in our case, of course, unless we build one for the occasion.

This is not a warning. It is a remainder we’re in trouble deep.  Barring a miracle, things are going to get exponentially worse.  There will be confrontations here and there, ranging from BLM level blocked highways and nuttery to Beirut.  It will be worse some places. It’s not even a blue-red thing. I note that though Denver has the same nutty pro-public defecation laws as San Fran it hasn’t got as insane except in very concentrated neighborhoods. Perhaps because most of the locals aren’t amused, and the imported Californians are too stoned to count.

It is a place by place and area by area thing, and it’s not easy to guess.  The American instinct is to go and “hide out” in the middle of nowhere, but in all the collapses of law and order I’ve witnessed/read about, isolated homesteads were the most dangerous (as they are indeed in South Africa today.)

I can’t make the decision for you, you have to make it for yourself.

I still think in the end we win, they lose.  It’s not that we have G-d on our side, but that we have reality on our side.  And reality can’t easily be ignored. Not forever.

However, what previous generations allowed — we only got here for the culmination — the concentration of power in the left’s hands, and the acceptance of Marxism as a positional good?  yeah.  Even being fourth-generation oligarchy dumb — aka rock eating dumb — they have enough power to make things very painful for us.

I expect trouble to start around or shortly after the elections. There is no way we can stop them cheating. There just isn’t. If we try it just brings the mess earlier and harder.

If what I expect is what’s coming down the pipe, unrest will be isolated, sudden, unpredictable. Most of your days will be completely routine and normal.

So:

Get in the best shape you can: physical, financial, emotional.

Make sure you have a supply of medicines if they’re the kind you can get a little in advance.

If not, find alternate ways to get them, in case your doctor/pharmacy are out. Hint, most things are available on the net. It all depends on how shady you’re willing to go.

Don’t go out unarmed.  Now, this depends on the laws in your region, and also your licensing. Because you don’t want to throw yourself at the mercy of the system. But at the very least, carry a knife. Always.  Mailbox? Knife.  Groceries? Knife.

A weighted cane (or umbrella depending on where you leave) makes an excellent weapon.  And no one can deny you the ability to carry them.

Don’t look for trouble. If you round a corner and see people beating each other, run the other way (see why we told you to be in the best shape?)  There is no percentage in getting involved in violent incidents if you can avoid it. Unless you’re young and stupid.

Have an arranged rendez-vous point with family members, should you have to leave.

Keep your cars filled up.

Keep your pantry stocked, and an emergency supply on hand.

Do the normal preparations you’d do if you live in storm country.  But more importantly, be ready to defend yourself and the ones who depend on you.  To quote Robert A. Heinlein “Keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.”

We can get through this and we must.  We must, because we must have a say in what is built at the other end.

As cathartic as letting it all burn might be, in the end you’re just left with ashes. We owe it to our founders and to our future not to let the last best hope of mankind pass from the world.

So–

Keep yourself safe. In what I expect to be economic warfare ahead (I got hit by it this year) lend a hand when you can. Mutual aid and comfort is a thing.

And most of all, be not afraid.  In the end we win they lose.

It’s just going to get a little fraught on the way there.

It’s okay. We’re the strivers. We’ll get it done.

And if it kills us, someone will pick it up after us.

In these halcyon days of calm we have left, rest and prepare.  Mentally, physically, financially.

Barring a miracle, the seas are going to get rough.

Don’t drown.

This post is being echoed here from Mad Genius Club, if you want to join the discussion there, also. Which you might want to do, if you’re a writer.

I don’t normally do that, but this week is crazy. We just came back from Fyrecon (and I’d forgotten how exhausting teaching is.  I mean, I love it, but I guess I’m out of practice — or just old — because it beat the living daylights out of me.) AND we’re getting up at 3 am to make it to the airport, to make it to Liberty Con.

If you meet me in Liberty con and I look like a zombie? Don’t shoot. I’m just tired.
And somehow in the middle of this I need to finish two short stories and a cover and iron and pack all the clothes, and do the boxes so lovely DIL and #1 son don’t have to deal with poo incidents.)

I’m exhausted, it’s been a very hard week, heck, a very hard year.  All I want to do is go to my office, close the door and write.  But that part is a good thing.

And it brings us to the theme of this post: If you love it, marry it.  Which is not about marriage but about writing. H*ll about any career, really, no matter what it is. But this is a writers’ blog, and it’s important to talk about this, because people don’t.

No one stays in love constantly. Note I didn’t say no one stays in love forever. That’s different. But no one stays in love constantly.  Not with a person, not with a career, not with a house, not with a city, not with a state, not with parenting/your children, not with your hobbies. NO ONE. EVER.I don’t know how many people are like me: when I thought of marriage — and I want to point I never thought anyone would be brave or stupid enough to marry me — I didn’t think of the dress, the wedding, the cake, the flowers.  In fact, I was so bereft of an opinion on this that other than preventing mom from dressing me like a cream puff, or alternately (because she thought that was my taste) like a nun, I let her run the whole show, from rings to flowers to cake. Because I didn’t care. I just wanted to get through it and then be married.

No, when I thought of marriage I had a very specific image in my mind: what I wanted to be part of.  I don’t know when I saw them, or even in what country, or for that matter how old they were, because if this was the 70s they might have been in their sixties (don’t let anyone tell you differently, people aged HARDER. They still do in many other parts of the world.)  But I was walking in a rose garden, and I saw a couple. They were both white haired, and walking slowly.  And they were not talking, but they held hands, and were obviously attentive to each other in the way you are when the other is important to you.

Coming from a family that had, at the time, never had a broken marriage, I thought it was like that.  You married, and then you were in love forever and ever, and it was all golden sunsets in a rose garden.

Unless you’ve never been in a relationship, I don’t need to tell you it’s not that way.

I’m not casting aspersions on my husband. He’s brave, possibly a little crazy, to have married me.  I don’t think he’s stupid. I also don’t think anyone else would still be married to me 34 years on.  Because I’m not an easy person to get along with. Like most brave, a little crazy and very very smart people, he’s not either.  And since both of us came pre-shattered, it’s a good thing we married young, when mind and emotion were still flexible and could be healed into a new pattern.

I love my husband very much. At the moment, I’m also very much in love with him, which is not the same.

There is loving, which is a constant thing. And there is being in love, which is a heady, silly thing, where you want to be together all the time, and can lose hours holding each other’s hand and…

The second one is effortless and dizzy-making and it’s what most people refer to as “being in love.”  And it comes and goes.

The first burst of it usually burns out in two years.  And no one tells you this, so many people when they hit that place, particularly if life is being difficult at the time, as it often is in early marriage — short on money, overworked, trying to figure out what the next step in career is, often having moved — think it’s over. They think they were mistaken about loving this person, that it was a mistake to get married, that they must get out and pretend it never happened.

These people often (not always. Some figure it out by the second marriage) go on to have a lot of marriages all ending between two and five years.

You see, they confuse the heady feeling, the sparks and electricity, the “my feet don’t touch the ground” for the thing that lasts forever, and when it doesn’t they think they’re doing it wrong.  And they don’t realize it comes back.  Note what I said above: right now I’m very much in love with my husband.  I’m lucky, this is on more than off.  But the off periods, what carries me through is three things: 1-I still love him, meaning I care for him. His happiness is still essential to mine. 2- I know the “in love” rush comes back and oh, my, is it worth it.  3-I am committed. (And sometimes I should be, in another sense.)  I gave my word, and I exert my will not to be forsworn.

I realized yesterday, when talking to the boys, that careers are the same way, AND NO ONE TELLS YOU THAT.  So, it’s even harder to understand/stick with it through the bad times than with marriage where SOMEONE might give you an inkling.

I think Kris Rusch was trying to tell us this … lo, 20 years ago, when she told us that writing careers follow the W curve, over and over again.  That is a plotting “format” where the character hits bottom, reaches top, hits bottom again.  In the plotting the W keeps going every up, even in the low points.  Is it the same in the real world writing career? Maybe? I’d be tempted to say no, but the only way I’ve seen it NOT be is if you give up, stop pushing, and/or are very, very ill.

But I didn’t understand what Kris was saying. Because I had no idea. And the understanding didn’t burst upon me till yesterday.

Now when I say careers and that this applies to all careers, I’m exaggerating a little. Because if you’re doing something to make money, but that’s not where your heart ever is, then it doesn’t apply there.  It’s like when they found out arranged marriages are often happier. That’s because you don’t go in expecting the “highs.” So, you accommodate easier to the lows. And I’d argue the happier. I suspect they’re more often “stable” and “functional.”  Which might be better. Or not.  I wouldn’t trade being in love for all the stability in the world. There is a high you reach, a thing of magic that wouldn’t happen without that.

So, this applies to all careers that are vocations.  I’m not going to argue what vocation is. It’s more than a passing fancy, though, or what brings you bliss. In fact, it’s often like a tragic love affair, and it doesn’t bring you bliss at all, as you bang your head on that wall. (Like 90% of my career. I have to pay for my luck in marriage, somehow, I guess.  To quote a Portuguese poet “Fate sells all that it gives.”) But it’s, to explain it to those who might not have grown up with the concept, what you were born to do. The thing that’s so much a part of you you can’t pull it off without stopping being you, and also being a little maimed your whole life.

If there is a grand, ineffable plan, this is the part you’re supposed to play.

Vocations can be for everything. I’m not actually kidding when I say I knew someone whose vocation was being a cleaning lady. She was almost supernaturally good at it, she was never happier than when cleaning other people’s houses, and she had always wanted to do it.

My sons, for their sins, both have vocations.  Perhaps it’s hereditary, since both their father and I do (and their father needs to get back to his math and music, which means I need to make a lot of money to get him out of indenture.) Theirs are not for artistic stuff, but they are for “arts.” In the sense some sciences are half art.

Both of them — as is the way of vocations — discovered them young.  They think they chose in their teens, but I saw signs going back to when they were toddlers.  (Weirdly so did my brother, who spends very little time with them because overseas.)

Along the way — and considering they’re both still in protracted training — there have been ups and downs. Both of them have come home with stars in their eyes and flying high after working — actually working — in internships or practice at their chosen metier.

And both of them have hit head first into bureaucracy (university scheduling, btw, is an abomination onto Noogan.)  Both of them have been tired, discouraged, confused, and tired of hitting their head upon a wall.  (Younger son just found out that engineers don’t find jobs through linked in.  This is driving him nuts because he doesn’t know HOW they find them.  And he needs a part time on for his final year in school, and is terrified he won’t know how to apply for a full time one when he’s done, either.)

I’ve found myself talking to them when their idealized vision of what the career would be — their dream career, what the work would be like in G-d’s ineffable plan — hits the very complicated times we live in, between government funding, private ventures, laws and stupid regulations, and people, always people.  People who are petty or malicious. People who care more for power-fiefdoms than for doing this job well, this magical thing that holds their hearts.

Usually I tell them it’s like that all over. I don’t know anyone that goes into their chose career and meets with nothing but unalloyed praise and success.  Or if I do, poor things. Because having it too easy in the beginning makes it hard to develop the resilience to last.

Worse, you fall out of love. Even if things are going well, the novelty wears off, and the mundane everyday of a career, like the mundane everyday of a marriage is not made of rainbow and sparkles.

There is comfort in knowing he’ll be there when you wake up, comfort in knowing you’ll have breakfast together. But if you’re seeing sparkles and hearing music, you should check your medication.

In the same way, you grow more competent, and you don’t notice. This thing makes up your every thought and you don’t notice. It’s hilarious, now that the boys are trained beyond the ken of mere mortals (or mom) to hear them decrying how much they hate their chosen vocation, then falling to thinking/explaining/speaking in the lingo of it, and in a way that shows they are OF it. They can’t pull it out without killing part of themselves.

Yesterday, I tried to tell one of them “you fall back in love with it.” “You recover the fire.” And he looked skeptical. So I asked my husband “How often have I fallen in love with writing, after hating it, or after periods when it was dead to me?”

Being a mathematician, he didn’t say “Many.” No, he thought and said “Seven. And you’re on the upswing of enthusiasm again on the eighth.”

And he’s right. There have been times I only continued writing because we needed to pay the mortgage, or baby needed shoes.

No artistic (or possibly any) profession is ever “fair.”  It is a meritocracy in the sense that when the stars align, you need a modicum of talent to hang on, to turn that curve, to stay on top. As a lot of the dahlings of the establishment have found, all that promo can get you ONE bestseller.  And then you stall.  Or worse, if you really have no substance, you fall.

But getting that push, or, in indie, getting that reach? That’s part luck, part personality, part timing, part… who knows?  So you can be a very good writer and never sell much.

However when I came in, between selling to the net, letting computers do the walking, push model stocking shelves with fads and books no one objectively wanted to read, publishing was in the middle of committing suicide (it’s getting there. It’s a slow death, as always for behemoths.)  And my career got off with a bad start with a book released around 9/11 and those numbers in the computer forever.

It wasn’t the first time I’d fallen out of love with writing. That had happened through the unbelievably stupid (on my side and theirs) slog to first publication: the rejections that made no sense; the ever stranger hoops you had to jump through to even submit; the years of writing three novels a year while looking after toddlers, rebuilding houses, refinishing furniture and moving every couple of years.

But I always came back. I came back in pain and despair. I didn’t KNOW that the love would come back. Or that the sparks and music could return. Sometimes I thought that it would be gritting my teeth and walking into the hurricane forever.

Weirdly it does come back. Sometimes a long time, sometimes very short. And sometimes it comes back mingled with pain, like a tragic love affair.

Eight times. I am fifty six. I’ve been at this, full-or-part-time, unpublished and published for 34 years. I’ve broken eight times. Completely and utterly to where even the thought of writing hurt, and each word came out as though pulled by forceps.

And there are days I’d trade it all for a glass of water, and it doesn’t need to be good water. But I can’t because it’s part of me. And that’s a good thing. Because some days I can’t wait to write and all the rest — even eating and sleeping — are a distraction.

I’m at the very beginning of my eighth time of falling in love with this crazy career.  Indie now, and the freedom, and I can do all these things I dreamed of when I was young. I imagine it’s like in marriage when the kids are on their own and you can have time for yourself (I imagine husband and I will find out, someday. ;) )  Also I realized, through teaching at Fyrecon (Utah, last week. Yeah, that’s why no cover posts. Sorry) that I actually no only know this craft, but I know it to such an extent I don’t know what I know. It’s part of me. And yeah, I love it.

I suspect there will be a longer period of being in love and the golden glow of it.

But there will come times I’m tired, I’m broken, again, and the sheer “everydayness” of writing means I feel I don’t love it. It’s just what I do.

Humans are firefly creatures, off and on, off and on.  Our continuity of personality is…. flaky at best.  I am myself in the essentials, probably, at least the last ten years.  I would probably b*tch slap the twit I was at 20, and not just on politics, either. But in a way this year of transition — aka year from h*ll — has been scouring and molding me and changing me, to the point I don’t know if I am the same I was a year ago. Let alone five, ten, 20 or 30 years ago.

Everyone is like this. Everyone changes with time.

If you want to do anything worthwhile, to commit yourself to something that lasts forever, be it a marriage or a vocation, you have to DO IT.  You have to make that promise. You have to wed yourself to it. You have to want it so much that you want it even when you don’t, that you stay with it even when it’s the last thing you want to do.

The alternative is to accomplish nothing that takes more than a few months and a passing enthusiasm.  And perhaps that’s okay, I don’t know.  It’s not a choice I have.

I am what I am and this is what I was born to be.

As my Mormon friends say “For all time and eternity.”

For better or for worse.  And you have to cross the worse, to get to the better.

But it will come.  The better will come again.

And then it’s all worth it.

One of the problems we’re dealing with with the left right now, is that they’ve lost the distinction between light and dark.

To explain: when I was taking art, our teacher told us, the first year, that you can tell most student art, because it looks washed out, like someone left it out to fade.

That’s not true, of course, but most students are afraid to use dark colors, particularly in big concentrations.  Because if you do, it can be so hard to lighten/soften them if you went too far.

OTOH, if you don’t use the dark, you lose both the light and the mid-tints. Without that contrast there, everything runs to a sort of grayish indistinct, a mishmash of stuff with no sense to it.

The problem of the left is that they started taking grey and calling it black.  Actually it’s worse than that.  They decided dark pink is black. Which makes the resulting painting a swirl of meaningless colors and tones.

Look, as long as I’ve been alive, anyone who runs against the communist/socialist/Marxist is “literally Hitler.”

Of course, the closest that the modern era has seen to Hitler, and far out-stripping him in sheer numbers, were the Marxists Mao and Stalin.  But it’s different when they do it, because their hearts are pure, I guess.

Seriously, the problem is this, and this is the reason that these comparisons make sense to them, even if your average Marxist does no actually know this history or the gestalt behind the philosophy he expounds:

Marxism billed itself as a scientific political-economic system. It was supposed to look at history and sociology and codify it in the light of science, and therefore be able to extrapolate what would happen.

And what would happen would be that the workers would revolt, take over the means of production, establish a dictatorship of the proletariat, and then somehow automagically, the state would wither away, and you’d have a stateless society where people had changed so much — the famous homus sovieticus — that they’d willingly hold all in common, economy would consist of people exchanging everything for free, from each according to his ability and to each according to his needs, and–

Other tommy rot of the sort. The thing was never scientific of course. You can’t have scientific history (you can have scientific economics, but it’s different from what idiot Marx thought. Economics is always descriptive, not prescriptive, as a science, and also what the man didn’t know about economics could fill several universes to bursting. The man had never run a lemonade stand or worked for a living. Among other problems the concept of distribution was opaque to him and led him to think distributors were “stealing.”) because you can’t know all of history. History is made up of a ton of little things. Look at the fall of the tsar, as an example (I had a rather disturbed dream about it, so it’s in my head.) would it be the same if the tsarovich hadn’t had hemophilia? If he and his wife had had three sons and one daughter, and one had been healthy?

How do you know? More importantly, how do you run the experiments, to compare and prove your thesis. You can’t.

More importantly, while you can look at a situation and take from it guidance to other similar situations, you really can’t assume they’re exactly the same. And it’s never, ever, ever prescriptive. You can’t say “I studied this old situation so this new one will be like this.”  And you certainly can’t make prophecies about the end of history and the new man, and call it scientific. or rather, you CAN if you’re a no-account grifter whose knowledge of REAL history and economics can be written on the head of a thimble with room to spare.

And what you write is not scientific and is self-serving religion.

The problem is the early Marxists, captured by the just-so story became fervent believers in this AS SCIENCE and as something devoutly to hope for.

No, really, these people viewed the annihilation of the human race as it existed (what do you think replacing it with homus sovieticus meant?) as a good thing. Probably because we’d crossed the threshold where you had to be sane to survive. The entire breed was technically too wealthy and was suffering from the disease of the sons of rich families: self-loathing and a belief in airy-fairy nonsensical just-so stories.

They also viewed it as inevitable. Anyone slowing it down was “reactionary”and “ignorant” and other things that meant they were standing in the way of “progress.”

Let’s get out of the way right now that Marx’s vision never worked as advertised. If you number the revolutions of the proletariat (defined as the industrial working class, but hell, I’ll even give you farmers) that have happened, you’ll count…oh, yeah, zero.

What we’ve had from Russia to China to the clusterf*ck in Venezuela is revolutions by grifter intellectuals (Marx’s chosen people) who claimed to be doing it in the name of the proletariat and who theoretically gave ownership of the means of production to the proletariat, while in fact keeping control and manipulating the vast, and increasingly more scared crowd of starving peasants to do their murder for them.

Which, btw, is what the left is trying. Because we don’t have starving peasants, they’re importing them by the million from the third world, in order to do a revolution in their name, and then claim that they are in control and it’s a “dictatorship of the proletariat” while in fact, the graduates of our ivy leagues do monstrous things to everyone and enrich themselves while destroying the nation.

Because Hitler declared war on Stalin, who was — of course — Marxist and therefore in their stupid little noggins a “good person” and “fighting for progress” he was evil.

They don’t really understand WHY he was evil. To do that, they’d have to understand his belief that he could manipulate everyone and create a new human race was de-facto evil, and if they understood that, they’d end up screaming in front of the mirror in the morning. So instead they attach to the touch-feel of things he did, without even understanding why they were evil, or how evil they were, or how destructive.

This is how we get idiot Occasional Cortex and the idiot Millenial Cultural Revolution Brigades who follow her, to think that putting migrants in camps at the border is EXACTLY the same as the death camps in Germany.

Because both Hitler and us not letting their chosen people in, in whose names they plan to get power, stand in the way of Marxism. Therefore we’re exactly the same and there’s no difference whatsoever.

Yep. Black and dark pink are exactly the same, even if no sane people would see it that way, because, you know, neither of them are yellow.

So we get, you know, people living in bunks and perhaps not getting to pick their menu, and not having the right board games, is the logical equivalent of death camps.  Not letting people of a different culture who have nothing to do with us and no claim on us waltz in and — btw — consume MASS quantities of our public services? It’s the same as taking your very own citizens, expropriating their wealth, making it impossible for them to work, and putting them in a camp where they’re either supposed to work to death, or be killed for their hair, the gold in their teeth and their bones which are then used as industrial materials.

They don’t realize there is a difference between saying “no, you can’t come in to our country” (which by the way EVERY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD DOES, because a country without borders is not a country) and putting people in camps where you feed them a paste made of paper and old clothes, to find out if humans can survive on that. (This horrifies me more than the ovens, because of the sheer CONTEMPT of it.)

They don’t even understand the fundamental difference: no one in America wants to exterminate everyone of Latin (or Latin American) descent. (The stupid crazy idea that ICE is stopping everyone who can tan and deporting them is in fact bullshit.  While younger son gets stopped a lot, it’s because he drives a red sportscar (it’s what he chose to buy. We TRIED to talk him out of it) not because he tans. Hell, I tan and have an accent, and I have yet to be asked to prove citizenship, including in situations where I should be, btw.) (Okay, maybe someone does, but there’s 300 million of us. So there is more than a thousand people who want us all to wear tin foil hats, and there’s probably the same number who thinks everyone who doesn’t have blue eyes should be killed.  The point is, they’re not in power, and most of them are okay if kept medicated.)  There is no concerted effort to round up legal residents and citizens (BTW I’ve found that millenials don’t know the difference. They think if you come over the border you automatically become a citizen. ARGH.) of darker skin tones and put them in camps from which they can’t leave except by dying. Hell there isn’t even a disconcerted effort. There is NOTHING.

The people detained at the border aren’t detained because we want to kill them and all their kind. What is their kind, btw? since we’re getting a mix of people from all over.

They’re being detained because we’re a sovereign land. That means this land is for people who share a culture and beliefs, or at least agree to abide by our laws (breaking through our border immediately declares you don’t, guys.) Furthermore, we as a polity, get to choose WHOM we let in.

Most countries have this. The minimum requirement is that you NOT go on welfare/assistance for x number of years (some places ten.) Then there might be extra points if they need, say, doctors, or English teachers, or something.  “We were told to speed these people along” is a thing.  I’m honestly iffy on that part, because it’s too much of planed economy and usually crazy, but eh, something we have the right to do.

I used to believe the thing that most illegals wanted to come in to work and not to take advantage of our welfare system. It might even have been true, at one time. But at least since Obama’s presidency, everything I hear from friends who intersect with this stuff from health professionals to education professionals, to social workers, is that 90% of our resources are being consumed by people who are here illegally and who not only contribute nothing, but can’t even understand they SHOULD contribute anything, because they’ve been propagandized all their lives that America stole all their raw materials or whatever, and that the poverty in their country is our fault. So they’re here to steal back their stuff, or grift it from us, all the while hating us. Because they were told it’s our fault, and they have a right.

This is part of the Marxists attempts to weaponize peasants, even if they have to import them.

It’s also the only thing that explains the caravans coming in singing their countries’ anthems.  IOW as an invasion force.

Putting them in camps is a bit crazy. We should be confiscating all weapons and sending them back under armed escort.  But hey.

And the number one difference between death camps and migrant camps? If you’re put in a migrant camp you can leave at any minute, if you agree to go back home. I think we even pay for the ticket.

To the millenials and convinced Marxists, no, this was not true in Auschwitz. Most of those people just wanted to go home and back to work and their normal lives.  The idea that Jews (or the other persecuted minorities) were “invaders” was just Hitler’s insanity. They were just Germans.

Wake me up when the US starts rounding up anyone who can tan, puts them in camps and doesn’t let them leave.

I’m going to suggest we start by rounding up Occasional Cortex, put her in a camp and not let her out till she can reliably tell the difference between dark pink and black, form three sentences coherently AND know a modicum of history not Marxist indoctrination.  And for the love of heaven, while you have her, do something about her teeth.  It’s like she has a vagina dentata for a mouth.

Meanwhile, kids, and those who should not act like kids but do: STOP THE MORAL PANICS. You’re suffering from semantic confusion.

Treating people as objects, taking their property away, silencing them, banning them from the public sphere, making it impossible for people who dissent to earn a living, and destroying books you disagree with?  THAT’s being literally Hitler. (Yes, it’s also a few of your favorite things.  Look in that mirror and keep looking.)

Making people sleep in dormitories because they tried to waltz through your border to collect what the left told them is their due (i.e. to rob you blind)?  That’s not literally Hitler.

Not only weren’t the Jews breaking into Nazi Germany for the benefits, but most them would have been ecstatic to be allowed to go away.

Your bizarre obsession with this comparison is not only obvious semantic and historical confusion, it’s a screaming case of trivializing evil and borders on Holocaust denial.

No wonder, having lost the plot you now think Trump is just like Hitler because he makes speeches.  Did you ever hear Obama and his cadences?  Never mind.

Look, you drink water, Hitler drank water. You’re literally Hitler. And it’s twice as bad if you drink water while vegetarian. Just like Hitler.

Evil is evil. It’s not superficial resemblances. It’s thinking you can — and SHOULD — control people and history and you think that you have a right — nay a DUTY — to do so, because you know better than any given individual what’s better for him/her.  True evil is stopping at nothing in enforcing your will and forgetting other people are people too, and should have free will.

Look in that mirror. LOOK. It is not dormitories that make camps.

And we’re not letting you go all the way to camps. Because we’re not. Because some of us have sworn to devote our lives to fighting evil totalitarianism.

We know what it is. We know the stench of it.

We will not be confused.

And you shall not pass.

I was going to write a post 4? 5? hours ago.  Instead, as always when I’m tired, the ADD is driving. So I’ve done a million things, but mostly hung out with friends…

One of them posted this (at himself, not me) early this morning:

It’s kind of true…  Add in that I’m tired though not sleepy, which is a weird state, and that I found out this morning —

Oh, yeah, let me back track: I got home to a strong smell of… well, poop.  I thought “well, it’s night time, the house is closed, must be the boxes.

But the boxes were pretty much clean, and nothing explained that smell.  Until I got a look at Havey-cat’s behind.  You see, he’s a Turkish Angora (no, we didn’t pay for him. We found him in a mini-golf course. So he’s probably not pure, but he even SOUNDS like them.) So, if you don’t shave his behind regularly, at some point he’s incapable of doing it himself.  Also, honestly, he only half tries. LEAST hygienic cat EVER.

We’ve been busy and not taken him in for a full shave.  So…  We shaved somewhat (we need to take him to the vet for a full shave) and then washed his behind (fun for the whole family!)

He was not only a mess, but he’d scooted all over the carpet trying to clean himself. At 10 pm, I was carpet cleaning.  And then I sort of passed out.

This morning, I realized though not as strong, the smell was still there.  And then I realized it was all over the dining room floor.  Fortunately wood, but still…

ANYWAY–

So, Fyrecon was very good, even if the lesson on giving your universe depth, because only three hours, and therefore — I realized — insufficient to create a whole non-earth world, turned into “How to make sure your alternate world isn’t laughable. What you need to take into account.”

I remembered again how much I enjoy teaching.  And how EXHAUSTING it is.  And the weird things I end up teaching.

So, definitely when I do online workshops, it will be no more than week a month (A week’s time. Not necessarily a week. I know some of you would benefit from having them on the weekend.)

AND probably only for a year (because it is exhausting.)

Since this is not a real post, I’m going to leave you to discuss what you THINK I can teach.  I think the building parallel worlds would translate well to online (but longer, much longer, as I’d have to give you hints/shepherd you on your own worlds.) And I was thinking a workshop on beginnings and perhaps one on character arcs.

What do you guys think?

Hopefully there will be time tomorrow to talk of cats and kings, wax seals and rings.  Actually what I wanted to address is semantic confusion fueling moral panics on the left (the right too, but our moral panics are in general less panicky, because to get a good panic on you need a stampede and the American right’s (anyone to the right of Lenin, really) motto is “you’re not the BOSS of me!” even when the person is.  So the individualists fail to stampede.  We also fail to organize. You got to take the bitter with the sweet.)

However it’s just gone seven O’clock and we’re running half an hour late to hit the road and head back to Colorado.

And I’m telling my body it can’t get this lovely con crud it’s trying to hatch till AFTER Liberty con.

Fyrecon is one of the most serious TEACHING cons (for writers artists and creators) that I’ve ever attended.  I’m just sorry I missed the class on making your own patterns for plushies.  I mean, I can do it, but it might have taken me to the next level. Also, stop judging my hobbies.

On the writing side, even the “kids” listened closely and asked a lot of questions, and they were pertinent. (Kids take to mean high school and college.)

I like teaching, and it helped me figure out a few things to offer classes in.

Also we got to see friends.  And of course, like the Derp Canoe I often am, I carried the book plates all the way to Utah, then forgot to ask Larry to sign them, so I could bring double-signed ones to Liberty con. I’m sorry.

So… heading back the fastest (not the scenic, this time) route.  I have three short stories and a cover to deliver before Wednesday.  And I’ll write a real post tomorrow.

See you on the other side.

Yesterday, just as I was falling off to sleep, a disturbing thought hit me: so, my kids and their friends are fanning out into the world.

Because they are a gifted and responsible bunch and perhaps because my friends tend to be artsy-fartsy (eh. Guilty) and/or in entrepreneurial/self employed jobs, their kids seem to have gone out of their way to get the most responsible/serious positions they could. Which means many are in the military, health professions, engineering, civil-engineering or simply writing the software for all of the above.

So I was thinking of these goofy kids who used to get in epic battles over COMIC continuity, and who are now responsible for keeping people alive.  They hold our lives in their hands.  Or people’s hands at any rate.

And because I was falling asleep, I then thought “but we all do, don’t we?”

Which might seem weird for someone whose only (ah!) responsibility is to write a few blogs, make up stories. Silly right?

Yeah, sort of. Except I know my life was saved at least once (in terms of my not giving in to awful illness) because a book kept my spirits up.

And hey, I know the letters I get.  Sure, I can’t reach out with my words and kill you.  Probably a good thing, honest, given how many times I wake up like a bear with two heads.

But there are times to believe fan notes, that I have the power to keep you going one more day.  Which would mean I have the inverse power too, right?
And then there’s the other side.

Our world is so interconnected — hello, social apes! — that we all influence each other.  Do I know one of you reading this isn’t a surgeon who will be made more (or less) hopeful and alert by my post? Or an airline pilot ready to go out and fly a plane with 360 some lives in his hands?

And note above –most of the no-account, free0lancers that were my friends in my twenties and thirties raised hyper-responsible, hyper- powerful kids.

Mothers influence their children , and a circle of friends and acquaintances.

It’s a web. We all hold each other’s lives in our hands.

And there’s always been — always, since I’ve been alive — a deep and powerful current of “Humanity sucks, I hate it, let’s kill or prevent the lives of most people right now.”

It’s only recently the counter current got any hold, because it’s only recently we acquired a voice.

Remember that.

We’re fighting back against a deeply entrenched position. And it’s time.  We need a lot of hands upholding hope and the future, and a value for humanity at large and people in particular.

It’s time.

Richard Fernandez equates it to the principle of good (or at least the defender of mankind) finally waking up, almost at the brink of destruction.  Finally fighting back.  He explains it all not supernaturally, but through infective “thought memes”.

He’s not wrong. And I’m not wedded to how you explain it. What matters is that we do it.

There is value in life and humanity. Dead nothing might be beautiful, but who is there to admire it.

You hold my life in your hands. We all hold each other’s lives in our hands.

You can’t always be good, and a force for life and strength and light. No one can.  We’re humans. We’re fractured and cracked wide.

But you can strive and work to uphold light and life and good and hope and that the future can be better than the past. You can do the best you can and on balance, positively, save more than you doom.

And that’s enough. And that’s plenty. And that should be more than what we need to fight back.

Because darkness and nihilism are exhausting and dreadful.  And light propagates light.

Go and carry the light. Go and build. Go and push upward, and push others upward, too.

You hold my life in your hands.

You hold the future in your hands.

Be not afraid.

*Sorry I didn’t post yesterday.  This is the hotel room with the FEWER plugs I’ve ever seen, (at least plugs that work) and my connecting on the net for any length of time requires my having a place to plug phone AND computer. (The phone eats battery on Hotspot.) Today I found a place to plug in in the area Fyrecon takes place.  So post times might be weird, but I CAN post tomorrow.  Today we have Amanda with a guest post. (Hurray, the Hamsters got it to me!) – SAH*

Stand up and be heard – Unfreedom of the Press, pt. 2 by Amanda S. Green

There is a fallacy in this country that many people still believe. It’s a simple one and one that’s easy to understand. We expect those in the media to report the facts without obvious bias. We expect them to be fair and impartial in their reporting, leaving opinion and emotion to the editorial page. Unfortunately, that era of journalism is long past—if it ever really existed.

Before I get to the second fallacy, one Levin falls victim to, let’s talk about the book, Unfreedom of the Press. Mark Levin does a decent job in an early chapter of giving a history of the media in this country. He talks about the early pamphlets and presses and how they were the product of those who fled Europe to escape religious or political persecution. They were slanted but, unlike much of the media today, they also were meant to cause discussion and philosophical debate. Those behind the pamphleteers and the press braved seizure of their printing presses, imprisonment and worse for speaking their “truths”. But they persevered.

They were, in short, the foundation of the First Amendment’s guarantee of a free press.

In the next chapter—the third, I believe—Levin jumps to modern media. Referencing the “party press era” that followed the Revolutionary War and lasted until around the Civil War era, he draws comparisons with todays media. During those early years, Levin points to newspapers that were basically nothing but mouthpieces for a single party. He uses a few examples to move into what we see in the media today.

To say much of the MSM is nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party is putting it mildly. The problem is how Levin handles the problem. He steps out of the realm of drawing comparisons between the “party press era” to flogging a dead horse. And this is where many of the critics of the book zero in. He sets forth page after page of examples of how the media has targeted Donald Trump as the newest, and worst, evil to ever walk the face of the Earth and doesn’t look much further.

While I agree with him about the MSM and how it has handled the Clinton loss and Trump presidency, his move from quasi-scholar to screaming mouthpiece for the Oval Office detracts from the message of the book. It turns it from a lesson both sides should take to heart to what could be seen as a partisan attack on the media—which is exactly how the media is playing it.

In short, it takes it away from being an instrument to encourage dialogue and discussion to diatribe.

If he’d wanted to be more effective with his arguments, he would have taken a broader approach in condemning today’s media outlets, especially those who are the “major players”. An example of what he could have done is seen in a recent article that appeared in The Federalist.

In the Federalist article, Mark Hemmingway gives a number of examples of how the media either soft-pedals stories to fit the narrative or they outright adopt the narrative of those who want to see our nation fall. Reading some of them is like listening to Ilhan Omar extolling on the virtues of certain Middle Eastern regimes or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez schooling us on economics and the joys of socialism.

But not going beyond the “They hate Trump!” mantra, he is more effective with his condemnation of how much of the MSM “reports” the news today.

If Levin wanted to really show how many in the MSM—not to mention certain members of the Democratic Party–would dearly love to see the foundations of our nation crumble, he would have done well to go beyond their hatred for Trump. He would have listed some of the many stories where they’ve tried to write the narrative and then show how other media outlets, both here in the US and elsewhere, have covered the same story.

While there might not be crickets along this line in the book, it is close to it because his “Trump! Trump! Trump!” bandwagon drowns everything else out.

To be fair, he does discuss how the MSM uses techniques that mingle fact with propaganda. How, if you look at the front page of a major paper, you will see maybe half the stories that are true representations of what happened and half that are, shall we say, slanted to the max. But, in doing so, he gives more information about the whys and wherefore of this technique than he does of examples his readers could identify with.

In other words, there is no “ah ha” moment.

You know what I mean. That moment when the examples suddenly come to life and you remember reading that exact article or one like it. That moment when you look back and realize how the article took the so-called facts and manipulated them, leading you—or at least trying to—to the favored conclusion.

The lack of this “ah ha” moment is a major weakness in the book. Those of us who already understand how the MSM attempts to shape our thought process get it. But it is those sitting on the fence, those who sort of understand what has been happening but aren’t quite ready to accept it without concrete examples who are being lost. Levin misses a wonderful chance to bring more folks over to his way of thinking by failing to move past the “They all hate Trump” mantra.

A perfect example of this how Iran shot down our drone the other day. I first heard about it yesterday morning when I turned on the news. Yes, yes, I know. I’m a masochist. I watch a few minutes of morning news each day to see what lies the media is trying to feed us for the day. When they finally mentioned the incident, it was well buried under more “acceptable” stories. I’d already read about it after seeing a link on Drudge and at a few other sites I visit regularly.

But there was basically nothing but passing mention of it in the MSM until Trump started talking about striking back. Why? Because Trump said something. He was going to take action! Trump bad!

Even now that he’s walked back taking immediate action, they are still trying to spin the story. Lost in it all is the action by Iranian forces to shoot down our drone.

Another example is how we aren’t hearing any outrage from the MSM or the Dems on a map that showed up on the New Zealand government’s website that removed Israel. Instead, it showed “Palestine” and “East Jerusalem” as the capital. The map has since been removed—after outrage which, again, the media hasn’t covered—but the internet doesn’t forget. There have been similar occurrences, incidents Levin could have included in the book and didn’t.

And that is my biggest complaint about the book. Levin falls victim to his own political blinders. He took a very important topic and limited it to basically anti-Trump condemnation. While I, too, am tired of seeing how the media is doing all it can to perpetuate the Dems’ hatred for POTUS, I believe the danger of what is happening goes much deeper than just their attempt to drive Trump from office.

Our MSM is not—yet—a state run media, but it is damned close. It is a true party-run media. It makes little effort to be fair and honest in its reporting, especially when it comes to politics or certain “social” issues. It has lost touch with what much of the country is interested in and has turned into nothing more than a mouthpiece for parts of the Dems and their ilk.

Freedom of the press is their cry. But their truth is they only want it to be their freedom. They want to silence the those who don’t believe in their narrative. Our best answer is not only to stop giving them our money—them and their sponsors—it is to question and challenge them at every turn. It is up to us to find alternatives to the MSM and, when we can’t then to make them.

We are the new pampleteers, the new town criers. But we have a duty not to fall into the same trap the MSM has. The same trap Levin eventually fell into with this book. We give opinion. We welcome discussion. But we also give the facts, making it clear which is which.

I know, I know. I can hear some of you now saying that we can only defeat them by playing their game. But the dangers that come with playing that game are great and do we really want to go down that path?

Honestly, we don’t have to. We just have to keep speaking out and challenging them. The fact their number of subscribers and viewers proves they are losing the battle. What we need to be prepared for is that they are going to double- and triple-down on their attacks on the foundations of our nation as they get ever closer to their final end. That means having in place our own alternatives and supporting them. It means reaching out to those who have been sitting in the middle, trying to figure out why that have that prickly feeling at the back of their necks when they read or hear much coming out of MSM outlets.

Give them a fair alternative. One that will be critical of both sides of the political aisle. One that remembers why this nation was founded and what our core values are. Freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of religion, the right to bear arms, etc.

“Molon labe!” is our rallying cry. Let them know we will not let them take away our freedom, our country or our voice.

(Help Amanda drink enough to keep snarking the unbelievable twaddle that passes for deep political thought these days.  We’ll collect for her liver transplant later. Hit her Pourboir jar now! – SAH)