Okay, guys I’m really, really, really lazy today.  I’m also doing the final push on Guardian.  So….

Sorry, not going to write a post.

I’ll give you something to have fun with.

and

HIS Revolution – A Future HE can believe in –  by Amanda S. Green

Bernie Sanders is no longer the only supposedly Democrat (but really a socialist – kind of sort of) on the national political scene. The news is rife with the so-called wisdom of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I say so-called wisdom because, let’s face it, she has repeatedly shown she has less knowledge of economics than I do (terrifying when she is an economics major). Then there’s the fact that, for a politician from New York, she has an appalling lack of knowledge about the Israeli-Palestinian issue. There’s more but, damn, the woman is a mess and yet she is now the media’s darling. As for the Democratic Party, she presents a huge issue for them. On the one hand, she is bringing in media attention that isn’t focusing on Hillary Clinton. On the other, she is out to defeat sitting Democrats across the nation, causing instability within the party, a party desperately trying to regain the majority in the mid-term elections and then the White House in the following election.

So where is our friend Bernie in all this? Well, he’s right there with her. They’ve been making appearances together, rallying the troops. He has become the senior statements of the socialist arm of the Democratic Party. Hell, he has become the sane one. I’m not sure whether to laugh, cry or run for the hills. But it does mean we should take another look at what Bernie has stood for and then, after that, what Ocasio-Cortez is saying and why we should be concerned.

Several months ago, I snarked commented on the preface to Bernie Sanders’ book, Our Revolution – A Future to Believe in. I thought, with so much attention going to Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders right now, I’d look back at Our Revolution and see if there is any substance in what Sanders and, by extension, Ocasio-Cortez have to say or if, as I suspect, they are all feelz and not much more.

I’ll admit, I managed to get to the second page of the first chapter of Our Revolution before I started laughing. Remember, this is supposed to be Bernie’s book on his form of revolution and how America needs him and those like him and how only they can build the right sort of future. In this first chapter, he writes about how, during the 2016 race, he returned to the neighborhood in New York he grew up in. There’s a description of how he and his family lived in a 3 ½ room rent controlled apartment. He lived there with his brother and parents for the first 18 years of his life.

So, all these years later, he returned. He couldn’t believe how small the apartment seemed. He couldn’t believe his family of four sat at a table and had dinner there. Oh, and the building was sooo much more dingy than he remembered.

I’ll admit it. That’s where I had to put my tablet down and laugh. The thought of this rich socialist – and isn’t that a contradiction in terms? – having a hard time believing he grew up in such a small apartment tickled me. Of course, the apartment seemed small compared to the large homes (dare we say mansions?) Bernie and Mrs. Bernie live in now. Besides, how many of us haven’t experienced something similar as adults when we’ve revisited a place from our childhoods? Something that seemed huge to us as a kid looks very different through our adult eyes.

But where I lost it was on the “more dingy” comment about the building. Of course, it looked dingier. The building was 57 years older than the last time Bernie lived there. Unless it had undergone a major renovation and gentrification, just the passage of time would make it look dingier. But Bernie apparently didn’t consider that.

He goes on to discuss how being Jewish and learning about the Holocaust had a huge impact on him.

No question about it. Being Jewish. The loss of family, including children my own age, in the Holocaust. The rise to power of a right-wing lunatic in a free election in Germany. A war that killed 50 million people, including more than one-third of all Jews on the planet. All of this had an indelible impact upon my life and thinking. (OR, pp 8-9)

Now, here is the first place since the introduction where I wanted to wall my tablet. Sanders, like so many liberals today, conflates being “right-wing” with Nazism. How many times have we seen this same sort of thing on social media, aimed at Trump or others simply because they are conservative or aren’t walking in lock-step with the liberals? As Bill Flax pointed out in Forbes:

Very little of Hitler’s domestic activity was even remotely right wing. Europe views Left and Right differently, but here, free markets, limited constitutional government, family, church and tradition are the bedrocks of conservatism. The Nazis had a planned economy; eradicated federalism in favor of centralized government; considered church and family as competitors; and disavowed tradition wishing to restore Germany’s pre-Christian roots.

There’s more. Bernie describes growing up. His parents weren’t political but always voted Democrat. His brother is the one who brought politics into the home when, as a student at Brooklyn College, he joined the Young Democrats and campaigned for Stevenson in 1956. After a paragraph or two about how he was so glad his brother could join him on the campaign trail during his presidential bid, Bernie bounces back to his childhood (have I mentioned that reading this book is like watching a tennis match? You are in the present and then in the past and then at another point in time without transition or warning. I may get whiplash before this is over).

While they weren’t poor growing up, there wasn’t much discretionary income. Money was often a point of contention in the Sanders household. “Painful arguments. Bitter arguments. Arguments that seared through a little boy’s brain, never to be forgotten.” (OR, p. 10) This is when I put on my best Ann Richards’ voice and say, “Poor Bernie”. What child doesn’t have memories of at least once when they heard their parents argue and knew things were going to Hell in a handbasket? My parents rarely argued where I could hear it. The one time they did, I knew it meant they were going to get divorced. They didn’t. In fact, they had a healthy marriage and continued to do so until the day my father died.

His total lack of acknowledging the things that apparently scarred him aren’t anything unusual – or unreasonable – drives me crazy.

How much money your family had determined the quality of your baseball glove, which brand of sneakers you wore, and what kind of car your father drove. (OR, p. 10)

How many of us, no matter what our income, have had the discussion with our kids – or our parents – about not being able to afford something that little Johnny down the road has (or why Johnny might not have something we do)? Not everyone makes the same money and not everyone places the same importance on things the way you do. But having to shop for bargains seems to have scarred poor old Bernie. Being fiscally responsible so damaged him, he apparently had only one option – turn into a Socialist and a good one at that because he has plenty of money, more than he really needs, which he holds onto even as he tells the rest of us we need to give, give, give to even the playing field for everyone else.

What I learned playing on the streets and playgrounds of Brooklyn was not just how to become a decent ballplayer and athlete. I learned a profound lesson about democracy and self-rule. (OR, p. 11)

He goes on to describe how, without adult supervision, he and his pals played in the streets or on the playgrounds. They figured out what to play, what the rules were, and worked out their problems. What he doesn’t talk about was how they were a small number of kids having to come to a decision. He doesn’t take into account how the more people involved, the greater the stakes, the more conflict will arise. There is a reason why the great socialist experiment has yet to be successful. Human nature will win out every time and, like it or not, that includes greed, self-interest and more.

In another of those tennis match-like moments in the chapter, Bernie writes about how, at the age of 19, he left New York for Chicago. His mother died a few months earlier and he was going to attend the University of Chicago. Now, finally, we get an explanation for why his father had been so frugal when Bernie and his brother were growing up. Why Bernie waited until now to tell us, I don’t know. I can guess. If he told us back when he wrote about how these money arguments had such a negative effect on him, he’d have lost the impact and we’d all have pointed and laughed.

My dad had dropped out of school at the age of sixteen in Poland. Having lived through the Depression, he worried a lot about money and making a living. (OR, p. 16)

Of course, Mr. Sanders worried about money. Of course, he didn’t want his wife or his sons spending on things they didn’t need. He had a reason. How many men and women who lived through the Depression didn’t react the same way? But, had Bernie added that bit in earlier, it would have lessened the impact and changed the narrative and we must never, ever change the narrative.

He spends the next 10 pages or so describing his time at the University of Chicago. He read. He ran. He got involved in political movements and fighting racism. He got married. He and his wife bought 85 acres of woodland in Vermont and build a “nice outhouse”. He approved of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Where Hillary’s “What Happened” needed an editor, this book really needs one. It is truly a flow of consciousness piece of – well, I’m not sure what. Perhaps as an audio book it is better than it is in print. If you imagine Bernie reading it to you, it might not be as bad. All I can say so far is I’m not impressed. We’re more than 25 pages into the book and I have yet to know why he ran for president, what this so-called revolution is or why it is a future to believe in. The only thing I can say is there is snark-worthy material here.

(As an aside, I will return to the Sowell essays but life is such right now that I need snark when I can get it. It is also why this post is a day late. Stuff has been happening to completely throw me off-schedule and I didn’t realize yesterday was Thursday until Sarah pinged me. So, apologies to you and to her and I promise to get back on schedule next week. – ASG)

Help Amanda drink enough to keep snarking.  We’ll collect for her liver transplant later.
Hit her Pourboir jar now!

I don’t have the time for a long post, but I’ve seen weird outcrops of despondency, and frankly, I’m tired of it.

First, it’s bizarre despondency.  Glenn has been worried we’ll get COCKY. I am too.  The polls are going our way, and yeah, it worries me that people will believe them, because we know what the polls were like last November.

So, it is not … unreasonable to worry that we are perhaps being gaslighted to minimize our enthusiasm/voting fervor.

For various reasons though, I don’t think so.  The reasons aren’t really palpable but they range from “the left can’t seem to fake defeat due to their cultish nature” to “they’re not acting like their internal polls make them confident either.  In fact, they’re acting like it’s the end of the world.”

But still, if you suspect the polls are cooked the right attitude is to be guarded, not despondent.

Apparently, though, there’s some critter running around with his head on fire, saying this is just like 94.  The level of disdain I have for political “scientists” can only be measured by the magnitudes used to measure the distance between the stars, but even then this prediction and comparison staggers me.

Unless this guy is coming at it from the left, which explains some of the crazy.  Yeah, Clinton got his hand slapped in 94 for having his hand so far up the cookie jar we couldn’t see his shoulder.  Also, the right had the contract with America.  Also, the Clintons were showing themselves to be not the happy and traditional couple we expected (and I’m sorry, it’s been a long time, was this before or after the cigar?  If after it explains the left’s obsession with porn stars, because they think it’s the same thing.  Because good LORD they’re dense on moral questions.)

Hand up cookie jar = Clinton and Hillary were threatening us with Hillarycare, which in its second version is so popular it’s decimating the dems electoral chances.  The contract with America offered us relief from some of that crazy/governmental power grabs/taking more of our money.  And the Clintons sold themselves as a traditional and happy couple.  Etc.

Okay, how things are different: NO ONE, not even the fundies who supported him, thought Trump was any less than a libertine.  My fundie friends usually say stuff like “Uh… G-d uses whatever instruments he pleases.”

Trump is, OTOH, on OUR side.  Not just in terms of being on the side of America, but in terms of giving us tax relief, and so far he’s tried really hard to keep his campaign promises (which frankly is novel enough it has me staggered.)

AND what are the dems offering?  Honest to G-d abolishing ICE and increasing our taxes.

Also, they’re acting in repulsive and bizarre ways, having dropped the mask completely on all fronts.  Oh, yeah, they also want us to apologize and bend over to North Korea and Iran tout de suite.

If you think that’s a winning program with America, you must be a producer of The View.  In fact, with the caveat on polls, but these are usually more accurate than electoral ones, the majority of American people couldn’t care less about: ICE or “children in cages”.  The majority of Americans are REALLY tired of illegal immigration.  And the minorities are MORE so.  MOREOVER, the American people also don’t care about Russia, which seems more than a little an unhinged nightmare conspiracy.  And they don’t give a rat’s tiny *ss how many porn stars Trump slept with.  (The left never got that our problem with clinton was two fold: the selling of a false image and the fact he perjured himself to cover up his affair.  If he’d do it on that, what else was he lying to us on? Which is why they think this is a winning strategy. Because on moral questions they’re beyond dumb.)

Does this mean we’re going to keep the House in November?  Answer unclear.  There’s way too much time for too many things to happen between now and November.

What if we lose?

WHAT if we lose?  Yeah, I know the left is beyond unhinged, but you know what, our system has checks and balances built in.  My guess is that if the left wins, their show of freakery will cause an even bigger backlash against them in 2020.  Only reason this didn’t happen and they got Obama was that Bush didn’t show when he was being attacked or what policies weren’t his fault, or the consequences thereof.  You think the dems will be more subtle now?  You think Trump won’t tell the world what’s happening behind the scenes?  Oh, please.

But there is more to it than that.  We’re going to lose some elections.  Yes, even against the communist freakery the left has become.

Keep your head.  An election is not the end of the world.  What happens if we lose?  WE KEEP FIGHTING.

The left is quite literally out of time.  Their proper element is the 1930s when technology and therefore society was going in a more centralized direction.

Our times are undoing what the “mass production” times did in tech and in mind.

In the end we win they lose.  Yes, there will be setbacks.  Yes, there will be loses along the way.  Victory for them took close to a hundred years.  You expect victory in two?  Oh, please.

Keep your head down and work.  We’ve got this.  In the end we win they lose, but it might be our grandchildren who see the full light of freedom (and promptly squander it.)

I’m not sure if we get there without a major disruption, either.

So, build under, build over, build around.  BE NOT AFRAID.

Sorry this is late.  It’s coming to you from the secret remote location in Colorado Springs (which might or might not be a library… ahem) because every few weeks we need to do stuff in the Springs (our eye doctor and banker and a dozen other things are still here) and so I come down with husband on his way to work, then hole up in a quiet place to write, while he is at work.

Anyway, on the way to the Springs from Denver — a drive that is used to punish the d*mned in hell, particularly when you do it at commuter hours — we were stuck on the highway going at the speed of a running tortoise, and I was looking at the side of the road, specifically at infrastructure on the side of the road: drains protruding from a berm, into a ditch by the side of the highway.  Or the train line running in just the sort of place where it won’t get overwhelmed by a flood.  Or–

There is a goodness to this, and also a sort of integrity.  It’s also almost unique.  (Not really.  English are decentish at it, and Germans are good at it.  But–) In most of the world this sort of work is done by despised professions and there’s no pride to it.  There’s also scant calculation and very little thinking associated with it.

Years ago in the blog that shall not be named, a frequent poster who had an SO in South America posted about taking a shower in his SO’s house.  He posted pictures of the shower too.  The problem was that no matter what you did, the bathroom was going to flood.  They just accepted it, and were going to clean it afterwards.  This ties in to someone posting in a private group on FB about how recent Mexican immigrants tend to throw the used toilet paper in the trash and how they “didn’t get it.”

I do get it. My parents house doesn’t have that problem, because the plumber was mom’s brother, and she watched every detail of it, and more modern houses don’t have that problem (in general.  There’s always fly by night construction) but in grandma’s house, we had to put the tp in the wastepaper basket because otherwise, the entire plumbing would have to be snaked.  And it’s not unusual in older houses.  I understand it’s about half and half in Mexico and these immigrants are trying to be curteous and not mess up the plumbing of shops or libraries or whatever.  The fact that it strikes us as gross beyond belief is not their fault.

But there’s other issues: hastily mixed concrete that isn’t the right mix and starts crumbling after less than ten years is a problem the world over.

And it’s not just construction that has an issue, either.  Dan was talking to me about some movie (I watch movies second hand, I swear) that featured the Favelas of Rio.  People in the US tend to view Brazil as a goofy and funny country, and it is that, but the poverty is worse than most of us can even willingly imagine, and what I was speaking to was a part of the movie where a middle class guy, with a job lived in one of the safer “favelas” (think slums.  But think third world slums, with hastily built houses of corrugated aluminum and plastic, often with stolen power and water.)

I explained it was a problem of permitting, by and large.  Portugal isn’t as bad, mind, nowhere near but in the seventies a lot of places were designated “green belts” everywhere, so that to build on them (and you had to build on them, or you were stymied in growth) you had to know who to bribe, and of course have the money to do it.  This isn’t the only reason why favelas end up housing even the middle class.  There’s a ton of other reasons, including but not limited to land ownership and property rights, and a shitton of stuff.  But permitting is part of it.

This is because people don’t view their public posts as something they do to make society better/serve society or even do a job, but as a way to enrich themselves/benefit their friends/make it easier to make money in the future.

Everything, from truly shoddy workmanship to rushed, corner/cutting work, to outright corruption comes from viewing a job not as something you take pride in and work to do your best at, but from viewing a job as an opportunity to enrich yourself and your family while doing as little work as humanly possible.  In fact in some societies, this is viewed as a duty.  As someone in comments cited there are places in Africa where locals can’t run a shop, because all their relatives near and distant will expect to be given merchandise for free… or even money out of the till.

A lot of this is because the idea of the individual as independent of the tribe and the family is a very new thing in most of the world.  We kind of have a head start on it because we are/are descended from those who left family and tribe behind.

The other part of this is that in most of the world people are stuck where I was when my only choice was traditional publishing.  There is no joy in mudville, because your doing well is dependent not on your own efforts but on the work of other people in a system that’s so corrupt that ninety nine percent of the time you’ll fail, regardless of how hard you work.  This eats the heart out from people — I should know.  A great part of the illnesses of the last 10 years started with giving up — and makes them into walking zombies for whom it is impossible to care about their work or really anything.

Also in most of the world working for money is vaguely shameful.  Particularly so if you’re working for someone else. (Except in my field where apparently the REAL shame is working for yourself without a publisher.)

And even here not only does that attitude persist, but it’s trying to make itself normal.  Particularly in politics.

So, take pride in what you do, and do the best job you can.  It’s not just important for you, it’s a building block of society.  Do the best you can, and control as much as you can, so maybe you will have just reward which is an incentive to do better.

This way is civilization built.  This way do things actually improve.

And under that heading, I’ve decided to publish my Austen fanfic for pay (because I can.)  I have quite a few stories either finished or hanging from a day’s work.  I’ll be putting it out as I get to it.
The first one is out under the pen name Alyx Silver (because it’s so different from ALL my other stuff, and such a niche market.)  Alyx might also end up doing romance.  Anyway…)

Sorry this is so late.  I’m alive, I just woke up early to get “fasting”blood tests and they took a while (there’s always a wait at these places) so I’ve just now had my first coffee of the morning.  Maybe I’m groggy and confused.

But what I want to talk about is gods.

Yes, plural, because it’s an historic thing.

I’ve been reading Campbell’s books on mythology, primitive, oriental, occidental and imaginative, mostly because one of my trilogies that needs to be rewritten (partly because it was only a novel.  660 words long. Look, I was young and had no clue of the realities of the market.) deals with a primitive religion which within the confines of the world is not actually a religion at all (though it’s been attached to it) but the feeding of an alien parasite which allows the host to do magic. (Okay, some of us are really uncomfortable with straightforward magic.)

Anyway, take it for what my foggy brain can dredge up.  As most of you know I’m a religious believer even if weirdly twisted and unorthodox (partly through having feet in two faiths by upbringing, and a heck of a lot of overthinking to confuse things.)

I am also by nature a non-conformist, meaning if something is rigidly enforced I instinctively fight free of it. I might come back again, but it has to be because I’ve decided to come back.

Taking all that into account the sheer secularization of society and my own psyche sometimes catches me unawares and renders me breathless, as I realize I’ve made a decision or done something as though I were sure there was nothing after death.  I see it even more so in our society.  Even our welfare system and even religious charities that offer relief without the need to “listen to the sermon” i.e. without any moral guidance or effort at straightening out your life assume there’s nothing hereafter.  Why do I say that?  Because charity is supposed to be offered, sure, but you’re supposed to make sure this person’s eternal life will be saved. That the suffering and the relief, both work to the greater good of making this person a candidate for heaven (or at least purgatory.)  The fact that the “charity” proffered by most churches enables and encourages the continuance of what is often a life of vice works contrary to that.  By their actions, the churches are proclaiming they don’t believe in what should be their greater purpose.

So, with that in mind, excuse me as I fling out a brace of disjointed thoughts.  Not because I don’t want to take time to join them/work them through but because the greater sense of the thing is right now a feeling, more than a thought, and I’m looking forward to YOUR thoughts to enlighten me.

• I’ve often said that Western civilization died in WWI.  It’s when we lost our animating purpose (to my mind.)  Since then we’ve been self-hating, a disability which the virus of Marxism in all its forms enables and worsens.
• Campbell dates the loss of belief in Christianity as an orthodox and universal faith to the 12th century, which ties in with my readings on the great death/black plague and the feeling that something broke in the western psyche then.
• Is it possible that in the intervening centuries, what animated western civilization was not a belief in G-d (even though that belief was still paid lip service) but a belief in the state.  It is from around that time that the conflation of church and state starts, becoming more intense in the religious breakdown of Germany (Such the prince, such the religion.)  It is also from then that we get loony genealogies linking European kings to putative children of Jesus by Mary Magdalene, thereby allowing the king to claim to be descended from Himself. So the belief in the ethereal and eternal was replaced with allegiance to a people/ruler.
• Which started breaking down … well, with our revolution, even if the ones that followed us were less kindly and more totalitarian.  So the belief in an Earthly power became more abstract: a belief in a people/state/the might of the blah blah people.  (We’re a little different as we believe in principles, which in turn call back to Himself. But that’s in theory.  A lot of people still regard presidents as kings — even some presidents — and WANT them to be so.)
• And then WWI, that vast abattoir for nothing in particular removed patriotism and the faith in the nation-state which was at that point the TRUE faith of the Western nations.
• Leaving us with? — it is perhaps no coincidence that the US, where religious faith is still WAY stronger than in Europe, and patriotism, oddly, also way stronger than in Europe, the virus of socialism/communism/marxism has less penetration.  Nor that the virus penetrates harder and deeper into those classes either hereditarily or educationally vacated of all other belief.
• Which brings us to why Marxists hate and attack religion, even as most mainline religions have been infiltrated and struggle madly to adapt to the demands of the left.  Because while religious belief in something/someone else, however attenuated exists, it prevents the full penetration of the Marxist mind-virus
• This also explains their insane attacks on people like Jordan Peterson, who offer — if not faith — a discipline for living which by itself precludes Marxism.
• The crazy blood-and-soil call themselves right also hate Peterson, and frankly any other form of discipline or belief that might impair what they hope and want to be a return to faith in nation-and-people.
• This blood and soil faith might even work for rejuvenating most of western civilization.  I expect it to be the animating force of a second European renaissance — if Europe is not too far gone.  It might be.  When there aren’t that many young people and those that are are drug/alcohol addicted, it might be gone beyond ressurgence — and frankly it’s better than the alternative.  Though if it works at all, the convulsions leading to “workable” will be long and bloody.
• It will not work for the US, not only because we weren’t formed in the same way (not people, coalescing by blood real or imagined.  Even at the time of the revolution there were as many Germans as Englishmen on the land) and frankly now we’re a hodgepodge of races, something that can’t easily be disguised in a time of genetic/genealogical testing.
  That said, we’re not in as bad a shape as the rest of the west, and a mere coalescing around the civic virtues derived from the constitution, a pride in our heritage, a learning of our ancestral thinkers might be enough.
  Of course, the contagion from blood-and-soil will come from Europe, but will it be more or less trouble than the Marxist mind-virus now leaking into the minds of those for whom Europe will always be a lodestar?  I’d guess less, as it’s not as… convincing and self-sealed a system, nor can it be made so in a nation where blood and soil aren’t covalent.
• The one thing absolutely sure is that our schools work against ANY belief except in Marxism and internationalism, which are presented as “sensible” and “rational.”  (They’re not.)
• This creates in all of the West a situation similar to that of a conquered tribe in pre-history (to which to a great extent our minds still belong.)  When tribe conquered tribe, the gods of the defeated were broken and humiliated.  This usually led to a state where the defeated tribe stopped reproducing/their women attached to the victors/and eventually they stopped existing utterly (unless they retained belief, despite all.  We know at least a tribe who did that, but there are others, not as prominent.)
• This is possibly because, as a Galilean Rabi said, “Man doesn’t live of bread alone.”  Whatever else we are, we’re creatures of belief and of aspiration.  Man devoid of those is not worth the name, but a poor creature, worse than the apes since the apes don’t need to see themselves in a story or to believe in something bigger than themselves to live.
• And this is what’s consuming western civilization.  Marxism is a virus, sure.  But it’s more like the creatures that infect a tree whose core has been sundered by lighting.  Where there’s any other sort of belief, it can’t survive.  It only occupies where nothing else lives.
• For us, and civilization to survive, belief, religious or secular — Rome survived for centuries on the belief in the God-Emperor long after they’d become fuzzy on their other deities — must be found and forged.
• It’s easy for Europe to return to an earlier form of belief, but it fits atrociously badly in the US.
• So, we need to teach and communicate our civic virtues and our special destiny in the annals of man, and leave it to each individual to believe or not believe in anything above that in respect for our freedom of religion.
• And that’s the best we can do, so let’s put shoulder to the wheel.

Diversity is an important thing.

Stop looking a me like I’m completely out of my mind.  I’m not.  Diversity of thought, of opinions, of experiences is drastically important for any endeavor that requires checking.

We were talking here, in the comments on the post on art and craft about how important honest feedback is to develop your craft.  This is true.  What they don’t say is that it’s also incredibly hard to get.

The problem isn’t even “honest” it’s “informed”.  If everyone in your writers’ group is about at the same level and working on the same things, the “informed” will be the hardest thing.  I mean a group like that is great for telling you that you’re progressing on x or y (if they see it. They might not even register it.)  But they purely suck at telling you the things you don’t know.

I know, I had a group like that.  I used to get the “Fix typos, send it out” type critique, which was kind of useful, but not really, because then I had to work out for myself what was actually wrong.  (This usually happens in the middle of the night, when I’ve just read a book and wake up going “My story needs to be more like THAT scene”  And then I’m up and typing.  Sometimes I’m up and typing before waking up.  This, btw, is why having your office be half of your bedroom is a bad idea.  Eventually, Dan and I hung a thick, blackout curtain between the two halves of the room.)

The group was useful, mind you, for getting me to produce on time, and for all sorts of other stuff, but the glaring errors escaped them, because they weren’t a “diverse” group.  In the sense of writing they were all at about my level of apprenticeship. (We had people of very diverse backgrounds, etc, but not in writing.

And this brings us to diversity that matters: Diversity in the head.  By which I mean neither that you need crazy people (neurodiversity has its place.  Every project should have a perfectionist aspie.  Every project, particularly the ones that can kill people.  But people who think they’re a little teapot, or that they are an ornate building and a wingless dragon probably aren’t contributing much.  I mean people used to pay good money to go see the crazy in Bedlam, so maybe they’re contributing something.  But not much. An aquarium will probably serve the same function) nor people from such profoundly dysfunctional backgrounds their input is useless (not just from the left.  I had an early writers group in which a very “Christian” gentleman tore a story to pieces because it had an hermaphrodite humans subspecies [that story is in the collection just out, see end of post, and it’s actually part of a universe Les Johnson and I will be developing, one in which lots of “alien” planets are humans who bio-modded or diverged for various reasons.  In the story I added instant “transport” between worlds, which probably won’t be in that world.  Maybe.  We’ll see.]  The point is he couldn’t see beyond the genmod to the story because it offeded his sensibilities.) nor people who are going to be offended/triggered by random stuff that makes no sense.

And this is not only in writing.  It’s arguably worse in companies devoted to actually accomplishing a goal.

This is why the left’s type of diversity — which consists of a range of tans, most of whom have been convinced that they’re owed something because people they never met were treated poorly; people so neurotic they identify as random things and live to be offended; and women who think that men are somehow boggarting all the cool stuff — turns companies, industries and all fields into a vast waste land.

Because not only is it required that those people all think alike (think should be in quotes, because actually you’re required to feel and follow the same directives from abroad every day.  And the directives change, and no thought is involved) but because any disagreement or even accidental trampling of someone’s chosen form of insanity is considered an attack, and will get you attacked in turn, sometimes physically.

They keep singing the song of diversity, but the only ways they can find it is “more and more protected minorities.”  …. and more and more conformity of thought, because anything non-Marxist is supposed to sear the unprotected/downtrodden little darlings like a cross on a vampire.

Which means that the only way to be MORE SPECIAL on their side is to take offense at smaller and smaller slips in dealing with you.  I wait eagerly the day when each of these people invents their own language and hands a sheet of it to a stranger, demanding they study it before trying to communicate.  At which point, my grandmother’s saying when someone tried to force insanity on her comes into play “I wouldn’t even go to heaven with crazy people. They’d be sure to push me down.”

This “diversity of crazy” is very far from true diversity and at best accomplishes a unified singing choir.

Once more, I’ll kind of quote this Reiner Kunze poem which I haven’t run across yet, in my book-clearing, and which at any rate, I only read in German and so will quote from memory, possibly with omissions/additions.

The trees grow top on top

None is taller than the others

The branches filter the rain so the

Torture of thirst is avoided

The trees grow top on top

None sees more than the others

To the wind, they all whisper the same.

And that’s the best possible result: that we’ll create things from such a place of conformity and lockstep there will be no one to point out the king goes naked.

This is awful for fiction, sure, but it’s truly horrific for science and industry and the things on which lives depend.

This is the way civilization dies.  Not with a bang, but with “chosen pronouns.”

Which means those of us who retain a modicum of sanity and who understand that The Gods of the Copybook Headings haven’t been abolished but are only sleeping, have to be ready.

Sure, some of these profoundly crazy and non diverse (where it counts) people will survive the apocalypse. Most of them will turn pirate, but that’s something else.  But they are, fundamentally, incapable of creating or building anything useful, having suffered a castration of the thought.

Build under, build over, build around.  Get ready to take the weight when she blows.

[Oh, the world’s worst promoter strikes again.  I mentioned the short story collection, but didn’t link.
This went up yesterday:

It’s a collection of my short stories, ranging from about ten years ago till now. I seem to have culled them for science fiction ranging from the absurd to the plausible.  It’s been ready to go for three years, (hence my “seem”) and it finally went up.]

Sunday Book Promo

*Note these are books sent to us by readers/frequenters of this blog.  Our bringing them to your attention does not imply that we’ve read them and/or endorse them, unless we specifically say so.  As with all such purchases, we recommend you download a sample and make sure it’s to your taste.  If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com.  One book per author per week. Amazon links only.-SAH*

FROM STEPHEN LAWSON: Leaders Taste Better and Other Stories.

This volume contains all my published work from 2017: Leaders Taste Better, Moonlight One, The Death of Arthur Owsley, Game Theory, and Bullet Catch. It also contains two previously unpublished stories, and the semi-pro contest-winning story that affirmed my path as a writer, Gifted. Whether you want to laugh or brood in the shadows; whether you want hard science fiction or urban fantasy, you’ll find a story to delight you in these pages.

FROM ALMA BOYKIN:  The Scavenger’s Gift (Merchant and Empire Book 2).

Of all the gods, men fear the Scavenger the most. Wise men and women take pains to avoid His notice.

When Osbert Manns’hillda ventures into the mine called Scavenger’s Gift, the Dark One takes notice. Or does he?

Short story: 5000 words

BY TOM TINNEY:  Blood of Invidia: Maestru Series Book 1.

2017 Dragon Award Finalist.

10,000 years ago, a warrior race waged unrelenting war across our galaxy. They were the Invidians and they conquered worlds. Arrogant mortal beings, driven to fulfill their destiny and build an everlasting empire , they sought the secret to eternal life. They found it.

And then they disappeared.

Tomorrow afternoon, a Vampire battles Werewolves in the middle of Times Square. Shortly after, the ashen-skinned Agorans arrive to calm our fears. Find out why the galactic order rests on the shoulders of three human beings and one mysterious stranger. To save us, they must follow the ancient path paved in the “Blood of Invidia”.

There’s over-the-top action in this SciFi/Paranormal (Non-Romance) novel packed with Galaxy Conquering Immortals, Shape Shifting Warriors, Yakuza Ninjas and “Roswell” Gray Visitors .

Aliens, Vampires and Werewolves…Oh, my! These aren’t cute candy eating extraterrestrials, or sparkly “Tween” bloodsuckers. This is the breathtaking beginning of the Maestru Series!

FROM DAVID L. BURKHEAD: Study in Black and Red.

Struggling artist Leslie Jefferson keeps finding strange paintings on dark and disturbing themes in his studio. To all appearances, from the signature to the style, they are his work. Yet he has no memory of making them. Are these paintings the product of a sick mind, perhaps even his own, or do they portend something more terrible than he ever imagined?

FROM L. A. BEHM II:  Footnotes From the Apocalypse.

John Peters awoke to a normal day. His wife was off with their son, in Dallas, visiting her folks. It was a typically sunny, Central Texas day. By nightfall he was scurrying around, stockpiling supplies for a long siege against an enemy too small to be seen with the naked eye. And before the end of the week he was puking his guts out, wondering if all his plans were meaningless.
But John survived the plague – one of a few of the scattered remnants of humanity – and alone he must begin to pull the shattered pieces of life together.
Along the path he brings other survivors with him, and they begin a long climb back.

(NOTE- If I didn’t put your book up, I did NOT reject it. As mentioned above, I don’t reject books. I reserve the right to make exceptions, but in general I put up what comes in.
It’s just that apparently people interpreted my vent about how people don’t follow directions as a request for MORE books to pimp. (!) So I had twenty books.  Even the strongest stomach won’t page past twenty books much less look at them, to get to the vignettes.  So, next week. – SAH)

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: Book

I’ve become a horrible person in my old age.  And that goes way beyond falling asleep so hard that I slept through my alarm and left my poor long-suffering blog fans waiting for hours in vain. No, I’ve become one of those terrible people that Heinlein talks about who tell the unvarnished truth in social situations.

To be fair to me (ah!) it’s not on everything but when it touches on one of my areas of specialty.  Or rather, it involves tons of things, but it particularly rankles me when it even vaguely touches on one of my points of expertise.

For instance, yesterday someone was complaining that we shouldn’t measure writing just by output.  (At least I think that’s what she was complaining about.  Later responses edged towards incoherence, so maybe she was complaining about the color of the sky or the fact it hadn’t rained or maybe millennium hand and shrimp.)

This is one of the things that makes my fangs grow, my hair stand on end, and my eyes go blood red.

Look, yeah, I’m not encouraging anyone to write ONLY for volume.  If you’re a lousy writer…  No, actually hold that thought.  But anyway, there are people so bound out in their own issues and their belief of what writing is FOR that they can write dozens of books all completely boring, predictable and preachy. There is more to writing than that.

But supposing you’re just your average newby writer, quite inept and cute as a button, someone who reads for fun and who, consciously or not, internalizes what he reads and the techniques he sees and lets them bleed out into his work, you’ll get better the more you do it.

There are no ifs, ands or buts.  You get better the more you do it.

The countervailing argument is native talent and art.  If you are naturally very talented, do you really need to write a lot?  Can’t you write a book every three years and have your adoring fans follow you around?

Well…. maybe.  How do you feel about your luck?  Do you often win the lottery?  No?
Look at it this way: there are millions of  books out there, more being released everyday. Even if you were a natural hitter like J. K. Rowling with her first book, what are the chances enough fans would find you to give you a slavering fandom, waiting with bated breath for your next release?  Right.  If you have two, or three, or, you know, ten there’s a better chance of being found.

But it goes beyond that, too. Even if you’re a natural (such people exist, but they’re rare as feathers on a bear) you will improve with practice.  Trust me on this, I’ve seen people do it.  You get faster, cleaner and just better.

And as for art, the kind you have to sit around waiting for the muse to pour out the blessed words into your ear…  I’ve written muse-possessed a few times.  Yeah, it’s a high.  Yeah, you the writer love the product.

I call these “Heart stories” and it’s happened to me with a dozen short stories and a few books (the latest being A Few Good Men) two of which have never sold (yeah, I need to rewrite and… well, now I know what sells, don’t I.)

Nothing matches the high of a muse-ride.  Nothing.  But it hits maybe a half dozen times in a lifetime.  And it’s not infallible.  The muse might be screaming in your ears, but if you don’t know how to write dialogue, don’t have practice at immersive description and are iffy on word choice, you will still botch it.  Hell, if you don’t know how to shape the plot the muse is feeding you, it will still throw readers out (which is why I have a three-book fantasy that needs a complete rewrite.)

What I mean is, talent — eh, who knows if you have it? your mommy will always tell you you’re prefect (not my mommy, but probably your mommy) — art — who knows art? Sure, the muse rides people sometimes, but the result can still be a mess — but craft? Craft will stand by you.  Why? Because everything that you’ve done a hundred times you do better.

Unless you’re so bound up in bad ideas and bad techniques (alarm bells for that should be that you write “to send a message”, or that you want to write say in the style of the 19th century (It was a different world.  You might love it, but the reading public isn’t the same.  You have to adapt) or that you’re so wedded to the one first world you created and which is unsaleable in and of itself (I resembled that for years) you will improve.  Heck, even in the later you will improve.  You just get tired of it and move on. I did) you’ll improve with practice.

This is btw known as trust the process, and of course I didn’t because no one could explain to me how ti worked.  I still don’t get how it works, but I know it does.  When I went over my old short stories to collect, there’s a marked break in readability and just quality between before I started writing a short story a week for a year, and after.

Do I know how it works? No.  But I think it applies to everything, not just art.  For instance, this morning I ironed a shirt for my son.  Why? He can do it, right?  Sure, but it takes him an hour or so, while I can do it in five minutes.  I couldn’t when I first got married, but I’ve ironed thousands of shirts since then.  It’s easy and quick.

Or when I was a little girl, I watched my mom peel potatoes with a knife (I don’t know why we never bought a peeler) and get a tiny little peel, so thin you could see the sun through it.  if I tried it I peeled away half the potato.  By 18 and having been set to peel potatoes often enough, I could peel almost as well as mom.

It works for mental skills too.  Part of the issues we have now with people reading fast and writing expressively is that our school system (don’t get me started) as eschewed the “boring” practice which is the only thing that creates those skills.

I can tell you it works with foreign languages.  The method I used both for learning and teaching was/is “learn vocabulary” “memorize basic grammar” “Buy books/texts written for natives and sit down to read them.”  The first book in English took me almost six months, and is scribbled in pencil all over with translations (Dandelion Wine.  I don’t know why I thought that would be a good idea.)  The second took me a month.  After that I was reading at normal speed.

Same goes for things like speaking in panels.  The more you do it, the easier it gets, the more the answers come almost automatically, the more you can do it while dying or asleep (I’ve done both) and still be entertaining.

The truth is, anything you CAN do, from brushing the cats to composing music gets better if you do it a ton.

Now we all start from different places and for instance if I decided to become a dancer it would take me longer than the years I have remaining.  Because I have no balance and my coordination is probably negative amounts.

But unless people are actually insane, they don’t usually fixate on things that they know they are much, much worse than the normal human being.  Though even there you can get gains, if what you want to do is just become closer to normal. Because I’m fairly active, I no longer fall over my own two feet while walking down the street, even though it was a daily occurrence till I was about ten.

So, you want to do something? Practice.  You want to excel at it?  Practice some more.  You’re already good but want to be excellent? Practice.

Ignore things you can’t quantify like art, talent, divine inspiration, etc.

You want to do something? Do it as well, as hard and as fast as you’re capable.  You’ll improve.

Or you can sit and whine.  And then you’ll become an expert whiner.  Which is an accomplishment, I guess.

For various reasons, but mostly because it’s now saleable and I have tens of thousands of words in unfinished stories, I went grubbing about in the old Austen fanfic sites for my stuff.  (Remembering the names I used was harder.)

Most of what I found is going to need serious revision.  There’s also the book that is missing most of the middle, because I had a note at the beginning and a thing about not archiving the note.  An inexperienced archivist thought that meant “Do not archive the post.”  Don’t go there.

What is interesting is finding things I don’t have the slightest memory of writing (we’re talking 15 years ago.)  It’s my style, and once I look at it a faint memory-like thing comes back, but I don’t remember what must be months of a chapter a week.  This disturbs me, because it’s like losing part of yourself. Also, am I going nuts?  Or was it just “young mother with young kids, writing late at night?”

But more interesting is reading some of these and coming across things that could be lifted whole from my later “serious” books.

It makes one feel uncomfortably like one is an instrument designed to deliver a certain type of message, which is going to come out no matter what the medium.

Which gets us back to the whole “was I designed to be a writer.”  This is perhaps more important to me right now because for various reasons, some of them physical, I’m having trouble concentrating even to type in/edit stuff much less write.

Which gets us back to the whole fate thing.

I grew up with “fate” as part of my mental picture.  Unquestioned part.  I was rocked to sleep to songs of people being destined to have some fate or other. It was probably the hardest thing to let go of when I acculturated, precisely because it was unquestioned.  Also because frankly most artists have a broken part of their brain that says “I’m meant to be yuge!” [looks at pants size.  Job accomplished.]

But if Himself is anything as an author it’s a pantser.  Sure.  We have the potential to be something, and maybe there’s some message He wants to get out, but in the end what makes you or breaks you is the decisions you make/plot you live in (and weirdly a lot of this is determined by what’s in your head.)

He probably has some dozen people designed to put out the same message I do.  And some of them chose never to write.  And ‘m not even fully sure what the “message” is as it’s woven into who I am.

It comes back to two things: the moment I was in the hospital, trying to die of pneumonia (now 22 years in the past) where what weighed most on me was the children I wouldn’t get to raise (they were 5 and 1 and change then) and the books I’d never written and which would die with me.  And the persistent wish I could go back in time and tell that young mother that yes, she’d get published.  Multiple times. Make a living even.

But if I’d done that, would I have fought so hard to get published?  Would I in fact have got published?

Sometimes, posting at insty late at night, I wonder at the weird trajectory of the little Portuguese girl, in a village of no importance, for whom dishwashers were imaginary, bathrooms inside were a luxury, and a six pack of colored pencils was THE most wonderful birthday gift ever getting the keys to a big site and giving her opinions to people who, had they seen her at that time would have looked at her as a touristic curiosity.

Is this a likely trajectory?  Is it even possible?  It has to be possible, because it happened to me.  But what fiction novelist could make this believable.

And if there were fate what mind would weave that one?

It makes no sense.

There is no scripted fate.  Or if there is, it is not written in stone.

We’re all arrows fired by a blindfolded archer, in search of a unique target.  Sometimes you have to make your own target.

It’s very easy to extrapolate from trends, both our trends and those of the nation and the world.  It’s also very easy to be completely wrong.

All those novelists in the forties and fifties writing of an overpopulated Earth weren’t cranks.  They were writing on extrapolation from the trends of their day.

Don’t be fooled by “perfectly logical” speculation.

The future is unwritten.  You (or the world, or the country) aren’t done till the count is finished, and the count is nowhere near finished.  The fat lady ain’t sung.  (And be glad, I can clear rooms with my singing.)

I hate “today is the first day of the rest of your life” as I hate most hippie slogans, because the answer should be “duh” or “It can also be the last.”

But it is still nonetheless true.  Nothing is scripted.  Sure, the past is prologue, but if you want you can defeat even the most persistent bad habit, the most awful “trend of bad luck.”  Analyze, change, create.

Do you want your story to be one of those that ends on a down note, of despair and inability.  O do you want it to be human wave “and he overcame all this to–”

The future is not formed yet.  Go create it.

Hurray for Thomas Sowell – by Amanda S. Green

After a break for some snarking, not to mention some family demands that have needed to take precedence over everything, I’m finally getting back to Thomas Sowell. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be writing about the second essay in Black Rednecks & White Liberals. Specifically, I’ll be discussing the second essay in the collection, titled “Are Jews Generic?”. In approximately 50 pages, Sowell once again not only gets to the heart of several social issues the United States faces but he exhibits a knowledge and understanding of history and human behavior all too few of the so-called experts do.

As with the first essay, “Black Rednecks & White Liberals”, Sowell uses historical facts and trends to illustrate why certain things happen today. Sometimes what he writes can be difficult to read. Other times, I found myself almost doing one of those V-8 commercial head slaps and doing my best Homer Simpson “D-oh!” because, with just a few words or a few paragraphs, he made something come into focus that I’d wondered about. Most of all, he made me think critically and, at times, question why I believed something.

That is what makes Sowell so good. He doesn’t shy away from asking the hard questions nor does he hesitate from coming to conclusions – and supporting them with facts – that might not be popular in this “woke” time we find ourselves in.

In fact, very often his research and presentation of facts put the lie to being “woke”. Let’s face it, much of what he said in the first essay proves that much – if not all – of the “woke” movement resemble the same so-called good intentions of the white liberals he wrote about. Intentions that have helped create and perpetuate the problems we see in the inner cities of our major metropolitan areas today.

Perhaps we need to take up a fund and send copies of this book to each of the Stoneman-Douglas kids who are going around the country trying to “educate” the rest of us on gun control. Or how about to all the Hollywood stars who think the way to preserve our civil liberties is to take them away. Of course, were we to do so, we’d probably have to stand over each of them and read the book to them, stopping every paragraph or two and asking questions to make sure they were both listening and understanding what Sowell wrote.

As tempting as such a thing might be, can’t you imagine their response? The twitterverse would explode with allegations that we were torturing them with propaganda that wasn’t woke enough for them. We couldn’t understand the suffering of the underprivileged because of our whiteness, etc. Funny how they seem to forget their own wealth and whiteness and privilege.

Hmmm, much like Sowell commented about the oh-so-helpful white liberals.

Instead, the best we can do is read the book for ourselves. Then we need to talk about it, first with our families and then with our friends. In other words, we need to educate ourselves because no one else is going to do it for us and Sowell is an excellent place to start.

So, getting down from my soapbox, let’s take a look at the opening pages of “Are Jews Generic?”.

I’ll admit, when I read the title of the essay, I wasn’t sure what Sowell was getting at? Being Sowell, he quickly gets to the point.

[I]n a worldwide perspective, the most hated kinds of minorities are often not defined by race, color, religion or national origin. Often they are generically “middleman minorities,” who can be of any racial or ethnic background. . . . (BRAWL, pg 65)

But what does he mean by “middleman minorities”?

He doesn’t answer that, at least not directly, right away. He does, however, list some of those minorities: Jews in Europe, Chinese minorities in parts of Southeast Asia, Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, etc. Students of history might understand what he is getting at but others might not. However, instead of answering the question directly, he continues to build his historical context. By doing so, when he finally explains what a “middleman minority” really is, his point is really driven home. It is just one example of what makes Sowell such an excellent author and why he is so good at making his readers think.

While many kinds of minorities have been persecuted and subjected to violence, the sheer magnitude and duration of the persecution and violence unleashed against the middleman minorities eclipses that unleashed against other kinds of minorities. (BRAWL, pg 65)

The picture he is drawing is becoming clearer. The first, and probably easiest, picture that comes to mind is the Holocaust. Not only because of the title of the essay but because of the historical “nearness” of the atrocities committed during it. But he references others as well: the mass slaughter of the Ibos in Nigeria, “the horrors” inflicted on the Vietnamese boat people, the genocide of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Yes, the picture is becoming clearer.

“[T]he scale of lethal mass violence against middle man minorities has been unequalled.” (BRAWL, pg 66) Sowell notes that the number of Chinese slaughtered near Saigon by mobs in 1782 is more than the total number of blacks lynched in the history of the United States. Sure, there will be those who point out blacks have suffered other forms of violence than just lynching but Sowell’s point remains. That violence has been, especially in the modern day, a series of isolated events and not an instance of mass violence.

Or, to put it into better perspective, “[W]hile the Holocaust was the ultimate catastrophe for Jews, it was also the culmination of a long history of lethal mass violence unleashed against middleman minorities around the world.” (BRAWL, pg 66)

So, what do these different middleman minorities have in common and why have they been, within an historical context, hated and resented?

Partly the resentments and animosities against these groups have derived from the economic role they play, a role that has been widely misunderstood and widely resented. . . even when this economic role has been played by people not ethnically different from those around them. Differences of race, religion or ethnicity, added to the resentments arising from the economic role itself, have produced explosive mixtures in many times and places. (BRAWL, pg 66)

Does it really all come down to money? Not exactly. Note how Sowell refers to the “economic role” these groups play.

Think about that and about what he might mean. We’ll come back to that next week when we get into the “meat” of the essay. For now, let me ask you this: who do you see as the “middleman minority” under attack in our country? The correlating question is why? Why is this group resented and under attack? Finally, how do we combat it when one of the two major political parties is touting as its newest rising star someone like Alexandria Ocasio-Castro (oops, Cortez), someone who has declared war on capitalism?

The battle lines have been drawn. It is up to each of us to decide where we stand and what we are going to do to fight the slide toward socialism – or worse. The battle begins with education – educating ourselves and our families and then moving on to educating others. Thomas Sowell is an excellent place to start because that education requires more than just political theory. It requires and understanding of human nature, of economics, of history and so much more.

Until next week.