Liberty In A Statist World
by Dr. Karma

Idealism

Anyone who knows me well would agree that I’m nothing if not an idealist. Idealistic about politics, about medicine, about science, even about my car and guns. But it’s a funny thing about ideals; they never quite have a one-to-one relationship with the real world. The less electronic tomfoolery in a car, the better, I say. Yet the car I drive has one of the more advanced automatic transmissions on the market, and an electronic throttle body (Throttle cable? Kickdown cable? What?). Therapy before pharmacology is my motto, and yet I became a psychiatrist rather than a clinical psychologist, with the primary difference between the two being the ability to dispense street drugs with fancy labels.

But such things are comparatively minor compared to how a liberty-oriented individual is forced to operate in this most statist of all worlds. Just as a surgeon must sometimes remove part of the body to save a life, we may sometimes be forced to advocate legislation where we’d rather none exist whatsoever. Beyond that, we must occasionally push for a direct curtailment of liberty in order to protect that which remains. This situation is best articulated in a quote I’ve seen, roughly paraphrased:

“We’re at an awkward point in American history. It’s too late to work ‘within the system’. But it’s too early to pull out the guns.”

The Problem

The essential problem is that once government has become involved in the regulation and restriction of various aspects of behavior, it is almost impossible to remove government interference from the picture. Furthermore, once involved in a given area, it becomes easier and easier for government to increase its scope and breadth. In other words, free societies will inevitably spiral downward should something occur to upset the balance between individual liberty and government control (as happened after Reconstruction, Roosevelt’s ‘Great Experiment’, Johnson’s ‘Great Society’, and the increasing trend for theocrats and ‘mixed economic model’ advocates to make up the bulk of mainstream political thought).

A complicating factor has to do with people themselves; their attitude toward liberty and government, the superficiality of thought, and the inherent tyranny of democracy. I’ve often thought that many in Europe (as in England, where the backs of their passports bear testimony to this) haven’t yet learned the difference between subject and citizen. Although they participate in democracies, they seem to have an unthinking, unfeeling belief that no matter what one speaks of, ultimately it is government’s responsibility to handle matters. It’s all too reminiscent of the days in which a serf would trade his freedom, his land, and the fruit of his own labor for the knowledge that his feudal lord would protect him. From the speeches of Franklin Delano Roosevelt declaring comfort to be a primary responsibility of government to the political landscape today, where the Democrat platform largely consists of how many ways and how extensively they can interfere with our lives ‘for our own good’. And the Republicans little better with their ever more invasive ‘national security’ programs and insistance on legislating against actions that, though dubious in morality, have little or no effect on others.

In the stark language that I’d use it’s easy enough to see the problem that lies in this mindset. However, it’s all too easy to present it in such a way that it sounds oh so good. Which is exactly what FDR did when he essentially sold us on socialism. A lot of people don’t understand why I vilify the man so much. There is no doubt that the man was between a rock and a hard place during the Depression, there isn’t any doubt that some kind of governmental interference was necessary to bring us out of the doldrums. [According to latest research, no. He prolongued, if not created the depression. We saw a repeat of this with Obama and the Great Recession, so I’m inclined to believe it – SAH] But the way in which he did it was reprehensible. As I was telling Intellect Impure a few nights ago, it reminded me of the way doctors used to function back in the day.

From the first day of medical school onward it’s been beaten into our heads that we do not make decisions for patients; we educate patients about their choices and help them choose their own path. This runs counter to the way it used to be, with the doctor telling you what was to be done, telling you that you needed it, and then doing it. Indeed, letting the patient know what was going on was more a courtesy than part of allowing him to participate in his own health choices. Personally, I’m glad it’s changed.

The doctor used to operate on the principle of unquestioned authority; he simply knew what was best for you whether you agreed or not. Depending on the situation, the patient was all too happy to leave the decision-making and disease management in the doctor’s hands. I imagine being told you have a life-threatening disease can be very daunting indeed, and the ability to leave your health in the hands of someone with more knowledge and skill can be a very comforting thought. There is a problem with this, in that, although the doctor may have your best interest at heart, he’s making the cost/benefit decision for you.

I remember when I had a meningitis scare and mom (a doctor herself) dragged me off to the emergency room at 3 am. The resident on duty handed me some gloopy orange colloid and told me to drink it before mom could stop and ask what it was. After she’d inquired about associated side effects , the resident calmly reported that there was a chance that I could bleed out through my GI tract. Now, if mom had had a chance to get a word in edgewise, she might’ve been able to tell the doctor that when I did get sick (fairly rare), my fevers tended to skyrocket, no matter how minor the infection. She might’ve asked the resident to tell her just how sure she was that I had meningitis before giving me the stuff. Like I said, it’s a good thing that the doctor now dialogues with the patient about treatment.

And this was the problem with FDR’s ‘Great Experiment’. He simply told us ‘Government knows best. We will take care of you. Just put those blinders back on and let us worry about it.’ And so the veritable litany of alphabet agencies was brought into existence from the Works Progress Administration to the Rural Electrification Administration (which still exists, by the way). The way he expanded federal control over our lives was to couch it in the language of a caring authority. He told us of the benefits, he told us that government had a responsibility to take care of us, he used the language of a doting, authoritarian figure to seduce us into serfdom. But he never told us about the costs, he didn’t tell us that because of his transgressions we’d find ourselves wading through the sort of red tape that caused the revolutionaries to take up arms against an oppressive government 150 years before him. And worse, he told us that through government control we would become ‘more free’.

And it is the same sort of language that continues to pervade statist political talk today. “We need to establish this government program for your own good,” they tell us, never asking if the benefit of comfort is worth the cost of freedom. Words are all too pliable, and definitions that were held constant for thousands of years were in the blink of an eye turned on their head in the first half of this century. ‘Freedom’ became a property that required an active role on the part of the government, ‘rights’ could only be produced by taking from the pockets of men the fruit of their hard-earned labor. In short, liberty was transformed into comfort. And so we lost the ability to perceive our freedom taken away bit by bit as government expanded its role in our lives.

It is a central conceit of economic theory that individuals will act in a rational manner. Yet in certain aspects of life, we consistently fail to do so. Beyond the fact that reality is filtered through the imperfect perceptive abilities of the human brain, we are simply too emotional of creatures, too sentimental, too susceptible to romantic ideas. And so, although rationally none could argue that the ‘liberty’ and ‘rights’ that statists speak of represent neither liberty nor rights, such strains of thought will remain and probably continue to expand in popularity. The idea that you can be protected from the slings and arrows of fortune, that someone else can be responsible for your safety, your health, or your well-being, is simply one that will never die. These things are far too precious to us to resist temptation when someone offers promise of them to you on a golden platter.

The Solution

The true ideals of liberty unfortunately stand little chance against the rhetoric of statists and their utopian talk of better living through regulation. We will never be a large part of the population for the simple fact that few are willing to put in the thought and rationality required to wade through the statist nonsense and understand the true meanings beyond the words twisted into shapes like so much modelling clay. Emotions, promises, dreams, though. These are things that all can and do understand. And it is these that most will vote with when it comes time to do so. Unless ever-so-carefully-safeguarded, a liberty-minded state will eventually fall prey to the charismatic powermongers and the very people who make up the republic. Just to get an idea of how difficult this is, remember just what a paranoid, forward-thinking, and all-encompassing document the Constitution really is. Read the strong language, the simple statements, see the truth laid bare for all to see. And think back to the speeches of Bush, of Kennedy, of Santorum, of Boxer or of McCain. Think of how easily they make a sham of the founding document.

No, the regrettable truth is that our ideals, though noble, cannot win against the statist once they have established so strong a beachhead that we find ourselves cowering against our inland borders, cowering as we await the killing blow. But that is not to say we are doomed to failure, or that the time has come to ready those ‘assault weapons’ so deplored by the mainstream left in order to start a revolution. It is simply that in order to win, we must sully our ideals, we must turn to the statists’ own tools in order to prevent further transgressions, and, if we’re lucky, regain a little ground.

The two tools at our disposal are the strength of the federal legislative bodies and the ability to compromise one ideal in order to protect another. Earlier I brought up a medical analogy and I’ll return to different ones here. The first concept can be characterized as ‘Cutting to Cure’ while the second is plainly and simply ‘Triage’.

Cutting To Cure – Reading the constitution, bill of rights, and historical documents of the birth of our nation yields no compelling reason why the second amendment doesn’t apply to handguns, ‘assault weapons’, or to the carrying of said weapons upon one’s person, concealed or otherwise. Furthermore, one cannot find a reason why a man must be prevented from using said implements in the defense of his person and property. Indeed, the definition of ‘to bear’ means literally to carry on one’s person. And for what purpose is a man to bear a weapon if not for the potential of its use. Yet here we sit with ‘assault weapons bans’ in several states, handgun bans in many cities, and even outright bans of all firearms in one or two localities, not to mention restrictions on when and where a man may defend himself. Here, federal legislation, despite being a non-libertarian tool, has been instrumental in at least partially returning to us a right enshrined in our most basic documents.

Triage – Every now and then, a man is forced to make a difficult decision. Does he save the wife he’s pledged his life to? Or the child he’s sworn to protect and raise from infancy to adulthood? Thankfully, the quandaries we are presented with, though ideologically painful, are not so bleak. An example can be found in the illegal immigration debate. Several respected libertarian minds have come out against immigration control and for amnesty. Just as many have come out in favor of strict enforcement and deportation of those who’ve broken the law in coming here. Personally I fall in the latter category (except for the ‘respected mind’ part), even advocating making English the official language and qualifying ‘of the soil’ citizenship with the need for the parents to have been here legally on some sort of long-term visa.

As several have mentioned, this isn’t a very libertarian way of looking at things. And they’re right. But this isn’t a libertarian world. In this world one has to worry about the statists and how the massive influx of new voters of a neither American nor particularly affluent population will change the political balance. And the answer is perhaps even uglier than Kirsten Dunst. In this place, at this time, the 10-20 million new voters represent a sizeable addition to the ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘mixed economic model’ camps. More social welfare, governmentally mandated bilingualism. Neither things I much look forward to. So I’m forced to choose between my belief that those who wish to come here should be allowed to versus my fear of treading down the road Old Europe has cautioned us against with their own pitfalls, both culturally and economically. Which is more important? To hold true to your ideals as they are all voted away from you? Or to compromise one to save the many? No, it’s not a very fun choice, but it’s one that we have to make.

No matter how we paint it, the future is pretty bleak for liberty; no matter the time or place, it will always be. But by understanding the mechanics of a statist world, we can learn how to cure it, or at least stem the flow of liberty’s lifeblood from our nation’s many ideological wounds.

** Dr. Karma is an attending physician at (information redacted). His many professional accomplishments include contributions to evolutionary biology and saving an untold number of kids from stupid adults and an even more stupid entrenched bureaucracy. His primary accomplishment remains convincing his coworkers that he’s a pediatric specialist rather than a hitman in a mere six months. He specializes in whatever he feels like that day, and his coworkers are too scared to point out that he’s ‘just a psychiatrist’. The kids get better just to get him to stop yelling, singing, dancing, or dressing up like batman. It works, so he’s good with it.

For those who don’t know, we have a “closed” group of my fans on Facebook, called Sarah’s Diner.

It’s a place with definite rules, because my fans come both from fiction and non fiction, and widely separate streams of thought.  So, no politics are allowed, and no religion and no…

In addition to that, there is a detailed,  list of rules, like you can’t have a link to FB with a sales link.  Most people find this pointless, and some people throw fits because my moderators take their ‘Harmless” amazon link to mugs, or toys or something down.

Yesterday a friend of mine told me that I have control freaks as moderators.  Do I? Would it be easier/better if I let everyone do whatever and only had moderators to stop fights/kick out spam.

I started out that way…

The rule about selling links to Amazon, for instance, started because of ONE main offender, who not only found a way to link his book EVERY TIME in all sorts of unlikely circumstances (so we put in a rule about self promotion) but then found ways to have his friends/relatives/gullible acquaintances post links to his books apropos nothing (rule against linking books) and then started figuring out how to get them to post links to other things (that had his books in the recommends.)

We could have kicked him out, we could.  Only you know, he hadn’t actually broken the laws.  Also, there were three or four people doing the same thing, more subtly, and falling in behind every rule loophole he found.

So my moderators gradually became control freaks.  Sure, I could have gone the other way and given them leave to just let anyone post whatever.  But the problem is that writers are stupid.  No, like, massively stupid when it comes to promotion.

Some of us — me — are embarrassed to do it at all.  And then some people do promo in the most bizarre and unlikely situations.  And I mean that.  Like answering someone saying their spouse has cancer with “I’m sorry, that sucks.  Now, in my book A Bright Promise, the main character has cancer and it turns out okay.  You might want to read it.”

And groups with a lot of writers, which mine seems to be, partly because I support indie, can become nothing but a link fest.  I don’t want that and don’t want to look at that when I visit.

Do the mods hate to have to police at that level?  Sure.  Because, you know, they don’t get paid.  Do I hate to make them police at that level?  Sure, because I’m actually very laid back.

So what does this have to do with communism?  Socialists/communists/the left in general, suffer from the illusion that you can give people stuff for free, and people will take what they need.

Ah!

No, seriously, ah!

Even without rule lawyering, people are STUPID, and some of the dumbest people are the smartest.

For instance I run the book plug here on Saturday and, with Charlie Martin, the PJM Book Plug Friday.  We’re glad to do it.  We don’t get paid.  Well, we get paid for BPF, but only for the article, the links are our own idea and extra.

The rules are simple: send me an amazon link to bookpimping at outlook dot com if you want to be linked on my blog on Saturdays.  Send us a link to Bookplugfriday at gmail dot com if you want to make an appearance on the Book Plug Friday post over at PJ.  IF your blurb is really long, send us a 40 word blurb to PJ, where we’re crunched for space. DON’T send the same book more than once a month.

That’s it.  I’m offering to do something for free to promo people’s books.  People like promo, as I mentioned above. So they make it easy for me, right?

Right…  Like, last week, I got: a message begging us to promo a book… with no link, no name of book. A book, in its entirety, including cover (and an apology for not sending a higher res cover!) but no link.  A long, incoherent ramble about our “rejecting” a book for promo.  I searched the mailbox. We never got the promo request.

Minor stuff includes doing everything right… except sending us the link, or sending us the link to a different book.

Other minor stuff which finally caused me to snap on FB today, includes pinging me on FB (seriously 7 a day) with links, or sending them to my email.

It probably sounds control freakish when I say, when you do that, unless you’re a friend or someone I REALLY LIKE you’re not going to get a plug.

It’s not. It’s just what will happen, not what I WANT to happen. Why?  Because I’m doing three full time jobs (PJMedia, Baen and Indie) before I even start on things like household, making sure we don’t choke on dirt, and spending SOME time with my family and you know, making sure my husband remembers who I am.  And that’s before the fact that my health has me at half power most of the time. If it’s not essential I’ll space it.  Heck, indie keeps getting spaced, and that has to end.

Which btw, shows you the problem from the other side.  When each is working “according to his abilities” with no compensation, even if you’re really conscientious and really want to do this, stuff will slip.  You’re only human. Add to that that the people receiving things for free, even pre-rule-lawyering are going to do stupid crap.  So much stupid crap, it will make your head hurt and make your job twice as hard.

This is before the rule lawyering.  The group on FB has something like a thousand people, but ALL it takes is one rule-lawyer to make you generate a million more rules, and make your moderators (and you) way busier and pissier.  Which is why every state that tries to give you everything ends up regulating everything.

So, basically yeah, we’ve never had “true communism” (or socialism, or heaven, or whatever you want to call it this week.)  That’s because humans are humans, and there’s always that one guy.

Which is fine.  The same things that make utopia impossible are probably the things that make us a creative and striving species.  And anyway, if you got everything handed to you, you wouldn’t get anything done.

We must forgive other’s foibles as we hope ours will be forgiven.  None of us is without sin, and it’s much easier to see how annoying other people are than how annoying WE are (and I guarantee we are, at least at times.)

I happen to like people, even with all their issues.  Which means I’m okay with no utopia this side of heaven.

And people who want that utopia tend to hate humans with all their might.  Because only angels would make their utopia work.

When The End Justifies The Means, Who Cares About Truth?

By Tom Knighton

One thing I get to enjoy as a full-time blogger is an up-close look at what the left publishes. I don’t get the luxury of living in an echo chamber, which is for the best. I have to listen to what they’re saying and, more importantly, how they’re saying it.

Now, there are some on the left who I believe may be misguided, but are actually decent folks. They’re True Believers, which can be a different brand of problem, but they also have some sense of morality that keeps some of the worst aspects of humanity in check.

But there are others who don’t really care.

Take this post from over at Medium.

Now, Medium is a pretty open platform and lots of people write at Medium with no audience to speak of, but this one got a little traction. The bulk of the post, despite a title about the supposed American collapse, is about a GOP candidate who is apparently a true racist.

Racists are scum and I would sooner vote for my coffee table than an avowed racist. I don’t have any issue with the author addressing the candidate’s claim that “God is a white supremacist,” which is the greatest load of bunk I’ve heard out of a candidate since “Hope and Change.”

What bothered me was his choice of photograph.

You see, when blogging, artwork matters. I remember the days when no one really cared about pics, but those days are long behind us. These days, the photographs grab people. Here’s the picture that the author, Umair Haque, chose to use:

Four women in white shirts at what is clearly a Trump rally saying “Make America White Again.” How was this not news when it happened? How was this not on the cover of every newspaper in the country?

Probably because it didn’t happen.

What you see above is a photoshop job. In this post, you can see these same four women as well a what their shirts really say. “Make America Great Again.” The same thing countless hats and signs at rallies all over the nation said during Trump’s campaign.

Yet Haque makes no mention of this. There’s no disclaimer that it’s not a real photograph, that he’s using it to make a point, or anything. This leaves two possibilities.

The first is laziness. Maybe he simply didn’t know it wasn’t real and failed to do any research on the validity of the image. If that’s true, then why should we take anything else he says at face value? He’s clearly not conducting rudimentary research on something as simple as a photo—Google’s reverse image search is a handy tool, after all—what else is he missing in his diatribe?

He may also have known it was fake and simply forgot to let people know, which is something he should have done from the start. Failure to do so is still laziness, and it also makes one wonder just what else he forgot to mention. If you can fail to provide such an important detail, what else did you fail to provide?

The second option, however, is malice. He knows It’s photoshop and didn’t care to inform his audience because he wants to paint the American right as nothing but racists. This image, and the fact that these four women would be so bold as to wear such shirts (if it were real, naturally) surrounded by thousands of other Americans, would easily show people just how white supremacist the conservative side actually is.

However, I seriously doubt Haque is lazy. It’s a long post with a lot of arguments included designed to dispute the idea that God is a white supremacist. Nothing in that reads as something written by a lazy person in any way, shape or form.

That leaves malice, and if that’s the case, I hope Haque has a good lawyer on standby.

You see, those four women are easily identifiable by those who know them. All it takes is the wrong soul seeing that image and they could lose their jobs and generally have their lives turned upside down. In other words, this could easily be considered defamation.

But for leftists like Haque, who cares?

After all, the American left has made it pretty damn clear that they don’t really care about the lives of people who disagree with them ideologically. They’ve taken to stalking and harassment in public spaces to try and shame conservative leadership into…who the hell knows? I guess they think they can turn the right into leftists with enough shame or something. That’s not how it works, mind you, but that’s what they apparently think.

Because of that, I can’t help but think that Haque doesn’t really care what happens to these women because of this photoshop job.

Now, I’m not saying he did it. I honestly don’t know who did the photoshopping here. I honestly don’t care all that much.

What I do care is that Haque has published it and promoted it while apparently presenting it as a factual and accurate representative of what was at a Donald Trump rally at some point in the past.

As of Sunday afternoon, it had almost 9,500 likes (or whatever Medium calls it). That means significantly more people saw that image. I mean, unless you think that everyone who saw the post clicked the little clapping hands icon. The likes to views ratio often varies, but I’ve often gotten hundreds more hits on a post than I got likes, so it’s not unreasonable to say that tens of thousands of people have seen this. It’s also not unreasonable to estimate that the number of reads that story got was in the hundreds of thousands.

In other words, Haque used that image to lie to thousands.

But, when the ends justify the means as so many leftists apparently believe, you can do that. Who cares if these four women have their lives upended? That’s just the broken egg necessary to make an omelet and all those other clichés.

Frankly, it’s just another variety of collectivist thinking. They don’t care what happens to four individuals because they think the group matters more.

What they always fail to remember is that no group of people is made up of a faceless mob. They’re made up of individuals. If you do what is right for the individual, you do what is best for the group as a whole. It’s the natural result.

But, when you do what you think is best for the group, there are individuals that are going to be hurt.

In this case, it’s possible defamation. In another it could be about jobs. Who knows?

What really matters is that collectivists like the American left will always tend to figure they can stomp on the individual, and that’s precisely what Haque is doing here.

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 links to books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com.  One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Please do not send me: the entire book; book descriptions; or newsletters.  JUST send me the Amazon link-SAH*

FROM PETER GRANT:  The Pride of the Damned (Cochrane’s Company Book 3).

The shadow war started as a simple contract to defend a system against asteroid thieves. The harder Andrew Cochrane and Hawkwood Security fought, the worse things became. Now they find themselves embroiled in an interstellar war with an entire mafia!

Worse yet, the proceedings are so profitable – not to mention bloody – that they’ve attracted the attention of some of the worst criminal organizations in the galaxy. If Hawkwood is to survive, it’ll need all the wits, cunning and ingenuity it can muster – and the unwavering courage and dedication of its people.

The galaxy’s not big enough for both sides. One or the other will go to the wall.

FROM LAURA MONTGOMERY: Rapunzel.

FAA attorney Terrence Rogers dreams of space, but he spends his days on informed consent for space tourists. Young foreign service officer Hal Cooper faces real change with the arrival of an alien spaceship, but it means something else for Terrence.

A short story.

FROM ALMA T C BOYKIN: The Scavenger’s Gift

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

FROM ROB HOBART:  The Sword of Amatsu (Empire of the Sun and Moon Book 1).

For four centuries, the Empire of the Sun and Moon has been torn apart by war as its samurai Clans fight for the empty throne of the Emperors. The Gray Wolf Clan is one of only six Clans remaining, but faces a deadly threat from the more powerful and ruthless Jade Dragon Clan. Yet the greatest threat to the Empire is not the bloody ambitions of its samurai. The shadowy followers of the Cult of the Mask, worshippers of foreign demons, burrow through the Empire’s society like worms in rotten meat, growing in power year by year.

As battles rage and conspiracies fester, the fate of the Empire will turn on the actions of a handful of samurai. The young lord Ookami Akira, trained by monks to be a master of war but desperately ignorant of the Empire’s civilization, must learn to be the ruler of the Gray Wolf Clan or he and his people will perish. Kuroi Kaede, a naïve girl forced into an unwilling marriage to Akira, must master the courts if she is to survive. The lowly magistrate Kobayashi Mitsui is the only one in the Empire who recognizes the true scale of the threat from the Cult of the Mask. And the murderous wandering swordsman Kenji may hold the fate of all in his blood-stained hands…

FROM STEPHANIE OSBORN:  Definition and Alignment (Division One Book 7).

When another enhanced human, Mark Wright, unexpectedly shows up at the Agency, Alpha One discovers that they still aren’t done with Slug’s machinations and levels of planning: Wright is there for Omega, and the NEXT generation of assassins will be GENETICALLY programmed to kill Echo! Thus begins a bizarre, inverted manhunt as the telepathically-brainwashed Wright chases Alpha One across the planet, using the pre-programmed mental link that Omega can’t fully block, to follow her anywhere Echo can take her…

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: valuable

Recently, in a group I belong to (mostly for the purpose of raising my blood pressure) someone wished that all “deviants” would be forced “back into the closet.”

Um…

In the context of the thread, where the deviants were people with tendencies that definitely harmed others that was kinda sorta understandable.

You know what else?  I even understand not wanting to hear everything about everyone’s sex life.  I mean, I don’t want to hear anything about anyone’s sex life, except the guy I’m married to, and in that case I sort of want to be there for it.

Yeah, I’m also the sort of judging … woman who thinks that some sexual (and non-sexual practices) should be looked askance at.  Take the case of that farm in one of the states that turns out to have no law against bestiality.  Horses were raised to have sex with people and some people died of it.

Sure the humans consented (or paid for it.)  Sure, horses aren’t sentient or at least not in a legal way and if we start protecting their rights we get into “should we ride them? Have they given affirmative consent?”.  It’s still something that if it came up in my friend’s circle, I’d say “uh… I don’t think that’s a wholesome or healthy lifestyle.  Maybe you should talk to a therapist?  Or have you considered just having a rich fantasy life, instead?”

Also there was that guy who was having sex (I swear I’m not making this up) with the gas inlets in people’s cars in downtown Colorado Springs, where we lived at the time.  Not only did I not want to hear about it, I didn’t want him to do that to our car (because I wasn’t sure what that would do to the engine) and also, yeah, I think he needed psychiatric help.

But when we say that “all deviants” ought to be “driven” “Back into the closet” it’s important to think about why, and what it means.

Okay, I don’t want to hear about people’s sex lives, and by and large I don’t.  I have a friend who took a while to give up on shocking me, but that’s past.  Other than a few jokes, we just don’t mention that stuff.  Other than that, I leave such discussions at parties, skim past them in books, etc.  So people’s tendency to overshare — which affects “normal” (in the sense of majority) and “deviants” in equal measures, it seems — doesn’t affect me at all.

Other than that, what my friends like in bed or out of it is none of my business, so far as I don’t want to have sex with them, and don’t think of them as sexual people.  Sometimes I have to remember a new significant other, or a plural one as far as party invitations or plus ones at get togethers, but that’s it.  I might think their choices in life are unwise, but no one has made me queen of how people live (thank heavens.)

So… deviants and closets.

It occurs to me that for certain people it is profoundly uncomfortable to have people do things they disagree with/don’t think should be done, and not even be ashamed of them.

Most of the time I see this in the context of the left wanting us “political deviants” back in the closet, because the fact that we think the way we do, while belonging to one or more of what they consider “naturally leftist” groups makes their teeth itch.  It challenges their world view to have us be otherwise decent people, and educated and yet not agree with them on welfare or “social justice.”  Their simplistic and tidy worldview doesn’t accommodate us, and so we should be destroyed or “keep decently quiet.”  How many times have you heard people say “I used to like you, but now you’re just a full on right winger” and you go “I’ve barely even started to talk tack.  I just used to put up with your unhinged rants with no protest, and now I protest?”

But it is not just on the left.  Frankly, though bigotry is rarer on the right (defined as American right, smaller government, more laisse faire, more individualism) I still make many heads explode as a foreign born woman who tans, with an MA in languages, who nonethless pegs pretty close to the Libertarian end of the spectrum (except for not believing in open borders and thinking collective self-defense is a right too.) There are people nominally on our side who wish I’d go back in the political closet too.  Then they could imagine me to be a leftist liberal and their world view could be tidy again.

Honestly, I think this is what the person was clamoring for — the deviants he meant in this case were not only people whose sexual habits harm others but everyone who deviates from average, as he made abundantly clear — that everyone who is (as a lot of members of this group are) conservative/libertarian and say gay (there are other “deviances, but he was aiming at that) go back into the closet, because they were messing up his tidy little world, in which if you’re off-beat in any way, you belong to the left.

Me?  I think this is crazy-cakes.  We’re conceding to the left not just the sexual deviants, but everyone who is a minority and off beat.  And then we’re shocked when they identify was left.  Or consider them the enemy because they’re left.  After all, they’d be perfectly welcome… in the closet.

Look, my closet was political, but the staying in the closet thing implied living a lie so thorough that I had to watch everything that came out of my mouth, every minute of the day.  Social situations became debilitating: both not debunking the falacies other people spouted, and watching my every expression and eye movement.  It made me ill with stress.  It’s no way to live.

And yet, just as the left wants people “back in the closet” a lot of our side wants a lot of “off beat” people (not just sexually) back in the closet.  Because it’s easier on US.

Now, there is a flip side.  People who are out of the closet often go through a crazy phase, where EVERYONE MUST BE INFORMED.  I tried to control that, and I try not to do things like, say, rub my political beliefs in my lefty brother’s face.  Sure, he reads my blog at his own risk (and going to mom and telling me to stop won’t work, because, as before, she just laughs.) But in family occasions, I don’t spout about politics, and he has to do far more than a casual comment for me to respond.  (Look, when he said the Chinese were less racists than Americans and that’s why they were making headway in Africa, I just ran to the basement to dial a friend in the US and laugh my head off, okay?  I didn’t start a big argument there, over the Sunday roast.)  Because I’m not going to change his mind, he’s not going to change mine, and why make everyone around us uncomfortable?

I find my sane gay friends have the same attitude.  They might refer to their SOs, or even hold hands in public, but they don’t feel the need to chase after parents and older friends going “Look, look!  You have to praise me for this.”

So called activists are a different matter.

The thing is, liberty means allowing people to do and be things we don’t approve of.  So long as they’re not actively hurting us, WHY should we want people to live a life of duplicity and concealment?

Sure, if one of my friends took up a life of screwing gas pipes, I’d rather he didn’t talk about it.  Or maybe not, since we’d have to know so we could get him to see a psychiatrist.  And I have no need to hear about what people do in bed.  But if my friend is in a long-term, committed relationship, why would I wish him to keep that absolutely secret? Or pretend to be single?  Wouldn’t that be painful for everyone concerned?

And why would I want that in an at-large society.  I believe sunlight is better than pretense, anyway. If things are out in the open, it’s easy to see the flaws.

And if I really like someone who has — say — taken up an unhealthy interest in pain killers, I might try to get them to see it’s not healthy.  But only if I know about it.  If they’re keeping it secret, I’ll only know when it gets really bad and they die.

But more importantly, if you desire people would hide what YOU consider objectionable, have you consider that other people might want you to hide what THEY consider objectionable?  And that the society this ends up in is a pretense, where much worse perversions and strangeness flourish under cover.

Yeah, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind and not being rude and rubbing our weirdness (this includes some writer-stuff, btw.  You’d be amazed how many people are weirded out by it) in other people’s faces is a good thing.

But closets?  Oh, hell no.  I favor the truth.  To the extent people need to know, tell the truth and shame the devil.

And get your nose out of your neighbors’ affairs.  Leave a decent and moral life as you conceive of it.  Give your opinion when asked for.  Other than that?  It’s none of your business.  Stop pushing people to a left which, should it take control, will enforce a bizarre and totalitarian conformity.

You’re a lover of freedom.  Remember this means freedom for others as well as yourself.

Some Funny Thoughts on Economics
by Alpheus Madsen

As a mathematician pretending to be a software developer recently looking for work, I couldn’t help but notice that there’s been an up-tick in companies looking for software developers who can program on blockchains — in particular, for projects to create automatically executable contracts for cryptocurrencies. I have learned a bit about these, and am particularly intrigued by the idea of recording transactions in a way that isn’t very susceptible to forgery … but for all the promise to revolutionize things, I would have to confess that I have a hard time accepting cryptocurrencies. And part of the problem is that I’ve encountered some rather bad economic thoughts I have associated with the justification of cryptocurrencies.

The biggest one, encountered a few years ago by a Bitcoin miner, was “cryptocurrencies have value because they take resources (energy, typically from coal) and labor (computers plugging away at computation) to create!” Ah, the labor theory of value … the heart of Marxist thought … and something for which counter-examples abound! No, there’s no inherent value in consuming — I can burn coal to crush big, smooth blocks of granite into rubble — but neither the coal I put in, nor the labor I exert to fill that hopper, will give that rubble any value. Indeed, I am wasting coal, my time, and fantastic blocks of granite that can be used for counter tops, buildings, and machine shops for both function and beauty. I am destroying value.

No, the value of cryptocurrency is, paradoxically, based solely on people choosing to value it. And this is true of everything, not just cryptocurrency. And people have all sorts of reasons for valuing something: it’s necessary for life, it can be used as a stable platform for putting things together, it’s pretty, it’s scarce or abundant (water is necessary for life, but because we have so much that our fundamental needs are met, we don’t value it as much as pure diamonds set in gold …) This core idea — called “marginal value theory” — is a fantastic explanation of why rare useless things can command such a high price!

Another funny idea (which I’m fairly certain I encountered in a cryptocurrency forum, but my memory is a little fuzzy on that) is the notion that, because inflation benefits people who are in debt — people who are allegedly poor — while deflation “only” affects people who are rich, we should always favor inflation, and always fight against deflation.

Sigh. This kind of policy doesn’t favor the poor. It favors people who have short attention spans, who can only see what the want right now and don’t care that, if they hold their horses, they can get even more, if they just wait until they can afford it; meanwhile, people who have even a modicum of future preference, who decide to save for the future, are screwed by inflation, because whatever they save now, becomes less worthwhile in the future! This can hurt the poor, because the poor widow trying to save her mites gets to see her mites evaporate … but what’s worse, is that it hurts the poor who are trying to become rich!

After all, who are the poor people? The people who can’t look beyond the horizon, and go into debt for everything. Who are the rich people? Generally, the people who diligently stay out of debt, and who save a little bit every month, so that it can grow into something that can allow them to retire — and sometimes even retire with style! Sure, you may have the occasional person who is bankrupt because of severe medical issues, or the occasional trust fund baby who is rich because their parents were rich … but these are far more often the exceptions rather than the rule, and too often, these exceptions are used to justify policies that are destructive to everyone, rich or poor.

Granted, at some point, I need to realize that these ideas aren’t necessarily inherent to cryptocurrency, and I need to dig into the core ideas to get a better feel for what value cryptocurrencies offer to us (beyond the crazy fluctuations that both make and break fortunes), but at this point, I’m on a roll, so I’m going to offer a crazy thought I happen to believe: that it’s this kind of thinking that gives us business cycles.

There’s a certain school of economic thought, called “The Austrian School”, that is convinced that saving is the key to economic advancement: by saving, day by day, some fish, at some point, I can take a week to make a fishnet, which can then allow me to catch more fish, and then take time to build a house, and so forth. Additionally, this school of thought is convinced that forcing interest rates to be below natural market value, is what causes bubbles that pop: artificially low interest rates lull businesses into believing they can expand, and so they do … but that produces inflation, because everyone thinks they can expand … which means that the businesses can’t expand as fast as they thought they could … which over-extends the businesses … until they can’t extend themselves anymore, and have to close things down, cancel projects, and lay off employees.

In contrast, the Keynesian school is convinced that savings is the enemy of prosperity — that we can tax and spend and go into debt, and so long as we have a Central Bank of some sort controlling our currency, and carefully controlling interest rates (usually by forcing interest rates to be lower than the Market says they should be), we can get rid of business cycles! Indeed, the Federal Reserve has been created precisely to do this. And oddly enough, the fact that we’ve had at least a dozen bubble pops (including one where the economy hadn’t recovered for an entire decade) hasn’t given very many people pause to reflect that hey, this Federal Reserve controlling the economy thing isn’t working as we expected … if anything, the assumption seems to be “Hey, it’s a good thing we have a Federal Reserve! Just think of how bad things would be if we didn’t have one!”

One final thought: when I took a Microeconomics class in college, one of the books we had was a history of economics focusing on six economists. I can’t remember who all the economists were, but I remember that Adam Smith, Karl Marx (who did for economics what Sigmund Freud did for psychology: took his personal, warped life, which was separated from the rest of mankind, and projected it onto everyone else), Milton Keynes, and some guy named Veblen were featured. Years later, I have come to that certain other economists — Milton Freedman, Ludwig von Mises, some guy named Hayek — were completely absent. I don’t necessarily think that this was on purpose, but considering that these economists pretty much go against the grain of all the others (with the possible exception of Adam Smith), it’s a pretty huge blind spot in the world of economics!

And now that I have written all of this, I think I have an inkling of understanding of why I don’t necessarily think that cryptocurrencies will fix everything. The solution that they are trying to offer — the decentralization of the control of currency, and the establishment of a decentralized way to definitively know who owns what — doesn’t solve the core problem that causes our economy to spin out of control: the conceit that is well-ingrained in our government, heck, even our society, that if only we had people who know what they are doing at the head of everything, they can fix things, and make sure that things run smoothly! (The actual solution seems to be “get out of debt, stay out of debt, and save money”, which doesn’t seem to be a very popular suggestion among the “elites”, and everyone else, for that matter …)

One of the things that the left side of the isle (but not just them) don’t understand about people like us is our chaotic nature.

Yes, I do have a coffee mug that says “I like playing chaotic neutral, because I like to keep all my options open.”

One, I don’t actually play D & D.  I did it once, when I was a housewife with a small boy and stuck at home all day and I think I inadvertently took up DMing for the group, which made it way too much work.  If I’m going to work that hard, I want a novel at the end.

Okay, okay, I realize it might be different with a different group, and am perfectly willing to try it.  There are local friends who have offered.  Maybe towards the end of the year, if there’s time. But still I’ve never done it.

Two, from my sons who both play RPGs I’ve come to realize that “chaotic neutral” means you might save the orphans from the burning orphanage… or set the orphanage on fire.  So, I know I’m not that.  I could be.  (More on that later.) But I’m not.  I have internal principles I cannot betray, at the risk of becoming “not me.”  The mug is funny though, just like my other coffee mug “I drink and slay dragons.  That’s what I do.”  … really, I don’t drink that much, and the dragon dragon-slayer has been done to death.

But it occurs to me to a lot of the left (and some of the more socially conservative right) we LOOK chaotic neutral.  Why?

Because they have not the slightest notion who or what we are.

Take the Tea Party, before it got weird.  And keep in mind that I think the Col Springs one was a weird half false flag, half crazy evangelical organization from the beginning, that, for instance, asked you to donate a can of food to the homeless shelter organization AND had the people from Focus on the Family give speeches.

It was still, mainly, against taxes.  And against government over reach.  At lest as to its attendance.  Healthcare, 25 percent of gross GDP had just got grabbed by government, by a procedural trick, with the fricking IRS administering it, and even the so called “right wing”(they aren’t) news media were playing footsie.  The vast opposition had no voice.

I don’t remember how I heard about the tea party but it was back door of a back door, of a back door, if that makes sense.  Hell, it might have been my Marxist neighbor who told me, sneering, over the garden fence.

This was early on.  We expected trouble.  I was still — I thought — semi-closeted.

There was NEVER any chance I wouldn’t go.  I decided early on no car.  I’d walk downtown (I’ve been to demonstrations where parked cars got set on fire by the left.  But at any rate, it would be hell to park.)

And I walked down.

Later on the tea party would be painted as an evangelical and of course racisss sexissss homophobic movement.  This is logical if you follow the left’s (racist, sexist homophobic beliefs — more on that later) and I think it ended up attracting crazy people TM both because revolutionary movements always do, and because of the rep the left gave it.  But even I was surprised at how fricking diverse that first demonstration was.

Seriously, as I was walking down (about a mile and three quarters) with an air of purpose, I noticed people also walking down.

To give some background, I lived in downtown Colorado Springs, a dot of blue in a sea of red. Also I lived, as we often have throughout our married life, at the edge of the lavender zone.  Not that we seek it out, but I live, by preference, where I can walk to shops and libraries (used to be coffee shops) because I need to walk for my health, but I have the hunter-gatherers attitude about wasting energy for nothing.  As in “don’t do it.” If I have a place I can walk to, I do so.  Also, of course, we have writer and mathematician money, which isn’t exactly either steady or crazy money.  So we pick places on the edge of gentrifying.  Safe but not expensive as hell.  Which are often right next to or in the lavender zone.

So yeah, there were gay people — wearing the rainbow colors — walking down with me.  I thought they were going to counter-protest, which means the joke is on me and leftist propaganda fools even our side.

Also the neighborhood was probably higher in “vibrant diversity” than the rest of the state, except for areas of Denver.  We were two blocks from Colorado College.  And well, you know that sort of neighborhood.  Thing is of course, not all of it was vibrant.  There were also decent people of all colors in the neighborhood.

Anyway, there were also people of every color who walked down and joined the demonstration.  My biggest surprise was the bus from the Reservation, with tribe members in full regalia, who came to downtown Colorado springs to protest government overreach.  Well, I guess they’d know something about that.

Imagine my surprise when photos in the local paper showed only white people, and talked about a racist/white supremacist movement.

The question is, did the media realize it was lying?  Or did they only see the white members and “protect” the rest of us from our “misguided actions”?

You see, from the left’s perspective any movement that opposes government freebies for all must be racist sexist and homophobic.  Their true opinions of these groups are revealed in that: i.e. if you’re not a (northern) European male, you MUST need government assistance.  (Hello, Left! These are MY middle fingers.)

This is confirmed when you mention, say welfare and they ASSUME you’re talking about people of color.  Because they really despise anyone who can tan that much.  (These are my middle fingers again, and note I have a matched set.)

Because of this deep-set, unshakable and absolutely unexamined (if they examined it they’d have to understand they’re stone cold racists.  Yes, of course they dance around it by saying these groups are poor because of “institutionalized inequity but only the dumber of them get fooled by this) assumption, they can’t comprehend us or our principles.

So every time we oppose them, they have to assume we are against giving opportunities (read benefits and the bigotry of low expectations) to these people who just can’t help themselves.  So we’re bad, evil.  We’re rich white people with all the power, fighting the rise of the enlightened minorities.

Yeah…. okay, I’ve been kind of pale for years.  If you look at my picture, those of you with medical training will also realize that very pale face also has the characteristic puffy hypothyroidal mask.  That’s because my hypothyroidism is NOT of the standard kind, and took about 20 years to detect s it got worse and worse.  This year it’s at least half fixed, and those who saw me at LC asked if I’d been to the beach.  Well, no. I spent about two hours outside on a relatively warm spring day.  And I’m still very pale for me.

When I was a newlywed in the apartment complex in NC the neighbors assumed, without even asking, that I was Mexican.

I’m also against not just government bennies but against the kind of “enlightenment” that hires/buys to “racial percentage” instead of to excellence.  I believe excellence is excellence, and it should be rewarded for the good of our science, our art and our military.

According to the left, this means I want to keep minorities and women from writing/being published in sf/f.  This is a pale bronze middle finger upraised in your direction, wankers.  None of you ever explained how I’m supposed to accomplish that while I’m a midlist writer with absolutely NO power in the publishing industry.  Newsflash, even if we had changed the Hugo awards for a year or ten, it wouldn’t stop anyone from striving and publishing.  Also, before you mau-maued people into dropping out we had all sexes and colors (most of them.  We probably didn’t have pale bronze. Also we didn’t to my knowledge have anyone who identified as a wingless dragon AND an ornate building.  I could be wrong.  You see, we just read the stories, not the writers.) in the running.

But of course, because they’re stone cold racists, if we’re not actively running around pushing people who aren’t ready into publication/awards just because they’re the right sex/color/politics, then we’re keeping them out of publishing.  Yes, that’s right, you victims of Marxist brainwashing who aren’t northern European males.  The left thinks you’ll never survive by your wits alone.  (Have I mentioned middle fingers?  Does it help if I paint the nails bright red?)

I’ve helped, to the extent of my ability and unstintingly people of all sexes/orientations/colors get their start in writing. I don’t have the power to get them published, except indie, but heck, some (most)of my fledgelings in writing/indie are doing way better than I did at their time, and about half better than I do now, financially.

But the left can ONLY understand my actions through the lens of wanting to keep those people they think are incapable of making it on their own out of publishing.

So they don’t understand us.

To them we’re either evil or chaotic neutral.

I’m going to explain it now once and for all.  I don’t believe in numbers, or statistics of distributions of color and sex and orientation (you know what, I’m starting to believe the injunction against taking censuses in the Old Testament was just good, decent common sense.) I don’t believe people need to be pushed/shoved into every field in population proportional numbers.  There is no worse tyranny than that which dictates your life choices according to numbers and in the belief that you are a widget.

Human beings are not widgets and culture of subgroups is a thing.  it’s perfectly possible for people to not want to write, oh, science fiction or do, oh, engineering, because their micro culture isn’t into that.  It’s possible for women to want to stay home and raise kids, without being “oppressed.”

My beliefs can be summed up in: Let my people be.  Actually let ALL the people be.  Take your big busybody… mind, and go stick it in your own life.  You’re not the boss of me.  You’re not the boss of us.

I/we believe in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for individuals.  WE believe in individuals.  We think you have no clue what an individual even is, and we think you should put your own house in order before you tell us how to live.

Examine your own beliefs, and stop trying to “change the world” when you don’t have any clue how to even clean your room.

Go clean your room.  Because I tell you this, you’re sh*t out of luck when it comes to “ruling the world” (which is what you mean by changing it.  I speak fluent proggy.)

We will not let you.  And we’re determined, angry as h*ll and, unlike you (who could pick any socialist paradise on the map) we have nowhere else to go.

We’re also chaotic, leaderless, and a bit nuts.  Which means not only don’t you “get”us, you never will.

So, stop trying, go clean your room, give up the mind-altering substances, and learn a useful trade that doesn’t involve bossing others.  This is not judgemental, btw.  It’s what you need to do before you have a hope of convincing us you know anything.

Go.  Now.

Dreams Whose Time Has Passed – A Blast From the Past From January 2013

Years ago, I was talking to an older writer friend and she said wasn’t it weird how the future they expected and anticipated, with refectories and public crèches never came to pass.  I pointed out that, though they weren’t provided in a centralized manner, it had come to pass.  Back then (early 2000s) we were living a rather hectic life and often stopped for take-out – along with every other family with two working parents, also stopping for takeout.

It is natural for science fiction writers to think of centralized solutions for the future they want to happen.  This is natural not only because most science fiction writers older than I (and even more younger than I, but the reasons are different.  The younger ones were indoctrinated rather than taught) thought that the only way to achieve brand new patterns of living would be through top down imposition, but also because it’s easier to write a government solution for something, than the myriad, lurching confused, responses of the market – no matter how much more efficient the second is, in the long run.

This is the exact same reason we often end up with our characters saving the world or something of the sort and in my case often in the space of two weeks (I like stuff to go fast) because it’s much harder to say “And then some guy in China did this, and then…”  Also, makes for lousy stories.  The climaxes just are no fun, if you have to show a bunch of people no one heard of before doing a tiny bit to turn the situation.

Anyway, my friend was shocked at the idea, just as she was shocked at the idea that as it was most people WERE being raised by strangers in daycares.

This brings me to a fascinating paradox.  We are supposedly living in an age when feminism won and therefore we have all become… men?

Look, I know some of you – possibly because I WAS saying heretical stuff – interpreted my blowing steam post as meaning that I wanted all women to go back to the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant.

Actually, I don’t believe in broad groups and that very much includes “male and female.”  No, I don’t think that those are “social constructs” – sorry –  even if some of the ways the inherent tendencies express are very much a cultural thing (after all, Elizabethan men wore make up.)  BUT I do think that when you talk about the statistical female and the statistical male you are not, in fact, talking about anyone who exists.  You’re talking about “in general, it is this way.”  Lies, damn lies and statistics.  Depending on where you hang out, you might not know a single woman who is in the center of the IQ curve, who loves shopping and whose greatest ambition in life is to have babies.  (I do know some women like that.  It always strikes me as offensive from a writing POV, the same way my Chinese dry cleaner annoys me.  I mean, shouldn’t these roles be less stereotypical?  What was the Great Author thinking?)

Although there is, broadly speaking, a female brain and a male brain, very few people have a perfectly gendered one.  My older son, in the few minutes before my eyes glaze completely over, has gone on about hormone baths in pregnancy and also how your hormone balance throughout life will affect your epigenetics.  Pregnancy does change your brain too, if you have kids and heck, an extended period on some contraceptives changes your brain too.  And one of the characteristics it changes is how well you fit your gender prototype.

Stereotypes of course got to exist for a reason.  Meaning they have SOME predictive value.  If you know someone who is madly craving a brood of children there’s a good chance the person will be female (though apparently once upon a time it was my dad.  And the partner who didn’t want ANY was my mom.  So they ended up with two.)  But in your circle of acquaintance, the person who really wants kids might be Joe, and the person who is a type A career driven maniac might be Mary.  And in ten years it might be reversed.

So – what do I mean by all of this?  Why am I confusing you?  There isn’t enough coffee for this – just this: people are not the group they belong to.  Humans aren’t chips to be moved around a board.  You can’t say “Group A was advantaged for centuries, so we’re going to punish their descendants.”  Not only aren’t their descendants the same people who got an advantage, but the reason that advantage existed might now be completely gone.  (For instance part of the reason males had an advantage in career was that, frankly, they couldn’t get knocked up.   Which meant their lives were less likely to be interrupted by stopping to have have babies [and trust me, it does a number on your brain] than women were.  Reliable contraceptives have stopped that.)

In fact, the ultimate definition of evil is always treating humans like things.  Humans have this tendency, statistics or not, to be highly individual.  Take me, for instance – for a while in my life (we were furnishing and rehabilitating a house) I hung out with the good old boys outside the hardware store, waiting for it to open.  I still like carpentry.  I was a tomboy until I had kids, and in some ways I still am (as you’d see, if you could glimpse me fighting the boys with nerf swords, up and down the stairs.)  So you’re thinking I’m a boyish type female.  I’ve certainly never had trouble competing with men intellectually or professionally.  BUT I love doing crochet, I enjoy dressing up and make up and if you saw me out – in high heels – for an evening with my husband you would think I was the girliest girly who ever stepped.  (The only form of shopping I like is for shoes.  Deal.)  I also wanted to have a dozen children.  (Stoopid lack of fertility thwarted me.)  And I chose a career that allowed me to work at home and raise the boys rather than the more monetarily rewarding career I could have had in translation or teaching.  (The fact I really wanted to write is neither here nor there.  The reason I quit my technical translation job was that I had pre-eclampsia with Robert and it does interesting things to your brain.  The reason I chose not to go back was that trying to establish myself in writing, instead, allowed me to stay home and raise him myself.)

The point is, if you try to fit me in either role, you’ll get me very upset.  (And trust me, no one wants me very upset.)

And I fit about as well in “the thing to do” now as I would have done when the “thing to do” was to “be a good wife and mother.”  I chose to have a career AND to raise my own kids.   So the career had to be one that allowed me to raise the kids, but I failed at soccer mom 101, because I was busy writing. Both were perfectly reasonable.  I had to do something intellectual or I’d go batty(er) and I always wanted to write fiction.  At the same time I’d seen the result of kids raised by strangers, knew there was a good chance my kids would be outliers of the type that always do worse in daycare, and I decided no, I wanted to raise them.

Yes, I spent years being looked down upon because I stayed home to raise the kids.  A gentleman who BARELY escaped having his head bitten off, this only because he was too stupid to talk to, at a party for a company Dan worked for in the late nineties, asked me what I did for a living.  I told him I was a writer – at the time I had sold my first novel, had five stories published and WAS working 8 + hours a day on getting the career off the ground.  Yes, I was normally working with the kids playing legos at my feet, or reading in my research chair.  He asked what I’d had published, and when I explained, he curled his lip and said “In other words, you’re a housewife.”

Now, the anedocte is illustrative of two things: first, he thought being a housewife was bad.  In fact, he thought it was so bad that he decided I was lying about writing (I still wonder how easy he thought it was to sell five stories and a novel.  Let me tell you, at the time, not easy) to cover up my condition as housewife.

He wasn’t the only one.  All through my life I’ve run into people assuming that a) because I’m married; b) because I chose to have kids;  c) because I chose to raise my own kids, I must have the IQ of warm milk.

Without an exception, the people making this assumption were feminists – whether male or female – and would have said that they were for female equality…

I’m fairly sure the shows showing every position of power from police captain to corporate exec as female (for double points female of color!) also think they’re striking one for equality.

My question is…  If we must all be equal, why must we all be equally male?  Why shouldn’t it be equality of opportunity: jobs have certain requirements, if you can fulfill them we don’t care what gender equipment you were born with.  (Unless the job is prostitution, where legal, of course.  Oh, wait.  That falls under requirements.)

I don’t at all oppose showing women in positions of power – though I’d prefer if it were made clear there is a price in both cases.  The stay-at-home, no-job mom will be paying a price in employability and also in social standing.  But the career woman also pays in an often (though not always) lonely life and in childlessness.  There is no perfect path.  You lays your bet, you takes your earnings.  BUT I do oppose showing women in EVERY position of power (or just about.  Sometimes you’re allowed a minority guy in those roles.)

Why is it that from promiscuity while young (though I think that is because of the misguided late-nineteenth century idea that if we all had all the sex we wanted there would be no neurosis.  We should be past that now) to single minded pursuit of career as an ideal, we are pushing women into male roles and giving male roles the high status even as we disem-power (totally a word.  Deal) REAL males.

It’s as though we’ve determined the best  thing possible for society is for everyone to be males or ersatz males.  And ersatz males are better.

In a truly feminist society wouldn’t the female roles be more valued?  Wouldn’t we have guys bragging how they stay home with the toddlers because they’re way better at it than their wives?  Wouldn’t we have women embarrassed to admit that kids were put in daycare?

And you know, the puzzling thing about this, is that – no sentimentality considered – traditional female roles were of paramount importance.  The raising of the next generation is not only vital, but perhaps the most vital to the continuation of the civilization.

It is also one done very badly by strangers, be they the government or private people.  It is not the first time a civilization has tried this.  In fact, squinting and from a distance, our pursuit of status through abandoning of the raising of our own kids is exactly what Rome did, and what the French aristocracy did, and what the British aristocracy did.  And every time – mark me – every time the kids thus raised either brought the civilization that created them down, or had a d*mn good whack at it, even if saved by peripheral events.

The fact that we consider raising kids low status shows how far we’ve come to devaluing women in this supposedly woman-centered society.  This is just like the promiscuity that is supposed to “liberate” women actually results in young men who never feel the need to commit to a monogamous relationship.  Who is it liberating?

Look, the old model was restrictive and oppressive.  No doubt about that.  There were, I’m sure, excellent scientific brains that could have advanced humanity but instead were expended in the dark dankness of a cottage, rocking the cradle, because women weren’t to be taught.  (For that matter, I’m sure that there are excellent brains covered by burkas in places where women are simply what’s between their legs.)

The new model is restrictive and oppressive.  Young women are taught that wife and mother is not an honorable choice even if they are working at home AT THE SAME TIME.  Even if their profession is demanding.  For that matter, young men are taught that staying at home to raise kids is somehow wrong.  (For a brief time my husband was the “kindergarten mom” and I went out to work.  The sneers were WORSE.)

Are there women who would do very well in combat?  Probably.  And given other psychological arrangements (like, perhaps the instincts of their male colleagues cause problems, so perhaps an all-female unit, if it can be managed) if they meet the requirements men meet, let them do it. There are women (vanishingly few) who can fireman-carry a 400lb man out of a burning building.  And if they pass the tests, for the love of G-d why not let them do it?

But please don’t push them into it, don’t lower requirements for them, and don’t sneer at them if they choose NOT to do it.  Value what used to be called “men’s work” and “Men’s ways” and “women’s work” and “women’s ways.”  It’s all human work.  It all needs doing.

In the same way – I know a few couples this way – if the man is more nurturing and wants to stay home with the kids, suspend the jokes.  And if the man wants to be an engineer and the woman wants to stay home and cook and sew and raise babies, what business is it anyone else’s?  Why should people be made miserable to fulfill dreams of past generations?

Oh, sure, I’d prefer a future in which because of tech we have even more flexibility: a future in which most people work from home and parents can supervise their kids’ education which is mostly online.  A future in which human potential is highly augmented by labor-and-time saving technologies.

But even then it won’t be universal, and the best way to GET there is to stop grouping people: by color, by gender, by … whatever.

Let each person do what they’re best at and WANT to do.  You’ll find that people are best at what they like – or at least they work harder at it.  And that everyone is better off, when people are allowed to do what they feel called to do.

I believe in individuals.  Whether the individuals want to be barefoot (pregnant is more difficult, because some of those will be male and others will be infertile) in the kitchen, or suited up in the boardroom, or driving a truck, or exploring Mars, or teaching toddlers, or nursing the sick, or fighting wildfires, or fighting on behalf of their nation, or researching scientific puzzles, or writing a novel WHILE rocking the cradle.

I think each person should do what they want and are best suited to, and that we should stop counting heads and thinking there’s a “problem” if there’s more outies than innies here or there.

Let’s stop pounding square pegs into round holes.  It ruins both the holes and the pegs.

This morning I woke up to two bizarre things: three coyotes merrily walking around the path between my back yard and the nature preserve in the full light of day.

For perspective, my neighbors often walk their dogs there.  Add also my reason not to have dogs right now — though we kind of wanted to — is that two weeks or so after we moved in, a coyote got into the neighbor’s yard and eviscerated the dog.  Who wasn’t small.

One of the things I really liked about hanging out in my backyard was seeing the other neighbors boxers (I think.  Yes, I know they’re illegal in Denver.  Yes, people still have them anyway) playing in the yard.  Now they rarely come out except for a few minutes, under supervision, or while being walked because of the coyotes.

At the same time, a friend on facebook, and someone I know is not stupid (and who is a RL friend, because he keeps his mouth shut on politics around me) was talking about what a great thing it was that Trump administration people were getting harassed and refused service in the name of “keeping the nazis down.”  No word yet on whether he wants to make Trump administration people wear an armband with an orange star.  Yeah, I think we found the nazi, and it’s not the people getting harassed.

And it’s our fault.  To a great extent it is our fault.  Oh, not completely, and I’m not going to argue that it is.  The guilt for being horrible people who wish to do violence and cause discomfort (for now that’s all) to innocent people is not ours.

But like someone in a bad marriage, the right has enabled the left.  I was going to write “in the US” but that’s not even true. It’s worldwide, and arguably worse elsewhere in the world.

Why do I say it’s our fault?

Well, guys, every mother of a daughter should tell her something on her wedding day “If he ever hits you tell him ‘one more time, and I leave’ then do it.” This is not as much a danger in modern America, or in America really, unless you’re in certain sub-cultures, but in the village growing up, from what I heard of women talking, every man tried it on at least once. I’ve had friends whose mothers didn’t tell them that, and who stayed.  The best of men, given disproportionate advantage of size and strength can become a bully to his woman, if there’s no enforcement.  Those marriages slide down hill fast.  I also have friends who were told that and left on the second offense.  Some reconciled later. Some didn’t.  Still better than the alternative.  And the ones who reconciled did it on a new footing.

Women have their own form of transgression in an intimate relationship, and if a man doesn’t curb his lady’s tendency to bicker and pick him apart with words, that will also end badly, particularly because she’ll convince herself he really is no good, and either leave him or demand constant homage.

I knew looking for a partner that I needed someone with a very strong will or within a year I’d walk all over him.  (Did it with boyfriends.)  Then grow bored.

So what does that have to do with how the left is behaving?

Same thing.  For years the partner in our political dance, had (still has in Europe) the full advantage of size and force.  Oh, maybe there weren’t more of them (impossible to tell) but there were more of them connected to each other, and they had the advantage of controlling all mass means of communication.

Also because they are crazy *ss people full of their own righteousness, most of us have kept quiet in public and often in private social occasions.  Oh, we weren’t crazy.  We knew that it could cost us our jobs/families/friends to even make slightly-less-left counterpoint to their assertions.

How many conversations did I sit through in the eighties, where Reagan was derided and Carter sanctified and we were told the boom in the economy was Carter’s and “just delayed”? How many conversations did I remain silent in the nineties, when they said that Hillary would run soon and wasn’t that wonderful? Or that sex was a private matter, and so Clinton had been totally right to lie under oath?

The problem, guys, is the same as with coyotes. Or wolves for that matter.  I had a well-meaning new agey friend in the nineties earnestly tell me  that all the campaigns against wolves had been misguided, all the legends of wolves attacking people were slander.  Wolves didn’t like the taste of people.  We were perfectly safe.  It took all I could not to yell in her face “We are made of meat, you dolt.”

But that’s part of it, you know, coyotes and wolves, and oh, hell, bears (there was a pub crawling one on the west side of the springs.  He hit bar dumpsters) and even deer (don’t get too near the large bucks.)  There is a number of custard heads who think they’re “cute” or “sweet” and “would never hurt humans.”

So we let them get closer and closer and proliferate out of control.  And we don’t even hit them with salt on the rear quarters, which would keep them away from people.  They lost their fear.

The same goes for the left and their constant bleating about “evil nazis.”  If they really thought we were that, they’d fall on their knees and lick our feet.  I know it with certainty because they do it with every totalitarian mass murderer from Che to Mao to Chavez to even the crazy mullahs.

No, what they’ve done is lose all fear of us.  And that has tempted them to act like the nazis they claim we are.

Look, sometimes just a dusting with salt on the butt of a wild animal (or super soakers with water with soap, which we’ve used on aggressive raccoons) keeps them away, makes them think twice.

Second civil war?

Sure, if we don’t start fighting back in other ways now.  How?  Complaints to the police for disturbing the peace/harrassment. Talking back in less dire circumstances.  Hell, if it comes to that and you’re feeling assholish, confront them for wearing t-shirts with mass murderers.  Bone up on the facts and statistics and get in their face with them.

But mostly, at home and at work, politely and firmly point out that these tactics are Nazi tactics, and that they are no part of a civil society.  Point out they are deluded and crazed partisans.  Keep on it.

Expect worse before things get better. Part of the reason they’ve gone insane, other than our permissiveness is that right now they’re losing power, and — having cut themselves off from all feedback — they don’t know why.  They lurch from conspiracy theory to conspiracy theory, unable to understand why they stopped winning.  After all, everyone they know keeps quiet no matter how heinous what they say.

They have to realize we’re not fringe, and that they’re out of control.  That takes figuring out not everyone agrees with them and silence isn’t consent.  Sometimes it’s horrified incredulity.

Yes, this is your annual “come out, come out wherever you are.”

As you know I was in the political closet for decades.  It twists your soul.  But more importantly, it lets the left thing they already won and can go totally out of control.

I’m not judging anyone.  You know your circumstances best.  Like me, you might be quiet because baby needs shoes.

But if you can, where you can, speak and be counted.

Fight now with words, so we don’t have to fight later with physical actions.

And may your efforts be blessed.

As we get older it becomes harder to look at ourselves in the mirror.  And no, it’s not just the obvious signs of aging but that we have to face — not even choices but — things that happened in our lives that left a mark on that person looking back on us.

Those of us who grew up near a large and relatively stationary family (look, dad’s family lost half its kids or more to other countries each generation (I represent) but there were enough that stayed there) and had enough generations to know the “family look.”

When you’re young you can deceive yourself that you don’t belong to this large, clumsy, lumbering tribe (represent again!) but as you age, you start seeing other people in your mirror.  For years now, I’ve been looking at my paternal grandmother, which is funny since, objectively my features are more like mom’s.  But there’s the look.

Otoh, when I’m tired or ill, the voice that comes out is that of my maternal grandmother.

So, what does it matter?  Oh, well, it doesn’t.  Not really.

Knowing where you came from seems to be a human obsession, though.

I have friends who were adopted and who would like to know who their real parents are, in varying degrees.  Some have been trying to figure out for years (and some managed) and others would kind of like to know for the health information, but have no burning desire to find out.

But humans as a whole seem to want to know “where we come from.” It could be said that in the past nobleman-privilege amounted to knowing who your great grandfather was. (Actually I know that.  It’s after that that it gets fuzzy.  Usually in varying degrees of family legends, and stories of ancestors getting amalgamated with each other.)

Sure there are things to knowing who your ancestors were and what they were good at.  It managed to make me pass (usually B) in math, even though I have severe digit dyslexia (how severe?  Well, I led the entire family on a search for a house number 265 recently, verifying my print out several times, until younger son pulled paper from my hand and went “For the love of heaven, mum, 295!”) because “our people have always been good at math.”  Ditto history and languages.  In fact, the only thing I was allowed to be bad in was crafts and art.  Art, because only about half of us were good at art.  And also because “crafts don’t matter.”  This is the other side of knowing.  You see, I actually COULD be quite good at crafts and art, but I got a free pass, because the family as a whole wasn’t.

Oh, yeah, and I could be as bad as I wanted in gym because the family as a whole had such coordination issues we could never jump rope or ride a bicycle.  (This part is good.  I tried.  I tried really hard.  Knowing no one on dad’s side could do it, just saved me beating myself up.)

There are stories particularly from the early twentieth century of noblemen walking away from their heritage and finding it immensely freeing.

I think part of the reason for American exceptionalism is just that.  You walk away and can reinvent yourself any way you want.  Easier, even in early days, as you could not travel, and your relatives didn’t check up on you via facebook.  You get there, and you can be anyone you want, and the people around you don’t have expectations of you based on the lives of people you never met.

To an extent, the left is reversing that.  It’s locking people up in victim/oppressor groups.  It’s worse than being bound by the deeds of your ancestors.  You’re being found by the deeds of people you never met and who might have no genetic relationship with you: nothing but a vague physical resemblance.

Take our former president, embraced by the descendants of slaves in America, thinking one of them finally won the presidency.  Yeah.  His mom’s family were slave owners, and I read convincing accounts of his father’s family’s relationship to Arabs and Dahomey, both slave dealers.  So, why is he supposed to be descended from the oppressed again?  Oh, yeah, he can tan, so he’ll always be a victim.  Gotcha.

Does anyone think this makes a yota of sense?

I have a friend whose ancestors fit in the same “oppressed group” at lest on appearance. But they came to the US recently, and as she pointed out once, they certainly didn’t consider themselves oppressed in their homeland.  Why should they?  What their status was in America didn’t affect them.  They weren’t here.

There is a certain blinkered twenty first century American blinkeredness about this designation of oppressors and victims, as though no other country ever existed, and as though everyone should care what WOULD have happened to your ancestors here.

It’s like we’re locking people in that same web of expectations, but not only less rationally, but also immutably.

Hey, it doesn’t matter if your dad is the president, if you’re of African ancestry, you’re still a victim forever.  And it doesn’t matter if you’re a concentration camp victim, you still have white privilege.

It’s like they’re constructing an entire world with no contact with reality.  Oh, wait, they are.  It’s what they do, and why communism is so lethal and socialism kills on the installment plan: because it tries to force people to act like equal and interchangeable widgets.  Which can’t happen.

Sure, family trauma, and if your ancestors were badly treated has some influence on you.  Not a ton.  I mean, look guys we’re all born broken.  But some of the breaks of the past come through to us in a way.  Mom’s obsession with never being quite good enough might have a lot to do with where she grew up.  But passing it on to me second hand makes mine less rational.  The fraction I passed to my sons is utterly inexplicable.  But yeah, it’s there.  You don’t raise kids with your good intentions.  You raise them with all of you. They learn from things you don’t know you’re doing.

So, yeah, the children of the oppressed — or the abused, or the social climbers, or the unsatisfied, etc — bear their scars.

But this is not something that can or should be fixed by government.  I might still be working through the guilt of some great-great-great ancestor at what he did in a war we’ve now forgotten, but CERTAINLY that doesn’t mean everyone who looks like me or has a similar geographic ancestry is working through the same.  And the government has no way of knowing PRECISELY what you might be working through.  Even if we could precisely identify all your ancestors (I have a feeling people in the future will find our DNA testing as funny as we find phrenology) do we know who raised them?  It’s not a matter of DNA alone, and the raising has at least half of it.

Right now, what we’re doing is creating “aristocracy” of the blood, endowed with rights just because of their PRESUMED ancestry, and “peasants” (really villains) of the blood, endowed with guilt and shame because of their birth.  No society who does this can retain its rate of innovation or be socially permeable for long.

We are who we are, to an extent, and as different from the rest of the world as we are, because those chains were broken.  It’s okay to want to know where you came from, provided you’re not going to find yourself in the ancestral village with the neighbors and even strangers telling you the limits that sets on who you are.

It’s okay to want to know what went into making you.  It’s not okay to make yourself part of a victim or oppressor group based on “looks like.”

And it’s a really bad idea to have the government give bennies or punishment based on “looks like.”

Using the government to do anything is akin to practicing surgery with a wooden spoon in the kitchen.  Using the government to right the wrongs of past generations and fix the psychological wounds of individuals by coddling or reviling is more akin to doing all of that, only it’s brain surgery, and it’s midnight, and the electricity is out.

It can’t be one, or at least not in any way that makes it better, instead of worse.

Yeah, that person looking at you from the mirror doesn’t feel like you.  But you are.  And you are human with all the goods and ills of it.

So, yeah, sure, you might be carrying wounds you don’t even know about because some past ancestors was very badly treated.

All of us have some wound.  No one can do the work of saving you.  It’s time to become the self-rescuing princess (or prince.)

Pick yourself up, dust yourself off.  Whatever your ancestors endowed or failed to endow you with, it’s you who has to make your best of what you have.

Now go do it.