Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

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.

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 ARLAN ANDREWS: Silicon Blood.

In the near future, the drug cartels of South America establish their own criminal nation, Cordillera, and proceed to flood the world with cocaine and political corruption.

America responds by using the new science of nanotechnology to produce microscopic machines – “nanobots” – to eradicate such drugs once and for all. But these tiny devices can also be used to create new kinds of drugs inside a human body – a “pharm” — or to devour it from within.

After a catastrophic nano-plague, a new and powerful drug lord, El Hombre – “The Guy” – uses nanobots to set up a worldwide drug ring, harvesting new drugs from human bodies and enforcing obedience with threats of devourment.

Jerry Gade, a nano-engineer with a horrific secret, fights back.

The struggle between Gade and The Guy takes place in both the human domain and in the invisible world of their own nano-creations.

The outcome of their battle will determine the future of the human race.

FROM MARGARET BALL:  An Annoyance of Grackles (Applied Topology Book 3).

Problems come not as as single corvids, but as full flocks…
Life at the Center for Applied Topology is never precisely normal, but Thalia Kostis, Brad Lensky and their coworkers have been enjoying a brief run of peace, quiet, and optimizing the theorems that allow for teleportation and camouflage. Everything is within parameters, until they get saddled with an intern who’s convinced that he’s God’s gift to math and that their applications of topology are illusory.
A rebellion is brewing – but bigger problems are afoot. Their old enemy, the Master of Ravens is back, and has teamed up with a mercenary with a grudge over the Center’s recent disruption of a profitable contract. Together, the two are planning on taking out the Center – and everyone in it!

FROM BLAKE SMITH:  A Short and Sweet Regency Romance.

Marianne Stanhope is in trouble. Her family is urging her to accept the attentions of a most odious suitor, so she turns to a gentleman of her acquaintance for aid. But Mr. Firth has his own reasons for assisting Miss Stanhope, and it falls to her childhood friend Mr. Killingham to convince her that she’s made a dreadful mistake.

FROM L.A. GREGORY:  Hawkwing: A Novel of the Bitterlands.

Kestrel’s land is scarred in ways its inhabitants cannot begin to understand, built on long-poisoned earth and menaced by twisted plants and animals. Farmers, hunters, and magic-users fight a long battle to create safe havens and reclaim lost ground, but their casualties mount over generations.

Kestrel knows little and cares less about the patterns that shape her world. She’s a shapechanger and healer who has spent the handful of years since reaching womanhood cleansing the wildlife of her blighted land with medicine and magic. Sure of her place and confident in her skills, she takes care of her own and doesn’t poke at things that don’t concern her. But when she returns from a routine journey with her brother to find her home ransacked and empty, Kestrel must gather her remaining family and search for new allies before old magic and older hatred rob her kin of their freedom, their lives, and possibly their souls.

FROM K.M. O’BRIEN: The Sculpted Ship.

She dreamed of adventuring across the stars as captain of her own sleek ship. Then Anailu Xindar grew up.
She didn’t lose her dream – she changed it; made it practical. She became a starship engineer; she saved her money; she earned the skills and experience a starship captain would need.
She still didn’t feel ready to go out on her own – but then her safe job went sour.
With her newly minted Imperial Shipmaster’s License in hand, Anailu just needs to find and buy a cheap, reliable freighter. Instead, she ends up making a crazy deal for an impractical, rare ship that’s long on beauty – but short a few critical components.
She’s determined to get her crippled ship back out among the stars, but her technical skills won’t be enough. Anailu will have to brave the dangers of a planet on the edge of the empire: safaris, formal dinners, rogue robots, and a fashion designer.
She may even have to make a few friends – and enemies.
The Sculpted Ship is set on the outskirts of a thousand-year interstellar empire, where a young woman with ambition, skill, and manners has a chance to achieve her dreams.

(newly edited and revised October 2017)

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: picture.

It is Heinlein’s birthday.  It is also coincidentally my oldest son’s birthday.  It is one of those things that makes me believe I’m living in a novel, as it connects me simultaneously to the past and the future. The man who molded my thought, and the man I helped mold (a little bit.  It will shock all of you that he’s a stubborn cuss, right?) both sharing the same name and born on the same date.  (Though our Robert started the being born thing on the fourth of July, he hung fire till the seventh early morning.  Go figure.  And yeah, I loved the three days hard labor.  Not.)

Lately I’ve been giving a lot of thought to what it means to be a writer, and to what a writer hopes to leave behind.  There are reasons for this, and yes, my entire family, collectively, has yelled me into going to the doctor.  I’ve been putting it off because it’s probably nothing, and I don’t want to give trouble, but at the same time, there are worrying symptoms, and at any rate I’m 55 which means I’m closer to the end than the beginning. There’s also the fact that 27 years ago today I almost died.  (They gave Dan 10% of chances both Robert and I would survive.  They said more than likely he’d lose one of us.  I’m very glad he didn’t.  I love my family.)  Also, 21 years and six months ago the doctors all said I wouldn’t live more than a few days (pervasive pneumonia. 11 days in ICU) and I prayed very earnestly to be allowed to live to raise my boys. Which I admittedly have.  And write my books.  Which I sort of have.  So, hence the morbid thoughts.

Anyway, any writer who is a working writer leaves a lot of crap behind.  And sometimes it is not what HE/SHE identifies as crap.  I mean Austen’s favorite book was Emma, a book I can barely get through because of the desire to reach through the book and strangle the eponymous twit.

So we’re not usually the best judges of our work, though I confess to giggling like a little girl while listening to number of the beast and hearing him refer to Stranger as “what some writers do for money.”

I have three of those, truth be told. Not that they made me anymore than a slightly upgraded advance.  (Hint: I haven’t reissued them yet.)

His books that I love: The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress; Citizen of the Galaxy; Puppet Masters.  All the others too, but after those.  And btw, yeah, Puppet Masters was a rushed thing, for money.

I hope but don’t believe my work will be similarly worthy of praise thirty years after my death.

Happy birthday RAH (both of them) and thank you (both of them) for inspiration and encouragement to do my best.

I’m trying.

The Guardian fan-girls over yet another Clinton – by Amanda S. Green

I know. I know. I was supposed to have blogged yesterday. Life has been “interesting” in more ways than one of late and time got away from me. I sent Sarah and apology and a promise to have something for her today. Later, she sent me a link to an article with the comment, “If you want something to snark . . .” Well, it took reading only the first paragraph to know snark won out. I needed something to snark and, OMG, she gave it to me. Of course, it is easy – and almost a duty – to snark anything in The Guardian [Teh Grauniad – ed.] and doubly so when any member of the Clinton family is involved.

You see, according to The Guardian, US media refers to Chelsea Clinton as “royalty”. They do so because she grew up in the Arkansas governor’s mansion and left for university from the White House. She’s special because of that, you see. “It is a uniquely strange and unenviable version of celebrity that stole Clinton’s anonymity before she was old enough to spell it.” I guess they’ve never heard of Caroline Kennedy or John F. Kennedy, Jr. Both of whom were thrust into the spotlight because of their family name, the fact their father was president, his assassination and their mother’s own fame. Or how about How about Lynda Bird and Luci Baines Johnson, daughters of Lyndon B. Johnson, former U.S. representative, senator, vice-president and then president? They grew up in politics and had the spotlight on them all their lives thanks to their father. Or Amy Carter, Jimmeh’s daughter? Or any one of numerous other children of politicians – or Hollywood stars – who grew up in the spotlight because of who their parents were? Nothing about Chelsea Clinton’s childhood makes her “royalty” much less makes her childhood “unique”.

Perhaps the writer doesn’t know what “uniquely”, which comes from the word “unique”, means. According to the dictionary, “unique” means “existing as the only one or as the sole example”. Considering the examples I’ve already given, not to mention others I could give, I’m pretty sure she hasn’t a clue about the meaning, at least not in this context.

But let’s go one.

Perhaps “pretentious” would have been a better word to use when describing Chelsea. First, the day before the interview, the writer spoke with one of Chelsea’s “handlers” who left her wondering how far she’d be able to go off-script in the upcoming interview. Then, the next day, the interview was held at The Clinton Foundation, in a “discreetly unadvertised expanse of midtown Manhattan office space populated by serious-looking people and elegantly adorned by African-inspired artwork chosen by Clinton’s father.” Oh, and the interview itself didn’t take place in a simple office or coffee room. Oh no. A Clinton could never be that normal. It took place in the board room. Yes, there is a psychology to this, one the author apparently either didn’t recognize or chose to ignore. It was Chelsea making sure her own importance, and her control, wasn’t overlooked.

Three paragraphs in – and they are long paragraphs – we have yet to hear anything about Chelsea’s book, the reason for the interview. There have been two, maybe three, references to the fact she ahs a new book out. But dayam, this is a fan girl’s scree to a Clinton. She’s soooo wonderful. She started the interview precisely on time. She was soooo informed about British current events. She noticed the author’s medical sleeve and asked about it and about the origin of her first name, “Decca”. It’s as if she’d never conducted an interview before with someone who had grown up being groomed for public speaking and service. Trust me, Decca, Slick Willie trained his daughter well, much better than her mother did, when it comes to connecting to people.

Finally, in the fourth paragraph, we get to the book, “She Persisted Around the World”. Well, we sort of do. We finally get the title. We know it is a sequel to another book Clinton put out. But most of the paragraph deals with how the original book got its title from the confrontation between Mitch McConnell and Elizabeth Warren when McConnell used Senate rules to stop Warren from reading a letter from Martin Luther King, Jr. Of course, good ole Decca is full of condemnation for McConnell and his “scathing attack” on Warren and his use of an “obscure senate rule” to silence her. Nothing, of course, is said about why he used the rule and little is said about how she had been warned, more than once, that she was in violation of Senate rules. That wouldn’t fit the narrative of an evil white male silencing a woman and we much stay true to the narrative, no matter what the cost to truth.

You see, Clinton wants to show girls they can be whatever they want to be. Okay, that’s cool. But let’s look deeper. Using research from the Geena Davis Institute – Yes, it is THAT Geena Davis and the full name is the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in the Media. Sorry, am I the only one to laugh hysterically about this? – to prove her point that the vast majority of cartoons have male protagonists, Clinton wants to see this change. She wants little girls – and, of course, little boys – to know girls can be more than sisters or mothers, friends or partners. She quotes Sally Ride, “You can’t be what you can’t see.”

Ride’s quote, while accurate, was taken out of context. It came from an interview she did and was in response to being asked about being a role model and the transition from astronaut to public face of her company. Ride basically said she didn’t become a physicist or an astronaut to be a role model. However, after her first flight, she realized she had become a role model. That’s when she said, “Young girls need to see role models in whatever careers they may choose, just so they can picture themselves doing those jobs someday. You can’t be what you can’t see.”

On the surface, Clinton appears to be supporting what Ride said. But then, when you look at it closer, you can see where she is using the quote to advance her own agenda. You see, she wants girls to be “more” than best friends or partners, more than sisters or mothers. No where in her interview does she seem to say it is okay if that is all the girl wants. Ride, on the other hand, makes it clear that girls need role models in “whatever careers they may choose” and, yes, motherhood, etc., can and is a career. But, again, that doesn’t fit the narrative.

Clinton says, “It’s so often the case that our stories are centred around men, told by men, the heroes are men – and so I think it’s hugely important that we make women more visible in the stories in our history that have always existed, but also to imagine and create more female-centred stories moving forward.”

Wow. Just wow. I feel sorry for her. To grow up in a home with a supposed feminist mother and not having known those stories already exist. I’m older than Chelsea. I grew up in a home with books about Marie Curie and other women in history. I can walk into my study and find books about Abigail Adams, Mary Todd Lincoln, Marie Curie and so many others. Books that my parents had. I can find novels with female leads, strong female leads. I didn’t need to see women in roles I wanted to be in. Why? Because my parents told me that, as long as I did my best, I could try for anything. I might not always get it – they were realists after all and not trying to raise a precious little snowflake – but I could try. Apparently, Chelsea either didn’t have this or she doesn’t believe there are parents out there who don’t rely on the media to raise their kids.

Yep, this comes back to the media. Remember, she is using the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in the Media to justify her work. I guess you have to reach for something when your dad was philandering in the Oval Office when you were a kid and your mother refuses to admit she lost the fucking presidency not once but twice.

She has talked in the past about inheriting her maternal grandmother’s “responsibility gene”, and mentions to me that her daughter’s nursery has been encouraging conversations about the concept of fairness. “It gives us the chance to talk with her about what is fair, and that she already has unfair advantages because of who her parents are. I don’t think she really understands the concept of privilege yet, but I want her to be able to understand that as soon as she’s old enough to.

Oh. My. Ghu. She has to have her daughter’s nursery “encouraging conversations about the concept of fairness”. If she is so “woke”, why is this even necessary? She should have already been having this discussion. Oh, and let’s not forget this is with her three-year-old daughter. Mmmm, yeah, I also “don’t think she really understands the concept”. She’s three! Maybe instead to talking to her about privilege, Chelsea should be talking to her about what is right and wrong, what is nice and what’s not. But nooo, this is so much more “woke” and sounds so much better to the other “woke” folks.

There is so much more but all it shows is what we already knew. The Guardian, if it ever knew what journalistic integrity is, has long forgotten its meaning. Pretty much like how the author of this article has forgotten the meanings of the words like “unique” and “lifelong impossibility of being” Chelsea Clinton. OMFG. You can almost hear the squees, in full fan-girl mode, of Decca as she writes about Clinton. For an article that is supposed to be about Clinton’s book, well, it isn’t. It is about how wonderful Clinton is, how strong she is for having survived being Clinton, etc. There isn’t enough snark – or enough booze – to keep reading.

What it all boils down to is this – Clinton isn’t Trump. Evil Trump. Bad Trump. She doesn’t do her father’s dirty work like Ivanka does. She even manages to get in a passive-aggressive slap at Barbara Bush in the interview. Yes, the interview that was supposed to be about her book but which surprisingly – or not – turned into a political interview. Remember when Decca lamented that she worried about how far afield Chelsea would go from the stated purpose of the interview? I think it is clear this was never going to be an interview about her book. This was a very carefully planned attack on the current administration and a set up for either her mother’s next run for office or her own political future.

Poor little Chelsea, sitting high in her mommy’s and daddy’s foundation, looking at her name on the door and knowing she has to do something to live up to their “legacy”, no matter what that legacy might be. I hate to tell her this but her family never has been and never will be the Kennedys, no matter how hard they try.

One thing does come clear as you read the article, however. Chelsea learned how to manipulate and communicate from her father. She is much smoother than her mother ever will be. This is something to keep in mind. Slick Willie has a daughter who can be as slick as he. Will she be satisfied with her “work” for the foundation and her writing or will she soon stick her toe into the political waters? Only time will tell but I know where my money is.

And no, I am not going to read her book. I’ve already read one Clinton’s book and my liver is still recovering. I think I would almost rather read Michelle O’s book than this.

Sarah, you own me a drink or three for having waded through this trash. I should have known better. Grumble. Grumble.

There are a bunch of sour pusses running around who quote John Adams on “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” to claim that every misfortune that comes our way is because we’re not moral and religious according to their version of morality and religion, or that we’ll never make the republic function, because, you know, we’re not perfect angels.

That sound you hear is me rolling my eyes hard.

Look, I haven’t made a concerted study of John Adams other than reading up on the revolution in general (yeah, I know I need to but time keeps running away from me.)  I do know that while religious and definitely moral (look, a man who defends enemy soldiers because that’s the right thing to do is moral.  You just might not like where his morality takes him) he was not a sourpuss, and would not demand that everyone be perfect angels according to his definition of moral and religion before the republic would work.  If he felt that way, he might as well have sat on his hands, since humans are not and have never been angels or morally perfect, or you know flawlessly religious.

I think what he meant was more along the lines of “people have to agree on a frame work for the world and it should be [what we would call] that of western civ.”  I.e. humans are imperfect, and only G-d is perfect, and we do the right thing even when it hurts us.  Also, the right thing is roughly contained in the ten commandments which by themselves enjoin respect for “the other” and his rights.

Not that John would expect us to be perfect at it.  He was human, and though it’s tempting to imagine their world back then was much simpler, it takes only an average intelligence and a modicum of knowledge to figure out it wasn’t.

Which brings us to that common framework, and not just in morals and religion (It’s always hard to educate people in a plural religious society.  Just not deriding religion in public might be all we can ask for. Morals on the other hand, we have a framework for in our own constitution and we should definitely be raising kids with the idea of the “right thing” you know like not stealing or murdering, and not sponging off people.) We’re failing them all across the board.  Which is unconscionable considering the years we make kids spend in Maximum Security schools, aka K -12.

I might have told the story here of when I was in college and for reasons I can no longer remember (the Shakespeare group?) took a train at 4 or 5 am into the city.  These trains are the equivalent of red eye flights with the difference that not only are they cheap, but they are the only way people from far flung regions can get into the city.  (Or could.  This was before the highway system and widespread car ownership) Which means they start at 9 pm or so and stop.at.every.stop.no.matter how minor.  Back then the stop in the village was almost voluntary in that it wasn’t even marked and sometimes new conductors “forgot” it playing havoc with my school schedule.

This one stopped, though, and on it were people from far in the mountains, who’d been traveling all night.  There was also a young man, maybe 14 who was making his way through the train, telling the tragic tale of how his family had been killed in the war in Spain, and he was a refugee with nothing.

In case you’re wondering, this was 1983.  Yeah, there was no war in Spain.  I tried to fit it with any of the bombings, but nothing recently in the news fit.  And yet, all these women were cooing over him and opening their purses.

Look, at the time, the war in Spain was something they’d heard from their parents as I had.  The required education was fourth grade, a lot of it very practical skills like how to tell if an egg was rotted, with a smattering of academic stuff (math, history, geography, grammar) at the end just so those heading to prep school (grades 5 and 6 — prep because it prepared you for high school) had the rudiments.  Most of my classmates went to work the day after they finished 4th grade. And the history we got never got past about 1900.  So what did they have?

Oh, the means to inform themselves, for sure.  Newspapers and books, and radio stations devoted to history and mythology and stuff.  I know this because my mom listened to those late at night when she was working because on a deadline.

But most people don’t care.  It’s just not important for their daily life.  Which means they fall for little sobs with an sob story in the train, but also for presentism and the lies of the Marxists.  Because, really, how would they know that this thing that sounds so good has failed and filled mass graves over and over again?

Never happen here, you say? We have 12 years of education.  TWELVE.  Surely people have a common framework for the world when they leave school.  It might be tilted left, but it’s a framework.

You wish.  What they actually have is a very odd mishmash topped with bits of popular books and movies.

And I’m not talking stupid, mind you.  I’ve heard things like this from people who were smart and even gifted in their fields, except that their interests didn’t fall to either history, economics or politics.

For instance one of my art teachers (post graduate education) once told me that Anne Rice did impeccable research about how there was a peaceful matriarchy before–  Yeah.

Heard same from well spoken people in grocery store about Dan Brown’s “amazing research” and the things he’d “uncovered.”

If you pursue conversation with these people you find their idea of the past is a mishmash of confusing insanity overlaid with the ideas of the SJWs, because those are really loud and have penetrated.  For instance, the idea women were always discriminated against, because men are evil.  Or that the normal state of women throughout history was roughly Victorian England for the upper classes: not allowed to work, not allowed to go out alone, etc.  (In fact most women throughout history have worked, because they needed to, and who the hell can accompany every woman throughout.  They think all women live basically in sharia countries, always.)

Two things I overheard this weekend, by no means from people who look stupid drove this point home to me.

The first was that England has had only one Queen, Queen Charlotte, the surviving widow of Henry VIII (!).  The second was more alarming in terms of policy: Apparently, Brexit broke up the EU, so it’s o longer the United Kingdom and that’s why Britain and Ireland have different currencies.  (And that’s a bad thing.)  These people are planing a trip to England, while they still have at least one castle, because it’s important to see where we came from and all that history.

I will note my dinner companions prevented me from delivering a lecture, in withering terms on the fact that while the UK is in Europe/ish, it’s NOT all of Europe, that Brexit had nothing to do with breaking up the EU but with freeing the UK from the EU and that what they don’t know about currencies could be carried in a very large bucket.

I also wanted to beg them please, for the love of Bob, not to vote, because as far as their vote has foreign implications, they will do something horrendous.  H*ll, I wouldn’t bet their view of national politics isn’t about the same level of crazy.

And this, THIS is why people can swallow nonsense about writers (who have no power in the field) keeping women and minorities (Why do they never mention people of different orientations when talking outside the field, I wonder) out of writing sf/f.  Or why each five years women storm SF/F AGAIN for the first time.  Or why they think that STEM is conspiring to keep women out, or why they buy the idiocy that there are refugees from Central America whose problems won’t be solved by moving a 100 kilometers (other than their country sucking, but that doesn’t entitle them to come here and make ours suck) or why they’re always willing to “try” socialism again “for the first time.”

They live in an undigested soup of stuff they gleaned from entertainment, vague memories of something or other heard in school, the stories their parents/grandparents told them.

How to fix it is harder.  We can’t fix the poverty problem because some people just WON’T do a lick of work over the absolutely required.  I mean, to the point of preferring to live in trash to their knees rather then picking stuff up. (I’ve seen it.  Trust me on this.) Evolutionary when we were scavenging apes and couldn’t store food long, but impairing now.  I mean, we’re the crazy ones, but it gives us an advantage in producing and creating.

Unfortunately that laziness applies with bells on to education. People don’t WANT to learn. They will take what they can, undigested, and retain very little of even that outside their fields.

So how is a republic to survive.

First we need to teach history better.  And by this I mean throw Howard Zinn out the window (is he still alive? Because the idea of literal defenestration is kind of cute.  But I mean his books and ideas.) but beyond that, teach history in short bursts of “this is how this era was” and make sure the things are simple enough to stick.  Never mind about the dates. People are going to telescope them anyway.  Just “this happened, then this happened.”

Second, we need to teach geography better.  The UK is not the EU. The EU is a recent construction. That sort of thing.

Third, teach how we are different and how radically innovative our founding principles are.

Sure, I’m just dreaming, right now.  But things are changing.  It might happen.

On the other hand, remember they also take entertainment.  We need to write more of that and do more of that.  Make sure your history is right in romances, in light adventure, in short and amusing mysteries.  Because the SJWs no longer have the only microphone, and even the disconnected are starting to “get” that the left ideas don’t work.  So, we have a chance.

But we can’t be timid or embarrassed.  In books, in movies, in social situations, we need to be able to go “Oh, please.”  Yeah, it won’t work well with total strangers, but with work mates? Classmates?  People who know you?  It will work and chip at the invincible fog of ignorance behind which the left operates.

We are the sappers for the culture war battalions, making the ground safe for the advance of more serious education.

Go build and do and teach.

Because the clueless shall always be with us, but the republic can’t survive its being as near universal as it is.  Let the fighting back begin with you.

A writer’s head is a weird place in that we’re never alone.  No, not even in the bathroom when someone — glares inward “You know who you are” — takes advantage of the situation to start dictating a novel.

But they’re there even when you’re not writing.

Right now in my head there’s a massive picnic in someone’s pasture.  It’s 20 years since the events in AFGM and the first time that they DARE have a public fourth of July (high holy holiday) celebration.  There’s fireworks, and people running around.

For the centuries of no territory, the centuries when the constitution, the declaration of independence and this idea of government for the people by the people were proscribed, the occasion was celebrated with readings from the holy documents, telling stories of the heroes after whom many of the USAians were named and, if you felt safe enough, a family meal.

This is the first time they have all that, but in public, in a small community of all Usaians.  (BTW the philosophy is not covalent with a nation in their times and very certainly it doesn’t correlate with no nations and no borders (in any time, really).  First, because it would counter the idea of property rights enshrined in the founding documents.  Second, because… well, you can’t have self-government when there is only a fluid culture that keeps changing with new influxes.  Ahead of our heroes in the series lie wars between nations both majority USAian but clinging to different interpretations and different cultures.)

Yeah, the philosophy is not a panacea, only simply the best way to have the safest and most prosperous society the world has ever known.

Of course, having become a religion to survive also changes it, and leads many to expect life liberty and the pursuit of happiness AFTER death, and therefore to not like those who try to make it happen in this world.

But that lies in the future for them, as we lie in the past for them.  For the first time, they can do what we take for granted, and celebrate the USA and independence in public.  (Only right now we aren’t mythical.  Or maybe we are, who knows?)

Having this go on in my head gives me an appreciation for what we have right now. The future is perilous (but when isn’t it?) not the least because we cannot afford to have Venezuela on our borders (and the attendant border crossers, not even mentioning they’ll vote for the same crazy here too) and yeah something will have to be done (and frankly a wall is better than a war.)

But liberty is always endangered because liberty and individualism is unnatural. Natural is the chieftain and the band and absolute power of one over the lives of others and some pigs being more equal than others.

We are a highly unnatural nation whose unnaturalness was purchased with blood sweat and tears.  Which might yet be required of us, so we can pass it intact to our children.

Liberty is never more than a generation from extinction.  Our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honors, might be required of us as they were of prior generations.

You get what you pay for.

Happy fourth.  Below see cover for an anthology of stories by me and a few friends to come out in a couple of weeks. Names will appear on the cover, then.

I’m alive.  Sorry I didn’t post yesterday, but part of that “new plant” for the convention thing, forced on by change of hotel is that I missed seeing a lot of my friends. So after breakfast (we get concierge because Dan used to travel for work) I packed all my stuff and went in search of friends.

It was my intention to come back to the hotel room, finish packing and put in the promo post and stuff.  (Let me know if you have something urgent, because at this point I think it will wait till Saturday.)

Next thing I know Dan is waiting with all my stuff to go to the airport.

Now, the theme (bad theme) of THIS con was footwear.  My sandal strap broke in Charlotte airport while running for a tight connection.  To keep it from tripping me, I tied it.  The problem is it rubbed the back of my foot into a blisters and — by the time we got to Chattanooga — raw.

So we stopped at wallmart on the way in to get me footwear.  Being me, I bought a pair of nice sandals.  Fortunately I had an attack of “let’s have something else in case, and bought five dollar shoes.

Even the sandals were too hard on the foot (I should have bought slippers, or flip flops or SOMETHING) which is why you saw me limping around everywhere in the no-support, still rubbing my feet raw $5 shoes.

So, if you’re worried about how much I aged in a year, that wasn’t it.  It was more walking around on feet that were skinned and by the end of the con bleeding.

Which also affected my seeing people.

But also the whole hotel/convention center thing seemed to make it harder to find people.  Not a complaint, exactly.  I’ve been through this before.  After a while the flow of the con adapts to the hotel/accommodations, and we’re okay. And anyway, we won’t be there again next year (at least we’re not supposed to.  Fingers crossed.)

It’s just that in a way between the feet and the new plant it was a very weird con, and I kept getting tired (possibly the low level pain from feet, but, yes, I’m going to go to the doctor) and having to go to the room for a little while.

I did see everyone, in the end, except Laura Montgomery (!) I think, but didn’t have much time with anyone.

Gifts (!) this year include the autobiography of an ancestor, a stuffed mammoth that’s supposed to be Robert, and a nerf gun with which I shot the penguin.  (Evil Penguin.  One of the barflies.)

Differences noted: a lot more people discussing their indie business.  A lot fewer people chasing trad.

Things I missed: two teas and a dinner and a friend’s wedding reception. (Because I’d run out of energy by then.)

Everyone seemed to talk to my younger son, instead of me.

Les Johnson and I are in the early planning stages of a novel whose working title is The Princess and the Spaceman.  (You can call us sexist later.  These are particular people, hence the title.)

Now I’m back, working on an anthology (editing) a collection (going over edits) and finishing up Guardian.  Well, notionally at least.  Actually I got up about two hours ago, having defeated Greebo’s attempt to herd me into the office at 5 am, and Greebo’s licking my feet at 7 am.

I might write another post today.  Or not.

But I’m alive, and now I’m going to shower and catch up on work.

(Pets blog readers on their little fuzzy heads, and exits pursued by a deadline.)