For various reasons, I can’t write a post today.  So I’m going to give you a picture (hopefully not repeated, but who knows) and let you play.

At some point I had some idea of doing noir mysteries in space.  Then I was playing with Daz and this happened.

It was supposed to be called “the Dame and the Bot.”

I don’t think I told any of you — have I? — the sequence of events that propelled me out of the political closet.

It started with my publisher Toni Weisskopf asking me to write an intro to Robert A. Heilein’s Puppet Masters (and as much as I loved Bill Patterson both as a person and a writer, I think what they’re now doing excerpting the bio as an  intro is a great idea.  Calling a book a “hack” book and part of the fear of the reds or whatever might be good literary criticism. It also fails to do that book justice.  It is the book for our times as we live through the masquerade.)   I didn’t want to, because doing it was enough to propel me out of the closet.  On the other hand, I could see that of course Baen wouldn’t care if I made myself persona non grata with other houses. Why should they? And what the hell, did I want to work for other houses?  By that time I was crispy-brown and smoking around the edges the burnout was so bad, and having committed Magic British Empire, I knew I’d have to up the ante on “sounding lefty” to stay in the closet, and that was making my auto-immune crazy.  So I said sure.

I also started opening the louvers of the closet here a little bit.  I needed it, particularly since my younger kid was going through a form of harassment no longer rare for boys in our public schools, in which girls accuse them (falsely) of harassment in order to harass.

And then Breitbart died, and I realized “if his voice is silent, who’ll take up the torch?”

I kind of — rightly — doubted my ability to make that kind of splash particularly since this is not my main job and I’m NOT a happy warrior.  But … could I do something?

Yes, I was risking losing my career such as it was (I was right on that too) as well as the remaining friends I had in the field.  But…

But the times were dire and a voice was needed.

My first posts made me so neurotic, I used to run them through friends before putting them up to make sure I didn’t sound insane except in the left — the USSR was like that too — sense of “does not support socialism, must be mentally ill.”

Do I like it?  I think I’ve said I’d much prefer to cocoon with my writing and ignore politics.  But politics rarely ignores me — or any of us anymore — and the alternative to listening and talking is to let people like me think they’re alone.

There is much despair on the right over “demographic change.”  I need to write a post for PJ about it.  Believing that the demographics changed that much in two years is touched in the head.  And it doesn’t even take in account the fact that no, even illiterate peasants AREN’T “naturally socialist”.  That’s a leftist myth.  Not only are you not required to believe it, you should naturally be skeptical of anything they believe because in general they’re at war with reality.

If “third world peasants” really take over the country, the left will get the shock of their lives. These people prefer the alt-right version of things, with everything that implies, including, yes, belief in their own racial supremacy (what do you think that La Raza is about?) Even the South American regimes that look leftist to us are mostly alt-right (which is leftist, yes, but not in the way of our hippie dippie internationalist multi gendered left.)  As for feminism… they’ve convinced themselves that people who are brown are less patriarchal.  See what I mean about at war with reality?

But our real danger is not third world peasants (though for f*ck’s sake, we still need to defend our borders and also a welfare state is by nature incompatible with open immigration.  Also large enough numbers will import their culture.  I didn’t leave the culture to have it follow me, so can we stop that sh*t already?) but our own, homegrown, indoctrinated children.

I am arguably the first indoctrinated generation.  At least my husband was. Took him ten to twelve years to realize they’d lied to him in every possible way.  It took Reagan followed by Clinton to knock it out of his head.

But the left has gotten better at indoctrination.  There’s political correctness, as a tool to teach people not to think, but to flinch mindlessly from words, phrases, thoughts.  Note that the bizarre and evil anti-cultural-appropriation mind set is designed to make NO ONE examine other cultures too closely, which would put paid to the brilliant idea of no borders, for instance.

Then there’s the idea of privilege.  If you notice that “victims” are just as evil as anyone else, you get told they can’t be because they don’t have privilege.

Then there’s invisible harm caused by words.

ALL of this is designed to make people unable to think or examine reality, or even consider history.  Because the left is at war with reality, they try to remove any signs of reality.  Yes, history is part of this.

So….

Imagine you came back from a future Socialist States Of America. Or worse, from a United States which, in reaction to that is nationalist, racialist, feudal-like in nature…. Think China.  Why worse?  Because that might be sustainable. Communism isn’t, and there’s the hope we’ll do a Poland, sometime.

Imagine you could just send your mind, not your body.  What would you do right now, today?

I know if I could go back to the eighties I would be a lot louder and more outspoken.  (I’d keep my name and my work name separate maybe, at least for a while, but I wouldn’t stay quiet.)

I think a great part of this is to lift the light, to let others who doubt the narrative know they’re not alone.

The left — for all their efforts — can no long fully wrap us in a united front of narrative.  It’s driving them insane.  When they’re insane they’re dangerous.  And because they’re dangerous we must continue to thwart their efforts.

For those who weren’t alive then, dissenting from the political — left — narrative REALLY made you feel like you were going crazy. You couldn’t even say anything to your friends, because they’d accuse you of being a conspiracy theorist or worse.  Even in the nineties, it was that bad.

Not true any longer.  I’m starting to think I need to read up on cult deprogramming to get to the younger kids — they were basically programmed into a cult. Including the idea of evil phrases or thoughts.  And you don’t want them to drink the final koolaid — but most of all we need to not stay quiet.

This applies particularly to those of us who are …. unusual and who stick out a mile from their idea of what “right wing” is.  Which honestly is most of us, but particularly those of us who are creative, or honestly “bleeding hearts” (just on our own time and dime.) Those who are women, or tan-enhanced, or —  you figure it.  All the groups that they naturally claim.  If you’ve ever been called a race/gender/orientation traitor? Lift up that lamp. Let your light shine.

Recently a friend told me I drive the left insane because I contradict their narrative just by existing.  Good, I say, and lift the lamp a little higher.

Yes, I know, some of you think you’ll lose your jobs/careers by speaking. You might even be right. (I was. At least without indie.) But you can have assumed personalities.  No one is holding you down.

If you came back from say twenty years in the future, where everything had gone pear shaped, what would it be worth to you to avoid it? Short of targeted assassinations or illegal acts? (If the rough music will play, let the other side start it.)

Your light might be small, and it might seem insignificant to you, but light feeds on light and it multiplies.  And light always vanquishes the darkness.

Light your lamp and hold it, that others might find the way.

Do it now.  Do it like you mean it.  Let the light shine through.

*I should be writing a real post, because I have things to say.  But frankly, I also have things to say for pay for PJMedia, and more importantly, I have a novel that I need to finish. So, I thought it was time for a little fun in our lives, and to remember it’s not just indie covers that can misfire horribly.  I do have a post on words in Mad Genius Club. If you can’t do without my writing, you know? -SAH*

Pulpy Things! by Julie Doornbos, a Blast From The Past From August 2015

Greetings! I’m Julie. I live on a mountain and do the art thing. And I have a thing for campy illustrations. Sarah has asked me to show you my embarrassingly huge collection of pulp fiction covers! You know you want to look.

*flashes trenchcoat*

I kid. Today’s post is (mostly) safe for work. So long as you work for yourself and/ or your boss can’t see what you’re browsing on the internet. I’ll leave the extra naked covers for another day. You’ll be fine!

Probably.

For educational purposes [delicate-lady-snort], I’ve divided these into three categories. The first category needs no introduction, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Covers With Scantily Clad Women That Don’t Need to Be Scantily Clad

Plutonians, gold bikinis, AND three sexes? Well hell, that has nebula award written all over it.

Her: Mildly irritated to have a man fused inside her bathroom wall.
Him: Deeply disturbed by that sparkly pink shower curtain.

For just a moment, please ignore how completely awful these space suit designs are. You see their belly buttons? No?

That was done for decency sake. That little bit of covering is the difference between Space Ladies and Space Hussies, my friend. (just ask Jeannie…)

Speaking of improbable spacewear…

Space Pasties! With tubing. For reasons. SCIENCE reasons.

My favorite part about this cover?

The little blurb telling you that it is complete and unabridged.

Somewhere out there is a heavily edited version. It’s just slurp noises.

That bit of red drool on the monster and the woman’s neck means he deaded her.

You’re totally oogling a corpse. You freak.

Speaking of freaks, our next category is

Covers With Monsters!

This is the far more terrifying version of Harry and the Hendersons in which I burn the movie theater down and everyone thanks me for it.

Art DIrector: “The book is titled WHAT? Don’t we have something ominous and mostly naked we can put on the cover instead?”

Somebody do something! That dinosaur is taunting Kenny Rogers!

I’m not exactly sure what’s going on, but I think they’re forcing her to listen to a dramatic presentation of Fifty Shades of Grey as read by Gilbert Gottfried. (I’m… just going to let you google that one.)

Somebody do something! That bear is spooning Richie Cunningham!

Which neatly brings us to our third category…

Covers With Men Being Attacked By Things

This category brought to you almost entirely by whoever was in charge of the covers for Man’s Life, True Men, Man’s Conquest, Stag, Man’s World, and the simply named Men magazine.

Attack fish!

Attack snakes!

Attack otters!

Attack eels!

Attack bats!

Attack crabs! (with bonus incorrect usage of the word “cannibal”)

Attack rats!

Attack weasels!

Attack flying squirrels!

(and my favorite) Attack turtles! With bonus cleavage!

You didn’t think I was finished, did you? I told you my collection was huge.

Surprise fourth category!

WTF Pulp

“…and arsonists are my bread and shoplifters are my pickles and bank robbers are my condiments! It’s a whole crime sandwich!”

I wasn’t aware that the CIA was hiring teeny-boppers…

This is my horrified face. Moving along.

Oh good. A palate cleanser.

You laugh, but Spinrad was nominated for a Nebula for this.

You think I make this crap up, I know it.

That’s hot.

I think the author must have described the entire plot of his book out loud and then finished up with “do you think you can fit all of that on the cover?” and the illustrator was all like “yea, brah, I got this.”

That’s all for today! Next time Sarah leaves the door unlocked, I may sneak in here and show you my collection of sexy 80’s com-pew-turr ads. [I keep hoping she does, but she says she’s been too busy.  Busy, ah! She just wants to keep all the attack crabs for herself.  Wait, that came out wrong – SAH]

You only wish I was joking.

Toodles!

Julie

*You know guys, I think I should leave the door unlocked more often.  What say you?*

I’m always surprised when I hear someone refer to me as a happy warrior (which happens about once a week.)

I’m not a happy warrior.  I try really hard to be a nice person.  I know my anger can cause a lot of harm to me and others, so I try to keep it in check, to the point of inducing depression to stop myself expressing it.

I’d prefer, by far, to live as so many female writers in the past, dreaming up nice stories and never pronouncing on politics.

Unfortunately I was born too late for that.  Even more unfortunately I was raised by a father who belonged in the Republic of Rome, when it comes to holding fast to a set of principles, and having a weird, inflexible idea of honor, particularly his own honor, and how he had to behave in an honorable manner.  (When I was little, and understood less of the world than I do even now, I thought dad was Roman, mom was Spanish and my brother was French.  In retrospect, I might have been right, in ways deeper than mere reality.)

My father believed everyone should be raised to be a gentleman of honor, genitals not withstanding, and he raised me that way.  (Yes, there are different female civic virtues.  Very different.  I learned that from his mom.)  And one thing a gentleman can’t do is let evil flourish under the sun, without attempting to fight it.

Which is why I was an anti-communist even when I was a — I know, Bob the Registered still thinks I am — soft liberal, which is the natural consequence of being raised in Europe.  In fact, those opinions — such as on gun control, say — changed through examining how these opinions HELPED communism.  To this day I feel icky if I have some opinions in common with the left, and I examine them extra hard.  (Though to be fair even when I agree with them on something, I neither agree on what it does to society, nor how it should be fixed.  So, there’s that.)

Why talk about this now?  Because every time I come across that “happy warrior” thing, I smile a little, because it’s so wrong.

I’m an unhappy warrior, who often triggers her auto-immune through anger and frustration.  But we weren’t put on this Earth to be easy and besides, they wouldn’t let me do the one thing I wanted to do in peace, without bringing politics into it.  So I fight.

In the same way, when I was young, stupid and an exchange student, I once heard my fellows talk when they thought I was asleep, and they all agreed I was a conventional, sheltered young Latin girl.  Something about “must have been raised in a convent.”  In fact, I was a young hellion, with acidic opinions and at the time had ideas of how things like the relationship between the sexes should be that would have made most of them not just blush but run and hide.

It took me a while to realize that the fact I was an introvert, and thought most of them were too dumb/young/conventional to have a true discussion/argument with meant I rarely said much, and what I said was usually of no great consequence, so externally I presented as they expected a nice Latin girl to present.

I think it was part of how people misjudged Cruz — tying in to what Amanda said last night — versus Beto.  You see, I’m 99.9% sure Cruz is one of us.  It’s not just the weird affect which would pass unnoticed in an sf/f con.  It’s weird things he lets drop, when he quotes Star Wars or the Princess Bride, for that matter.  I think he knows how weird his points of reference are, so he keeps quiet, so he’s not one of those “out there” sf/f people, who are, as everyone knows, crazy.

I think he should put on a costume and hit comicon.  Sure, pay attention to the costume so it’s nothing the left can pick on him for, but let people see him having fun.  He underestimates to what extent the geeks have taken over the culture.

But besides that, I think it’s also why we miss-perceived Trump.  At least I hope we did, and I hope my suspicion is right.

Because the left enforces conformity in areas — physical or professional, or even creative — that they control, a lot of us keep/kept under very deep cover, even going to the point of sometimes saying things that could be perceived as supporting lefty povs.  (Or writing. There’s a reason the Magical British Empire is still under revision.  It gets tiresome.)  OTOH every time you bow, every time you scrape.  Every time you’re forced to pretend to be something you’re not the resentment grows.

If I’m right, Trump was under deep cover, and now, having won a measure of power, he’s going to take revenge.  All the revenge.  Which suits me fight.  And I sympathize with.  If I’m ever in a position of power in my field, whatever that position is now, in the changed climate, it’s going to be interesting.

I never understood the left’s belief that if they stop opponents from talking, or even force opponents to behave as though they agreed with the left, the opposition will go away.

It leads me to believe either they’re incredibly shallow thinkers, or they think that any opposition is lack of information (they do. Hence the ubiquitous “educated yourself” from the indoctrinated, ill-educated left) OR they’re aliens and have no idea what people really are and think.

Sure, run us from the public sphere. Make our believing in your weird cult, or at least expressing outward belief, a condition of working or prospering in the areas you control, people will conform outwardly.  Sure, some of them, those who want to go along to get along, might even change their minds.

But there are many who will keep quiet and hate you all the harder for what you’re making them do: for making them complicit in evil.  And sooner or later they’ll get power.

Also, when they do, not only will those like them join them, but so will the go along to get along.  This is how you get black swans.  This is how people in Romania turned on their brutal leaders in the course of a day.

You can tell the left is no longer sure what hold they actually have on the country.  You can tell they know the counts are corrupt, because they, like us, are trying to read the tea leaves.

But because they’ve isolated themselves so thoroughly from who their opposition is and what they believe, preferring to view them instead through flawed Marxian lenses, their attempts are almost bizarrely strange.

Such as… there was some idiot saying there must be more of them than of us because more people did Yoga than watched Nascar.

Uh…. and?  I have never watched Nascar.  I’ve never watched any car racing, unless forced.  Just a total lack of interest. I’ve done yoga once or twice — it was a class in my high school.  In the seventies. In Portugal — though granted, I never stay with it, because it’s too woo-woo for my tastes (though one of the times I lost weight it was yoga that did it.)

The point is, what the heck does either of those have to do with believing in individual liberty, right to property, and the constitution of the united states?

And, at any rate, isn’t Nascar a regional thing?

Well, it has to do because in their hearts they KNOW we are all redneck hicks, and therefore we need to behave like redneck hicks.  In their minds, too, Yoga is new and daring and therefore lefty.  (Memo- Neither the left nor Yoga are new and daring.  In fact, they’re both conventional and mainstream.  I.e. you ARE the man.)

Why does this matter?

In 2008 we voted early (I was still not aware of the amazing levels of fraud) and so we voted in downtown Colorado Springs, early one morning.  I stood in line looking at all the people around me and going “hell, they’re all libs.”  You know, women with short hair, men with long hair, sloppy in their attire, etc.

Then I realized I presented more or less the same way.  I tend to forget to dye or cut my hair.  (I’ve been grey since 28 and right now the “time to stop dyeing” is “when I have first biological grandchild”.  Because it’s as good as any.) So I often have half-grey, long, and pulled into a mommy bun hair.  In the dark and in a hurry, I’d dressed in one of my Indian skirts and a peasant blouse.  And I had a bag with my artwork, and another with my pastels, because I was walking to art class after voting.

To anyone who watched I was one of them.

More and more I see the right making target acquisition errors that mirror the left and the left’s weird assumptions.

Does most of the right live rural?  Some, surely, though I know my share of farmers who are all for subsidies, my share of postmen in rural areas who are all for unions, my share of–  You get the point.

Are the cities/creative professions/educated people overwhelmingly leftist?

Oh, for fuck’s sake.  Seriously, guys.  The left might have a majority of those. MAYBE.  I was always shocked when I stepped out of line in sf/f and people in deep cover sent me support…. privately.  These are people who were way better than I at faking it, many of whom I thought were darlings of the left (many of whom WERE darlings of the left.)

The problem with the left suppressing dissenting opinion, is that a lot of people not only keep quiet but pretend.  To be allowed to do what they want, they have to.

And of course, vote fraud is easier in cities, so cities present a uniform lefty front.

But is it true?  BAH.

Don’t fall for the lies of the left or the enforced conformity they create.  You could be wrong about half or even a majority of city dwellers/creative people/young people/minorities/etc.

And if I may, if it comes to hell and high water, you guys are going to need US.  We know how to talk to the middle squishes, and we reassure them that the right are not all REALLY hicks.  And we know how to talk to furriners too, which will be needed in the future.

Yes, I am sure that if the rough music starts to play, I and others like me will be killed in red-on-red violence.  I tan, I’m urban (well, suburbanish now), I have an accent, and I speak in big words.  Depending on the day, I might or might not have pastels or watercolors on my fingers. The left thinks I naturally belong to them.  For our sins, so does a lot of the right.  And when the rough music plays no one stops and thinks. I’m not even trying to stop that.  It might be a reason I don’t want this to devolve to mass violence, but I also know there are worse things than mass violence.

But let’s suppose I’m lucky and escape that first impact. (I live in a semi-hidden suburb, judging by friends who have tried to find us and get confused.  And the neighbors are simpatico.  Guys, you’re going to need me. You’re going to need others like me. If for nothing else than you’re going to need shapers of ideas, people who make sure what gets passed to the next generation isn’t as crazy as what this generation has been taught.  Sure, you need me less than you need farmers, mechanics and cooks.  Weirdly, though, I can also cook and sew and in a pinch I’m a more than decent jack leg carpenter.  But I don’t think civilization is going to devolve to the point ONLY those are needed.  And I definitely don’t think they SHOULD.

Sure, the founding fathers were men with the practical skills of their time — farmers, and cobblers and the like — but they also had lawyers.  And almost every founding father was a man of the intellect and the mind.

Without it, the left, however many of them remain, will shape the future. They’ll just couch their ideas in a different way and have a go at the kids again. Because they have the words and can create the narrative.

Let me remind you that while national socialism (Germany excepted) is less lethal than international socialism, it’s still lethal, particularly to the human spirit, to innovation, to freedom and particularly to people like us who stick out.

Stop stereotyping us just as the left does.  Stop buying the stereotype.  Yes, this is also self-aimed.  I almost didn’t vote for Trump.  I bought the cover.  Many on our side still do which is something we need to fight.

The fact their stereotyping us is so powerful tells you the power of the narrative.  Be aware of it, but don’t buy it.

Oh, sure, if the rough music starts to play people like me are gone.  Most of them.  Depends on when it hits.  Like a tsunami, it’s not controllable and can’t really be planned for.

But if we are lucky beyond our deserts and this can be turned slowly, in debate and opinion, in daily work, in education, in words, in diplomacy, be aware the left is wrong about the opposition, as they’re wrong about almost everything.

We might — and will — find allies in the weirdest places.  Don’t be too trusting, (note I’m still not sure about Trump) but don’t write them out.

Remember external conformity is not conformity of thought.  Only a fool or a leftist (BIRM) believes that.

What happened?- by Amanda S. Green

That’s the question so many of us have been asking since last week’s election totals began rolling in. It is a question we’ll continue to debate over the next two years. We need to look at the close races as well as the races we should have won. What went wrong? Then, in those races we shouldn’t have won but did, why?

Let’s get one of the reasons out of the way right now. The first is that we saw a standard mid-term response to the party in office. Historically, the party in power loses ground during mid-term elections. So we should have anticipated at least some of the shift we saw. “In midterms since 1862, the president’s party has averaged losses of about 32 seats in the House and more than two seats in the Senate,” according to Mary Jordan in this post for Politifact.

Part of the reason for this is because fewer people, often far fewer, vote in mid-term elections than in presidential election years. Another part is the “X-Factor”, X being whoever the president is. We saw it during the Obama administration and we are seeing it now. It is especially prevalent when you have a president who actually does something, whether it be good or bad. With Obama, we had it with Obamacare and some of his other policies. With Trump, we have it with his economic policies and with his personality. That “X-Factor” tends to motivate folks to the polls, as it did this time.

There might have been a record number of voters for a mid-term election in a number of areas around the country, but those voters were not conservatives or libertarians in all too many instances. Too many sat back and rested on the wave of votes that brought Trump into office. The liberals, on the other hand, used Trump as the motivator to get the votes out (legal and not).

But there are things we, as conservatives and libertarians, need to be aware of and watch out for in the future. One of the reasons the Democrats managed to get so many folks to the polls (and I mean living, breathing folks and not the dead and buried) is because they put forth candidates that enticed younger voters. They beat the gun control drum as well. They talked about issues young voters, without any real life experience thought sounded “awesome” but never talked about how they’d pay for those issues. Because so many of our youth hasn’t figured out politicians lie, they bought it hook, line and sinker.

How else do you explain someone like Occasional-Cortex—sorry, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—winning not only her primary but the election? Here is a young socialist bitching and moaning now because she can’t afford an apartment in DC until she gets her first congressional paycheck in three months. Where is all the affordable housing? We have to take steps to make it more affordable for the pols to live. Whine, bitch and whine some more.

The younger set is eating it up. Why? Because they aren’t looking at the fact that Occasional-Cortex quit her bartending job a year ago to go on the campaign trail. How did she live during that time? Oops, let me rephrase that. She lived on other people’s money, just as she plans to now.

I don’t know about you, but she is the perfect example of what we need to vote out of office and keep as far away from any political office, or classroom, as possible.

Then we had Beto O’Rourke. As a Texan, I can only thank God he wasn’t elected and it was a damned close thing. Beto came out as an everyman. He wore jeans and rolled his sleeves up. He wore ball caps. He rode skateboards. He was the “young” candidate, the voice of our youth.

Except, he is only one year younger than Ted Cruz. But to look at them, to listen to them, you’d think there was at least a decade difference in their ages.

The Republicans fell down on the job—hell, let’s be honest. They were asleep at the wheel—where Beto was concerned. They didn’t bring out his history, criminal and otherwise. They let him be this generation’s JFK, exactly what the DNC wanted. And it came too damn close to working.

Instead of reminding folks, especially those in El Paso where Beto started, that he married into money and, as a city councilman, voted on issues that at least seemed to benefit his real estate developer father-in-law, they let him be the boy child. The Republicans forgot history, specifically the 1960 Presidential election.

Now, I’ll admit there were other issues with Cruz. He doesn’t come across as warm and fuzzy, far from it. That might play well against most candidates, but not against someone like O’Rourke. He needed to loosen up some.

But let’s not forget the real issue: voter fraud. There is fraud in every election. But it appears to be at a record high this year. One Georgia county had twice as many votes cast as they have registered to vote. Yesterday, while at a concert, I received a news push from our local ABC affiliate that almost half the provisional votes in Fulton County would need to be tossed out. There were hundreds of duplicate votes. There were votes cast by people who didn’t live in the county and then there were votes by those not eligible to vote.

And people wonder why we need Voter ID laws.

There are some who want to count votes by those who are not only NOT citizens of this country but who are here illegally.

Yeah, there’s a problem and we need to deal with it. Not only do we need to apply the law, to its fullest extent, to those who vote illegally, we need to do so to those who facilitate them in doing so. [Hanged, cut down before death and their entrails burned before their eyes? –SAH asks eagerly.]

If the Republicans are smart, they will take a long, hard look at what happened in this election and be prepared for much the same in two years. They will learn from campaigns like Beto O’Rourke’s. They will encourage the liberals to put Pelosi back in as Speaker of the House. She is one of our most effective weapons because she is so disliked, not only by conservatives and libertarians but by many in her own party. Let Maxine Waters keep running her mouth. She’s another one who will, eventually, do her party more harm than good.

But we need to take a page out of the other side’s playbook. We need to quit being the nice guy. While I don’t encourage public displays like what we’ve seen at Tucker Carlson’s home or at the country club with his daughter, we do need to stay in the face of the Dims who have been voted into office. Every time Occasional-Cortex opens her mouth, we need to point and laugh. She really can’t help herself. She provides such good comedic fodder.

We also need to keep an eye out on those candidates like Beto who lost but who were so clearly being groomed for bigger and better by the Dims. [I am sure that includes Occasional Cortex, sadly. –SAH] Whether they continue to tout their golden boy in the future is something we will only have to wait to see. If we’re lucky, they will tell him to go back home and figure out what he did wrong. At the same time, they will run someone like HRC or Biden for president. Both wouldn’t argue if offered the nomination.

The Democrats made the play for the young vote and, for the most part, got it. Again, much as they did in 1960 with JFK. While what they do in 2020 is important, it isn’t the most important. That falls directly at the feet of the Republican Party. They can’t wait to respond to the DNC, as they pretty much did this election. They have to get out in front now. Analyze and plan, learn and implement.

If not, heaven help us all.

(I will be back the end of the week with the regular book review/commentary. No, I’m not going to do Michelle Obama’s book. You guys don’t buy me enough booze for that. Also, apologies for the break in posts but family obligations had to take precedence for a while. – ASG)

I apologize for not doing the vignettes and promo post.  I’ll do it sometime this week.

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of reading of books (mostly mysteries, which are an amazing recreation of every day life and what people thought because their thing is to immerse you in daily life and sound plausible/likely) written in the early 20th century.

The bad ideas that are devouring Western civilization were there before WWI, but it was only after WWI that they took hold of population at large and went viral.

Now, there are tons of reasons for that. Technology allowed for faster, better and cheaper manufacturing, which in turn grew cities and shrunk the countryside, weakening family bonds.  Transportation also became faster, cheaper and easier.

Oh, and we finally had enough surplus that you could be very, very silly without starving to death.

Oh, yeah, and the mass production led to mass distribution of ideas.  The strongholds of transmission of those were immediately seized by the crackpots, who are the people who can devote their entire lives to very silly things.  (I should know.)

None of that, however, justifies the corroding self-hatred of the west.  Posturing against the past generation does not justify deciding every civilization is better than yours, that criminals are the only people worth helping (if you want to study those ideas, and also the protests against them you could do worse than reading Agatha Christie’s They Do It With Mirrors.  Christie was a thoroughly conventional middle class woman, and so her opinions are worth reading.  Though the book was written in the fifties, it “feels” older, because we all preserve something from the times of our upbringing.)

No, that was learned in the battle fields of WWI, where industrial civilization turned to mass killing in batch lots.

The fact the rot took hold in Europe first, where the destruction of WWI was more obvious would support the trauma theory.

Rivers of ink were spilled on WWI, and I haven’t read enough to tell you how much is true, and how much is ideological distortion.

I just know that somewhere after WWI and its echo WWII the bien-pensants in the west switched to thinking loving your country was a sin and that people who loved their country were war mongers.

Perhaps it is a way to justify the cowardice of the chattering classes who hoped the Soviet wolf in its inevitable victory would eat them last.

To my mind the West is still bleeding from a gaping wound inflicted by the long war of the 20th century.

It is important to neither romanticize war nor to demonize it.  War is a function of being human.  Yes, WWI might have been a senseless war (how do I know? All the materials on it have a point of view, and much of the later ones are corrupt) and it was certainly approached in a spirit and in a way that maximized both trauma and numbers of dead.

Was that because Western civilization is inherently bad?

Ah. I shudder to think what other civilizations given the newness of the mass-killing tech would have done.

Is industrial mass production inherently bad?  Well, it lifted most of the world out of famine and dire poverty, so no.  But applied to war it can be horrific.  We simply didn’t (to an extent still don’t) have the technology to fight smarter.

I suspect it’s likely given that stage of civilization and production, the war would have happened, more or less as it did.

And I imagine it would have been worse if it hadn’t happened.

Which is hard to understand, or picture for us.  The path not taken is ever sweeter.  But real life doesn’t work like that.

On veterans day let us contemplate that war is terrible (and to be avoided if at all possible) but it’s not the most terrible thing.

And that sometimes it is needed for people to sacrifice themselves, if not for a cause or an idea, for their homes and those they love.  Or as Heinlein put it “Roman mothers used to tell their sons ‘come back with your shield or on it’.  Then they stopped staying it.  Rome, itself, did not last much longer.”  (Note I’m quoting from memory of the first time I read it which was in Portuguese. Errors of expression all mine, not RAH’s)

To be human (or really animal and from Earth) is to war.  To war is to risk death.  There are things worth dying for, else there’s nothing worth living for.

Our civilization has run away from the idea of things worth dying for (possibly because of the trauma of WWI) and therefore no longer knows what’s worth living for.

On this day let us remember those who gave their lives for home and country, so others could live free and flourish.  Whether we are descended from them or not, their blood shaped the world we live in.

Ours it is to make sure their sacrifice — whether now viewed as futile like WWI or vital like WWII — is not forgotten nor cheapened.  The left cheapens their sacrifice because they don’t understand there are things more important than self.  Things worth risking sacrificing self for.  It’s a strange and myopic view, one that leaves them stranded in a formless world in which only the wants and transient wishes of the self count.

We do not know, yet, the ramifications of the wars of the 20th century.  It is therefore impossible to know which were vital or which were disastrous.

All we know is that without men willing to fight to protect others, only evildoers would fight — and win — and shape the world in their image.

Those who served and lost their lives are beyond thanking.  But not beyond remembering.

Those who served and fought for my country and made it possible for my country to survive in a world inimical to our ideals and envious of our wealth: you have my gratitude.

May we have many more like you in future generations, and not suffer the fate of Rome.

You know, I know, everyone with a basic understanding of reality knows that it’s impossible — even given truly bad practices and lack of ballot custody — that every time ballots are “found” they are uniformly for the democrats.

You know, I know, everyone knows that not only is election integrity in the US so bad it would make camel herders blush, but we joke about it.  We’ve been joking about it since I was first in country.  Chicago is a byword, but we’re starting to get a feeling the practices of Chicago are more or less universal.  In America all the dead are rising and voting… democrat.

And our opponents are okay with that.  They’re fine and dandy with that.  They’re fine with busing people from precinct to precinct to vote fraudulently.  And they’ve done everything they can for maximum fraud and maximum deniability: vote by mail, early voting, same day registration.  Dear Lord, the voting integrity was bad in the 90s, now it’s ludicrous.

And they’re okay with that because their RELIGIOUS fervor in their political credo tells them that we have the upper hand — never mind that we don’t — due to “institutional bias”.  Their enormous racism leads them to believe no system designed by “dead white men” can be fair.  Sure, they don’t see the logical inconsistencies, but their literature and “studies” professors taught them to see all sorts of things that aren’t there, and to take on faith that the only reason the country isn’t socialist is “white males.”  Their faith also tells them that if the people being oppressed (or self oppressed, or that have internalized white supremacy and patriarchy, or another million nonsense phrases to signify “if you’re not doing exactly what I want, there’s something wrong with YOU.) COULD vote their “true” feelings, they’d vote for the dems/socialists/communists (where on that continuum are most of them now?)

So all they’re doing with their fraud and their transparent corruption is balance the scales.  They giggle gleefully as they do it, because  they think they’re striking one against “the system.”

Only what they’re destroying is our faith that we can live as we want and be left alone.  What they’re destroying is the ability to own property and trade, the same system that made them fat, happy and stupid.  Oh, so very stupid.

We who are grown up, we who know history, we who know when applied to the real world their illusions bring only death and mass graves, know they’d be the first in those mass graves if they won, pushed there by their comrades.

We can’t let them win.

But we don’t move.

We don’t move — and some of us, ludicrously, try to pretend fraud isn’t happening. BAH! — because the minute it’s out in the open, the minute the music plays and the dance starts, there’s no turning back.  We like our lives, we love our country. We don’t want to see it riven.

The idiot children — even those older than I — take our silence, our horrified immobility for an admission that what they’re doing is right and just, that it’s a balancing of the scales, that we OWE them.  And they grow ever more crazy and blatant.

We’re still quiet, but anger is growing.  This year more than ever, as the dems prepare to STEAL three senatorial races, without so much as a fig leaf, people all over the country have gone strangely quiet, and in private, horrifyingly angry.

This only ends one way, and the left, ever incapable of forecasting a different result of their actions than what they’ve experienced before, keeps pushing and pushing and pushing.

If you’re a believer pray, pray very constantly that a miracle occurs, that a legal solution is found, that our vote system is cleaned up, that the lawlessness ends without blood shed.  Pray that our cold civil war remains cold until things change enough that it resolves naturally.

If it goes hot, given my necessity for daily meds, my life expectancy is a year or two.  But that’s not what scares me. What scares me is what comes after.  Our last civil war, emphasizing federal power, made us vulnerable to today’s mess.

But there are worse things than personal death.  And there are more horrible things than war.

Take a deep breath. Take stock of your preparedness, your ability to survive.

Take a deep breath.  This weekend, enjoy your life, your family, and this fractured, tentative pause.

Before the music starts and we must dance.

I was thinking of the village today.  No, not with any great nostalgia, (except the nostalgia every middle aged person feels for the innocence of childhood.  Also, I miss grandma) and I realized that their narrative in the head was as simplified and as erroneous as any we see among millennials.

Sure, it was a different narrative. And in many ways more functional.

They studied history in school — fourth grade was mandatory — but somehow emerged with the idea that Catholicism was the FIRST religion ever. (Not just the first Christian flavor.) That Portugal was the most developed and best country in the world. That they were, in a way, chosen people.

There were a ton of other things in the “narrative and picture of the world in head” which included, but was not limited to, stuff on how and when to plant, how we wore our clothes, what we ate when, etc, etc, etc world without end.

My family was slightly askew to this: better educated, and HONESTLY just odd.  We didn’t function the same way.  But most of us faked it well enough to fit the general framework.  Well, maybe excepting me.  The village didn’t know what to make of me in their framework, so I ended up being painted by rumor as either the red woman of Babylon (which was hilarious, since I got kissed the first time at 18) or crazy, or drug addicted.  The rumors flew back and forth in contradiction.  They probably still do among those that remember me, and are left in the village.

And yeah, the narrative irritated me me as much as the left narrative does, because it wasn’t TRUE.  And being odd, I’ve got a weird passion for the truth, even when it hurts.

But today I was thinking that at least the village’s narrative was functional.  Okay, so, besides the unbending (sort of, when you grow up you find people make all sorts of exceptions, like, having a baby out of wedlock is the end of the world and you’ll be shunned forever.  Uh.  Not.  If you marry later and behave decently, then it will be expunged.  Even if you don’t marry the father of the first baby, people will forget, deliberately and not, and you’ll be an honest woman and mother) moral — and frankly behavioral — rules, which are very helpful for humans in general, because we like to fit in, there was the belief they were part of a great country, contributing to something immortal.

Look, most people in the village were going to live and die there (many my age already have) doing unimportant jobs, and being forgotten except for a name in the family tomb.  But that doesn’t matter, if you feel you’re part of something great, building the next greater and better thing.

People live like that for generations and are happy.  Self-esteem works for cultures. Because humans are creatures of the band and the tribe.  And being proud of your band or tribe encourages to behave better as a human being.

The problem with the millennial head canon, and really with the narrative that has infiltrated the west starting in the 20s and becoming dominant by the sixties, is that it’s a dysfunctional head canon.  It’s a head caonon turned on itself, eating itself from within.

I mean, it’s objectively wrong, too, a-historical and in many ways anti-historical but that’s not what makes it bad.

What makes it bad is that it’s exactly the type of narrative victorious enemies impose on the conquered (partly because it’s the result of Soviet agit-prop, so, exactly that.  Though they never conquered us, they did conquer our academia and education.)

My kids’ history books — and remember the boys are now in their mid-twenties, so this was a while ago — were all based on Howard Zinn. ALL of them. They’re all America is bad, the west is bad, white people are bad.  It’s worse now, from what I hear from younger friends.

Day after day, week after week, month after month,school year after school year your kids in public school and most private schools, honestly, are bathed in a sea of “you’re bad, the culture who created you is bad.  You’re bad for being born. You’re bad for being American.  Europeans are bad. Being rich is bad. Being comfortable is bad. Being happy is bad.”

Honestly, I’m surprised at how many kids shrug it off and go on to be happy and productive.  What is no surprise are the multiple tatooed, gender fluid, no hope of ever being anything but a mental patient numbers they turn out.  Anyone who has studied the history of a conquered country recognizes the dysfunction.

Kids find only ONE refuge: to be a victim.  Because that exonerates them.  Hence why victimhood is now the supreme good.  Which is dysfunctional, too, because victims can’t be happy or successful and must be held down forever.

One way to reject that narrative is what Europe is taking more and more, and I expect any minute now will take them to jackboots.

Europeans are as muttish as we are. They’re a mix and mingle of most of Europe.  Oh, Southern Europeans are MOSTLY Southern Europeans, and ditto North Europeans.  But not always.  Remember all those wars and invasions? the treaties? the traders? even the royal visits?  Yeah.  Primly “Every contact leaves a trace.”

But that’s not how they think of themselves.  Until very recently, and still now, but not out loud, they thought of themselves as separate RACES.  The Portuguese race, the English Race, the Irish Race, etc.

They’re defaulting to that.  Partly because they have to.  They’ve gone as far down the drain as they can without perishing entirely, and apparently there’s some kind of instinctive fail safe.   And their fail safe is kicking to “blood and soil.”  That’s fine.  I’m not one of those people who insists the solution for everything is the same world over.  Cultures are different.  Really different.  And if their new head canon allows them not to self-destruct, I’m all for it.

Obviously this won’t work for Americans.  It can’t, despite the delusions of a lot of people (a growing number, as the left has divided us into tribes, and doesn’t realize that will create real racism.  Or that accusations of white supremacism breed real white supremacism.)

Americans are not only too visibly mixed, we know it.  And the numbers of minorities (increasingly, thanks to the left anyone who isn’t NORTHERN European in appearance as well as ancestry) are too large to be submerged and subdued.

Besides, for this to happen we’d need to ditch the constitution.  And yeah, sure, the crazies say we should.  But we can’t.  Because that’s what made us a country, and what made us the best thing the Earth has ever seen, lifting up our lamp to lift the world into its most prolonged and absolute era of prosperity and safety for most humans.

But we need a narrative to save us.  Humans don’t really keep the whole world in their heads, as it is, at all times.  They can’t.  That’s not how we’re build.  We need a simple narrative to teach the children, to make them proud of who they are.

Note the first thing the left went after was the stories of greatness: the founders, our brave fighting men, the courage and honor of simple Americans.  They started with “but not…”  And then on the basis of that doubt, they demolished everything, including, ultimately the statues, because these were “slave owners.”  No allowance was made for the past or for their values and society being different, or for doing the best you can in an horrible world.

The same people who excuse all of foreigners, even stoning women to death for taking a ride in a car with a non relative, and dropping walls on gay people, also think it makes perfect sense to excoriate our founding fathers for being men of their time.

Because the conquering culture wants us utterly destroyed.  They don’t care as long as we’re gone.

Raise your children to be Americans.  Tell them stories of our great men and women and our greatness in the world.  When they bring up the vileness taught to them in school tell them those are lies, planted by our enemies, in the long cold war.  Our people aren’t perfect, no one is perfect, but we’re the best damn thing in G-d’s creation.

Without us, the light would go out. Keep the light going.

Teach them that.  Discuss it in more detail as they grow up.  Yeah, explain the flaws in the picture, but explain that the flaws don’t invalidate the picture.  Give them a head canon that emphasizes American greatness and bourgeois virtues.  Tell them the truth about the school — that it’s trying to destroy them. That if they follow the path of the schools they’ll end up dysfunctional and lost.

Build.  Build a healthy head canon now.  And pass it on.  Because without it, we’re going to end up in war and the stories we tell ourselves will be the dystopian crap that has been pushed at sf/f for decades.  (The power of the head canon is such I swear half the people who grew up reading them WANT them. Because it’s what they expected. That’s why prosperity upsets them.)

And while you can escape from physical chains, it’s much harder to escape the self-hatred that chains your mind.

I am a bookish person and my family has always excelled in philosophy which is a required course in Portuguese High School. In a point system that theoretically went from 1 to 20 but in which, practically, 14 was an A and you rarely saw anything higher, Father, brother and I averaged between 18 and 20 in philosophy.  (And history.  And for me in English, but that might be personal.)

Philosophy is a neat thing, because most of it is the study of closed systems.  I.e. people build entire worlds in their heads and the philosophy survives or not depending on how well it describes the real world (and therefore how useful it is to the people to whom it is communicated.)

If you study the history of philosophy, you find that the theories get more and more fanciful as they go, and less and less applicable to anything that means much of anything in day to day life.

I haven’t graphed it — though if I tell husband he probably will.  Lately he’s been spending a lot of time with things like workforce statistics and graphs.  I suspect there will be a post or a series of posts — but I suspect the “the theory is very pretty, but day to day it makes no difference” becoming popular travels along the same curve as human prosperity.

Someone who lives and dies by planting and harvesting doesn’t even have a philosophy.  He has the proverbs that come from experience.  Early to bed and early to rise, you know, and if it’s red in the west the hens get to rest or whatever.  Look, I have no clue.  Grandma, who, though not living from it, got a substantial portion of our food from her vegetable garden was full of these sayings.  “It will be a hard year.  Easter is in March” is the one I remember.  Mom says it differently “Years with Easter in march are years of famine or of great dying.”

Now correlation is not causation.  If Easter is on March 31st as opposed to April 1st, is that cause to be worried? And is this tied to agricultural cycles in Portugal? Or is there some grand cycle we can’t explain and whose mechanisms we can’t penetrate that has that as a side effect? I don’t know.  I know I get vaguely uneasy when Easter falls in March.  And I’ll note it did in 2001.  Which means the crazy hamster at the back of my head got a little crazier.

But when you live close to the bone, in the potential of famine and death, you hold on to these bits of wisdom and don’t try to think of underlying causes. When you have more time on your hands, and finding a crust of bread for the table is not the primary thing on your mind, you have the opportunity to scrute the inscrutable and unscrew the primary cause of the universe.  That great solipsistic cry of “I think, therefore I am” is not the cry of someone who needs to find his next meal, where the imperative becomes “I must find something to eat, or I’ll stop being.”

Even our images of the struggling philosopher — or artist — are not connected to true famine or true conditions of exigency.  The “starving artist” might catch some illness from not eating enough (though in real life he was more likely to catch a disease due to screwing too much, or at least two indiscriminately, but let it stand. Sure, the philosopher or artist is sacrificing for his art, but that is not something people do in a society subject to famines and mass dyings. There you do what you have to do to stay alive.

The problem — okay, one of the many — of the 20th century is that it was the first century (the end of the nineteenth perhaps also, haven’t looked at figures) — where a majority of humanity (at least in the west) was beyond that absolute need to root, hog or die.   You could live better or worse, but you no longer spent your entire life in immediate need.

Thus the great wars of the twentieth century were caused mostly by high flown philosophical theories, often — but not always — slating to a national identity.

The problem with the Nazis was not that they loved Germany.  If a human doesn’t love his homeland (or her chosen homeland.  Shut up or I’ll throw a fish at you) and his tribe, he’s already more than a little mad.  We’re creatures of band and territory. To try to suppress nationalism is to go against human nature, and it can’t be done anyway.  You can suppress nationalism, but then you get tribalism.  And since overcoming tribalism (loyalty to family or those who look like us only) was a great part of what enabled civilization to flourish and get us beyond the need for looking for the next meal, that’s a massive step backwards.  What you can’t do is eliminate the need for the band or the tribe.  Ain’t gonna happen.

The big problem with Nazism was the whole mess of the racial theories.  Not that the Nazis were unique in this respect.  Read any science fiction from the 30s and what you find is a hot mess of “racial hygiene” and other pseudo scientific nonsense.  But the Nazis wrapped it all in German RACIAL superiority (if Germans are a race, I’m a pseudopodous mouse) etc, etc ad nauseum. They marched under the shiny philosophy that if they won the world would be perfect because they were the master race, after all.  Also they could do whatever they wanted to to people of different origins, because those people were not so far distant from animals.

Portugal managed to be national socialist without building vast camps or considering anyone subhuman (or notably hating Jews.  Though frankly, given how emulsified Jewish populations were in the general Portuguese population, Jew-hatred would have depopulated the country.) and “just” making everyone poor and freezing life at around the 1940s. Because in Portugal the philosophy was not that strong.  It was mostly crap-stuff from Rome.  (I learned most Roman “people building” stories in elementary school.) and much chest puffing about how great the Portuguese were because we had the greatest history in the world. It wasn’t great. It was authoritarian, but its death rate was probably no more than is from international socialism: opportunity costs, inventions that weren’t made, the sclerotic national health.  That sort of thing.  Not the digging of mass graves and the piling of bodies like cord-wood.  (Yes, the colonial wars, and Americans tend to be sympathetic to colonies, and I get that.  But if you understand most colonial wars for “independence” or against Portugal were instigated (and often staffed by Cubans) by the Soviets, I don’t think a free country could have avoided fighting, anyway.  Of course when the international socialists were in charge the territories in Africa were handed over to the soviets and their Cuban mercenaries.  What happened then is the type of thing I don’t even like to think about.  I was only 11 and couldn’t have done much about it, even if I understood it, but I still feel I should have. May G-d have mercy on our souls.)

In the same way the problem with the crazy version of socialism that international socialists try to impose was not that it was a form of Russian nationalism, which it really was, if you looked at it at all closely, nor that the Russians were trying to take over Europe.  It was that they tried to take over Europe under the banner of Marx’s just-so stories.  Marx was really a later-day Don Quixote, living without working and expounding ideas already disproved in his time to people as detached from reality and real economics as he was. Which is actually a good metaphor, because those infected with Marx’s internally coherent (before Gramsci got hold of it) theories are incapable of seeing the world as it really is, and go forth fighting dragons that are really windmills for romanticized minorities that are really just people.

Jorge Luis Borges once called Don Quixote the least necessary of books.  Nothing would change if it had not been written.  I think he was wrong.  Don Quixote is a metaphor for the “age of ideologies.”  At the dawn of mechanization, which made abundance and freedom from toil possible, Cervants foresaw how possible it was to get completely detached from reality and beguiled by pretty tales.

The problem with knowing a lot of things that just aren’t so, is that they rarely (if ever) cohere with life-as-it-actually-works.  The day to day world isn’t glamorous, particularly coherent, nor does it inspire one to marsh on, shoulders back and head tilted up in the way of the art of every totalitarian regime ever.

But the made up theories and made up world — particularly in a society consumed by the certainty that everything can be known and proven or disproved by “science” — can be manipulated by people perhaps also beguiled by other philosophies (Marxism is an almost universal culprit these days.)

I never understood why the left in the US consistently identified the right with Nazis, when the “right” in the US isn’t even blood-and-soil, but just “Oh, for the love of bob, leave me alone already” or why or how the left could decide we, mostly small l libertarians (what is known as constitutional conservatives) are “authoritarian.”  And not just me but any number of you have been puzzled at the idea that they think we are sexually repressed, or that we hate sexual minorities, or that we want women to be chained to house and kitchen, or that we are incredibly, fervently religious, or a number of other things.

But the left believes this with such absolute fervor they continuously “attack” us on that front.  Take the rather vomitous naked pictures of lefties saying that they’d “grab us by the vote.”

Look, I was born with no body modesty.  I suspect it’s something in the brain that was just left out of my head.  Yes, it was a Latin country and I’m fairly sure I was sujected to a never end of lectures about how showing my body was immoral, but it was such an alien concept that I don’t remember any but one: a priest who stopped me at 11 or so, when I was climbing a wall in short skirts and gave me a lecture on how all the boys were looking at me.  I remember that one, because if the boys were looking at me… well, I don’t remember it that way and I think we were all too young, and also because at the time it puzzled me so profoundly.  I remember asking mom why anyone would be looking at my legs (at the time tanned and scratched pipe-cleaners) and I remember she didn’t tell me.

Eventually, at 13 or so (and fully developed) I was persuaded not to go out naked in public, that I should wear a bikini top at the beach or I’d be arrested, and that other people put some sort of construction on people going around in the altogether, so I should no longer get up from bed and rush downstairs naked because we had visitors.  (I had hair you could sit on, so I suspect no one ever saw much.  Brother called me Lady Godiva.)

Later, nudist or topless beaches didn’t even make an impression on me.

HOWEVER I’m 56, overweight and my body is shaped by two difficult pregnancies.  I don’t have body modesty, but I have body-shame, because frankly, it ain’t pretty.

Most of the people taking the Grab them by the vote pictures had bodies worse than mine.  They should have had the basic understanding that no one, possibly including themselves, wanted to see them naked.  So what was the point of those icky pictures?

They thought they were shocking us. Because of course we are sexually repressed.  This is, btw the same kind of lunacy that caused them to think at the height of Sad Puppies that Kate Paulk — Kate fricking Paulk who is Aussie by birth and generates triple entendres like she breathes — was too delicate to write the word vagina.

Anyway, we know the left has this image of us in their heads, what most of us never understood is WHY.

I confess I’ve never done a deep dive on the crazy pseudo-scientific bullshit of the twentieth century.  I’m a depressive, okay?  I try not to read things that make me want to slit my wrists.

But yesterday I strayed into a link to an essay that called the 2016 election the “Flight 93” election, i.e. “Storm the cockpit or die”.  You might still die anyway, but it’s your only chance.  I followed it, because the left is STILL foaming at the mouth mad at it.  But you know, the essay isn’t wrong.  It isn’t even slightly wrong.

Anyway, this morning I woke up to write this post (well, A post, I actually didn’t have any ideas) and I’d left that essay up, so I was tempted by one of the links at the bottom.

The post is about Donald Trump and how he isn’t a real authoritarian and books claiming he is.  I don’t need to go into that here, but in the middle of it I found this:

The mid-20th-century creators of the concept of “authoritarianism” appear to have cooked their books. In the pathbreaking work The Authoritarian Personality (1950), the authors—including German sociologist Theodor Adorno, one of the leading lights of the Frankfurt School—created four “scales” measuring anti-Semitism, ethnocentrism, political and economic conservatism, and fascism. All of these indicators, they alleged, do not merely correlate highly, they are inherently connected. If you score high on the scale for one trait, you almost certainly score high on them all. Thus were the hitherto respectable—even fundamentally American—tenets of conservatism, and also the inborn and inexpungable passion of love of one’s own, now “scientifically” linked to anti-Semitism and fascism. Which is to say, to Auschwitz.

Coming in 1950, this was explosive stuff. The Left naturally intuited that here was the perfect moment to forever tar the Right with Nazism.

Nor was that all. The traits that place one on the “F-scale” (for fascist) include conventionalism, aggression, submission (hard to see how these go together, but let’s forge on), superstition, predilection for stereotypes, worship of power and “toughness,” destructiveness, cynicism, a propensity for projection, and—channeling Freud while anticipating the ’60s—sexual hang-ups. All of which the authors identified as mental disorders. Conservatives were not only proto-fascists, but also borderline insane.

The whole apparatus is a high-toned ancestor of those clickbait articles on pop-left-wing websites with headlines like “Study Shows: Conservatives Meaner than Liberals” or “Red State Average IQs 10 Points Lower than Blue.” Which is exactly what it is: “science” twisted to serve and popularize leftist political ends.

What Harvard’s Nathan Glazer said of the original study—“the authors of The Authoritarian Personality seem quite oblivious to authoritarianism on the political left, and so set a precedent for studying authoritarianism without need for unpleasant self-examination”—may not be true to the letter of these present-day updates……

I doubt most of the left knows of this book.  Or perhaps they do, at least the college educated ones.  But that book, digested by the chattering classes and fitting into the wholly made up universe of Marx and the extremely flawed (because mostly based on self-analysis, and that man wasn’t WELL) of Freudianism to regurgitate the certainties the left has about us.  And also the certain that they’re simon-pure and absolutely nice because well… because they think that everyone should fuck wildly (except, of course, if it offends feminists.  They might want to look in the mirror now) and they don’t hate Jews (but they hate Israel with anti-Semitic fervor and now have convinced themselves Jews control everything, but never mind) and they’re not nationalists and in fact despise their own country, and oh, yeah, they don’t want to control the press, except for that icky “right wing” press.

Actually, even in Adorno’s very flawed vision, the left scores high as authoritarian, particularly when you view nationalism as “loyalty to the tribe” which they have in spades, both to the leftist tribe and to whatever subdivision of victimhood they can claim.  The only thing that doesn’t fit, at first blush, is the sexual inhibition one.  But then you get into “all penetration is violation” and “you’re raping me with your eyes” and you’ve arrived.

But the fact is that all this is a bloody pack of nonsense.  Jew-hatred correlates ONLY with authoritarianism BECAUSE a totalitarian state hates all divergent minorities.  In the end they try to beat down every nail that sticks up, including the exceptionally smart, the exceptionally dumb, homosexuals, assexuals, creatives and introverts.  Jews are just a rather visible non-conforming group and therefore the canary in the coal mine.  Portugal, for instance, managed to be quite authoritarian without EVER descending into Jew-hatred.  And in America today anti-Semitism is far more prevalent on the left than the right, something most American Jews don’t seem to notice possibly because they’re beguiled by the philosophy.

They know a lot of things that just ain’t so.  And they’re fat and sassy enough they’ll never notice they don’t fit with reality until and unless their nonsense (like say the “No America at all” they were chanting again yesterday) comes to fruition and they realize that they are creatures of abundance, and that without abundance they can’t hold these just-so stories in their heads.  (A reason that Europe seems to be edging closer to Jackboots and former liberals are leading.)

And we, Lord bless us, are trying to prevent them from getting their reckoning.  Not that we love them that much, every unwashed dreadlock and flabby fat exposed fold, but because our fate and theirs are tied by living in the same area and being subjected to the same laws, and working in the same economy.

However, for the record, here is what real authoritanism is: when you feel you must control everyone else, including people wholly unrelated to you.  When you want to control what they read, what they think, what they say in every minor detail. When youu want to make sure they have no options but the ones you approve of.

It’s particularly bad if you do all this under some sort of “unified philosophy.”

And if people and groups with those characteristics get the power to do it, the result is always mass graves.

And no, it makes absolutely no difference if you’ve convinced yourself that it’s your opponents who “really” want to do this, or if you engage in psychic projection to figure out what’s driving the opposition.  (Which is how “we want fun stories, we don’t give a damn about politics” became, to the left “they want stories with no women or gay people or minorities. And they don’t want those people write either.” Something that, looking at the principals, or at the stories they write would have exploded in a New York minute.  But they’re Don Quixote beguiled by the story in their heads and unable to see reality.)

That you’ve convinced yourself that people voted for Donald Trump — Donald EFFING Trump, people — because they think he is a paragon of Christian virtue and modesty just doesn’t make it so.

Look instead at who does what they can to ensure books and movies and series with opposing viewpoints (or even slightly divergent.  Or even you know the creator didn’t buy into the latest politically correct “truth”) don’t see the light of day.  Look at who is willing to destroy careers and lives to ensure their narrative isn’t challenged, even slightly.  Look at who tries to shut down websites, leaves bad reviews to books never read, and calls those who agree with them “the good people.”

Those are the real authoritarians.  Whether people want to sleep with everything that waves in the wind or with no one has nothing to do with it.  Freud was wrong and studies on this are tainted.  The Victorians have been long-dead, and they weren’t nearly as prudish as the left likes to believe (in fact, if you read their books you find young people accusing them of having a “mind like a sink” in which everything was sexual.) And we on the right? Bah.  We actually do embrace a wide diversity.  Yes, even in political thought.  My friends range from Libertarians for whom any rule is an imposition to Socons who think that children not always obeying their parents is a sign of the apocalypse.

We debate things hotly and sometimes incandescently, but we don’t require other people fit every spot of our mental map to be friends, or indeed to be PEOPLE.  Which is what the real authoritarians do.  The left, OTOH will excommunicate you for having ONE thought out of line with their mental map.

Perhaps they know their mental map doesn’t fit anything? Surely after the fall of the Soviet Union, they must have an inkling it doesn’t fit REALITY?

Perhaps this is why they’ve decided, instead, to put their hands over their ears and lalalalala very loudly in the face of disproving facts?

It seems to be the case.  They seem to have decided that if they just believe hard enough and push hard enough reality will conform to their dream-world.

So, you know, for conservatives and libertarians — most of whom, frankly would rather be concerned with their private lives, doing their work and raising fat babies — it’s not just that 2016 was the Flight 93 election.  It’s that we live in Flight 93 times.  The left, after 100 years of dominance of the culture, has made it clear we must keep charging the cockpit or die.  We have no other choice.

Most of us completely understand the words of Based Lindsey Graham: You want power so bad, and I hope to God you never get it.

Because we can’t let them get it, not in the amount they want.  Because their programming is to destroy western civilization in the firm belief they’re bringing about paradises of freedom when in fact, they’ll take the world into an authoritarian age of misery, famine and tribalism.

Meanwhile, they’re living in Ruby Slippers times.  If they click their feet hard enough and wish hard enough….

And that is where we are, and why it doesn’t look good.

The only thing I can tell you is that in the end we win, they lose.  But it’s going to be a hard, hard road to a place where they realize they’re wrong.  Dreams are so hard to kill.

Be not afraid.  Let’s roll.

Who knew? PT Barnum was right.

Apparently it is possible to win the House of Representatives in America even in an extraordinarily prosperous time (though I’d argue most of us haven’t recovered from the debacle that started with the Dem legislative take over in 06, so it doesn’t FEEL prosperous yet.) by promising to raise people’s taxes and to throttle energy production.

Or… of course, we have a fraud and an MSM problem.

I’ve talked about fraud here before.  In CO in 2012, when I both poll-watched and was in touch with poll watchers throughout the state on a party line, we were counting 1/3 people being told they had voted before.  On the party line, I learned that in Denver it was 2/3.  You can’t beat shit like that.

Yes, the people turned away were allowed to vote a provisional ballot, but you see… the thing is that that only gets counted if they come up short — ie. if the difference between the winner and loser is less than the number of provisionals — but the other ballot just gets counted.  It’s already in. It’s already in the system.  Do. The. Math.

Even so, 12 was tight, and they had to find boxes of votes up in Boulder county.  Which is why the first thing the dems did when they captured Colorado legislature was to go all vote-by-mail.  To save money.  You know how fiscally conscious dems are, right?

I’m told something similar happened when Oregon went all voteby mail.  We’ll never win another election here, unless this is reversed. Period. Dot.

And now the architect of this change, which most people who aren’t really involved think was some super duper way of campaigning, is our governor.

Pray for my beloved Colorado.  I don’t want to HAVE to move.  It’s in the cards, in ten years or so, mind, since likely the boys will settle out of state for various reasons and we love our friends here, but have only two sons and would like to be near them (with our luck that will mean I need to make a lot of money indie, and we need two pieds a terre one near each boy.)  But then one boy or the other might stay here, and we WANT to stay here for ten years at least.  In this house.  I love my eagle’s next house, where the eagles fly at my office-window level.  And we’re doing stuff to it, like put down wood floors, to make it my dream house.  I don’t want to be forced out by Colorado going California fast and hard.

I have ideas on how to get around it, and an article for PJ about vote by mail and early voting (And btw, US born and raised people are all ADHD or short term memory loss.  Every time I come out against those, everyone piles on that I want our military not to vote.  Not a problem. They always had vote by mail.  Or they tell me I don’t want them to vote because they’ll be busy/not in country on election day.  Oh, please.  There was always SOME early voting, but you had to show you needed it.  One year I voted two weeks early, because we were going to be in Portugal on the week of the vote.  I had to show my plane tickets, is all.  And a friend who could not vote because she worked all day every day, and wouldn’t be let out, took a letter from her boss.  What I oppose is vote early or by mail for “convenience”.  Will you sell your franchise for convenience?)

And we have an MSM problem.  A BIG MSM problem.  Not a single democrat would have got the vote, if the MSM had, you know, reported on them and their actual agenda.

As in, if the MSM had shown them chanting “No America at all”, if Louis Farrakhan were shown shouting “Death to America,” (Since that’s all right with the MSM, let’s all shout “Death to Louis Farrakahn.”  No? Why not? What’s the difference?)

If the MSM had reported on how well the economy is doing without trying to credit it to Commie Barrie. Etc.

Mind you, millenials might still vote commie, because they are profoundly misseducated, particularly on history.

As is, with those two advantages: the unchecked fraud and the MSM wholly on their side, they managed to get the house by a razor thin margin.  Yeah, it’s not impressive.  It’s certainly not a blue wave.

But it’s enough.  Look, somehow, people think health care is the most important thing right now (it is, but not for the reasons they think. Obamacare forced a lot of good doctors into early retirement rather than deal with the crazy. I know. Friends and I lost doctors that way. (And a lot of the ones who stayed are wholly invested in the Obamacare “force you to lie to us” questions.  Which, yeah, is what it is.  If one drink a night with dinner is alcoholism, then I’m going to tell you I don’t drink that.  (Note that this makes whole countries alcoholics. Also, now that I’m on a million and a half meds, I don’t drink much, really.  But I lied to them for YEARS.)  Let alone other things.  Half of my mental answers to the stupid questions are “none of your business with bells on.” Which frankly means a lot of the ones left are social workers and busybodies at heart, and not the best doctors.)  With Nancy Grey Goose Pelosy (seriously, her alcohol bill a taxpayers expense when she was speaker was gargantuan.  Speaking of alcoholics, she seems to have one tied on AT ALL TIMES) in charge, the solution to this worry, as she already hinted, is Single Payer.

Now you’ll say we have the Senate and Trump.  The Senate has squishes and healthcare is Trump’s least conservative stand.  He simply fails to get that Single Payer is bad.  So we’ll likely get that foisted on us.  As I get older, and yes, my body being tricky, this worries the living crap out of me.  I’d like to live another 30 years, as is customary for my family. I have books to write, damn it.  This will not happen under single payer.  Not unless I make a lot of money and go private as soon as it’s available.  (Okay, so I see a lot of writing in my future.)

That I’d say is our biggest danger.  That and our inability to clean out the inky stuff in the FBI, CIA and federal bureaucracy with the House in enemy hands.  And of course, the ever-present possibility they’ll find ways to institutionalize fraud as they did with CO.  But for that they usually need two chambers and a complicit executive.

Oh, and the possibility they’ll screw us financially. And that their constant drip drip drip of investigations on crazy sh*t — they are already demanding Trump’s tax returns — in conjunction with their MSM amplification will create such an image problem that they can elect whoever they want in 2020.  If you thought Obama was bed, wait for the Kamala Harris administration.  You’ll die laughing.

Of course Americans are slow to fight, which is why we got here, but if that goes on… there will be blood on the streets.

So, is all lost? No. Despite the fact that I woke up with a splitting headache and a sense of doom.  (No, not hangover.  I actually ended up not drinking, because… mostly because not indicated with meds.)

Here are our strengths:

The MSM is less believed every year.  The full court press, the crazy sh*t they’ve been spinning should have seen them win 60 seats in the house and flip the senate.  It would have, even ten years ago.  But they were so openly corrupt during the Obama years that people lost faith.  Most of the people still listening to them are my parents and inlaws ages, and I’ll be blunt, most of them won’t be around much longer.  (And a lot of them are only voting because of democrat “helpers”in nursing homes.)  And their audience is skewed more to those who are sitting and listening to their propaganda all day, which is not the healthiest segment, at that. Remember working out makes you conservative? (My parents seem to bear that out)

In another 2 years, their influence will be smaller. In four, even more so.

And we are finding new ways to reach people, in news and in entertainment.  This blog took a step into more serious reporting with Bill’s posts.  There will be more like that (though not necessarily from Bill.)  We need more of that.  Our penetration is small, but there are ripples, and ideas spread.

There isn’t a hell of a lot we can do about vote fraud — except report on it, ceaselessly — but we can do something about information.  And about entertainment.  In fact, my friends, that’s my particular trench in the culture wars, and I MUST — for various reasons some personal — amplify my efforts.  Those of you who can, should too.

The other sign of hope, and not so much statistical but among the kids we knew while the kids were growing up, is that millenials started moving away from all the crap they learned in school, as the rest of us did, when facing the real world.  The fact that there are JOBS under Trump has exploded all their preconceptions.

Yeah, they’re squishy and occasionally they still fall for “Orange man bad”or for “commie so cool.”  If you have contact with them, educate them.  Don’t bludgeon them.  The young are prickly.  TALK to them.  Explode their preconceptions and the crazy economics and history they were taught in school.  Do what you can.

And while at it, if you have kids, homeschool.  No, I don’t mind homeschool fully, though of course if you can, do it.  I never could.  But I homeschooled AFTER school.  Read their books.  You’ll find most of them are based on Howard Zinn’s bullshit.  So, buy other books. Teach them world history.  Explain why the establishment lies to them.

Teens are naturally rebellious.  For generations, the left has sold the idea they’re anti-establishment.  Make sure people understand the left is the establishment.  They have such easy-to-mock types, and a lot of them will be on display in the House of Representatives.  Encourage the kids’ right and just rebellion against the sclerotic establishment.

This is not the end.  It’s not even the beginning of the end.  It might not be the end of the beginning.

We’re starting the long work of turning around a leftist narrative and governance that is now almost 100 years old.  No one promised us a rose garden, and in a long war, the other side will win some battles.

Yes, I know, the other side is SO unhinged it’s scary when they get any power at all.

On the other hand, it will happen.  We must harden, we must survive.

The next two years will be tricky.  We need every single one of you to fight for the cause of liberty and continue the work of freeing us, mind and body, from Marxist shackles.

Go on.  Go work.  Be not afraid.