Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

I almost called this “Sympathy for RFK, Jr.” but that would be both right and not. I mean, the man is far more of a statist than I’d like, and he might have a dead worm in his brain, but he’s obviously not the devil, and is capable of allying with MAGA to get to his end of Making America Healthy Again. Also, he’s so goofy that it’s impossible not to like him at least a little. I mean, what kind of gonzo mad lad has as his secret when running for president that he once moved a dead bear cub?

Still he believes in the power of centralized up-down commands, so I’m not sure I can back him the whole way. OTOH, he hasn’t tried doing any mandates, so he might be okay.

He is absolutely right on the fact that most of our bought-food is ridiculously bad for us.

I went to a con last weekend, meaning we drove to TN all day Thursday and back on Monday. On the way back we brought some oranges and we stopped for lunch. But on the way out we left too soon for me to able to eat after my thyroid meds. This means I was looking for coffee and food at a road stop. Not only was it much harder to find just plain coffee — how many machines are designed to sell us caramel/frosting/various flavorings of corn syrup and soy with vague bits of caffeine, instead of the one coffee machine in the corner — but finding cream to put in it (as opposed to sweet, flavored soy stuff) was almost impossible. As for anything to eat, there wasn’t amid the various baked things even a glimmer of something that was “just breadlike”. No, it was all sweet cupcakes (even the ones called muffins.) And worse, the cupcake thingies were filled with super-sweet cream and crusted with sugar frosting.

WHY?

Well, I can tell you why, because I am OLD. Around the eighties, the authorities, influenced in no small amount by “Diet for a Small Planet” which combined ignorance about agriculture (lands that are good for growing cows in, don’t necessarily work for wheat, corn or even potatoes) decided that meat was evil, and fat was responsible for every health problem.

Because fat is what makes food delicious, they instead started loading things with carbs and more carbs. And because our food regulations are susceptible to lobbyists, the corn lobby insisted that all sweet should be provided by high fructose corn syrup.

Thing about sugar is the more you have the more you get desensitized to it, so to make things more palatable more and more sugar must be added.

Since we don’t eat much sugar at home, road food, even not the spectacularly restricted choices at breakfast meant that I had enough sugar in a day to dwarf the amounts I normally eat in a week and to give me a hangover.

The amazing thing is not that Americans are overweight and have high rates of diabetes. I’m shocked that all of us aren’t dying in our forties.

So, how do I feel about seed oils? I don’t know. That’s the short answer. Mostly the seed oil oils that we used was canola, and there’s reasons to not have it under “overprocessed” and “goes bad after a while.” For a while now we’ve been using coconut oil or even animal fat when we fry which is not very often. But I have a weakness for tiny fried potatoes, so maybe once every couple of weeks? And it’s not that “we don’t fry” is not because it’s unhealthy* but because it tends to make a bigger mess in our small and um…. anti-efficient kitchen.

Look, at this point I don’t know what is “healthy” and I very much doubt anyone knows.

I grew up on margarine, because butter would definitely kill us all with heart attacks. Eggs were to be longed for, but actually eating them would kill us with heart attacks, etc. etc. etc.

I’ve lived long enough to see that reversed and carbs condemned.

Is this now the universal writ?

I refuse to believe it. I have friends who are far skinnier than I am and perfectly healthy who are functionally humming birds. They live on sugar and carbs only. If I did that, I’d be 450 lbs if I hadn’t already died of screaming diabetes.

Dave Freer, who worked as a biologist for a while, and was even a zoo keeper for a time, once told me that even within species nutrition requirements were highly individual. I think the example he gave were twins (but not identical) lions, where if fed the same diet, one would be unhealthily skinny and the other unhealthily fat.

He says that’s something animal biologists know, but human biologists refuse to acknowledge.

Some day we should be able to identify people’s ideal diet from their genetics (there’s some work on this already) but until then, we definitely need to stop government interference in how we eat.

The government needs to stop not just telling people how to eat — that is as it might be — but telling people what they can and can’t sell, and what subsidized food (which shouldn’t exist) must consist of. Because that just means our collective diets (all of us need convenience foods sometime, and frankly I’m coming to the age not cooking all the time would be nice. Since there’s only two of us most of the time.) are schizophrenic and keep careening between extremes, as well as being influenced by the worst possible reasons; which lobbyists have access and money.

I hope RFKA considers that Making America Healthy Again passes through Getting Government Out of Our Food (Yes, GGOOF. It’s catchy.) Let people sell food unhampered by mandates, and let people eat the food that best suit them. And stop teaching people that plant based food is best. It works for some and perhaps some people like it or need it. But humans are a scavenger species and those eat meat when they can get it.

This whole obsession with vegetarianism (absent some rare health issues) is just more Diet For A Small Planet and the fears of a stupid philosophy that has been proven wrong.

Our planet is not small (And we can colonize others) and meat is delicious, and protein is good for you.

Eat what works for you. Ignore the government. Find your own health.

Humans are fickle creatures. A month ago I was delighted and happy at the speed with which the administration was fixing things.

I’m still happy. I’m also very tired, though that might have to do with just having come back from a con and still being on the edge of con crud.

The thing is that little dissatisfaction points have crept in. I don’t like the labor pick. I am ambivalent over the whole thing with Ukraine, but willing to accept Trump is doing the best he can with the situation and that it’s not entirely in his control. (He’s not magic.) I’m frustrated with judges who make rulings that should be beyond their reach, and which the Supreme Court, inexplicably, decided to tolerate.

This post is as much to you — I’m sure some of the rest of you will need to hear it, not just me — as to myself: Possess your soul in patience. It’s less than a month and a half from inauguration. Yes, Trump is governing like someone who knows his life, as well as our country, depends on this. But he’s not magical, and he’s certainly not a king or a dictator.

Looked at one way, we’ve been on this road towards an European style “managed” republic for a hundred years or so. It can’t be undone with a magical wand, or in a minute. it’s going to take work, and there’s going to be wins and losses. Sometimes it will be two steps forward and one step back. Sometimes the wins will be alloyed with loss and irritation. We will be muttering and cursing, and hoping.

And Trump is not magical either. He’s going to do things I disagree with. Look, anyone will. Even if I were president, I’d be forced into things I didn’t like or, considering how often I’ve made mistakes in life, do things that didn’t play the way I wanted.

The thing is just we tend to attribute magical powers of imposing their view on everyone in power. And the opposition has been driving us to such a bad, illiberal, “you’ll eat the bugs and be thankful” place, and we got such a miracle with the election win, against the cheating and the spending and what felt like a scripted loss. So, of course, we feel like Trump should have a magical reset button. But this doesn’t exist in reality.

And we can’t do much of anything, except work the culture side. Now as a year ago, our job is conquering hearts and minds to liberty. And perhaps percolating a few suggestions upward, as seems to happen sometimes.

Take a deep breath. Eat properly. Try to sleep. And…

Possess your soul in patience. This fight we’re in is not easy, and it will never be over. We might win big and have some breathing time and a time of prosperity, but the statists will come back. If not here, then somewhere else. If not on the national, then on the regional or local level.

The fight goes on. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose.

In the mean time, take care of yourself. Celebrate the wins. Endure the losses. Shrug and keep going.

Possess your soul in patience.

Remember, patience is a virtue. So is fortitude. And we’ll get a chance to practice both a lot.

Patience. Keep going.

I don’t like behaviorism as an explanation for all human behaviors. I’ve always believed in humans being able — if not always willing — to think and reason and make decisions, instead of just acting on habit and impulse.

(As for who wrote “Every time a dog salivates, a Pavlovian rings a bell”- Robert A. Heinlein on the blackboard before psychology class, I know nothing. It was an impulse. Also, I’m fairly sure the statute of limitations has expired.)

But there’s no point at all saying that a lot of the stuff we do every day isn’t in great measure made easier by our trained in habits.

Like, for instance, do you think every time you walk? Do you carefully balance? Unless you’re a certain age and your knees have started going, or you’re a toddler, still establishing the habit, you probably don’t. And you don’t think how to write, you just write. (Well, I do. I mean form the letters. Shush you, in the peanut gallery.) So–

You can see how doing a lot of things by rote and habit is useful to us as individuals and as a species. It saves brain power and attention and applying yourself to every little thing.

Thing is, the busier you are, and the older you are, the more things you do by rote, even things that should — technically — be impossible.

I was told recently by an artist that, yeah, you can do it while half asleep, if you’ve trained for decades.

And you know…. Enid Blyton, when she started losing her mind to Alzheimers continued writing. Apparently one of the final novels was a slightely reworked version of another novel, but she was writing.

The thing is, the older you get the more and more things you do by rote and habit. You’ve done them so often.

And it tends to ossify your behaviors. It leaves you curiously unable to adapt when circumstances change. (This by the way is why it’s good to not have been massively successful — though I swear it wouldn’t spoil me) but always scraping at the edges to survive. It builds fewer habits of complacency. Though I won’t say it doesn’t build some non-productive habits, like an inability to relax.)

Cultures can get this too, of course. “But it always worked.” I suspect that’s the problem with the truly contra-productive behaviors like, oh, off the top of my head relative marriage or harems.

Anyway, looking at the spectacle of the democrats in congress holding up stupid little signs during Trump’s speech, or in fact all the incredibly stupid things they’ve been doing since last November I kept thinking of ingrained habits and older people, since most of them are geriatric. (And the young…. well, their younger generation seems either dumb or intellectually lazy.)

They keep doing things like those stunts with signs, or talking about how “the people” are angry or talking about how the right is for “millionaires and billionaires” and it’s like they forget all the times that didn’t work, in the last decade. They keep doing this stuff as though they didn’t have to cheat massively in 2020.

They keep crying on TV, going for the celebs, telling us we’re stupid and uneducated….

All their strategies, including the demonizing of Jan 6, say, would have worked perfectly 30 years ago. Heck, they almost succeeded in making Obama a “great president” as they did with FDR, in the press and school books.

But the information ecology has changed completely. And they can’t adapt. They keep falling on habit, because habit worked so well before.

It’s a bizarre spectacle, like watching people doing stupid things, convinced there is a curtain in front of them, hiding what they’re doing. And unable to realize what there is is an entire crowd watching them.

It’s like watching a mouse that was trained to touch a button and get a pellet, and who keeps doing it even though no treat is coming.

And all we can do is watch and learn, and try to stay mentally flexible.

In a time of high change.

Book Promo (the normal weekly patter.)

If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH

FROM CEDAR SANDERSON: The Luminous Citadel of New Atlantis (The Tanager)

A Hollow World Defies Known Science…
Wilt Frobisher seizes the chance to join an expedition to the Luminous Citadel—an enigmatic moon orbiting a shattered planet—leaving behind everything he’s ever known. What he finds inside the hollow impossible world staggers the imagination: a lush, gravity-defying biosphere teeming with ancient trees, mysterious inhabitants, and ugly secrets hiding in the shadows.

Guided by the fearless Dione—a red-haired native with a knack for flight and a language all her own—Wilt plunges into a realm where survival depends on mastering the strange currents of an alien ecology. Questions arise the more he bonds with Dione and her people. Who built this refuge? Why was it abandoned? And what does his mentor, the eccentric Dr. Sooma, know that he’s not telling?

In a world of treetop villages, floating acorns, and lurking dangers, Wilt must uncover the truth of the Citadel—or risk becoming part of its forgotten history.

FROM DALE COZORT: Wokuo Incursion

Invasion from an alternate timeline?
It’s December 1937 in a world exactly like ours except that it is about to veer wildly into alternate history. It’s less than two years before World War II broke out historically in Europe. War has already come to much of Asia, with Japan invading China. An isolationist US fears it will be drawn into that conflict, especially after the Japanese sink the US gunboat Panay. Just when President Franklin Roosevelt thinks he has that crisis under control, he faces a bigger issue. High tech descendants of the Wokuo, Japanese pirates and smugglers who should have vanished over three hundred years ago, flood into the Pacific coast off California.

The Wokuo are both refugees and invaders, fleeing from war in an alternate reality where they survived and grew strong, while looking for new conquests to replace their lost empire. They set their sights on California. President Roosevelt sends disgraced former Colonel Martin to California to organize resistance to the invaders, but the Colonel has his own issues, buried deep in his brain and waiting to cause disaster.

FROM LAURA MONTGOMERY: Took Their Wages (Space Law Science Fiction)

Returned from long years in interstellar space to longer decades missed on Earth, a starship’s crew face their biggest obstacle yet: Human Resources.

Fresh off their victorious defense of a starship captain on mutiny charges, attorneys Calvin Tondini and Sara Seastrom must now pivot to a new challenge: defending the same starship crew’s hard-earned salaries. Bureaucrats citing relativity want to apply a different clock than bargained for in the crew’s original contract.

Whatever may be said about Einstein, time, and space, the crew’s attorneys know that money isn’t relative.

Check out Took Their Wages for a sober analysis of this timely question.

A science fiction short story.

FROM DAN MELSON: The Price of Power: Book Two of Politics of Empire (The Politics of Empire 2)

For everything there is a price.

Grace has married into one of the most important families of the Empire. The Scimtars are wealthy and powerful in every sense of the term. Her five children will be among the Empire’s elite when they are ready, and Grace herself is not without influence or importance despite her relative youth. But Imperial politics are deadly, and the more you have, the more your rivals want what you have.

There is no shelter from The Price of Power.

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: The Lion of God (Timelines Book 1)

John Wolff has been handed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Again.
He’s already saved the love of his life from an early death – thirty years after she died.
Now, a beautiful young woman, who is clearly his daughter, has appeared from the timeline branch where that same love of his life survived and married his counterpart.
She says they need his help fighting off invaders from the far future. Who, by the way, are looking for him. Why? Because they want the starship drive he and a friend invented, the precursor to their time machine. Problem is, in her timeline, it hasn’t been invented yet.
What man can resist a cry for help from his own daughter?
Particularly when the invaders think she’s a saint. Or possibly, a devil wearing saint’s clothing. And they’re looking for her, too.
Thus begins the Timelines Saga, and the story of the Lion of God.

FROM LINDSAY PETERSEN: Caught in the Wizards’ Duel (The Romantic Chrononaut Book 2)

Rumors swirl of the “Elf King” sabotaging Nicola Tesla’s network of aether towers. Dougray Cameron is called out by King Edward’s Secret Service to investigate. Doug’s wife Kate follows in secret, heeding her misgivings about this ‘wee, small task’ Doug took on. As she watched him scale a tower across the turbulent strait the great iron tower slowly collapses, plunging Doug into the fatal surf.  It’s the stranger next to her whose slow-clapping amplifies the horror — what kind of fiend would do that? 

When Kate turns to demand an explanation he’s gone. Surely he knew something, planned something, killed her husband! The card he handed her — he lives in Paris! Kate Cameron, newly widowed, will follow this Errol Koenig to Paris and serve justice on him!

But — he’s aware of her pursuit, and his confederates are determined to stop her, if not kill her. Aided by those she meets, including Winston Churchill, P G Wodehouse, Mata Hari, Arsène Lupin, Nicola Tesla, and Kemal Ataturk, she follows her prey across Europe to Constantinople and beyond, travelling by Orient Express, Tesla’s airship, and automaton Janissary. 

Somehow the moment to end Koenig’s life never arrives. Could his strange allure be the reason why? 

And could it be true that her husband survived? 

In a classic scene, the pursuit ends atop an ancient castle in a thunderstorm. 

FROM GERALD HALL: Yesterdays War

A wealthy Australian industrialist in the year 2040 accidentally opens a portal into the past with one of the scientific experiments that he has financed. A cataclysmic nuclear war that dooms humanity erupts almost at the same time. The industrialist decides to go through the portal and try to change history to prevent the final war. He assumes the identity of a dead prospector after finding himself in the year 1918. The time traveler enlists the aid of local Aborigine tribesmen while planning to use his knowledge of the future to become wealthy once again. Only this time, he will be using his wealth to influence the course of history and those who made it.

FROM J. MANFRED WEICHSEL: Five Maidens on the Pentagram

Nobody believes Jonah, a mild-mannered mental patient with split personalities, that his doctor is working with his evil alter ego, Maldeus, to sacrifice women to a sex-crazed demon in the hospital basement. Determined to expose his doctor’s evil plan, Jonah goes undercover as Maldeus.

Assisted by a cute nudist mental patient named Aurora, Jonah is thrust into a diabolical plot that forces him to confront the very limits of his own identity. Will Jonah defeat his doctor in time to stop the rise of Satan?

FROM MARY CATELLI: The Princess Seeks Her Fortune

In a land where ten thousand fairy tales come true, Alissandra knows she is in one when an encounter with a strange woman gives her magical gifts, and another gives her sisters a curse.

And she knows that despite the prospects of enchantments, cursed dances, marvelous birds, and work as a scullery maid, it is wise of her to set out, and seek her fortune.

FROM KAREN MYERS: King of the May – A Virginian in Elfland (The Hounds of Annwn Book 3)

MORE VALUABLE AS A WEAPON THAN A KINGMAKER, HE MUST MAKE HIS OWN CHOICES TO SECURE THE FUTURE.

George Talbot Traherne, the human huntsman for the Wild Hunt, had hoped to settle into a quiet life with his new family, but it was not to be. Gwyn ap Nudd, Prince of Annwn, has plans to secure his domain in the new world from the overbearing interference of his father Lludd, the King of Britain.

The security of George’s family is bound to that of his overlord, and he vows to help. But when he and his companions stand against Lludd and his allies at court, disaster overturns all their plans and even threatens the Hounds of Annwn themselves.

George and his patron, the antlered god Cernunnos, must survive a subtle attack that undermines them both. Other gods and gods-to-be have taken an interest, but the fae are divided in their allegiances and fear the threat of deadly new powers in their unchanging lives.

George and his companions must save themselves if they are to persuade their potential allies to help. But how can they do so, attacked on so many fronts at once? Will he put his family into greater jeopardy by trying to defend them?

https://amzn.to/41mdVoVFROM LEIGH KIMMEL: All the Little Hedgehogs

In Soviet Union, genetic engineering does you.

Yona wondered why everyone kept steering him toward a military career, until one of his teachers noticed his aptitude for genetics. Now he’s the personal student of Academician Voronsky, working in a secret genetic engineering facility in a closed town.

However, Yona keeps having to spend as much time babysitting the Academician’s adopted son Kolya as actually doing genetics. When this extra assignment becomes a frustration, Yona learns just how quickly privileges can be retracted.

And then he starts learning just how deep the secrets of the Soviet human genetics program really goes.

A story from the Grissom timeline (Gus on the Moon universe).

Caution: Contains intense material that may be disturbing to some readers. Reader caution advised.

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: Glamorous.

True tragedy has always fascinated me. It makes for lousy novels, unless you like eating grey fog with a spoon, but can be an effective background for a novel, within which pre-doomed background the character can carve out difficult wins.

What I mean by true tragedy is the type of pre=determined plot in which two people/nations/forces run at each other, each with vital and urgent needs from their own point of view and they can’t see the other pov at all, no matter how they try.

Most of the most fascinating tragedies of this type happen when two cultures collide, because cultures — and those embedded in them — truly are at a very essential level blind to each other.

When I was researching the simultaneous Boer and Zulu invasion of South Africa (no, the Zulus were not even vaguely “native” and assuming they were simply because it was the same continent and they’re black is not just racist but arrant ignorance. They were no more native to South Africa than Frenchmen to Portugal during the Napoleonic wars. The fact outsiders can’t tell you apart from the natives does NOT make you native.) I realized I was reading about that type of tragedy. And that the same type of tragedy (rather than overpowered, oh, so strong colonizers against helpless “natives” who worship nature) is what happened in America with the Amerindians. To an extent it’s what is unrolling before our very eyes in the Israel/Palestine conflict, which has only NOT resulted in complete elimination of “Palestinians” because the Israelis have the patience of Job and perhaps an insufficiently developed sense of self-preservation. (I recommend on read The Washing of the Spears by Donald R. Morris, for a glimpse at the big picture.)

What happened in all of those cases (and is happening in Palestine, in slow mo, with one important difference) is that a civilized culture came into the sphere of a barbaric one.

I’m not going to apologize for these terms, btw. Words mean things. A civilized culture, in general, in western terms, means one with adequate means of communication, a sense of belonging and human worth beyond the most basic and pathetic tribal affiliation, and some kind of shared moral/philosophical ethos. (For most of the west, that is Judaic/Christianity. Other cultural disagreements happen, of course, but it’s on the framework of that background.) Barbarians, OTOH are the default background from of humanity. There is no link, no belief in overarching humanity beyond the most basic blood ties. Tribes can be long lasting and widespread, but at the bottom there’s an assumption of shared blood and more importantly — since the shared blood is (no matter how provably wrong) often at the very heart of modern nationalities too — the denial of humanity or value to anyone else. The basic philosophy of the barbarian is “survival for me and mine/at the expense/despite/never mind anyone else.” (All humans can get pushed to this place in moments of dire need. But for the barbarian it is the only mode. And this is also present in our current issue.)

The problem of barbarism/paleolithic mode of interaction with other cultures is that it developed a very simple, very effective way of dealing with invasion/incursions of other tribes into their area. Remember, they don’t give a hang about the people coming in, not even women and children. Their way of retaining their land and getting rid of the invaders is simple, basic and …. showy. Showy and ruthless are needed.

So, if you notice a settlement from another tribe on your lands, you go over and commit the most ruthless, shocking atrocities you can think of. You kill men, women and children (unless you take those as slaves) in the most horrifying way. Slice, dice and often eat. And leave the corpses as a warning.

For two barbaric tribes, this works. If the outpost was a part of a tribe, the first tiptoe over the line, you just showed them they don’t want to come here. You’ll do worse than just killing to them. From what I understand in most neolithic clashes, this would either make the other tribe retreat and find an easier place to colonize/raid/attack, or at least pause hostilities while you prepare for bigger fights.

When the enemy you’ve spotted is a civilization, though, you’ve just bought yourself hell. Civilized people tend to view neolithic barbarism as putting yourself beyond the pale of humanity. You become a feral beast who must be eliminated.

There were serious debates in the clashes between civilizations on whether the Zulus had souls, whether Amerindians had souls. Dismissing these as racist misses the point. A lot of us who are visually indistinguishable from the Palestinians (basically Mediterranean sub-race) have had more than a few moments of feeling that way about Palestinians after 10/7. There is a type of behavior so barbaric that civilized human beings immediately, instinctively class it as “not human.” This is intentional as a war tactic of barbarians, of course. It’s the whole “Don’t mess with those guys, they’re not even human” but it misfires badly with a civilized enemy, who then decides to exterminate the “non-human.” The other part of this is that barbarians always underestimate the size of the group they’re dealing with. Because they don’t understand group allegiance beyond the tribe.

The end of these clashes is ALWAYS that the barbarians are exterminated with prejudice. Sure, sometimes the barbarians survive physically. But the culture is obliterated root and branch and civilization imposed on them. (It can take a very long time.)

A note on the Palestinian7e and the general culture have been part of the “civilized” world since Rome, but their culture itself has progressively become more barbarian-like and yeah we can say a lot about supremacist religions, and illusions of relevance fed by a corrupt media and world powers, but the fact remains that 10/7 was pure Neolithic war tactic, and that they were convinced this would somehow, oddly, win the war. That is PURE barbarian thinking, and shouldn’t be possible for someone in the 21st century. But here we are.

Anyway this type of clash is a true tragedy because there’s no finding middle ground.

To an extent, though what we watched with Zelenski and Trump in the oval office is even more tragic. There is cultural misunderstanding but there was no need for it. Both cultures are civilized and there are bridging advisors. It’s not always obvious, but there was no reason for the conflagration, either.

SURE there are cultural assumptions on either side, but when it comes to tragedy, this is not the pure tragedy above, but in my opinion, more of an Othelo type tragedy in which a third party sets it up, for its own purposes.

Francis Turner wrote his view of it here, and he sees it more like a tragic culture clash, but I beg to differ.

My view is more of an Othello. For how I watched the meeting (without sound) look at this: Full Body Language analysis.

It is my opinion that Zelinsky — having agreed to sign the treaty and demanded to do it in the oval office — then walked into the room already determined not to sign. More importantly, he walked in determined to humiliate Trump and make him plead with him.

Now there is some tragic misunderstanding there, mostly of who Trump is and of the cultural moment in the US. Europeans tend to view all of the US as the same, and they really believe in a “uniparty” and they’ve doubtless been listening to the press talk about how old and impotent Trump is. This is tragic indeed.

But more importantly we know now for absolute fact that before Zelinsky went into the oval office, he talked to the same broad group of democrats that had been “supporting” him and they advised him to “resist” Trump, to demand more, to refuse cease fire, etc. etc. etc. They wound him up and convinced him he could get whatever he wanted and adulation besides.

To them this was win-win. They were going to put Trump on the spot in the oval office, and if he rolled over paint him as weak, if he didn’t go back to painting him as Putin’s stooge, which they still think is a winning play, judging by their media.

And so it played out. Major loss for Zelinsky. An upset for Trump, but come on, not even the right squishes were siding with Zelinsky. Not even those who all out support Ukraine.

Where the cultural blindness and inability to understand what is happening comes in it’s at Zelinsky’s level and more broadly European level.

They really, really, really don’t understand our current Democrats. They have their own despicable elites in Western Europe at least, but most of them haven’t seen through them. They are as we were say in 2016. The masks haven’t even half fallen. So to their minds, and certainly to Zelensky’s minds it is unbelievable that they’d instigate further war and deaths and risk Ukraine being obliterated and the other states in Europe threatened TO MAKE TRUMP LOOK BAD; to score points in their captive press. (They keep missing that no one is watching/believing that, not in the US. The election should have been a clue, but apparently not.)

And so even anyone that Zelinsky might have consulted would have been unable to advise him better. They and him probably would assume that the democrats had the best interests of Ukraine at heart, if not Trump’s. And in Zelinsky’s case, it is even less likely he realized they were willing to underbuss him to score points, since these are the same people who were helping him till a month and change ago.

So he did what they advised. he had no clue. They’re probably still telling him to “Stand strong” or some derivative thereof. They’ll do this until they realize this isn’t causing most Americans to turn against Trump — a poll in a day or three — and then they’ll ignore Zelinsky* and discard him, like they discarded everyone they used in the past from what’s her face Sheehan to Greta Thunberg. Everyone is a rock star to the left when being used against their true enemy: their domestic opposition. And everyone stops mattering when the attack fails.

But in this case their puppet has substantially wounded his nation’s chance of survival and perhaps the safety of Eastern Europe.

Look, in that position, at that time, Trump did what he had to do. The only thing he COULD do.

How does this end? I don’t know. Right now Trump might be more than willing to throw Ukraine under the bus, but I can tell you he will not willingly endanger Poland.

Can he pull a rabbit from the hat, and make it so that we can still get a ceasefire and use the minerals deal as a trip wire to protect Ukraine? I don’t know. If anyone can, it is this administration (Not because Trump is a super-genius. He might be, but that’s not the point. But because he’s not a politician and his out-of-the-box thinking can allow him to come up with unconventional solutions.) Will he?

I don’t know. Having had my own arguments with Europeans recently, I can tell you the temptation to bitch slap them is almost irresistible. And yet saving them is probably ultimately in our interest. Even if I — and I’m sure Trump — am not willing to sacrifice American lives to that cause. (Not anymore.)

At this point all we can hope for is that Trump pulls a hat out of a rabbit.

And remember that no matter how much we hate the left we can’t hate them enough.

*I realize I spelled Zelinsky many different ways in this. The truth is, I tried to look it up, but nothing clear came up, and I’m typing this while tied to the roof rack in the back of a speeding car. I don’t feel up to go back and change it all to be only one, much less figuring out which is correct.
So, instead, those of you who come up with a count of the number of ways I spelled Zelinski’s name, send me the number and your snail mail to my bookpimping email, and I’ll send you a signed book by return mail. :) Make my issues with spelling work for you. Go.

At ConFinement. Just never came back upstairs after breakfast. Spent a while with friends, just talking. Promo might NOT be till Tuesday?

SORRY.

I woke up this morning to anger and worry in the groups I normally check into before setting my mind to work. (Work today being weird, anyway, since I’m at a conference.)

People were very upset because the left was being the left. In this specific case, they were — after doxxing her — bad-review bombing DataRepublican’s husband’s small business.

Most people’s reactions — and her own — was “that’s not fair. He didn’t do anything to deserve it.”

What is missed in this whole thing is that SHE didn’t do anything to deserve it.

Data Republican is not a hacker, breaking into their systems. In fact as they keep saying, all the information she’s discovered has been public for for decades. (What she’s doing is more attaching the index to the volume so we can read it. But she’s not breaking into their systems or causing damage or any of that.)

All she’s doing to bring on their hatred and attempts at destroying her and everyone linked to her is bringing to light the things they’ve done for years — decades? — in secret with our tax money and the government power with which they were entrusted.

If they can’t stand to admit (even to themselves, perhaps) in public what they’ve been doing all this time, they should ask themselves why they’re doing it.

If they can’t look in the face the theft, murder and evil they’re involved in, perhaps they should repent and stop it?

Yes, they’ve committed theft, embezzlement and even murder, by removing money people needed to keep body and soul together, by giving money to people who are kidnapping children and women to bring them across the border for (literally) fates worse than death, by incentivizing very poor people to enslave themselves to the cartels to come in, only to be enslaved once here by extremely low wages and a net of social dependency. They’ve done many, horrible things. Some of them too horrible for normal human beings to contemplate.

But the operative thing here is that they’ve done it. Exposing them is not an attack, but merely revealing what they’ve done. If they’re so horrified by what they did that they attack the one exposing them, it’s their problem, not hers.

If who they are is so horrible they can’t bear for it to be exposed, I have only one question: have they broken every mirror they own?

“I’ve Had it Up to Here” by Cybersmythe

You know what? I’ve had it up to here (points to neck, thinks better of it and points to top of head) with people telling me I’m going to regret Trump’s presidency. The last couple of weeks, I’ve been bombarded on all sides by stories about how Trump voters started regretting their votes on Inauguration Day and there’s an avalanche, or perhaps even a cascade, like one of preferences, that is causing MAGAts, whoever they are, to rue the day, and we’re talking imminent rue-age, because the righteous will righteously rise up and smite the unrighteous usurper. In a righteous manner, right?

The most recent was an description on LinkedIn talking about how since Republicans abandoned Nixon, they’re sure to abandon Trump. I got sent a notice about it because a writer I know commented that Republicans aren’t going to be able to abandon Trump. I was devastated, not because I am anticipating rue-age with dread, but because the writer in question is someone I thought had half a clue. I try to have better friends than that.

One of the things I’ve noted is that the people who believe in the value of the status quo never seem to have question whether or not they’re doing the right thing. Sure, there are questions among the left, but they’re about whether or not they need to push even harder to organize and collectivize and whether or not they’re incredibly awesome or merely amazingly awesome. There’s no reflection, no attempts to determine if the goal is really the nirvana that they expect, and certainly no attempts to look at intermediate results to determine if what they have achieved so far is better or worse.

Not that wishful thinking is absent from our side and…you know what? We first have to deal with the critical issue that our side has. There’s an elephant in the room that needs addressing: We don’t have a good way of describing ourselves and I’m tired of talking about “our side” versus “their side”. Left and right were never very good descriptions even as they were useful labels. When I describe my beliefs, I talk about the desire to reduce the size and scope of government at all levels. I talk about the inherent value people have simply because they’re people and not just yet another member of yet another interest group. I talk about just wanting to be left alone. “I can do what I want” should be the default unless there’s a good reason why it must not be.

I know lifelong Democrats who have expressed to me their desire to reduce the size and scope of government, and who just want to be left alone. Those aren’t partisan issues, those are people issues and it’s as critical to freedom and liberty here and now as the antislavery movements of prior centuries were then and there. You, and I do mean YOU, are not the property of anyone but yourself. I have no wish to control you, just as I have no wish for you to control me. It’s just the right thing to do.

So, when I see Trump’s lieutenant Musk and his battalion of wrecking balls rampaging through USAID I can’t help but cheer them on. Is this a sign that Trump is a fascist? Oh, HELL no! Real fascists hired an army bureaucrats so as to spread their power more effectively. Fascists would not be laying people off so as to conserve more and more of the national resources. They would be hell bent on increasing their force of minions to convert more and more of the treasury to their personal wealth.

“But,” some have said, “Trump fired all those inspectors general. They were supposed to rein in his power, wheren’t they? So firing them must be a bad thing, right?” Well, no. Some people may have gotten the idea that the president works for those in the executive branch, when the opposite is true. The inspectors general are there to make sure that the president gets his way from the various parts of the executive government. They work for him, therefor it is essential that they have his trust. In Trump’s first time, they all betrayed him so they all have to go.

“But Trump pardoned all those insurrectionists. They were trying to overthrow the legitimate government! That’s evil, right?” Well, no. What happened on January 6, 2021 was not an insurrection, it was a protest. Democrat constituents protest like that all the time, including breaking things inside the capital building. Enough information has come out about election irregularities since then to show that the demonstrators were likely correct. Besides which, there was an orderly transfer of power. If it was an insurrection, then you have to explain why they didn’t actually do a violent overthrow of the government instead of just taking an impromptu tour of the capital.

“But Trump is going to gut the FBI.” You mean the same FBI that has committed a significant chunk of resources to tracking down little old ladies because of a trumped-up “insurrection.” We can surely do without those agents because they haven’t done a lick of work in years. I’m afraid I can’t get worked up about it.

“But Trump revoked the security clearances of retired intelligence officials. We need them to fight the War on Terror!” You mean the intelligence officials that created a “dossier” that was a work of fiction from beginning to end? The same intelligence officials that said that the story about Hunter Biden’s laptop had all the hallmarks of foreign disinformation? Those intelligence officials? It may seem like tit-for-tat to revoke their clearances, but just what does a government retiree need with a security clearance? Shouldn’t they be out of government work? That is what “retired” usually means.

“But Trump granted security clearances to people who aren’t elected!” Um, well, yeah. The people he hired to clean up the mess need access to find out whether or not the agencies they’re looking at are doing what they’re supposed to do. Lots of records are incomplete, possibly deliberately so, and so they have to be reconstructed from those that remain.

“But Elon Musk was never elected and he’s a foreigner!” So? The president has the authority to hire people. And, outside of certain roles mandated by law, he doesn’t need anybody’s permission to do it. Elon is doing what Trump promised to do during the election. Those promises are a large part of why Trump won the election. We don’t care where he’s from, we like what he’s doing, and we’d like to continue and grow.

“But Trump is going to dismantle the Department of Education? How can this be a good idea when education is so screwed up?” You might consider the fact that the Department of Education has been core to the education of Americans since the oldest of the current crop of teachers was in elementary school. If the DoE isn’t responsible for the mess that we’re in, who else could it be? Don’t you think doing something different might be a good idea? I even think there was a saying about always doing the same thing and expecting different results. Anybody remember?

That is, in fact, the real crux of the matter. Trump is changing things, and that’s not comfortable for some people. For decades, many Americans have been crying for change, not just changing the nameplate on the door of the Oval Office, but real substantive change, and it is like our pleas have finally been heard. Will the change be all to the good? Maybe not, but doing the same old same old wasn’t going to cut it any more. Maybe some good people will be caught up in these changes and have their lives torn asunder, but while I feel for them these changes certainly seem to be essential for the country has a whole to survive.

So, regret DOGE? Regret Trump? I’m about as likely to regret holding my newborn daughter in my trembling hands. Maybe the change will cause pain for me and mine, but I can’t imagine any such pain to be but a temporary condition. Anything they’re doing can also be un-done and things that should be done should be done with transparency in the full light of day so we can all agree that it’s what’s right.

That is why I do not regret the actions already taken and why I do not anticipate regretting the actions yet to come. I’m delighted by what’s happened, not devastated, and I just wish those people salivating over my regret would go away, or at least stop trying to sell me on the idea.

One thing I’ll say for our side of the political equation. We seem to have become slightly more immune to psy-ops, or perhaps less willing to go along with anything the left tries to prod us into doing.

These days, it looks like when they need a patsy they have to actually recruit and pay them, which they’ve apparently been doing to get people to “talk back” to Republican representatives at townhalls, or use bots. Now the AI bots are getting better, but you can still tell if the person you’re arguing with on FB has an account made yesterday and no followers. (Okay, normally made after the election, but still.)

And despite the dire warnings — really? — that the government would “collapse” in six weeks (awfully precise there chum. Kash, are you monitoring these?) that was suddenly everywhere after Carville flapped his lips, and which seemed to imagine that US governments like British can “fall” before elections. (Was this ops run by a Britisher? Did Carville have a senile moment? Was he fed the wrong line? Or does it indicate something far more sinister? Again Kash, are you monitoring this?) even the most squishy of squish blogs on the right has not run with panic.

And the whole “people are mad at DOGE” also isn’t taking.

The screaming that if the right touches Medicaid it’s done, that this worked before is the left drinking their own ink and/or trying to panic the right. It is important to remember that no, it didn’t work before. What worked in 2018 and 2020 was FRAUD. Massive, industrial quantities of fraud, served from a firehose. I can’t be the only one who remembers polls held open for two weeks after the election in 2018. What, are all of you more ADD than I? How do you remember to dress in the morning?

If we solve the fraud — Mr. President, more needs to be done — then curtailing Medicaid is certainly not going to bring the government “down” (even if that were possible.)

Frankly, this whole “Medicaid can’t be touched, or people will turn” is nonsense. As with social security, medicare, etc, the vast majority of people my age and younger (and I’m sixty two, rapidly approaching the point at which MOST people are younger than I) never counted on any of the social net programs. Since the eighties, we expected there would be nothing for us when we qualified.

AND thinking people are super invested in “government paid health care” ignores how much more cynical we got about health care in general in the last five years. I desperately need to go see a dentist, but have been putting it off, because I remember dentists closing because they couldn’t figure out a way to make us wear masks during procedures. And the other doctors? the last time I got asked to wear a mask was two months ago at my PCP. And the receptionist said the doctor might refuse to see me if I wouldn’t wear it. (I know the doctor. She ALSO wasn’t wearing a mask. Because she’s not crazy.) Then there was the crazy time mid 21 when a doctor tried to convince my husband they could do his physical over the phone as thoroughly as in the office.

Look, it’s not happy making, because it’s one of the things we still need, but the medical profession has lost a ton of confidence and prestige over this insanity. And people are way more hesitant to seek “care.” (Which might prevent iatrogenic issues, but hey. Better or worse than the fact people are putting off needed care? I don’t know.) So, saying “We’ll take away your free medical care” is not as scary as it used to be. On top of which, frankly, we now know how much medicaid was being used to look after illegal immigrants who just came in and got top of the line care. And if that’s cut, there’s probably still enough for every citizen and legal resident.

The fact is that the left is mostly trying to panic our politicians and make them buckle. I urge those cooked-spaghetti kneed idiots to stand firm. Borrow someone else’s spine if you need to. Because you have no idea how bad things will get if you cave now, and therefore Trump can’t clean up the mess y’all have been creating for a century or so. You don’t want to know. Trump is the VERY POLITE REQUEST.

Despite my moments of blind, red-veil rage, I do NOT want the tumbrils to roll. Once you start feeding madame Guillotine, you can’t stop for a long time, and you’ll be fed to it yourself.

As for the right wing bloggers even the squishy, gooey-center ones, who are for now holding firm. I need you to continue holding firm. Remember they’ve got nothing. The only way they controlled us before was by use of an absolutely coordinated propaganda machine that went from the news to actual fiction books, all publishing the same narrative at the same time.

They tried that in 2020 and it failed, even with the panic created by the “pandemic.” It failed to the point they needed to fraud openly and in front of G-d and everyone. (And if you refused to see it or talk about it, shame on you. Also sign up for remedial math. Because it really was obvious.) They tried it again in 2024 with everything at their disposal, trying to create “inevitability” for Kamala. They convinced the Europeans and every “reputable” source in the US. And yet they failed, spectacularly.

Because people have tuned them out. They’ve seen them in action. They’ve seen the masks off for eight years now, and once the mask if off you can’t put it back on.

If you’re scared, if you’re a squishy gooey “right” wing person, if you’re afraid, if you feel like panicking, I want you to stand in front of your mirror every morning and practice saying “I really don’t are, Margaret.” Or come here and I’ll give you the needed righteous kicking. I have a lot of aggression to work off, anyway, thank you for volunteering.

The truth is that Medicaid, aye, and social security too, are going to go away. They are unsustainable. They could have worked if the left hadn’t forgotten they needed every-larger generations to sustain it. Instead they wanted to plunder the young and at the same time reduce population and at the same time sideline legal workers in favor of illegals who don’t contribute (no, really) to any of these social programs, but do take from them.

The left is dying at its own hands, drowning in a pool of incoherence and self hatred. We understand the self hatred. Heck, I even understand the incoherence since they were fed a lot of contradictory bullshit and forbidden to think about any of it.

But I really don’t care [Margaret.]

As when you’re faced with a pet who is going to die in a few days, in pain, your choice is to give it one clean shot, or let it linger and die ugly. And at that, I don’t think the plan is even to kill these “social net” dinosaurs outright, but to put them on palliative care: saving them just enough for those who desperately need it, until they die a gentle death as those few who counted on them pass.

This is the GENTLE option. If we do nothing, if we don’t investigate, if we don’t cut back, it’s going to collapse suddenly and explosively and leave a lot of people in desperate straits.

Same for the government, all of it, honestly. Yes, I know a couple of people who were doing needed functions for the government and who are right now in limbo. But the whole thing was so bloated, convoluted, overfed and over-wasteful it was going to collapse anyway.

It should never have been created, is the problem, and btw, my friends who are in limbo say the same “it sucks, but it’s needed to save the country. And in the long run my job is less important than saving the country.”

Yes, it’s going to hurt. It’s going to hurt a lot.

Thing is, people are already hurting. Badly hurting. I don’t know the real numbers, but I know what I see around me. My sons’ generation and younger is drowning, particularly the males. They either have no jobs; have jobs in seriously exploitative situations; are being treated as inherently bad for being born with a penis. Girls aren’t much better off, though academia and make-work have absorbed a bunch of them.

People are starting to see that what they thought was the economy is a painted floor and they’ve been running midair a long time.

There’s a feeling of subdued panic everywhere. None of us are being told the truth, but seriously, do an inventory of the young — 35 and younger — people you know. How many are solidly established as a proportion? Yeah, yeah, they’re young, but by 35 people were firming up, even in my generation, and boy we thought we were late.

As for the older… my generation was hit hard by layoffs every few years, which kept people from any real savings for retirement. And the H1B thing has been brutal to those in tech jobs.

We’re now hitting retirement age, and most of us know we’re going to have to work until we drop in our traces, if only we can continue finding work.

You can’t make it worse by cutting the illusion of security. In a way it’s a relief when the truth is finally told.

Which is why all the left’s demands we panic, and their whispers that “the government will fall” are finding no purchase. Yes, what DOGE is finding is horrifying, but we’ve suspected it so long, we’re just relieved someone is talking about it at last.

Don’t give the left an opening. What they want is impossible. We can’t go back to sleep. We can’t go back to the pre-2020 world, no matter how much nicer it seemed. That world isn’t there anymore, and we too have changed in ways they forced us to.

If we let them propaganda us into destroying the current cutbacks and clean up — chainsaw go brrrrrrrrrrrrrrt — we’ll only be put on the sure path to hell to heads on pikes.

Even if most of those heads would be lefty ones, it won’t be all of them. In the end that kind of collapse always claims more lives than you can imagine, and more indiscriminately than you think: it always ends up door to door and intimately personal.

The only way to spare us that horror is to stay the course. To hunch one shoulder and say “I really don’t care, Margaret.” And forge on.

It’s the right thing to do, but more importantly, it’s the only thing to do.

Because the alternative is unthinkable.