Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

I am not pagan, though I have friends that are, and though there was a strain of belief in the village which, without having anything even vaguely to do with American/New Age/Paganism, was not… precisely Christian. Or anything much else.  Call it “using natural forces that science hasn’t yet identified” and be done with it.  It exists in every rural community.  Communities close to the land that have no room for frills spend an unusual amount of time on manipulating these “forces.”  Perhaps they are forces of the collective subconscious as things like “the Secret” claim.

At any rate, this is not to talk of religion, even unusual ones.

It is to talk of raising the power.  Raising the power (Yes, I’ve watched pagan ceremonies.  I watch a lot of things) is a fascinating concept, and it’s probably all headology, but one does feel something while watching it.

Again, I’m not pagan.  I don’t propose to raise the power from the four corners of the world, or whatever.  I also sometimes drive my pagan friends nuts by pointing out historical truths about some of the names they invoke (or heaven help us, call their children) and say “not near me.  It might be all superstition and imagination, but history has a power, and not near me.”  Having to explain to a friend that sacrifices to Tanit were NOT a Roman invention was kind of interesting.  Everywhere the Carthaginians went there’s Topeths.  And hundreds of little skeletons in clay jars.  If those were only burials of malformed/premature children, the Carthaginians must have had a hell of a child mortality rate, unheard of in the rest of the world.  And I am not a very good person (or at least very nice.  I DO try to be good.  With mixed success) but one thing I know and that’s that dead babies are an evil thing.  Sort of the touchstone of my morality, such as it is, is that “You shall not hurt the helpless, the trusting, or those who have reason to expect good from you.”

Anyway, I don’t play with things I don’t fully understand, which is the same principle that leads my poor husband to be responsible for electrical and plumbing.  I’ll do painting and carpentry because I GET those, but not electricity or plumbing.

But again, I like the concept of “Raising the power.”

So many of you, not just here, come and say something like “I’m trying to fight, I am, but I’m so tired.  I’m just so tired.”  And I get you, because I’m so tired too.  Tired of politics, tired of the career that often seems like running on ice, tired of a million daily contretemps and problems.

To continue focusing on the difficulties, the problems, the areas that don’t make you happy, doesn’t help.  It just drains you more, till you become angry and bitter.  Trust me, I know.

Twenty years ago I was dying in a hospital bed.  No, it wasn’t some woo woo stuff.  It was pneumonia, but being intracellular pneumonia it took a while to diagnose and if my blood ox hadn’t been too low to read the hospital would have told me it was all in my head and sent me home.

However, everyone who was anyone told me I was going to die.  (Except my husband who said “the hell you are.”  And that’s why I’m here, because he wouldn’t give up, even when I had.)

At that moment, clearly, I found what my “center of power” was.

I was back then still unpublished.  We had a house I was trying to fix/improve (as, when aren’t I?) and the boys were toddlers, and I had no help, let alone being eaten alive by stuff like clothes and shoes.  Life was a continuous round of work, interrupted by the occasional rejection.

But in that hospital bed, I realized what I really missed.  I missed going out garage-saling and thriftshopping with the three guys (my husband and sons.)  I missed the cats.  And I felt guilt and terrified that all my worlds I’d never written or never written well enough to be accepted were going to die with me.  (My very first world still waits writing.  I now know how to do it, but I need to clear the decks a little, first.  It would be amusing if that is the one that hits, particularly since it’s weirder than any world has a right to be. And definitely ah– Post binary.  Suffice to say it was my answer to The Left Hand of Darkness.  Then it went crazier.)

And in that moment I found my power.  I was going to live so there would be more of those moments with the guys.  I was going to live so I could write, and write well enough to be published.  (I wrote Darkship Thieves four years later.  Yes, I do know when it came out.  There are other, publishable novels I wrote in between that just need my going over and editing.  Some I’d forgotten I wrote.)

My raising of power is almost always from my family — I’m soppy that way — and there are particular jewels I keep and bring out and relive fondly.  Like the labor day when #2 son was three, and we discovered Lakeside.  (For those of you not in Denver, Lakeside is a rather decrepit amusement park with an art noveau design, and a lot of outdated, still running pretty well rides.  And a wooden rollercoaster.) Since I hate heights and falling, amusement parks are a bad idea for me.  Except the door price at Lakeside is very low (I think it was free, but parking was $5) and you pay per ride.  So Dan and the kids could sample everything from the wooden rollercoaster to the bumper boats, and I could walk around reading one of the mystery books I’d bought the day before at Murder By The Book, and then take the train ride around the park at the end.  That first time there, we left the park at ten, as they were starting to turn off the lights, and went in search of a place to have dinner.  The little one fell asleep against me, his head heavy and warm, as kids’ heads are.  And we ended up finding PF Chang’s at the top of a high rise (everything else was closed) and eating there, looking at Denver lights.  We lied to Marshall, too, and told him the duck was chicken, because he only ate chicken at the time.

I can close my eyes and bring it all back.  And I feel better.  If everything crashed tomorrow, I’d have had that one perfect weekend.

There are others, usually fleeting.  My favorite is when I was very depressed and, out of nowhere, Dan said “I’m not going to work today” (we’re terrible people.  We work on weekends) and took me off to City Park at sunset.  We made three circuits of the park and harassed the ducks.  And then we went out to eat — I THINK — at Ted’s Montana Grill, which has a little fountain outside, which we watched while we ate.  (Well, Dan might have been watching the scantily clad girls walk by.  It’s all good.)

Almost as good was the time two years ago, when older son was working near-full-time and odd hours and I was trying to rebuild a house, write (which was difficult as thyroid issues only allowed me to think of three words at a time) and make some sort of life in a space cramped with boxes. I don’t remember why but we had to go to the mailbox (which we had the foresight to get in Denver even though at the time we lived in the Springs.)  Must have been a contract or check I was expecting.  So we drove to the mailbox, and since it was an hour and a half away, while we were there (after getting whatever it was) we decided to go to the zoo.  It was pouring rain, so we stopped at a walgreens and got umbrellas, and then we walked around the cold, rainy zoo, talking, having the zoo all to ourselves.  Afterwards it was too late to drive home (we’d have hit right at rush hour) so we went to Pete’s kitchen and watched the rain stipple the windows while we had coffee and (against our diet, very much, but we only do this once every few months at most) we split a baklava.

Or there’s the time when we were so broke that Dan could only afford one gift for me for Christmas, and that was a little blown-glass owl, which still sits in my office, because it reminds me of how much trouble he went through to get it (having to drive to Manitou during work hours, while working unusually long hours) and how much thought he put into it.

If we let despair and turmoil overcome us, we deny that these good moments can happen, that there is beauty and happiness in the future.

Or we can think of and meditate on our “happy places” and our “centers of power” and raise the strength to dive back into the muck.

Once more into the breach, my friends, but let us keep in mind those things that make life worth living.

It’s all very well to pledge your life, your wealth, your sacred honor, but life must be worth living to be worth sacrificing.

Remember that.  Raise the power.  And fight on.

In case it hasn’t been blindingly obvious — stop shouting, guys — I’ve been a little out of sorts.  Part of it is that we’re in a time of great change.  No, I don’t mean politically, but that too.

I’m finally getting my thyroid issues treated, (though I need to schedule a check-up blood test) and I have a desk treadmill, both of which by and large make me feel 20 years younger.  Unfortunately there are things making me feel twenty years older.  Such as… younger son moved out this weekend.

Now, we still have older son on the property, but he has his own area, where he can live without coming upstairs but once or twice a week.  So suddenly I find myself an empty nester.

I was never one of those mommies.  You know exactly what I mean.  When they were toddlers, and I was looking forward to their entering school (yes, yes, I should have homeschooled.  Hindsight is 20-20) I was talking to a bunch of other moms and the consensus was “oh, when they go to school you’ll miss these days.  You won’t know what to do with yourself.”

I was doubtful on the accuracy of this, and in fact it wasn’t accurate at all.  When the kids were at school I wrote.  That’s what I did.  I never had any problems figuring out “what to do with myself.”

So why does the move out, and being alone with my husband (whom I happen to like, as well as love) freak me out?  Why does it feel so weird?

I think I figured it.  It’s not even the reorientation of our priorities.  We’re still partly financially responsible for each boy and will be for two more years, and they are, of course, our priority till they’re wholly self sufficient.

No, it’s the images in the head of what each life stage should be like.  When and where I grew up, when the kids left, you were done.  You had done your job.  Retirement was around the corner, and then you slowly dwindled into irrelevance while life went on without you, with nothing more to look forward to than visits from the grandkids.

Obviously this has changed in the last fifty years.  It was always different for some people anyway.  There were always exceptional people who started their career/interest in their fifties or sixties or even, occasionally, seventies.

But when and where I grew up sixties was “old” and seventies was very old and eighties was unheard of.

My parents are in their eighties and have broken the mold to an extent.  I know what they did when the last kid (me) left the house.  They went traveling.

I don’t particularly want to go traveling and besides, I think that was part of the assumption they were old and counted for nothing.  They were going to travel before they died.  They’re still around, and dad is keeping up on his reading and walking, but I don’t think my old age will be like their old age.

Part of what is changing everything — some for the better, some not — is that the entire concept of life milestones is changing.  First is the longevity thing.  We now can live to our nineties, or can count on it, barring the obviously unforeseeable stuff (I’ve lost friends in their fifties.)  Expectation CAN extend to the nineties without straining credulity, and if you’re lucky, you can get to a hundred.  It’s not only not unheard of, older son while working at the hospital saw a lot of centenarians.

That’s an almost doubling of the “reasonable expectation” of life for people when I was a kid.  And before you say “but most of that is useless old age” … well, my dad complains (who doesn’t) and he’s not walking as fast as he was, but if I didn’t know his age I’d rate him as early seventies or, in village terms when I was little, sixties.

And yes, I too saw the article saying we can’t get past 114 because of errors in copying.  (Rolls eyes.)  This sort of assumes our gene-science never gets better.

The point I’m trying to make is that I have shoved the last kid out the door (not true, he skipped out) and I have an expectation of maybe forty years more, maybe more, because, well, look at how things changed in the last 50.

That is a lifetime.  Careers lasting 20 years are full careers. Thirty, definitely.

It’s no time to dwindle, no matter what my subconscious says.  But I have no models for what it is a time for.  And humans are social animals.  We live and die by models of what to do.

Hence I’ve been a little out of sorts.  I’m trying to get over it, honest, because I have books to write, and there is no reason to be moping around waiting for grandchildren that might or might not happen (except for the adopted ones, who live too far away.)  And certainly no one in my generation is seeing one red cent from social security, so we’ll have to work those next forty years, anyway.

But it’s all new.  There is no guiding experience of previous generations, no model for this stage of life (we’ll call it “second maturity” shall we?)

Maybe I’ll start wearing a bun and dress all in black, to assuage the instinct, while I go about finally getting my career off the ground (almost impossible with offspring in the house.)

But I — and a lot of people who find there is no “model” for their stage of life — am going to be a little out of step, a little out of sorts.  It’s almost like a second adolescence.

Bear with me.  And advantage of being older is that I do know this too shall pass.

I am in many ways a terrible person.  Or I am to anyone in authority over me, trying to give me a story without making it a detailed explanation.

Say I am told that books just aren’t selling because people don’t read.  I go “But I am someone who JUST reads for fun.  No games, no tv, no movies.  And most of the time I go to Barnes and Noble and can’t find anything I WANT to read.  For years all I bought there were stuff like The Times Table of History” and it wasn’t for lack of WANTING to read, it was because of not finding anything remotely readable for my tastes.  (If I want to be preached at, I go to church.)

I’m that kind of horrible person, I ask questions.

Which is why I found it somewhere near ROFL funny when that creature dropped by yesterday — you remember, the one who asked us if we were not free in some way (rolls eyes) which not only betrays a lack of understanding of what I was saying, but also a lack of understanding of the fundamentals of liberty — and I went to her blog to check out whether she was just an idiot or malicious.  (I do in general check out drop ins I’ve never seen before, if their first comment is unreservedly positive or negative. Because, see above.)

The answer would seem to be yes.  But the really funny part was the reason she was so upset at the “puppies.”  (Notice no difference between sad and rabbids) whom she represented as being “right wingers” upset at “no right wingers winning awards in science fiction.”  Hence, the “Yes” since darling idiot seemed unaware the sad puppies nominated among others an outright (and proud) socialist.  It’s always astonishing to me that people can have so little curiosity they don’t check the story.  Also among the organizers, I wouldn’t qualify myself as a right winger, not by European classifications which is what the left uses.  I mean the last time I heard the phrase “Gentlemen, your swastikas” was while watching the Producers.  I’m a Rational Anarchist, who has tried really hard to vote Libertarian and ends up voting Republican half the time, with a clothes pin on my nose, only because I have family in Venezuela and I don’t believe in socialist paradises.  I suppose darling idiot thinks everything not communist is “right winger.” Sometimes I wonder we managed to teach them to write.  Maybe she’s using text to speech software.  There’s a hope.

But the reason she was REALLY mad at us is that now Science Fiction no longer presented a “united front” towards the world.

And there I stopped, scratched my head and REALLY wondered how she managed to read and write.

Look, I know it’s customary to ask “what are they teaching the kids these days?” BUT REALLY I ask you WHAT ARE THEY TEACHING THE KIDS THESE DAYS?

Do they teach people that “uniform front” or “community of one accord” or whatever the hell they call it are normal for any group of more than three people?  And if so WHY?

Everytime I hear that anyone won by unanimous vote, even if it’s in a small organization, I know for a fact either it’s a job no one wants, or there have been shenanigans.

Humans are otherwise so constituted that there are always a few of me among them. And far worse than me.  In a run off between the Messiah and Beelzebub there would be three or four custard heads who voted for Beelzebub in the firm belief he was misunderstood or maligned.  In anything less clear cut than that you’re going to see far more dissension.

And when you’re talking about a community of creative people who can’t otherwise agree on anything, up to and including whether pants should be worn on butt or head, if you see a united front, you know there’s shenanigans.

I.e. I always marveled at all those people who said things like “there are no right wing writers, because right wingers just go along with the status quo and aren’t very creative.”

This betrayed that a) they were living circa the beginning of the 20th century when anything vaguely considered right wing was “the status quo.” b) they’d failed to notice the socialists had run away with the train around 1920 or so, and were now the status quo in every large institution and company.  c) were under the impression it took marvelous creativity to write the 14th Harry Potter knock off, which was in fact most of what was being produced at that time. d) thought it was possible for creativity to follow a rigid set of ideological beliefs.

It seems stupid but I spent a large part of the 00s arguing with people that this was blazingly, in your face dumb.

It was also gospel for all the big publishing houses.  To check if someone was a good writer, you made sure they mouthed the right beliefs.

Which explains why I went to Barnes and Noble to be disappointed.

Thank heavens for indie, people know it’s not like that.

And in the same vein thank heavens for the Puppy movements, because now people know we’re real, living, breathing people and not Marxist robots.  They might be tempted to look over a science fiction book now and then, and might even buy one and then another, and another.

Now, if only we could get the incipient little totalitarians to understand that it’s possible to have more than one opinion about things, that total unanimity is not a sign you’re right but a sign you’re afraid (or voiceless), and that dissent is not some kind of crime in other more important areas, like national politics.

Perhaps then they might be fit to live in (or even conceive of) a free society.

A Fall of Books – By Free Range Oyster

*And a Sunday challenge from me.  Write the first two paragraphs of a story where the main character is a beggar, the setting is modern and the problem is distraction. – SAH*
A peaceful and joyful Sunday to you all. Let’s start off the new week with a mess of books, shall we? There’s no shortage this week, and we’ve a nice mix of styles to boot. Leaves are falling (in this hemisphere) and books are blooming. As always, future promo post entries can (and should!) be sent to my email. Happy reading!

Jason Dyck, AKA The Free Range Oyster

Overstimulated, underremunerated, medium rare, and half price on Thursdays

Jason Anspach

’til Death

Rockwell Return Files Book 1

Sam Rockwell is a fledgling private investigator specializing in Returns, or, recently deceased ghosts with unfinished business. After his no-nonsense father is murdered and comes back, Sam takes the case hoping for a big break and a chance to win the heart of his Girl Friday.

Short on experience and long on the swagger of the dog-eared pulp fiction he keeps in his desk, Rockwell sets out to find his father’s killer only to find himself caught up in a deadly game of Cold War Intrigue at its most horrific as the Doomsday Clock inches closer to permanent midnight in this witty throwback to the Golden Age of Hollywood noire.

On sale for 99¢

’til Death: Second Impressions

Rockwell Return Files Book 2

Wisecracking Private Detective Sam Rockwell is running for his life, but that doesn’t keep him from taking the case of a Return who’s slipped past Heaven’s radar and overstayed his time on earth. Together with his fiancé, Amelia, Sam brawls and dances his way through San Francisco to unravel a zany mystery where nothing is what it seems at first blush.

The laughs and silver screen thrills of Jason Anspach’s signature 1950s Cold War tale of Hollywood noire are back in this madcap sequel as Sam and Amelia return once again to right wrongs, solve crimes, send the dead off to their proper eternity, and maybe, set a date for their wedding! The Maltese Falcon meets It’s a Mad Mad Mad world in this smart and witty paranormal romp.

On sale for 99¢

’til Death: The Man Who Balked

Rockwell Return Files Book 3

A pennant is on the line and a life hangs in the balance!

When local baseball player Junior Jones receives death threats over the color of his skin, the team’s wealthy owner hires Sam Rockwell to solve the case and stop a murder before it happens. Sam goes undercover as a minor league pitcher to strike out the culprit. Follow the clues along with Sam’s curmudgeonly ghost of a father Frank Rockwell, and Sam’s wife Amelia, who holds a secret that will forever change the lives of the entire Rockwell family.

It’s another laugh-filled, madcap mystery in the warm, witty 1950’s hollywood style of author Jason Anspach.

Currently available for preorder

William Lehman

Keeping The Faith

John Fisher Chronicles Book 2

It was supposed to be a simple poaching case. A “easy way to get back on the horse, after your injuries”. Oh yeah, it involves lycanthropes, but, that shouldn’t be a problem. The trouble is, NOTHING is ever simple when John Fisher, Federal Park police, and retired Navy SEAL is assigned to the case… When they found the dead Marine, that’s when things really went south. John and his partner have to solve poaching, the murder of an active duty Marine Lycanthrope, and several other crimes, but it seems the Government isn’t exactly happy to help.

C.J. Carella

Advance to Contact

Warp Marine Corps Book 3

(WARNING: Contains violence, strong language and adult content)

As war rages on across the galaxy, a diplomatic mission turns into a desperate fight for survival.

Captain Peter Fromm: Fromm and his Warp Marines face old enemies and new threats inside a colossal space habitat ruled by a mysterious alien civilization. Their lives and the fate of their country hang in the balance.

Heather McClintock: The CIA operative faces her toughest opponents yet: a race of decadent immortals with godlike powers and murderous urges. Her only weapon is an untried new technology with lethal side effects.

Major Lisbeth Zhang: The fighter pilot risks her very soul when she makes contact with entities from the depths of warp space. Her choices may lead humanity towards a golden age – or eternal damnation.

Corporal Russell Edison: Russell just wanted to travel across the galaxy, meet exotic aliens, and shoot them. These new ETs want to play with Charlie Company, and they are about to find out that Marines only play to win.

Release Sale: Advance to Contact will be on sale for $2.99 until October 18, when its price will go up to $4.99

John Van Stry

Past Tense

Days of Future Past, Part I

Paul’s been having a bad day, perhaps one of the worse days he’s ever had. And now into the middle of all this, his instructor just got drafted by some mystical goddess to help save a world.

As for Paul? Well, he’s really not supposed to be there, and if he thought he was having a bad day before all of this, it just got worse, a lot worse. He’s now on a one way trip, forced to help a man who despises him while at the mercy of the world’s biggest trickster.

J.M. Ney-Grimm

A Knot of Trolls

North-lands spellcasters who reach too boldly for power transform into trolls – grotesque villains wielding a potent magic and destined for madness.

Spanning the North-lands history, from ancient times to the pastoral present, A Knot of Trolls features seven such evildoers. Seven trolls and the ordinary youths called by chance or by destiny to take a stand.

“The Troll’s Belt” stars motherless Brys Arnsson, challenged as much by his own deceit as by his troll foe. “Crossing the Naiad” presents shepherd girl Kimmer with a dangerous tragedy from the distant past.

“Skies of Navarys” follows two friends with a vehement difference, their contested decision to decide the fate of thousands. In “Resonant Bronze” Paitra and his brother struggle to claim appropriate guilt – neither too much nor too little – and thereby defeat a troll warlord.

“Rainbow’s Lodestone” offers the spirit of the rainbow a chance to learn that the smallest places birth freedom. “Star-drake” stalks a pitiless troll-herald to defeat – or is it victory? – utterly unforeseen.

And in “Perilous Chance” young Clary needs a miracle. But her miracle – when it comes – sports razor-sharp talons, world-shaking power, and a troll-witch to guard its sleep.

Seven tales of magic balance death and destruction against destiny and hope.

Also available from these fine booksellers:

• Barnes & Noble
• iTunes
• Kobo
• Smashwords

Dwight R. Decker

Some Other Shore

From Mermaid-Land to Poughkeepsie…

Daft professors and their put-upon students roam this world and others in these six stories, training the all-seeing eye of Science on history’s stranger mysteries and legends, and answering questions no one ever thought to ask before…

Are Gingerbread House-Building Witches really apex predators following instinctive behavior patterns something like trapdoor spiders?

When a UFO contactee cult builds a landing field for flying saucers, will anybody show up?

Is it possible to bring a dead king back to life when he probably never existed in the first place?

Was the next step in human evolution something we never even suspected – and we’ve already missed the bus?

Those intrepid if somewhat queasy investigators bring a much-needed reality check to fantasy… but sometimes fantasy bites back!

Jeb Kinnison

Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations

Human Resources (HR) departments are widely disliked, and job searchers are generally advised to contact the hiring manager directly if they really want to be considered for a job. There are good reasons why HR acts like an arm of the government bureaucrats pressuring companies to hire more protected minorities and women—because that’s what they are, in many companies.

There are many people working hard in HR to promote the interests of their organization, but their efforts are often blunted by the prevailing HR culture that values buzzwords and feel-good social goals more than productivity and excellence.

This book may make you angry, but it will show you how you can fight back by resisting HR and its policies.

Pat Patterson, aka Papa Pat, wrote a blog recently about how the greater drives out the lesser. You think you’re having the worst day in the world till you get that phone call and you find your best friend has cancer, as my husband did some years ago.  And suddenly all the petty stuff at the office, or the household repairs are … just petty stuff, and you don’t even remember them.

Nothing bad happened, but yesterday I spent the day in a hospital waiting room.  And then we heard everything had gone well.  In fact very well.  And then we came home.  And I crashed hard.  So hard that today I barely woke up in time to go collect the two-legged critter from the hospital and make him comfortable back at home.

And then I did a quick clean because well, the house was dirty.  And I only now remembered I hadn’t blogged.  I’m sorry.

Family took over for a while.

I am okay and everyone here is okay.

I’ll try to do a Dark Fate later today, but I’m about running out the door, to spend most of the day in a waiting room.

I’d like to make several points, though, before I go, partly to explain what yesterday’s post was about.

First of all I made the post yesterday because I HAD TO.  The other alternative was walking away and shuttering the blog.  I was going to bed depressed every night, which interferes with what I do to earn a living.

Now some of you are going to say I can’t stand contrary views, I’m unreasonably optimistic, and I can’t stand to have anyone oppose it.  Obviously, this is what at least one gentleman believed, as he thought I meant he shouldn’t read my blog any more because he “can’t find hope.”

Certainly, if you’re so depressed that you need bolstering, I DON’T mean to send you away.

What we were dealing with, though, was not depression.  It was “burn it all downers” treating their “side” as a soccer team.  If we pointed reasons why the US is not like any of the scary examples they’re scaring themselves with, they come back with “Nuh-uh, yes it is.”  The apex of this, again, was someone thinking that Americans will act like Chinese or Russians at the time of their revolutions, ignoring culture, ignoring education, ignoring the fact we have the ability to communicate without state interference and therefore would know what is happening.  In fact, ignoring anything except the “win” that we’re going to go down just like Russia and China.

And accusing me of fetishizing guns was probably the funniest part of all this.  Yeah, Americans aren’t even aware of the liberties they do have, like a fish isn’t aware of water.  Which is why we’re not like any of those other countries. If you don’t know that, you might have no perspective on what the world is really like.  You might also wish to consider you’re not fully informed and get your images of the possible from reading too much fiction.

When I’m faced with people like that, who want to “win” by… I don’t know causing everyone else to kill themselves, yes, I do tell them to get out of the way.  Because after a while you get tired of fighting the very same irrational battles.  If these people BELIEVED what they say they’d already be committing suicide. But it’s all testosterone, wanting to be right and believing that the worst case scenario makes them “smarter.”

I’ve seen this in the past.  I grew up in the cold war and we were going to be nuked, really, next month, if not before.

As to my vaunted optimism: This makes me giggle.  I am not by any definition an optimist.  Ever. My worlds, despite the fact my characters keep fighting are actually fairly dark.  If you look back through past posts you’ll find I expected by now we’d have lost an American city to a nuke.  Even now, I expect whatever the outcome of this election, there will be blood on the streets, and in some places it will get to the level of “civil war.”  (Take the thing in Charlotte to the next level.)  I’m predicting domestic terrorism if the left loses (which doesn’t look likely) and I’m predicting the government harassing areas it doesn’t like if the left wins.

I’m not predicting “the long night” because that would take A LOT of nuclear explosions.  I’m not saying it’s impossible, mind.  That was also what yesterday’s post was about.  But those nuclear explosions will come from outside the country, not within.

Anything else?  We’ll rebuild.  We haven’t yet got to the level of civil disorder of the seventies here, let alone the seventies in Europe.

Things are never as bad as we imagine they’ll be.  They’re also never as good.  Those who thought we could elect republicans and then sit back and reap the benefits, and who are now mad because their brilliant plan didn’t work are guilty of unwarranted optimism.  Also of not understanding our system of checks and balances and of expecting legislators to perform miracles.

My best case scenario is that we’re going to eat live slugs for four years.  At the end of those four years, if we’ve worked really hard and are very very good at it, we MIGHT be lucky enough to get another Mitt Romney.  And in three more cycles, if we’re very good, we might have someone approaching Reagan, after which we can continue applying shoulder to the wheel to get us to as close to the constitution as this sorry world will allow.

The nation isn’t turned around in one administration or in one week.  The left has been taking over the administrative apparatus for a hundred years.  Count on at least that much.  Yeah, each of us can’t do much.  I know my only usefulness is in the culture wars.  But I’ll do my poor best.  And if each of us does his/her poor best in the cause of freedom, which might very well involve working for liberty in the belly of the beast, our great grandchildren might be free men and women.

If this is unwarranted optimism, you’re reading me wrong.  And if you think my scenario is depressing, consider the alternative if your great granddaughters being women of the veil, dressed like living room furniture, or your sons living in 1984.

Not that 1984 is plausible.  The tech went the other way, from mass to individual.  Which is why I say that in the end we win, they lose.  We are more in tune with how things are done now, while they pine for the “mass information” world of the twentieth century.  Mass production too.  That encouraged thinking of humans as widgets.  This encourages thinking of each one different.

But adapting to how things work now will take time.  And it will take work.  And if your only interest in the world is to see the long night come, you are, objectively, working against Liberty and humanity.  I don’t have to indulge your sadism.

And I don’t have to go to bed every night between angry and depressed.

So, that was yesterday’s post.

If you’re willing to work, no matter how disheartened you get at times, you’re welcome here.  You’re my brothers and sisters.

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat but there’s a 10% chance the light at the end of the tunnel is not an oncoming train, but liberty for future generations.

I’m not in a good mood.  This happens.  Partly this is because I was caught by a cold in the middle of a downward spiral (downward spirals happen.  They’re fairly normal, I know how to correct for them, and most people can’t tell I’m in one.  It’s just human interaction becomes a little more difficult and I become more of an hermit.  Also, at a party, you might notice me in a corner, more. I’ve been dealing with this since I was seven or eight.  I manage it so that chemicals don’t need to manage it for me. In this case it was responsible for my catching a cold, because I’ve been so isolated from human contact going to a diner made me catch a cold.)

Yesterday a very good friend sent me a note.  While she didn’t object to Out of the Darkness’s post, she said she might stay away from the blog more, because she knows politics are horrible, but she doesn’t need her nose rubbed in it.

At the same time I spent all day yesterday overcoming the desire to shutter the blog and walk away.

Not because politics are dire, or because I don’t have anything to say (as some of you have noted, a lot of what I write about is not political but cultural.)

No, I’m not going to shutter the blog.  But I’m going to take my gloves off, turn the crucifix to the wall, and speak my mind.

I’m sick and tired of people who treat politics as people in the village treated soccer.

Soccer was a big thing in my day.  For one, it was regional, which meant it tied in to your native pride.  For another it was passionately felt.  Families had allegiances to a soccer club for generations. Money was paid to “Women” to hex the opponent before a big game.  People who neither watched nor listened to soccer, nevertheless knew that “their” club was on the side of light and good and the others were agents of Satan.  I knew a man who disowned his son for rooting for the wrong club.

Those thinking this was displacement for not being able to DO anything are absolutely right.  First Portugal had a mono-party regime.  And then it had so many parties that it made no difference. So, soccer.

I’ve long been disturbed by Americans’ ability to treat politics as the village treated soccer.  It might have made sense once upon a time.  Politics were regional, hereditary, and whoever won you at least had the illusion they wouldn’t endanger you (that this was still believed to be so during the cold war shows how irrational the belief is.)

That Americans are still doing that shows you that humans are REALLY great apes with the group identification gene overcoming reality and self-preservation.

This was exemplified yesterday when I was in one of Alexander Pournelle’s threads.  He’d just posted about the long — and silent — war queuing up all over the world.  China’s moves, Russia’s attitudes, the long game of Iran.  All of these are things that are clear and present dangers.  But his first comment on a post about Russia was from a guy saying “Oh, yeah, we should elect Trump.  He can grab Russia by the p*ssy!”

The ONLY partisan thing in Alex’s post was that he pointed out that our government is doing NOTHING about this, except, well… piddle, twiddle and negotiate.  He did not post in support of Trump, and in fact it had nothing to do with partisan politics (I doubt either of the creepy clowns have the wherewithal to conduct a rational war. Sometimes I think that onet would be better because he’ll view it as an insult to his dignity.  Then I remember “the art of the deal” and his tendency to admire Putin.  Then I think the other would be better, and I remember she doesn’t GET security and her vp is a robot imperfectly programmed with Maoist phrases.  He’d probably GIVE us to the Chinese, let alone sell us. And she hates the military.)

But the creature commenting on Alex’s post can ONLY see his team and the other team.  If his team is acting like putzes, he must show the other team is no better, because “Go Dems” is about the level of his understanding of national politics.

Time and time again, I come up against this.  And now?  There’s a new team in town.  They’re the “burn it all downers.”  They’ve coalesced around Creepy Clown Trump, because subconsciously they knew he’d destroy the GOP and they think that this will lead to the emergence of a party that represents them better. (They also believe that the “GOPe” has betrayed them, because Trump told them so.  And perhaps because they, like him, have ZERO understanding of parliamentary procedure, or how the government is divided, or even the power of an hostile press.)  Mind you for a party to represent them it would want mostly to burn civilization to the ground and “abandon all hope” which is the only thread they have in common.

THEY TOO think politics is soccer, and they’ll lie (to themselves, most of all) distort and harass in the service of having their team win, with no thought what comes after.  They must pound down any shred of hope, even if it involves saying that the American populace is equivalent to the Russians in the tens or the Chinese in the 40s.  Yes, that’s right.  Culture be damned, we’re all EXACTLY the same and population dynamics are the same, and reactions are the same.  This can only be maintained by someone who never lived abroad among natives.  OR someone who needs his team to “win” so badly nothing else matters.

For some years now, I’ve been trying to explain to the “abandon all hopers” and to the “we need to fight it out with each other right here and now and that’s the only important thing” that this is not how the world works.

Look, I blame Hollywood.  In Hollywood there’s wars and revolutions, and they’re fought internally with no input from anyone else. And one side wins.  Books tend to do this too, and it’s something I fight VERY hard not to do.

We no longer live in the world of the 1700s, and even then the rest of the world got a say (a major say, both for and against, btw) even though voyages by sea took forever and there were no intercontinental missiles.

The world is as far away as the press of a button.

The US has been enforcing Pax Americana for about 100 years (give or take) now.  This is not an ideal situation, of course, but it is what it is.  We had the firepower and the wealth to do it, so we did it.  I’ll remind you that without it, you’d all be speaking Russian — and you might still be.

Unfortunately the isolationists and people who think you can end wars by saying you won’t fight have the bit between their teeth.  They’ve conspired to make America the weak, dithering, self-harming derelict on the street corner.

No one is really afraid of the derelict, and that’s why you’re seeing adventurism abroad from all sorts of bad actors.  Because regardless of what you were taught in school, there are bad actors in the world and they don’t depend on American “aggression” to act.  In fact, they depend on America being busy elsewhere, looking in the mirror and popping its own zits, like an adolescent psycho.

There is another reason the US was suited for “world’s policeman.”  We didn’t have imperial intentions.  Because we’re not a country of soil and blood conquering another land and giving it to our blood means nothing to us.  Which is why to quote Dave Freer “The Americans are awful imperialists.  All they want to do is go home.”

This is already imperiled and wait till you taste the way other countries do imperialism.  You’re gonna die.

BUT if we kill one of the major parties, the one opposing the vile progs who hate America, if we descend into the madness of “let it all burn” and encourage destruction of institutions and cultural structures?

The world will be RIGHT HERE, at our door.  In less time than it takes you to say “Are we being invaded?”

Alex Pournelle has been sharing links like this, and this, which are nibbling at the edges, seeing if we’re dead yet, so they can bite.  And if we act dead (which we’ve been so far) they devour us, even though we’re bigger than they are and have plenty more resources.

Two years ago, though you probably never heard of it, the Chinese got hold of most of our files on people with secret classification.  Yeah, they sold some of that to scammers, but do you want to bet none of those assets, the ones with juicy info on their files, are compromised?  I wouldn’t.

And the Russians have compromised our government.  Yes, Hillary’s server, but Obama too, and our voting system.  Any halfway sane country would be saying ALL ballots will be paper and ALL voters have to re-register NOW and ID will most frackingly be necessary for voting.  A serious country would be pointing out to the perpetrators that wars have started for less than this.

We’re not acting like a serious country, because the Kumbaya kids want to believe in “give peace a chance.”  And the journalists will not report it, because they are social signaling as being on the side of the rich and powerful, which are in this country the left.

And meanwhile, Republicans, Democrats and burn it all downers continue squabbling and fighting like there is nothing more important in the world than making sure their “team” wins.

Listen, do you hear that?  The tocsin is sounding.  The idea of America will not perish from the world, but we can be hurt so badly that all of civilization goes down for the count.

If that’s what you think you want, go look in a mirror and think about why you hate the world and humanity.  And if you really hate us and despise us so much, do us a favor and rid the world of you.

The rest of you, the ones who are capable of realizing this is not a soccer match, open your eyes.  This is not a game. The results affect our lives, the lives of our descendants, and even for those who have no descendants, the life of the species who gave them birth and who has nurtured them.  (And if you think everyone has done you wrong, and you want to burn it all down, I say to you: you first.  Matches and gasoline are not hard to obtain.)

It is time to remember that by the people and for the people government thing.  It’s time to start fighting as hard as you can.  Sure the press, the left and the burn it all downers managed to give us nothing but Creepy Clowns — incompetent ones at that — for the national election.

The national election is not the only one.  There’s local ones.  Work and vote for your local sane candidates.  Or “saneish” candidates.  Anyone who understands water is wet and fire will burn will do.  And after they’re elected, don’t step back and expect them to save you.  Continue working.

The tocsin is sounding. Iceberg dead ahead.

You want to play with the deck chairs, you do so at your own peril.

This is the time to be grown up.  Infants screaming the world done them wrong and they want it all to diiiiiiiiie will be ignored.  They will be first in line for protection, if the shit really hits the fan.

It’s time to be a grown up.  It’s time to do what you can, in whatever small way to shore up the Republic, or ensuring it can come back.

America is still as it always was the last best hope of mankind.  No, it’s not perfect.  Its ideal government lasted less than 10 years.  Ideals and the world don’t coexist.  So, no, you didn’t get perfection.  Sorry, the world is like that.  But you got to be born in the best country in the world, measured in prosperity and ability to make your own way.  If you don’t see anything special about that, I bet you there are millions in the rest of the world who’d trade with you.

You’re not getting your way and a pony too.  But there is no reason to destroy what we have.  Yes, the fight for freedom is continuous.  No, you’ll never be able to declare you won and go home.  That’s soccer, not life.

Now stop whining and work to preserve liberty in our life time.  Or get out of the way.

Controlled Burns – Out of the Darkness

There are times in life where you just have to call it quits, burn everything down, and rebuild from the ashes like some kind of mythical phoenix. You just need a clean slate, with as little baggage weighing you down as possible. I can understand that, having done it in my own life several times now. I am rather annoyed with those who think that this is the path we need to take for the country. Put the damned matches down for a hot minute.

The country can still be saved. We are starting to run into the real trouble, the crazy years, and people are losing their minds. What we need now is careful consideration and a calm center. We need to figure out what is weighing us down, and *then* we can burn. We need to have a few controlled burns so that we can keep the whole thing from going up in flames.

The educational system turning the nation’s children into oversenstive idiots? Burn it down. The welfare system that has failed to have any appreciable impact on reducing poverty? Torch it. The DEA, which is setting policies that deny doctors the ability to treat real pain while it enforces laws that make criminals out of peaceful citizens? Light it up. You guys get the idea. We need to clear out the dead weight so that what remains is a cleaner, more efficient government that doesn’t interfere overly much while we go about our lives.

Yes, there’s a lot of dead weight. Yes, there’s a lot of corruption. Yes, there’s a lot of problems. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water, though. Pick a problem you see in the country and learn all you can about it. Get involved on the local level. Educate people about the issue. Light a fire under your elected representatives to start cleaning house. Then join with others who are working on different problems in your community.

The left has been working for 150 years to destroy the American spirit, and yet it lives. They have tried to drive the nation’s soul into ruin, and yet we still still stand. We are tarnished and rough around the edges, but we are still in the fight. They have tried to make us bend the knee to our betters, and we still stand defiantly.

We have let them push us apart for too long. We have let them set the tone for too long. We have let them drive us to despair. Now is the time to build. Build businesses. Build relationships. Build community. Build lives. Teach your children. Help your neighbors. Work on the issues, and keep your matches ready for those controlled burns.

*A Sarah post-script: As you guys (probably) have noticed, these posts have been getting later, I haven’t done Dark Fate in two weeks, and if you’re on FB you’ve seen me there a lot.  Yes, there is a an explanation.  A member of my family is having relatively major surgery on Friday, which is stressing me, and I’ve caught a stupid cold.  The good news is the cold is better.  And this too shall pass.  Hopefully this weekend, the critter (no, not a cat, one of the guys) will be back home and recovering. Meanwhile, I’ve put out the first of the new collections I’m assembling, with the short stories I took off sale, to avoid cluttering my page on Amazon (though each collection also has a new story in it.)  Yes, I made the cover from “found elements acquired for free from Pixabay and the renderosity free section, and ran it through filters with filter forge.*

Chris Chupik first said it about two weeks ago: 2016, bad writing, implausible premises, and why are we even still watching this?

Now, as most of you know, I’m not a big one for TV.  Mostly, if I get captured by a tv show, or two, it means that I was sitting around, spending time with my husband while he watches, and the show was so good, it caught me.

I got caught by 2016 for various reasons.  To begin with I’ve enjoyed some of the predecessor shows.  Even 2001 with its nail-biting climax three quarters of the way through, a sudden shift in focus from what had been discontent and bickering abroad to an external threat… well, I’ll be honest, that season wasn’t enjoyable.  It depressed me so much I acquired a new cat and spent three months in front of the tv, crying.  But I WAS watching.  In 2002 the writers had already lost the plot some.  The appeal to the UN subplot really didn’t appeal, because let’s be honest, the UN is so twentieth century and no one in the twenty first could believe in it as a force for good.  Particularly not when we’ve seen the subplots about sex slavery where UN troops go, about child abuse, about UN secretaries who are both rapacious AND crooked.  So I thought they were trying to return to the plots of a simpler time, but it is the effect of writing that you can’t put humpty dumpty together again.  Once you’ve dirtied a character or subverted a background, you don’t have it back clean and sparkling, unless of course, you engage in one of the endless reboots that comic book franchises do.  And I always thought that was a cheap trick.

Anyway, since then we’ve had our ups and downs with this franchise.  I thought 2012 had jumped the shark with having one of our ambassadors die on 911 and yet the “crooked media” device being used to smooth it over and give the crooked president and his crooked associates yet another term.

But I hadn’t seen anything yet.  In 2016 they take one of the responsible for the 2012 dead-ambassador debacle and run her for president.  This was already stretching my disbelief, as I thought they’d have to use the crooked media to a near-unbelievable point to make it work.

They have.  But to this they have added, to make it plausible this terrible person would win the election in a country of non-crazy people, the ascendancy of a crooked lapdog of government businessman, who is like the worst cliches of the seventies come together as her opponent.

To do this, they used the “crooked media” device to get rid of more promising candidates on both sides.

Now I understand there are contracts to honor, and the crooked ex-secretary of state might have one that said she got to play president later, but really…

One way to make her ascendancy plausible, in addition to giving her the least plausible opponent ever (in fact, many are predicting later in the season, the reveal of a double cross plot, in which her opponent is running SOLELY to handle her the presidency.  As stupid as that plot would be, I regret to say it would be slightly more plausible than the idea that the opponent is playing it straight) is to handicap the opponent.  Make him stumble a couple of times in public.  Give him a secret illness.

The writers seem to be aware of this, but instead of applying it to the opponent, they applied it to this Hillary character, thereby making my disbelief start to scream for mercy.

As though to keep its viewership through sheer horror, the show started killing characters left and right. Let’s say that I think that George RR Martin is moonlight in 2016, with characters dying left and right. As though this weren’t enough, the foreshadowing has been really heavy all along.

I mean, okay, I’m not the greatest person to talk on forecasting, since I like mine so light other people don’t see him.  That’s neither here nor there, though.

This one has been so heavy that we have trouble abroad, an impending massive economic crisis, and “government” that doesn’t do anything about its most show-defined legitimate function: Common defense.

Instead, the “government” in this show blunders around creating trouble, helping enemies and hurting friends, in a way no real life human being or even group of beings, human or alien would do.  It just makes no sense.

It’s too obvious that, alert to flagging viewership, the writers are preparing a big “surprise” (not) global conflict to bring them back in 2017.  Or as another critic put it “It’s obvious we’re watching the period that is labeled in history books ’causes leading up to’ just before the maps get all spikey and arrowey.”

Look, I’m as fond of a war show as the next viewer.  It gives an opportunity to sketch characters larger than life, and to make subplots that resonate with practically everyone.  Also, times being what they are, on likes the idea of problems one can shoot one’s way out of, as opposed to the ones we have to deal with.

But 2016 has run up against a major issue with long running shows trying to create a major “war scenario” — it’s almost impossible to do without someone (to quote one of the worst scripted scenes of a former show) “acting stupidly.”

And the problem with the idea that the character should cause his/her own problems is that you must be careful not to make it too obvious and stupid.  Because if you do, we lose respect for the characters and confidence in the writers, and stop watching.

Which I think is where most of us are right now.  And no, the appearance of random “creepy clowns” unexplained, in various parts of the show, doesn’t make any of this more plausible or interesting.  It just makes me wonder if the writing team is having a nervous breakdown.

As much as I hate reboots, comic style, I think that it’s time for one, if this series of shows is going to be salvageable, and if anyone is going to come back to watch 2017.  Heck, at this point I’d take that most hackneyed of reboot devices “it was all a dream.”

I suspect that the writers will resist this because they think they’re entitled to artistic pride.  Trust me, guys, you don’t have any left.

2016 is just a bad show that needs to be rebooted, if it’s going to save itself.

I’m getting really tired of the creepy clowns.

No, I don’t mean the ones everyone keeps seeing around schools, though that fad interested me enough because it resounds with visions of strange things in times of trouble, like seeing UFOs in the seventies.  In fact I went so far as to look up the sightings, but couldn’t determine if, as when one sees UFOs (or in the olden days fairies) there were the after effects of burning eyes and what seemed to be a mild cold.  Years ago, in a summer of insanity (I’d just given birth) I read everything I could about UFOs and fairies and determined they were similar phen0mena and possibly had some sort of intelligence behind it.

Anyway, none of the accounts of the creepy clowns is detailed enough to mention that stuff, so other than as a sign of our slow national psychosis, I am not interested in them.

I’m not even talking about the two creepy clowns running for president, each more profoundly unserious than the other and each in many ways children in adult bodies.

No, it’s the creepy clowns on Facebook, who are starting to terrify me.

There’s a posse of them running around everywhere telling everyone how we’re doomed, doooooomed, dooooooooooooooomed and the republic is already lost and there’s nothing we can do.

I honestly don’t know if these people were convinced Trumpites (I think so) who have now lost faith in their figurehead, and therefore everyone must be doomy and gloomy with them.  I know some of them were.  The others are probably just general purpose ass clowns.

There is one person I respect who thinks we’re all lost — but on a longer timescale than the assclowns — because of a Marching Morons scenario.  I.e. he thinks we’re paying the least competent to reproduce, while our most successful/competent/responsible people can’t afford kids after all the student loans.

I respect him and like him but I think he’s wrong, even if he’s probably smarter than I.  His perspective is distorted by his job, where he deals with the fast-reproducing dregs of society and also for his failure to see the effects of dependency on human intelligence and ingenuity.  It’s not that those living off the system are the dumbest (some aren’t dumb at all, since the system is a labyrinth to navigate.)  It’s that their natural wit and ability has been turned to sponging off society.  Cut the oppressive “net” around them and quite a few of them will shock you with how smart they are.  Most of those irredeemably dependent and tame will die, in some way or another.

No, differential reproduction doesn’t worry me.  There have been periods like this before and it tends to be a self-correcting problem.

And that’s the ONLY legitimate reason to be worried about our society and our republic in particular.  Yep, the only one.

What about the creepy clowns running for president?

Well, honestly, they’re more a symbol of how much grip the left has lost on our society.  There was a time when they could run a Republican and a Democrat, both fully accepted, both with “deep credentials” and both statist to the core.  No?  If you think Nixon was a champion of liberty, you need your head examined. Ford? Not even.

Nowadays they can’t do that.  And the left was aware of a protest vote of seismic proportions building, and the BEST they could do was push it to the only “republican” likely to lose to Hillary.  The fact that this turned the race into a spectacle worthy of an insane asylum didn’t worry them.  It was their hail Mary pass.

But they should worry, because in vulgar terms, they’ve shot their petard.  However this turns out, this is the last time they could pull this maneuver.  And, given how pressure cookers work, and Hillary’s inability to understand the national mood, they not only will never be able to do it again, but they might have bought themselves the mother of all backlashes.

As for the rest of society, if you think that a love of freedom is at its lowest ebb, you weren’t alive in the sixties and seventies.  And if you think this is the worst election evah, you haven’t read enough history to be aware of FDR, or Woodrow Wilson for that matter.

I’m not saying there’s nothing to worry about.  I’ve never lied to you guys and said that we’re not going to go through a pretty rough period.  We are.  If our different beliefs were divided by geography, we’d already be in a civil war.  As is the idiots on the left, who are convinced if you just shut the valve on the pressure cooker, it will shut up and you can do whatever you want with it, are going to create something very like.  And it’s not even far off.  I thought it was going to erupt over the stand off on the cattle ranch.  And that’s without the left running around trying to fan the flames of a race war they’re sure will finally bring about Marxism.  (Because if you can tan, you’re naturally Marxist, don’t you know.  You’re born with a little hammer and sickle tattoo on your rump.  Those racist idiots who think your skin determines your thought disgust me.)

I told you, and stand by it, that we’re going to go through blood, sweat and tears, and we’re going to see some things we thought were impossible in this country come to pass.  I just think in the end the trend of the technology and the trend of the nation is towards more individual liberty, just like the trend in tech and thought in the early twentieth century was towards mass production and therefore standardization.

I believe in the end we win, they lose, I don’t believe it will be painless or without problems.  The very fact that the left believes history comes with an arrow and they’re “on the winning side” guarantees we’re going through a decade or two or awfulness.  (Which might very well be the rest of my natural life.)

But I do NOT believe all is lost, or that we should abandon the ideals of the republic and sit around telling each other how everything is doom and gloom.  Doooooooooom, I tell you.

The people doing this seem to have drunk the left’ koolaid, and think the arrow of history points away from them.  Which would also explain why so many of these creepy clowns are worried about things like corporations.  (Bad news, guy, the family is a corporation.  Why?  Mostly so that if I drop dead tomorrow, the guys can control my literary estate without a hiccup.  Also so I can be publisher to all of them.)  This corporation is, like all others, run by humans and suffers from the faults of humans.  It’s not an alien lifeform oppressing humans.

At least one of them is also terribly concerned about income inequality, which is Marxist claptrap.  Because free market has inequalities.  The only way to make everyone equal is to make everyone equally poor.

What really bakes my beans is the latest from these assclowns.  When challenged (the last one just informed me our country is terrible, and he’s not proud to be an American and then bristled when we suggested he find some place he can be happy) they bring forth a new and bizarre argument.  I call it Argumentum Ad Enlistorum.  I.e. they will parade before you the fact they did military service, that they served x terms, and tell you that if you didn’t you can’t be/aren’t a real patriot.

This argument would make plenty of sense in Prussia, but it really doesn’t do much in America.  Most of the founding fathers were NOT veterans of any military service.  Nor are we organized as a military dictatorship.

I will say that I have a lot of friends (probably 2/3 of them) who are veterans, and that as a rule I trust veterans more than I trust any other group.

However, I also taught military people.  And I know for an absolute fracking fact that they have their share of idiots, problem children and *ssholes.

What is more, learning to shoot back when shot at, and even giving years of your life to serve the republic does NOT make you an expert in history and political science.  It might, if you served in Heinlein’s military in Starship Troopers, so if that’s the case be sure to inform me, okay?

To use your service to the nation as a way to try to make people believe it’s uniquely horrible is a betrayal of yours and other people’s service and of the nation and of civilians.

Also, it’s liable to get you pointed at and laughed.

When you tell me things like you’re no longer proud to be an American, but resist any thought of going abroad, what you’re telling me is that you know d*mn well that the rest of the world is worse.  So what you’re demanding of your nation is that they be PERFECT to fit your… perfect self?  Really, if you believe that you need meds.

And if you carried your point and convinced everyone everything is doom and gloom and we should sit back crying and wailing, and let the country go totally to h*ll, what would you gain by it?  The ability to say I told you so?  Yeah, I hear that keeps you in advanced medicine and food, when a society collapses.

No, if you’re acting like that you’re just a creepy clown who is too cowardly to put on make up and scare little kids.  You should keep your doom and gloom to yourself, and, perhaps, see a psychiatrist for that depression.

Because the rest of us would continue fighting EVEN IF, like in the beginning of the 20th century, it looked like technology would drag culture away from individualism and freedom.

We’d continue fighting because we know while you’re still fighting there’s still hope, and history doesn’t come with an arrow.

We also know even if we win this, there are no permanent victories.

The price of liberty is to fight for it.  Not just physically, but philosophically, in the culture, in your family, in our schools, and everywhere it can be betrayed.

And those of us who aren’t dead will continue fighting.