Ladies and gentlemen, Phoenixes and Pegasi, and the odd alien this is your captain speaking.  We’ve been over some turbulence lately, and I’ve not been handling it with my normal grace and aplomb, (for a blind elephant) so I thought it was high time you knew what was happening here up front in the flight deck.

If you’re a regular you know I used to do state of the writer fairly regularly, but there seem to have been some other things to talk about, recently, and besides I didn’t like the state of the writer and didn’t want to feel I was whining.

So, last December I had a biopsy I was told was negative.  That was true but it wasn’t PRECISELY true.  There is a growth and also some free floating suspicious cells.  I found this out early January, right after we’d decided to rent a house and move so we could clean/repair the other house for sale. That way we could remove from the house with the cats, leaving one guy behind to look after that house.

That was okay (I thought) because the surgery was set for March 16th.  Plenty of time to get the house ready.  Mistakes were made.  It’s taking much longer than I thought, partly because I’ve been sick so much the last three years that things have gotten shoved willy nilly in places and they’re neither obviously throw away or keep.  To make things slower I can’t drive and haven’t been able to for about 6 months because the hormonal stuff keeps switching my astigmatism.  (I had to drive a few blocks the other day and parked cars all seem to be starting and coming at me.  That sort of thing.) This means I have to wait for the guys to take me over/fit their schedule which means my maximum work at that house is about 4 to 5 hours and not everyday.

This is okay, as I apparently also forgot I wasn’t twenty and that nights with cramps (one of the side effects of my little friend) leave me beat.  So four to five hours violent physical work is about all I can take at any one time.

This is not a long sustained whine, precisely.  Stuff has got done, and it will probably take another month till the house is for sale.  I don’t like it, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.  The guys will have to do a bunch while I’m laid up and recovering.

Things we simply don’t know: How long recovery will take.

This is a biggie, but I’m trying to do MY PART at the house (did you know I’m a fabric hoarder?  I know you’re shocked.  I used to sew both clothes and stuffed animals, and since I’m cheap I grab stuff at garage sales.  Continued buying for three years of being sick.  Yikes.  I shall donate about half, because I don’t think I’ll have time to sew much while getting back to writing) so that the guys can empty it in my absence.  Then only painting remains.  I’m counting on two weeks before I can paint.  I might be dreaming, who knows.

If there’s more than I was told so far.  No one knows.  Will go to pathologist.  I need some steady prayers and good thoughts because good Lord, I don’t have time for chemo.

Things we know: I have had very odd reactions to anesthesia.  So have Older son and my mom.

This is actually my biggest fear coupled with the fact I LOATHE anesthesia because I don’t like not being “at home” in my mind.

The hormonal madness likely had something to do with my problems concentrating to write the last couple years.

Where the Writing is: The damn book finally wants to pour out, but I’ve been working at the other house till too tired to THINK.  The revision is done and I’m entering changes/adjusting, and have… 4? 5 chapters left to write.  Yes, will try to finish before surgery, though it might not happen, depending.  One thing I underestimated was the amount of pre-op.

Where the Sarah is: Terrified while knowing it’s stupid to be terrified.  Making preparations in case I’m not here after Tuesday, even though I know that’s unlikely.

Where the blog will be: I have guest posts for a week.  I’d like to have them for two.  While serious complications are unlikely I have the body from h*ll and well, after both births there were weird complications, minor in younger son’s case, but consuming three weeks in older.  (And also keeping me on morphine the first week at home, which is my excuse for writing Thirst.)  So if you ever wished to see your name in lights on your very own ATH post, this is your chance!  I have to have them by Sunday night, though, when I’ll be cueing them all.

I likely won’t be in comment section Monday, unless things go extraordinarily well, and I have my tablet at the hospital.

I probably won’t be in on Tuesday which will be my first day back home.

I don’t know how much I’ll be doing here that first week, but I likely will check in now and then.

I’m not being unspeakably lazy, I’m just going to be doped.  If mind is working, plans are to do whatever else I need to get Through Fire off my hands and work on Darkship Revenge and/or dragons depending on mind.

Amanda Green, Cedar Sanderson and Kate Paulk should know how the surgery went, though not the aftermath, yet.  So if you need to know, contact them. Likely David Pascoe and Tedd Speaker to lab animals as well.

At least until I can stumble here and tell you.  My husband will post updates on his FB page.  Because of the way my page is setup he can’t post on mine.  He’ll also post in the diner on FB.

Should the unspeakable happen, (and yes, I know it’s unlikely) be aware that you, the regulars here and my much abused subscribers, were a great help particularly through these difficult two years, and that I’m not sure I could have continued functioning without your help.  I love you guys, and I think you know it. You’re kin, every fractious, prickly one of you.

Okay — end of the soft stuff.  I hope you guys will understand if I’m a little testier than usual and not hold it against me.

I will still be posting through Sunday.

No reason to panic.  This blog will now resume its flight path.  If  you look to the right you’ll see a panicked writer caffeinating in order to write, so she can go to the other house this afternoon.

If you look to your left, you’ll see  panicked fleeing cat, which means I need to go see what he just did in Robert’s office.

So tonight – phone – had an interesting conversation with Bill Reader. He’s not a troll, and since we are friends he wouldn’t come to my blog to call me names, but he was making many of the objections made here over the weekend to the idea of working to take over the GOP.

We covered the reasons – mine and his – mine being of course the ones I laid out here. His being – his being younger than I – that he despairs of incremental gains, of slow victories.

Part of me understands. Honest. It’s a tough thing for people in their late thirties and early forties, who don’t really remember Reagan, and who just remember a slow slide to the left. (Ignoring much of public opinion has moved the other way.)

I had to tell him of the seventies, when it was assumed that Communism was right and the ultimate destiny of human governance and, in fact, the moral high ground. It was assumed by my teachers, in Europe, and it was assumed by the intelligentsia and the upper class here as far as the 1980s when I came here to live.

I mean, the Russians were brutal and uncouth and imposing by force a regime that would be great if we just slid into it.

Most of Europe bought it too, and have been doing just that.

This meant most conservatives older than I are … squishy. Not all, of course. Not nearly all. But most “conservatives” older than I assume things like the ACA are necessary and if not a good, at least inevitable for ‘civilized governance.’ Europe, needless to say assumes so – and are paying the price of it in stagnation, in lost opportunity, in slow decay (which they seem to wallow in. Go figure.)

And then there was Reagan. And those of us not old enough to remember Goldwater’s candidacy nonetheless got an idea conservatism/liberty could and would work.

The establishment got power again, afterwards, of course, the people who believed socialism was covalent with civilization.

And because the conservative/libertarian base was busy working at their jobs, raising their families and doing the other stuff we do, we slid back into the GOP thinking their goal was “sure, same result but slower.”

The momentum was already there, baked in the cake. And the left kept pushing. Harder, because they wanted everyone to forget that for one moment the USA had deviated from the European pattern of slow decay. (Does anyone remember the early nineties, everyone trying to portray the eighties as a horrible decade of unemployment and economic hardship?)

It worked to an extent because the left had an immovable wall of media: news, entertainment, teaching. All of it worked in tandem to proclaim the big lies: that Republicans were for big business and the rich; that the democrats were for the little people. If you noticed that the rich were more and more democrat and used politics to enrich themselves, you wondered if you were going nuts. There was no corroboration out there, no idea that your opinion wasn’t completely alone. No idea you weren’t insane.

This is something the left excels at. Or did. The centralized communications of the twentieth century were ideal, once they took them over, to maintain the illusion everyone agree with them and painting their opponents as crazy.

Now there are cracks. I’m not sure what the percentages are, but it seems most people at least know about Drudge. There are indie books and you might find suddenly the villain isn’t always a conservative and Libertarian.   There are blogs where the like minded meet and draw strength and knowledge to face the next battle.

And conservatives and libertarians of my generation – most of us – not only do not view communists as having the moral high ground and socialism as a rational path but – having seen the Soviet Union fall and been exposed to the shenanigans of our own left through the alternate media – view it as an evil to be fought at our costs.

Bill said “but this feels so paltry. It is just words.”

He is right. It is just words.

But we’re humans and we need narratives to guide our lives. The narrative used to be of a state run by “the best minds” which would take over more and more of the functions of life until it provided whatever you needed, exactly right, because “best minds”. If you don’t believe me, read a lot of the classic science fiction. Even those who disapproved of the idea viewed it as inevitable.

Now we’ve seen what an out of control state can do, and a lot of us are proclaiming the message of a state that’s kept small, starved, humble, a state that can neither give you everything you want nor take away everything you have.

And there are a lot of us, all over. And we know we’re not crazy.

Guys, if this were the nineties, people WOULD be convinced Obamacare is the best thing ever. I can just imagine story after story after story, its becoming part of major movies’ plots, etc, etc, etc.  In other countries “universal care” was given and almost immediately approved of.  Here, its approval ratings keep dropping.  People can get the real news, not just pravda, see.

The left has lost that narrative setting ability. It wasn’t an inconsiderable weapon. Arguably it was their largest.  Or at least they’ve lost most of its potency.  And we’ve gained a good deal of it.  And it will serve us well.

Because if we can change the narrative in people’s heads, not only can we restore the republic incrementally, but – heaven forbid – should we need to rebel earlier (I don’t think it will happen. In fact, I can’t see anything short of our own government nuking one of our cities that won’t be hushed, tamped down, and the few who rose portrayed as traitors. The media is still strong enough to run a distraction game while the few who moved get hanged to dry.  I could, of course, be wrong. If Net Neutrality hampers the net much, the millennials will rise for sure. They don’t know life without the net.)

The founding fathers spent a generation in broadsheet and public meet hashing out their ideas and more importantly propagating them. There was a small number who fought, but when they won and it came to creating a system, people were all (almost) on the same page.

A rebellion or debacle that happens before the culture is changed means we already lost.

We COULD end up with something out of Starship Troopers… maybe… only I don’t see even that. Historically, in that situation people go for the man on the white horse who promises to save and fix all, even if he is just a little man from Corsica.

The good (urgh) news is that I don’t think there will be a flare up, certainly not a widespread one. And I don’t think there will be a collapse. Yes, yes, I get those emails too “Banks about to collapse” and I have since 1990. There is a lot of collapsing a country as rich as ours can do. Venezuela and Cuba are still very theoretically solvent.

This is what I call the “Slide down easy” route. If we don’t succeed in getting some people who will fight for our rights in the capital or if the other side wins the day in 16, we will see the slide down easy. Things failing, things breaking, a general degradation of our style of life. Heck, we’ve seen that the last six years, though nowhere near “bad” yet. Just minor inconveniences, curbed pleasures (Staycations, not driving an hour to something because of gas, eating a lot of eggs because cheaper than meat, etc.) If it continues it has a long way to go to get to where we only have utilities some hours a day.

That’s a long long way down (longer some places than others.) We’ll have time to change hearts and minds and hopefully arrest the decline before it gets to that point.

People who want to take different routes? Go right ahead. Not the shooting route, because frankly if you’re screaming you’re ready to start shooting on a blog you’re either a government stooge or just incredibly stupid and surrounded by them. I think the third party route is insane, but then I don’t even think you’ll pull many votes. And there’s always Libertarians pulling votes on the right side (mostly.) (I’ll note Ron Paul was smart enough to run in the Republican party and as a Republican. He understood the dangers of third parties, and clearly he too thought it was worth it to run a quixotic campaign just to pull the GOP away from socialism.)

There are times when I myself will switch my ideas of how to do this so fast your head will spin: if mass arrests of our people occur; if the country gets attacked and our president tells us we deserved it, if… a dozen other events occur.

The thing about the right – even if people tried to tell me otherwise this weekend – is that we’re not monolithic. We are the proverbial individualists who failed to organize.

The only thing that unites us in fact is our love of liberty and individual freedom.

And if there are some among us who don’t love those, they’ll get overwhelmed.

The left has the advantage of being able to march in lockstep. It has helped them many times. On the other hand, the disorganization typical on the right is a strength too. They demonized the tea party, but they couldn’t personalize the demonization because there were no leaders. Part of their obsession with the Kochs is that they had to find someone to blame.

When a crowd comes at you each in an individual style, it’s much harder to evolve a strategy than when everyone comes at you marching in uniform ranks.

I? I’m going to continue working the culture vineyards. It’s self-serving in a way, but it’s what I can do best. Sort of utilizing my meager talents in the area I have them.

I know others of you who are more competent (and less health impaired) are doing the local level taking over the GOP thing. Others yet are fighting culture fights in games and literature (I do that a little too) and schooling and everywhere the long march has entrenched leftists.

And others of you are setting up groups, working in organizations, teaching the young.

Yes, as Bill told me, it all seems incremental and slow and just “ideas.” But the Jewish people had an heritage mostly of ideas and stories, and they have outlasted the peoples who built in marble and granite. Ideas matter.

And though – as with my never-ending clean up and fix at the other house – it will seem like it’s never ending, and a thankless task, I know from history and from other similar projects, one day we’ll wake up to find ourselves in a new world we build.

… with all the work to do to keep it so.

Because that’s how the world works.

I know it’s difficult and tiring and thankless, but it’s our job, and we can do it. We have to do it. It’s the only thing standing between us and darkness. Or at least the triumph of socialism and the eternal slide down.

In the end we win, they lose – we just have to make it so.

The Once and Future Insurrection – Jason Hobbs

I’m a deserter. I didn’t understand that was what I did at the time, but now, in the better vision hindsight provides I can see the ugly truth: I deserted in a time of war.

I should explain.

I spent the 2007-2008 election campaigns overseas, stationed in Afghanistan and Egypt in the US Army. I watched as Hillary rose and then was ambushed out of nowhere by some relatively unknown (at least to us—later it would be revealed that he was a rising star in the Democrats at the time) guy by the name of Barack. This new arrival to the political battlefield was a charismatic fellow and many were swept up in his campaign of hope. I’d like to say I wasn’t fooled by him, but I feel I underestimated his allure.

I was out of touch, you see, I was insulated by the grace of being overseas and in the military from suffering the collapse of 2008. I didn’t need a peddler of hope, I still had it aplenty coming from elsewhere. Even so, when he was elected in November, I still had little reason to care; it was just the normal cycle of things, a Republican president followed by a Democrat president. Just like it had been for the entirety of my life.

Watching from the outside in 2009 changed that attitude. Suffice to say, I’d seen enough of administrative actions and world experience to realize this guy was bad news for the country. This was why when I exited Active Duty near the close of 2009 I made the decision to get involved. I found where my local Republican caucuses would be held and I volunteered that day in February 2010 to be a delegate. I made friends with some libertarians working within the Republicans to change the party, though I was still naive in my perception of the rot within that party.

As the primary season continued, I again put myself on the list to become a delegate for higher conventions, but I discovered something disheartening: I wasn’t wanted. Oh, the young blood was nice and all, but the Republican establishment wanted me to show up and vote for them and then sit back and shut up. I saw during that district caucus the old, well-established delegates who’d been so for years upon years chosen yet again, while we of the younger generation, our life experiences forged in the fires of war, were ignored. I felt dismissed, so I stopped trying. I sat and I watched the election and while many things in the 2010 election went our way, a number did not and I felt discouraged. Over the next eighteen months, I would watch the people I had supported proceed to bungle and screw up at every opportunity, driving Minnesota into the DFL’s (Minnesota’s brand of the Democrats) waiting arms and progressive madness.

At that point, I gave up and deserted from the battlefield, convinced the only way was to let the two corrupt sides burn the whole thing down and try to piece the remains back together. “Let the left have their little ‘revolution’”, I thought, “we’ll just put them down when the time comes.”

I woke up from my nap yesterday and realized the revolution had come and gone….and they’d already won.

There’s been chatter for years about this cold war between ideologies going hot, finally the tree of liberty getting its thirst slaked with the blood of patriots, and the disturbing anticipation so many ‘patriots’ feel towards this terrifying event. It is as if on the battlefield of blood, guts and mud is the only way to defeat the disease that is progressivism in their minds. They’ve conceded that the walls have fallen, the barbarians are within the gates, the battle has been lost and all that is left is phyrric battle. And so they wait, longing for the open hostilities while no doubt secretly hoping the status quo remains; things aren’t great right now, but at least they’re not worse. They’re waiting to fight an insurrection.

What they, and for the longest time I, thought is that the fight was still in the future. That now was instead the time to prepare and build defenses.

We’re wrong. The insurrection is happening right now.

The enemy isn’t the easy one—the jackbooted thugs armed and looking to kill us—it is the insidious one. It’s ideology, it’s fanaticism, it’s complacency. It is an enemy that attacks us on two fronts and must be met on those two fronts.

The old Party Members I spoke of earlier? The ones who wanted me to vote for them and then sit back down? They are one front, the entrenched establishment looking to maintain power and privilege, to keep themselves in comfort no matter the concessions they must make. We’re fighting an insurrectionary war against the RINO elements which seem to be everywhere within the GOP. And you can tell we’re making headway in the battle by the increase of intensity with which they and their collaborators among the leftists declare this insurrection to be ‘inconsequential’ and ‘irrelevant,’ by the increasing desperation to defame and discredit our cause. (Typical Alinskyite tactics.) This is also the origin of the calls for a party split.

The GOP RINOs would accept diminished stature that splitting the party would bring, so long as they are permitted to remain the ‘loyal opposition’ and continue receiving the perks of their power. The calls would also ensure on the second front Democrat (and therefore Leftist Progressive) domination for the foreseeable future, giving them the freedom to enact their dreams and finally tear down the great evil of the world, America. This front is the current battle of our insurrection, a fight to take the heart and soul of a political party long corrupted by the comforts of power and staffed by men and women more than happy to sell out to keep it.

This second front, the Leftist Progressives, products of Soviet agitprop of the Cold War, is the greater battle. The Soviets studied us and tailored their programs well. They played the long game and found willing conspirators among the Progressives born of the early 1900s. They took over the institutions which frame how we think, how we perceive, what we hear and know. Their disillusionment process was so thorough the most deeply indoctrinated are impossible to reach and are, sadly, forever lost to us. This is the enemy which we must face in the Long Fight, against which we must stand in the greater battle once we’ve moved beyond their proxies inside the GOP.

Because of the efforts of other rebels who stuck with the fight, we’ve now carved out a block with which we can, on a limited basis, engage the Leftist Progressives. We didn’t even have that much six years ago! It’ll take time, but we’re succeeding in many holding actions now and with patience we’ll be able to turn to the offensive!

The cracks are present in the other side. Defectors within the Democrat party growing more uncomfortable with the president’s need to drag his party further down the Soviet rabbit hole are potential allies, so long as they know they’re not going to be alone.

Back in the GOP, so long as we continue to stay the course and refuse to desert our positions we can and will further increase our gains and push back against the progressive disease infecting the establishment. They didn’t build their network overnight; we cannot build ours and tear theirs down overnight. It’s going to take hard work and some discouraged evenings to fight this insurrection, but it is a battle well-worth joining.

Those who’ve deserted the fight, we should all return again. Better to fight now than to wait for the gunsmoke and blood. The American Revolution was an aberration, an outlier event. Every other instance of a rebellion being fought successfully has led to horrible ends with dictatorships and death. We came out of the Revolution in an unheard of way, creating a country unlike any that has gone before nor come since. We cannot guarantee a second having such a grand outcome—it certainly isn’t worth the risk of becoming another Iraq or a Balkanized mess, which is the more likely end to any second revolution.

We must fight the insurrection now, in the battlefield of ideology and culture, so as to be saved from fighting it later in the battlefield of mud with the blood of our fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and children.

The Insurrection has already begun in your neighborhood, your city, your state. You were looking for the fight, what are you waiting for?

It is NOT the end of the world as we know it. -Amanda Green

Over the last few days, something strange has been happening here at According to Hoyt. Instead of the usual collection of folks who take umbrage at anything Sarah says because she is too conservative or too white or too much of a traitor to her sex (or whatever the current attack of the day might be), there has been a spate of folks coming here and telling her she doesn’t understand. She doesn’t understand US institutions. She doesn’t understand history. She doesn’t understand tyranny. Well, you get my drift.

If got so bad at one point yesterday that I checked to make sure I hadn’t fallen down the rabbit hole. Nope, I was still where I belonged and not a rabbit or a Mad Hatter was to be seen. So, I checked usernames and even asked her for a couple of IPs to see if some of those commenting weren’t actually some of our favorite trolls just trying a new tact in an attempt to trip us up.

As far as I could tell, that didn’t appear to be the case, at least not for the most part. So did someone put something in the water or are we just in a very long full moon? I’m not sure but here’s what I think about their objections – thhhppp!

Okay, my mama taught me better manners than that. So let’s see if I can be a bit more verbal in my response. Sarah knows better than most anyone who comes to this blog what tyranny is. She understands, because she has lived through such things, the impact a revolution can have on a country. She knows what it is like to have friends and family simply disappear because they didn’t say or do the approved thing. To accuse her of not understanding tyranny is to show your own ignorance, or maybe your self-appointed superiority.

But I’m not here to defend Sarah. She can do so much more eloquently than can I.

What I do want to address is the idea that the creation of a viable third party would solve all our ills as well as the belief that collapse and revolution are the only options left for us. Third parties and independent candidates have come and gone since the founding of our nation. In recent memory, we have the presidential campaign of Ross Perot in 1992. That year, George Bush was squaring off against Bill Clinton. For a time, he pulled better polling numbers than either of his opponents. I remember how everyone was looking at him and declaring him the first viable third party candidate for president since Teddy Roosevelt.

But polls don’t always translate into votes and votes don’t always translate into Electoral College votes. Despite the fact Perot received more votes than any third party or independent candidate since TR, he received no – I repeat NO – electoral votes. And, folks, without electoral votes, no one, no matter how many popular votes they can, get be elected president. That is the strength and the weakness of our system. It is also why we won’t have a third party president for a very long time. For that to happen, we have to start at the grassroots level by focusing at our local then our state and then our federal elected offices.

It isn’t something that will happen overnight. In fact, we have a better chance of changing the Republican Party from the inside before that happens. Oh, wait, there is a movement already in place that is trying to do just that. It’s called the Tea Party and it has been making strides on the local and state level. This past election showed that it is starting to get a foothold on the national level as well. But until it has enough members on the Hill to get key committee appointments, legislation penned by its members can and will be hung up in committee.

Unless, of course, we make enough noise at home and the incumbents start realizing that we are no longer satisfied with the status quo.

Of course, there is another side to this. Those members of the Tea Party – or any other non-traditional win of either party – have to stop coming across like screaming lunatics. That will scare folks off even more quickly than the hatred of the status quo.

As for the stance that America is about to fall into collapse and the only way to avoid it is to revolt now, well, get real. Yes, times will get tough if things continue as they are right now. But this won’t be the first time this country has faced hard times, nor will it be the last. However, if you really think we can go into armed conflict here and not have outside forces taking advantage of it, you are more than naïve. The moment we turn on one another, our allies will step back and wait for the dust to clear. They will no more want to get involved until they see where the cards are falling than they want such rebellion in their own lands.

But our enemies – and gawd do we have enemies – will leap into the fray with one intent. They will use the desire to tear down the government to destroy our country. It won’t be like the movies either. They won’t invade Denver and leave the rest of the country alone. No, our bases overseas will be attacked. Our trade with other countries will be disrupted. Debt will be called in.

Do you really think ISIS and its ilk will sit still in their neck of the world and wait for the dust to settle here? Oh hell no. They will use the cover of our own fighting to move in and destroy what makes this country great. Lives will be lost, many more than most of you think. I don’t know about you, but I’ll do just about anything to keep that from happening.

So instead of sitting there, whining about how bad things are and how there is nothing we can do, I challenge you to quit sitting on your hands and start trying to change things. How many of those who attacked Sarah for not understanding the current situation have actually tried to run for office or have served on local or state committees where change can be implemented? How many have actually been to countries where tyranny is an everyday reality?

Am I saying there is nothing to be worried about? Far from it. I am not liking one little bit a lot of things that have happened the last twenty plus years in this country. But I am seeing steps being attempted to change things. Unless and until I see the president, whoever he or she might be, announcing that martial law has been declared and elections have been cancelled, I will continue to believe that we can implement change without actually taking to the streets in open rebellion.

Color me naïve is you will, but I have seen what real oppression looks like and we are far from it in this country. Can we get there? Yes, given time and an electorate that decides there is no reason to stand up and make those running for office take note that we are tired of things going as they are.

Otto von Bismark said, “People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.” So study the voting records of your elected officials. Let them know that you are keeping track of what they do and will not hesitate to vote them out if they fail to vote in the way that best represents their constituents. Learn all you can about the candidates – from all sides of the spectrum. Has that candidate for city council lived in your town for long? Has he or she attended council meetings, taken part in city planning sessions, have they even voted in the last umpteenth elections? If not, ask yourself why they want to run for office and what their qualifications are? Listen to what their platform is and question them. Go to the meet the candidate functions and see if they actually show up to those or if they are ghost candidates. In other words, do your homework.

Then go out and spend time trying to get the candidate on whom you can place your confidence in elected. Vote. Volunteer to be a poll watcher. You don’t have to be the “official” watcher. It is those who watch the watchers who actually help keep the system from breaking down too much. Most of all, if you see something going on, whether it is in violation of the election laws or is your elected official not doing his job, don’t be afraid to speak up. Shout it from the rooftops, but do it only when it is a valid complaint and it is best if you do so when you have something to back you up.

In other words, quit bellyaching and then not doing anything else. That simply makes you part of the problem, a very annoying part.

*I was going to write something about a disagreement on methods not on principles and the things that would turn even me, but let me count the ways the last two days have sucked: injury to another member of my family; appointment with cardiologist last minute before surgery; the reroute-fairy getting hold of #1 son on his journey home so that he got home yesterday at 3 am. I have no brain. And I must do something for MGC. There might, or there might not be another post later. Meanwhile there’s the oyster and the promo post – SAH*

There once was an oyster so grand,
he wandered about in the land
but he lost track of days
in a housecleaning craze,
so the Promo Post’s later than planned.

As always, future entries can (and should!) be sent to my email. Happy reading!

Jason Dyck, AKA The Free Range Oyster

Teacher of logical positivism, and also in charge of the sheep dip

Joseph Francis Collins

The Black Hand: Arsonist

A Talent for Chemistry
Mathew Tudor had just earned his PhD and was working a dead end job when The Black Hand approached him about a life altering career change.

A New Career
He was in too deep before he learned that he’d been hired as an arsonist. He’d already sold his soul to The Black Hand and saw no way to get his freedom.

The Future
His training end with a final test—a massive arson fire so dangerous that it might kill him. With luck, skill and determination, he might just survive his time as…

The Black Hand: Arsonist

C.J. Carella

Shadowfall: Las Vegas

HELL COMES TO SIN CITY

It starts slowly. Bizarre murders. Disappearances. Suicides. Sightings of strange creatures in the night. But the strangeness soon snowballs out of control, with people turning insanely violent without warning and sinister cults growing bolder and more dangerous. Nightmares come to life and monsters walk the streets of the city. And all those events are but a prelude to something far worse. Darkness is coming to Las Vegas.

A police detective, a street gang member, an exotic dancer and a visiting tourist cross paths with a bizarre collection of occult troubleshooters trying to prevent the looming disaster. Their actions will determine whether or not Las Vegas will be destroyed by the occult forces gathering around it – and whether or not the rest of the world will follow.

Shadowfall: Las Vegas is set in the same universe as the short story Bad Vibes. It’s a horror-action novel with a dash of humor and film noir sensibilities, with a diverse and compelling cast of characters, Lovecraftian undertones and more than a few zombies.

Mary Catelli

Madeleine and the Mists

Enchanted pools, shadowy dragons, wolves that spring from the mists and vanish into them again, paths that are longer, or shorter, than they should be, given where they went… the Misty Hills were filled with marvels.

Madeleine still left the hills, years ago, to marry against her father’s will. If her husband’s family is less than welcoming, she still is glad she married him, and they have a son, two years old.

But her husband’s overlord has fallen afoul of the king. And all his men fall with him, including her husband.

She sets out, to seek the queen and try to bypass the king — and the Misty Hills.

Some things are not so easily evaded.

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Sean Golden

Warrior

The War Chronicles I

The Seven Gods are at war. Lirak has become a pawn in their all-consuming conflict. Born of an outsider mother, feared by superstitious villagers, resented by his own brother, Lirak must lead his people into battle against an invading malevolent horde. But first he must control the destructive forces that surge through his mind and body before they devour him.

Callan Primer

Company Daughter

The Children of Astraea Book 1

A girl. A saucepan. A plan to conquer the universe.

Aleta Dinesen doesn’t see the point of hanging around home, not when she can cook a mean paella. But her plan to conquer the universe one meal at a time runs afoul of her overprotective father, commander of a tough mercenary company. And when he puts his foot down, he’s got the firepower to back it up.

Undeterred, Aleta escapes the dreadnaught she calls home one step ahead of the gorgeous, highly disapproving Lieutenant Park, the unlucky young officer tasked with hauling her back. But the universe isn’t the safe place she thought it was. Stranded in a dangerous mining community, she clings to survival by her fingernails. Only by working with someone she can’t stand will she have a chance to escape, proving to everyone that a teenage cook can be the most dangerous force in the universe.

Well, that was fun. Yesterday’s post was one of those I wrote because I had to. It was forced on me by whatever the h*ll it is that makes me write my novels. If I hadn’t written I would become unable to write anything.

I wish whatever the h*ll that is had more sense, because… well, that was fun.

I wrote more than two thousand words so I could carefully explain my reasoning and my motives, and make people understand that this was not what I would PREFER but the only way we can deal with unpleasant reality. Also, that frankly the “let it burn” and “third party” roots have the hallmarks of a false flag operation encouraging them. Which frankly ladies and gents, I DO know about and can smell a mile off. The other side always uses them.

For my pains I was told I’m an “incrementalist” and that I respect authority and that I am mushy and that haven’t I seen that Boehner is the worst thing evah, evah, and the only choice is to start shooting.

That was fun. Have you got it out of your systems, now? Good.

Perhaps now you’ll listen.

When the kids were little Dan and I had a question guaranteed to stop them mid screaming fit (even justified ones against real injustice) “What are you going to gain by this?”

So that is our question for the various options. But first let’s examine the root of the problem and why I think you’re being led on by a false flag operation of posting sneering comments saying “I’m done.”

My main reason for thinking this is that it was in place before this vote. It was in place before the November elections. It has made comments on some blogs places I no longer venture into. It let up a little after November (had to, right?) but by December, it was back.

That’s neither a sane response, nor a response to something that just happened. It’s a campaign, all over, pushing you like cattle in one direction. We’ll examine that direction in a moment.

Look, I’m the first to admit I’d love for the Republicans to get in and to say “Excuse Me, Mr. President, what the hell do you think you’re doing with the executive orders?”

But what good would it do? His ethnicity makes him unimpeacheable. The fact we impeached Clinton makes him unimpeachable. And as we learned with Clinton impeaching a president who has no shame and whose base has no shame does NOT remove him. And yep, the press will paint us as just impeaching democrats not because they’re bottomless pits of corruption, but because we disagree with them.

Now, the latest debacle. It will tell you something even I who am a political junky don’t understand the full mechanics of the senate. BUT from my comments I glean that defeating the damn thing was never on the books. What was on the books was a nuclear option, which would force the dems to decide not to fund DHS, which they couldn’t do.

Our side is afraid of the nuclear option. Yes, it’s stupid. But our side is.

However in the end the horror would have passed, anyway.

And there’s tons of complications to that thing. It’s not like someone brought a bill saying “Do you want to approve Obama’s immigration action?” That’s not how life works. It was embedded in a DHS bill. And if you don’t fund the DHS now, you get to be blamed by Obama when his several setups for an attack pay off.

Take a deep breath and realize what you’re hearing from the press, not even on our side, where we’re influenced by how the mainstream press reports it, is not the full story. Then go investigate. Will you change your mind? I don’t know. I don’t have the time to pour into procedures and details and be sure that they had no other option. BUT if it’s that important to you that you’re considering a third party over it, then go study it. It’s the least you can do before taking such a step (and that’s just a fraction of what it would take to let it burn or go all shooty.) If you don’t do that, consider there’s a good chance you’re being played by the usual way the media reports such things.

Okay, leaving that aside and keeping in mind that the “third party” and “let it burn chorus” was in place before this vote, let’s go back to the basics.

Third party. What do you expect to get by this?

It will split a party that at its best has about 50% of the vote. It has more of the population/values, but that’s not relevant. It’s the vote that matters. And the vote is influenced by rogue IRS agents and by the corrupt media too.

What is more important, HOW is your magical party going to avoid the fate of the Tea Party which got demonized with LIVs in… two years? Tops?

Yeah, the Republican brand sucks. So will any other that is not democrat. Until and unless we take down the media, that’s what we have to work with.

But beyond that – what do you expect to accomplish by saying “I will never vote for a republican again?” or “I’m going third party?”

I know what you think you can accomplish. You think the GOP will fall in line.

WHY WOULD THEY?

What you’re saying is “I’m going to keep the dems in power for the rest of our natural lives.”

You know what the unprincipled (most establishment) GOP hears when you say that? “I’d better cozy up to the left because they’re the future. Let me see what I can concede today. I sure would like to keep my job as the loyal opposition.”

Is that what you want? No? Change your tactics.

And frankly I think that’s what the false flag intended to do on all the prominent conservative blogs, give the squishes in power the idea their own hope and support are the dems. Those comments not only need to not get support, they need to be laughed at.

Have you considered instead starting a group, a campaign, a money collection, and a list (perhaps public) of people who need to be primaried, where their names are added when they step out of line?

Why not? It’s more work, but more effective. As in, compared to screaming you’re leaving, which might accomplish the other side of what you expect.

As for “let it burn”… Guys, we’re not communists. Communists have a (I think in America crazy) faith that if they let it burn what will come back is them, because they are a brutal dictatorship. When you let things burn, everytime in history, what comes back is a brutal dictatorship.

I know what you’re hoping to accomplish there, I do. You want to wipe away fifty years of school indoctrination with a really hard winter.

Guys, I lived through this. I lived through the hard times. You know what people taught to trust and believe in authority do when times are hard? Revolt? You got to be fracking kidding me. They scream for more and more help and for “Someone ought to do something.”

Eventually someone does. Humanity is disastrously prone to the man on the white horse syndrome. Pray we don’t get one here. He’d probably be from the right, yeah, which is where the communists are wrong, but right or left dictators are dictators.

And civil war… It’s something my friend Bill Reader and I often talk about. “Why hasn’t the civil cold war turned hot yet?”

Because we’re emulsified. Because there’s no distinct division. Because the tribal markers are all mixed. Last time I went to vote, I found myself sneering internally that all those women in line were voting dem for sure: middle aged, overweight, wearing colorful clothes, obviously “intellectual” workers (I lived in a college neighborhood.) And then I realized I looked just like them. Because I too am middle aged and an intellectual worker.

Civil war might come. I’m not saying it won’t. I confess in my darker times, I think of the lines in Starship Troopers “And then the veterans had had enough. Coming home from a war they weren’t allowed to win….” And if the US military took over, at least they’d give it back eventually. Almost for sure.

But war is not something that should ever be considered lightly. And I know you imagine it all as shooting government officials. But it wouldn’t be like that. All modern insurrection movements end up doing things like bombing school buses. Now it might be because they’re leftist bastards. Or it might be the logic of the situation.

But if we go that way, the chances are that 90% of the outcomes are that it will burn.

So, am I saying to go along and be good little sheeple?

You guys have to be kidding.

I’m saying we need something like the tea parties (we can even call it the same and tell the mass media to stow it.) We need to demonstrate, remonstrate, primary. People in the establishment GOP need to know we’re not going away but we don’t like them. So they can start behaving, or we’ll pull them down.

That troublesome base the media keeps pitying the GOP for? Yeah, we need to be that.

And we need to be smart about the news and smart about blogs and not accidentally lend weight to the other side by making our squishes think the left is their only hope.

And we need to work. At media, at education, at entertainment. The tide is turning, and pushing the boat in now will work.

Is it less satisfying than the other options. Oh, for sure. I too sometimes just want the grand, simple solution.

But life is never a choice between cake or death. Life is more usually a choice between shit and slightly more shit. In this case the slightly more shit is poisoned too, and leads to dying suffocated in an outhouse. But that doesn’t mean the other choice can be cake and ice cream with sprinkles.

It took them 100 years to get here. 100. We’ve been fighting for 6. I know the individualists fail to organize, but guys, can we manage ten more?

There is hope in time, even if all we can do is move them a little to the right. The GOP RINOS and squishes are by and large older than us. And as for the Dems, the truly malignant ones are OLD. Princess cheekbones is their “young” hope. They can’t dip into the younger generations, because those are fracking crazy identity warriors or very, very dumb. They’re mommy and daddy’s daughters who never questioned anything.

Why is third party or letting it burn such an almighty hurry? My grandmother had a saying, “For the bad life, short times.” War or letting it burn or third party, all mean the dems in power and really bad times. Postponing the evil day and working from inside on changing the gorram GOP and the culture for ten years won’t be pleasant. Many times you’ll wish to beat your head on concrete because it hurts less. But neither of them involves total dem control or mass death.

Ten years. Can we try that?

You see guys, I can’t let it burn. America is my heart and my soul. It burns, I burn. It goes down for the long count and it might be more merciful if I die then.

I have nowhere else to go. I stand here. It’s my last stand.

If it comes to fighting, I’ll fight. If it comes to the end, I’ll hold the idea of America in my heart and try to teach my descendants well.

But it might not have to fall, and might not have to burn.

And all it takes is a little patience, a lot of work, and more work, and more work.

It’s worth a try.

If it doesn’t work, you can always burn it later.  That option is always on the table.

Ask yourself “What do you expect to accomplish with this?” And see if the results are in line with what you want. And if not, think again.

Cromwell for obvious reasons is not one of my heroes. Nonetheless, I find myself quoting him: I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.

Lately there has been a wave of talk about leaving the GOP behind, going third party. It’s seemingly everywhere (except this blog, where the people espousing it are people who always have – hold on to that point, it will be relevant later.)

I know I responded with a twitter rant of someone who got more snippy than I would have because he said it better than I could – not the snippy part, but the point of his rant – to someone who said that two days ago. I am sorry, no offense meant. It’s just that I think you – all of you – are barking up the wrong tree and failing to see both the progress and the problems with your chosen course.

Sure, some people I respect – Chris Muir, Bill Quick, sometimes Bill Whittle – advocate that. I’m going to say they haven’t looked at facts on the ground. Or perhaps it is that they don’t have experience of real revolutions, in real life. They think that once things are in motion “of course” it will go our way.

It only does that in books. Other places we are opening the door to the overwhelming and cataclysmic possibility of disaster.

It might yet come to it that we have to do that, that we have to burn everything to the ground and hope we can rebuild eventually (perhaps centuries from now) in part of our territory, with part of our resources, with the world around us in ruins. But that is a bleak hope.

And it’s not that I don’t see your point, my friends. (I’d call you comrades, hadn’t the word become so deeply tainted.) I do.

This week has been a tough one. And the reason it’s been a tough one is not just the Republicans funding the Obama amnesty nor the “net neutrality” boondoggle where apparently even passing it won’t tell us what’s in it. Oh, no.

To me the really worrisome signs were little things, one of those private. The public one was Carney going to Amazon. It is a bad day my friends, when the most successful enterprise of our days has to hire a government stooge who brings nothing to the table except cronyism. We might have achieved peak fascism. It’s the sort of move I expect from China.

The private ones were finding out that two young ladies I used to mentor as writers back when they were in middle school – two talented, immensely gifted young women and not just in writing – had gone ivy league for, respectively, feminist studies and political “science.”

It is the mark of a society gone far off the tracks that our best and brightest are learning division and manipulation, instead of technology, creativity and the things that keep us going as a society.

And part of this is that they are good students and smart. So one assumes they picked the path that will take them furthest, the path most approved of by society.

And that’s the problem. Hold on to that thought too. I have something to say about it.

So I understand your feelings, when you say “let it all burn, we’ll rebuild.” You know I have those moments too, and this week has been bad, which is why my posts have been anodyne. When I’m circling the black pit I try not to impinge on you.

(In my case there are other reasons for that too, mostly consults for the surgery upcoming, which led me to tell my husband “How about I don’t have the surgery and we risk it?” It will interest you to know he put his foot down and said no. Sigh.)

But then I started looking at things. Really looking.

Yeah, we are in very deep trouble.

The hour is dire, the snow is deep, we’re backed into a small area and our movement is restricted. We don’t have enough food. Clothes have worn thin. (For which you might substitute the last six years have been difficult economically and the foreign situation is getting dire. Oh, and the culture sucks.) It seems like the war will go on forever. Small wonder then that, as in that bleak winter at Valley Forge, people are deserting, taking their kits, going home.

In fact, those might be the sane people, motivated by healthy self interest.

But sometimes, in society, self interest needs to take a longer view. The love we feel for our kids, our grandkids, those young people we care for, cannot blind us to the bigger picture. Or perhaps even the smaller one.

In letting it burn – what do you think will happen? If you give democrats control of the country for another 12? 20? Years, what do you think will happen?

These are people who have been taught America is the source of all problems.

It’s really hard to decide whether the current administration is full of malice or incompetence, because the answer is something else. They’re actually full of good intentions, but they’re full of love for the Earth. Citizens of the world, they call themselves, who have seen nothing of it outside of protected and pampered visits and the indoctrination of our schools.

These are people – in our own field – who write the stories about naturally enlightened and full of compassion and wisdom people in the deepest Africa, villagers with no education who spout perfect SJW points. And they believe this. It is ironic that they never bring that enlightened savage view to bear on our own rural people. No, those are rednecks who drink gin and beat paleontologists to death (Possibly because they despise trinomial designations, who knows.) In fact our least educated rural inhabitant, while having some prejudices, is far more open minded, accepting and less aggressive than what you find in other countries. I know. I grew up elsewhere. The things rural “uneducated” villagers will say in Portugal would make an SJW’s hair stand on end. And THAT’s in a nominally first world country. In Africa, where I traveled in my youth, let’s just say it’s more so.

But these people, educated in our best universities, and largely protected from reality by a tower of “learning” really believe this stuff. They believe that the rest of the world is innocent, and it’s only America and Western civilization that corrupted it.

So what they’re doing is trying in earnest to dismantle western civilization, so that happiness and flowers ensue. Yes, they’re incompetent, and we should give thanks on knees they’re incompetent and that their fantasist view of reality extends to more than their black-and-white view of the world. Otherwise we’d already be done for.

However, I beg you to believe that destruction is far easier than construction. Even deluded and incontinent children can do it. Give them long enough and they’ll not only destroy the US in all relevant senses, but they will destroy the world.

Our current administration has brought us far closer to nuclear war than we’ve been since the Soviet Union collapsed in on its corrupt self. And worse, it will be a multiparty war that will leave at best 1/3 of the world in ruins. And what they’re doing to the new generation, between indoctrination, unemployment and setting the sexes against each other doesn’t bear thinking too deeply about, lest the black pit yawns beneath our feet.

One way or another, we already have two more years of this. And that’s enough to make that snow-laden wind of despair howl around our flimsy tents.

If the world were just the US. If we didn’t have to factor on anything from outside, I’d still say “yeah, let it burn is an option.”

But is it?

Like it or not, the Pax Americana is AMERICANA. If we collapse, the world falls in on itself, and more importantly, we get truly overrun. Because we’re still relatively stable. The 7 million of Obama’s imperial amnesty won’t be but a drop in the bucket.

But, you say, Sarah, a third party can save us.

Right. Right. What third party? Which one? Shall we talk?

The people I see going all “third party” fall into two camps: socons and libertarian purists. (To which you could add a third camp of “yes.”) Oh, there are small l libertarians too. And constitutional convention people. And those who just want Obama impeached.

(Rubs forehead above nose.)

Guys, that’s not one party. That’s about a dozen contradictory movements, when all is said and done, all fighting each other.

I’d love to live in a world where the important choice is between Libertarianism and Socon. But that’s not here, that’s not now.

And if you say that all these coexist in uneasy alliance in the GOP – yeah, they do. But the “third partiers” are PURISTS. They think everyone is with them and it’s their way or the highway.

Now, it’s possible that out of all this a decent third party can coalesce. It’s even likely. A party based on strict constitutionalism and states rights.

By the elections in 16? Don’t make me laugh. By 20? Unlikely. Maybe by fifty if we’re really good. A good part of those who are interested in the third party route are libertarian in fact or feeling and it’s a byword that “the individualists failed to organize.” The Libertarian Party has existed since the seventies, and they managed to drive me out – years ago – and I’m one of your broad church, tolerant types.

This would be worse than the Libertarians (which contain in their ranks a good portion of people who support Occupy Wall Streeters and the tea party and see no contradiction) because it would be several groups who agree on only the barest principles and who are more interested on pounding each other than the enemy, because they do agree on some things, so it’s a fratricidal war.

But let’s suppose by a miracle the country holds together twenty years while the new hope emerges.

And then let’s say you manage to send your bright shining boys and girls to DC. What do you think will happen? I’ll tell you what will happen. What happens to republicans. Their offices will be penetrated, their information corrupted and they’ll become – at best – like the republicans. (At best, because remember what I said above about Libertarians who are with OWSers and the Tea Party and see no contradiction. They could flip on you.)  More so because the dems will have taken over ALL the bureaucracy.

So, how is that different from the GOP?

You know, I read all over the net, mostly in comments (and more on that later) that the GOP had gone spineless and they had funded Obama’s amnesty. So I went and looked at numbers. 1/3 of the GOP flipped. ONE THIRD.

Two thirds held firm. And this on a matter that has emotional appeal to politicians if not to the people on the ground. You see, they are convinced if they vote against it it will drive Latinos away from the GOP. It’s what the media and their corrupted offices tell them. It’s the “smart” opinion, as opposed to all us rubes on the ground.

And two thirds held firm.

You’d think it would be a moment to celebrate. You know, ten years ago half of them or more would have caved. But we’ve been working on taking over the GOP. And it has effects.

It seems to me what we should be doing is celebrating that two thirds held firm, and taking notes of the cavers to primary them.

It’s obvious Boehner is being blackmailed or otherwise manipulated. Good Lord, the left has done that throughout Europe, why would here be any different? Maybe that’s why the crying. He knew he’d have to cave.

So primary him. Remove him. Elect men who will say “publish and be damned.” Get someone in the presidency who AT THE VERY LEAST doesn’t hate the US. I’m not sure about Christie because malignant narcissism is malignant narcissism. But even Jeb Bush (and guys I’m the last person to support him, okay? To be blunt I don’t LIKE him.) would be better than a president who actively hates us (though he might just think he’s a “citizen of the world”.) Particularly if new gains are made in 16 (and this is likely) he would have a legislature at his back, controlling him somewhat.

But let’s not be bleak. We might out-push the establishment GOP (and btw men ten years older than I are or more are what we call RINOS.  It’s a generational thing.  Remember that command and control used to be “scientific” and remember Nixon was a statist) and nominate Walker or Cruz or even Perry. And then we’d have a president who can keep the 1/3 (or less by then) of RINOS in check.

The Winter is cold, and we’re surrounded by enemies, and unfortunately the culture assigns social value to our enemies’ propaganda, which is why they’re capturing our best and brightest and why politicians surrounded by “smart” staff cave.

But like the patriots in the war of independence were saved by the French, several trends are going our way.

Technology is freeing people from the fortress of doom the left and Soviet agit prop built around our vital institutions: there are new ways to get news, new ways to get entertainment, and the homeschooling movement grows by leaps and bounds. Also, their demonstrable and obvious incompetence and the horrors they’re precipitating around the world are starting to break through the wall of glitz the palace eunuchs mainstream media has built around the Low Information Voters.

The future is ours, if we can stay the course.

Yep, the dying liberal establishment is going to throw everything they can at us. It is their only chance. At this point, I must note that the “let’s go third party” comments are far thicker at other conservative/libertarian blogs. Why aren’t they here? Don’t know. I know I banned certain IPs, mainly ones that poured out a stream of Marxist propaganda in more than one voice, if you know what I mean.

A false flag operation? Well, what do you think? Hilary is imploding before their very eyes. Their last hope is to divide us. After all divide and conquer is ALWAYS their way. Is it paranoia to note this is ALWAYS their modus operandi?

They’ve got nothing. Their model, the USSR, collapsed ugly. Their policies are failing. Making conservatives go third party(s) is their ONLY chance.

Are you going to LET them?

For a hundred years, they’ve patiently been working. They took over one of the major parties. They took over education. They took over the mass media and entertainment and the arts. They had a whole wall of coordinated messages and it all imploded. Clinton? Don’t make me laugh. Should they manage to elect her, her disastrous incompetence will be obvious. Bill Clinton only had a patina of glitz because there was no internet, no dissident voices. Now? Pah.

Net Neutrality? Bah. Six months. Like their attempts at gun grabbing being squelched by 3-d printing and horse sense, give our bright boys six months and net neutrality will be circumvented. Built around, built under, ignored.

Their only hope is division in our ranks.

I say we don’t give it to them. I say we keep taking over the GOP. We’ve been at this for what? Optimistically 20 years. Not a fraction of their (at least) 100.

Yeah, we’ll eat live eels sometimes. Like, say, we couldn’t counter the veto on the Keystone pipeline. However the people claiming that as another reason to defect CAN’T be even “I’ll hold my nose and vote republican” people. NONE of the GOP defected on that. Not one. And some democrats defected to the GOP side. It is not a sign to despair, but a sign of hope.

As for those other democrats? The stooges of a long-dead system? Putin’s best buds? Yeah. We’re coming for them too.

And then, once we’ve pulled our ship off the rocks, once we’ve made the dems into a wreck, or alternately into an American party again, THEN we can have a grand fight Libertarians against Socons. I’m looking forward to it! I’ll be seventy or so, and if I run like my family, a little old lady scary beyond all reason.

But right now? Right now people are trying to destroy us, and our civilization and world.

In the end we win, they lose. Reality is on our side. But the “end” can be a long ways away.

The question is, are you going to cave into their games and let them destroy a third of the world and send civilization into the dark for hundreds of years or not?

I vote not. I understand your impulse.

But this is no time to get wobbly. Keep Calm and Keep Taking Over the GOP.

They’re corrupt bastards, but we’re stuck with them, until we pick them off one by one. And we already have our sort in their ranks.

Steady as she goes. We’ll win this.

Big Red-Cedar Sanderson

Sometimes when you go back and re-read a book you can see the bones. Both my First Reader and I loved anything by Jim Kjelgaard when we were growing up – the wonders of public libraries, that childhoods separated by 20 years could supply the same books to be read and adored. I brought home copies of Big Red and Irish Red from a recent used-bookstore foray, and while I was making a stack on the bed of to-read books, he came in and saw Big Red. His eyes lit up, and he wordlessly snagged it out of the pile. I laughed, talked to him for a minute about the children’s book(s) I’ve been contemplating writing (for my mother and son, which is funny but really works). He went back to the office, I curled up with Agatha Christie and my sore throat (I binge-read when I’m not feeling well) and forgot about it.

In the morning, though, he waved the book at me. “You know, I have remembered why I liked this so much as a boy.”

It turns out that, much like myself, he’d grown up knowing people who lived like the main character in the book and his father do. Odd jobs, hunting, fishing, trapping… it seems an idyllic existence to a child of a certain age and temperament. Both of us, it turned out, had tried our hands at trapping. Him for mink and muskrat, me for ermine and fox in the Alaskan wilderness. We never had much luck, and wet boots from slipping in the creek weren’t exactly fun, but there was a connection to the land we shared.

It seems to be a lost thing, now. Where once you could find folks who didn’t hold with a regular job, who could exist with the work of their two hands and the plenty of the land, now… Now, if you find someone living homeless, it’s likely under a bridge and with drug problems. We neither of us have our rose-colored glasses on when it comes to looking at the past. There were miserable existences that centered around finding enough to eat, and heat in the winter. I well know the effort you can pour into making enough wood for the stove happen, not to mention the garden and hunting for the family’s meat. It’s not easy.

But there’s an allure to it. To going out and getting it yourself, doing what needs to be done, and not worrying about a boss, or regulations, or… One of my favorite books on a similar theme and written in a similar time period is Gene Stratton Porter’s The Harvester. It’s not about farming, but a man who cultivates medicinal herbs and sells them to companies back-East who use them in medicines. By the standards of the day, he makes good money with the delicate niche harvest he cultivates. And the book is a sweet romance, if rather improbable when viewed through modern eyes. I still really love it.

Neither book rings as true now as it did then, for several reasons. We are further from the ages we were then, having grown from child to looking at ‘old’ with wary eyes. We are further from the Land than we were, and at that, I am closer than most, as I will still forage for wild things to eat when practical, not out of need, but because I enjoy it. When I discovered we had wild onions in our yard, for instance, I was overjoyed (I’d never lived where there were wild alliums before). But how many modern Americans would even entertain this as a possibility?

Another thing that has changed is attitudes towards sex. The First Reader remembered the main character to be perhaps 12-14 years old, and was slightly incredulous on re-reading and discovering the lad in the book to be 17. Seventeen, and not in the slightest interested in girls, his world revolved around a dog. It would stretch credibility in a modern novel, yes. The Harvester is about grown adults, who are all tension and blushes over a kiss. Sweet… and so far we have come from that time and place.

But no matter how much distance there is between our fondness then-and-now, the books are still worth reading. I plan to give the Kjelgaard books to my son when we’ve read them, to hopefully inspire another generation. And as we read them, we look back, and remember ourselves as we once were. There is still a lot of value in the old stories, they capture a picture of what once was an ideal. We shouldn’t entirely lose sight of that.

I’ve been cleaning the attic at the other house. This means I’ve been stumbling on caches of stuff my kids just put up there to avoid really cleaning. I.e. when I said “clean your room” they’d run upstairs and stuff papers in the spare room. There, all clean. (Sigh.)

It’s a bit like an archeological dig. You find things you never expected, things you expected but didn’t know where there precisely, and then things that make you shake your head and say “you were there all the time.”

What I mean is, you go through life changing, right? I mean I know both my political orientation and my reading interests, not to mention my writing interests have changed drastically since even my early thirties (when I was a Libertarian with a capital L and no compromises. Before that I was more European.)

Even then there were certain facets of continuity. For instance even in my younger, waffling days, I always hated communism for the abomination it was. Having read Gulag Archipelago and been forced to study Marx in all courses in school for three years, I really had no illusions about the emotional/psychological mechanics of communism.

I just sometimes didn’t recognize early stage communism, or the dangers of other authoritarian regimes, particularly anti-communist ones.

But I can look back and think “Wow, I was someone else.” And then…

But we were talking about my kids.

I’ve mentioned here before that younger son found his “vocation” and his interest in school when he was thirteen and we went to a presentation at the natural history museum, and he got REALLY interested in space science.

I never thought he paid any attention before.

But I found an exercise from when he was 8 and he says his favorite things in life are fried chicken (hey, I make good fried chicken), comic books, and the space wing of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

I never noticed his interest before, possibly because we also had to drag him away from the dinosaur wing (he takes after me.)

But it was a moment of recognition, a moment of “oh, there you were all along.”

The same thing with stumbling on a drawing from Kindergarten from Robert with a cat (wearing glasses) named Tom. This was years before he even thought of writing Cat’s Paw.

And weirdly there is the fact I often can’t tell whose exercise book/composition book/fragment of story/picture I’m looking at. And neither can they. Now if you’d asked me, I’d have said that my kids are different as night and day, but apparently the continuity is there.

(Or to quote older son “Well, mom, it’s a kindergartner with an incredible vocabulary who, nonetheless, confuses m and w. We can’t say anything but that he’s yours for sure.”)

What I mean, other than bragging about the boys (semi-bragging. Man, before ten did they creative-spell. And sometimes creative-word) is that there is a continuity to you even when you don’t see it.

It reminded me of talking to my best childhood friend, 4? 5? Years ago (too long. She divorced, my life got crazy. I lost touch. And now I don’t even know how to get in touch with her.)

This was at a time I was fighting agents trying to push me in a literary direction (over a fun direction, I mean.)

And she said “Oh, yeah, I can see how you’d hate that, of course.”

Now, people who knew me later and met the more airs-adopting me thought I wanted to be literary, or even to join academia. But Isabel who knew me in elementary (she was my desk mate) saw the continuity. (The short tale is that literary is easy for me to do, and at some point you’ll do anything to break in. Easy to read and fun is much harder. I’m still working on it, okay?)

So, you know the thing about never forgetting which voice is yours? We all have to put on masks to survive (these days, often political masks. I came to realizing it wasn’t worth it, but to each his situation and judgment) but never forget who you really are.

Because in the end, one way or another, who you really are, what you really love and what you really believe, at the heart of it, have a way of surfacing.

And you’ll never get far running from yourself.

Sorry this is late. I’m now on that stage of rewrite/revision in Through Fire where I don’t fully sleep. Or rather, I sleep to half dreams of wandering around the novel seeing what needs to change. I sleep, but I don’t stop working.

This is actually all good, since the changes I figured out tonight solidify character and strengthen the story, taking away some of the “random happens” bit I didn’t like about the end.

But it means I sleep later, because I keep waking in the middle of the night and going “oh, that.” And “Yeah, that would work better.”

So lately I’ve been thinking – partly through an exchange of emails with a friend – about story and message.

She interpreted my post on “everybody wants to change the world” as calling for just entertainment in stories.

It was and it wasn’t that. It would be the height of hypocrisy for the author of the Darkship series to say there shouldn’t be messages in stories.

But part of it is that I doubt the effectiveness of overt messages in stories. I don’t scruple to say I was raised by Heinlein, nor that I wasn’t the only one. The man might have had no biological kids, but he has sons and daughters all over the world, including me.

But then we have to look at how he raised me. Remember I came at Heinlein through (mostly) the later books because most of the Juveniles (Door Into Summer and Have Spacesuit Will Travel excepted) were either not translated to Portuguese or no longer available when I came along.

And yet, what I took from his books was not the obvious messages: “Though art God” or the bedhopping or multiple marriages as the natural way to live. (Oh, for a while, but that was the spirit of the times, too, being the late seventies.) What I took from the books were not so much the messages as “the way to be.”

By creating characters that were tough, questioning, strong, and, most of all, useful, he made me want to be that way. I took as my model (being touched in the upper works) the broken caryatid, not just for characters but for what a human being should be, lifting whatever the burden without complaining.

Now, it takes a certain type of personality to teach at that level. I’ve seen it in some teachers, too, who, regardless of whether they teach you history or English, really give you a model you aspire to being.

The left, being daft, thinks this has to do with the character/teacher looking like you. They think only black people can model to black children. This is part of their insanity with “there must be so many characters of tan per book.” And also with promoting incompetent teachers to positions of power, because they have a certain ancestry or skin color.

But it doesn’t work that way. It’s more subtle. It’s more about being who you are in such a strong and convincing way and making the characteristics you have or approve of so admirable that people want to follow them.

Which is what Heinlein did.

I’m not going to say his other messages failed completely. Red Planet when I got my hands on it, in my late twenties, convinced me of the wrongness of gun control. And If This Goes On still gets me to shiver a little at the idea of populist theocracy.

What I’m saying, though, is that the most effective messages weren’t openly delivered and might not have been consciously delivered.

He changed an entire generation and not just in pushing them towards science and space (which I’m sure was deliberate) but in making them men and women who rationally examine the world and don’t blindly trust government.

Which incidentally is why the feminists, being dependent on people “group thinking” and behaving like widgets hate him and try to steer people away from him. They’re not even sure what causes that effect, but they know they don’t like it.

Now, did he know he was delivering that message? Probably. He was a man of strong principles and ideas of what was morality and what moral behavior meant.

But those weren’t the main theme/messages of his books, and they weren’t openly delivered.

And they’d never – and this is important – have made it to my (or other Heinlein’s Children’s subconscious) if they’d been the whole of the package.

Yeah, I know he gave mini lectures in the middle of his books, but they were done in voice for the character, and they made sense in the book. And they didn’t take over the book to the point of making the characters puppets.

Instead, the mini-lectures, usually wrapped around some practical event or occasion, were an integral part of the character’s personality and learning.

So, they were absorbed because we already liked the characters.

Now, instead, if you subordinate everything to the message and just yell at me from the beginning that this is so, and I should accept it, and break your entire universe to carry water for that macro-message, you’ll never succeed, because people don’t work that way. Particularly if you’re insulting some of them for characteristics they can’t do anything about – like being male, or white for instance – and telling them they’re guilty of crimes they never committed. The book will get closed, unread, and your message will not make it anywhere.

So, your overt attempts to change the world will fail.

It’s like the problem of intercontinental ballistic missiles. I understand even if Iran should build the bomb, it will be pretty hard (though not impossible) to hit us because their delivery methods are not anywhere near there (unless they buy from Russia.)

You can have the bomb but not the missile itself that will deliver the bomb.

So, while I find the bombs of the left weak sauce, being not so much speaking truth to power as power speaking at you in the same voice it has spoken (to me and most of the generations after mine, even in the US) since kindergarten, so that they are at best a wet firecracker, if you don’t deliver them in the compelling medium of a novel, through characters so admirable people want to imitate them, you’re not going to do anything. The bomb is going to explode amid your circle and get you the amen chorus, and that’s it.

But perfect that delivery, and even the incidental payload, the things that road along and you didn’t know, might make a big difference in the life of many people you don’t even know.

So, do we all write to change the world? I don’t know. I suspect not explicitly. Oh, sure, we all put some overt message in our stories: the ones at the center of our being, sometimes.

But mostly I think writers – people who think in narrative – write to make sense of the world. (It’s not the first time I absorb/deal with a major life shock through a series of stories, and I know my husband dealt with his brother’s death through a year of short stories.)

Reality is chaotic and often events seem not to have a cause. We write to unite the raveled threads of cause and effect so they make sense to us.

And we write science fiction to warn or enjoy about how those causes and effects, projected to the future, can change the course of history. This is important, because it makes people more than puppets of events – it gives them the rational power to think through things (at least properly done) and might influence current events (like turning me against gun control.)

But it is the sense we make of the world, the compelling logic of our story that will change things: not the sandwich board, not the soap box, and certainly not running around the world trying to shut down everyone who disagrees with us and ensure the field is an echo of our ideas.

We could do all that, and, without a compelling vision, a compelling logic and an absorbing story it would be for nothing.

People get preached at all the time, from church to commercials. They’ve developed high levels of anti-message immunity.

Which is why messages must come with stories and it must make them follow both the logic and the feelings of the author.

To change the culture and the world.