Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

Coming to oneself means regaining consciousness. I don’t recall ever hearing it used in English, (though the expression is the same) but in Portuguese “vir-se a si” is the expression explicitly used to denote waking from a swoon. (We tend to just say waking. Which I didn’t want to use because of the aggregation to woke which, like all leftist speak means the opposite of the plain meaning of the word.)

I was contemplating this post when in a group a friend linked this post: American Strong Gods, Trump and the end of the Long Twentieth Century.

And I realized if not the main point I was trying to make, it is a strong supporting point. He talks about the end of the long twentieth century in which the whole world aimed for a vague “open society” that was the opposite of nationalism, as a way to fight long-dead-Hitler (Or prevent a recurrence of fascism.) And how Trump is the long-delayed end of this.

Put a pin in this, because we’ll revisit it.

First: We have been working late and a lot, and therefore coming downstairs late and with our minds turned to mush. So, we’ve been doing what we normally do, which is watch some kind of series on something or other. in this case we’ve been watching a series, per decade, on inventions that changed the world.

And both of us noticed that other than computers, the inventions they showed, after the seventies, were not inventions that changed the world, so much as things at the margins, and increasingly more and more things at the margins.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, the computer revolution was massive, but I feel like it almost came as an after thought, while the regulators were looking elsewhere. The truth of course is that the regulators, the overarching state, developed computers as a way to control people. The way it escaped their control and became a tool against them is what took them by surprise.

But other than that, and compared to the vibrant and immense changes of the early 20th century, invention became a game of changes at the margins.

The answer to why is “Because we became increasingly tied up in a regulatory, credential enforcing, bureaucratic state.”

This state, in fact, engulfed the world after WWII, which is what the linked article talks about. To prevent the resurgence of war, we were told we needed to do away with nationalism and religion and — really ultimately — the family and all natural connections.

I know this sounds utterly and completely insane, but what they say in the article is exactly what I was taught in school. Perhaps not in so many words, but very clearly, we were told again and again that the cause of WWI was nationalism, religion and traditionalism. This was all completely wrong, by the way. The cause of WWI was the attempt at building international empires, the destruction of old limits on nations, empires and beliefs, and an attempt to create a “modern” world ex-nihilo.

However, the miss-atribution was so strong we were told German military FASHION caused WWI and that any resurgence of religion or nationalism would lead to endless war.

In truth, what led to endless war was the attempt to create the “open society.” By denying the strength of individual cultures, and their vital needs to humans — we are not physical creatures, our essence is not limited inside each of us, they are not fully human if not raised in a culture and society — by making that very individuality of culture and nationality, not to mention human individualism, an enemy and a sign of danger, the open society set itself up for a cycle of continual violence that ultimately made everything about being human illegal, forbidden and to be suppressed.

As a side effect, this destroyed all invention, all creation, made masculinity verboten (any society that wants passive subjects has to destroy masculinity and make women the keepers of that emasculation) and led to humanity losing all interest in continuing. Hence the coming population crash. The diminishing of inventions. The fact we haven’t been back to the moon.

Only — Western culture (the other cultures were never as strong or innovative as ours, let’s face it) — wasn’t quite dead. Despite its suicidal depression, its treatment as a conquered culture by a bunch of neurotic self-hating Marxists for almost a hundred years now, the culture of the West, of freedom, of individualism, of invention, of discovery, is not dead.

Like the king that sleeps in a cave and will awake when danger is great, it turns out we were just sleeping.

At some point it had to penetrate our uneasy soma sleep that the brave new world we were promised if only the west committed suicide was actually impossible. Other cultures persist, and their barbarism is not going to be miraculously redeemed by us disappearing. Our cultures persist too, as does the fact we’re individuals. We’re never going to be insects. Remove men and the women will become violent. Remove the West and barbarism will cover the planet. Remove G-d and humans will worship the silliest things. And a world government was always a stupid idea. Not just impossible, but stupid. The more distant the government, the less accountable, as we’ve found.

Our promised brave new world turned into endless re-runs of 1984, each one less disguised than the previous.

It was inevitable that the wakening would fully flower in America first. As a culture, we are based on the individual, on innovation, on the rejection of the old limitations of mankind. Only an act of treachery on the part of the “progressives” sealed by FDR secured us for the “open society” hegemony. They needed to secure us, because if we are free, we show the world what’s possible.

In a way if you prefer, the whole Open Society lie is the return of the old nobility. This is not as obvious in America, but it’s glaring in Europe, where the new bureaucrats, the heads of the all too powerful “international administrative state” are the descendants of the noblemen, the old “Good families.” In fact, in recent years they became very open about it, like the fact some British published a book trying to prove even in America it was the descendant of noblemen who somehow — naturally — they seem to think, will rise to the top everywhere. (I know about this book because my husband’s family was one of seven families they mentioned, in what I think they called an American Debrett’s (sp?) Which is hilarious as, just like they misunderstand the vastness of America they misunderstand the vastness of our genetic diversity. Sure, somewhere in the distant past husband’s family has the royal blood of two nations (Most of us do, really. That’s the other thing these asshats missed) but that blood has since crossed with much better genes: Amerindians and religious Germans, Irish Catholics and French Hugenots, and eventually a no-account Portuguese writer. I’d say we’ve quite redeemed any royal blood and genetically overwhelmed it.

Anyway, the whole reeking edifice of the “new world order” rested on the idea that our “betters” would rule. And Americans, save for those who were paid to believe it, (and even on them it rested uneasily) never fully believed they had betters.

So the new world order had to end in America. It had to end here. At a guess Trump 1.0 terrified them because they recognized in him the potential to end their world. Or rather, they recognized it in his supporters, because Trump 1.0 was still trying to play by the rules.

Hence the crazy play of the reaction to Covid, the attempt at playing for all the cookie chips. And the blatantly stolen 2020 election. And their behavior after, including the inauguration behind barbed wire in 2021. And the attempts on Trump, both legal and physical.

The funny thing of course is that though the revolution was coming, if they hadn’t fought so hard and overplayed their hand so early, they stood a good chance of surviving Trump. And true revolution, the end of the protracted 20th century, would take another 20 years or so. And when it happened, it would be more brutal and come into a much diminished world.

So, I guess we should be glad of the overreaction of the tyrants, that brought about their much needed overthrow.

It’s actually a fairly common thread in all stories of revolution. Those who feel they are about to be replaced overreact and bring about their own fall.

Eh. Now we’re in the middle of it.

Çȧ Irȧ!

If we’re very lucky, this time without tumbrils.

Not of bread alone lives man…. I seem to remember someone saying that. Yes, the follow up was about religion, but the point remains. “Not of bread alone lives man.”

It’s weirdly easier to ignore that in our super-affluent era. You’d think that people scrabbling to survive in a world that yielded subsistence a handful of grain and a quarter cup of oil at a time would be more focused on the material, the absolutely needed to keep alive. But no. People in those circumstances were aware of the need for religion, for dream,for a vision of the past and the future for them and their kind.

Possibly this was because the present frankly didn’t offer them much to anesthetize themselves with. Therefore they needed to know the slog they were going through today counted towards the welfare of the future. Either their own welfare in heaven, or their children and grandchildren better lives here on Earth.

And then we took care of the basic needs, and yes, science is magnificent at that. Or science was, at the level that it improved food production, and travel, and medicine. I don’t want this to be understood as my saying science isn’t important. Science is. It’s just that science isn’t the WHOLE THING.

Let me explain: I’m writing this at noon (during my (eh) lunch hour,) on Wednesday. Having protested the whole version of “the right gave up on the culture, and that’s why the left dominates everything”, I was attacked by a blast from the past from early cold war days (or pure stupidity. I report, you decide.) And then I chose violence. Real word violence. The words “take a flying leap” were used in reply type of violence.

The poster deserved it because he answered our — mild — dispute on whether the right gave up on the arts and culture or not by going all “America after the Sputnik”:

Note, unlike the artist, I am actually posting this with the guy’s xit with his name and user handle, because frankly he deserves to be famous for that piece of incandescent stupidity.

There are so many things wrong with that post it’s not even in the right universe. Let me put on the hazmat suit and dissect it.

“You’re both full of crap” obviously and clearly translates as: I don’t give a flying fig what you two are talking about, because I don’t like art, I’m not interested in art, and I want to prove all the bad stereotypes about the right by telling you not to do it.

My answer to this is ignore the idiot. He’s not representative. There are a few of them. In a population as large as ours, you’re going to find any number of people who simply don’t “hear the music.” Fine. Some of them are on the right. Some are on the left. They all have their uses. None of their uses should be setting policy for the rest of the country, because they simply have no clue. This is roughly akin to letting blind people set policy on colors. “This color thing you guys argue about is bullshit. I can’t see anything, and I never needed color. Let’s do away with this distraction. The only color allowed shall be grey.” Yeah.

“While you two shout at each other about THE ARTS, Chinese 8th graders are learning calculus.” Uh…. okay, then. This sounds like it should be an immensely important message, but in fact it’s just irrelevant bullshit. I mean, I can juxtapose too. “While you yell at us on twitter, space x is working on spaceships.” Or perhaps “While you stomp around screaming, people are watching Hollywood movies, because they have nothing else.” Or perhaps–

The point is an argument about whether the arts are or are not a thing that inheres on the left has absolutely nothing to do with Chinese 8th graders learning Calculus. In fact, Chinese eighth graders learning calculus has nothing to do with anything. Does the poster think if I and the other guy talking about art stopped talking about art Chinese eighth graders would stop learning calculus? American eighth graders would start learning calculus? (Hint, mine did, and I bet a lot of others do.) Science TM would win? I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that this no-account writer and what appears to be a no-account artist arguing over whether the arts are ignored by the right had that kind of power. Apparently we can — and should — rewrite the world by choosing what we want to argue about. Someone tell me what I should argue with artists about to provide us with free energy and reverse aging! Enough farting around. We should “Argue to save the world”!

Stop rolling on the floor laughing. I’m sure the idiot was being VERY SERIOUS and posturing in the way he’s seen others posture. Which makes him very smart and important, people. You should ignore the fact it makes no sense.

The whole thing reminded me of a Portuguese anti-smoking campaign that had as its slogan “Read more, smoke less” despite the fact that most nicotine addicts can smoke quite well while reading. I keep wanting to scream back “Fiddle more, burn Rome less.”

This btw. doesn’t touch the fact that the claim that “Chinese eighth graders are learning calculus” is meaningless. Chinese eighth graders are very good at doing well in international competitions, partly because their whole culture is based on testing. But there is more to it than this. Chinese are totalitarians, which means they carefully choose the face they present to the world. So they will pick the best students. I will bet you dollars to doughnuts that given the infection of DEI in our culture, the people we’ve sent to international testing are a variety of colors, and any number of them arrived in the country two weeks ago and are uncertain what they’re even being asked to do.

Point being: Stop paying attention to totalitarian propaganda. This is like telling me that the Chinese are building aircraft carriers. And ignoring the fact those are made of pot metal and tear like tissue paper.

At least the aircraft carriers thing makes sense, as in the military buildup of China can mean something in a potential war with the US. The calculus thing is tangential. Yes, we do need kids (and more importantly adults) who can do math in order to win wars or simply to maintain civilization.

But none of that a) has anything to do with how early you learn it, or how well you do in international competitions b) all the received knowledge in the world doesn’t make you a scientific powerhouse. c) even if you gave each kid in the US an excellent scientific education, with emphasis on the sciences and nothing else, it doesn’t mean America would thrive as a result. (We know that, because we did it. Put a pin in it for later.)

The thing about a) and b) is how many years this browbeating has been going on. Before I was born, we heard all about how the USSR did so much better in the sciences and that’s why America would lose the cold war. And yet, almost all scientific innovations come from the US with a not-insignificant trickle from Israel and a smaller trickle from Europe. The science-derived things that change the world and the way we live come from America. Part of it is that, as my friend Dave Freer once put it, America’s primary and secondary education suck but our tertiary is excellent. He was right (sort of) at the time, but now that our universities — INCLUDING STEM PROGRAMS (put a pin on this too) have been thoroughly corrupted, it is important to point out our DIY education, our ability to reinvent ourselves, and our relative ability to try and fail or succeed are still unequaled in the world.

Let me translate that: there are third acts in American lives. There are often fourth and fifth acts. … I know that our economy has been getting progressively restricted and entrepreneurship and invention limited, and in the last four years even more so, as people with saws ran around cutting off the legs of those who stood out. BUT we’re still possibly the only country in the world in which your life course isn’t set at 17 or so, for the rest of your life.

In America, if you didn’t learn Calculus in eighth grade, you can learn it at 30, in your free time, online, using one of the MIT free courses. And if you need it for that thing you want to invent and create, you very well will. Which means that it’s more directed. Sure, not everyone learns calculus, and then 99.9% go on to never use it, but those who need to learn calculus can learn it ala carte and cheaply when they need it.

Or put another way: my people, who are mostly the ones who are likely to create something (And to be rightly understood by “my people” I mean those who don’t fit in, who are just Odd, who spend their lives trying to understand, make, think, even as the rest of the world looks at them like they lost their minds. Call us Odds. Or pink monkeys. Or goats. My people) are always learning or trying to learn something, their entire lives, limited only by money and time and the number of hoops they’re made to jump through to acquire knowledge. In America, those are minimized. Right now my ability to (re?)learn ancient Greek is being hampered by health and lack of time, but I have an Oxford-packaged course on my desk as we speak. (And another course on game theory because I have a feeling it will help understand the cultural context we’re living through.)

To demand that we teach calculus to every eighth grader regardless of ability, interest, or whether they crossed the border yesterday is to subscribe to the totalitarian model of education and human society, in which everyone moves through stages of knowledge and training at the same ages, the “best” (and usually most highly conforming) ones are picked for the best training and posts, and your life is set at 17. This might have been the best way when your professional life was done by 60, your “climbing” professionally was done by 45, and the world was fairly static. This hasn’t been true in America since the 70s, at least. Probably before. And the only reason it’s “true” in the rest of the world is that they’re being artificially held back by their kraptastic systems of government.

A society with increasing numbers of healthy and productive eighty year olds would be stupid to set your course in life at 17. Count in your head how many people you know who are in their second, third or fourth careers and who have finally got where they’re meant to be.

Freedom is a choice, and it affects everything. Stop trying to regiment our education to compete with imaginary milestones. I agree our kids are being taught a bunch of idiocy and not learning how to read/write/do math. But the answer is not “more regimented top down education.” That’s how we got here. The answer is to free parents/others to teach people — not just children — as much as possible. OUTSIDE regimentation.

Now, remember that pin? After Sputnik, America panicked that they were losing the education game to the soviets. The answer was to emphasize STEM. We’d show the reds we were better by being more regimented and learning more sciences. Nothing but the sciences. Everything else was unimportant.

Which left an entire generation open to Soviet propaganda, selling them a rotten vision of their own land and their own system. And that is exactly how we got here.

Top down arguably doesn’t ever work very well in education, nor does one size fits all. Take languages: everyone who became an exchange student with me had learned English. Some of them, being rich and attending private schools, had learned it from kindergarten. On the plane over, we found out that I who had learned English for all of two years, as a guilty pleasure, was the only one who understood the stewardesses. I spent a sleepless night, translating for everyone. In the states, in turn, I found that those countries in which English was taught from kindergarten were slightly better. The Scandinavians could at least get along in the basics. But their attempts at conversation with the natives were actually less fluent than mine…

No, I’m not bragging. I’m pointing out I did well at it because I had an interest. You’re more likely to find people fluent in English in Europe now and it has nothing to do with school learning. It has to do with interest and this thing we call the internet, where they need to know English to communicate with the (eh) natives.

Interest drives learning. It’s always like that.

But beyond that, this training of everyone in STEM and only STEM because “STEM + Medical improves lives” leaves you open to cultural bullshit.

Because humans aren’t machines. Sure, there is “how men fight” (and women too) but there’s also “Why men fight.” In the two world wars, there were entertainers sent over seas and men painted cuties on the nose of their planes. On the hottest edges of tech innovation, right now, people are driven by visions. Musk (whom we imported, because America is not limited to ITS OWN 8th graders) is driving space travel and a whole lot of related science because he wants to go to Mars, not “because science.” He has a vision of humanity as a multi-planetary species, and that’s why he and those who are attracted by his vision work and create.

If you educate people excellently in science but don’t give them a “why” they’ll come up with “whys” and some of them will be imposed by the enemy, toxic and corrosive. The generation of the sixties, fed on STEM, had nothing to oppose Soviet puerile slogans and claims of superiority. The degradation of the culture can be laid squarely on the feet of that obsession combined with the left’s playing gatekeeper and keep away for everyone to the right of Lenin.

And it didn’t even work. Do you know anyone who did great things in STEM by being relentlessly pushed towards “STEM ONLY!”? I don’t. But I do know any number of people working in things from medicine to space who were brought there by the novels of Robert A. Heinlein.

Novels. Entertainment. And granted, a lot of his novels had state-of-the-art science. But by the time I came along, the science was outdated. The vision, the hope still drove me to love them and drove a lot of people to real science.

Meanwhile, the people pushed to STEM but not given a reason turn into bitter functionaries and hold on to “received science” as a religion. Not to evoke the unholy name of Fauci, but Fauci. And he is unfortunately the flowering of a trend. By the oughts the left was pushing into STEM with both feet. We got racially inclusive math and other insanity. Because if you don’t allow people to have a vision of what to work for, evil idiots will invent one and then subjugate those who have none.

Science is unglamorous and a lot of work. It’s also very important. But to work through the unglamorous, slogging parts people need something to drive them: the vision of a free future; the vision of humans living better and more happy/healthy lives; the vision of humanity as a multi-star species.

You can sell that vision via preaching and propaganda. Your buy-in will be small, and a lot of people will rebel. (Though in the totalitarian countries you won’t see much of the real rebellion. (Not that it doesn’t exist. You just won’t see it.) )The end result will be meh.

Or you can let those creatives who are not suited to STEM do their thing. (these things are hereditary, guys. Some of us in the commentariat pushed our kids HARD towards STEM and now in middle life 2/3 of them have escaped in the direction of arts and culture. Note I’m not saying that we’re not capable of science. I loved engineering. But for various reasons, we ended up working in the culture wars, arguably because that’s where we belonged. There are reasons for it. And those reasons will apply to a lot of our kids too.) .

Let people work and create and learn and live according to their inclinations. In the end, freedom and competition are the answer: nationally and internationally, in arts, in science, in everything.

Work at making training more easily available and opportunities more abundant. The rest will shake itself out and we’ll have the best science AND the best art.

Competition between the two was always a false dichotomy.

Put your helmet on. Go. Learn, create, invent. Explain, create, imagine. Art or science? Who cares? Everyone in the scrum. Everyone do what he/she is best at. May the best ones win. For the good of humanity. (And our destiny in the stars.)

I’m tired.

I mean, okay, part of the reason I’m tired is that my thyroid is still not quite right, and I’m trying to get the full house unpacked by the end of the month. And I’m trying to edit the YUGE book, and… and never sufficiently d*mned daylight savings time has thrown a spanner in my physical works just at this time.

But the other part of why I’m tired is more of a Weltschmerz, a weariness of the soul.

It got triggered yesterday by some poor sod on Twittex. I’m told he is an artist himself, and that I shouldn’t be mad at him. I’m not mad at him. I’m mad at the same old, same old he disseminated.

If he’s an artist, he’s been beaten down so far he now thinks it’s the law of the world for the left to clobber the right in artistic fields.

Look, I’m sick and tired of the story that goes something like this: The right is more hidebound/rationalist/uninterested in art. This is why the left took over and conquered all the non-STEM fields, and why they now control the culture. If the right wants to fight back, it needs to fight for the culture.

Everything in that paragraph is a life lie, except the last paragraph. And the last paragraph isn’t a lie, it’s just outdated. The right has fought back and is starting to make the left bleed freely.

I first had this argument with another of my kind — creative, on the right — in … 2009? I think. The other creative was Roger L. Simon, and he was peddling this same story. I think he believed it, in his case, because he’d not broken in as a right winger, but changed after. But still, it was inexcusable for the writer of “Blacklisting Myself” not to realize the right hadn’t walked away from culture-molding pursuits: from literature to art, from theater to news, from Hollywood to music the left was keeping out and giving hind teat not only to anyone to the right of Lenin, but to anyone they suspected MIGHT be to the right of Lenin. Or even to anyone who showed even an inkling of a glimmer of independent thought.

Which is why they are losing the culture war, the only way it can be lost once you have control of the means of distribution — well, not the only way. New technology to distribute the art and news and all the mass communication also helped — i.e. they have become an echo chamber, predictable, detached from reality — the best art touches, and amplifies reality, even in fantasy — and so inbred and involuted that it appeals to no one.

Look, I remember, if you can’t, that in 2012 the right was way behind the left on memes, and now everyone knows the left can’t meme.

The truth is that the right is more creative. Not, mind you, that we are special in our own, but because coming to the right while the left controlled the culture required a certain independence of mind to begin with. And of course, we’re not controlled top-down which allows us to be more creative still.

What we lack is money. Right now all the people who pay big money for artists and creatives, and productions, and movies, and all that are on the left. And I suspect once we track where all the government money is going, we’ll find that the crappy art, the strange plays about trans nonsense that supreme court judges (Kentaji Brown. no, really) can star in, etc. are all being paid for by our money.

On the other hand, being paid for by big NGOs and the government will impair your creativity.

So, we need to figure out a way to have the people finance it. We need to figure out a way to have people find out what we’re creating and pay for what they like. And we’re finding it, from indie to kickstarter.

It’s early days enough, but even our small endeavors are enough to to put the hurt on the arts-industrial-complex.

And I’m doing my part to promote and spread the word about indie writers. (To be fair all writers I like, not just indies, but a lot end up being indies.)

You do your part. And stop beating us down.

There is no psychological “explanation” for how the left came to dominate culture. it was all brutal game theory of hiring and promoting ONLY people who absolutely agreed with them, while the right hired and promoted anyone who was competent.

FYI by the time the lefty house of cards started to collapse they were starting to do the same to STEM. And it shows.

So stop beating us. We’re already winning the race, even though we’re running with a foot in a cement sack.

Perhaps give a little push when you can, instead?

Three months ago I came up with resuming a project I started here before the great lockdowns and all the insanity.

I was going to read myself back into my personal history with science fiction.

I see this is going to take my explaining a bit of my own background or how I came to run away with the science fiction and fantasy circus, which is not just a fairly strange pursuit for a woman who was born and raised in a small Portuguese village of no particular importance but outright insane.

You see, where I come from — sonny, (and for that matter, daughtery) — men were men, women were women, and reading was fairly weird. However if you were going to read — and my family was weird enough to — you read things like the newspaper, poetry and if you were of a certain bend of mind and aimed to improve yourself, popular theology, history, and other sciences, more or less in that order. At least that’s what you read if you were a man. If you were a woman you read improving books, edifying tales, and perhaps, hidden and by stealth, true confessions. (Oh, manuals of cooking and handcrafts, too, but that’s another category.) If you came from a family weird enough to read fiction — guilty as charged. Actually my family read everything, including collecting the inserts in medicine bottles. What can I way, the nut didn’t fall far from the tree — normally men read mystery, historic fiction, maybe military fiction, Westerns (for light reading, which they might or might not admit to.) Women read romantic fiction or edifying fiction, such as the lives of saints. (BTW romances in Portugal were more romantic than sexy, but the romantic was more of a 19th century definition. Or as I like to explain it, he died, she mourned him for decades till she died — joining a convent optional — and that was the HEA.)

Of course I read everything. Yes, including the romances that my older cousin read. But part of it is that I continually ran out of reading material. I had entire friendships based on the fact that some kids’ parents signed them up for book clubs and I could borrow the books. In fact, looking back, a lot of my young life was distorted by and devoted to story-seeking-behavior. What the stories were didn’t much matter,and whether they were good was secondary. Honestly? Story is story. Kind of like chocolate is chocolate. Even the worst chocolate (the chocolate of my childhood could be classed as a form of soap) is better, to a kid at least, than no chocolate at all. And frankly, when it comes to story I’m still a kid.

My father tried. I want to point this out right now. My father did his best to teach me good literary taste. He tried to get me to appreciate great books, and have mystery as my guilty pleasure on the side.

It could have worked, maybe. Even if mysteries would have been my primary reading, and the literary stuff just enough to be able to talk about it.

The problem is that my brother went into engineering. When I was eleven, he was an engineering student, and he made friends with a guy who had an actual library. (Something I’d only heard of in movies. In my family we kept books everywhere, including the potato cellar, the workshop and in every other room. Yes, that room too.

Anyway, I listened to the description of the library (yes, it had a ladder) as though he were talking about a fantastical realm, but the most amazing thing is that my brother had discovered science fiction.

For reasons that only the psychiatrist he never had could explain, he decided that he could borrow books — please note, actually bring books into the house I lived in, into the room next to mine — and I wouldn’t read them.

Of course I read them. The first one I remember reading was Out of Their Minds, by Clifford Simak. The first book i remember reading knowing it was science fiction, that is.

It is possible — unless it’s a false memory — that I had read Have Spacesuit Will Travel (Robert A. Heinlein) before, when I was 8. My brother says this was impossible because the first Portuguese edition was when I was 14. And this might be true. Or not. You see, Portugal had the same approach to copyright as many other third world countries. I suspect I stumbled onto it having bought it, in a plain unmarked cover, in some fair, or from some sidewalk bookseller. And that — officially — the edition didn’t exist. The reason I think this happened is that I didn’t have a concept of “science fiction” and didn’t realize the book was anything but contemporary fiction, in 1970. You see, I had seen the moon landing, and I had absolutely no reason to believe that America didn’t have people on the moon permanently. So– I think if I had read HSSWT at 14 I would have realized what it was.

Anyway, i do understand that Out of their minds isn’t precisely science fiction, except perhaps in the that sense where science meets philosophy and ontology. But it was science fiction enough for 11 year old me. At least once my brother had explained that science fiction was dreaming/writing of a future that obviously did not yet exist.

I fell into it with both feet and no parachute. By the time my brother realized I was reading everything he brought home, and told his friend to not lend him any racy stuff, it was already too late. both to stop the addiction and to keep it clean. By then I was taking classes in the city, and had found my way to bookstores that sold more of this particular form of crack.

Oh, heck, who am I kidding? I was back to my old tricks, including carefully cultivating entire relationships because these girls’ fathers or grandfather had stashes of science fiction books around the house. (Some of these men were even nice enough to give me entire boxes of these books as, they say, they’d “outgrown” them. Ah.)

Now what does that have to do with reading myself back through it? Well, you see, most of the books I read — though not all, but the one offs are harder to track and often were never legal — were from the Argonauta collection.

And it’s possible now to find a listing of all the books. See link above.

The problem, when I first tried to do this, is that some books were (as they were by the time I started reading them) unobtanium. But a few months ago, Charlie Martin suggested I might just read the ones I could find.

…. As such, I have read Adrift in the Stratosphere, and will inflict my views of it on you sometime next week. Mostly because I think it’s important to pass on a knowledge of what came before, what worked and what would make us laugh out loud.

Reading what the people of the past thought was the future is fascinating, and also a cautionary tale that what seems absolutely obvious to us is not necessarily so, and the future might prove us wrong.

But more importantly, I’m going to do this, so I might as well share.

I will do these “reviews” — revisits? — once a week on either Tuesdays or Wednesdays.

If you guys find books of the same time that are interesting, and want to suggest them, feel free.

Anyway, we’re off next week with Adrift in the Stratosphere, by A M. Low. If you want to play along.

You obviously don’t have to read it, and I’ll try to make the write-up fun anyway.

So, see you next week.

So, here we are, somehow part of a big tent.

Okay, correction, the big tent is still forming. We have the oddest people suddenly trying to be with us or on our side, or something. And it’s not so much like we’ve done something to attract everyone and their second cousin, it’s that the other side has been so enthusiastically pushing people away and excommunicating people and demanding that people conform to not just a narrow but ever changing set of specifications that change constantly. And if they don’t conform, they’re terrible, horrible, basically not-people.

So, people have been drifting out way.

Look, it’s not that our beliefs aren’t attractive, mind. They are. We promise people the ability to work to better themselves and the world. But it’s hard too. Being free is hard you have to admit to your own mistakes. you have to fight your own battles. You have to be the adult, and no one is coming to save you.

This means that a lot of people will be afraid of it, scared and horrified by the work needed. But right now they don’t have a choice, and they’re being catapulted, screaming onto our side. Because it’s still better than the psycho alternative that wants to control their every breath, and, if that doesn’t work, is quite willing to destroy them, their culture, and ultimately all humans.

So, they’ve raced here, and they’re on our side now. At least they think they are. They claim to be.

Except it’s not that easy. Is it ever? At heart they still have a lot of of bad habits. They still run to mamma want government to tell them what to do and how to fix everything.

And they have other unsavory habits. One of them being that they try to be what they always thought we were. And what they thought we were is crazy cakes.

So you’ll hear a lot of nonsense, and a lot of people claiming to be on the right and saying the most bizarrely appalling things.

Of course the difference is that there are a lot of soft skulls who just hear it everywhere and start thinking it must be right.

So a lot of the dumber ones are saying all sorts of appalling things, and really thinking they’re getting this “right wing” thing right.

Look, I remember when they told us about the “era of good feelings” And how there were no partisan feelings, no factions, etc.

But you know d*mn well that there were factions, because there were strong disagreements. And there are strong disagreements.

I think the crazier stuff will shake off. Because it usually does. Russia went completely insane once the opinion/discussion control was gone. And then it went extremely Russia. which is where they are right now. Hey, not all cultures are sane, and most countries sort of aren’t.

But we … as a nation are either incredibly sane or completely insane, coming out on the other side. So we have a way to maybe come out all right.

Maybe.

So, despite the fact that humans are social apes and we tend to imitate each other, and fall in with what we think the group is, I’m telling you to hold on to what you believe, what you think and know is right.

Don’t go falling in with the group because “this is a plausible theory.” And “this is what’s behind everything.” Or worse “this is the opposite of what the left told us they believed. (The left lied, anyway.)

Hold on to your beliefs. And if you’re shaky on those, I recommend our founding documents and the writings of the founding fathers.

If you’re still confused? We believe in individual liberty, individual responsibility and individual achievement. We believe in self-determination, freedom of association, and definitely freedom of commerce.

We believe we have the righ right to say whatever we want, particularly the people who are stupid and wrong, because that’s how it can be argued and how the most horrible things can be shown to be horrible.

Turns out when everyone is shoved under one big tent, it’s where the fights are.

There will be some epic fights. Enjoy them.

It’s the sound of freedom.

Book Promo

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

BY ROBERT J. HORTON, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: The Law Comes To Singing River (Annotated): The classic pulp western.

Lang Rush had to run. He’d killed a man in self-defense, fair and square, but then thought another man was drawing on him and shot him, too. But that man was Drayton, rich and connected, so it didn’t matter what Lang thought.

He ran, all the way to Singing River, population 15, without so much as a post office. And laid low. But there was a girl… and then there was trouble… and before everything was over and the gunsmoke drifted away, the Law would come!

• This iktaPOP Media edition includes an introduction giving the book historical context.

FROM KEVIN IKENBERRY: Bureau 42 (The Phoenix Initiative)

Peacemakers. The Galactic Union’s most capable enforcers and resolute negotiators, their name alone elicits fear and awe among the Union’s citizenry.

It doesn’t happen often, but when a Peacemaker can’t solve a case, it goes to the Peacemaker Archives, as all Peacemaker cold cases reside within “Bureau 42,” as it’s also known. Cases dealing with ghost ships, missing Peacemakers, mysterious killers, and even a few cases that aren’t even really cases can all be found in the files of Bureau 42.

Fourteen authors present thirteen all-new stories from the depths of Bureau 42. Take a look into the forgotten files of the Peacemaker Guild and find never-before-seen secrets, some of which herald the future of the Peacemaker Guild and even the Galactic Union itself.

These stories honor the threat, set the terms, and walk the knife edge between standing or falling. Step inside, Candidate, and see what our files hold…

FROM SCOTT MCCREA: Targets West: A Lucas Wheeler Thriller

Lucas Wheeler is having a bad day when he leaves his beloved Wyoming for the concrete canyons of New York. But he has no idea how rapidly things will turn for the worse. En route to London, where his ranch hands will be performing at the largest international rodeo in the world, Lucas is contacted by the State Department with an unusual request: to report back all observations and significant data on Sheikh Kashif Rashid Al Marltaum. Lucas will be traveling to Dubai to sell several hundred purebred Arabians to the Sheikh, who he learns is deeply involved in terror cells located throughout the U.S.

Before Lucas can even begin his assignment, he is kidnapped by student radicals, chased while handcuffed through Central Park by on-the-take New York cops and nearly shot in London’s poshest restaurant. It is only when Lucas is lured to Sheikh Kashif’s outlandish Summer Palace hidden in the Dubai desert that he learns of a daring and brazen terrorist plot that will have devastating consequences for the entire Western world.

With a shocking conclusion set in London’s crowded O2 arena, Lucas must overcome incredible odds before a multinational cabal of terrorists can hit…targets west.

Hopping through three continents, filled with memorable and very human characters, and energized by pulse-pounding suspense, Targets West is a thriller for people hungry for stories of American heroism and international intrigue.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Light Up the Night.

Dane Crockford is tired. Tired of the green energy crapping out and leaving his wife Rose gasping for breath when their air conditioning dies, tired of trying to hide his use of his own solar panels from the nationalized electrical company, and tired of worrying about his daughter and son-in-law, trapped in an abusive indenture program to pay off their student loans. He’s not the only one, either. Everyone in his home town is in a similar situation, many of them with their children doing dangerous jobs without pay to offset crippling student debt. So when his grandson Toby accidentally discovers an energy generation method that isn’t wholly owned by the federal government, he jumps on the possibility of building something that works, in spite of and around the federal monopoly.

But what the monopoly doesn’t realize is that their grip on Dane, and on his home town, is far less secure than they think. When they disconnect his house from the power grid, they have nothing to hold over him, to force him to work for small rebates on his monthly bill. The utility has unleashed the power of a cranky old man with a rare skill, and they’ve got no idea that they’ve tossed the pebble that starts an avalanche.

FROM DALE COZORT: Jace of the Jungle: A Snapshot Novella (Snapshot Jungle Adventures Book 1

A Snapshot Jungle Adventure?
Strange new people and animals keep appearing in an alternate history or alternate reality Africa otherwise isolated from the rest of the world for millions of years. In that strange version of Africa, oddly familiar events keep happening.

*An out of place passenger liner is torpedoed by German submarines.
*A castaway boy is raised by man-like apes.
*Brutal slave-raiders sweep in to destroy peaceful communities.
*An 18 year old damsel finds herself in a lot of distress.
*Men talk with elephants.
*Men and ape-man fight to the death.

Sounds like that has all been done before a time or two, right?

Jace of the Jungle delivers an homage to the pulp era Jungle Adventure story with a New Pulp novella just as action-packed as the old pulp adventures. Fair warning, though: Jace starts out considerably darker than the old pulps and goes places the pulp era stories couldn’t.

FROM ANNA FERREIRA: The Root of All Evil.

When murder comes to Stockton, it brings long-buried secrets in its wake…

Kate Bereton leads a busy but unexciting life as the clergyman’s only daughter in a small Dorsetshire village. She’s grateful for the break in routine heralded by the arrival of her stepmother’s latest guests, but when Kate discovers a dead body in the parsonage one morning, she finds herself in much more danger than she could have ever anticipated. Terrified and desperate, she turns to the local magistrate for help. Mr. Reddington is eager to aid his dear friend Miss Bereton, but can they discover the murderer before it’s too late, and the secrets of the past are forgotten forever?

With a dash of romance and a generous helping of mystery, The Root of All Evil is a charming whodunit that will delight fans of Jane Austen and Agatha Christie alike.

FROM PAM UPHOFF: The Black Cube (Chronicles of the Fall Book 14)

Hieronymus was just going to take a ride with a friend and wasn’t expecting his friend’s sisters to be a kidnapped . . . and he certainly wasn’t expecting the opportunity to be a hero.

As information about the abilities of unchipped Portal Clones spread, their usefulness for cross-dimensional crimes of the ordinary sort should have been anticipated . . . although how to stop them is difficult, if not impossible. But as a spunky thirteen-year-old works to escape, Hieronymus has a plan . . .

FROM ALMA T. C. BOYKIN: Threads of Empire: Merchant and Empire Book Ten

“Return with coin or not at all!”

Dagnija Modrisdatter brought nothing but bad fortune to her family, or so they believed. When a merchant offered to hire her as spinster and weaver, her father sent her off.

Adrians Eckelbert searched for the master weaver who made ornate belts. He found her on a remote land-tongue, and brought her back to Rhonari.

Dagnija discovers a different world, one filled with possibilities she had never dared to even dream of. But she must learn to navigate the shoals of Rhonari, seat of the trade lords of the Northern Empire. Spinning comes easily to her hand. Speaking for herself and balancing trade law and family duty? Far harder.

FROM MARY CATELLI: Magic And Secrets

Tales of Wonder and Magic A woman, sent to a far off duchy, finds a mysterious wolf haunting the forest, and learns there are secrets no one even suspects. Playing with props for amateur theatricals has more consequences than any of those doing it dream. . . act with care. A king’s tyranny sends a woman searching desperately for a legend of lions, there being no other hope.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Moon Mirror

Chelsea Ayles dreamed of going to the Moon since she was a child. Now her dream job at NASA has turned into a nightmare, thanks to those many blood-sucking arachnids. Yeah, politics, as in a Senator accusing her of destroying America’s priceless heritage because she chose the moonrocks that were used to make a proof-of-concept mirror segment for a lunar telescope project. Now the mirror sits in her office like a bitter mockery of what might have been — until the day her reflection turns into a handsome stranger who calls himself the Man in the Moon and offers her visions of a world that might have been. Visions that ignite a longing of an intensity she hasn’t known since she was in grade school and watched videos of the Apollo lunar missions in science class.

FROM CHRISTOPHER WOERNER: 202502 2.0

Collection of current events and other thoughts from February 2025. The world has changed all of a sudden, this is the new update.

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: Evanescent.

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

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

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

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

WHY?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is this now the universal writ?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Possess your soul in patience.

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

Patience. Keep going.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In a time of high change.