Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

Who Murdered Beauty?- Cedar Sanderson

We meet today, my friends, to attempt to solve a crime. A crime against all of humanity, one which is extinguishing the life from Art, Philosophy, and even Ethics. Unlike with a human life, the existence may yet be restored to Beauty, but it will take solving the murder first, so we may begin to breathe life anew into these noble causes. We may look at the vast scope of what we contemplate, and wonder: can we do this? Is it worth doing? What difference can we few make?

I say, let us discuss Means, Motive, and Opportunity, and in doing so, you may find answers to some of your questions. I may take an obscure path, through all of Aesthetics, but I think you will see our steps guided through the philosophy of the nature of humanity and soul, to the visual feast of Art.

Motives

The death of objective standards of beauty, which would lead in time to the demise of Art, and which was a visual indication of the state of affairs in which Ethics and Philosophy find themselves today, began innocently enough. The rise of the great philosophers in the 18th century was lauded as a new wave of humanism. Gone was the world’s dependence on that crutch, religion. Humanity was the be-all and end-all, and with death, there is only silence hereafter. A world ready to abandon those who would tell them what to do and how to do it, embraced this concept, only to find themselves very shortly back in the same situation.

“Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty. One person may even perceive deformity, where another is sensible of beauty; and every individual ought to acquiesce in his own sentiment, without pretending to regulate those of others.” (Hume 1757, 136)

With nudges and suggestions and sly winks, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche and many others removed the idea that there is a standard, be it for morals, beauty, or thought. If all is relative, relative to what?

The rise of Humanism brought about the rise of Nihilism, and “What began as a critique of divine authority due to humanist influences became part of a much wider social movement that criticised any kind of authority as ultimately unjustified…” (Nihilism and the Sublime Postmodern By William Slocombe, 2006, p11)   What had begun, in other words, as questioning authority, had become a rejection of any authority, of any standards or objective foundations. All must be destroyed, and a new thing brought up in the rubble, to separate the new from the old.

Means

Philosophers who were engaged in the building of the New Western Culture, one stripped of all that had gone before, inasmuch as they were capable of, affected the academic and literary bastions first, then slowly this rippled throughout the world as it was taught to those who would teach, and so on. Nietzsche was one of the ‘rockstars’ of this early movement. “As early as 1873, Nietzsche was arguing that human reason is only one of many peculiar developments in the ebb and flow of time, and when there are no more rational animals nothing of absolute value will have transpired (“On truth and lies in a non-moral sense”).” (Dale Wilkerson, ND)

Values, much less absolute values? Valueless. “Given that no absolute values exist, in Nietzsche’s worldview, the evolution of values on earth must be measured by some other means. How then shall they be understood? The existence of a value presupposes a value-positing perspective, and values are created by human beings (and perhaps other value-positing agents) as aids for survival and growth.” (Dale Wilkerson, ND) And here we come to the nut of the matter. If all is relative to the human experience, no more and no less, how can we possibly say one thing is better than another? If you see it as beautiful, and I do not, and you are louder than I am, in control over me, as socialists would have it (because in communal control, all are in control over all the others, unless there are some who are more equal than others, in which case they are in control. “The tendencies in socialism that came to be known as ‘Marxist’ or ‘Communist’ exemplify this position. The rhetoric was always that the goal was the direct and communal control of society for the common benefit of all members.” (What is Left? Nihilism vs Socialism, 2012)

“This is simply a statement of solipsism -‘without me the world does not exist‘ – although it does have wider reaching implications when it is perceived as the belief that nothing exists at all; that is, nothing exists, there is no reality against which to measure this, and no-one to measure it anyway. It is based upon the belief that reality is illusory, an arbitrary set of rules that has no meaning. The view that ̳nothing is real ‘can lead to either a magnificent furore of being the centre of the universe – without its perception by the observer, the world does not exist – or to complete impotence in the face of an overwhelming nullity, depending upon the extent to which this nihilistic formulation is pursued.” (Will Slocombe, 2003)

We are left now, in the age of progressives, post-modernism, and nihilism, with an emptiness. We dare not say ‘this is beautiful’ or ‘this is art’ or even, ‘this is true’ as they have taken all those things from us. They have cut the head off of beauty and proclaimed that it never existed, that there are no standards, and there ought not to be. All is relative… self-evidently relative to what they want, as they are in control.

Hegel, lecturing on Aesthetics, comments “Beauty and art does indeed pervade all the business of life like a friendly genius and brightly adorns all our surroundings whether inner or outer, mitigating the seriousness of our circumstances and the complexities of the actual world, extinguishing idleness in an entertaining way, and, where there is nothing good to be done, filling the place of evil always better than evil itself.” (Hegel) And here again, we have found one of the pieces of the puzzle. For the goal of the ones who would kill beauty is, after all, to deny the existence of “good” and “evil” in this world. Only through that may they claim that the ends justify the means, when the means is accomplished through the deaths of millions of innocents. Only in their world, there is no innocence, either, which is why they exalt those who prey on children.

Opportunity

We have abandoned the lists, my friends. PostModern art claims no standards, no need to be beautiful in any way but how shocking it may seem. Nothing is left to do, “The fundamental principle that there is nothing new to create has made the use of quotations an important stylistic feature of postmodern art.” (Andrea Gern, 2003) So why even bother trying? And certainly, if you look at a display of postmodern art, you will wonder why they did bother trying.

How can we be encouraged when it seems the Art we desire has been eclipsed by schools of thought like this? “An interesting set of ideas about art, its context and its relation to philosophy comes from the American philosopher and art critic Arthur Danto. What makes something a work of art is not, says Danto, to be found by looking at its obvious properties. Danto believes that what “makes the difference between a Brillo box and a work of art consisting of a Brillo box is a certain theory of art. It is the theory that takes it up into the world of art, and keeps it from collapsing into the real object which it is.” (Anja Steinbauer 2006)

“The “art” that has been produced over this time is revolting, and the general public dislikes and disrespects it. It has become a joke of sorts. Everything associated with “modern art” is so crazy and irrational, people have stopped paying attention to it. They believe it’s a stupid game played by intellectual snobs. They don’t understand the “art”, and don’t understand the game. They ignore it, deeming it to be useless.” (Jeff Landauer and Joseph Rowlands, 2001)

One of my favorite fantastic artists (in the sense of genre and art style rather than adverbial) is Bob Eggleton. He has been derided by the general art community for his choices of venue, but has a skill and style, and above all, beauty to his artwork that few can claim. He has this to say, recently, “The sad fact about the “Art World” is people get told to like/buy into certain fads, trends and fashions. This results in a lot of questionable art(“Is it art? What is it? It’s a line on a canvas”) being sold at very high prices. Read a quote where one artist said “If something doesn’t sell I go back and put a cat in it” as if his entire show was a failure because 7 out of 8 paintings sold. He was serious too. The reality of all this makes my stomach curdle. Along with overhearing a younger person talk about a museum with priceless works in it having utterly no interest to him, his interest being the latest smartphone tech. If people detect any notes of defeatism in me lately, I think it’s hearing this kind of mindset….”

Conclusions

I know this has been long, and tedious to read. I believe it is important to discuss this, the death of beauty, and how it came to pass. Only then can we discover how to revive it. Not art for art’s sake, but because in knowing what is beautiful, we can rediscover what is right, pure, and good. Only then can we reject that which is evil, destructive, and immoral. For there do need to be morals. Rejection of ‘immorality’ opens up the pit to whatever may slither forth and root itself in society, the breadth of human appetites, and this is why humanity has come to loathe itself.

Self-loathing, and a desire to be extinguished, turned society’s face from beauty. Our hostess, when I talked about this post and what I planned to discuss, pointed out that they want to add ground glass to every candy. All: fashion, toys, art, literature, everything a human can craft to elevate their existence, is immolated. You see, if they can elevate, they must be pulled down, in the name of equality. If all are to be common, and in common held, as socialism strives for, then none can achieve a higher plane, whether it is through the creation or appreciation of beauty.

But before I go, I would like to inject a note of hope into this conversation. I am an artist, however slight, and I love art. I do not wish to see it remain dead, and like so many others, I have despaired of what calls itself ‘Modern Art” or “PostModernism” or whatever other title it claims. It certainly rejects any suggestion of skill. But there is DeviantArt. It’s not an ideal platform, and there are many there who are beginning, or just haven’t the ability… but there are those who do, and my word, they are capable of great beauty. Many of them have little or no formal education, which might be why they have this heart for art, as they have not been told what they must (or must not) do. Take a few moments, as you can, to look here for exemplars of art and beauty, and know that this is truly modern art, of the like you will rarely see enshrined in a gallery or museum.

They proclaim that they are breaking all the rules, but as I referenced above, they are actually following what they are told to do, by an establishment that does not tolerate individuality. “Thus Marxism begins by recognizing that, strictly speaking, individuals do not atomically exist: “the real nature of man is the totality of social relations…” (John Rothfork, 1995) Perhaps it is time to remind people that there is beauty in the world, there are objective ways to measure it, and as one of the articles I read suggested, to do a scientific study on that which is beautiful. If it were subjective, and solely dependent on our own culture and experiences, how could I look at the art of a country and culture not my own, and think, ‘my how beautiful that is’?

*Yes, it’s late.  Deal.  Also I haven’t had time to go back and fix all the “concordance points” so if you go back you’ll find the story occasionally contradicting itself.  You’re most surely going to have to deal.  It’s been crazy out here.  I want to get to it in the next month, and G-d willing I will, but who knows? On the good side, we had a valuation on the damage from the hail storm a month and some back, and we’re going to have to replace our roof.  Whether it can be done with the money they allocated, given it’s a Victorian and there are inevitably surprises up there, who knows.  At any rate, at least so far nothing is leaking, and it’s impossible to find good roofers just now given demand, so it will have to wait.  If it sells before that, we’ll make arrangements with the new owners.  But it’s one more complication and one more task.  Because we needed that.  So, between finishing overdue stuff, I must do this — and Michael’s story — but be patient with me about this AND the subscribers’ space and loot.  It will come.  I haven’t forgotten a single one of you — it will come, and I’m sorry for the time.  My life seems to have become a plaything of chaos this year.  Which mind you it’s better than illness (last year.)  And when I got back through RM I have a strong feeling it’s going to be thirdpersonized…  I feel uncomfortable with the multiple firsts.  We’ll see.  Chapter over at MGC in an hour or so.  I need more tea. Or not.  Something just came up.  So I’ll run something a blast from the past at MGC, with apologies.  Sigh.*

The prequel to this — Witchfinder — is now up on Amazon.

This novel will get posted here a chapter every Friday or Saturday, or occasionally Sunday.  If you contribute $6 you shall be subscribed for the earc and first clean version in electronic format.  I think it will probably take another three months to finish.  Less, if I can have a weekend to run through and get ahead of the game.  It hasn’t happened yet.

NOTICE: For those unsure about copyright law and because there was a particularly weird case, just because I’m making the pre-first draft of my novel available to blog readers, it doesn’t mean that this isn’t copyrighted to me.  Rogue Magic as all the contents of this blog is © Sarah A. Hoyt 2013.  Do not copy, alter, distribute or resell without permission.  Exceptions made for ATTRIBUTED quotes as critique or linking to this blog. Credit for the cover image is © Ateliersommerland | Dreamstime.com

Seraphim Ainsling, Duke of Darkwater, Royal Witchfinder, Prince Consort

I’d had the bright idea that I might be able to turn back the clock. All right. Not precisely that, but I had the idea of going back to the time before Gabriel had fracture and warn him not to do so, and maybe try to find some way around the unbearable – it must be unbearable, right – pressure that made him do it.

Of course time magics are most forbidden for good cause. For one, none of us fully understands what time magic does, or why, or what happens to the future that was, but now isn’t, when the past is changed. The shifts in magic when that happens are bad enough to give magical cartographers the cold sweats and to keep magical theoreticians happy for years figuring out the equations involved. But though I’m sure Marlon would be quite happy to lecture all of us on the occasions we know it happened, no one really knows what happened.

At least one of the theories insists that when this happens it can give rise to worlds without magic, such as the Madhouse. It might be nonsense, though, because here’s the thing: we think it has happened before, or at least that’s how theoretical magicians and magical cartographers explain certain shifts in magic which they can’t account for. But we’re not sure either way. How could we be? After all, if a future doesn’t exist it doesn’t exist, much less an abbreviated future that stops short. There are some traces in the magic, but no one can be sure what they show.

In the same way, we know there are multiple worlds and that they branch off at what could be called decision points for the past. But do they really? Or were they always like that? There are multiple explanations for them. In one of the worlds they’re convinced it was caused by the loss of the eyes of a goddess in deepest Africa. I didn’t visit that world often. It was crazy in more ways than one, and it severely represses shifters. So the only reason to go in is to save shifters. Though last time I had to go in they were involved in a war that took up the whole world. I wonder how places can get in that much of a mess.

And I refuse to believe that it’s a branch off of my own world.

Yes, I heard the stories that our own world tells of the branching off, said to have occurred when Merlin was imprisoned over in France.

I don’t believe it anymore than the eye of the goddess story. They might be true, of course. All of them. Since the worlds diverge at some point in history, and not all along the line, perhaps some happened at one time and some at the other. Who can tell?

On the other hand it’s possible the worlds were simply made multiple from the beginning and that history just obeys laws we don’t understand. On top of which, it’s entirely possible that time travel, for which parameters and spells do exist, if tried in real life would destroy all the worlds. And while I was fully aware that if I did that, and it destroyed all the worlds, my wife would be very upset and find a way to yell at me, the truth was with the king of fairyland – who was fairyland itself – disintegrating at a fast pace, and with us knowing for certain sure that fairyland was the engine of the worlds, if I didn’t do anything, we would all disappear or die, or perhaps never have existed, anyway.

So I reached into my mind and ran through the spell sequence. It was all mental work. It’s curious how the more complex spells are, while the simplest might require physical action and the words as well, and the medium ones require spoken words. It’s as though the more powerful the spell the more it moves inward.

For a moment nothing happened then I felt the biting cold of betweener which happens when you move between worlds. Since I was trying to go backwards in time, in fairyland, this made perfect sense.

But the minute I landed, I knew it had all gone wrong. Possibly disastrously wrong. You see, I’d started the spell in my office, with my back turned to the desk, facing the door to the office. Through it, I could see, at the angle I was, part of the plaza where they were cleaning up the remains of the statue, blown to pieces by Jonathan Blythe’s pocket bomb. Which, by the way, should I say the words in public, would make no one think of a real bomb. I wouldn’t say that in public, but I thought when all this was over, I’d like to mention it to Nell, my wife, who was raised in a more straightforward world and who would gurgle with laughter at the idea of someone setting an explosive device in Jonathan’s pocket, given that Jonathan himself was in many ways an explosive device.

Of course, she would gurgle with laughter, if we’d all come through it unscathed. Something that seemed less than likely, as I faced a door that no longer displayed the plaza, but a glowing pink mist of sorts, the kind of magical mist you get when some spell has gone seriously wrong.

I didn’t say the word I thought – a wise precaution, in case I was in fairyland, where words are spells – and turned around, to face… me.

Then the person behind the desk did something, and I realized it wasn’t me, but my half-brother, the elf-king, Gabriel.

“Penny,” I said, wondering if my spell had worked after all, but wondering if we were in my office. The nickname, derived from Gabriel’s last name – Penn – and used for years mainly with the intent of nettling Gabriel out of his sometimes disastrously serious moods, came unbidden to my lips. It had its effect too, as he narrowed his eyes and sighed before he could help himself.

So I’d established this was the real Gabriel, which was good enough, considering that in fairyland seeming and semblance was rather a specialty and who knew what he might have thought to do. Also, I’d not forgotten he’d looked just like me, as I came in. “Penny,” I repeated. “Would you tell me what you’re playing at, and why you’re in my office?”

He opened his mouth, snapped it closed with an audible sound, sighed again and said, in a tone of exasperation, “oh, Duke!” which was what he called me, when he wanted to cajole me.

He stood up. As he stood the remnants of whatever spell was supposed to make him look like me vanished, as did the remnants of whatever spell it was that made the place look like my office.

I found myself in something that more closely resembled my brother Michael’s workshop, with magical machines twirling and turning al around. Only, as I blinked I realized these weren’t machines exactly, but the models of various worlds. The one nearest me was Avalon, in miniature, and as I looked I could see tiny ships on the sea, and carpetships flying the atmosphere, and I thought, if I leaned farther I would see all the buildings too. Then I thought these were not models, and felt a strong shiver.

The wall behind Gabriel had turned into curved glass, looking out onto… fairyland, I’d guess, from a height, showing all the crazy and changing variety of landscapes, the sudden shifts of reality. In a plane, front and center two armies were meeting, one of them centaurs.

And Gabriel’s outfit had changed into something odd, and shimmering, that seemed to be made of silk and glow. Worst for my retiring brother who, in his human form rather preferred traditional suits in unassuming black, he was wearing full royal robes from a few centuries back, at least for Earth. He had on a sort of long tunic ending below the knee, and hose beneath that. He also trailed what looked like a mile of cape, all of it deep blue with pinpoints of stars. And he had a cepter.

“Your majesty,” I said, and used my most acid and ironic tone, because I’d like to know what Gabriel thought he was playing at to try to impress me in that way.

He looked down at himself with an effect of surprise, and waved his hand. At which gesture he reverted to his black suits, and sighed. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking and in this damned place the clothes are mostly controlled by thought.”

“So you were being your majesty and so—”

Another sigh. He was setting a record. “Something like that. Seraphim, what in heaven’s name are you doing here? I was counting on your staying well away from me. It was in fact my only measure of safety.”

I don’t normally do this, but I think you should read my PJM column this week.  (With Charlie, I do the friday book plug, and if you’re not submitting to it, you should be.)  But I’m the one who does the “blather” that goes before the promo.  Ie the text before the links (with exceptions, such as when I’m too sick.)

This week’s is about the amazing event that most of you probably realized you weren’t seeing.

(Incidentally, in looking for a picture to illustrate this, I found it’s very difficult to get images of statues of Lenin pulled down or dragged, and there are none available for licensing through the usual services.  I don’t believe in conspiracies, but I do believe in a lot of people burying what makes them uncomfortable.  Just saying.)

Anyway, here’s a quote:

This worked about as well as you expect of top-down systems. By the time Amazon came along, we were more than ready for them.  Don’t let the Amazon-whiners deceive you.  If everything had been fine in publishing – say if Amazon had come around in the seventies – it would have had an impact, but not nearly as large.

But Amazon moved in on a vacuum. Even now, the main publishers don’t get it (as Joe Konrath proves, taking Hachette to task.) Suddenly readers could find the authors that never got stocked, and found out that hey, books were still being published they wanted to read.  (From the other side, the authors’ statements didn’t change much, even though they suddenly found themselves hailed as celebrities by neighbors and repairmen who came to the house.  Strange.  It’s almost like those numbers are the ones the publishing house decided on, and not what really sold.  Some day, when my husband has time, he’s going to do a dissection of my mystery royalty reports, where – I swear – the print run changes in a quantum manner, to avoid paying me royalties. It’s obvious even to me that they’re lying, but my husband is a mathematician and will have lots of fun with it.)

Then Amazon opened the market to self-publishing, and people could find things that they wanted to read that insulted neither their intelligence nor their political beliefs.

Thereby precipitating whining, denial and outright illegal price-fixing from the publishers.

But you know, I didn’t quite believe in the revolution.  Oh, I believed I could make a living from it, at least at the level I was making.  Witchfinder proved that, if nothing else.  (Though I need to bring out the two sequels soon or sales will crash.  Indie has low attention span, because it’s spoiled for choice.)

However for real push, for real penetration of market, traditional publishing still held control. They could still make something a bestseller if they wanted to and pushed enough. Or at least so I thought.

I saw some signs it might not be so, because if I’m right, they tried to push Night Circus to the same level of publicity as Twilight.  It didn’t get there.  Nowhere near.

But then maybe I was wrong, because this was like a middle school chick watching the boys to see who liked her, or the free world watching the May day parade to see who was in and who was out at the Kremlin.  One thing was sure, we’d get things wrong.

And then this week, I saw the walls tumble down.  I saw the statue of Lenin dragged through the streets.

Now, go read the thing.  Yes, I know the PJM site is a pain, but go read it anyway.

*My loyal henchman, Free Range Oyster (always good to save on those range fees!) has come through with today’s promo post.  I shall do a chapter of Rogue Magic later today, though first we have the insurance inspector coming, to evaluate any damage from the hail.  (I know our paint got stripped.)  For now, consider this week’s offerings.*

I’m afraid I haven’t got anything witty to say this week. Go read books, leave reviews, support and sustain the authors among us. I’m going to go pound out code and clean things before the new minion arrives. Dang tardy minions… *grumble* As always, future entries for the promo post can (and should!) be sent to my email. Happy reading!

Jason Dyck, AKA The Free Range Oyster

Verb Polisher, Computer Coaxer, and Bane of House Arthropoda

BJ Beck

The Fields Where Soldiers Play

Book One of The Mending Wars

Sir Jacien Blyne of Newelen was hoping to go home. As the leader of an army from the country of Newelen, rarely did he get a chance to enjoy the very comforts he was always leaving to protect. However, Newelen’s complacency, stemming from the people’s belief in their alliances with neighbors, has left them vulnerable to the ambition of conspirators. Greed has driven the country’s former friends to take action against them, their seeming goal the riches that Newelen’s port to the world has to offer. But, even the enemy has enemies, both unforeseen and manipulating events with an evil hand. As a simple soldier, Sir Jacien’s job is to protect Newelen from all its enemies. And so, he takes to the field once again, this time to beat back invaders at a snowy keep. At his side are other soldiers he recruited from his last war, including a member of the Daferin race and a female warrior from a reputable country. The enemy, however, has help of its own, in particular a sociopathic teen boy who can wield Reticulative Magic more powerfully than anyone in Newelen. As the enemy’s grip tightens, the noble classes in Newelen remain ignorant of events as they deal with concerns of their own. Will Sir Jacien be able to stop the encroaching horde at the gates? Or will their line in the ice break and serve just to slow the invaders down? How will Newelen’s nobility react when word reaches them, and are their troubles completely unrelated? One continent, several countries … “The Fields Where Soldiers Play” is just the beginning of the saga.

This book is also available direct from the publisher.

Doug Irvin

A Delicate Touch

Langarou River

Anglea is a nobody, a no body with dreams. When the chance comes to do a mighty magician a favor, she takes it – not realizing just how much it would change her own life.

CJ Carella

Doomsday Duet

New Olympus Saga Book 2

In the sequel to Armageddon Girl, Christine Dark and Face-Off must face their inner demons while they try to save Earth Alpha, a world where superheroes are real and danger is everywhere. Can a former gamer chick endowed with cosmic powers and a murderous vigilante deal with their differences – and their growing attraction for one another – and escape the shadowy forces hunting them?

Meanwhile, Ultimate the Invincible Man finds himself a wanted man, persecuted by his former colleagues; Condor and Kestrel fight for justice while indulging their twisted sexual desires; and Cassius Jones, the hero known as Janus, reveals the terrible things he discovered during his exodus in outer space.

Filled with action, adventure and romance, Doomsday Duet continues to explore a world filled with superhuman beings with all too human failings.

(NOTE: Contains violence, sexual content and adult language)

*This post arose out of a conversation I was having with Mackey.  This is my comment on it, in addition to what he has to say below:

I like it, but I think you’re forgetting ONE thing — the tide of crap
really has already receded a lot.  See, the aunt Toots of he world when they
fail to become millionaires stop posting.  Then also become full of pride in
not selling.  They will go on and on about how they’re too artistic (or too
holy) to sell.  And that’s where “you sold out” became an insult. – and now I’ll get out of the way and let Mackey  (who is selling very well indeed) tell it.*

Art and Angst and Aunt Toots – Mackey Chandler

A friend recently reposted a comment about the stupidity of thinking art is corrupted by paying the artist. I got the impression they thought fat happy people never make anything pretty. It takes the angst of a gnawing empty stomach to drive the writer of great lit*er*a*ture. The stress of cruel prejudice to create the Blues and Jazz, and the horrid squalor of New York City tenements or living in Akron Ohio to push a rock band to greatness.

Let me say historically art has always been tied to money. The great and famous paintings we see in public art museums were mostly commissioned by the church or a few really wealthy nobles. Let me assure you the peasants and serfs didn’t have oil paints in their hovels or murals decorating their walls or ceiling. Art might have been a fancy line of color in the cloth they were weaving or a little different pattern in basket they made to carry food. Only the rich could afford to have a huge hunk of marble delivered and feed an artist for months while he hammered and chipped and filed and smoothed to make a statue.

This means that the art we see was very restricted in subject. Since the church was paying the bill the paintings tended to saints and scenes from scripture. Although having no idea how natives of the holy land looked or how they dressed, some of the painting really need labeled for you to know it wasn’t some Dutch or German merchant instead of the Good Samaritan or John the Baptist. Books were rare and again tended to be religious or history. The history stroking the egos of the nobles and their ancestors. If you want an example read the dedication and forward to the King James Bible. It goes on and on kissing up to the King. After all he fronted some serious change for all these churchmen to try to make the Latin translation of Greek and Hebrew and Aramaic texts make sense and agree with church doctrine in the then current English.

Adventures and fiction were pretty much the reproductions of Greek stories that say more about the strength of wine in a warm sunny climate than any real historical truth. Some of the monsters are easily the equal of any alien we can dream up. Given the church we find that romance and outright porn seem to have a foothold in the Orient with different philosophies earlier than Europe. Especially anything with illustrations. I admit I would like to see what Medieval copyists could do with Asian porn for illuminated texts. Think anime.

Populist art had to wait the spread of printing presses. Even at the time of the American revolution the spread of subversive papers was limited, if only because it was mostly the well to do who could READ. Once presses became common for printing advertising flyers and boiler plate newspapers they could be used for things like ten penny novels. Before and after the Civil War (War of Southern Rebellion or War of Yankee Aggression depending on your ancestors) papers included serial stories to hook readers. Those serials could later be printed as cheap pocket books selling from five to fifteen cents. Just keep in mind a dime back then could buy you a pound of flour, two mugs of beer, an egg, or toll over a private bridge. Once a series of dime novels were written they would be consolidated in a ‘thick book’ – which reminds me of some current authors who constantly remix their shorts in various combinations as new books.

Art for your wall as prints or postcards or had to wait for lithography to become common at the start of the last century. That’s why people starved for something visually stimulating put up advertising posters for goods or traveling shows and political sheets in their homes. I’ve always thought the pictures of JFK so many black people had in their homes in my generation echoed this.

Just because art got cheaper didn’t mean it was GOOD art. That’s why some of the books were called penny awfuls or penny dreadfuls. Common subjects were stories of the western frontier or travel and military adventure in foreign lands. Often written by people living in New York City or Chicago who had never been past where the streetcar ran.

It’s true that modern society with its riches has opened the door to more artists. We are past the point ‘starving artists’ literally were in danger of going to an early pauper’s grave. And yet I am left wondering. Where is all the art from people on welfare or Social Security disability? We just had a lady die, Maya Angelou, who had a horrible early life. She grew to express it well enough to let others at least partially see what others suffered. She also acted during the civil rights movement to help not just herself but others. Yet where are all the other abused, disenfranchised voices? I deeply suspect she would have produced greatness even if she’d had a wonderful childhood and a comfortable life.

I’m personally happy the computer has opened the door even wider than the printing press. Without it I probably wouldn’t be published. Or if I was it would be so late in life I would have had far fewer books and I’d have been paid much less.

And yet…

Some of the e-books are very much like the penny awfuls. You do have to learn to filter or let somebody review and help you.

Let me tell you about my Aunt Toots.

My favorite uncle like my father had many brothers. My dad’s were down in Alabama so I didn’t know them. My uncle Ben had brothers locally yet I rarely saw them. I remember once he did take me to see my his brother Buck and his wife Toots. I can’t remember their real names because uncle Ben was… eccentric. He never called anyone by their real name. I was ‘The Will’ (Wilson my middle name), my mom was ‘Crump’ (?), my dad was ‘Cake’ (used to be a baker). A famous scientist who he had take me in to see a running research reactor and gaze down in the water at the beautiful blue Cherenkov radiation was ‘Hambone’. The Oil Minister of Saudi Arabia, His Excellency blah, blah, blah of about twenty names was… ‘George’.

When I was about 13 or 14 he took me to visit Buck and Toots, and their boy a year or two older than me. They were not eccentric. They were flaming nuts. The boy immediately showed me a rifle he’d assembled from parts, noting it had no serial number and if he killed somebody with it they’d never trace it. “Oh, and would you like to go walk in our woods with me?” Uh, no thanks.

Uncle Buck went all over the US to play in horseshoe tournaments. The one living room wall was covered with loving cups and plaques. Every time my uncle Ben visited he would whip Bucks butt playing horseshoes. He never went to a tournament saying it was a silly waste of time for a grown man. Buck had that wild eyed stare of the fanatic.

Aunt Toots was the prize of the bunch.

She wore a poodle skirt and bobby socks and every gesture, every step was theatrical. She would have been in her late thirties or early forties then. We sat and tried to have a conversation. She talked non-stop. I mean, if somebody sat forward or cleared their throat she looked actually afraid they’d say something. She gasped for air so she didn’t allow a pause for an opening. After about an hour she ran out of oxygen and her eyes rolled up in her head and she face planted on the carpet out cold. She simply ran out of air because she wouldn’t shut up. Buck didn’t even look surprised. Get the picture of this lovely family? There’s a reason I painted such a full picture.

Aunt Toots was a writer.

After “The Men” went out to weld something I stayed behind. I knew they’d weld with no protection and burn the crap out of their arms. I stayed with aunt Toots who felt she had to entertain me. She took me in her sewing room and showed me her manuscripts. Three full massive file cabinets of hand typed manuscripts as tall as I was. I’d never known a writer.

She showed me a couple and I read excepts. She’d been writing twenty years. They were all children’s Christian literature. Turns out she was a Sunday school teacher. She’s write a story for the week and read it to her class. Parents inflicted this on their kids to have a little free time every weekend. In fact in Akron Ohio they have what is known as the ‘Bus Ministry’. You can judge the success of a church by the size of its fleet of busses. Parents would give their kids a buck or fifty cents and send them off for spiritual enlightenment so they could go back to bed, get some more sleep or make the poor kid some siblings. Aunt Toots was as enlightened as they got for a buck.

Being young and having no tact and already seeing what she’d shown me was pure crap I asked the awful question. “So, how many of these stories have you sold?” – Not*A*One. She was however convinced that once she sold ONE, the floodgates would open and her back-log of thousands of stories would be worth a FORTUNE and she’d be on easy street. (facepalm)

Today it frightens me to think of her uploading five or six THOUSAND stories/sermons to Amazon. I mean, there must be a market in old maid Sunday School Teachers who would just LOVE her work. But some poor people would probably buy them by mistake. She was the sort who today would call the police and swear out a zero tolerance criminal complaint if one of her five year old students kissed a little girl on the cheek. If he kissed another little boy on the cheek she’d have him roped to the flag pole piling faggots at his feet in short order. Even then I wondered how they had ever had a child. The only thing I can imagine is that they did like their sauce a bit.

Given their age they missed Amazon by a couple decades. I’m sure aunt Toots’ manuscripts are compressed in a landfill somewhere, waiting for future archeologists to find them and open a new window on twentieth century Mid-western culture. I’m certain however if you do a careful search you can find aunt Toots spiritual successors on Amazon or other e-book sellers.

Back when the rich churchmen and nobles bought statues and oil paintings they had their own filters. Unlike today when people go to New York galleries and buy junk welded together or paint thrown at a canvas by monkeys as investments, if the painting made the Duke look like he had a big nose, or David was a bit too Jewish looking then the artist probably didn’t get paid. For sure he didn’t get a new commission.

When you browse through Amazon DO use the look inside feature. It’s to the point now where it’s just too easy to see a book only costs a buck or three and you can just click on buy it with one click and take time to look at it later. There are gems hidden that deserve being bought to encourage the artist. But please, please, the aunt Toots of the world don’t need encouragement.

As everyone here knows I don’t do Twitter, not beyond the minimum like echoing my blog posts. I lack the time to burn in yet another social media, and frankly twitter could become addictive.   And also I don’t REALLY need to be tempted into anger and spleen. I can find them myself.

I do have my… ah, organs of information in twitter. Yeah, okay, I have fans who report to me. My fan reporting to me on yesterday’s battle between Larry Correia and one of our respected colleagues, however, fell very, very short of the idiocy of the attacks on Larry. This morning Iulius sent me a link to the whole mess on twitchy and, oh, my Lord, it’s idiotic. Apparently, it’s stupid and “sounds like he’s encouraging rapists” for Larry to have a headline saying “The Naïve idiocy of teaching rapists not to rape.”

The only way I can figure out for that headline to be considered “standing with rapists” is if the other side REALLY believes that rapists can be taught not to rape. Do they? (Looks scared) F*ck if I know. And guys, I was raised in Europe, and you’d think I was exposed to the craziest theories socialists can dream up, right?

In a way I was. I vaguely remember – I must have been ten or so – absolutely believing that all criminals could be reformed, and that crime could be completely eliminated from society. Maybe the other side still believes this, but I have trouble crediting them with that. I mean, from people who go all superior and point at religious believers as naïve and willing to trust priests and shamans, one expects at least some contact with the real world. Or one would, if one hadn’t read years of their increasingly more psychotic explanations of the fact that the world can’t be made perfect, no matter how hard you rub your Marx and wish.

Yep, you’ve heard the excuses and elaborations. Crime exists because… oppression. Crime exists because… capitalist societies inherently distort the human nature. Crime exists due to lack of education.

All of this is – to say the least – bizarre from people who profess to believe in evolution. (Which I do too, btw. I just don’t think it excludes a belief in G-d. Who in heck am I to dictate how He should work the clay of the earth? I also think it has more holes than – as Heinlein put it – bastards in a royal European line, but that’s also normal in any scientific field.)

There is crime and there are rapists because humans are not angels but – I know, I’m going to shock people – animals capable of reasoning and higher functions. This doesn’t mean we don’t have an animal nature, but that we live and contend with it every day – even those of us who try our best to not give in and who are sane enough not to give in the major ways: murder, rape, theft.

The early Marxists signing onto the Rousseau bandwagon was not a shock. After all, all of Marx was a fable of paradise lost and regained having absolutely no contact with reality, written by a grifter who lived his entire life at other’s expense and who haunted libraries.

What is somewhat surprising is that the modern Marxists, having embraced Darwin, can still believe in the entire nonsense that crime happens because capitalism has corrupted the beautiful nature of primitive humans.

Have these people ever met any primitive – or even just feral – humans? Do they read history at all? No. Wait. Of course they don’t. These are people who raise their children by the no-frustration method and expect good results; people who classify regimes like Ferdinando and Isabella’s autarchy as “capitalism” for the purpose of explaining not just the conquest of the new world but ALSO the evil perpetrated by natives of the new world. Yep. They write off piles of human sacrifices as either lies of the Spaniards or the result of these beautiful natives somehow being tainted by the “capitalism” of absolutist monarchist Spain.

If your mouth is, by now, hanging open in sheer awe at the craziness, you might realize you’re in the presence of homus academicus, a creature as suited for survival anywhere outside academia as a declawed cat in the middle of a pride of lions.

To quote someone on that twitchy thread, teaching rapists not to rape is about as sane as teaching snakes not to bite. Someone gifted at that could also try teaching lions to be vegetarians, so they could become housecats.

And because some of the idiots read this blog, no, I’m not saying rape is natural to all males. That is the other side’s #yesallmen crazy ass contention. I’m just saying that rape is a “natural” thing, preceding from the fact humans are partly animals, or if you prefer, built on an animal framework. The fact that most males DON’T rape, and would be rendered impotent at the IDEA of raping is a mark of how far we’ve come. Most males don’t even need to be taught not to rape, though of course, if you teach your little boy not to hurt others, you’re teaching them not to rape. But you can’t teach the men who are inclined to rape NOT to rape, anymore than you can teach a leftist not to spout tripe. For the slow of understanding or those who don’t live in the real world, or any academics reading this blog (but I repeat myself): We’re not all made alike. Humans are not widgets generated by a computer program. We’re creatures of flesh, blood and yes upbringing. In some of us something goes wrong. Whether the flesh, the blood, or the upbringing, who knows? It’s been debated for years. However, some humans will grow up to want to hurt others. If they’re not of a twisted enough nature to become Marxist-believing intellectuals, who seek ways to hurt others through laws, perverse theories and generally corrupting the mental space of humanity in order to gain power, they might choose the more direct and physical method of murder, robbery and rape. You could say they partly do this in the serene belief that the aforementioned Marxist-believing intellectuals will excuse him and lay their vile deeds at the feet of “capitalism” and traditional culture. Me? I think that this is too harsh on the Marx-believing intellectuals. Sometimes rapists and murderers and robbers simply do things because they want to, and would still do them even if the culture didn’t tell them that their crimes are societies fault and even if the aforementioned intellectuals had as much trouble telling a criminal from a victim as telling their arses from a hole in the ground.

#nonotallmen but #somemen will rape (And murder. And become Marxists. Some women too, will become rapists and murderers and a surprising number of them become Marxism parroting fools.) Some of them even come from good backgrounds and most assuredly were taught not to hurt others.

But see, despite all the fights about nature and nurture, in the end, no one knows why anyone turns out the way he or she does. Oh, we can make guesses about early trauma and influential events. But that big computer between our ears, after a while programs itself. All the influence and education in the world can’t make someone into this or that. You can’t program kids (or adults) as if they were computers. Brave New World was not an Utopia and A Clockwork Orange is not an instruction manual.

To the extent our culture is doing well, rape is a relatively rare crime. (No, I’m not going to argue this. Yes, if you think a man looking intently at you is rape, then rape is a very common crime. Which is why I suggest you move forthwith to a culture where it is believed men looking at you is rape, and that in fact your being uncovered enough to be looked at is encouragement to rape. The fact that in those cultures women are treated like objects is a small price to pay to finally be free of al those rapey-rape stares, right?) Almost anywhere and at any time in history, it was much more common.

And here I’m going to digress from my digression to point out that in the culture I grew up in, it was assumed that if you were out after 8 pm, unaccompanied, you were “asking for it.” And yes, rape would be let go with a slap on the wrist in those circumstances, because only “decent women” were supposed to be protected from it and if you were out after 8 pm you were not a “decent woman” – even if you were coming back from evening classes.

I’m not going to advocate returning to that sort of rule. However, women should have situational awareness. You might have the right to move through the night safely, except that no one has that right. That right to be “secure in their lives and possessions” thing is one of those rights we invent and write into law, but it doesn’t make it happen naturally. It doesn’t LITERALLY mean you get to go walking around unarmed in a bad neighborhood at night and because you have this right nothing bad will happen to you. (#teachgangbangersnottobang.)

No, if you really have a need to be out after dark in areas that aren’t quite safe (and no area is perfectly safe. Ever.) you make sure you’re armed or otherwise protected (I have at least one friend more lethal with her hands and feet than most people with a gun. Which doesn’t mean she doesn’t also carry a gun where allowed) you go armed. And you know how to defend yourself. Which is what adult human beings do to teach rapists not to rape (it’s a well known fact the recidivist rate of dead rapists is 0%.) For all other human beings, there is feminism. Which won’t keep them safe, but lets them feel really warm in the unearned superiority of their world view.

And if you’re thinking that even by the standards of Marxist “intellectuals” it’s not just stupid, but truly, stone-cold stupid to accuse Larry of supporting racists when all his headline says is you can’t teach them not to rape, and when everyone knows Larry supports lowering the recidivism rate of rapists to zero (and their body temperature to ambient) you’re right.

We’ve been seeing a lot of this stupidity lately. Stuff like our esteemed leftist colleagues going on their #yesallmen campaign, apparently forgetting they have fathers and brothers and maybe even sons who definitely would not. (Or maybe they don’t. Have genetic studies been done? It’s entirely possible these creatures reproduce by fission. It would explain their #evolutionarydeadend status and their lack of understanding of evolution.)

You’ve seen this scene before. This is the moment, at the end of the horror movie, when the monster, bleeding from several holes, is clearly dying, and so starts thrashing around, madly, hitting everything in sight, friend and foe, more out of reflex than rational thought.

In my field of course, this is because traditional publishing is losing control of the market to a shocking amount and with shocking speed. Like you, I’ve read the excuses for the bombing of Hillary (#sainthillary!)’s book, and as unpleasant and as unpopular as the woman is, it shocked me. Why did it shock me? Because I think even a year ago, traditional publishing would be able to make the book a success on paper by cooking the books if nothing else. The fact that they no longer have room in the budget to make it seem like her book is popular, is a shock. The fact that it’s selling SO badly they can’t even try to hide it, is again a shock.

How do you think people who aren’t #sainthilary but who were pushed into at-least-on-paper success by the publishing industry as it was feel now that the ground is being eaten out from under them?

I have, some years ago, identified the process by which left-leaning institutions die. Someone had asked me why an sf editor I will not name, having killed three magazines, got given yet another to kill, and why each magazine was successively more leftist. This was compared to the process by which news magazines and media when in trouble because too leftist for the general public, go hard left just before they die. (Also known as the left-leaning-death-roll.)

Because I was in a field where this (then)worked, I had to explain to the people I was talking to that this happens because in fields that are 90% or more left, this works. See, if your magazine/newspaper/tv station goes under because you’re incompetent, no one is going to give you another job. But if your magazine/newspaper/tv station goes under because you’re “too far left” then the left – aka the rest of your field. Aka those who give awards and jobs – perceive you as a hero, suffering for your convictions, and promptly give you another job. So, if you’re an incompetent idiot, and your business is failing, your best way to cover it up and assure your survival in the field, is to run as far left as fast as you can. This has been trained in at the back of the brain of most people in the media and entertainment by DECADES of this strategy working just fine.

So now that businesses (solo and corporate) in those fields are failing at record levels, everyone is racing to the left as fast as they can, oblivious to the fact that they’re all failing together and no one will be able to give them jobs. (Though frankly to be fair, they can still give them awards.)

What did you expect of Marxists? Contact with reality? If they had that, they wouldn’t be Marxists, a theory that requires you to be a blind fool who believes in wishcasting. (#yesallMarxists.)

If you want to extrapolate from this to our political scene — where again their theories, their safe positions and such unassailable leftist shibboleths as the certainty that wars end when the “capitalist power” who is by definition the assailant apologizes and promises to be good, are exploding before their very eyes – it might bring some understanding to where we are, and why I am scared just now.

When leftist institutions/cultures are dying, they race to the left. The bad news is that the left has a long history of filling mass graves.

The good news is that in this country, the non-left is armed.

The other good news is that this mad hatter race to the left is always – ALWAYS – a sign a leftist institution or culture is dying. And right now it’s everywhere where leftists are prevalent.

Hold on to the sides of the boat. The water is about to get rough and #somemarxists are more dangerous than people who accuse Larry of misogyny and get beaten like a Spanish mule.

BUT their flailing attacks, from the stupid to the serious, are all signs that they know they’re dying and are trying to stake out the leftward-most position.

It’s their last gasp.

Be not afraid. In the end we win, they lose. And they know it.

The Problem of Wymyn Power: Or Why Elizabeth von Sarmas will always be an Outlier – Alma Boykin

So, in light of the Nebula 2014 awards, and Sarah’s comment about my not doing any guest posts recently, I was trying to come up with something vaguely interesting to write about. Whether I’m going to accomplish that remains to be seen, since I’m still up to my waist in alligators (having beaten them down below my ears for the first time in a few weeks. Has anyone seen the swamp’s drain plug?) I apologize in advance for this rambling, wandering mini-essay.

I’m not an anthropologist, nor do I specialize in Women’s History. The latter is in part because I enjoy dabbling in other disciplines too much, and it is not easy to pull geology, climatology, range science, and other stuff into Women’s History. Another reason is because the theoretical background now required to write academic histories of women in society leaves me cold. Historical theory doesn’t excite or interest me, and it feels like pulling teeth to read many of the seminal [oops! Sorry, sorry, should say critical] theoretical works in order to bring the proper framework to my writing. I enjoy reading about the lives of women in society in various cultures and historical periods, but not doing academic research on them. I also enjoy reading about the lives of men. Oops again.

“But, Alma, you write about strong women! Rada Ni Drako and Elizabeth von Sarmas have Grrrrrll Power!” Yes, and no. They are outliers, much as David Weber’s Honor Harrington is an outlier, or Elizabeth Moon’s Paksenarrion. They also do not have any of the duties that an average female in their universes has, which makes them even farther out on the tail of the bell curve of “normal female.” That’s why, under Azdhag law, Commander Ni Drako is a male, and “his” title is Lord Ni Drako. Rada is Rada, not because she has a uterus and the various attachments that come with having a uterus, but because of her background and training. And she’s sterile because of being a hybrid, which eliminates her from possessing the “special ways of knowing” that come with motherhood. Or potential motherhood, in the case of the arguments that dominate hard-core Feminism of the late 20^th and early 21^st Centuries on subsections of Earth’s Western and Northern Hemispheres.

(As an aside, those of you who have read Hubris and the other Cat Among Dragon stories know that the Azdhagi society before the Great Relocation is a lot different in terms of female rights than is the culture Rada Ni Drako works in. The sequel explains why in greater detail, although you probably saw hints of it already.)

When I think of the matriarchies in fiction, neither Rada nor Elizabeth would fit very well. In no set order, I come up with: the Witches of Witchworld, the priestesses of Avalon in The Mists of Avalon and the related novels, the Sisters of the Sword and Free Renunciates in Darkover, the society in the Exiles duology by Melanie Rawn, and a couple of alien species based on bees from several different books. Oh, and Wen Spencer’s A Brother’s Price, which I have not read yet. One thing I notice first off is that the Witches and the priestesses have McGuffins—magic and esoteric knowledge that helps level the physical playing field. If you stretch definitions, you could even say that during the time of Honor Harrington, the Manticorians have the McGuffin of technology so Honor and her allies are as strong as their male counterparts.

Because this is one of the critical problems of a fictional matriarchy: physical strength. Especially in fantasy, if the physically weaker sex doesn’t have a McGuffin of some kind, they will still be at a survival disadvantage. What’s Elizabeth von Sarmas’s big worry when she flees Frankonia? Assault and rape. OK, and starvation, hypothermia, drowning, and lice, but those are problems common to men in her world as well. She’s not as big, strong, or well armed as the men around her, so she has to scramble to survive.

The Free Renunciates, especially as described in some of the Darkover anthologies, point up another problem of human matriarchies in fiction, if done realistically. What do you do with baby boys? What if a woman wants a male lover, and decides to (gasp) establish a monogamous relationship with him, even if it is sine catenas (the Darkover version of a common-law marriage)? And what about the boys who find out that their mothers set them aside because they had a Y chromosome? Don’t tell me that’s not going to lead to problems for everyone. I’ve walled a few books that didn’t address that tension, because everyone was all happy and unicorns and butterflies and the guys so totally respected the independent women more than the conventional women and look, kittens! And if you extrapolate the hierarchies and fights of the Renunciates to a larger scale, you don’t get peace, harmony, and love. You get a society that’s potentially just as unpleasant as the Dry Towns of Darkover, except with the guys getting beat up instead of the women. In other words, you have Rawn’s Exiles world to an extent.

So where does this leave my current, strong, female protagonists? Rada Ni Drako and Zabet dar Nagali have crossed paths with the matriarchs on occasion, and the outcome wasn’t pretty for the matriarchs. (Hint: Just because you are female doesn’t guarantee you a discount.) Rada prefers to deal with a political and social system based on ability, especially if she can be near the top of the ability heap. Why doesn’t she agitate for female lib on Drakon IV? Because 1) she doesn’t feel like messing her nest, 2) she has other things to worry about and 3) she figures that changing Azdhagi society is the Azdhagi’s business, not hers. Ditto on Earth: human females are smaller and have different capabilities than do human males, and Rada just shrugs and carries on, although she’ll give Joschka the what-for when he forgets that she’s just as competent as he is.

And Elizabeth von Sarmas? She’s an exception and knows it. Without giving too much away, she states this flat out later on. Like Rada, she’s unusually physically strong for a woman of her time and place, she doesn’t have the responsibilities of a normal woman (ie. children and a spouse), she has servants to do the daily work, and she thinks and acts more like a man in a skirt than a “real woman.” Which keeps the gossip and innuendo flowing, as you would expect, and has some nasty social consequences that, if she were not a noble with a killer mule and strong male patrons, would put her in a very bad position.

Can an author create a large-scale matriarchy that “works?” I’m sure there are a few out there that I just have not yet found. But when dealing with humans, the Paksenarrions, Honor Harringtons, and Elizabeth Von Sarmas of the world, just like Elizabeth I of England, Maria Theresa of Austria, Empress Wu, and other women, will be notable exceptions, not symbols of the dominance of Grrrrl Power.

Yes, I actually have… five? Guest posts ready to cue up. Yes, I should be writing. But I owe you this one.

I had some rumblings about my depressed post written on Sunday night. Look, we have plenty of reason to be depressed; crisis besetting us on all sides any one of which would be enough to do for us… In the seventies.

If you have a feeling that the seventies have rumbled up from their grave and are walking forward like zombies in an apocalyptic movie you might just be right.

–          The middle East is on fire, where an incompetent (or traitorous. Jimmy Carter was probably JUST incompetent, OTOH he did offer to negotiate with the soviets in return for help with his second election campaign. So… who knows?) president has betrayed our friends and encouraged our enemies. (And in respect to Jimmah, I must say at least he never armed and furnished with money an organization sworn to destroy us. Whatever he lusted for in his heart – power, likely – it wasn’t the destruction of the US.

–          Somehow, the reanimated ghost of the Soviet Union has been dug up to stalk the land. The president’s “flexibility” has allowed Putin to threaten all of Eastern Europe and to move to swallow them in a disturbingly familiar pattern.

–          Our press alternates between singing happy days are here again and blaming the American people for being “ungovernable” or telling us to get used to the sh*t sandwich because it’s the new normal.

–          Our Southern border is besieged by a bizarre equivalent of the Mariel boatlift, this time as Children’s Crusade. The president admits that rumors were willfully spread in South and Central America that a “new law” allowed minors to get in and become citizens. (Of course the Dream Act does. I mean, look, if you come from a not-particularly law abiding country, you won’t even see anything wrong with pretending you were brought in years ago.) He says the only way to stop it is to pass “Immigration reform” which in his book means absolute amnesty.

Depressed now? Don’t be.

The president is simply doing what he said he’d do (the promises he keeps aren’t the ones made full voice, before the cameras. They’re the ones you have to read between the lines for.) He wanted to be the anti-Reagan and undo everything Reagan did. (The 80s amnesty, misjudged though it was, was an attempt at controlling immigration.)

But here’s the reason to hope. They’re rays of light in deep darkness, but they are NOT oncoming trains.

–          There’s reason to think this terroristic insanity of Islam is because they can’t stand before the modern world, and their religion can’t cope with it. Historically, no culture ever kept the future at bay no matter how bellicose it got. Technology will still get through. Things will still change. It can be done for really small places like North Korea, but they dream of a world wide Caliphate, which is like dreaming of flying to the moon unassisted, but less realistic. We’ve whipped ass in the Middle East, and we’ll do it again.

Why it’s not unalloyed hope – we might very well lose cities to this and as for Israel… pray for Israel.

–          Russia is in bad shape. What we’re seeing now is the final lashing out of the dying bear. Yes, I too have met the trolls going around claiming that the birthrate in Russia is “resurgent”. Unless they’re reading my future history and making people in labs, bullshit. They have other issues which have only got worse since the end of the cold war: troop training and discipline; equipment failure… the list goes on. For all of Putin’s bluster and the very real harm he can inflict to the Eastern European countries, Russia is a failed state, ruled by mobs.

Why it’s not unalloyed hope – I spent the early nineties expecting this to happen, because it’s what dying empires normally do. In many ways the havoc Hitler wreaked was because Germany was mortally wounded. And Europe has grown fat and lazy, used to Americans defending it, so they have virtually no resistance to even a toothless enemy.

I think this lashing out of the bear doesn’t last long, and that, what’s more, we can pack it away any time we want to. I’m just afraid it can’t be done without blood – ours and European – and maybe a few radioactive areas. I hope I’m wrong, and there’s a very slim margin of hope.

–          No one believes the press like they did in the seventies. NO ONE except very old people. Yes, there is still a vast contingent of brainwashed sheeple, but most people are aware that there’s a discrepancy between reportage and event. No? Mention “Summer of recovery” in a grocery store line. Unless you’re in Manhattan, where it takes a lot of very educated/smart people to be that dumb, you’ll get bitter guffaws in response.

–          The Children’s Crusade… As long as we don’t pass “comprehensive amnesty” this will solve itself, or at least hold until a sane administration sends the kiddies back. Which will be expensive, but not as expensive as keeping them.

They were sent, many I suspect coerced, to establish a beach head to legalize their entire family. If this is not possible, and that becomes clear, the kiddies will be called back. Or we can send them back.

On top of which, really? What is the point of coming to a land with no jobs and fast running out of money? What can’t go on, won’t. Stand fast. Yes, we’ll end up with a few more citizens out of this –meh.

My humble suggestion would be they take any under ten and make them available for adoption — saving Americans millions in foreign adoption fees. But for that we’d need to dismantle our ridiculous social services methods that include adopting out ONLY by race and ethnicity and also never letting the kid be fully yours, even after adoption.

So it won’t happen, unless a lot of things change.

THE REALLY GOOD NEWS, though, is that for the first time since WWII the masks are off, and this means there is the possibility for real change.

Look, I’m not one of the ones who say “let it all burn” – I have children and an (adopted) grandson. Letting it burn will burn many of the good people; many of the good things we love about our country. Letting it burn, as the other side knows, is to invite a totalitarian regime. (Only it’s as likely to be ultra-religious/social conservative “Big Man” as communist. More, actually. But never mind.)

What do I mean by the masks are off? For the last sixty or seventy years “progressives” have infiltrated our every institution, convincing people those who hate our country are not so bad, and that we, in fact, should hate our country because we are uniquely bad an imperialist just as the Soviets/mullahs say.

I became aware of this divided mind thing when I came in. All the upper class here made the “approved” noises which were indistinguishable from the stuff socialists/communists said in Europe. But if you called them on it, they wrapped themselves in the tattered mantle of “patriotism” and made “how dare you?” noises. Things like making it uncouth to say “America, love it or leave it” are part of this mind set. (No, I don’t mean you have to approve of everything America does, but I don’t think anyone ever said you did. Protesting your leaders is acceptable, but outright hatred of everything American should d*mn well mean you leave. No? Why not?) So is “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism” even while what you’re demanding is surrender in the middle of a war. And even though that changes, when they’re in power.

What we’ve had in fact, is the masquerade, from puppet masters. These people are possessed of a fanatical hatred of the only country they know well, the country that allows them to exist, but go around pretending they “love” it even as they tear it down.

The masks are off. Obama’s actions are very clearly not those of anyone who loves America, and he is a representative of the “elite” of this country. People are starting to catch on.

The only way to fight these very stupid ideas, from political correctness to multiculturalism, to anti-American fervor is to have them out in the open.

When the zombies are eating people in the dark basement, you don’t know and can’t fight. Once you know what you face, then you can fight.

The other sign of hope is that these are not the seventies. Yes, we have better technology, but more importantly, we have fifty years of exposure to leftist madness. Everyone in the seventies pretty much believed Paul Ehrlich. Now we just point and laugh. Which is why the gospel of “climate change” is not sticking at the street level. (Which makes them a little more insane about preaching it, but never mind.)

I remember when they tried to revive seventies fashions and it never really caught except among the terminally young and trendy. It’s the same thing. So many things that they used to stampede us in the seventies are no longer credible: Overpopulation; lethal pollution; end of oil; and that communism is a superior system of government.

And yet, these are ALL the other side has. The reason our president can’t be firmly said to be either a traitor or a dunce, is because he is EXQUISITELY educated in the elite ideas of the bien pensant who have taken over our schools and colleges.

Even if he wanted to change course, to somehow make the system work, he doesn’t have anything. All he has are the ideas he was taught. And the ideas he was taught, when brought out to the full light of day are bizarrely stupid and laughable.

That’s all they have. Ideas that would make a ten year old laugh, if they weren’t presented by teacher as “gospel” but as a theory of how the world works.

All they have.

And now those ideas are out in the open.

And we’re not amused. And there’s a lot more of us than there is of them.

Look, guys, there is a reason that despite massive vote fraud – trust me on this, there was – they still needed to suppressed the GOTV effort on the other side, via the IRS.

They’ve got nothing. They’re the kid trying to stop the tide with his hands.

What can’t go on, won’t go on.

Their ideas, that frothy hodge podge of self-loathing from the west after WWI and undigested Marx, have proven what they are: somewhere between lethal and plain dumb.

And now that we know that, they’re spent.

Will they try to stampede us anyway? Well, of course. I think part of the Children’s Crusade is to bring in teens to recruit to put us down if we riot. (Rolls eyes.) This is part of the problem of the left. You see, they think in stories, not in real world. In their story Fast and Furious would work, because if we sent a bunch of American guns to Mexico, then revealed the death toll, Americans would recoil and demand all guns be banned. Do you see that working? Anywhere but in a not-very-good-novel of the type the establishment pushes?

No, neither do I. But to them it made perfect sense.

It’s entirely possible that they think Central and South American teens will “terrorize” and “Win” against an armed US populace with who knows how many veterans. Because you see, the South American teens are “dispossessed” and “Proletarian” so in their story, they win. (Rolls eyes again.)

This is the quality of mind we’re up against. They’re not stupid. They’re exquisitely taught to work in a world that doesn’t exist.

Which is why it might get very unpleasant, very unpleasant indeed, but I don’t think it’s “the final crash” nor that we’re going back to the middle ages.

Look, guys, I don’t even think the cities will burn. Remember when everyone expected cities to burn after the Zimmerman verdict? Do you care to tell me WHAT and when burned?

This is not the seventies. The theories that drove people to riot before are discredited. They’re mouthed and used to get cash, but no one will fight and die for them.

They’re trying to bring about a revolution that was unlikely even in the seventies, in a world in which their theories are somewhere between dead and a laughing stock.

Crazy people can cause a great deal of trouble and destruction. But in the end they don’t win because they’re functioning in a world that exists only in their heads.

There’s more of us than there are of them. They’re barely keeping us at bay. We’re stronger, we’re smarter, we’re more adapted for survival.

I’m not going to sugar coat it and tell you that this madness won’t have a butcher’s bill. I’m not going to tell you that there isn’t an unpleasant decade or so ahead.

I’m going to tell you that in the end we win, they lose.

Now do what I’m about to do: shut up and get to work.

Goats and Sheep – Kate Paulk

Inter oves locum praesta, Et ab haedis me sequestra,

Provide me a place among the sheep, and separate me from the goats.

Lately, it seems this particular phrase from the Requiem Mass has a rather wider application. Truth to tell, that’s pretty normal among humans: we’re a social animal at our best and worst, and we don’t do well without other humans to rub off our odder and less pleasant edges.

Like anything, this can be taken to excess, as it is with the kind of destructive group-think where one must adhere to all the tenets of the group in order to belong, and any deviation from said tenets makes one not merely subject to expulsion, but evil and fit only to be destroyed as well. When the list of BadThink things is generated seemingly with a hose on wide dispersion and covers everything from politics to soft drink, that’s the kind of group you want to avoid, lest you fall foul of “Everything is an Abomination Unto Nuggan” syndrome.

To take the extended metaphor a little further, sheep are notoriously herd-centered, to the extent that often it only takes getting one sheep to do something and the whole herd does it. They bunch close together when they’re nervous and while they pack a pretty mean kick (and bite), by predator standards they’re reasonably easy prey. And any sheep that’s just a little bit different from the others will be abandoned by the herd even as it runs after said herd bleating to be let back in.

Goats are different. They tolerate each other, and are annoyingly independent creatures with a remarkable ability to make even the most patient person swear. Getting one goat to do something is no guarantee the herd will follow – in the words of Terry Pratchett, “Sheep are stupid, and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent, and need to be led.”

It’s hardly surprising that the standard religious metaphor to separate the good from bad is the sheep from the goats. Irrespective of the validity of said religion, every faith has gone through at least one phase where its leaders were extremely powerful – and what person with power doesn’t prefer to have sheep who can be driven rather than independent-minded goats for whom he (usually it was a “he”) has to actually be a leader rather than simply issue commands to drive the faithful onwards.

Lest the religiously inclined here take umbrage, I’m also referring to the modern secular religion of communism and its assorted personality cults and Dear Leaders, along with the splinter sects of anthro-centric climate change, enviro-fascism, and US political parties. The fact that one of the parties is marginally less of a religion unto itself than the other is largely a happy accident that I sincerely hope will be used to break the bloody power faction open and return it (or push it) to a narrow focus of “pay the bills, don’t use debt for the living expenses, and don’t screw with the rest of the world unless you’re prepared to clean up the mess afterwards”. The other one I don’t think has any hope: it’s become the Communist-Lite party (and lite only in the sense that the bastards are smart enough to avoid using the obvious communist rhetoric there. In terms of policy-as-enacted it’s somewhere between communist and anti-national socialist-fascist with a side of mafia in which the government forms the largest imaginable protection racket).

We’re seeing the results all over the world right now. Iraq and Afghanistan both needed decades of occupation to become marginally functional nations. In both it was painfully obvious that removing the strongman would awaken all the tensions said strongman had been brutally crushing for years. It’s exactly what tore Yugoslavia apart and why Czechoslovakia is now the Czech Republic and Slovakia. There were two ways to handle both countries after defeating them. One was to crush them utterly and walk away – leaving what was left to pick up the pieces in any way they chose. The other was to occupy them indefinitely, with a strongman level of control – including being willing to crush any sign of internal conflict or revolt against the occupiers. And actively change the culture to an American one.

Instead, the so-called experts (most of whom have been corrupted by soviet propaganda – but that’s a completely different rant and one Sarah has more experience with than I do) tried to build a middle path which tried to “respect” the local cultures – including the most appalling ones – and turn places that had been tribal before falling under the rule of strongmen (which is really tribal writ large) into modern nations in less than a generation. I don’t know about you, but I’m hardly surprised it’s falling apart at the seams.

I could forgive doing this out of foolish optimism, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, but the Libyan adventure isn’t forgivable. Qaddafi was anything but a good person, but helping to replace him with our enemies goes beyond criminal stupidity into treason – and I do not use that word lightly. I don’t expect to see any action taken on that front because there are too many people with power who have too much to hide, but that’s not going to stop me calling what I see. The White House is occupied by a traitor.

He wants sheep that he can drive wherever he chooses. We – more than most Americans – are goats. We’ll follow a leader, but that leader has to prove himself, herself, or itself worthy first. Hell, a lot of Americans are goats and are with us, but they’ve been disenfranchised from politics like the rest of us. We no longer have a real say, and we are seeing the consequences in thousands of small things as well as some of the big ones. Police becoming nothing more than uniformed thugs who can murder innocent people in their beds and get off with a metaphorical slap on the wrist. The bloody TSA. Courts upholding this bullshit when it’s obviously wrong. And of course, the American Pravda which is just as true to the name as the Soviet one was.

Like quite a few others, I see the next ten years or so getting quite ugly. I think that the American spirit is still there, but most people don’t realize they have it. I also think when it comes to crunch-time, that spirit will make itself felt in ways that will be unpleasant at best and involve a great deal of death at worst. But at the same time, no matter how bleak my logical analysis tells me things are going to get for us goats, I have a – possibly bizarre and insane, but quite unshakable – sense that the end result is one that will see the American experiment and American ideals rising to a new strength.

As it might have been obvious, yesterday, I had some trouble getting myself organized enough to write. I have a novel and a novella grossly overdue (technically two novels) and I finally can see the end of Through Fire (you really are going to have your minds blown. Mine is still in shards. I figured out I was tyring to impose the wrong end on this and the real end is… well! ) As for the novella, I know how every line goes. It’s just…

I made the mistake of reading the news yesterday. There was this link from insty. And then I got the article from L. Neil Smith who is usually more upbeat than I am… This one wasn’t it. His thoughts echoed some of my back of the brain ferment, some of which I don’t even want to put here because it – still – sounds crazy. At the same time, I got an email from Commentary liking to this article.

Where to begin?

Normally I am relentlessly positive, to the point of quarreling with another member of the evil league of evil about the best days for the US being ahead of us.

Mind you, most of the reason I’m relentlessly positive is that by nature I’m extremely depressive, and nothing can be served by my becoming so depressed I can’t work. The second part of this is that I’ve found that the worst doesn’t normally happen. To expect the worst to happen in catastrophic situations is just as unreasonable as to expect the best to happen. Neither are realistic outcomes.

For instance, even if we seem to be heading towards a cooling period (we’ve had maybe three hot days so far this year) I don’t expect us to revert to the age of cavemen and hunt mammoths. It’s a very inconvenient mode of the human brain that we tend to think in stories. So when we talk about a crash people expect the middle ages. In fact, that is in the article at PJM.

The middle ages are grossly unlikely. Grossly, bizarrely unlikely. Technology doesn’t go backwards when the economy and society collapse. It just becomes… dingy.

My experience in Portugal through the hard times is that electricity became… unreliable. Food on shelves became iffy (so you stockpiled when you could) and there were a hundred others daily inconveniences. I understand if it had advanced all the way to a communist state it would have got even worse, but never, mind you, like the middle ages. Here’s the thing, even in the soviet union, life was dingy, dangerous and icky, but it was still life in an industrial state.

So some of these fears make me want to laugh. I wish all of them did.

I’ve been, in recent days, understanding the wisdom of Robert A. Heinlein who, during World War II refused to read the news daily. The news make me – to put things bluntly – want to slit my throat to stop the pain.

It is an extended version of the rage-filled days after 9-11-12 where I couldn’t believe any administration of ours had left our people to die in foreign lands, nor that NO ONE was going to denounce it.

We’ve traveled a long road since then, and even then these last few weeks have left me stupefied.

I cannot believe what we’re doing in foreign policy, essentially abdicating the burden of the Pax Americana. I can’t believe what we’re doing in the States themselves. If you haven’t heard, our “growth” has been revised to minus 1.7 for the first quarter. Yes, you read that correctly, the growth is almost two negative points, and this is with pulling every dodge in the book to avoid telling the truth. And our imperial ruler is trying to outlaw coal, which means those of us in the snow states are supposed to freeze in the dark. The story my indie sales tell makes me wonder what traditional publishing is doing. I mean, at Dave’s release, how many of you told me you didn’t have the money to buy? And I know how money is here too.

And there’s the fact that a talk with a neighbor confirmed my guess that the entire neighborhood hit the wall at the same time. We are preparing to move and to put this place up for sale, and given my preference for urban neighborhoods, and our willingness to take on another financial burden till this sells (we can’t sell the house with the cats in this, so we’ll have to rent) I suddenly wonder what I really SHOULD be doing. Will the city be safer when the SHTF? Will the country? Any part of the country we could get to? It is an American belief the middle of nowhere is safe, but in other collapses in modern days, it hasn’t been.

There’s also the fact that a trip to Portugal WILL have to be fitted into the summer, somehow, because mom isn’t telling me what’s wrong, but is so insistent on my visiting I know something is. And that for whatever reason, when I travel, all h*ll breaks lose.

So – what does all this add to ? The websites are abuzz again, with the old question “dunce or traitor?” I fail to see why it’s one or the other. I very much think it’s both. It’s traitor because he was raised to be a traitor. I don’t know how to link L. Neil Smith’s article, so I’ll just say that he pointed out that someone who was raised as a communist, is in fact a communist. Why would he be anything else? It would require a Road of Damascus experience, and I don’t remember his telling us of one. And trust me, he would have.

So, there’s the traitor part. But in it there’s the dunce part too.

Look, I’m not going to consider whether or not communists can be very smart. Maybe they can. I’ve never met any, though.

Oh, raw IQ, sure. But people don’t move and choose through raw IQ. My brother is brilliant. He’s also a deeply conventional man. This mean his thoughts move only in the “approved thoughts for brilliant people” mode of the last century – that is, leftist. We have a childhood friend who is an European communist leader (I suppose not openly, but who knows?) Is he stupid? Not raw IQ. But communism requires him to believe certain things. Such as “the right people” will naturally seize power after a collapse.

That’s what we’re dealing with here. Given Obama’s performance off script, I don’t think his dunceness is that smart. Look, as with his being a red diaper baby, it doesn’t even take much guessing. The evidence is RIGHT before our eyes. If he were smart, it would have been shouted from the rooftops. IQ? Grades? Achievement of some sort?

Come on, the biggest thing they have to tout is the fact that he was editor of the Harvard Law review, even if he published nothing. That means IQ, grades and achievement are all of a nullity or very close. Which – yes, I’m going to be crude here – in an age of political correctness when Harvard would want to give him a “win” (i.e. good grades/honors) just because of his color and his exotic religious background, means he must be something special in the way of dumb.

That is important, to an extent, because it means to the extent he’s in control, we’ll get dunce-moves.

But he’s not fully in control. From the disabled credit card checks, to the carefully scripted campaign that he clearly had bugger all to do with, it’s been clear all along someone else is driving this train. And that person might or might not be a dunce, but they are, definitely a true believer.

The problem posed by “dunce or traitor” is that the answer is both. He is a traitor, but to the extent that it’s not working, it’s because he’s also a dunce. And whether he’s a dunce in IQ or an ideology-impaired-dunce the result is the same.

For instance, have you guys figured out yet that OWS’s was supposed to be an attempt at a “proletarian revolution”? No? If you look at it, it becomes clear. Raised on stories of proletarian revolution, they thought if they squeezed us just enough, and then provided a spark – OWS screaming about the 1% — the country would spontaneously rise up in a communist revolution.

This was obvious to me, because I KNOW communist myth.

Then there was gun control, which has failed, even despite Fast and Furious. And Fast and Furious is something that only crazy, delusional and dumb people would dream up.

But there are things he can still do – crash the economy (the continuous money printing can’t go on) disarm (while China arms) and effectively switch sides in the war on terror.

These might be enough. I can see a very difficult winter ahead. I am still/again afraid that we’ll lose at least a city, and possibly more to enemy action. And I’m very afraid both my sons will end up in uniform and possibly dying to pay for this massive mistake.

So… It’s time to assume crash position.

This is somewhat difficult because nobody knows what form the crash will take. Again, I am stuck not knowing whether to move to an urban center or the country. There are precedents that say either or both are dangerous… or safe.

Some things we do know – when we cross our new distributed media with the crash, some things become clear:

–          Cultivate multiple, distributed sources of income. Things will change very fast. Even in a collapse you need to eat. Grandma lived through a time when money wasn’t worth anything. There’s still trade. Commerce will find a way. Just keep working.

–          Arrange for unreliable power/net. Spare batteries for your laptop might seem like a ridiculous precaution against collapse, but in the end if you make a living from intellectual work, you need your laptop to work. Get three. Get four. Keep them charged.

–          Arrange for some food set aside, and food for your pets too. We call our supply shelf “food for Armageddon” but if the issues in Portugal hold true here, it’s more “food for delays”. The same with medicine. If there’s something you can’t do without, lay it by.

–          I wouldn’t live in a major East Coast city just now, but other than that, I really don’t know where best to survive what’s coming.

–          I reiterate: we’re not going back to the middle ages, or even the fifties. Yes, practical ability in something like computer/car repair might come in handy, but it’s unlikely to be the be all/save all.

–          I guarantee as rough as it will get here, it will be worse everywhere else. Americans are often not aware of the extent to which the world depends on America. And that worries me, because I remember the seventies. It’s going to get very, very rough.

–          We’re still Americans. Look, he can hurt us, but he can’t make us be anything else. Americans are, if nothing else, unpredictable. Communists, whether dreamers or practical plotters, rely on one thing: reliability. In fact they expect people to be far more reliable than they’ve ever been. I don’t think they get that. Not in America.

So, is it time to put your head between your knees and kiss your *ss goodbye? Oh, heck no. It’s time to plan. It’s time to make connections. You can’t be both urban and rural, but you can have somewhere to run to, when things get ugly. It’s time to think, plan and prepare.

But as much as this situation scares me, and as much as I pray for my friends in large coastal cities, it’s not time to give up.

We’re Americans. We don’t give up. And believe it or not, if some of the primary source stuff I’ve read on WWII is true, Obama is in fact true to his idol, FDR. And we pulled out from that one.

Sometimes, as with addicts, you need to hit bottom before you start the climb again.

And I need to stop reading daily news, and leave them, maybe, for Fridays, just before the weekly two fingers of Devil’s Cut.

Because I am an American and I’m not going to fold. I have books to write, and other stuff to take care of.

I don’t really care what our government is doing or whether it has utterly betrayed the constitution. This country was never a country of government or politicians, but a country of citizens. This citizen is going to stay on the post, and make sure our flag is still there.

You do likewise.

The future is never guaranteed, and sometimes it’s downright scary.  But our ancestors survived, and we can too.  This is no time to get wobbly.  Keep calm and work rationally to overcome this late-hit of the Soviet machine.

I trust and pray that the last best hope of mankind is not going to die more futilely than any seventies writer could have imagined.

Not on my watch.

I suspect it’s too late to avoid a crash, but not to late to make sure it’s temporary and not as deep as it could be.

Now put your shoulder to the load and lift!