Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

I have a short story with a squirrel started. (11-D Mailclerk’s fault) though it’s not science fiction. But I’ve managed to catch a friend’s cold, and I was still pretty beat up with pneumonia recovery. So….

I’m going to break my self imposed rule and hit rattle the cup without giving you a freeby. I’m running a mid winter fundraiser for the blog. You know why.

There’s a Give Send Go for the Winter Fundraiser and well, if you need anything else including a snail mail address, please go here.

If you haven’t seen the free reading and the free short story, page down for them. And I’ll have the short story tomorrow, I promise. I just need a good night’s sleep and a late start for a change. (Sorry.)

Oh, yeah, meanwhile, Draw One In the Dark, the first of the Shifters’ books is on sale for 99c.

Something or someone is killing shape shifters in the small mountain town of Goldport, Colorado. Kyrie Smith, a server at a local diner, is the last person to solve the mystery. Except of course for the fact that she changes into a panther and that her co-worker, Tom Ormson, who changes into a dragon, thinks he might have killed someone. Add in a policeman who shape-shifts into a lion, a father who is suffering from remorse about how he raised his son, and a triad of dragon shape shifters on the trail of a magical object known as The Pearl of Heaven and the adventure is bound to get very exciting indeed. Solving the crime is difficult enough, but so is — for our characters — trusting someone with secrets long-held. Originally published by Baen Books.

Today I was thinking about the birth rate, partly because of this.

He is wrong, and right, but mostly right. So I thought I would talk about it a bit. First he is wrong about economic incentives having no point in it.

Yes, you could choose to have ten kids in a hut in the middle of a national forest and you and your husband/wife hunt and live off the land. Given how most of us were raised, that’s about as likely to happen as of a large number of people suddenly sprouting wings and doing away with the need for an airline industry.

But more importantly that ridiculous agro hectoring of “People had children when they were much poorer. Shut up, you young spoiled ones. Have babies on command.” This is roughly translated as “I didn’t have kids when I could, but you should do like my ancestors and birth ten babies and till the back forty. Uphill, both ways.”

Why is it agro, and why is it ridiculous? Dudes. He’s comparing kumquats and quail.

Let’s unpack why people had packs of children when they really logically couldn’t afford it and a vast number of them died of starvation or diseases that took easy hold for being on the verge of them. My mom’s parents had five kids in a space roughly equivalent to the family room where I write blogs and the small kitchen adjacent. Into that space were crammed a small bedroom where the parents slept, a larger room that contained a double bed, a table and china cupboard and grandma’s sewing machine, and then there was a very small kitchen with cement floor, an open cooking fire, and two trunks for supplies, as well as shelves on the wall.

So, did they have children because they really wanted children, longed for them, and the culture told them children were a positive good?

You’re kidding, right? YOU HAVE TO BE KIDDING. My grandmother did care for her kids, but I never got the impression she passionately longed for them, and I happen to know she made the older responsible for the younger as soon as she possibly could. My grandfather honestly couldn’t care less. (I loved him, in his old age, but he was a wicked man.)

So why oh why would they have that many? Mostly because contraception was hit or miss and mostly miss, and because grandad wouldn’t let no rhythm stand in the way of his pleasures. I very much doubt if they’d had safe, convenient contraception they’d have had more than one or two. Because grandad wouldn’t want to spend money on them.

The other thing, and the reason this comparison is specious and one more way of saying “you youngs deserve to be poors, so go and have some children and live in a hut.” is that children were a way of making money. Oh, not initially. Initially they took time, money and effort. SOMEWHAT. For instance grandad never allotted money to clothe and look after his brood, so grandma did what she could form odd sewing jobs and such (And work delivering bread, for which she forged his signature, since she couldn’t work without his permission, and he didn’t want her to work because that dented his prestige.) Which meant they were covered and not hanging in the breeze. But they went barefoot summer and winter until they entered apprenticeships at ten.

And here we go into the other point: PEOPLE. Kids earned money. Even those in apprenticeships, you might have to provide some fee up front (though not in Portugal at the time) but the kids got paid. And the money was brought home to the parents. They might be allowed to keep SOME (mom did, so she had shoes) but that was at the parent’s discretion. And kids started earning (in Portugal, in mom’s time. Other places in history it was earlier) at about ten. The end of fourth grade. Note that mom had a scholarship that would have taken her through high school, but grandad chose to send her to apprentice to seamstress instead. (What she made of it afterwards was a business in which she mostly designed and at one point had seamstresses working for her. But that’s what she made of it.) Because it paid. And he got money from it.

Children weren’t some airy-fairy “the culture tell us it’s good.” For most of human history children were economic goods, an addition to the parents comfort and their ability to survive. For a head-spinning moment, go and read colonial biographies. “I’m so sorry my four year old died. He was doing most of the work looking after the cows and horses, and he was very advanced in his study of Greek.”

Put a pin in this. In changing the culture, we need to change our conception of what children are and what they can do. But for now.

About economics: It’s not a coincidence that educated people are having fewer children. Most of them are burdened with student debt TILL PAST THEIR CHILDBEARING AGE. And please spare me the “but sacrifices.” If minimal survival requires both people in the couple to work to service the loans, no, they’re not going to make sacrifices to have children. Because what you’re asking is that they take massive loans…. again.

And again, kindly, if you or your children went through school more than 10 years ago, consider for a minute you might not have a clue what you’re talking about when you talk about how they should “pay up, you deadbeats.” It’s not just that the loans are much higher than you can imagine (when we were young and broke Dan’s relatively small loans were a serious impairment, and they were small.) it’s that starting jobs pay less — sometimes much less — than you think, and than those published “what you can expect to make” surveys say. Those surveys are mid-career salaries, or at least include them. We’ve had an influx of visas targeted to give corporations cheap skilled labor, and imported even doctors (which are trained in very different ways abroad) by the plane load. This is not so much to fulfill a need but to bring the cost of labor down over all. And it works. BOY does it work. Kids starting salaries are lower than ours were, if you account for inflation. They’re about 75% lower. And my generation started work in the post-Carter cratering (due to his insanity and the inflation of the seventies) which means we didn’t start out high. We were broke as heck. Part of this is because I couldn’t find a job for much of our early years, since no one accepted my schooling. (I’m not counting retail jobs which I did have, and without which we wouldn’t have EATEN.) But mostly it was because we weren’t being paid much, and were barely scratching a living until our mid thirties, at least. (With episodes since then, usually tied to some event or other, not what we make.)

Anyway, the kids are worse off.

BUT you’ll say, it’s the culture. If the culture valued children! If people were willing to do the work!

“You youngs deserve to be poors and overworked. Go and reproduce like the beasts of the field.”

Look, I’m not going to argue the culture values motherhood. Put a pin that too. I’ll revisit it in a moment.

But the practicalities of having children CANNOT and should not be disregarded. And kids shouldn’t be told to go ahead and give birth uphill in the snow, because it’s good for them, for humanity, for the older people who are running out of social security, or whatever.

People do things due to abstracts, yes. BUT NOT WHEN THE PRACTICAL IS DEAD SET AGAINST IT.

Look, social pressure — culture — can do a lot. And so can instincts. But they’re not everything.

I’d like to know — really know — for certain what percentage of the population desperately desires children at any given time. 20%? 90%? We don’t know. We actually have no the slightest idea.

I know I was a fairly odd duck for my generation, because I REALLY WANTED KIDS. A lot of them. And we worked very, very hard for the two we have. Including what infertility treatments cost, which weren’t cheap. (Still aren’t, but more common now, so cheaper. Our relatively trivial interventions cost us as much as IVF would cost nowadays.) But from talking to my peers, even in the eighties, when briefly it was expected you’d have children, because it was “the thing to do” I was an ODD DUCK.

So, what percentage of people truly DESIRE to have kids? I don’t know. And neither do you. Because in the past children were both inevitable if you wanted to have sex (which most people do) and an economic value add.

And what is the natural rate of infertility? Absent lack of desire and active contraception, absent abortion and infanticide? Absent cultural imperatives not to have children?

You don’t know. And neither do I. NO ONE DOES. We know now there are slightly better chances of medical science circumventing infertility. But honestly, from my acquaintance alone, even those who started trying early, the improvements achieve no better than a 25% chance of having a kid. EVEN NOW.

In the past? We here of people coming from families that birthed twelve or twenty and two survived, sure. But how much of that is survivor bias? Given most of the records we have are from baptism and marriage from the church, do we know how many couples had one or two despite really wanting many and trying hard? No. More importantly do we know how much infertility was due to marginal nutrition? (The reason I think grandma only raised five and only birthed six over 20 years of marriage.) We don’t know. All this is a blank.

But we can assume from the records of noble houses and kings and queens and even famous people (who presumably were not as inbred as royals) that the rate of infertility was fairly high.

Now look at it on the flip side, regardless of desire.

Now back to that pin we put into children and economics earlier. Children in our current culture are not an economic or material plus. They bring absolutely nothing to the family and are always and completely a drain until … well, you could say legal majority at 18, but because of extended education and the difficulties with finding jobs and supporting themselves, etc, most of our friends are supporting their kids well into their twenties if not thirties. And heck, even we ourselves would have foundered without small, but undeniable monetary help from my parents over the years. I mean, for one, we’d not have had Christmas any year. The reason we could afford the Christmas dinner, let alone gifts for the kids is that my birthday is in November and my parents usually sent me $500 for my birthday, which went for that. (And sometimes for warm coats, though we got those at thrift stores, so cheaper.)

The fact that children are not a plus value materially is partly because we’re no longer farmers, sure. Except where it’s not. Most of it if you look closely is the result of an intrusive government dictating how children and adolescents and young adults MUST be treated, for their own good as determined by experts.

These are laws and regulations established not by any sound research but through sheer alarmism.

For instance, while not advocating for “Dark Satanic Mills” do you realize that there is no proof whatsoever that sending kids to school as early as possible and teaching them as little as possible (no, really. You’re not allowed to go ahead of plan) has produced better results than having the kids, say, help in the family farm and attend school three months out of the year?

A lot of song and dance is made about kids now learning more complex things, but none of it is true. We’re graduating kids AT EIGHTEEN that have learned a complex variety of nonsense, like what pronouns to use and what the politically correct term for someone who sews is, but have no idea how to actually READ in their own language, let alone the rudimentary Greek and Latin of the past. We’re graduating kids at eighteen who KNOW that math is racist, but who can’t do change, calculate the area of a wall versus the amount of paint they need to cover it. All of these skills and far more I’d been taught by 10 in a village school that operated from 1st to 4th grade, four to five hours a day, except the teacher threw us outside to play when we were too noisy and it was fine out, and sometimes recess took two hours because she couldn’t even. In Shakespeare’s day people would know small Latin, a little Greek, a vast vocabulary and how to cypher by the time they were 10.

Sure, they didn’t know how to program computers. And they would be utterly baffled if you asked them to remember individual pronouns, because that’s what we have NAMES for. But most of our kids can’t program computers, either. They can use them, which is different.

Most kids leave High School less informed and far less educated than my mom did at fourth grade. And trust me, mom has massive holes in her knowledge of things from History to science and is weirdly susceptible to “I saw it in a movie so it must be true. They wouldn’t be allowed to make movies that way if it weren’t.” (BRIDGERTON. GAH.) But so are most of the graduates of American High Schools who spent a lot more time in school and learned no useful garment making and designing skills to go with that. And they do exactly the same mental revision of history according to movies, if you look at what they’re writing.

So, the government ONEROUSLY dictates that parents finance 18 years of non-productive learning for their kids. FURTHER MORE the jobs kids can take, which were already restrictive by the end of the last century, have grown insanely so.

It’s not that the kids CAN’T contribute economically to the family. It is that the government doesn’t allow them to, afraid that if they allow kids to take jobs — any jobs — they will magically be enslaved in Victorian mills. It has nothing to do with all of us no longer living in farms. It has to do with the fact that, say, I couldn’t ON THE BOOKS have paid my kids for cleaning the house, and deducted it as a business expense, because I was working.

More importantly, my friends couldn’t pay my kids to clean the house, or collate prints, or typeset or typo hunt for them. Therefore my kids couldn’t be making money, even in early to mid High School when they could have done so. Yeah, yeah, they did some of that anyway, but we had to pay under the table, and there’s issues with that.

Part of the barrier is also minimum wage. You’re not going to hire a fifteen year old with the judgement and attention span of a fifteen year old at $16 an hour. Pay them $5 an hour, and it’s suddenly feasible and worth it. And most American middle class parents don’t even want to take any part of that money. But it’s also good to know if they need it, the kids have SOME. (During a very bad time in my birth family, my brother’s tutoring money kept us in mortgage payments.) Arguably this is good for the kids’ self respect. It definitely is worth it for their education, but it’s verbotten.

Basically, in our regulations, we’re supposed to support our kids through an 18 year long recess, after which they’re automagically economic units and independent. Even that is profoundly unapetizing as a prospect, particularly when you’re young and insecure, and contemplating having your first child. Now add to that that most of us have eyes and see parents supporting their kids well into their thirties, and helping into their forties, and yeah, prospective parents will rightly be afraid.

Then there are other, even more onerous regulations, like the mentally handicapped “Home alone” rules that meant I couldn’t leave my nine and six year olds alone in the house, even with cell phones to be able to call me, and strict instructions not to turn on the stove and such. Again, because of one bad situation these stupid laws impose onerous takings on all the parents. I worked from home, but even so was restricted on when I could shop, when I could work, and what lectures and such I could attend by this stupidity. (Which the parents who are prone to leave the kids in dangerous situations don’t obey, anyway.)

Or add the increasingly hysterical regulations to avoid “truancy.” In Colorado there for a while, anyone could denounce you for having a child with you during school time, and leave it to you to explain that a) the kid was only 3, he only looked 6. or b) that the kid was sick and you stopped by to buy some canned soup on the way from the doctor or c) you were homeschooling and the kid was having school while out with you.

In fact the governmental “well meaning” (EH!) burden of “how to raise your child” regulations is so heavy that it adds to taking away a good half of a parent’s time, and by itself completely circumscribes the number of kids you can have.

Take the whole “Never physically punish the child.” Look, I’m not advocating beating a child, but particularly in the pre-verbal or pre-understanding years, a swat to the bottom stops dangerous behavior quicker than a time out or a philosophical discussion that can’t happen in the middle of the grocery store, anyway.

Yes, there is a thing called “Gentle parenting.” Yes, it works wonders. But it doesn’t work wonders for every child. (It worked on my second. Not my first. My second took redirection like a pro. The older one not so much.) Not every parent is capable of it. And government dictation on “you can’t do minimal physical correction” MOSTLY results in children growing up without any physical discipline whatsoever AND parents living shackled to the kids just to ensure they don’t accidentally kill themselves or others.

So what we’re rowing against is not “Parents have to be willing to make some sacrifices for children.”

It’s “Parents who have some amount of desire or at least ‘eh, wouldn’t mind’ for kids are committing to supporting another human being for possibly thirty or more years with no economic benefit and a lot of possible social and criminal liability.”

GEE! You say birth rates are falling? Shocked, shocked.

It must be lack of yelling at young people that their ancestors had kids while being much poorer, and why don’t they get with making babies?

Then there is the social. This is the part where he’s right. The culture is not just sternly against it, the culture has eliminated the image of women as a separate creature from men. No wonder we don’t know what women are, or think it’s all a construct and about clothes and stuff.

It’s not. Women’s entire biological role is built around having children. We medicalize it and thwart it at every opportunity, and treat the fact we were born female (those who were, obviously) as a condition that prevents us from being as sexually free as men, and achieving as much as men do in their “careers.”

This has been going on a long time. As I said, in the early eighties, I was an Odd duck. Furthermore, I was afraid of talking about how much I wanted children, because you see, I was a “smart woman” TM and wanting to have children, much less stay home and raise them was a-priori proof you were either stupid or abused by the men in your life.

So I kept my mouth shut.

Smart women were supposed to do what men did, sleep around and have a Splendid Career, particularly if it was in a male area.

I don’t know why. I didn’t then, and I still don’t. In retrospect, and having done it, I can’t imagine a more splendid career than raising smart and (within the limits of possible) functional kids. Or more satisfying.

Having worked as a corporate drone and as a freelancer, let me tell you, there ain’t nothing splendid about a career. Most women — and men too — trying to nourish their soul on “corporate” success meet only with grinding, boring mediocrity. And your competency and intelligence count for less than your ability to meet changing corporate fads and doctrines and a general ability to suck up. I’m not bitter or disillusioned (for a free lance writer I had more success than most, and indie has freed me further) I’m talking about what I’ve observed with friends and family over the years.

Can we change the culture? Yes. But we must stop telling various lies to people.

Lies?

Sure. We must stop telling people careers are inherently satisfying. That every job leads to a “career” instead of leading to making enough money to afford to live and build a nice life outside of work (or at least paying our own way.) That family is inferior to having some kind of material, externally defined success.

Further, through our entertainment, literature and art, we need to stop focusing on the bad parts of family. Families, like all human institutions, are flawed and can be bad, yes. But why focus on the bad? I can tell you with absolute truthfulness that this chronic depressive (Still unmedicated) would be dead as a doornail without her husband and kids. Years ago. There have been bad times, yes. I worry about the kids, yes. Sometimes I fight with my husband, yes. But on the whole, I derive more … joy, more authentic happiness from them than from anything else I’ve ever done. Sure there’s good and bad, and no one is asking you to show the good only. But why show the bad only? And why weight the bad more? It’s not artistic. It’s not mature. And culturally it’s suicidal.

More importantly, we need to stop telling people they’re going to be twenty forever and never die. I’ve seen people age. I’m aging myself. Let me tell you, sure you have friends, you have your group, but old age without descendants feels cold and bleak. As I age, I find I lean more and more on the kids emotionally if not financially or physically (YET) because I KNOW them better than I know anyone else. And because family is where they have to take you in when you show up at the door.

Look, it’s not just “someday you’ll die.” It’s “what you want will change” and “given current rates of survival, you have a good chance of being “old” and increasingly frail for about half of your life. Being a corporate go getter who sleeps around stops working more and more as those conditions set in. And having someone you saw growing up and can trust intrinsically becomes more valuable.

So, stop telling people they’ll be “forever young”. It’s not true. You can extend it to your thirties, kind of, but no further.

And yes, changing the culture will help, though the only way to do it is one on one, creator by creator, person by person. We’re not going to suddenly flip over to “and then everyone.” THAT’s not how it works.

On the other hand, there are those economic factors. And no amount of screaming at the kids they should live on less and have MORE kids is going to overcome the fact that having kids is a huge financial burden, or will consume most of the financial life for 30 years or more, depending on how many kids and how spaced. Or that for about 18 of those they’re rendering themselves criminally liable in a million ways that no human being wants to be. Like I STILL HAVE NIGHTMARES OF DROPPING MY KID AND HAVING HIM HURT HIMSELF FATALLY. The specific nightmare involves the kid suddenly throwing himself backwards, a thing toddlers do, and my not catching it in time, and kid hitting his head on the hard floor and dying. Yes, the nightmare is horrible enough, because I don’t want my child to die. BUT in the dreams I’m always also aware I’ll probably be arrested and tried, on suspicion of having done it on purpose. Because well, some people do. And the law is an ass. I usually wake up screaming. But I’ve also had friends who were called in and reported for screaming at their sixteen year old. Or because someone doesn’t approve of how they keep house. Or, yes, because they were out with a school age kid, during school hours. This doesn’t include the time husband gave younger son nursemaid’s elbow because he thought he was awake, and tried to pull him up. (He wasn’t. Arm got dislocated.) We took him to the pediatrician fully expecting to be arrested. (We weren’t. Pediatrician was sane. But that’s increasingly rare. And they’re hemmed in by mandatory snitching laws, that never seem to stop the errors but throw up a million false positives.)

NO ONE WANTS THAT. No one sane wants to put themselves in that kind of hock.

Also, no one, NO ONE knows what a joy their own kids will be till they have them. As much as I wanted kids, I had no idea how much I’d love them, or how much joy raising them would bring me. And it’s something you really can’t explain. (If I’d known I’d have tried harder. We’d have hocked the house and the cats to be more aggressive on infertility.)

So, it’s something where the rewards are unclear and hard to communicate to someone else. BUT the liabilities are clear, in your face, and often very realistically material.

Gee, I wonder why the kids aren’t having kids. Maybe if we shout at them and shame them more?

Or perhaps we can work to get government off their backs, become sane about regulations which the bad actors ignore ANYWAY, and try — to the best of our abilities — to easy young people’s path into a rewarding working life, and make it easier for them to have kids without being watched like hawks by karens every step of the way?

And perhaps, just perhaps see what we can do about forgiving or at least commuting the student loan penalties (for most people incurred when so young they could have no idea what they were doing, and a larcenous, lying business anyway. And, listen, the money has been spent. Ultimately it was the government printing more money to give to colleges. The value has been inflated away.) Help them find jobs. Train them if needed (the expensive universities don’t do that.) Introduce them to likely people of the opposite sex. (Look, I try, but I’m limited.) Help them a bit even if (only) as my parents did to us.

Lobby to ease the regulations on working from home. So mothers can do it. Lobby to ease the regulations on teens working. And allow them to get a somewhat lower wage the first years of work. (There shouldn’t be minimum wage anyway!)

AND GET THE D*MNED GOVERNMENT OFF THEIR BACKS.

Whether the young people of child bearing are yours or not — so many of us have no kids, or had fewer than we wanted — don’t shout at them. Give them a hand up. Help them feel the security needed. Make having kids less daunting. Don’t require they go live in a cabin in the forest and wash their clothes in the creek. You wouldn’t want to do it, why should they? Require no UNREASONABLE sacrifices.

And write movies and books about the joy of having and raising kids. It’s the type of thing art can convey when logic can’t.

We must, must turn this ship around. For the future.

So there will be one.

*Sorry I’m late with a free short story. I have one about a shifter squirrel started, but this post wanted out. And then it was Yuge. Sorry. – SAH*

I have to confess that for a while now I’ve been reading the lefty laments on the election with every measure of enjoyment.

Listening to them rage, howl, and throw themselves on the floor screaming that those d*mn disobedient peasants voted for Trump for “the price of eggs! They voted for eggs!” is comedy gold when you look at it from the POV of the lefty planners and strategists really being spider creatures from Alpha Centauri who landed yesterday and are trying to understand humanity.

On the other hand, a young friend also laughing at them unearthed something that took that enjoyment and strangled it, and shoved it down my throat to become absolute and utter unreasoning anger. This post is the result of that.

What my friend first posted in a private group was this:

Guys guys
I just learned the most hilarious term
“Treatler”
It’s about people willing to overlook Travesty and Injustice and Racism because they like their “treats”
…like they literally made up a term for “liking nice things makes you Hitler”

She — younger than I so less prone to yell at the sky, I guess, thought this was hilarious, and went diving for more of the insanity. And found it.

(Vague recollection of nice things being “treats”–unimportant, antisocial–was this unhinged Twitter discussion years ago about … I think it was year-round bananas being listed as “treats” people would have to do without to combat climate change)

From UrbanDictionary:
Coined by left-wing twitter, “Treatler” is used to describe people whose extent of political ambition is about their selfish want of fulfilling their consumerist desires, even at the cost of lives.
Guy 1: Who do you plan on voting for in the coming election?

Guy 2: I think i’ll vote for Mr.Smith. I know he said those things about how he wishes to genocide minorities, but he said he will make gas 15 cents cheaper by the end of his term.

Guy 1: You’re such a fucking Treatler.

And this is where I went insane. In fact, this is where I went Librarian Poo!

Look, ignore the stuff about the candidate saying he wishes to genocide minorities. Anyone who has been through a couple of election cycles knows the left says that about anyone who opposes them, regardless of if the person, him/herself is a minority. In fact, of course, it is the left once its regime is firmly established that always sets about exterminating and running down minorities. (No? Ask what it’s like to be gay in Cuba, what it was like to be black or Jewish in the USSR, what it’s still like to be gay in Venezuela, or for that matter what it was like to live in a black neighborhood in the US during the hot enthusiasm for St. Floyd of Fentanyl.) What are they really saying?

They’re saying that someone wanting to be able to afford necessities like gas, or wanting to buy a little extra — bananas! BANANAS! for the love of holy frig! — with the money THEY EARN AND WORK FOR is wanting “treats.”

As though the vast majority of working people were some kind of toddler under the care of a benevolent kindergarten teachers, waiting for “treats” for good behavior.

What the actual tri-plated, reinforced, damned gal of these would be aristos! TREATS?

Eggs, aren’t treats. Affordable gas isn’t a treat. Bananas aren’t treats. They’re the basic building blocks of a decent life and decent nutrition made possible for the working man and woman by free trade, innovations in transportation and drilling, and manufacturing. They’re the earned fruits of civilization built by our forefathers and foremothers with insane work, the sweat of their brow and ingenuous innovation.

They’re not the aristos to give or withhold. They are not — or should not be — under the control of any unelected bureaucrat and they should not be restricted or affected by any precious regulation, no matter if the people who came up with it thought that doing it would bring about utopia.

“Climate change” is not an excuse to restrict people’s access to have they have earned should be able to buy in any sane system. The people’s PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS, which, yes, includes full bellies and a sweet treat now and then, shall not be impaired. Other things that aren’t a sufficient excuse for government to restrict people’s liberty to buy what they can afford include but are not limited to: inequality, redistribution, racism, and “its would be nice.”

In fact, it is the Lords of Despair, the purveyors of Utopian pap who are the toddlers, screaming and rolling on the floor, demanding that others do what the toddlers say or they’ll hold their breaths till they turn blue, or scream for endless hours on Bluesky and the like, and sneer at us with a mighty sneer.

And no matter the reasons they say they want to deny the population these “treats” — TREATS, could they have come up with a more infantile name? What a window to their infantile worldview and the infantilization they wish on the rest of us? — the true reason is because they want to be the only ones who have these things, and therefore be special. They want to be the favorite students of kindergarten teacher government, and get all the gold stars and be able to preen and act special.

This is because they know at their heart they are the least useful and creative people imaginable. They demand privileges and a pedestal because they know anyone on the street is better than the yawning chasm that passes for the soul they sold to the gods of envy.

Well, since they’ve never studied history and have a sketchy grasp on linguistics, let me point out Utopia means “No place.” And in fact, every place they have attempted to install this “utopia” of their has turned to hell on Earth.

It’s time and more than enough to shove the utopian aristos aside (From how high, and with what strength you shove them is a decision I will stay out of) and allow people to enjoy the blessings of liberty.

People are voting for their own self-interest. Of such things is civilization created. Because no one knows what each person wants or needs than that person. No philosopher, no king, certainly no bureaucrat can guess or decide such things for the individual. In fact, the very system of voting is based on the thought that each individual knows his own interests best and should be allowed to have a say in governance to preserve them.

Yes, it is licit, what’s more, it is highly moral to vote for a candidate because you think he/she will make eggs and gas cheaper, jobs more abundant, bananas easier to buy. The ultimate goal of any human civilization is long-lived, healthy seniors and lots of fat and happy babies. Only those allow us to build and improve, and reach ever forward so the species shall not be extinct.

Anything that stands in the way of that is an evil not to be countenanced.

So, go ahead, you shit-headed aristos. Go ahead, call me a treatler.

In return I will call you what you are: You are an unserious utopian, a too-early-weaned toddler rolling on the floor of kindergarten, demanding the other kids give back those gold stars, because onlyyyy you deserve them!

Or if you prefer, you are a cankerous worm fallen from the rotten ass of Karl Marx, and if given your way you will turn all of the Earth as dismal, sterile and dead as that thing you call a soul.

It’s time you were told the only place you get to rule is no place. It’s time your rolling around screaming were stopped and you got a good spanking.

If you’re very lucky, the spanking won’t be administered with a tire iron.

Hey, guys, in a major case of brain slippage (I’ve caught a friend’s cold. Yes, I know. I should be in a bubble till I’m fully over whatever this is) I forgot to tell you I put Christmas In The Stars on Sale for 99c, and it’s been on sale all day.

If you guys already have it (probably, since it came out last year) it’s fine, but hey, it’s Christmas. You might even want to give it to someone. I think you can even set it for delivery on Christmas day. Or Christmas eve. So…

Christmas in the Stars: On Sale for 99c.

This is a collection of four Christmas short stories.
It starts with a star-explorer stranded in unknown coordinates listening very hard for sleigh bells. Then there are two deserters of a doomed planetary war, in a forsaken planet, trying to do the right thing to secure peace and good will, even if one of them happens to be dead. And did you know there was a small, sweet robot at the nativity? Also, sometimes, all you need for a Merry Christmas is a cat.
This is a short collection, but it’s heartwarming and cozy, and the sort of thing to read on a snowy afternoon, by your fireplace, with a cup of eggnog nearby.

These are some of dumbest things I’ve heard all year, in no particular order.

Yes, most of them are since the election. But they’re so dumb, they have to be dumber than even claiming Trump had somehow arranged to be shot, with centimeters of accuracy and perfect timing that require not a twitch.

The ever-insightful Gay Patriot, whose site used to be one of my daily reads unearthed this gem.

How dumb is it? Let me count the ways:
First – why do they think Trump is going to do anything to stop gay marriages? The man has appointed a married gay man with kids as treasury secretary, has used Rich Grennel as a surrogate during campaign, and hosts gay weddings at Maralago.

Second – if Trump really were a cardboard cuttout of a social conservative, fifiandfoming all over the place, and were going to forbid gay marriage, why on EARTH would you get married in a rush? He’s going to forbid new gay marriages but totally respect previous ones? In what world.

Third – If Trump were really going to put all gays in camps, why would you want to have your union registered, thereby telling the state you’re definitely gay? Is this an attempt to go to the head of the line on being shipped to camps? Oh, guys, I heard they don’t even have pedicurists. And the hair stylists are awful. Barbaric, really.

Fourth – Having kids? You really want to do that if going towards a regime (in your mind) where you’ll be forbidden to live as you wish? Also, please, guys. I know you didn’t pay attention to this in your health classes, but even the best surrogates lack time machines in their wombs. In two months you’ll be lucky to have an embryo implanted. You certainly won’t have a baby.

Second up: Liberal Women Are Undergoing Sterilization and Blaming Trump: ‘Election Tied My Hands’.

Yes, yes, they are getting their tubes tied because they could be raped and get pregnant tomorrow and reeeeeeeeeeeeeee they wouldn’t be able to have an abortion, and how horribad!

Let’s count the ways in which this is stupid….

First – Abortion is not forbidden utterly anywhere in the US, and even the most restrictive states have exceptions for health of mother, rape and incest. (Whether they should have them for the last two is a complicated moral question we are NOT going to debate here.)

Two – Even if you don’t find out you got pregnant before the date at which it’s forbidden in your state, you do realize there are still planes trains and automobiles, right? If you’re rich enough to have an elective tube tying for the heck of it, you certainly aren’t too poor for a bus ticket to another state and a week at the days inn. NOT that it will be needed, but even in this awful land or your dystopic imagination, pre-emptive sterilization is a bit far.

Third – Do we need a third? — rape is still a relatively rare occurrence, though becoming less saw with the third world diverse cultural enrichment pouring over the border (Not race. Culture. No. Westerners didn’t introduce rape to the third world. They might have introduced the concept of rape, because before the idea of women having a right to say no was just not a thing.) Your greatest danger of an unwanted pregnancy is having unprotected sex. And there’s an amazingly good preventive for that. Not having unprotected sex. And accepting that in the case of pregnancy (no method is 100%) it’s just one of those risks you’re taking. Abstinence is neither impossible, nor life blighting as a lot of people know.

Fourth – you do in fact have a choice, and ooh, boy did you choose dumb with both feet and a pair of hooves. Sterilization is an extreme response to a threat that does not exist and you’re going to regret this.

And then, and then there’s THIS: Watch CNN’s Scott Jennings’ Facial Expression When a Lib Said This About Hunter Biden’s Pardon.

What did the lib say? You’ll never guess so I’ll show you.

How do you count the wrong? Apparently Leigh McGowan is a “political influencer” and she should influence herself right down to a medical professional and get prozac or something, because it won’t cure her stupidity but might make her less eager to flap lips and share it with the world.

She thinks Trump could put Hunter Biden in front of firing squads.

First- Yes, treason has a death penalty. BUT–

Second – We’re not at open war with China, so it’s hard to say in selling us out the Bidens were giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

Third – there are still modes of selling that fall under the espionage laws. Does Ms. McGowan know that the Bidens committed this infraction? Would she like to share with the world? Did she bring enough for the whole class? (I don’t know. I figure amphetamines.)

Fourth – I’ve already given this more thought than this idiot did and I’m late with the post and feeling under the weather again, so I’d prefer — greatly — not to do research on this. However, I don’t think people would be executed by firing squad for federal crimes.

Last I heard the statutes talked of hanging, I THINK. But as much as we’d all enjoy the show, (no? If they’d committed acts of espionage at that level?) I believe right now it’s lethal injection. Because it’s not cruel and unusual or something like that.

Anyway, dear Leigh McGowan:

Anyway, that’s it for this crop of stupid. But don’t despair. At the rate the left is losing its sh*t they’ll say even crazier things before the end of the year.

Meanwhile, ya’ll be careful.

I might have been a little tired when I read this last night. I might have mentioned? Maybe? That part of this post-viral thingy is that I get very tired suddenly, and sometimes my awareness doesn’t catch up with me in time. I think it hit about three pages into this story, so …

It’s not an audio book, it’s a reading. Which is no excuse for forgetting how to pronounce a character’s name, forgetting the story title at least once and… well, if I didn’t forget my own name it’s a close thing.

On the other hand it’s the one story I ever plagiarized (though considering I took it from a pencil-drawn comic book that remains in my bedside table to this day, maybe we should call it an homage. Besides I bought the author off with Chinese food.)

I’m doing this, because I am doing a Winter Blog Fundraising. I’m doing a Winter Blog Fundraiser, hopefully the first and last, because the summer one was odd. More people donated than ever, but the amounts were lower. So… at the time people suggested I do a winter one. I meant to forget it, but we need to have a bunch of stuff done on the house and that’s… well… Which would be okay, but it comes on top of very expensive water main repairs. So– Here we are and I’m doing a Winter Blog Fundraiser. There’s a Give Send Go for the Winter Fundraiser and well, if you need anything else including a snail mail address, please go here.

But I hate to do it without giving anything in return. So I’m doing something for free every two days.

Yes, I do know I already do the blog for free, but you know? Something extra.

And so, yesterday I read Calling The Mom Squad, based on younger son’s comic. He was four when he wrote it. I would scan it and put it here, but he says no. So…

To download or listen to the reading, go here. I hope you enjoy it.

It is said that the past is another country, they do things differently there.

The same can be said of the future. And both the past and the future are ultimately unknowable to us. Even the past we lived in changes in memory as we go along, and we often forget what doesn’t accord with the way we live now. Nothing crucial mind, it’s just… remember when there were little pumps for toothpaste? You pressed a button at the top, and it dispensed toothpaste? It was available for maybe five years, and sometimes now I wonder if I dreamed it, or if it was a regional thing.

But the future is more so, because we will never live in it. Not past a certain point. I mean, look, maybe I’ll be wildly lucky and live to 100. That means anything past the 2060s, or maybe the 2050s — EVEN IF I LIVE THAT LONG — will be, for me, an undiscovered country. I can dream it and think of it, but I’ll never see it.

I don’t even know if there will be anything of me — biological descendants, writing — that will survive that long.

This doesn’t matter. The future will exist, if not for us, for someone, and it is part of being human to try to make that future as good — for our conception of good — as we can make it.

The obsession with the end of the world, the destruction of all things, the absolute certainty that there will be no future, or that the future should not be, since no part of us will be in it (An increasingly common situation for people my generation and younger) is deranged and increases the chances of a bad future for everyone.

It is part and parcel of the falling apart of Western civilization, which in turn seems to be a form of survivor’s guilt inexplicable to or by any civilization before us (Though some of them did similar). It’s part that and part “Rich child guilt.” It’s like the west found itself so triumphant, so rich that it had to self efface so as not to make the rest of humanity look bad.

So instead of taking the triumph and pushing it further, we sat down and started meditating on our end and telling tales of how it would all inevitably go wrong and horrible.

We’re not the first people to do this, and what hits as “rich” and “triumphant” is much lower than you’d think it is. And for those who are going to tell me it was from losing religion, I’ll point out the ancient Israelites, a theocracy, did in fact do exactly the same thing and start meditating on the end and why they deserved it. It is where we get our entire notion of eschatology.

I think it comes from humans being descended from scavenger apes. For scavengers, by definition, if times are too good and they’re finding many kills to scavenge, the ecosystem is overloaded and there will follow a time of famine.

So every time we push through and avert the end; every time our children (or someone’s children) live better than we did, it activates the fear it’s all going to collapse and the perverse human need to see dire predictions come true.

I don’t have a prescription to avoid it. I too am human. I too am beset with fears. Most of my fears for the future center on my kids, as I suspect it’s normal. But even if there’s no one related to me past the next generation, I still care about humanity and I still fear for them.

The problem with fear is that it can be self-fulfilling. I’m still convinced a lot of the destruction and attempted destruction we see is because of the dystopian fiction and the dingy futures of seventies and eighties science fiction. Note Elon Musk is, like me, a child of Heinlein and the belief in a better future. More importantly, the fear, despair and certainty of a worse future is bad for you now, in the present. It constricts the soul, it damages the vision, it impairs the ability to work and create.

So I wish I had a magic wand and could make it go away in each and every one of you.

I can’t. I can’t even do that for myself.

All I can share with you is what I do when the dark closes in, and the way to the future is obscured, and I no longer believe there is A future: Work. Work as if the future were there, and you could make it the future you want.

You and I will never see the future. Not the long future, where things are better (if we’re very lucky.) We’ll probably never see humanity go to the stars, though if we’re lucky we might see the beginning.

But we can hold on to work even when hope fails us, and work for it, as hard and as steadily as we know how.

I find if you work through the tears and the terror, where the path is invisible beneath your feet, sometimes, through it all, you catch a glimpse of what might come after.

And it makes it all worthwhile.

Real or metaphorical, go plant a tree today that you’ll never live to see the fruit of.

Let the vision and hope of that future reach backward to nourish you.

Go.

Book Promo

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

FROM CEDAR SANDERSON: Giant Counting Robots

The robots are coming! The robots are coming! Whatever we do, we’ve got to be cunning!
Count along as they thunder into your town! Then translate into binary to communicate with them. This book is intended to be fun to read aloud, engage with, and grow along with a young reader until they’re ready for code-breaking!
From simple numerical concepts to the more complex, this is a read-aloud, learning, teaching book.
Most of all, though?
IT’S GOT ROBOTS!
So many robots of all shapes and sizes!
Count all the robots, they’re full of surprises!

This picture book will appeal to ages 3 to 10 as it can be read aloud, used to teach numbers and counting, and later, binary coding! Fun, educational, but most of all… The robots are coming! We can’t stop them at all!

FROM HOLLY LEROY: Hostile Earth

Terra Vonn is fighting to survive in a destroyed world, surrounded by unspeakable horror . . . and things are about to get much worse. After witnessing the vicious murder of her mother, Terra has a singular focus—exacting revenge on the killers. But before she can complete her plans, savagery intervenes and she is cast alone into a brutal post-apocalyptic world. As she trails the men south through a land filled with cannibalistic criminals, slave traders, and lunatics, the hunter becomes the hunted. Terra quickly learns that she is neither as tough nor as brave as she thinks she is. Worse, she may be the only one who stands between what little remains of civilization and destruction.

FROM P. L. KENNY: A Deadly Dish: A Rafe Merritt Thriller

“She’s some dish.”
“Make sure you don’t take a bite of that dish, Lake.” Rafe lowered himself into the sedan’s backseat. “Remember she’s suspected of murdering a dozen men that we know of. I’d hate to have to tell your mother you were lucky thirteen.”

Police Commissioner Rafe Merritt has his hands full when a dangerous beauty comes to town. With the bodies piling up and a target on his back, can the young commissioner put an end to the murder spree before he becomes the next victim of the “Deadly Dish”?

A mystery thriller short story in the pulp tradition of The Shadow, The Whisperer, and Bulldog Drummond.

FROM L. DOUGLAS GARRETT AND NICKY ROBINSON: Remember the Dead: A Collection (Remember The Trade Book 1)

What was The Project? How did it start? What happened to forge the man known as David Cox? Six short stories and a new novella, alongside the original Remember When tell the tales that begin the Remember The Trade series.

His job was to be a bad guy for a good cause. David Cox was a mercenary soldier and agent, selected and trained for the dirty jobs of clandestine operations. But David was only supposed to be a cover identity. And once he’d learned how powerful it was to be ruthless, how could he resist bringing that home?The Remember The Dead collection contains the eponymous new novella of a pivotal mission in 1980, the formative year of David Cox’s career. The short stories and vignettes of other missions and characters help paint the picture of his early years.

WITH A STORY FROM CHARLI COX (AND ONE FROM MARK WANDREY): Express Elevator to Hell (Universes at War Book 1)

Attack! Attack! Attack!

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and for the people on a starship waiting to make a planetary assault, that trip will be as fast as possible so they can—hopefully—make it through the enemy’s defenses. Some liken such a trip as being on an express elevator to hell.

But a planetary assault is a dangerous thing, and it can have consequences for the assaulters as well as those being assaulted. Are you ready to join the attack?

Fifteen of today’s leading scifi authors take you on a variety of science fiction assaults that will have you on the edge of your seats as you go in with the first wave. Are you ready to jump on board the express elevator to hell?

You better be, because it’s going down!

FROM MARY CATELLI: Dragonfire and Time

An angry dragon demands justice of the king.

Mae, a royal wizard, is assigned the task: the dragon had metted out her own justice, burning a thief with dragonfire, but she had seen him since, whole and sound, and this she will not tolerate, so Mae must put an end to it.

Mae goes to discover the truth of this before the dragon leaves its lair to extract her own justice. And in her search of the spring festivities, learns more secrets than the dragon had even guessed of.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Holidays and Holy Days (Modern Gods)

Hera was hard at work in her counseling office when her clients started cancelling for Thanksgiving travel. She…hadn’t realized that a) that was coming up, or b) what it actually about…until she did a little research and decided to celebrate. In the process, she learns about Christmas coming, and decides that it’s high time somebody threw Christ a birthday party.

Of course, nothing goes as planned, but when does it ever?

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

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

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

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: DOMINEERING

*I’m going to rattle the tin cup. I’m doing my winter fundraiser. And while I mean to give free ice-cream every day, I haven’t recovered from Thanksgiving (I know… But hey.) Anyway, there’s a Give Send Go for the Winter Fundraiser and well, if you need anything else including the why and all, please go here. Tomorrow I hope to do a Christmas short story and another reading. We’ll see. I spent most of today sleeping. And now the memes!- SAH*