Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

When I was little, living where I lived, we notionally had electrical power.

Notionally because it was often more in default than not. Meaning that the electrical power was almost exclusively used for light, and that the light as such we would now here, and probably there, consider grossly inadequate (sixty watt naked light bulb in the middle of a huge room,for instance) and it went down all the time, on the regular.

It particularly went down during summer, not because of air conditioning — I think the first time I encountered air conditioning I was 17? It was a dress shop in Porto and they advertised air conditioning on the door. — but because people stayed up later/kept lights on longer, and also might run a fan or two.

So we were prepared. As in, it wasn’t a matter of “shoot, the light went down” but just going to the kitchen cabinet and getting the candles or oil lamps, etc. and lighting them up. In a deranged way, I learned to enjoy when the light went down. For one, the family would go for long walks. (Took me years to figure out that was because my parents didn’t trust me around candles, mostly because I really, really liked them. And was very clumsy.) For another, well, I could take a candle to a corner and read, and it excused me from socializing.

So, why do I bring this up? Well, first of all because there’s enough socialism in the air, and we all know what socialists used before candles. But for another because everyone I know is really, really scared.

It’s not that we think the American people want or would vote for communism. It’s that we’re seeing the fact the socialists/commies are again running a potemkin campaign, and you only do that when you know you have got it all sewn up.

Sure we hope and pray — boy do we pray — they fail, but …. you know?

And we saw the big steal go through once. And it’s reasonable to fear it will happen again. And, boy, oh boy, is their program pure communism straight up, guaranteed to immiserate everyone.

So, some hope is more that their program has been failing to take hold for four years — not for lack of trying — and that “push harder” is not likely to work any better. Some hope is that they are truly, truly stupid and some of their attempts will mar their other attempts. Like, no the invaders they enticed in won’t stay in as spiral deeper and deeper into depression.

But that is bitter hope, in both cases, and it’s impossible not to feel scared/out of it/panicked as the election draws near.

First of all, prepare. Just prepare. As much as you can. And I do realize some of us are preparing on a severely injured budget. But try anyway. And it might be stuff like “Gardening supplies and seeds for next spring” because honestly even if Trump pulls a miracle, we will go through hard hard times before things straighten out. It’s already baked in.

Second, remember you’re not alone.

I figure that second is my function. To remind you you’re not alone. Because being alone with the bad thing, in the dark, is the worst thing ever.

I promise I’ll keep the lights on in this blog as long as I’m not forcibly prevented from doing so. And even if I’m forcibly prevented from being on the net, I know several of you are keeping address lists of commenters. I’ll get those somehow, and you might get this blog once a month, on mimeographed sheets (are there still mimeographs?) or more likely printed in a 3d printed guttenbergish press, stapled together, like old style fanzines. (I figure it’s the only way to continue selling fiction too, if everything collapses.)

And if I go silent, if the really worst worst possible happens, I hope someone will pick up the pen and continue.

Because, yes, more needs to be done than talking about it. We all know that. And for Fed the Fred, I’m not even talking violence. For instance some people here have been working with TrueTheVote for years. (Though Fed, honey, you should consider how hard we’re being pushed, and incentives.)

BUT all forms of resistance, even passive, start with knowing you’re not alone.

You’re not alone. There are other people out there feeling the same. I suspect we’re the majority.

If the worst happens, keep the lights on.

Likely the light will be seen through the night and inspire others into lighting their own light. Even if it’s a little candle, or an oil lamp, it reduces the darkness overall.

And if the worst of the worst happen, the light we keep on as long as possible will be seen through the dark times to inspire generations still unborn.

Be not afraid.

Light a candle.

My brain is probably under the sofa with the cats. Look, it’s been a very weird week. So weird that “dealing with cleaning up and fixing basement flood” is a minor inconvenience and definitely not the one that’s making it hard for me to sleep and eat.

As usual, if you’re the praying kind, keep me and mine in your prayers.

Meanwhile, yes, I like messing around with AI art, and so, there follow a few visual prompts for you to play with. Or not. I’m not the boss of you.

I just need a day to regain my equilibrium and stop being salty at the world.

A lot of people here are older than I, but even I remember the ethos I grew up with: the idea that top people rose to top positions, and that “experts” in the government knew what was going on and could forecast how things should be done, and what to do for “progress.”

I never put much faith in it, but that’s probably both because of a problem with authority (A very small problem. I neither like it nor trust it. While understanding not all authority is bad, and that it’s impossible for me to verify everything for myself and trust no one. So, you know, a tiny problem about the size of the universe) and because of early experiences.

Also I suspect because of growing up in a society that recognized “given” authority derived from birth or credentials, which I always found to have a hollow sound when tested if you know what I mean. When you’re eight, in an argument with an expert, and realize he missed some great big honking discrepancies in the data, you’re going to give authority the side eye forever. Being in a society that forces you to show outward compliance just gets you very salty and low-key mad forever.

But anyway, even I seemingly gave “people in charge” far more credit than they deserved. Than they ever deserved.

Last night, and for reasons of being inexplicably and profoundly depressed, which causes me to fall down rabbit holes, and usually depressing ones, I fell into a rabbit hole about Lebensborn.

I knew about the program, which apparently puts me in a minority. In fact, I don’t remember when I first heard of it, though I have a vague, somewhat hazy idea I’ve “always known” which would mean I first heard of it in elementary school. And there’s a sense I based the upbringing of the Mules/Good Men on it.

For those too sane to follow the link, the Lebensborn homes/program were an attempt to create more babies of “good Aryan blood” and it turned out just as evil as the Holocaust, though from another perspective. I mean, one is tempted to call it opposite, because they aimed to create human lives, rather than eliminate them, but in the end it was exactly the same thing and perhaps even more arrogant.

Killing people in batch lots and attempting to eliminate an entire sub-race (of sorts. The genetics are more nebulous than that) is arrogant, but it is also to an extent understandable as a goal for a state to undertake. At least, killing off people in batch lots — normally in war, but sometimes internal minorities — has always been a thing that the state has done, even when the state was as small as a kingdom scarcely larger than a family.

But that humans would presume to breed other humans like cattle, that seemed oddly overreaching and strange.

It was of course the manifestation of a really old impulse, but now layered with “scientific.”

Some people hate it when I talk about the early 20th century, or the mid-20th century and point out it was a time of diminishing freedom, a time when people expected even less freedom in the future, a time when we expected “experts” to run every aspect of our lives in the future.

People of a conservative bend have gotten so used to blaming everything that’s wrong on the sixties/seventies, than they don’t realize that while bad and worsened by Soviet agit-prop, was a reaction to what had been happening before. (And before my unreconstructed hippie readers question the “bad” — yes, tearing down of all norms and rules, but worse, casting doubt on the very foundations of humanity is wrong and bad. Casting pair-bonding as slavery, casting having children as more slavery, and making the ideal human completely ideally isolated and self actuated was very bad and led directly to where we are, in this atomized, broken society where the species seems quite likely to not-reproduce itself into oblivium.)

It was a reaction to letting the best men run everything, and to treating humans as a sort of gadget that could be put in places, and would act in predictable ways. All at the behest of the “best” and “smartest” of people.

What we’re seeing now on the left is nothing new. It’s the reassertion of all these ideas. Part of the reason I object to saying the Nazis were “right wing” (besides their being another species of Marxist) is that they were the flowering of this idea of expert-rule and “best men in charge”.

We say current leftists look at 1984 and treat it as an how-to manual, but that’s not quite true. It’s more that that 1984 and the ideas of the left about society all come from the mass-production era where, because making widgets in bulk was cheaper, humans made the leap of thinking planning everything centrally was better.

The truth is it never worked. It’s not even a matter of it worked poorly, or it had bad side effects. The central thing itself never worked. I remember hearing about Lebensborn early enough that people assumed the kids who went came from it would be healthier, or stronger, or live longer. Sure, breeding humans like animals was wrong, and raising them in batch lots was wrong, but it got a superior product right?

Well, no. It got a bog standard product, humans like the rest of us, suffering from the same diseases and defects heirs to the same frailty. (The human genome is complicated. Even if we get to designing it, it won’t be better.)

The idea of central planning and of group guilt persisted, and in some cases was even stronger after the war. Which is why the Lebensborn children were treated so badly in so many countries, as it was presumed their “German blood” now made them naturally evil. (Many of them were actually Polish. Or other nationalities. Also, no. Germany did not fall into Nazism because it was uniquely evil. If I had to guess it was more susceptible to falling for the central planning thing because it was one of the later-united polities, and in fact a sort of empire all by itself. The shocks of WWI didn’t help.) But there it is.

And central planning never worked. Mostly because it makes it easy to fall victim to ONE PERSON’s obsessions or insanity. Like, did you know that Fauci speculated you could use face masks to avoid AIDs back in the 80s? Because he did. It seems to be his own personal idiocy. Now, he has others, and he’s far from clean, but even the best of men will have blindspots and obsessions. Giving anyone that kind of control over a country or a civilization just leads to bigger and more bizarre failures.

It always failed. The US, as far as it remained free, has propped and fed a lot of evil central-control experiments, including the European illusions of “limited socialism”.

Now it’s all falling apart. And it’s important to remember not to go back to the sort of “but we were united and there was order” society of the early twentieth century.

We have the tech and the ability to organize in many, agile, small polities. While the federal government in the US has its uses, those uses should be strictly limited to the duties appointed to it by the constitution. Everything else should devolve to the smaller possible polity, and eventually the individual.

Aim small, miss small.

Instead, the 20th century is a study in aiming huge and missing … entire countries. Look at China’s population games.

The past has a way of being covered by our memories in glossy, soft and glowing tones. Mostly because when we were young enough we imagined things worked way better.

But they never did. The ability of dissemination of information now allows us to see how poorly central planning always works.

It’s time to ensure that message sticks and we don’t careen back into the illusion that all the best men have got our back.

A couple of centuries is enough for failed — and evil — experiments.

Let’s not ride that carousel again.

I read somewhere that Obama had authorized our three letter agencies to run psy-ops on American soil.

If true — I’m not sure how one does that precisely, or why no one made a big stink about it at the time — that is not an admission they’ve got more powerful, but that they’ve got weak enough to need to use the apparatus of state for their gaslighting.

Because the gaslighting was going on before. Just more efficiently. Things like, oh, remember when they convinced the world that Ford, an athlete, was too clumsy to live? or that Nixon was the greatest crook ever to occupy the presidency and had done something so horrendous no one else had even thought about it? how about that FDR was an honest man who had only the nation’s best interests at heart?

And that’s without counting the great deceptions of my life time. There is a reason most Americans think every show should have a gay character, or that races should be represented 50/50. That is the previous gaslighting telling them that.

And sure, there are still people convinced that all illegals are coming in to work, and that they are all a kind of saint because of the gaslighting that still works.

But most of it doesn’t.

It started falling apart during Obama’s administration. Yesterday Dan was watching some movie, and there was an hagiographic comment on Obama and I realized I haven’t heard any of those. Not even that many in his second term, much less after he left office. With Clinton, the glowing comments continued for decades.

I remember they tried to make Obama into FDR, but it didn’t stick. None of it has stuck. With TV, radio, movies, everything trying to prepare for the ascension of Hillary — no? Most of those movies with Madame president? What do you think that was about — and it didn’t work. It still isn’t working. They were willing to keep Biden in place, and they tired the narrative of “he really won the debate” but it didn’t work.

So, when you hear about how popular Kamala is, or how great her polls? Remember that.

It’s all a psyops.

The psyops is in the service of making you believe there was no fraud. You must, in self preservation point out over and over and loudly that fraud is the only way they’ll win. You need to shame the “respectable right” in their attempts to hide the fraud, because, well, gentlemen (and ladies) wouldn’t believe something so uncouth. And they certainly wouldn’t protest.

Be uncouth my friends. The psyops is breaking, and our salvation lies in telling one and all that the king is naked. And he’s an ugly sight. Gigantic, indeterminate gender sibling is ugly and its parent, the state, dresses it funny.

This week they’re going to try really hard to blast the DNC at us from every angle, but already they’re treading Babylon Bee territory, with their free abortions and vasectomies. They have no clue how WEIRD they sound to normal people. Which makes the psyops hard to stick.

Be uncouth. And don’t let them get us mad at each other. They only have one thing they can do now, to try to save themselves, and that’s to get us fighting. Don’t let them.

Be not afraid. They might still fraud their way in. That’s a battle they might yet win. I have a feeling it will just be a more complicated way of losing the war, though.

We in this blog are fairly resistant to psyops, anyway. Just make sure we inoculate others.

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 PAM UPHOFF: Origin Stories (Chronicles of the Fall Book 11)

Six stories in the Troystvennyy Soyuz on the run up to and during the Fall of the Alliance.

Young people with problems with the brutal society, and all too often their own families. Young men and women reaching for a better future, as everything changes around them.

FROM D. A. BROCK: Tales of the Texas Navy: Volume 1

This mini-anthology contains two short stories in the ‘Republic of Texas Navy’ universe, revealing heretofore unknown facets of that world.

FROM KEN LIZZI: Semi-Autos and Sorcery: The Complete Series: An Urban Fantasy (Semi-Autos & Sorcery Box Sets Book 1)

The Complete Semi-Autos and Sorcery Boxset.

FROM M.C.A. HOGARTH: Haley and the Town of Refuge (Haley and Nana Book 6)

A girl, a town… and a final choice.

Spring is just around the corner when the town of Refuge is at last asked to confront the Trial’s true challenge, an event that kicks off a furor in its population. But for Haley Landry, level 9 Questgiver, the challenge is more personal. After nine months of working with the alien system and overseeing the growth of her tiny town, a questline brings her to a crossroads, not only for herself, but for Refuge as well.

It’s the hardest decision Haley has had to make, and no one can make it for her. But her choice will shape the future, inside her heart, and out of it.

Join Haley, Nana, and the residents of Refuge for one final adventure in this cozy LitRPG apocalypse. There’s a brownie recipe in the back, because no matter how heavy the material, that’s still the kind of series this is.

FROM LIANE ZANE: The Covert Guardian (The Unsanctioned Guardians Book 1)

Prequel to the Elioud Legacy series

Every hero starts somewhere. She’s going to take the fast track from student to trained covert operative.

Six months ago, Olivia Markham testified in the grueling murder trial of her cousin Emily’s killer. When her boyfriend Jamie surprises Olivia with a trip to Ibiza, party island of the world, her family and friends urge her to go. After all, Emily had been her best friend, the one she’d planned to room with at Brown University her freshman year.

Olivia gets her chance to let loose—only not in the way anyone could foresee.

What was supposed to be a vacation dancing and drinking on the beach trying to move on from her cousin’s death turns into a nightmare terrorist attack instead. As men with automatic weapons and knives move through screaming, swimsuit-clad, and drunken tourists, Olivia can’t flee. She has to do something. Even if it kills her. So she stops and confronts a knife-wielding man who’d just slaughtered a young couple.

It was a foolhardy act.

But Olivia’s presence of mind and surprising fighting skills don’t go unnoticed—or in vain. A team from the Special Activities Division, the CIA’s ultra-clandestine paramilitary unit, miraculously intervenes. What happens next changes the course of Olivia’s life forever.

Set six years before THE HARLEQUIN & THE DRANGÙE, THE COVERT GUARDIAN narrates Olivia Markham’s genesis from idealistic college student to trained intelligence operative.

“I took the opportunity to read The Covert Guardian twice. What an intriguing plot — what interesting characters – what wonderful geographical and cultural contexts. Zane is one helluva researcher. I’m a fan!!!!” Ted Fichtl, Col. USA, Retired

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Dragon’s in the Details

Six stories of dragons hiding in today’s world:
A Friend, Indeed–A little girl meets the best friend she could ask for when she finds a dragon sleeping in her wagon.
Tempest–What do you do when you find a dragon in your favorite teacup?
Clowder–These are absolutely not cats, no matter what they look like, and will take offense at your mistake.
Back Yard Birds and Other Things–If the dragon defends your chickens, you invite it to stay.
Houdini–When the pet supplier sends the wrong kind of dragon, the pet store’s got a problem.
Hoard–Not every dragon cares for gold, gems, or cash.

FROM MARY CATELLI: Through A Mirror, Darkly

What lies behind a reflection?

Powers have filled the world with both heroes and villains.  Helen, despite her own powers, had acquired the name Sanddollar but stayed out of the fights.

When the enigmatic chess masters create a mirrored world reflecting her own home and the world about it, it’s not so easy to escape.  All the more in that the people of that world are a dark reflection of all those she knows.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Margins of Mundania

A tween boy’s Christmas gift opens a world of wonder and brings joy to a whole town fallen on hard times. A young New Englander in the early Twentieth Century discovers that some parts of human history don’t bear too close examination. A literary critic in the old Soviet Union must confront his own moral cowardice.

These stories, along with a multitude of bite-sized works of flash fiction, carry you from the most prosaic of events to the moments of awe that offer glimpses of matters larger than ourselves.

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: CLIP

This past week was scheduled for over six months for a visit by my assistant, who lives across the country. We were going to go over several ongoing editing projects, better handled in person, firm up a schedule for the rest of the year, as I’ve been merrily forgetting/running over deadlines at such a speed she can’t keep up with me, and arrange for her to coordinate a website design/shop design with my web person.

For this purpose, she was going to stay in our basement guest room for a week, and we’d have plenty of time to work, even taking in account that I was trying to do the last 10k words of the very long book.

About twelve hours after she arrived, I discovered there was a huge, confused, bureaucratic snarl involving documents needed for #2 son’s religious wedding to take place in Portugal in October: meaning they were demanding a document that I’m fairly sure they don’t need for reasons that are not applicable, but since the bureaucracy there moves at the speed of glaciation, I tried to get the document they might remotely need (they can’t have the one they asked for, since son is NOT a Portuguese citizen nor am I) and ran into the fact that the representation for Portugal in the US is widespread and beyond bizarre.

Since one of the main reasons I give thanks every morning when I wake up and I’m not a Portuguese citizen is the bizarrely convoluted bureaucracy that has been worsening since the Roman Empire, if not before, my blood pressure shot up to three million over five hundred thousand (these are approximations, it might be higher) multiplying as I met each obstacle to obtaining something very simple. Each step tried to convince me to get the document the Portuguese side think they need, which is actually impossible since neither of the parties to the wedding are Portuguese citizens.

On top of which I’m VERY BAD, bordering on mentally deficient when dealing with bureaucracy of ANY KIND and my response to frustration when dealing with bureaucrats is to roll twenty for angry snark. (Which does not go well in Latin cultures.)

If at this point you have an image of me sitting in front of the computer with a little cartoon chimney protruding from my head and steam whistling out, it would be accurate, yes.

Pray for me, as that situation is ongoing.

After about six hours of this, plus trying to explain to the Portuguese side — via my mother who is 90 and VERY stubborn — that we can’t actually register the legal marriage in Portugal since neither of these people are registered in Portugal and the process for them to marry legally there (legal and religious are completely separate) will take multiple years, and is pointless since they DON’T LIVE THERE. (The process will probably necessitate their living there for some time, at that.). Also reminding mom that neither my marriage, nor that of my older son were registered in Portugal, despite which we could have a religious ceremony there all the same — I decided we probably should eat.

And because I had completely forgotten to shop, I went to the basement, which had been fine in the morning, to get food from the freezers.

At which point, at the bottom of the stairs, my feet went splish-splosh. Note that I was so out of it I went five steps before going “that sound is WRONG” and looking down…. at two inches of water. At that point I was in the FINISHED part of the basement where the guest room, electronics and musical instruments are….

Run up the stairs screaming “We have a water leak.”

Well, I was wrong. The fact is we had a massive storm go through, and what we actually had was a raw sewage backup.

Thanks to husband’s precaution of putting everything in the basement on platforms, everything but possibly ONE eiderdown and cover and a Christmas tree are PROBABLY salvageable/okay.

Call the insurance company, who sent over a mitigation company who, for reasons inexplicable, decided WE must be the ones to carry everything stored down there up the stairs (while I’m fairly mobile and fine health wise, Dan’s knees are shot, which means bringing up EVERYTHING from food storage to appliances to empty computer boxes from the storage area would take me, even with my assistant’s help about two weeks. All the while walking on raw sewage, which, btw, for some reason started my asthma going. The company meanwhile, was enthusiastically removing flooring and padding, and wanted to proceed well beyond the area of flooding, and also wanted to CUT OUT DRY WALL, despite the wall not starting until well above the flood. Oh, and they wanted to empty the basement despite the fact that most storage is on elevated impermeable shelves.

Husband got very upset and called insurance again. As of right now, the basement is clean and disinfected and drying, pending environmental testing, and getting a company in to re-floor the damaged area. Also pending is getting in a plumber to make sure this backup doesn’t happen again. (Among other things we found we had some kind of a sewer access down there we didn’t know existed, until the cap popped off under pressure. This wasn’t mentioned in our inspection; it was under a set of shelves. We had no idea it even existed. The other access was thoroughly roto-rooted, but the source of the backup was outside our property. I don’t know what to even do with that. And please don’t tell me. Tell my husband. I’m already dealing with ONE insane bureaucracy.)

Meanwhile about a hundred minor things seem to also have decided to go critical all at once, to the point I’m answering the phone with “What fresh hell is this?”

At least we seem to have pulled Havelock cat from kidney failure brink. He’s been letting us hydrate him, and is doing well, if thoroughly put out with my locking him up in the office randomly (from his perspective. Actually so hoses/vents can be run up through open doors from the basement.)

Since the Portuguese bureaucracy will shut down in an hour and a half and my assistant HAS to leave in the next couple of hours, I will be trying to sit down and finish the book shortly. Even if I don’t have any hair left.

Pray for what remains of my sanity. Even if you’re an atheist. The novelty might be enough to get the Author’s attention, or at least cause Him to laugh.

I need three days or so to finish this book and maybe catch my breath, before returning to the struggle, which is very definitely real.

I was thinking of the place I grew up which doesn’t exist in any meaningful way, except as geographical location. Every field has been built over with stack a prole apartment buildings; every farm is now a park or a plaza. Highways have obliterated most of the streets and alleys; the people who live there are not the people I knew, and when I walk down the street I might as well be in a completely foreign land which I’ve never before seen.

The assumption from the much higher population density in the village now, than it was when I was growing up would be that there has been a population explosion.

But in fact, if you drive not a great distance from the city — or any of Portugal’s three major cities — and stray from the highways which host the usual cluster of vendors and restaurants and the towns and villages that support such, you find … miles and miles and miles of nothing: areas so empty you can hear a radio playing somewhere a mile or so off.

In that way Portugal is similar to a lot of American states where the areas that were farms and grazing land became increasingly more depopulated, which the cities either grew or maintained. This is because agriculture takes fewer people of course.

Which is good. Regardless of what their statistics say — and I have no idea and I don’t even begin to trust them, anyway — there as here, beyond the cooked numbers (I’m not going to exhaustively describe all the ways the census is gamed even here, except to say if you believe they’re counting everyone and that everyone responds honestly, and that the bureaucrats don’t add some arbitrary number so they get paid more/get more subsidies, you’re a beautiful soul and possibly too good for this world) you can see an accelerating population collapse.

My parents generation with five or six siblings gave way to my generation with one, or maybe two children per couple (yes, I know, the boomers was usually three or four. But I came immediately after in the years aggregated to the boom for no good reason sometime in the oughts.) And my generation, those who married, have at the very most two children, but more commonly one, and not uncommonly none.

There are many reasons for that. Part of it is socialism — it kills, fast or slow — which as it does embuggered economies, so it became harder for families to survive on one income, or one income supplemented by work done from home by the woman which was the traditional way. This in turn necessitated child care and made it harder to raise a family.

But more than that, the cultural shocks of the long war of the twentieth century and all sorts of nonsense devaluing the traditional business of women, run from home, and making a fetish of higher education and specialization for all, stigmatized craft work, or simply homemaking and house keeping as professions and declared that the be all and end all of human achievement was “a corporate career.” This of course ties in with socialism, because it’s very hard to tax and regulate work for which you’re not paid in a traditional, regular way. So that sort of work must be discouraged, in favor of work that can in fact be controlled by the government.

Over it all there is a cultural belief that we were reproducing too much — a conclusion arrived at out of thin air and cooked statistics, with a few polemicists declaring on nothing much that the Earth was at carrying capacity — and that the virtuous thing to do was to have no children or as few as possible. The profound disconnect between this idea and the fact that wealth comes from humans and that of course most of the planet was barely populated at all outside large cities never registered.

Instead, the whole planet bought into the polemic and fell headlong into the hysteria of “too many humans” aided by the fact that Marxism, which has penetrated the culture everywhere, believes at its core that wealth can’t be created, only endlessly redistributed. And if that were true, then fewer humans would mean more wealth for everyone. (This is the lesson drawn from the great dying of the black plague when everyone became suddenly much wealthier. BUT the truth is that this was because it gave people a brief boost by acquiring already produced goods. What made the prosperity stick, after that, was the fact that the population exploded after forcing the exploration of new lands and new means of cultivation, etc. and leading straight into the industrial revolution.)

Because this hysteria happened when mass communication and top down government were possible (due to the technological developments of the time) this meant that everyone pretty much fell for it, from governments penalizing having more than one or two children, to private citizens doing the “responsible” and “socially approved” thing.

Which leads to where we are, with a severely contracting population worldwide. I believe our ridiculous open borders and propagandizing of people to come here for free benefits seems (briefly) like a boon for some countries which are getting rid of trouble makers and charity cases.

But long term it won’t wash. Human families cycle through uselessness on the regular, usually caused by circumstances and life being too easy. Human evolution doesn’t happen in a generation or two. (Which is why the whole strong and weak men meme is such a useless piece of nonsense.) Welfare cases can, and often do have, quite rational and productive children. Provided they have children. I think the countries emptying themselves are going to find they have no future and are a howling wilderness left empty and roamed only by the beasts of the fields.

We’re not that far off, and yes, we are providing all the wrong incentives and might end up with a near permanent underclass because we’re cultivating it… Except we don’t have the money to cultivate it forever and the problem will fix itself.

But in general people is better than no people, because we’re clever apes and can figure out ways to turn things around. (This is not to say that I approve of the flood of illegal immigrants. If we decide to attract more population, instead of making it through the dearth with mechanization until people get their heads out of their tight, dark, smelly confines and start having more kids, then we should import population that is useful to us now where we are technologically, and also that wishes to embrace our credal nation and become Americans in every sense of the word.) It surely beats no people.

The world might be very pretty with no humans in it, and the left particularly seems to have a fetish for post-collapse porn, endlessly dissecting how long it would take for our cities to return to wilderness, for instance, or trying to figure out which species would follow ours up the evolutionary scale to intelligence (thereby betraying a curiously pre-scientific mind set, since nothing dictates that the dominant world species be intelligent or use technology.)

But a world empty of humans is irrelevant. If pretty, who is there to appreciate the aesthetics.

And to me, since I am human, such an empty landscape is sad and bereft of my kind, those who give meaning to the future.

I’m haunted by a feeling that the area I grew up in, the area where some branch of the family or other seems to always have lived in, with children of our extended relatives running and playing down the old cobbled streets, getting in fights in the alleys and exploring the fields and the woods, will, one day, in the not very distant future, be empty of children voices and laughter. I can picture in my mind the empty, crumbling stackaprol apartments swallowed up by the encroaching forest.

It happened once. Before the black plague, what became a “village” when I was little, was a very large market town, about the same sprawl it currently occupies (presumably without stackaprol apartments save for a few built on the insula model.) The depopulation of the black plague and lack of commerce means that the woods and fields in which I hiked as a child were, back then, manor houses, workshops, mills.

Centuries later, one of dad’s and my stops for lunch was sitting on the medieval millstone that rested at the edge of the woods.

It will not be so bad if in five or six centuries a little girl and her father sit to have a picnic lunch on some lump that used to be the entrance steps of a crumbled apartment building. And it’s the most likely thing, as it’s unlikely humans will manage to eradicate themselves completely.

But the the loss of wealth, of ability, of tech, of life that would result from the years of population collapse in between make my heart ache with sorrow.

I’d very much prefer fields and dales were filled with the laughter and sounds of children at play, and the children were taught and made competent so they can keep civilization going, so that my grandchildren or great grandchildren — should I have them — can walk in different worlds, under different suns, building families and growing, and creating vibrant, joyful human civilizations where non exists.

World without end.

The other is a fairytale for nihilists.

I realized with a shock a week ago that the anniversary of the October 7 attack on Israel is now less than 2 months away. This startled me and shocked me, because in my mental map, it happened yesterday.

It took looking back carefully to see the months and months of anti-semitic attacks all over the nation, the ridiculous pro-Palestine demonstrations trying to swell up to the level of Buy Large Mansions, the various losses of mind over technical Supreme Court decisions, then the growing incoherence of the Junta culminating in what amounts to an internal coup d’etat, oh and attempt on Trump’s life which like a lot of things — the Las Vegas shooters, that explosion on Christmas day four? years back — will never be adequately investigated or explained.

And I realized I thought it happened yesterday, because I’ve spent this entire year in a state of high alert, of stress, waiting for the next shoe to drop. Looking around, in astonishment at the things that are okay, normal, no one says much.

It’s been like that since 2020. Closing down the entire country; putting the entire population effectively under house arrest while scaring them about a virus that, yeah, was dangerous to people over 80, but turned out not to inflict any excess mortality beyond what a bad flu year would do — all of this would be considered so stupid, so highly implausible that I couldn’t get away with using it in a book. People would mock me if I tried and ask me what universe I lived in.

Yet, there we are and they did it. And since then the crazy outrages keep piling up, including the in-your-face-stolen election at the end of 2020 and the slightly less blatant one at the end of 22. Including the attack on Israel, which sure, was another country. But the atrocities, and the bragging about them, the targeting of civilians, women and children, and the fact perpetrators thought it was a great “victory” that would achieve, heaven only knows what, was like the stuff I read in history books when tribal societies clash, things that should be de-facto impossible in civilized societies. Certainly bragging them should be impossible without drawing condemnation from everyone. Except our officialdom and the left did not condemn the atrocities, and have instead been screaming at the top of their lungs because Israel is defending herself. This should not be possible, but of course it is, because people though angry are atomized, propagandized and incapable of fighting back with their elections corrupted.

Now the left thinks that this means this wonderful strategy of replacing shock with shock and outrage with outrage will give them a reign of a thousand years.

Leaving alone the fact that they live in a fantasy reality and couldn’t govern their way out of a wet paper bag with the directions written on the inside, there is the fact that eventually the traumatized population, after repeated retraumatizing goes into unreasoning and complete fury.

Judging by various things including our potemkin economy and increasingly obviously, transparently false news reporting, and the expressions of people at the grocery store, something is coming. And it will be neither good nor peaceful.

The biggest risk, honestly, is not letting the fury consume and destroy all, and to return to our civil society at the other end.

It’s almost impossible, but it’s not impossible. And America is a nation of miracles.

Heck, maybe the biggest miracle will occur, and we’ll be able to turn this around without it getting ugly and kinetic. Don’t bet on it. Prepare for the worse, but perhaps G-d still looks after fools, drunkards and the United States of America.

What is more important right now, while we wait for this very profligate centipede to drop yet another shoe, and wait/fear that the powder barrel we’ve been tap dancing on to blow, it’s very easy for stress to kill us, particularly those of us of a certain age.

You have to recognize that we’re living a very unnatural life, one beset by high stress that we keep trying to ignore so we can live life.

It’s easy to relax when the storm has passed, everyone is alive, and your main task is to recoup and regroup.

But the storm hasn’t passed, and power lines keep breaking and sparking all over, so we keep stumbling on them and getting shocked despite ourselves.

You can’t, on your own, do something about the terrible situation the world is in, as the beast of socialist governance keeps spasming to stay in control and causing more and more damage as it does. At some point either enough people will have enough and be in a position to fight back (If it’s on Christmas, you’ll be required to speak Romanian) or — it’s possible — the whole thing will fall apart at once, through extreme stupidity and malfeasance (it’s happened.)

But nothing will be won if by that time you have let stress and rage eat you, and make you ill. I don’t care how old you are, most of you who read here are rational human beings, and we’re going to need you to help rebuild on the other side, so maybe, just maybe we can get our representative Constitutional Republic back (while knowing that it hasn’t existed as such, not functionally, since before I was born and I’m somewhat past the mid century mark).

So, how do you manage the stress and the rage, not forgetting or avoiding seeing what they’re doing to us, but refusing to let it get inside our heads and destroy us?

Well…. Most of what you can do are small mitigation efforts.

Prepping for the worst helps. I know that, because my PTSD forces me to. If I don’t, I get to the stress level that doesn’t allow me to function.

What else? Well, carve out time and space every day to do things that de-stress you and make you feel better.

I can’t tell you precisely what that is, because I am not you.

If you’re a reader of this blog, reading is probably a great part of your relaxation and recovering strategy. So, find books that make you feel happy. Ignore if they are stupid or don’t teach you anything. Don’t hold yourself to impossible standards. Take time and make space to have things that make you feel happy. Books, or music, or something.

Sometimes when you’re very stressed, listening to a favorite tune with headphones might help. Reading a book or re-reading a book you enjoy might help. Taking a walk with your loved one might help.

On that, yesterday while dealing with bureaucracy for the kids’ wedding, the basement flooded with sewage because of a city line thing. Which is why this post is so late. And why my stress is somewhere at the point that you can expect a chimney to emerge from the top of my head and whistle.

But we’ll get through this. Personally and nationally. We will survive.

It’s all about maximizing our choices and not letting our stress kill us till it does.

AR Maintenance 101 by David Bock

Guns are fairly intricate mechanisms. While they can go long periods with minimal maintenance and no issues, it’s a good idea to know how to maintain them beyond a simple cleaning.

Since the AR family of rifles is probably the most popular semi-automatic rifle in the country right now, I’d like to discuss some of the malfunction causes and solutions that the average owner can take care of at home.

The heart of the AR is its gas system, commonly referred to as gas impingement. In this system, gas is diverted from the barrel and fed back into the gas key on the bolt carrier group. This channels the gas into a chamber behind the bolt, pushing the bolt forward and the carrier back. Since the bolt can’t move forward, being locked into the barrel extension, the carrier has to move back. This movement causes another component, called the cam pin, to rotate and unlock the bolt. The bolt and carrier then move back together during the action cycle.

All of this is very dependent on a few components being in good repair and properly set. Specifically the gas key bolts need to be properly tightened and staked and the gas rings need to be within spec and replaced when they wear enough to cause function issues.

Happily, most carriers come with the gas key bolted down and properly staked. Unfortunately, not all of them are. Knowing the signs of gas key leakage or worn gas rings and how to remedy the situation can prevent your rifle from being transformed into a really awkward straight pull bolt action.

Gas Key

If the gas key bolts are not properly tightened and staked, they can loosen during the firing cycle. This allows gas to leak out around the base of the gas key and rob the system of pressure, leading to short stroking of the action, feeding issues, and failure to lock open on an empty magazine.

A replacement gas key won’t be staked and will look similar to this one.

If the gas key is loose, don’t just tighten the screws and call it a day. The key needs to be removed and the mating surfaces thoroughly cleaned before reassembly. Once that’s done, the bolts need to be tightened and properly staked.

There’s no need to really crank down on them. Firmly hand tightened with a proper bit driver is all that’s needed. Once this is done, it’s time to stake the bolts. No special tools are needed for this job other than a center punch. I prefer an automatic center punch like this model from JelBo, though a manual center punch and ball peen hammer can work just as well.

Make sure the carrier is properly secured. I use a bench vice with padded soft jaws, but a couple of pieces of wood clamped to a table can suffice.

All that needs to be done is to displace a small amount of metal from the gas key into the head of the bolt to prevent it from turning under vibration. Don’t go crazy.

This is one in my collection. The first attempt at staking turned out to be insufficient, so it had to be done again. That’s why the staking looks more messy and aggressive.

In case anyone was wondering, I’m not a fan of thread locker on firearms. There may be some instances where it’s warranted, but much less than it’s used. If you must use some kind of thread locker on a firearm, blue shalt be the color thou shalt use, and the color of the thread locker shall be blue. Green shalt thou not use, nor either use thou red. Black is right out.

Gas Rings

The gas rings on an AR bolt, like the rings on a car engine cylinder, add a gas seal as well as some friction to the system. Every time the bolt cycles, they rub against the inside of the carrier and wear. Gas rings, like springs, are consumable parts and will need to be replaced eventually. The signs are similar to a loose gas key, but there’s a simple test to check the gas ring friction.

After removing the bolt/carrier group from the rifle, make sure the bolt is in the forward position and gently stand it up on the bolt face. If the carrier stays up, the rings are fine. If it slides down the bolt, it means the rings are sufficiently worn to require replacement.

The bolt requires three rings and they are usually sold in convenient three packs, like these from Brownells.

Remove the bolt from the carrier and wipe off any grease, oil, or loose carbon. Using a knife point or sharp pin (do not use the firing pin) find the gap in the rearmost ring and pull it towards the tail of the bolt, stripping the ring out of the retaining groove on the bolt. Repeat for the other two.

Clean the retaining groove and replace the rings. Don’t worry about the gaps in each ring lining up, the first time the bolt cycles they’ll shift around. Lubricate the bolt and reassemble. There should be a noticeable increase in friction.

Remember, take care of your tools and they’ll take care of you.