Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

I’m tired. I’ve been up since six thirty am. Didn’t sleep very well. And the morning has been a long slog, save for feeding and petting the tiny kittens.

The older cats got in the office supply closet. No, you don’t want to know.

But please, do take into account I’m tired. I’m very tired.

Part of what I’m tired of is the American right’s obsession with “electability” “Dignity” and “acting presidential.”

Trump is apparently listening to “consultants”. Heaven knows why. You can tell, because the right is all praising him for being “presidential” and saying he “learned.” You can also tell, because the left has put him in the same cone of silence it put McCain and Romney when they were running.

If you’re very connected and linked in on line, you’ll hear echoes of the fact he’s still speaking at rallies and events. But other than that? He might as well have vaporized for all we hear of him.

Apparently this is called “being presidential” and it makes for photo finish losses. Or losses that are so due to fraud, but can be spun as real, because who hears of them.

You see, someone convinced Trump not to do “mean tweets.” After all, those acting like a cat laser forced the left to cover him during the sixteen election. And heaven knows, we wouldn’t want that debacle of a victory again. The establishment was all ready to give everything up to Hillary, and Trump spoiled it.

No, no, no no, no. Let’s lose with dignity, like gentlemen! We know how to do THAT.

If anyone here has a line to Trump tell him to fire up the mean tweets. Look, we’re probably going to lose this anyway, to fraud. WHY make it easy for the left?

If there hadn’t been a potshot at him, would you even know he was campaigning?

Having worked on THREE republican campaigns now, there’s only one thing I can tell you for sure. Consultants work for the other side. The only people who believe them are “right wing pundits.”

And speaking of right wing pundits: I’m also very tired of all the right wing blogs saying the “surge” for Kamala is real. Oh, sure, the left is jumping and screaming in glee on command. And the “polls” show her winning!

Of course the internal of the polls show something like plus seven for the democrats. Which does not accord to any demographics, except perhaps white house staff.

“But the unskewing of polls in 2012 proved to be a lie. Obama really won by that much.” Yeah. Let’s talk about 2012, the election that told me how deep the fraud goes in the US. You see, I was a poll watcher. In Colorado Springs, at the time considered safe republican. And yet, 1/3 of the people showing up to vote were told that they’d already voted. People in their thirties and forties. WEIRD incidence of Alzheimers, no.

And of course, they were appeased by being told they could do a provisional vote. They never told them the conditions under which that vote would be counted. Because it wasn’t. The vote was in. They couldn’t find it and remove it. And they COULDN’T PROVE IT WAS ILLEGITIMATE.

So, they stole the election for Obama. They also managed a bare majority in Colorado (which is amazing, and tell you how few they were, when you consider that in Denver fellow poll watchers told me it was 2/3 showing up and being told they’d already voted) which allowed them to make Colorado all vote by mail. To save money on elections, you see, because Democrats are all about saving money. Weirdly no state that goes all vote by mail EVER goes republican again. It’s just a coincidence, I’m sure. (Salutes the fallen.)

I’m tired of the bizarre religious martyrdom obsession of the American right too. Guys, listen up: It’s me speaking, okay? I AM religious. A lot more religious since 2020, fairly inexplicably, considering the locked churches, etc.

But if I hear one more of you tell me that the world doesn’t matter/everything is doomed/but you got Jesus, I’m going to come through your screen and beat you to silence with a fluffy slipper.

Does the parable of the talents tell you to bury the talent and sit back, because He comes back, and He’ll take care of everything? No? Gee, I wonder why.

Look, people have been saying He’ll surely return now, because the world is already lost since shortly after He left. He still hasn’t.

Sure, work on your salvation, however you think it is. And prayer never hurts. But don’t be so sure the end is coming soon. You DON’T KNOW. And you’re not SUPPOSED to leave it all to Him.

He gave you two good hands and a brain. FIGURE OUT HOW TO STOP THE DOOM or at least make it shorter. Praying helps, but that’s not ALL you should be doing.

Unless, of course, you’re a refargain gnostic who thinks the material world is a trap. In that case, carry on, but let me tell you better and far more religious people than I got much, much angrier than I am at that heresy.

While at that, stop yelling at young people. No, I mean that. “Kids these days” “I paid my way through college” “Why aren’t they getting married” “I had a job wiping weasels asses. Why are they whining about their beginning jobs.” etc. etc. etc.

I have two kids. They’re not that young anymore, actually. Over ten years out of high school for both of them. They’re working, and making okay money, which is unusual for their generation. I mean, to have both of them have jobs.

And no, it’s not for lack of trying. Kindly remember the circles I run in. My friends are neither low-achieving nor do they lack drive. But their kids are a wasteland.

And it’s not because they were coddled either. We’re not that kind.

So, what is going on? Well, those jobs wiping weasels asses are now either banned due to environmental concerns OR they require a doctorate. And even then you’ll be lucky to get it. (And no, STEM isn’t a guarantee of jobs. Mostly connections are a guarantee of jobs.) Yeah, you paid your way to college, but that was before government took over the financing and prices went through the roof. At one time (paying half the tuition for each kid, back then) we were paying around 40k a year. In a state school. With the kids living at home. I imagine what other people’s kids are in hock for.
And even those who have jobs, even decently paying (much more than minimum wage) jobs are barely making it. Guys, we’re feeling the pinch of inflation/prices/etc and we’re in many ways in our peak earning years. We don’t eat as much as we used to. We have most of our essentials (more than that) including clothes and books. It’s horrendous for the kids.

And most of them never had a first job till mid to late twenties, unless they got skilled training, and even then…. The early jobs are just not there. And all the “child labor laws” mostly protect people from being adults till they’re legal adults. When everyone is competing for the same barely pay jobs.

Statistics can lie, but these are being buried, so they probably don’t. Most kids are not moving out. They’re living with mom and dad into their late thirties. This includes married couples. I know this. I remember it from Portugal. In my parents’ generation multi-generation households went away, (except for my family, kind of, because my parents wanted to save ALL the money before they bought the house) in my brother’s generation they came back, because no one could afford to move out. Because there were no jobs.

So before you say “kids these days” walk a mile in their house slippers. Those doing best among them are the ones inventing their own jobs. And that’s, as always, a minority.

Stop shaking your fist at them, and lend them a hand. Yeah, you had it hard. I had it hard. But the kids have it hard too, and because of the times we live in, it’s all too easy for them to drop out and go into a depression of computer games and computer chats. Forever.

Thank heavens movies suck, otherwise it would be another way for them to disappear. Most of them weren’t even taught to read comfortably enough to get “stoned with books.” Help them with that too.

The kids are all right. Most of them want to learn/do well. They really do. But they’ve been betrayed by society at every level.

And while at that, stop thinking you live in a movie. No, seriously.

I’m having people tweet charts at me, showing that the US is doomed and will cease to exist because the debt is so high.

People, are you actually and for real insane, and how do you type in those straight jackets?

Sure, the debt is scary. It’s also not what it looks like. The main creditor of the US government is …. the American people. They have borrowed from you, your kids, your grandkids. The main way it’s being paid for is RAMPANT inflation.

The numbers in the budget right now, are mostly passing around of tokens.

Look, macro-economics isn’t real, no. We can’t make a coin that will pay the national debt.

OTOH — and knowing BGE will hit me in the comments (I’m not that stupid) — our economy isn’t REAL either. No, seriously.

It’s a fiat economy, guaranteed by the faith and credit of the US government — can we tell them, or can we tell them? — and the current debt is to China, who doesn’t DARE collect, or even cast doubt on it, even if they had real force to do so with (they don’t.) And to the American people. What that debt is doing is making us pay more at the grocery store, the gas pump, etc. And making investment harder.

Is that good? No. Is it the end of the US?

SNORT GIGGLE.

Guys, how the heck can you even believe that — and stop all tweeting the same chart. What are you? Leftist bots? THINK — for a refargin minute?

Argentina. No seriously, Argentina. How many periods of crazy high inflation/can’t survive this has it gone through before Mr. Chainsaw ascended? There’s still an Argentina.

Unlike Argentina, or other places, people in America WANT to work. In 2016 they voted for the guy promising to give them jobs over the chick promising them free money in such numbers they gave him a surprise win.

And our land is rich in resources and ingenuity.

Heck, most of our people still believe in individual rights that transcend the government. It’s the government that’s the problem, and the excess regulations not to mention blinkered ones.

And that it’s a single point of failure. For the other side. All it takes is an election.

Can we win the election? Well, probably not. Not that we won’t win it. We will. We won 2012 and 2020 too. For all the good it did us.

But we can’t win the fraud. And knowing the right that is all too willing to lose — with dignity — those of us who point out it sure as heck is fraud will be told we’re crazy. No, no, it’s those damn kids/women/people who tan who voted for the socialists.

Not just losing with dignity, but alienating people on our side. How is that for a win? Very presidential. Tres dignified. Ten out of ten stars.

Look, I told you I’m short on sleep. And sick and tired of the bs.

Is there anything you can do? Sure there is.

First, on the cone of silence. Hit social media. Yes, I know most of you want to go and hide in a hole till after the elections. About half my regular commenters no longer comment, and have told me it’s because they’re “Staying away from politics. So depressing.”

That’s nice. That’s beautiful, really. Particularly when you encourage me to do the same.

It’s not that I like it here in the muck pit. I ain’t sleeping any too well, and I’m trying to finish a book, but hit a wall every time the scene demands any sort of energy or strength. Because I’m so tired. And angry, but mostly tired.

But at the end of that “I’m going to tend my garden” road is the stupid lefty bumperstick “what if they gave a war and no one came?” well, then the enemy wins, by default. Which, I submit to you was the point of that bumpersticker. They wanted the USSR to win, and that was only possible if we stopped fighting. That one was of a piece with all the unilateral disarmament crap, and all the push for US to give up nuclear weapons, and then we’d have “peace.”

The only guaranteed peace is that in the grave.

Going under the socialist boot won’t give you peace. Or them. Because some of us ain’t going down quietly.

The election is PROBABLY lost, but no more so than in sixteen, and that one was miraculously won.

And all we have is to get lucky once, then clean it up — now we know the extent of the problem — while they have to maintain control every time.

So, what can you do? You can engage. You can stop the dooming even when you want to doom.

There are indications that we’re being subjected to a psyop and indoc machine by our own three letters. You don’t have to let them in your head. Take off the overcoat and examine your own back.

Want to doom? Go doom at the cat. Go yell at the squirrels. Tell them all is lost. Even better, tell it to the raccoons. Maybe the fat bastages will believe you.

Go to a Trump rally? Make a twitter account. Post about it. Even better, post a recording. If he’s decided to be dignified, we can be undignified for him. And anyway, we can do mean tweets at will, because we’re not him.

Hit facebook, even if it’s a cesspool and they tell you this photo is fake:

Is it “undignified” for Trump to point out that Kamala Harris has changed races three times? (Born white, claimed Indian, now claims black.) I don’t think so. And it’s not undignified for us. She wants to wear black face, she’d better be ready to explain her earlier identifications.

Is it bad to unskew the polls? Well, don’t call it unskewing. Just show the internals.

Be loud, be obnoxious, be there! Give each person who sees you the sense they’re not alone, and no, the right doesn’t come pre-defeated.

There’s more to the future than the boot stomping on the human face forever. That was the vision of a depressed, disillusioned socialist.

If we free people find ourselves in that position, we’re going to bite that d*mn boot off. And then start on the foot.

Be not afraid. Be not meek. Be not dignified. And BE NOT SILENT.

Are you tired? Hell, how do you think I feel?

Have a sip. And then come with me. We’re leaving the trenches and running at the machine gun nest today.

Sure, it’s sure death. Then again, there are indications that machine gun is CGI so maybe not.

And after all, isn’t the uncertainty exhilarating?

The future isn’t scripted. Let’s write it ourselves.

Pardon me. I wasn’t going to write a post today, but this has been bugging me all night. I’d wake up, think about this, go back to sleep.

I have a headache, feel like I have a hangover — which is very bad, since I haven’t had alcohol in months (no, not on purpose, but I don’t like drinking alone, and husband doesn’t drink, so since the boys moved out I practically don’t drink.) –and am in a mood. So, you’re surely going to have to excuse me.

(Steps up to the stage. Turns the huge picture of Heinlein to the wall, so he won’t hear anything she’s about to say. She respects him too much for that. Rolls up sleeves. Takes off a shoe, and puts it next to her on the podium. Like every Latin woman she was trained in the fine martial arts of the chancla, and it will visit your head if you don’t stop being an idiot.)

Okay, now.

First let me tell you the situation, as I see it. Of course, I could be wrong. I often am. Just not as often as paid professional analysts, campaign consultants and their ilk.

I’m not black pilled — because I think we’re winning the culture war. Which means we win this. The only question at this point is the level of utter destruction we’ll have to dig out from, and if a counterfeit of freedom will be sold to us in the form of a “strong” government before we get our freedom back — but I also don’t expect us to win the elections in November. Or not cleanly. And I don’t expect a revolt afterwards, just a lot more Irish democracy.

To be clear we don’t need a revolt, and a revolt if it happens — and it might, I just don’t expect it — will kill the good with the bad, because our side has LOUSY targetting ability, will destroy things and people we actually need to rebuild, and will throw us into what I’ll call The Latin American Loop. The Latin American Loop is increasing instability, “solved” by bringing in men on a white horse to “solve” it. Sometimes, like one in ten, you have a decent leader who will actually let the country prosper, but really it’s just dictatorship and class structure and– bah. Go read the history of Rome in the Empire. It’s just Rome. Rome not only never fell, but is infectious. Which is why importing Latin culture by bringing in large, unassimilable batches of Latin culture people is wrong and bad. And yes, I am aware that I came from one of the Rome Never Fell countries. Gorram, people. If I wanted to bring the culture with me, I wouldn’t have bothered immigrating to a country where I had no connections, no padrinos, no one to lend me a hand on the way up. I wanted rid of it, save for my abilities with the chancla (very useful for kids) and the due respect paid to the family still abroad who have no intention of immigrating. I came to America because I wanted to be American. That means living in American Culture, not Mexico-American-WTF. What part of that was unclear?

Simply increasing resistance to the insanity from above to the point it collapses and we can topple it and restore the Constitutional Republic will do it. Possibly not in my or yours lifetime, but that’s, if not irrelevant not the most important thing. History is slow. It doesn’t move at the pace of human temper.

Now none of this is what I want, of course. I want it to topple fast. I want for our voting to be restored to a semblance of sanity — if it takes purple fingers, one day of voting, paper ballots? So be it and about time — and for us to kick the small minority of cultural invaders (Marxists. The illegal incomers are a large minority) raping our polity to be thrown down and their illusions of superiority cast into the trash heap of history.

There is a very small chance. A miracle. And we can do it.

If there were no chance, they wouldn’t have taken a potshot at Trump. (Uh Uh. Just a lone nut. Yeah. I’ll buy that. Except no, I don’t. As one of my writer friends put it, the only way to get not only that much incompetence but total lack of interest in investigating is if it was orchestrated. Sorry not sorry.) If there were no chance, they wouldn’t have replaced the corpse with the puppet on the ticket (and I still say Biden will die in October. I’ll explain why in a moment.) And they wouldn’t be Cone-Of-Silencing Trump so hard. AND they wouldn’t be working their fear and despondency brigades quite so hard, either.

Guys, PLEASE follow the bouncing ball as I unpack the situation: the only chance we have to bring this to a soft landing in my lifetime is to win in November. This is almost impossible due to fraud.

To win, the left doesn’t have to create real enthusiasm for Kamala (the left can’t meme. No, really. They’re trying to make coconut-pilled a thing. They’re …. impaired.) They don’t have to create anything bad against Trump (which Lord knows they’ve tried.) They JUST have to create the impression Kamala is gaining and now suddenly “unbeatable.”

This they can do mostly by removing attention from Trump’s MIRACULOUS survival and his iconic photo with the whole palace coup stuff. Then buying up more Kamala ads than I’ve ever seen in any campaign. Then putting a cone of silence on Trump, who, yes, is still campaigning all over the country, but you don’t hear a thing, do you? Just like you didn’t until he was shot at.

AND by hitting twitter to tell us how their latest campaign is working so well, and having a million bots talk about how we missed our opportunity to unseat the left because “everyone” hates Trump. They’re reviving the DeSantists too. The idiot on twitter yesterday said that we all vote by identity groups now and “we missed our chance in Iowa” alluding to picking Trump. As though DeSantis wouldn’t get the same “vote by groups” so that doesn’t make any sense. When I hit him with the reality he was working for the enemy, he came back with it was all lost, because DEBT and only DeSantis could have reined back the debt.

This is a propaganda operation, trying to revive resentment from borderline never Trumpers.

I have only one thing to say to those who fall for this crap: If DeSantis didn’t have the kind of fire in the belly and control of his campaign to achieve victory against Trump MUCH greater name recognition, then he didn’t have the fire in the belly and control of his campaign to defeat the cone of silence and the poisonous lies the left would have uncorked on him the moment he was the nominee. It’s neither here nor there if he’d have made a better president. He’d never have got within a stone’s throw of it. Because Trump is not a bigger adversary than the wholly controlled, lying media, okay?

Now to further unpack our situation: we now know that their candidate can be so damaged they KNOW no one would buy his winning the election. So they traded him for another puppet whom they can PLAUSIBLY say won the election.

Note this has nothing to do with her getting more votes — unburdened by what has been as she is — but with the fact they can LIE about it, and the RIGHT will believe it. The depressives on the right will join the chorus with “Oh yeah, stupid women will vote for her because she’s a woman. Stupid brown people will vote for her because she’s brown,” etc. etc. ad stultium, and when they fraud her in — 400 million votes for the win — they will do what they did and some are still effing doing with Biden and saying “Well, Biden won because people hate Trump thaaaaat much, because Trump is blah blah blah.” Or “Biden won because stupid women and minorities….” ONLY they’ll say it harder for Kamala.

Look, guys, ain’t no one voting for Kamala that wouldn’t have voted for Biden. And FYI women low-key hate women in power. That’s the real reason Hilary didn’t win. The “feminists” in public will talk a good game, but in the voting booth, they ain’t voting for no woman to have power over them. And as for “black” woman…. Most black people know she’s not black. And black men ain’t gonna vote for a black woman in power.

The important thing here — the absolute crucial thing — the ONLY thing you can do stop this nonsense is to keep pushing back. To point out, no, she’s not popular, the polls are cooked, and what they’re trying to do is cover the fraud.

And you have to be loud and constant. It might be impossible if they do manage to get Michelle Obama for her running mate. Not that the woman is popular, but because they can SELL it to the right as her being popular. (I very much doubt even her husband is popular now if he ever was. I saw all his books on the discount bin even while he was president. And her hyper-pushed memoir was kind of a dud.) BUT the right believes in her invincible popularity, and it might be impossible to turn the depressives around.

Note the left intends to keep up this continuous barrage through the DNC, and Kamala’s VP “selection” because by then Trump’s surviving his shooting, the fricking miracle and that photo we were given, will be “old news” and they’ll throw doubt on it with all sorts of stupid crap. And they’ll keep the cone of silence on him. And then in October Biden will die, and there will be elegies, and it will be forbidden to criticize him because morti nilsi bonum, etc. etc. etc. All of which will lend cover to their fraud because Kamala the horror will never be fully exposed, and “everyone” will love her and vote for her in memory of the great late Biden.

All of which means when the election happens, the right will go right back to its depressive “It’s because we picked the wrong candidate, and people really love socialism and–” NONE OF WHICH IS TRUE.

You–

(Gives baleful look at the back of Heinlein’s picture, defaults to The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress mode.)

You rockheads! You deserve to starve!

But I don’t deserve to starve along with you, and you’re endangering my children, for which G-d have mercy on you, because I won’t.

THE ONLY CHANCE WE HAVE is to let them know ahead of time that the fraud will not be believed. That we won’t buy it. That the right will not lay back and think longingly of England.

THAT’s the only chance we have in the next twenty or thirty years or so.

But oh, no. It’s too much effort to stay off twitter with your depressive crap; not to turn substack into a depressive echo chamber; and to stop believing the worst of your fellow citizens.

It’s too much effort not to take the black pill much less to stop yourself from propagating it. It’s too much effort to remember that, yeah, sure, some other person might have been a better president, but Trump is the only one in recent memory that has managed to break through the fraud, and even in 2020 to make them fraud in such a way anyone with eyes could see it. Not that you have eyes, of course. They’re glued shut with your superior sense of grievance.

Holy Hel and her minions, people, how many of you are under thirty? Because the only people excused from knowing that every Republican is Hitler, and also mean, uncouth and stupid are people that young. The rest of us remember when Romney became Hitler and extreme right, and far too dangerous to elect. Romney. Pierre Delecto and the hairgel brigades, people!

WHY are you lending your voice and amplifying the psy war against us? Next you’ll believe that calling us “Weird” is really turning “normies” against us. Bob — Heinlein — help me, people, we, Oddlings and Strange ones that we are are the “normies” supposedly turned against the right by the apellation of “weird.” Like the rest of the culture doesn’t wear “weird” as a badge. Like anyone, anyone alive in America today is afraid of “weird” much less thinking two men, masculine enough to grow beard, on a ticket is “weird.”

This is Hollywood thinking and the idea that every hero must be gender swapped. And let’s remember how “well” those movies do. In fact, love it or hate it (Not my fave, and the movie had plot issues, but it was free) the movie burning up the charts right now is about MALE FRIENDSHIP. That’s not weird. It’s the rock bottom of civilization. (No, hear me out. Without it, or the concept of it men just fight each other to the death. In that milieu women are chattel.)

DO YOU THINK I DON’T HAVE MY MOMENTS OF DESPONDENCY? Those of you who talk to me privately know how often I hit those. For the love of Bob (Heinlein) I’m a chronic depressive. Do you think I live in forest with singing animals and go through my day falalalaling? I haven’t been able to work in fiction for almost a month because I’m watching your ninny behavior and feeling the sinking in my stomach as I know you’ll not only fall for the fraud again, but you’re happily running around making sure the left knows its lies are pre-bought. So its plan is gold.

Again: You rockheads! You deserve to starve!

So, this is what I’m telling you to do. I don’t expect you to follow it to the letter, because the individualists are incapable of organizing, but I expect you to try.

Hit the social media of your choice, and push back. Push back with humor. Push back with derision. Don’t be afraid to call Kamala names. Respect her position? Which of them? I don’t own a Kama Sutra. Mean to women? Not as mean as taking someone who slept her way to the top as the ne plus ultra of women. And as for respecting the position? That was always hogwash. If the person occupying it isn’t worthy of respect, the position means nothing. We don’t have nobility.

Make fun of her. Point out her mental shortcomings (It’s not difficult.) Remind people of the strange case of her race-change.

All of this is twice as effective if you’re a woman and can tan, but since the worst depressives are male, males pointing out the women of their acquaintance aren’t planing to vote for the Ho anymore than they were for Joe also helps.

And point out, always point out, that all they’re trying to do is make the fraud plausible.

Spreading fear and despondency is a war crime for a reason. Stop doing it unless you knowingly want to work for the enemy. In which case, you ARE the enemy. (Looks at picture of Heinlein.) The lieutenant wouldn’t like that. If you have to die, he’d expect you to go in a pile of spent brass and with a suitable escort. And that’s double if it’s metaphorical as it is right now. Do not let the republic die because you like whining!

Now, are you scared? Depressed? Bah. Welcome to the party, pal. I have told you for four years just about that the only way we win this is a miracle. The fraud is that big.

It doesn’t mean you need to aid and abet the fraud with your credulity. You’ll have your black dog moments, but I expect you to be an adult and keep those to yourself or a closed group, and come back to the fight ready to fight, or at least to pretend to be confident.

Now butch it up, Mary, and if despondency hits take a Valium like a normal person.

Fight! Fight! Fight!

The new slur of the left for those of us who won’t conform is “Weird.”

Apparently “Deplorables” has lost its sheen, and “ultra Maga” (Ultra Maga assemble!) is no longer working, so now we must be stigmatized as weird.

To say this is bizarre is an understatement. It’s also a symptom of their losing the etymological war. Oh, and the ontological war too, while we’re at it.

You see, for years now, the left has anchored its power on two things:

1- being able to define what “bad word” their enemies are, a single bad word, which, whether it makes sense or not, puts you outside the overton window and makes you someone to shun and disparage. An untermensch if you will. A no-man.

2- being able to define which ways of being render you untouchable. “If you are this way, whether a characteristic of birth or acquired, or just the way you prefer to be, it makes you the enemy.”

The two can work together and often do. So, if you are, say, an anti-Marxist, that both makes you “stupid” and therefore untouchable. “Well, she’s really dumb. She doesn’t even understand Marxist dance theory, and that it’s the only way to interpret modern dance.” This is a bit on the nose, of course, but something like this would be the code phrase that rendered you unhirable for anything from art criticism to serving coffee at the local coffee house.

It would also make people laugh behind their hands at you, and ascribe all sorts of other characteristics to you, in sort of a reflexive cloud-grouping. So if you were anti-Marxist they would adduce traditionalist, easily shocked, very religious, not very educated, etc. etc. etc.

It is that sort of grouping that caused people in the early days of this blog to come here and yell at us that if either I or my commenters had ever finished highschool or left the deep South we’d think differently. It’s also behind their forlorn foghorn of “educate yourself” which really means “Fall in line with my mental categories, and behave as I want you to.”

Because this started breaking down, they had to try to resort to more overt stigmatizing. Which led to racist, sexist, homophobe, leading to the absolutely hilarious moment during a late in-field kerfuffle when a blog accused me of homophobia, a year after the publication of A Few Good Men. (Oh, I’m sure they would come up with a justification. You see, REAL gay people can’t be USAian, therefore I must be writing them wrong because I hate them. But it’s stupid, and even they know it’s stupid.)

Their old stigmatizing of “stupid” doesn’t work, as not only have a lot of us with advanced degrees from institutions THEY respect are coming out of the closet as conservative, but it’s becoming glaringly obvious most of their leading lights are utterly brainless, like the current candidate for the presidency on the dem side. Or their previous one.

So they tried deplorables, which because Hilary is old is almost charming. It’s like she called us ne’er do wells or rogues. Of course, it was immediately seized up, ran with, worn as a badge of pride and in online names etc. I honestly can’t figure out how they expected anything else, except they had their sense of humor ablated at birth.

And then there is Ultra Maga. I keep trying to get my favorite artist to do a picture of a Maga Superhero, whatever that would look like, in a power-pose with Ultra Maga, Assemble! But they don’t get that either, and hence the red speech and the insistance that this that and the other thing are “ultra MAGA.”

Except that too didn’t bring opprobrium. And they’re desperate.

So the new thing is to call married men with children “incels” which of course means involuntary celibates. Which has ALL OF US laughing into our hands, because either they don’t understand how children are made, or they’ve lost their minds. (Narrator voice: They lost their minds.)

When that kind of glanced off us with a “LOLWUT?” they then resorted to “Weird.”

There are multiple problems with that. It starts with the fact that well… weird is rather a province of the left, from weird hair colors to weird neurological groupings, where people make their disability their identity.

But they’re now trying to claim the ultimate ontological beach head by defining that as “normal” and you know, being married, having kids, working a full time job, etc as “Weird.” Oh, and being male as “weird.”

They’re not going to succeed. They don’t realize they’re no longer “the youth” however defined.

To be fair, they kept that badge as “the youth” far too long, riding on the boomers being generally understood to be left (even when it was not true) and the fact that “the boomers” for a long time took one more year every year, till a generation — not a genealogical generation but a commercial and experiential one defined as “babies born of parents returning from WWII” included people whose parents weren’t born by WWII — so that they were “forever young.” But that was a battle they’d lose, anyway, and they have. “Boomer” now means “Old” and heck, “Millennial” now sounds old. And each generation being not only smaller, but by virtue of our bizarre leftist regulations and governance that make adulthood and entrance into the workforce difficult, increasingly more desenfranchised and poorer, they don’t have that kind of power as to make a bizarre way of life “normal” and normality “weird.”

I’d expect that new definition of weird to hit the movies, TV, youtube, lefty media all over, at the same time, in coordination. It’s their modus operandi.

But it won’t work. Why won’t it work?

Well, it would have worked on THEM. The leftists remaining are creatures of group and consensus. They couldn’t stand to be out of step, strange, considered not hip.

They don’t realize those of us who clawed our way out of a Marxist Leninist mind set DESPITE all means of indoctrination aimed at us are, by definition, immune to group-shaming and calls for us to fall back in line.

They don’t understand we’ve been out of the mainstream so long, we’re comfortable here.

Weird? Sure, we’re weird, and frankly the fact that many of us have happy marriages and families is not our weirdness. We have far more weird things we think/do/believe/work at.

Weird? You call us weird like it’s a bad thing.

Yes, we are weird. And together we’ll build a beautiful weirdness.

One in which the NPC greyness of fake weird will feel so out of place they’ll need to fit in with us and adapt to our weirdness.

They’ll never be free-thinkers, poor things. There’s something intrinsically broken in them that forbids it.

But with work and care, they might be able to fake it, and not be quite so boring, speaking only in echos.

Sure, go ahead, call us weird. That was a badge of honor before you even started finger-pointing and screaming.

I predict by the end of today there will be t-shirts with “Weird by choice” and “Get with the program, be weird.”

There is no one here but we weirdos, and in our chaotic lack of conformity, we’re a target they can’t begin to hit.

Yesterday I came across this from Power Line Blog, and I agree with their call for lawfare against this attempt at gaslighting.

However, what stuck out at me, perhaps because of my own experiences was how they assume someone is financing a blog run by lawyers in their spare time.

That first stuck out to me when people — not this outfit I don’t think, though it’s possible it did, and I ignored it — started sending me emails asking me who paid me and how much I made. Sometimes accusatory, sometimes interested.

There was also the break in of my online accounts, where it became obvious they were looking for emails/messages that mentioned money. Which means as I was already booting them they spent precious time sending very rude messages to my editors, to fellow indie authors discussing earnings, and a friend talking about how to split money for a birthday gift of another friend.

This wide variety of subjects obscured the purpose from me, but with thought I realized those messages, rapid fire and full of for real racist slurs that made no sense whatsoever, were copy-pasted and sent to everyone mentioning money without reading the actual messages they were responding to, under the assumption that they were offending my sponsors so they’d drop me.

Years ago, during a time when I’d just had a SWAT attempt and was more paranoid than my normal baseline, a young lady contacted me and asked to come to the Hun’s dinner. It was obvious she wasn’t a regular at the blog/our circles. And she was, she said, a recent convert to our side. And she wanted to talk to me.

I don’t think the Huns dinner was what she expected, and she never came back. Partly because we were all in super-paranoid mode. And partly because she wanted to talk about money.

No, she didn’t want us to pay her. I think. Probably.

What she wanted to tell us is that the left had far less support than we thought. That young people were working for the left not because they believed Marxism, or its lies, but because they wanted to be paid. And the left paid. And the young had student loans. And the job market sucked.

At the time I didn’t believe her. While I realized that some of the left were paid — they all have the billionaires, but a handful — I didn’t realize it was pretty much everywhere.

Just like the USSR used to fund and pay for even stupid little publishers and newspapers throughout the west; just like China pays for much of the left nowadays; other interests and would-be totalitarians fund a lot of the left, from insane feminist bloggers to dumb as rocks anti-gun kids spouting off, to … well…. ante-fa burning, looting and murdering one city at a time, because they could only recruit enough people for a few busloads.

The point is that I’ve since from questions asked, from the assumptions of the left about us, come to the conclusion that maybe not all, but a good number of them are crazy for pay. They’re in it for the money.

And the funny — hilarious really — thing is that they ASSUME there’s more money on the right. Well, they would, of course. They think that they are the underdog, despite their clearly being the conformists. And they are for the “poor” which means we must be “for the rich” so it stands to reason we’re much better paid, right? right?

Also, particularly in the arts they know anyone striking out and being blatantly right wing stops being paid by the official outlets, so how much more must the unofficial ones pay?

Look, it’s the only reason for me to often being accused of selling out…. Apparently my price was a stale doughnut and a pack of chewing gum and I was looking for someone who’d offer LOW enough. (What?)

This is ultimately the thing. They don’t understand why anyone would oppose tyranny or work against its consolidation UNLESS they’re being paid. They can’t understand anyone undertaking hardship and sacrifice to purchase freedom for generations yet unborn, unless the ka-ching is echoing somewhere in their personal register.

This is a fatal misunderstanding.

It’s the reason they try to strangle us financially (and fail, because there are always a million of us who have just had about enough and will mouth off for free or even at great cost) and destroy our careers. Because that will make us go to their side to get paid, right? We’re only doing this because we’re being paid, right?

They probably also think that like them we rig the vote, so they’re just anti-rigging.

They honestly think that Marxism is foreordained, that it’s “scientific” and no one can question it, unless they’re doing it for money. So we must be doing it for money. Heck, they only bother to fight us for money, too, because it’s foreordained, right? There’s nothing to fight for. The future belongs to them.

It’s a fatal misunderstanding. It prevents them seeing that they can’t crush us, because we’re a real grassroots rebellion.

If we’re lucky their sources of funding dry up. Likely in the case of China, less so in the case of the Soros. (Though possible. Alex reads as a moron to me.) And others… But there’s always the possibility of miracles. I count Musk’s flipping over as one of those. Oh, and Trump too, at that.

If we’re not lucky it’s going to get very bad before it gets better.

Hold on to the sides of the boat. The water is getting choppier and choppier.

And be not afraid.

In the end, we win, they lose. It’s just the getting there.

I’ve already done a post on this. And M. C. A. Hogarth did an excellent post on this. So, why do the third? Well, because we’re talked about the effect of the deeper game in not fighting back against the let’s unrelenting, ceaseless attacks.

But we’ve not talked about the effect on those who fight. Or what you’re doing to them. Yes, you. That the enemy will attack them, is a given. That you choose to condemn them to whatever the other side wishes on them is however on your conscience. And should be.

First let’s establish the situation, shall we?

Before I was born — I turn 62 this year — the left had captured and commanded all the institutions and definitely all means of mass communication.

What this meant is that they defined what was real, what was sane and what was possible.

This take over of the institutions was specifically sponsored by the USSR which first took over communications and schools. Whether the take over of educators (prior to taking over education) was facilitated by the fact that WWI had stripped the previous ideals from people who were never very reality-oriented and therefore more than willing to replace one airy-fairy ideology “our nation is better than all others and destined to empire” with another “No nations (except low key the USSR) and international communism.” I leave as an exercise for the reader. To me it seems obvious that WWI set this domino up, and the only way the disillusioned people could recover their self esteem and ideas of being the smartest ever was to come up with another overarching ideology that replaced the fallen one. (While on this our mistake when the USSR fell was not offering the same set of people a “just so/explains all philosophy” so like the dog to his vomit they went back to communism. Let’s come up with something better. Let’s give them USAanism this time.)

Anyway, by the time the Nazis were defeated, the USSR had gotten hold of the communications and arts and education in most of the allied countries. No, it wasn’t open, but if you go back it was blatant. And part of it was just that the winning of WWII also convinced a vast number of people that the government could do everything now.

How much that had to do with the press not reporting how fraught that win was or that things like rationing were actually injurious to the war effort is something else.

It’s also a piece with how they kept control until very recently, and how a lot of you will fight me tooth and nail on “But they weren’t in control.” Oh, but they were. They shaped everything people saw. They just couldn’t come out openly. However most of the history you think you know for the twentieth century is either subtly shaded or an outright lie.

Then how was the USSR defeated? Well, partly because communism just doesn’t work. It just doesn’t. It’s an academically perfect way to starve out and destroy a nation, not to build anything, and certainly not to live.

But also because some people continued fighting. They had to fight with both legs in a bucket of cement, mind, but some people were just that cussed. People like Ronald Reagan and the other people he assembled around him, all of them determined to destroy the USSR.

And I know a lot of you will say stuff about how he didn’t do enough, etc. This is a mirage caused by the fact the times have changed. While the left controlled every means of communication, it was impossible to be out there, and get everything the Freedom Lovers wanted and not get destroyed.

As it was, it was touch and go. The left commanded enough of the opinion making, that Reagan got called crazy, and a warmonger, and evil, and above all –persistently — stupid. Even P. J. O’Rourke called him “His dumbness.”

When intelligence is defined by parroting communist cant, then someone who doesn’t is “stupid.”

As was his every utterance was distorted to make him sound totalitarian. And everyone abroad knew he was “a Nazi.” So has every Republican president been. EVERY ONE OF THEM. And every candidate. Even McCain who was really a soft-communist. (I’m not using socialist, because socialism is just the way to communism, and every communist nation calls itself a socialist republic. So I’m not indulging their desire to use shading to hide what they are anymore. And yes, our democrats are “socialist” but really communists, just hiding. Look at what they’re trying to do, from making the vote a merely show activity to silencing opinion, to controlling production and who can use what, to wealth taxes. They’re communists. There is no difference from the USSR’s plans. They even want 5 year plans.)

But Reagan took the hits. And he was already bit enough by the time he was elected and was savvy enough that they couldn’t stop him. Which meant the USSR fell, because it couldn’t continue without the complicity and connivance of the US government. Couldn’t survive without massive quantities of wheat, charitable shipments and ridiculous concessions from our presidents which allowed the USSR to swallow ever-increasing territory they could leech for sustenance.

Well, the USSR fell, but we didn’t give the loonies any other system they could use to feed their sense of unearned superiority. And the loons in the academic and communication system need that. So after a few years of fumbling, they went up to communism, telling themselves it had never been tried before. Not real communism.

And here we are. If it weren’t for the fact that we now have other means of communication and expression, we’d already be under the boot.

Well, that and because they still have their basic problem: Communism doesn’t work. Fascism does, barely, for a time, which is why China fell from Communism into the facto fascism. And why the system they’re trying to impose here is fascism under the rhetoric of communism. But the thing is — looks at China — that even fascism only works for a time.

Look, it’s the totalitarian, bureaucratic aspects, combined with an ideology that doesn’t mesh with the real world. What they think is inevitable, or perfect, or necessary NEVER WORKS. But everyone lies up the line, so people think it does, and it’s just them failing, or something. Until the wheels come off. And they always come off. And come off spectacularly.

All these centrally controlled, ideologically-infected systems have the fundamental problem of treating humans like widgets and governmental proclamations as laws of nature. None of them account for unintended consequences, which always bite them in the butt. And none of them can feed even the diminished population their starvation and lack of reproduction policies create.

To the extent they limp on is due to the fact that America, even hampered as it has been, has remained free enough in essentials that we can feed and clothe half the world, while they play at state socialism.

Which is why they must take us down, because we’re proof of how flawed their ideas are. And why they can’t take us down, because then their regimes will fail harder and faster, and therefore will be revealed as failures and go down.

And this is where we are. Only well, they are ideologues and very stupid. Stupid DESPITE or BECAUSE some of them have genius IQs. Which means they don’t understand the real world AND they must salvage their impression of themselves as brilliant and infallible.

So right now, their overriding concern is to shut down every opposing source of information, and everything that reveals their chose system for the failure it is, and history as a rebuke and proof of their insanity.

I don’t know if some of them are smart enough to realize that if they achieve their goal humanity dies out, but I suspect this wouldn’t upset them too much. Since the USSR fell, they’ve been furious at humans in general for breaking their little red — I speak advisedly — wagon.

So right now, even as we can communicate around their barriers to information, they are insanely preoccupied with shutting us up and silencing us in every way they can.

Note “disinformation” a Soviet concept is now uttered by them with no shame. (It sounded better in the original Russian.) There is no such thing as “Disinformation”: there is only truth or lies. “Disinformation” ends up meaning: this is true, but it goes against our objectives, so we don’t want people to know it.

Every one of them, from the Biden Junta to the WEF has been very concerned with “disinformation.”

We know they put through hell and destroy anyone who opposes their program since Reagan. We have seen what happened to Trump (And Palin). This will only get worse.

But this is visible and obvious. Below the surface, there’s been a war going on on dissenting voices in art and journalism, in academics and history, in broadcast, film, and even, yes, all the auxiliary arts to film, including costuming.

By the time I broke into publishing, now almost 30 years ago, this was already obvious from the inside. Not only couldn’t you, say, declare yourself an anti-communist, but giving them any reason to suspect you might not be fully onboard got you sidelined so hard you’d never work in that field again. I am told it is the same for every other field they controlled.

Yet people kept breaking through. Either by keeping very quiet until they were huge and couldn’t be taken down, or by a combination of accidents and ability.

This drove them insane, particularly the people keeping very quiet — which was my chosen strategy until it was untenable — and then speaking out. Since it often also happened because people changed their minds as they got older and saw more of the world, it was even more difficult to curtail.

So they started demanding more and more demonstrations of loyalty. Trying to tie you to having said increasingly more horrendous things, so you couldn’t walk it back.

This was the strategy of the Roman gangs where you had to kill a family member before you could join.

And some of us couldn’t. Some of us walked away. Others hurt themselves by proclaiming what they knew to be lies, to sell one more book, one more story.

Meanwhile, in public, we were told by people who knew nothing, that the right just wasn’t creative. It was because we were so conformist (as though arriving at an opinion completely different from everything the mainstream told you COULD even be conformism.) And those of us still working were told we were “peculiar” or “just not very bright.”

BUT and this is important, the NICE people on our side didn’t help. They didn’t say: wait a minute, I read so and so, and they’re not peculiar or stupid at all. They’re just not leftists.

They didn’t say: wait a minute, these people who are being pushed at us from every outlet are the height of conformism.

They didn’t say: So and so who is attacking this person for daring to speak up, is a rancid idiot with the IQ of a gnat.

Oh, no. We must be NICE.

Therefore, when I made up nicknames to people who were trying to destroy me (Partly because I’m dyslexic and remembering how to spell their names is often difficult) I got told I shouldn’t be mean or dismissive towards them, even though they were attacking me and trying to make it impossible for me to continue working.

And whenever one of us comes out and says something like “Well, fine. But communism doesn’t work” or “women are not the same as men” or “people’s opinions are not determined by their sex or race.” the left descends on us calling us everything but children of G-d.

And you nice people stand above and tell us we must be nice. We can’t even expose their real misdeeds, or call them names. Because that would be falling to their level, and that, for the nice people, is worse than death.

I don’t know how they imagine this works. What? People who are willing to kill and destroy to get to the top, will look at you being so saintly and repent and come to your side? That’s not how real life works. There’s more to Ghandi than the legend they sold you. Even saints engaged in war at times.

How it works is that the right tries to be oh, so fair. So, say we do manage to won a publisher, or a journalistic outlet, or a school — usually because we saved money and started it — we don’t say “No, we won’t hire commies.” No, we’ll say “These two candidates are about the same, but the commie is slightly better. I’ll hire him.” (Since the ‘slightly better’ is often by credentials, and it’s easier to get credentials if you’re a leftist, because the left will hire you and push you ahead, this doesn’t even denote real competence.)

Meanwhile on the left, they will look at two candidates, and one is brilliant, but not quite so leftist, while the other is barely passable but an outspoken communist. And they’ll hire the communist. EVERY SINGLE TIME.

Which is how, eventually, even “right wing” institutions and outlets get taken over by the left. The leftists have better resumes, after all. and one has to be fair. We can’t be like them. Oh, no. We are nice. And we don’t descend to their depths.

We will punt a president and call him names, and believe an OBVIOUSLY STOLEN ELECTION that deposes him because “he did mean tweets, so obviously people hate him.”

We will not mention that Kamala Harris is REALLY Commie LaWhorish and a complete dunce and intellectual nullity with it. Or that she was hired because Biden promised a “black woman” VP. Which caused her to undergo a convenient race change, of course. No. We won’t mention any of that, because that would be sinking to their level. And we couldn’t have that!

We will pluck out our eyes rather than see that our behavior just means the left takes more and more institutions, and jobs, and means of communication, causing also a disproportionate imbalance of their having all the money on their side. (Oh, but we can’t say they’re really the rich. And we can’t say we’re for everyone else. That would be populist. And — fans self — we all know how bad that is.)

AND THEN we’re surprised no one speaks up. We’re shocked that a president on our side can’t find anyone to hire. It’s almost like there are no reliable resumes, or something. We are confused that the only people who speak up on our side are either dunces, evil or uncouth. We know they are because the left told us so.

And we can’t understand why every form of entertainment sucks, our college presidents are illiterate and our scientists are bought and paid for. We can’t understand why civilization is falling apart at the seams.

Why, we’re so NICE and we’re not like THEM.

Look, those of us in the trenches are getting really tired. We don’t demand you knit socks for us. But can you please stop joining the enemy in their attacks?

It’s all we ask. Despite it all, we have a fair chance to win the war.

It’s not that you’re good or supportive. It’s that the enemy is not only wedded to a system that doesn’t work, but they’re as stupid as they are vile. Seven decades of hiring for ideology rather than competence will do that.

So we can win this. We really can. If you stop stealing our weapons and trying to beat us unconscious.

No. I won’t be nice. Yes, I will descend to their level. (With the difference I won’t lie. I don’t need to.) I will take a tooth for a tooth and eye for an eye. And I’m better at it, particularly when annoyed.

You keep on this war for yourself image and preen in front of the mirror with how nice and civilized you are.

Me? What I’m fighting for is nothing less than the survival of humanity and civilization.

It is a cause worthy of being a little rude.

Don’t you think?

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 JERRY BOYD: Nikki’s Day Out

Nikki wants Bob to help a failing colony from her Guide days. It turns out some people don’t want to be helped. Bob is able to explain it to the colonists, but our shepherd is handy with new and different things to worry about. Ride along, and see what BSR gets up to this time.

FROM PAM UPHOFF: Wild West Bar and Grill

Horst Aslanov is a seventeen-year-old criminal. Or at least he aspires to be one. But his mentor is missing, the number two boss is a dictatorial idiot, and it’s hard to say if the possibility of a police raid is better or worse than the violent criminal gang moving into their area.

The Wild West Bar and Grill is a restaurant in a cross-dimensional future Moscow. Serving authentic barbeque, and tiny shows of wild west shootouts. It’s also a cover for an unlicensed brothel . . . which is an extra layer of cover for an ID hacking and brainchip forging operation. But the old forger is missing, and now Horst has to decide if he’s going to try to keep the business running . . . or go straight.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: All the Little Hedgehogs

In Soviet Union, genetic engineering does you.

Yona wondered why everyone kept steering him toward a military career, until one of his teachers noticed his aptitude for genetics. Now he’s the personal student of Academician Voronsky, working in a secret genetic engineering facility in a closed town.

However, Yona keeps having to spend as much time babysitting the Academician’s adopted son Kolya as actually doing genetics. When this extra assignment becomes a frustration, Yona learns just how quickly privileges can be retracted.

And then he starts learning just how deep the secrets of the Soviet human genetics program really goes.

A story from the Grissom timeline (Gus on the Moon universe).

Caution: Contains intense material that may be disturbing to some readers. Reader caution advised.

FROM ALMA T. C. BOYKIN: Hunter and Horseman: Familiar Generations Book Four

Undying love or cruel obsession?

Devon County, a quiet rural corner of Pennsylvania. That is, until two brothers refuse to take “no” for an answer. Malice and magic pull Jude Tainuit, the lone Hunter, into the fray. When a tornado rips through the county, leaving pain and twisted power in its wake, the Hunter and his allies face two foes – one in the open, and one who lurks, patient and deadly. A blood-path magic worker hides in the storm, one who hunts Hunters.

Worse awaits. Aunt Martha goes to visit relatives, leaving Jude in charge of the farm … Or as in charge as his Familiar and Martha’s cat will allow.

Jude Tainuit will need all his skills, and the help of allies great and small, to face the storm when twisted power awakens the phantom Horseman.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Schrödinger Paradox: Cataclysm

The end is coming.

Unlucky jerk Tom Beadle was on watch at NASA when the collision alert sounded: a new asteroid, bigger than the dino-killer, headed for Earth. Big problem, but that’s why we have NASA, right? Except, after decades of budget cuts, NASA has no way to shove it off course. That job has to be contracted out. Will the private sector company his best friend from college works at succeed where the government option failed? Might be best to have a backup plan, just in case…

FROM LAURA MONTGOMERY: The Gear Engages: A Science Fiction Lost Colony Adventure

It takes more than a single terraformer to start a new world.

The human colony on the lost world of Not What We Were Looking For faces fracture and schism. On one side of the river, the settlers from Earth remember what it means to live in a free society. In the Marss-controlled city, the governor cancelled elections long ago and strives daily to cement his grip on the inhabitants.

Thaddeus Dawe and the Hudson cousins, including the one who agreed to marry him, save the colony’s last terraseeder from the governor’s political grandstanding, and head for the secret northern enclave started by Thaddeus’ brother. But all Thaddeus’ careful planning takes a wrenching turn when not one but two parties race in pursuit.

Thwarted in his original goal, faced with repairing the consequences of what he does to escape arrest, and besotted by the discovery of newspapers, Thaddeus wrestles with new ventures and roles in which he dare not fail. He must save not only Earth’s microbial legacy but its knowledge base as well. Not to mention, he’s getting married.

But when the governor’s chief of staff decides to weaponize Thaddeus against both the city’s farmers and the newspaper’s publisher, Thaddeus must fight the governor’s attempts to steal the farmers’ land even as someone destroys everything Thaddeus himself tries to build. In the end, he must do what he can to save those his own betrayal put at risk.

Picking up where Under the Earthline left off, The Gear Engages is the fourth book in the gripping science fiction colonization series Martha’s Sons. If you like action, political machinations, and a driven hero, you’ll want to dive in heart-and-head first.

Pick it up now to join the fight for a lost world!

FROM BECKY R. JONES: Night Mage (Academic Magic Book 2)

After fighting a demon in the middle of Philadelphia, Zoe O’Brien wants nothing more than to return to her normal, if stress-filled, life as an assistant professor of history at Summerfield College. But she’s an Elemental mage and that means when there’s potential magical trouble on campus, the squirrels come to her. Who or what is the dark presence moving around campus? Why is it here and what does it want? Zoe struggles to come to terms with her mage powers and the leadership role her colleagues have given her. Complicating everything are all the papers that have to be graded, classes that need to be prepped, and most importantly, cats that require attention. Oh, yeah. She might actually have a boyfriend as well.

https://www.amazon.com/Summer-Scarborough-Pride-Prejudice-Sequel-ebook/dp/B07T8ZRZ51FROM ANNA FERREIRA: A Summer in Scarborough: A Pride & Prejudice Sequel

Miss Anne de Bourgh was delighted to receive a letter from her cousin Georgiana, explaining that she would be spending the summer by the sea, and requesting the pleasure of her company. A glorious few months of balls, shopping, and walking by the sea awaits- a wonderfully diverting holiday for Anne, who has rarely left Rosings before.

But Anne is a de Bourgh, and life is never simple. Before long, she finds herself caught between the attentions of two very different men, and must choose if she will follow her heart or disoblige her family. One must be disappointed, and Anne has never been very practiced in the art of disobedience. Must she give up everything she has ever known, will she find the strength to search for happiness elsewhere?

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: vest

I’m going to start with a startling confession: I am a cat lady. There, are you shocked? Running around in circles and rearranging your mental image of me, yet? No? Why not? Could it be because I constantly talk about my cats, when I’m not talking about my kids?

What’s worse, I come by this naturally, having got it from grandma, who was like the platonic ideal of a cat lady, having somewhere between 17 and 30s some named, cared for, clean cats at any given time (To be fair, they were mostly outdoors, in a rural community.), Dad, who if mom allowed him, would bring home every cat who needed a home, and every dog, rabbit, injured bird and turtle too, and older brother who takes in dumped, abused and injured cats on the regular and has a variable clowder of them.

So, of course, I’m now mad at Vance for saying Cat Ladies were bitter and lonely and I’m going to vote for his opponent, who merely wants to strip Israel of the ability to defend herself, and turn over our cities to feral homeless and criminals, and erase our borders. And, oh, yeah, wants to confiscate guns and–

What? You’re not? But you’re low key mad about the cat lady comment? Well, listen, that’s because — I know this is shocking — it was completely taken out of context, and weaponized (by CNN initially) in order to seed dissension on the right. When will you learn? Then for further digging, it was paired with comments he made earlier about people with children deserving more of a say in the future… Sigh. It’s like that.

We now have crazy women running around in circles claiming that Kamala Harris is just like George Washington who also only had step children. Thereby increasing the stereotype of “all women are crazy and hysterical” and seeding more dissension.

I must ask, on the serious, were you people not awake and aware when the left weaponized “Women in Binders”? A reference to giving PREFERENCE TO WOMEN WHO’D BEEN OVERLOOKED which was turned into “proof of sexism” by repetition without context? And which never made any sense, btw?

So, I don’t have a link to it, or even a link to where Charlie Martin pointed out it was taken out of context on Twitter, but I’m sure one or more commenters will find it. The CNN utterance was cut and further distorted by the “concerned discussion” after, as the left does.

What Vance was referring to was not CHILDLESS people, or even people who tried to have children but couldn’t, or people who are childless but have anchors in the future.

What he was referring to was our “elites” who, frankly, are of a sort that infests any nation in trouble — see decadent Rome, France just before the revolution, England before the Victorian renewal, etc. etc. — that is the kind that has bent their entire life into working for and seeking power.

This happens when a polity is so centralized and codified that the only way to ascend the hierarchy is to LIVE FOR IT. Which always ends up with profoundly unhappy people in power. Whether they be male or female, yellow, purple or pink. It’s just the way it is. And having profoundly unhappy people in power, particularly people bent on denying they’re unhappy, always ends up in horror.

Right now our nation is such that we’ve bent every field of human endeavor to be that kind of greased pole, in which you must bend everything and subordinate everything to attain it. Trad Pub too was that kind of ladder, and amid the many career mistakes I made was not bending everything to success. OTOH I have a family and I love my family.

Anyway– I feel the need to explain what he meant by childless versus having children. This is a weird thing to explain, and to make things worse, it’s not even absolute (for the reason Washington and Kamala aren’t the same. And that’s just a beginning.) There are people who have children who are in fact childless in every manner that counts, and people who are childless who are in fact people with children in every way that counts. It’s just there are lessons that are easier to learn through having children and raising them, so that’s the way the personality tends to bend.

It’s weird to have to explain it, because of course, most of the time, most of society has children, and knows what it’s like. Except that’s no longer true. In fact, again, the way our society is organized most of us who have children are encouraged to behave and live as if we don’t.

I wasn’t even aware of this until a much younger friend mentioned in passing that the beau ideal of our fiction — movies, tv, novels — nowadays is sort of an eternal college student. I.e. you have no ties, not even to your parents, and you live life for yourself and your own self-actualization. Even romances are portrayed this way, with often the female’s self-actualization being primary, and the male being there to serve it. Unless they get together because “it will help us both be more ourselves” (which isn’t wrong, but it goes through becoming sort of a blended person first. It’s complicated. Yes, I can do a post on that, too, if anyone needs it.)

This is what people are being told to be. Which in turn distorts everything. Because this is what people view as being “adult” and “responsible.” You have a career, you have friends whom you help, but they’re sort of fungible, you have a place you live and where you can have parties. Children, in both fiction and the way you’re encouraged to live, are viewed as hindrances. And if there is a pet it’s usually a cat, because cats are subordinate to the way you live. You don’t have to walk them everyday. There’s automated feeders and most cats who aren’t Indy don’t take them apart. Etc.

This is so alien for most of human history that it’s distorting the way we live and everything we do. It also doesn’t take in account that we still age. Yes, we stay vigorous and hale till very late in life. But we still age. And old age without someone younger to lend a hand, do the tough stuff, make difficult decisions when you’re not feeling well, etc, is hell on Earth, as a lot of people are finding out, since a vast majority of the population is now hitting old age. (And yes, that’s why MAID and other such programs.)

People who hit it and can no longer live the college student lifestyle are likely to be bitter. Further, every woman I know who hits menopause while childless feels regret, even if childless by choice. If they deny that regret, it too becomes bitterness partly because the culture lied to them and most people aren’t introspective enough to distinguish what they wanted and what the culture told them to want.

More importantly, our lifestyle goes against every instinct and deep-set bit of culture laid in over thousands of years, and that too generates some deep-set subconscious alarms, no matter how happy one thinks one is with one’s life.

So, the explanation:

First let’s get a few things about childlessness out of the way:

1 – Being childless is not a moral failing. There are tons of reasons to be childless. Starting with “never found a mate.” Continuing through “Is infertile”. Going on with “Is physically or emotionally unsuited to having children in the sense that being on certain psych medications makes you unable to.”

2- Being childless has a cost. Even in a perfect welfare state, (which doesn’t exist anywhere) once you hit the slope of old age, you’re going to need help and company, and no, paid help and paid company are not the same. Even if you can find them. I’ve now seen this story several times, and being old makes you cranky even if you were sweetness and light before. And it makes you need tasks done for you that should NOT be performed by strangers, even if some strangers are saintly enough to do them. There is a cost. It’s part of the human condition that everything has a cost.

3- The cost is not, despite our longings and ideas that our genes won’t go on. I actually was watching youtube videos on how genetics work down the line yesterday, because I couldn’t function and it was white noise, but really, it’s fairly obvious if you have 23andme or anything like that. Other than a couple of very ancient genes, our genetics get sliced and diced in such a way, if I have grandkids, ever, they’ll be about as related to me as a second cousin. And further down the line, we all sort of return to an undifferentiated sea of humanity. (This could be a post in itself. Tell me if anyone is interested.)

4- The cost of being childless does NOT include “not passing on my values and ideals” because frankly, you learn through being a parent what you pass on is super weird. Like, you can spend 18 years trying to convince the kid to follow your deeply-felt religious faith, but what actually emerges when they’re in their thirties is that they dress nice on Sundays and have a special dinner. (Not even joking, that’s about normal. They pick up the incidental, more than what you try to teach. And culture always has a say.)

5- Having children has a cost too. A high cost, which is harped on by society endlessly. But in the end that becomes a reward.

Which segues into the costs and rewards of having children, very nicely. Strap on. It’s going to be a weird ride.

I know a lot of people who lament never having had children. This is sort of like lamenting never having gotten married. Or never having gone to college. Or whatever.

It’s legitimate, because it was a thing you wanted to do and didn’t get to. So, of course, regret is legitimate. Envy, bitterness and revenge AREN’T.

Because there’s trade offs. And sometimes it didn’t happen because you weren’t willing to make that tradeoff. (Like, in a flip, my career sucks partly because I was the primary caretaker for the family. I had to learn not to be bitter over that.) And sometimes it didn’t happen because it didn’t.

BUT if it had, you’d have been required to make other tradeoffs, which you might now regret. And which would have made you a different person in the end. You would be markedly different than you are. And might feel bitter because your career was blighted. Or because you you never got to go to France, or whatever.

I find, on average, most people get what they really want out of life. What they’re willing to sacrifice for. (They just sometimes don’t think through the consequences of what they want.)

That said, there are two ways in which the difference that comes with having children makes it better for a nation if those governing it have children. And two ways in which the majority of people NOT having children makes a nation face a crisis as those people age.

The first is obvious. Right now my perception of the future is my potential lifespan plus that of my children. I.e. I am intensely interested in the future of the world for another 60 to 70 years, which given a long-lived line is my expectation of longevity for my children and their spouses.

Because of the times we live in, that’s worrisome, but not a very long time span historically. Even with the wheels coming off, with luck, I can expect that with minimal effort that will keep my kids reasonably fed and prosperous and comfortable for the rest of their lives. At least by historical standards of comfortable.

OTOH if one or both of them spawn my interest in history is suddenly a hundred years with the possibility of more. That means I have a major investment in keeping life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness available for those yet unborn generations that I feel responsible for, because those individuals would not have existed but for my choices. (For at least four generations or so, then…. undifferentiated sea of humanity.)

But Sarah, you’ll say, that’s only if you care about your kids. This is very true. If you don’t care about your kids, had nothing to do with their upbringing or actively dislike them as individuals, OR if you don’t feel responsibility to those you created? All this is null and void.

The flip side, where we get George Washington, btw. who married his wife while the kids were little, is that if you raise or help raise someone else’s kids and care about them INTENSELY then you have the parent mind set, even if you’re not biologically one.

I’ll only add it’s easier to be passionately interested in their fates if they’re actually biologically yours. This is not a slight on adoptive parents, or others, it’s just an instinctive thing. It’s EASIER. Doesn’t mean it happens, or that it doesn’t happen if you’re not biologically related. It’s just that a lot of us who otherwise don’t particularly like kids can connect to our own. That’s all. (I keep giggling as young people in my circles discover this and are shocked.)

The second importance of being a parent, and one not immediately obvious, is that it makes it very obvious both the extent of your ability to influence others, and the sheer, blind inability to save those you love from bad decisions. It makes you less authoritarian because you realize you can’t even completely (or much) control those you oversaw from birth and whom you love passionately. Every parent I know has hit this point with a very beloved child. “I love him/her but I can’t stop him/her doing this bizarrely stupid thing.”

If you’re lucky the bizarrely stupid thing is not permanent, and it’s just oh, getting in a very bad job situation, or a bad relationship, or moving to a strange place. And sometimes the kids come back from those. The permanent ones give you nightmares. And yes, they can include outright suicide.

AND sometimes you find that the horriblebad mistake you thought the kid was making turns out fine, and that it was perfect for them all along. Sometimes that paragliding course turns into a whole life of soaring to high expectations. Because parents are no more infallible than anyone else.

The important thing here, as a parent, is that it teaches you you’re not omnipotent and people aren’t widgets. You don’t get out what you put in. It’s not all situation and gestalt. People are individuals, and sometimes some deep inheritance, genetic or otherwise, can come out and bite you in the pound of flesh closest to the heart. And you still love them. You shake yourself off, and keep on loving them despite that. Because the link is still there.

But Sarah, you don’t need kids for that. You can get that with a spouse, a friend or even a cat.

True. It’s just that having seen the story from the beginning, and having it happen with a creature that depended on you for feeding, cleaning, LIVING for years just makes the lesson inescapable. (As for the cat, a friend with a very abusive parent says that parent learned from the CAT what the parent wouldn’t learn from the kids. That you can’t control everything. People are weird.)

It is an important lesson in terms of polity. And one that a vast portion of our population doesn’t seem to GET, which is why they keep thinking entire groups are composed of widgets, and if you feed input a, you’ll get output b. And never understanding the tradeoffs or unintended consequences.

I’ll note, as in my friend’s example above, that even though every single parent runs into this, some parents fail to learn it. Those are the ones that were either never connected to the kids, or are broken in such a way they CAN’T learn it. So they either cut off the kid utterly or keep trying to control the kid, lifelong.

BUT normally, in the normal run of things, all of us learn our kids are — gasp — individuals, different from us in fun, cute, interesting (sometimes blessed) ways, and also in horrifying “you think what?” ways. No matter how much input we put in, the outputs are more likely than not unfathomable.

These are the primary ways in which being a parent changes you. The third is less obvious and it’s that once you have raised kids, it actually is easier to relate to and care to the rest of humanity.

Now, again, because we live in crazy times: this is not a judgement on people who don’t have kids. For a long time I thought I’d be one of those. First because I thought I’d never marry, and second because it took us six years and intensive treatment to have first son. (Second was an unexpected miracle.)

I have no idea who I’d be in that leg of the trousers of time. I do know my proclivities, though, which are isolation and being slightly afraid of other people’s kids. (VERY afraid back then.)

I might very well be one of those very isolated, bitter cat ladies (cats are a given, look you) who resented the comment, without thinking through it.

And that last would be a mistake.

If you care about the future, even if it’s of that undifferentiated humanity from which you came, and to which your genes will return, it is essential that you think about the future, and think of it as a way that people who aren’t like you but for whom you care can survive and thrive. And of a future where individuals are LESS controlled by an authority that can no more guarantee good outcomes than a parent can for the children he/she raised.

It’s also essential you don’t let yourself be manipulated by cheap tricksters into being angry at people over a handful of words and protecting your abstract group over the actual future of civilization.

Pardon if the post is semi-confused. I’m better than yesterday, but still not well. I can and probably should revisit all the components of this very long and perhaps confused post.

But right now, this is what I feel must be said.