Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

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.

I’m tired. Maybe the fact that Canada is burning and in the air again has to do with this, or maybe it is the eternal wishful stupidity of the right. Could be either or.

Unfortunately this means I have a fever, which lately happens when I’m having an auto-immune outbreak.

For those of you who are new here, when I get a fever it’s like when other people are on prednisone. I lose what little governor I have. Also, because my head hurts, I become very short on patience.

What does this mean? Well– The old hands will tell you.

It means I roll up my sleeves, turn the Heinlein picture to the wall and speak without prettifying it for the sensitive souls. I’m sorry. But in case I haven’t mentioned it, I’m tired.

On facebook, someone took offense at my “Getting it out of the way” post. First at my saying that Kamala probably has less recent African ancestry than I do — and mine isn’t that recent. It’s someone who comments here, but he primly informed me that a little research would have prevented my embarrassing faux pas, since her father is of Jamaican ancestry so, obviously she has recent African ancestry.

Head>desk, repeat with gusto. He then insisted the “cast of her father’s features” meant he was black. I know that what y’all are conditioned to think of as “black” reads as “What?” to me, but seriously, the man looks Mediterranean with some English and I checked with people born here. Also, I’m not going to post my own family photos, but the side that so far as we know (unless that’s the tiny amount of Nigerian in my 23 and me. Yes, that’s right. I’m a princess!) has no African blood looks more African than Kamala’s father. Because, well… Portugal is a very mixed place, but also because what American’s consider “black” is not.

But even so, my contention in making that statement was not to dispute one-drop rules, because frankly who cares, but to argue that Kamala is no more black than I am: She’s not black American by culture or ancestry. Meaning that as far as there is a common (and there is) experience among Americans of (some) African ancestry whose ancestors were brought here as slaves, she ain’t got it. She got made “black” because Joe wanted a “black woman” vice president and it was her or the “real governor of Georgia.” That was it. Which is disingenuous.

For some reason this gentleman decided what I was REALLY saying was that Kamala and her family didn’t experience discrimination. (Pfui.) He then went on to lecture me about how if we say she isn’t black we’re making it so that black people rally around her. (This takes a level of double reverse leap and mental gymnastics that, given the fact I don’t have brakes right now, meant I was better off absenting myself from the discussion.)

Look, she isn’t black. Black people know she isn’t black. They were willing to fall for Barrack Obama who at least looks like an American black, but if you think they weren’t bit by that and aren’t wary of him, you’d be silly.

Now, am I saying she didn’t suffer discrimination?

Wait a moment. If I bang my head on the desk some more, with force, maybe it will stop hurting so badly at the arrant stupidity of this idea.

Yeah, she suffered discrimination. I have very bad news for you who are a little older than I: The conditions the democrats and their race obsession have set up in America, largely by poisoning kids’ minds in elementary schools, there is NO ONE that has lived in the US for the last 50 years who HASN’T experienced discrimination based on the way they look, or some perceived racial group. (Other reasons too.) Significant, marked discrimination that often affects their financial or physical well being. White men have suffered significant continual discrimination. So has everyone else. And it’s been much, much worse in the last 30 years. Largely because the left has succeeded in its endeavor of having everyone’s hands against everyone else.

Sure, people who tan have been discriminated against. I happen to know a highly educated Indian (dot) young man whose white wife had nasty things said to her in a diner while he was in the restroom, because she was a you know what “lover”. I also know that mixed race families can be extremely sensitive on that stuff, sometimes unwarrantedly. A couple of our friends, way back when used to get upset at people “staring at our kids”. The truth is both their kids were stunningly beautiful. So, yeah, people stared. Now, some might have been racist, but I suspect most were like me, awestruck at the kids’ beauty. Still, yeah, there are still racists out there, though most of it isn’t the “white supremacy” of the left’s obsession but “He/she ain’t one of us.” And all of us, everyone alive right now, has been a victim of it.

It might be that a realtor didn’t take you seriously, because you were “Mexican” and “poor” — waves hand in the air, though honestly most of it was, PROBABLY that we went to see the house dressed like college students. It was Saturday, we had a small child. We were tired — or it might be you were passed up for promotion because you’re a male of pallor (there’s a vast group of these, and frankly their wives are salty too.) Or it could be the teacher who treated your kid as mentally slow because he was “mixed race” even though being Portuguese you weren’t aware you were of a different race than your Scotts/Irish/German/Amerindian husband. Or– Never mind.

Yes, it has affected me, hence the examples, but heck, I’ve had friends discriminated against for being Mormon, which as we all know is a legion of pale.

And part of this is that people are trying to read “a certain cast” of features which can be interpreted various ways. I can post pictures here of my mom that will have you certain she’s Philippine. That I know of we have absolutely NO Asian blood other than some Indian (dot.) But between hairstyle, makeup and the peculiar artifacts of photos in the 40s, you’d swear to it.

And the problem is Americans read these tea leaves all the time, and do things like “see” some race or subrace in someone. Because they’ve become conditioned to do so. And then they make assumptions — I want you to admire what it would take to look at me and see “Mexican” because it really is astonishing. But then imagine the triple leap of the people who decided DAN was also Mexican, because…. I don’t know. He has black hair? And the truly gifted people who out of nowhere decided we were BOTH Russian and spoke Russian at home (this was after years of trying to put our kids in bilingual, Spanish education, but new principal. And this is what she attributed younger son’s deafness-driven speech issues) — and treat people a certain way. Those people get very upset and treat other people in retaliation. My younger DIL who is one of the whitest women I know has been screamed at and attacked for being “white” which is racism, exactly like attacking someone for being black.

Racism is not skin color plus power or lack thereof, for one because power is not a Marxist thing where groups have power and others don’t. A young white woman who works entry level employment for a living has far less power than a black woman with an ivy league education. To pretend otherwise requires the invention of phantoms like “Structural racism” which is invisible and undefinable bur pervades everything, supposedly, and that leads you down the rabbit hole where you start claiming holocaust survivors have “privilege.” The backlash from that kind of stupidity is going to be epic and leave scorched cities in its wake. And it’s already started.

Which brings us to the next part of this. Apparently we’re not supposed to make fun of Kamala, or refer to the fact her greatest accomplishment and so far as we can tell the only thing she was competent at was servicing a powerful man in exchange for advancement. And we’re not supposed to make fun of her cackle. And we’re not supposed to point out her stunningly bizarre lack of competence. (She’s not really any more competent than her zombie boss.)

Why not? Because you don’t hit a girl. Particularly you don’t hit a female “of color.”

This is the part I roll up sleeves.

Oh, you sweet summer child.

Apparently attacking a woman will backfire “with the American people.” As Sarah Palin can attest right? The woman who was dragged up one side the street and down the other, and called everything but a child of G-d for the offense of running for VP as GOP and being one of best governors Alaska has had? Yeah, granted, she wasn’t a “woman of color” being about one jot lighter than Kamala.

Are we for real now? I don’t know where you people are coming from, but you must have grown up in 1940s movies, where offending “a lady” was a problem.

Nowadays women will be offended if you call them ladies. No, I don’t get it either, but it’s what it is, right?

Nowadays 90 lbs women will challenge 200 lbs guys for a fist fight, because they’ve seen it in movies and it must be real. It speaks to the essential goodness of American males that fewer of them are killed than you’d expect. Nowadays there’s not a single man OF ANY COLOR alive who hasn’t been screamed at by a woman in a rage for the crime of… being nice to her? There isn’t a man alive who hasn’t seen a woman promoted over him because “has vagina.” There isn’t a man alive who hasn’t been told he’s a horrible person for having a penis. (This last includes boys.) There isn’t a man alive who hasn’t been accused of something imaginary by a woman and had a hell of a time extricating himself. And if there is one or two, maybe, he probably has close friends or relatives who have suffered through this.

The chivalry and “you don’t hit a girl” and “let the woman have her turn” of the American people have been stretched to the breaking point.

Now, do all women behave badly? No we don’t. Do all women get undeserved promotions/grades/benefits? No, we don’t. Just like not all minorities advanced are undeserving.

And frankly, the Didn’t Earn It advancement of the undeserving pisses off women and minorities who actually work for it and earned it MORE than it does the white people bypassed in favor of the incompetents. Because our hard earned success gets ascribed to the same kind of preference. And NOTHING, nothing burns more than that.

There is a meme going around about how you shouldn’t say Kamala advanced on her knees, because would you want your sisters/daughters/wives to hear that.

My response to that is, yes, when I say TRUE THINGS about how a woman in power got that power, I WANT my child to hear it. I want her to hear that sleeping with a man for power is NOT the way to achieve it, that it makes people question your competence. I want them to see strong, powerful women who achieved power on their own merit.

I mean, I may disagree with political positions held by Nikki Haley and Tulsi Gabbard (two OTHER Indian-American women), but neither of them can credibly be accused of selling themselves for power. At least not sexually.

Kamala Harris is a horror. The horror starts with her having slept her way into power she was quite incompetent to hold. It goes on through her being a convinced Marxist which at this point after all the discomfirmation of the philosophy is the refuge of the idiots who rely on discrimination to advance.

And it continues to an utter and complete lack of empathy or even understanding others are human beings. Her “I was that girl” at Joe in the primary debates — whatever you think of Joe — was her slipping a shiv in the back of a man who had materially helped her. His look was one most men will recognize. Go and look at that debate. There are recordings, I’m sure. In my opinion that was responsible for how badly she did in the primaries. Wounded men recognized the behavior. They’d suffered it before. So do the women who love them and saw them be treated that way by women they helped before.

And while on that, her complete lack of empathy is expressed in her support for Hamas and hatred of Jews AFTER THE EVENTS OF 10/7. Oh, and her help to release BLM burners and looters to burn and loot some more. All of which is her using humans as chess pieces, not really humans.

If you can look at that creature, and NOT hit her with everything you have, including that she’s pretending to be something — American black, descended from slaves — which she’s not, that she’s a woman who advanced in the oldest and most corrupt way possible, that her very utterances show either lack of brain or heavy drug use, and that she’s to all accounts an ideological monster and a horrible human being, that doesn’t make you “good”, it makes you willing to trade the future of the nation for your own self image as superior and standing above it all.

More importantly, if you’re clinging to “Gentlemen don’t hit girls, because if they do everyone will turn against them and defend the girl”, you’re a patsy. You are specifically a patsy of the leftists, and believe what they want you to believe.

They certainly hit women on our side with everything for the slightest step our of line. If you have time, I’ll show you the scars, some day. Or maybe they’re displayed well enough on this post. Also, I recommend you ask Sarah Palin about it. They destroyed her on every level.

More importantly, we DO know the culture has turned, even if the left refuses to believe it. I call to witness EVERY movie with girlbosses or even super-tan girlbosses, and their failure at the box office.

Yes, in most cases it is because those movies are horrible. But in a couple of cases, because younger son told me the movie was actually “okay” — not wonderful, but okay — and had been lumped in with the horrible ones because of the girlbosses, I watched them. And he was right. The movies were okay. But people couldn’t take another girlboss, another reboot with “girlboss of color”.

The left still thinks casting that way is infallible, because no one would dare hit the movies. They’ll get called racist! Sexist! (Which probably explains their choosing Kamala.)

They don’t get those words have lost all power. I do.

Since if I have grandkids they’re likely to tan (notwithstanding the pallor of one DIL. The other tans darker than my son despite being blond.) and since I have friends with beautiful, bright young daughters who are far darker and more “black” than Kamala, since I am a woman even if an atypical one, I beg you to stop your ridiculous chivalry to people like Kamala.

She doesn’t deserve any forbearance or respect accorded to her for characteristics of birth. And the more you give to people like her, the more you setup the rest of us for the backlash.

If you insist on behaving like patsies and let that creature be “elected” (mostly fraud, but if you shut up you let it sound plausible) you’ll probably be setting up such a backlash to the horrors she’ll put us through that you’ll set the condition of women and people who tan back to the EARLY twentieth century.

Do you want that on your conscience? I hope you do, because if you allow that to happen most of us will never, ever forgive you.

Now lecture me once more about being nice. Tell me again that I must fight with my legs in a sack. Tell me I can’t call her Kamala when most of us called George W. Bush Dubya. Tell me I can’t say chick who looks like light skinned Indian (dot) isn’t black. Tell me I can’t refer to her as being a slept-into-power woman when I said the same about Hilary.

Go ahead. Lecture me. It will be amusing. I have a fever and time to burn.

And I’m fighting for the future of women, particularly those who tan. And for that matter the future of men, particularly those who tan.

And frankly, your delicate, lilac scented feelings aren’t even in the picture as far as my concerns.

So, do go ahead. Make my day.

Let’s suppose you live with say 20 roommates. (Don’t ask, you just do.) You have a private room, but the common areas include office, living room and kitchen.

You all, by common consensus acquire a beautiful, fluffy puppy, all big eyes and eagerness to please.

The puppy does as puppies everywhere do, and goes on the carpet. You clean it up, but you don’t rub his nose in it, and don’t punish him, because well, he’s a puppy. He doesn’t know he did wrong. He’s just doing what’s natural, and it’s mean and non-Christian to punish him for doing what comes naturally.

The same applies to his tendency to nip when he gets over excited. You tell him “no” or stop playing but you don’t smack him, because he’s just a puppy. He doesn’t know any better, and he didn’t mean to draw blood.

You’re going to end up with a nightmare of a dog, unless someone else is training him properly. As Heinlein pointed out, training a puppy that way means that when he’s a full dog and uncontrollable, the only thing you can do is take him out back and shoot him. Which is a horrible way to treat a dog.

But wait, it can get worse. Suppose that the people you live with, for whatever reason, are divided into 15 who are like you, and 5 who are absolutely perverse f*cks. They like/think it’s funny to encourage the dog to go everywhere, all over the carpet, and to bite their roommates.

So when the dog poos or pees inside, they give him treats and tell him how great he is. And when he nips, they laugh, and praise him.

You’re going to end up with a nightmare, vicious dog. And your — and your other 15 friends — only alternative to hiding in your room/living up to your ankles in dog shit/getting bitten every time you try to use the common areas is to move. Only any place you move to, those 5 people — tired of living in shit and getting bitten — follow you and train your new dog the same way.

This is what our society has been like for 100 years just about. Each new puppy — each generation of young people — get trained that being leftist is a positional good that makes them BETTER and more admired. Why?

Well, because the left will praise them for being attack dogs who scat everywhere with leftist slogans and “philosophy”. That’s where the praise is, and the good jobs, etc. And they can be absolutely unfair and go after anyone they please, both officially and in social interactions. But anyone trying to retaliate runs not only into the barrage of leftists, who really don’t want anyone to teach the puppy that spreading poop all over is not a survival strategy, but into a number of “well meaning roommates” who gang up to tell the person trying to train the puppy that punishing the poor little thing for what it didn’t know was wrong is mean and evil and unchristian. Not to mention declassee. “We’re better than that!” they say. Until they run away, and try to find a place they will be left away. Which never happens, because there is no incentive for leaving people alone. Only for being an incontinent, leftist attack dog.

No one is asking you to beat the puppy to death. And you definitely shouldn’t be the one training the puppy if you have no stomach for it.

But this is the process by which we’ve got where we are.

The squeamish on our side will condemn our candidates for being “uncouth” and “mean tweets.” While their side is egging on people who dox, pile on and SWAT at the slightest sign of opposition to the craziest points of the leftist agenda.

It doesn’t take a genius to know how it ends, if you tie the hands of your fighters.

You know lead, follow or get out of the way? You don’t have to do any of that, but respectfully, stop being a sissy.

If you don’t have the stomach to fight, don’t. But stop piling live coals on the heads of those who do. Some of them hate fighting as much as you do. They just had to fight or be killed, and chose the first. Be aware if you’re trying to hamper them, you’re choosing the second. And frankly, at this point, they’re fighting for you too.

Be not afraid. You don’t have to be a lion. But don’t be a sheep.

I don’t care how much you’ve internalized the hierarchy by which only the left gets to do whatever it wants.

It’s wrong. And if it doesn’t stop, civilization itself will die.

Our fighters are not only fighting for the dissidents from the Marxist-Leninist party line. They’re also fighting for all those who never had a chance to learn any better. And for the Marxist-Leninists who don’t realize at the end of their dreams, it’s not utopia that will reign, but death.

Remember the 2012 DNC? The guy on the street interview? “We all have to belong to something, so why not belong to the government?” while I was screaming at the screen “Some of us prefer to be self-owned and not slaves!”

Funny times. It appears many women — not all but many — particularly the exquisitely indoctrinated ones think they must belong to “women” and that by virtue of being born “female” they owe some kind of allegiance to other people born with a vagina. And that goes double, with a cherry on top if they also happen to tan. They then belong to “people of vaginitude” and “Tan group”.

Note “people of vaginitude” because often these are also people who can’t define what a woman is, and frankly, no one can define race very well, and whatever it is it’s not as Americans see it. (Kamala might tan slightly darker than I, maybe. I do however have more African ancestry. Not saying I’m black, note. That’s complicated. And the one drop standard is stupid.)

But even those women who seem to know that women is not something assigned at birth, but something observed at birth, and who are starting to be red pilled will default to reflex genuflections at the mention of “fellow woman.”

Dr. Naomi Wolf is a good example of it. On X she was being all ruffled because saying Kamala advanced on her knees was some kind of sexist remark. This shouldn’t surprise me, as she also took Trump saying that Occasional Cortex is dumber than rocks as being “sexist” and an insult to all women.

Marxism is a helluva drug. It causes women (and some people who tan) to demean themselves and think of themselves as widgets with no individuation, will or agency.

So, from the top: If I say that man — say old Joe — is a disgusting old pedophile who showered with his daughter, will that cause every man to tell me I can’t say that because that’s sexist, a low blow, and demeaning to all men? No?

Then why would saying Kamala is a ho who got into politics on her knees and whose only demonstrated ability is what she did while on her knees bother “all women” and be considered sexist and a low blow? Enlighten me.

Oh, because women are oppressed is it? And a minority despite being a majority by numbers? And Reeeee six thousand years of oppression, you say?

Bullshit. Bullshit on stilts.

Were women oppressed throughout history? Children! PEOPLE were oppressed throughout history. For the few, very few at the top, sure, some women were oppressed sometimes. Of course you read of more women than men being oppressed, but DO consider who writes history. No, not men. Crazy feminists.

Kings were written about more, because they went out to battle and fought and died more. And if you think that’s the good part, or more enviable than staying home minding the demesne, you might be poisoned by story. If I read one more story where a regency lady hates sewing and wants to go to university, it will be one too many. Few men went to university, either. And granted, amid the upper classes in England, a woman’s only way to make a decent living was to marry or be a governess or something. But then among the upper classes in England, a man’s only way to make a decent approved of living was to administer an estate, be a rector, or go to war. None of which are enviable or speak to a lot of freedom. And in the lower classes, people scrambled to survive, did what they could and died young.

Yes, women throughout history got pregnant, and often died. But then men throughout history did the dirty, hard work, outside, and often died young.

There is no choice between the two. They were both terrible. Be glad you live in better times. Spit out the Marx pill. It induces stupidity. Just because someone was oppressed, it doesn’t mean there is a whole group of people who oppressed them. More importantly, it doesn’t mean that group extends unchanging through time.

All the shrieking feminists remind me of the screaming for reparations. The screaming for reparations is demands from people who were never slaves for money and privilege from people who never owned slaves. The shrieking of feminists is a bizarre fear of and desire to beat and humiliate men who never hurt them because they were told that people who had penises in the past hurt their ancestresses. That this would make the men who putatively hurt these women their ancestors too seems to evade them.

Oh, and sure, there were some very bad men who abused power in the past. There are those now too. The fact that they make up abuses of men on the right while giving people like Clinton and Biden a pass just says it’s all Marxism in its feminist skinsuit. (An Edgar suit would be better.)

There were some very bad women in the past too. In fact, you can’t study the royalty of any country without coming across at least one woman who outdid all the men. In Portugal there was the French bride who not only took up with her husband’s younger brother, but managed to depose the king and give the power to his brother. So, you know. There are some bad women too.

The point is humans are humans. I might be diminished because Kamala slept her way to power. But I’m not diminished because someone says she slept her way to power just because she and I both — presumably, and I’m not checking — have vaginas.

You know what I’m diminished by? Women who sleep their way to power and then demand respect. Women like Kamala and AOC and for that matter Hillary, whose only claim to fame is that they are women (and Kamala and AOC “minorities”) and who thereby demand that everyone respect them and be quiet about their atrocious behavior, on penalty of being called “sexist” and “racist.”

Meh. Clinton is also a man-ho. And worse, a predator. So is old Joe. (Yeah, yeah, Trump. Bite me. If the BEST they can bring against him are the ramblings of a broken down ho, and another broken down ho who claims to be a writer of some sort, the man is cleaner than I’d expect of a triple-divorced New York City tycoon. FAR cleaner. Almost impossibly clean, in fact.) And frankly, we didn’t say it enough and we should have. We particularly should have noted how the “feminists” was really quiet on this.

Now, is that the worst that Kamala has done? Oh, pfui. Everything that woman has done is a horror. Probably because she’s an empty shell occupied by evil, but then again, I’m not the owner of her soul, and maybe she still has a scintilla of humanity. Her prolonging the sentences of a lot of incarcerated black men to take advantage of their labor wouldn’t indicate that, but it’s possible, right?

However, sleeping her way to power and being a DEI hire, claiming a race that’s not her own is also something she’s done. (I’m not privy to her 23 and me. Maybe she’s got more recent African — we all have distant African — blood than I have. It’s possible. But note I don’t claim to be black. Because I’m not, either by experience or appearance (except to crazy people, which happens.) And by appearance and experience she’s Indian-American. by ancestry? A lot of ancestors who owned slaves. But one isn’t going to hold that against anyone. Now lying about it? Sure.) And we can’t get the full picture of the horror that is Kamala Harris until we know how much she’s willing to do for the power she then misuses.

It’s not sexist to mention it, because we’ve been mentioning sexual transgressions all along. It’s the left and feminists who have swallowed everything the left tosses out. So to put it.

In fact, it’s sexist to protect women from this type of accusation when we wouldn’t protect men. It’s sexist not to hold sexual transgressions and sexual trading against women, when we hold it against men.

It’s sexist to claim someone is amazing — as the left does, and is already doing about Kamala — because someone happens to be a woman. Just like it was the epitome of racism to claim that Obama was amazing BECAUSE he was black.

And if you think I’m being crazy and that there were no people who did that, in 08 that was the usual answer for my colleagues when asked why he was so amazing: He’s black, and he’s running for president. Honestly old Joe’s “clean and articulate” was less racist, as it at least had other attributes. BUT still incredibly racist in assuming this was something that shouldn’t/ couldn’t be true for black men.

I am so tired of this sexism and racism and general bigoted bullshit flying under the radar of enlightenment and “diversity.”

Because this is real pernicious shit and does real harm. To people like me, my kids, my friend’s kids who have a black father, just about every woman alive today, and everyone who tans at about the level of spun gold (Home depot paint chip. And I wasn’t that tan) or darker.

For the sake of letting a few chosen Marxist-Leninists be above reproach and untouchable, or a few no-talent chosen “artists of the left” be lionized and above critique, we’re selling the birth right of everyone else who shares a single characteristic of them.

I resent this. I resent this with the first of a thousand suns.

I don’t want to be judged as a Woman Writer. Or even a Portuguese Born Writer (which implies a little more effort, at least, since even if I’d come here as a child, I’d have had parents who were ESL. The fact that I’m writing in a language I learned at 14 is at least a little more personal and the result of something I did, not merely was born. But still yet, that’s not the little pool where I want to swim the rest of my life.)

I want to be judged as a writer. As a human. Period.

Look, if we’re going to list all the writers I’m not as good as, we’re going to need a bigger blog and also the next month just to write out lists.

BUT I’m working on it. I’m working really hard. And what I aspire to is being THE BEST. I’ll allow some qualification, because it’s impossible to weigh apples and kumquats together, much less apples and dinosaurs. So I aspire to be the best Space Opera writer. Okay, I’ll never get there. But I want to try. I want to compete in that arena as a writer, not was “a woman” or “A woman of color” (Meh. Pale-ish just now. But not transparent, so still of color) or “An immigrant woman” or any of that.

I’m me. I’ll compete as me. As a human being. And I’ll go up against the best, mano-a-mano, and mostly get clobbered. But what meager victory I earn will be my own, and not of some collective group.

Yes, Alexandria Occasio Cortez is an idiot. Whether she has a brain and doesn’t use it, or never had one and is merely a parrot doesn’t matter. She’s still an idiot. There are brilliant women out there, but my saying that this one woman is a blithering moron doesn’t mean all women are morons. To claim that AOC and Margaret Thatcher are the same because they both have/had vaginas is like claiming that tomatoes and pineapples are the same because they’re both fruits. Outside reproductive purpose, it’s completely irrelevant.

All women who get offended and shriek “Sexist” because we make jokes about knee pads Kamala need to take a step back and THINK. Unless they, too, only got into their profession by orally servicing a powerful man, why are they shrieking? Do they owe such allegiance to the fact they were born with a vagina that they’d diminish themselves to ONLY THAT? Do they think sucking off powerful men is the only way women advance, and it’s therefore mean to talk about it? If the last, they are the sexists, and also should be put away for their safety and that of others. But it is exactly the kind of idiotic belief encouraged by refusing to hold women who behave badly to the same standards as men who behave badly. It encourages the perception women protect corrupt women because we’re all corrupt.

And that is something I will not put up with.

As for everyone who tells we’re too good and too clean to refer to Kamala’s underhanded ascent into politics using sexual favors: that’s cute.

You stand there above the fray and pose for the picture of the world’s most noble loser. But leave the rest of us to fight for our lives.

We are in a fight for the life of the nation. Kamala is a horror, not just in her private, but very much in her public behavior. Note this from the GRAUNIAD of all places. And this that mentions her support of HAMAS. Those happy go lucky butchers of 10-7.
Yet there are many LIVs who will ignore the fact that she falsely imprisoned black men, or used her power to destroy and oppress, or opened our borders to invasion, or paid to free the arsonists and terrorists of BLM– BUT will be prudishly shocked she slept with a married man, and refuse to vote for her.

“But that’s not fair. That’s not why they should be not voting for her,” is a cute whine. And it’s everywhere, right now, particularly on the left. Stop using arguments that come from the left. You know where they pulled them from.

Fair has absolutely nothing to do with it. They’d use it against us because it works. We should use it against them because it works. Oh, and unlike their accusations, happens to be true.

This is not a polite argument in a gentleman’s club. This is a bare knuckle brawl in an alleyway. You fight with everything you have, or you’ll end up dead.

And while death for me is as may be, death for those who depend on me is not. And death for America never is.

Which is what’s at stake. No more, no less.

Draw the line at lying, yes, for the sake of your soul. But unpalatable truths?

They wouldn’t shriek so hard if revealing those truths didn’t have an effect.

Fight like you mean it, and never mind the mud. Mud washes off easier than blood.

First of all, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, yes, I did a quick house cleaning yesterday. Forgive me, readers, for I cleaned, and as we all know when I clean things go weird.

Not that this is all that weird, except for the fact that it has all the appearance of a palace coup. As in, one does wonder if Biden knows he dropped out of his campaign. One does wonder, at that, if Biden is alive, or sufficiently compus mentis to know that he has dropped out. And that’s if he knew he was running in the first place, which one very much doubts.

Some people on Twitter are horrified that someone other than Joe Biden is obviously acting as president. I want to scream, vomit, laugh and hit my head on the wall. First of all, if they don’t think that’s been happening since 2020 they are such wishful thinkers they’re not even in this reality. Second, apparently they’re horrified because the people running the country “weren’t elected” which implies they think Joe Biden WAS elected. Despite the campaign run from the basement, which no one would do unless they were SURE they could win, and the only way to be sure was to have it fraud-locked in place; despite the obviously and clearly hackable voting machines; despite the kicked out poll observers, despite the glaring mathematical impossibility of the vote count; despite the way the democrats acted immediately after, like they were afraid the American people would catch on and tear them limb from limb. Despite all this, these people believed. Because they wanted to believe.

This complacency and this going along with it because no one wanted to “cause a constitutional crisis” — this includes our craven Supreme Court — is why we are where we are now.

A small group never elected to anything is trying to manage perceptions while they behave as they please, hold this great country in vile submission and rotate the nominal presidency among them as they please.

America isn’t gone, because America is not its government but its people, but we are being held in nominal captivity by a Junta that is less legitimate than some banana republic governments.

This isn’t our first time in this situation. Most of the elections that put people like FDR in power were probably unable to stand scrutiny.

And the good news is that we are winning the culture, which in turn will change the politics, hopefully before a Northern Ireland situation eventuates. (Which would be very very bad, because Americans do everything bigger and with more bang.)

But this doesn’t mean we’ll wrestle control back this November. Maybe. Maybe a miracle will occur, in which case we should straighten out our electoral dysfunction then and there, before worse happens.

However, no matter how unpalatable what comes next is — and if they get Big Mike in, it’s very unpalatable indeed — remember that yeah, sure, they can’t win the election, but that’s not the goal and never was.

Their goal is simply to PRETEND to have won it, plausibly enough the usual weak sisters tell us to shut up, and obviously Trump lost, because so mean, so abrasive.

In that sense even Kamala might do, because it distances them from the obvious Biden negatives, gives the opposition research less time, and can count on the bizarre tribalism of many American women (no, not all, but many) who will vote for someone “because vagina” having such low opinions of themselves that they think they should be a separate category with only one requirement of being born with an organ that does not in any way contribute to cogitation.

So while we stand here, in awe of the magnificent dumpster fire, make not the mistake of underestimating the enemy. They have fraud on their side, and fraud is a powerful demon.

Be not afraid, but be not stupid. And if you’re a believer — or even if you’re not. Imagine how surprised the Author would be if you piped up at Him — pray for America.

We’ll survive. We’ve survived worse. But we’re going through a very narrow point with near-endless ruthless door-to-door civil war on one side, and vile submission for a few decades on the other.

Pray we don’t fall either way.

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 M.C.A.HOGARTH: Who Is Willing

Alysha Forrest is looking forward to her assignment as the Songlance’s newest lieutenant, particularly when it gets her placed as the liaison to the ship’s water environment crewmembers. Interfacing with the mermaid-like Naysha and the alien Platies who serve as the ship’s navigators is an exhilarating experience, and all the other officers on the crew are eager to welcome her into the fold… all of them, except one. Mike Beringwaite, the overbearing ensign who ruined their leadership retreat years earlier, has somehow made lieutenant too. When a routine problem in the water environment throws them together, Alysha has to decide how willing she is to forgive him for what he did, whether she can work with him again, and most importantly, if she can trust him–with her life. The disaster at the leadership retreat is nothing to the one they have to handle now. If they can…. (Prequel) Alysha’s Fall 1. Second 2. Who is Willing 3. Sword of the Alliance 4. Either Side of the Strand

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: A Fox in the Henhouse (Timelines Universe Book 2)

Delaney Wolff Fox is a spy. A cute spy. A deadly spy.

A spy you want at your back when stuff gets real.

From a palatial office in Johannesburg, to a fancy whisky bar in Sydney, Australia, to a beautiful private beach in southwest Florida, to the great and wild city of New Orleans, Captain Delaney Fox, United States Space Force Marines (Intelligence Division) finds herself beset by assassins at every turn, while first saving an alien government’s valuable artifact from the South African cartel that’s stolen it, and then being assigned to guard said artifact while it completes a world tour, on loan from that same alien government.

But like the proverbial fox in the proverbial henhouse, you can count on Delaney to complete the mission and come out with the prize, intact and in hand – even if the “farmer” isn’t all that keen about her doing so.

FROM DAVID COLLINS: The Bug War

The Ogres seemed to be ‘monsters,’ but they were monsters that could be reasoned with—as long as you understood what motivated them.

Several new aliens have now joined the fray:

One that seems helpful and friendly, but something from its past may have kicked over a hornet’s nest—a really nasty threat that hasn’t been seen in centuries.

A new race may be the most dangerous they have encountered. They have a weapon against which they have no defense.

To top it all off, a massive swarm of intelligent insectoid aliens has been expanding, and their former enemies, the Meduala, are now squarely in the path of the bug’s expansion.

Keith has to solve this new puzzle carefully, and none of the pieces are fitting. Time is running out.

FROM MACKEY CHANDLER: The Long View (April Series Book 14)

Despite their animosity, North America seems cowed into leaving Home and the Kingdom of Central alone for the moment. They are begrudgingly honoring the treaty Singh and Love hammered out in Hawaii and allowing free passage to Home. That doesn’t mean they’ve lifted the sanctions on Home trade. The European powers are as friendly as needed to do trade but have never apologized for the lies about the origin of the last flu pandemic. That’s already fading from short-lifer’s memories. They can’t understand why long-lifers just won’t let stuff go. It helps that North America has other problems like Texas aggressively nibbling away at their border. Quebec has always been patiently waiting for them to be too busy elsewhere to repress them, and Mexico is quietly slipping away to Texan influence without a shot being fired. China, never really homogenous is too fractured into competing regions and interests to be a threat for a while. Jeff may have tipped them over the edge to that but it wasn’t hard.
In the relative peace holding for a moment in history, the habitats and the Moon are progressing past survival to making life comfortable. While many on Earth think the Spacers survive on Earth-grown food they’ve progressed to an abundance of essentials and are working away on the luxuries. They are acquiring extra-solar real estate beyond the Earthies reach.
Heather and her peers, April, and Jeff, plan a Grand Ball to celebrate life, friends, and allies. If the timing doesn’t work for the Earthies that’s their problem. It’s time to enjoy what they’ve accomplished and make plans for the future long put off. Soon enough, short-lived politicians will be replaced by those who don’t remember what happens when you rile the Spacers up. But for now, they can enjoy the moment.

FROM RACONTEUR PRESS ANTHOLOGIES: Or All Will Burn: At All Costs (Raconteur Press Anthologies Book 32)

Whether in a murky forest, the void of space, or under the bed, the innocent are often in peril. Hazards abound in the outer darkness and only a parent stands between it and their children. Here are tales of parents wiling to endure whatever perils they must to ensure the safety of their kids, at all costs.

FROM CAROLINE FURLONG: Debris (The Rise of the Discarded Series Book 1)

Strength has many facets….

Lost in thought, Ayar’s mind was on his invention that would allow premature griffin cubs to survive. He had no inkling he would rescue a creature that he suspected might be rational. Who would put one of their own out to die like that?

Rhys Callahan wanted to avoid a point of known pirate activity. Then he flew directly into one, and his ship was shot out of the sky. He managed a terrifying crash-landing on the nearest planet only to find himself among regressed humans who thought he was a god. When they realized he wasn’t, they became angry. Then they chained him to an upthrust boulder as a sacrifice to their local deity.

Neither Ayar nor Rhys ever expected to meet one another. But now that they have, maybe together they can fight for both their kinds. First, though, they need to learn how to communicate – and hope that neither of them is killed before they can get their enterprise off the ground!

Welcome to the first book in the Rise of the Discarded series!

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Godshead (Modern Gods Book 1)

Food and drink for sale; snark for free…

It’s hard to be a god nobody believes in, sometimes. Especially when one spends their days trying to quietly go about his or her life in a world that barely remembers the myths surrounding the old Greek gods, but where some religions still follow the old Norse gods.

And some of the Norse gods are getting more dangerous: Loki, the trickster, has lost the last of what passed for his sanity, and needs to be helped, or stopped. One of the two. And no one seems to be up to it.

At least, not alone. Working together, they can avoid the worst of Loki’s tricks, and maybe even solve their problems.

A tale told from several points of view.

FROM KAREN MYERS: Broken Devices: A Lost Wizard’s Tale (The Chained Adept Book 3)

Book 3 of The Chained Adept

CHAINS WITHOUT WIZARDS AND A RISING COUNT OF THE DEAD.

The largest city in the world has just discovered its missing wizards. It seems the Kigali empire has ignited a panic that threatens internal ruin and the only chained wizard it knows that’s still alive is Penrys.

The living wizards and the dead are not her people, not unless she makes them so. All they have in common is a heavy chain and a dead past — the lives that were stolen from them are beyond recall.

What remains are unanswered questions about who made them this way. And why. And what Penrys plans to do to find out.

FROM MARY CATELLI: Winter’s Curse

Who but a fool would linger after Zavrien laid his curse? Ill luck can kill — and all the more in Zavrien’s enchanted, endless winter, haunted with ice giants and frost fairies.

When the soldier Gareth is cursed, the young wizard Perriel learns how dangerous lingering can be.

But she can hold out a sliver of hope for breaking the curse — if it doesn’t break them first.

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: GRASS

*I won’t lie. I have a post, maybe two about this whole thing I want to make. But here’s the thing: I’ve been on the Fight! Fight! Fight! team for a long time. M. C. A. Hogarth though? She’s the nicest person I’ve ever known, always trying to find kind reasons for what the other side does. And yet, she’s now here. These are the times we live in – SAH*

Aiming the Chilling Effect by M. C. A. Hogarth

“I thought not fighting was always the moral choice. But it turns out not fighting is only the moral choice among reasonable people who agree with you that violence is not an option. […] When the school bully makes the class poet cry, it’s not virtuous to let them.” –Major Pieces, M.C.A. Hogarth 

Back when I was still an officer in SFWA, there was some talk going around about banning Jerry Pournelle from posting on the forums because of the “chilling effect” he had on younger women and minorities. The possibility that Pournelle might respond was sufficient to deter these people from speaking, and so we were deprived of their viewpoints. “Many people are afraid to post because of him,” I was told. 

 If you were lucky enough to know Pournelle, you could see how a cantankerous, confident, successful gaffer might intimidate some people. But I did not judge that sufficient reason to ban him, and fortunately, enough officers agreed with me that we were able to keep him around. My advice to people was ‘practice courage on this minor battlefield: make a post, and don’t let someone else’s opinion stop you.’ 

 But the people complaining about him were correct about one thing: chilling effects are real, and they shape your local communal cultures. Too many people are worried about what some Big Name Influencer is doing or saying without turning around and noticing that they are keeping silent at work about their beliefs, tucking their religious symbols under their shirts when they go to conventions, or grimacing through another diatribe from one of their children’s teachers, knowing that if they go to the principal they won’t get a sympathetic ear. 

The reason those people can talk about half the country as if they’re evil is because we have ceded those local battlegrounds. We are the ones suffering from the chilling effect. We’ve allowed ourselves to be silenced, because the alternative is frightening, distasteful, or too costly. But each and every one of us is responsible for creating and enforcing the norms of our society. We, by our individual behavior, show one another where the line is, and what behavior will get you shunned. And it is our duty, as people who want to live in a civilized society, to say, ‘That’s enough.’ 

There is a lot of talk lately about not “punishing” the powerless and downtrodden for poor behavior. “Save your ammunition for their leaders! They’re just following the trends!” As if the decapitation of a movement is sufficient to topple it. But society is created at the ground level, in our everyday interactions with one another. That’s where we demonstrate what behavior is acceptable and what behavior must be beyond the pale. It has to start with us saying, ‘Hey, not everyone agrees with you’ at work; with us going to conventions with our ‘Jesus saves; all others take half damage’ shirts; with us telling our children’s teachers, ‘That’s not appropriate behavior, and I won’t support it in someone who teaches children.’ It is in our local communities that we have power, and in our local communities where we see results. When enough normal, everyday people realize ‘If I talk like this, I will get in trouble,’ then it will stop. 

 Many people right now want to take the moral high ground, as if we have already established those norms. But we haven’t. Right now, one side thinks salting the earth for the most minor transgression is appropriate behavior. Until they fear that their neighbor will raze their house in retaliation, there can be no meeting of minds. Both sides need to agree that some behaviors are unacceptable and fear the consequences of embarking on them before they can come to the negotiating table as equals. You don’t call in the diplomats before the fight’s over. 

The thing that always tires me about these discussions, in the end, is that it’s never the Moral High Ground people who pay the price for their principles. When they decide that they should be better than their opponents, it’s the non-combatants, the children, elderly, helpless, sick, or weak, who take the punishment… while they stand back and let it happen. I maintain it is never principled to allow other people to pay the price for your rectitude. Offloading the consequences of your purity onto others and calling their suffering the regrettable cost of being the better person is wrong. 

 I am a non-combatant who’s taken those blows. I’m also the diplomat you call in when the fighting is over. I love people; I care for friends and family and fans who are on both sides of the political spectrum (and some floating beyond it in space). I want us to return to a point where we can enjoy books and pet pictures together because we think of one another as human beings and not faceless evil drones. But to get there, we need to understand that the chilling effect never goes away. Our only choice is where to aim it. I would prefer to aim it at people who want to spit vitriol about assassinating presidential candidates in public, or wishing that more people “on the other side” would die, until they no longer feel comfortable voicing such sentiments among civilized beings. Only when we respect the weapon in one another’s hands can we move on. 

I wish none of this mess had happened. But as Gandalf reminds us, it’s not for us to decide whether we see such times or not, only to decide what to do with the time given us. And this is the time to practice courage. 

This was not the post I was going to write today, but sometimes — sometimes — an idea comes out of nowhere and whomps you between the eyes.

This morning I woke up to a text from one of you — you know who you are — and suddenly I had this great plot for a thriller in my mind. Yes, I know you’re laughing and of course I’m finishing the mammoth book first. I just want to ask your opinion of how plausible this story is, in your mind, okay?

The names used in this plot are just place holders, no resemblance intended to any person living or dead, despite Wretchard’s tweet which of course means he ate some bad oysters of something, right?

Imagine we had a president, let’s call him Bindy E. Weed who was always an extremely corrupt politician, and whose family is so deep in crime that every dictator and cartel owns a piece. He was elected in an election so fraudulent it could never happen in reality because among other things it required fooling other nations about the virulence of a released bio-agent, and I mean, why would other nations all fall for that. Wait, I’ll make it so that they too are fighting internal dissension that will upend long-held structures of power. That might do it, right?

Bindy is elected and immediately gets what he deserves. First, due to his guilty conscience he jumps at nothing and either he or someone in his orbit orchestrates a Reichstag fire, which fails to have the effect hoped for despite work over years to make it into the worst thing ever. His inauguration — this is pretty much impossible in America, okay — is behind barbed wire fences and beefed up guard, but despite incitement nothing happens to justify it. And then…. slowly, incrementally, the wheels keep coming off.

There had been signs of decline before, but they were possible to cover up. Except he gets much, much worse. Behind the scenes he’s puppetted by his wife, a Doctor of … oh, I don’t know let me see a completely useless degree…. We’ll call it Pedagogical studies, as a place holder. His wife…. d*mn it, need name, Tilly Weed, and his son Nimrod. Nimrod not only has acted for years as the family bagman, but is also an addict to several disparate substances and has subtly been emitting cries for help in the form of trying to get caught for years. There’s also a cabal of overgrown theater kiddies who love, adore and bow down to Tilly thinking she is a mondo genius. The most prominent of them are the triple A group around Bindy, who are frankly my weak point. I mean, why should they all have A names? It begs the question. I might change it in post. And make them Bs. I mean, they’re B class talent. Anyway, it’s not just them, of course. Tilly has the kind of suburban mom vibe that will appeal to broken kiddies of any age, of which there are a lot in this administration and the corrupt ideology that supports it. For instance the head of the secret service Howda Cheatam — yes, the name is too on the nose, I’ll fix it later — is a great friend of Tilly and owes her rise to Tilly.

Everything is going swimmingly. Okay, it’s not, because our little cabal in power is busier fending off attacks from other cabals within the very corrupt party that put them in power than actually governing. Also, they’re not that smart. Suburban and (I hate the term, but there it is) midwits. More sure of their smarts than smart. Mostly because they have credentials and are sure these must mean something.

One of the more prominent cabals is from hungry-for-power-yet-hapless vice president Succor Brown. So far she’s not been much trouble because she’s even less liked than Bindy and frankly utterly incoherent.

But then the guy they frauded the election away from, and the previous president (1 term, so still eligible) announces his run for the presidency. What do we call him? Um…. Let’s call him Jack Spades. Remember this is just a placeholder. I’ll come up with something more plausible later, okay? Anyway, the Weeds know exactly how much votes this guy got, and they’re terrified, so they try to take him down before the elections. By legal means, of course.

Dr. Tilly isn’t precisely stupid, but she is hampered by the fact she is essentially, culturally, a suburban housewife. She knows what would stop her voting for someone. She would never vote for someone who had been convicted or even credibly accused of crimes. Not because she’s Simon pure, but because she would never vote for someone who is on the outs. Think grown up high-school cliques. This is the level of her intellect.

So there is first a lawsuit on a tenuous “I vaguely remember being raped at a time I can’t remember, in a place that maybe we were both at” that awards the person making the accusation (another faded jumped-up suburban mean-girl) a lot of money. But that doesn’t work. So the suits multiply, they’re obviously coordinated by Dr. Tilly (I mean there are links back up to her. Obvious too, because she’s not too bright.) And Spades is convicted. Only what he’s convicted of makes no sense whatsoever, besides “evil bad” and frankly, it seems to bolster his popularity. I mean, the one time they arrest him, he makes his mug shot iconic. He has no shame, his followers have no shame, and Dr. Tilly is starting to get that feeling she often got in college when the professor would explain something everyone else understood, and she felt like they were speaking a foreign language.

Then the truly disastrous happens. Well, to be fair, Dr. Tilly has got careless, mostly because no matter how strange and obviously out of control her husband gets in public, the press does cover up wonderfully, converts all his gaffes to moments of genius, and in general convinces the low information voters that perhaps things aren’t going quite as he planned, but Bindy is a good man, and certainly much better than Hater McHaterson Spades who will put anyone darker than a Fitzpatrick 2 skin tone and anyone who ever looked appreciatively at someone of the same sex, as well as anyone who ever dressed up as the other sex for a school play, in camps.

So Dr. Tilly thinks she’s safe in putting Bindy on a debate stage with Spades. Well, to be fair, she has reason for it. After all, they get the questions in advance, and practice saying things that will set off Spades notoriously volatile temper, so even if Bindy is a little incoherent, it will be overshadowed by Spades’ getting angry and ranting incoherently. They can then play those clips over and over and totally obscure the fact that Bindy is a few roots short of a full clump.

However, Spades keeps his cool. And Bindy is more incoherent than even Dr. Tilly could have anticipated.

Suddenly their own ideological faction, which — having lost its philosophical appeal for reasons that I’ll fill in later, like, oh, their historical model has been catastrophically disproven over and over again, to the point it’s hard to obscure — is best described as a bunch of rabid rats in a sack, each determined to survive all the others, is demanding that Bindy step down before he destroys their side utterly. AND Spades, incredibly keeps climbing in the polls. The praetorian media has him in a cone of silence which has worked for candidates before, but is not working for him. Somehow. And Tilly feels like she’s in a movie, where you fire at the monster and he just keeps coming and coming.

It’s time to — metaphorically speaking (or not) — pull out the big guns, and to destroy Spades and replace him with someone controllable.

Dr. Tilly knows or at least like everyone else has heard that other factions on her side have gotten rid of inconvenient people. There is that famous guy who died in jail and who didn’t kill himself. And as bad as that “suicide” was botched and despite the list of that guy’s clients never coming out, it’s held, hasn’t it?

And she has the power that Bindy is no longer able to hold. I mean, it’s good to be queen.

She’s not so stupid as to involve the three letters, because, well, she probably tried to give them hints in the past and was looked at like she’d lost her mind. And that was that raid on Spades’ resort Ocean Large which was supposed to have shown he was a danger to national security but the only three letters group that would listen to Tilly were themselves not the brightest and despised even within their agency. So the setup had started to leak almost immediately, and THEN the fact that Tilly’s husband had done worse had come out. Seriously, she could have spit. It wasn’t enough that the old goat had not been able to keep his hands off young — some very young — women but he also had done things so stupid even she didn’t know about them. So that entire thing had unraveled, and didn’t look to go anywhere. And hadn’t affected Spades’ polls the slightest. Except perhaps to make his numbers go up.

Now, I’ll admit I’m a little hazy here, because I’m ninety percent sure that no three letters were involved. Even in these, our debased times, it’s hard to sell anyone on the idea that they would in fact be this stupid, let alone be unaware of the foibles of guns or shooting, the fact that connections would start coming out over time. OR stupid enough to lend themselves to Tilly’s plot, particularly after the Ocean Large thing.

I don’t know, these things usually solidify when I write the actual book, so let’s say that Dr. Tilly knew of this kid through his parents, who are therapists of a sort who probably worked through the pedagogical establishment. Or perhaps Nimrod knew him through the drug dealing scene? The kid did after all work in a medical center. Or– Well, we can establish a million things.

Now, for all I know Dr. Tilly has another wounded child in her orbit in Nonesuch Agency who combed through records for her and found the kid. Whatever.

The question — the only question — is how hastily can I have it be setup and still be credible. Since it’s a half assed movie like plot dreamed up by a suburban woman, I think five days is enough. Interestingly, the same person whose tweet sparked this has another….

Okay. We’ll go with that. Five days, uh? Totally doable, if you pick a kid who is just enough on the spectrum he has no social media presence and no friends. This is essential otherwise he might tell someone about his great mission, etc.

You must pick a kid isolated and closed-in enough that he will not speak in the very few days left in his life. AND he must be smart enough that you can cater to his sense of being smarter than his surroundings and capable of more than he’s achieved. While he must be innocent enough of the world and well, let’s be clear, autistic enough to believe the movies are life. I should be able to write a kid like this — except for crying on the keyboard — because frankly that’s what most of us were to an extent or another.

If Dr. Tilly has enough low cunning — and she does — his parents or at least one of them actually support Spades, and the kid — just in case he shies off or escapes — is told he’s actually somehow helping Spades. Say he’s convinced Spades is not himself but an evil double, and if he kills the double…. OR he’s convinced that this is really a false flag to help Spades’ numbers.

Or of course the kid had been told for four years that Spades is actual Hitler, and who wouldn’t kill Hitler before the ovens got going?

Anyway… Meet with the kid a few times, convince him of his great power. Have him set his van to explode as a distraction, so he can “get away” even though, of course Dr. Tilly probably has someone else set to off him.

Oh, this is easy, because of course she has Howda Cheatam. Without Howda, Dr. Tilly could not possibly pull this off, but Howda knows to whom she owes her position, and besides, she admires Dr. Tilly in a soppy, not-very-bright-female crush on another not-very-bright female who made good. Dr. Tilly is everything Howda wishes she was, so smart, so well dressed, so down to Earth and so “sensible.”

And Dr. Tilly is not asking her to do anything actually illegal, right? Only take most of the security detail to protect Dr. Tilly at her impromptu appearance — so important. I mean, the first lady is better than some skivvy candidate who has been CONVICTED, right? — nearby and oh, keep her agents off the most logical roof to shoot from. Which is only safety. The roof is PITCHED after all.

So, the poor kid goes off to save the nation…. He makes sure his boss knows he only needs a day off.

There are still questions and points where my plot is weak: How did they prevent the secret service from acting and at least immobilizing him in the 50 minutes they would be aware of him? Why would his parents be so alarmed by his being late — he’s a 20 year old after all — or just not at work, that they called the authorities? I mean, I know those happen, but not how or why. Never mind. It will fill in later.

In fact, I’ll start this book with the kid being shot. And then fill it in backward.

Look, the thing about idiot plots is that they have a way of unraveling.

Now not splattering Spades’ brains all over kingdom come? That I need to invoke a miracle for. That is one of those things that is truly unbelievable, and I’ll have to call in my “one miracle.” You’re in general allowed one miracle per plot. But I need it for the setup to work. Because if the candidate is dead, it’s a whole different book, and I’m not writing the story — even fictional — of America unraveling and descending into chaos.

But after that? Look, the three letter agencies — who know they’re going to be blamed for this — might be corrupted by the corrupt ideology in power. They might be penetrated and at war with themselves. But they’re not as stupid as Dr. Tilly. (Few things above nematodes are.) And particularly they’re not as bound by the suburban zeitgeist. so they’ll see the holes she doesn’t see in her plot. And they’ll start poking.

Three days? That is enough for them to figure out what actually happened, and who did it. At that point, frankly, they’d be terrified. One thing is to have rapacious and conniving plotters on top, who can stay seated with carefully targeted assassinations. But Dr. Tilly is a clown show, a danger to herself, others, the nation, and frankly and more importantly, the three letter agencies. Not just their lives, but more importantly, what remains of their credibility. She’s already caused them to take body blows. At this point, even another Spades administration — and they can deal with him quietly, later, probably — is preferable to the sooper genius plots of Dr. Tilly.

They have the goods. They need to go to someone almost as stupid as Dr. Tilly but with boundless ambition, and the one most likely to take over if Dr. Tilly falls. So they go to VP Succor Brown. There would be a big confrontation in the halls of power four? Five days? after Spades survives.

Also the three letters would make sure Dr. Tilly knows they’ve got the goods and the proof.

Suddenly Bindy who said he’d never step down unless the Almighty told him to, comes down with a bio agent x infection. And says he’ll step down if the doctors say he should.

Now I’ll admit I don’t know how I finish the book. Ideally Dr. Tilly would get her comeuppance, but I’m not sure how to make that seem real. Likely neither do the Three Letters. And heaven only knows what their further plans are and if they had plans to deal with Spades before Dr. Tilly’s genius stylings.

What do you guys think? Does the plot so far hold together? And what do you think comes next to remain true to this book?

And what do you think of titles? Told by an Idiot, harking to Dr. Tilly’s essential stupid. Or The Boy Who Would Kill Hitler. Or perhaps Decision at Dumb?

I don’t know, but I’m sure you will. It is essential that people reading this think very carefully through it, and let me know what they think will happen next. I’m all curiosity. And who knows? Perhaps we can turn it from tragedy into comedy.