Of course, I had to go and look up the history of ghettos in America.

You see, I joke that I have a mind like a stainless steel lint trap: it only retains the most useless stuff. However, this is not even true, really. The truth is that I have a mind like Indy when he’s bored. I will not only chase after any irrelevant distraction that crosses my path, but I will then, with absolute determination, take it apart, examine the parts, and then bat it around till it ends up under the (metaphorical, ontological) fridge, where it’s out of my reach.

And having started thinking about how much the song “In The Ghetto” annoys me, because its assumptions are so wrong they’re not even in the right universe, I found myself trying to figure out what American ghettos actually were. I mean, we all heard about them over and over, but what were they, REALLY? Because they weren’t the same as European Jewish ghettos where Jews were confined by law, and often not allowed to be out of after sundown or whatever. (Depending on the time and place.)

The answer is… complicated. As of course such things are because America has a massive hole in the head when it comes to race, both seeing it where it never existed, and then trying to erase it in weird, government centric ways, when not trying to emphasize it in weird, government centric ways. Take it from someone who grew up abroad, and whose ideas of race are either far more complicated than American culture — each nation a race! Forget genetics, hits history! — or far more simple — who gives a d*mn about race? It’s culture that matters! — that America’s way of thinking/handling/dealing with the fact that humans come in different skin tones and sets of features is bizarre enough it will eventually give archeologists headaches.

In the sense that the lending/selling apparatus of the US was for a time weaponized in the service of segregation of the races (due to governmental decree) America could be said to have — for a time at least — have had real ghettos. This was an artifact of law and finance, not of the people on the ground. And such ghettos, being imposed from above tended thereby to become… limited and limiting of those confined to them.

Or in other words, it limited the choices and ability to thrive of people who were more or less unwillingly confined into them.

However, if wikipedia is to be believed (and I’m not giving them a link, because they rarely are) the term ghetto also applies to what they call “voluntary segregation” which according to them (rolls eyes till she sees her own brain) is still going on today. Also according to them ghettos aren’t just racial, but also economic, because people want to segregate from icky poor people and —

Bah.

I’m sure some of you are for more versed on this than I am, however the whiff I started to get is that ghettos is applied to everything the do-gooders and impersonal planners don’t approve of. If your neighborhood is not what they’d like then stomp, stomp, stomp it’s a ghetto and it needs to be broken apart, dispersed, gentrified, de-gentrified and made into something they like.

And what do I mean by gentrified and de-gentrified? How can they want to do both?

Oh dear. So. You have to understand that the Planners That Would Be don’t really have a vision. They just have a naked will to power that they disguise under wanting to do good.

No. I’m being uncharitable. let me rephrase that. Most of them desperately want to do good, but don’t cope well with unintended consequences, which in turn causes them to waver back and forth, in search of an ideal state that can’t happen. The fact that this causes their solution to end up being the worst of both worlds is probably lost on them. Or maybe gives them another “cause” to pursue ad infinitum.

What I mean is that because their definition of ghetto is insane, it applies not only to blighted urban neighborhoods, segregated by race and thereby confined and limiting as to human potential, but to simply neighborhoods that are poor or unsightly or to — in fact — under the “voluntary” segregation, historical black neighborhoods, rich and well-functioning in their own right.

Look, the left doesn’t like it when white people do it — while almost enforcing it when anyone else does — but humans do try to congregate in “looks like me” communities. This was fairly obvious to me, from the first week as an exchange student, during orientation in New York City. (It was also fairly baffling, as apparently I’m one of the very few people whose programming is broken because I don’t do this at all. But then again, Odd in every way.) In a college campus filled with hundreds of students from all over the world, those people who had taken the trouble of becoming students abroad, so they could experience a different culture, congregated in ethno-cultural groups. Like this: The Portuguese all clustered, but if there weren’t enough of them in an area, they’d aggregate with the Brazilians. Failing enough Brazilians, Portuguese and Spaniards would congregate. If not enough Spaniards, Portuguese would cleave to those of Spanish colonies, if– You get the point. People gravitated to people who either spoke similar languages, or looked alike. In ultimate “need” Portuguese would gravitate to Italians, Greeks and Arabs, because they all look “substantially alike.” (Though if you grow up in one of these, you can tell the others very easily, and even group them mentally by where they’re from. Whereas after 39 years in America, I have trouble telling the difference. Eh.)

It’s probably some very old programming in the back brain, because honestly, in pre-history the more someone looked like you, the better chance they were related/same tribe/related tribe, and the less chance you’d end up in the stew pot. (Judging by the archeological digs never a zero chance, but lower.)

So, yeah, people more or less self-segregate, not even along racial lines, but along “looks alike” lines.

What this means for a nation of immigrants like the US is that particularly for newcomers or people with strong racial differences that are visually obvious — black people, say, or Asians, but at a certain time or place, Italians and Irish — there tend to be entire neighborhoods where they self-segregate. I.e. they preferentially buy there, and if a stranger buys there, they are more or less glared out of the neighborhood, even if nothing worse happens to them. Trust me, most of the time you won’t even buy there, because when you go to look at the house, everyone glares at you. (Yes, I’m speaking from personal experience of shopping for houses in places with such neighborhoods.)

But these neighborhoods also have a culture of their own, and one which is very comfortable to the people buying in them. Whether you’re freed slaves from the South, or immigrants recently arrived from Italy, the ethnic neighborhood in a large city can provide a place where you’re comfortable and “at home” enough as you get a foothold in the new country or the more general culture.

Now, of course, those places have good and bad characteristics. One of the bad ones is that you don’t really integrate into the land to which you took the trouble to migrate (and freed slaves migrated to the North) or into the wider American culture which, frankly, has some pretty amazing advantages, in terms of world and cultures. What I mean is, if you live in a solid multi-block Italian (or Portuguese, or Jewish, or Vietnamese) neighborhood, you’re going to be operating by the rules of the country you came from. And you might not learn English very well or at all. This can be limiting as to where you shop, where you work, how far you go in school, or what type of professions you learn.

Which, yes, depending on what the culture is, can lead to ghettoization, understood as a limiting of opportunities and financial well-being. Now, for most cultures, and absent government interference (which has never been absent when applied to black people, alas) ghettos of this kind tend to break apart in three generations, or 100 years or so. As in people succumb to the lure of selling their place to well-paying strangers; kids are educated in the wider culture, intermarry and move away; osmosis occurs between the insular culture and the hosting country. (Excepted here are those communities, like, say Orthodox Jews who have a … ah… higher mandate to remain separated. Amish fall in this too, other than the fact that they, of course, aren’t urban. And, yes, a lot of the currently incoming Muslim immigrants might well fall into this as well.)

Anyway, the problem is that do-gooders, and particularly the kind of insufferable do-gooder mentality behind “In the ghetto” intervenes long before 100 years.

If the area of ethno-cultural segregation is poor and visually distinct (note that the insufferable song would never be written about Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods, because the culture simply doesn’t lend itself to it.) the do gooders will look at it as “something must be done.”

And weirdly the something that must be done very often involves big projects that forcibly relocate people and demolish the homes they are attached to, while relocating these people who might or might not be poor, but who have been integrated in a functioning community into big urban projects with the chronically poor afflicted by various pathologies.

Look, when reading the definition of ghetto according to the liberals at Wikipedia, I flashed on the history of the black community in Denver. No, it really doesn’t exist now, not in terms of neighborhood, and it never existed that I knew it as such. It was long before my time, that the Five Points community in Denver, by the time I moved a trendy area being gentrified, used to be a fully functional community of black people who had immigrated from the South after the civil war. From everything I can read about it, it was fully functioning, and a supportive and culturally functional community of its kind. By this I mean it looked after its own and had rules that supported youth growing up functional and families forming and staying together. (It’s hard to be sure, because when researching it, you have to filter out all the bias for and against depending on when the stuff was written.)

It also grated on do-gooders nerves, mostly because, yes, it was restrictive. As in, it wasn’t a “do your own thing” community, but one that enforced its rules, but also because it was poor (again for various reasons) and had some characteristics of rural Southern culture which seems to ping most Americans raised outside it, as both poor and annoying.

And so… enter urban renewal. People had their houses bought from under them and were relocated and dispersed “for their own good” and the area became more blighted, as tends to happen, in between government buildings and … well, nothing much.

From what I can tell urban planners for a while had an habit of targeting and breaking functional black communities that were mostly “poor but honest” in the sense that while economically they might not have been anything much, they had a supportive culture that enabled those who wanted to do well in the wider world (as soon as mandatory segregation was lifted.)

Now, here’s the thing: that stuff can be good and bad. I mean, the area itself, eventually, can end up being more prosperous. And those people who were dispersed and for a time had their lives destroyed, also might end up materially better off.

The problem is that as a rabbi who walked the shores of Galilee long ago said “Not of bread alone lives Man.”

And here I must bring my own experience and perception of this, because you see, in another country, and another time, the place where I grew up was one of those communities interfered with and improved for their own being.

The truth is that the place I grew up in was more town than village. I refer to it as village (almost hamlet) because the particular “neighborhood” I grew up in had that feel. It was at one time a Roman farm, part of a larger community. In fact the name for the area derived from the farming part of the latifundium. Nearby areas included “Forno” which from the fact that the ruins of a massive baking complex were found there, was where the communal ovens were, etc. Someone with an interest in linguistics could probably reconstruct the considerable holdings of some Roman Veteran awarded an estate in these barbarous (Celtic, largely) regions.

But the place I grew up in was one long street, maybe a mile and a half long, with large and small houses either side, and not much depth. There was a “back street” and alleys connecting the two, but mostly behind the front street and the back street, and a couple of streets branching off where the houses were rarer and the fields more common, it was all farms, fields, forests.

Insert here the fact that the area was apparently much larger and more prosperous before the Black Plague, and it must have been a market town of some importance, judging by the areal views showing ruins of buildings extending into what I thought — growing up — was forest primeval. That’s neither here nor there, just perhaps a bit of perspective on how things change, even absent governmental mandates and well intentioned do gooders with plans.

When I was growing up…. Well, I have it on good authority it was far more prosperous than when dad was growing up. Which considering that he grew up on the heels of the great depression (When America sneezes the world catches pneumonia) and on the heels of World War I and during World War II (Which even if Portugal stayed out of it, still immiserated the region) is not perhaps surprising.

However, when I was growing up, Brother’s characterization of us as being “poor as Job” was not precisely wrong. It would have irked grandmother no end, because we weren’t poor. We were those who “made do.” Let’s however say that any community in which people unravel last year’s sweater and dye the thread to make this year’s sweaters is not exactly flush with money. As is, my family was relatively well off, and had habits that made us seem more well off than we were, including habits of reading and learning and saving. Also we lived in a multi-room house, with a functional kitchen and a more or less functional bathroom (even if that was outside the back door. It was a bathroom, though, not an outhouse.)

The vast majority of the village, though, were tiny houses with perhaps two rooms (the kitchen and everything else) in which families with multiple children lived. As far as bathing, they availed themselves of communal facilities. And entire groups of buildings might share an outhouse, in arrangements that were positively medieval.

Needless to say, I have a soft-edged recollection of the village of my childhood. Truth be told, I miss it, and will perhaps one day get to walk its streets without those downsides of this earthly state, again in a better place. But I’m not blind to the fact it was a wretched place to live for most of these people, at least seen from the outside.

Seen from the outside? Well, I can tell you the fact that we used chamber pots (would you want to go to the bathroom outside in winter at night, as a small child? Or even an adult?) or that eight people shared a bathroom with only cold running water, or that the kitchen had no faucet and depended on water pumped from the well for all the washing up, or a million other inconveniences, struck neither myself nor my family as particularly onerous, even though being plunged into those circumstances now would be unendurable. I suspect the poorer people also viewed those as “just the way we live” and weren’t particularly bothered.

All the same, the village was improving. The “new generation” (My parents and those their age and younger) were either building new houses, which were — if still wretchedly inconvenient to how I live NOW and here — modern, clean and convenient (my parents’ house had two bathrooms for 4 people. Both of them indoors. With hot and cold running water. The lap of luxury.) or buying older houses and retrofitting them to 20th century standards. Some “buildings” of more than one residence were also going up, market driven by the lack of housing that met the standards of the younger people.

Needless to say this was not enough for governmental purposes. At any rate, they needed to build a highway and if they didn’t actively dislike the village, they also saw nothing much worth preserving. And let’s be honest, I’m fairly sure they considered us “blighted” and in need of improvement.

So not only was the new highway designed so it sliced the village neatly in two, but the only way over it, for people who lived there, was a pedestrian bridge. There was absolutely no reason this could not have been made into a bridge that admitted cars — in fact, the bridge is wide enough for that, which is why they had to put pillars across the top, because locals were blithely driving over it — and kept the functioning of the village — other than the parts demolished — intact.

Instead, the village was bisected, and the way around cumbersome enough that it was killed as a functioning culture and community. This combined with the new access to and from the city opened the way for a lot of Stack-a-prole apartment buildings, and for the community where I grew up to disappear under a forest of cement and imports-from-outside.

Now, realistically, and with no rose colored glasses, are the people living in the village better off than in the old days? Yep. Yep they are.

Most of the unsightly cement-block apartments have bathrooms, separate rooms for parents and children, and functional, usable kitchens. It is probably healthier, too.

The thing is those people aren’t the same who lived there. A lot of those were relocated to projects with the urban poor, because apparently planners see only income and not culture. A lot of others, the ones who sold the land these buildings are on, are probably living somewhere nearby. A lot of the people who used to live there simply cannot afford to buy even a condo in one of the buildings.

Everyone has become dispersed and rootless, and there is no community to speak of.

Is this better or worse? Well, I’ve talked about the restrictive and crab-bucketish characteristics of the village. Some people probably thrived when freed. On the other hand, there also isn’t the support of a shared culture and shared responsibilities and raising of children according to accepted principles.

In fact, ultimately what is achieved is the casting of people into the culture imposed by the centralized government which is mostly built by the people who look at any “poor” community of long standing and see a ghetto. Instead of the restrictive rules enforced by the old women, about dressing modestly, and “remediating” sin with marriage, and such, you get a restrictive culture about not using too much electricity because of “global warming” and of blaming all your failures on faceless others who are “holding you down.”

It’s double edged. Over all material comfort is increased. On the other hand, not only is Chesterton’s fence erased, but even the memory of there having been a fence, and any memory of self-sufficient communities who more or less looked after their own, however limited they might have been materially.

Perhaps superimposing my history and the history of the community I grew up in is what makes me flinch at the “do gooders” erasing the “ghettos” that existed as functional ethnic communities in US cities until the planners got to them.

Or perhaps I’m seeing something real, as judged by the fact that those same do-gooders seem to recognize that after their interference and the inevitable “gentrification” that sweeps in, with developers making what remains into “quaint” lofts and “distinctive” residences for the very rich, a displaced population is left markedly poor in a way they can’t quite quantify.

The do-gooders then “solve” this by railing against heartless “gentrification” and the rich people who “chased’ the poor off. When the poor were in fact already chased off by stupid planning interference.

Do I have a solution? No. I neither have it nor do I believe I should. I think communities should be left to evolve and live and die naturally without regulations trying to shape them into someone’s idea of paradise.

I mean, in my ideal world, anyone from outside a community coming in and deciding they ought to break it up/rebuild it according to someone’s idea of sanitary and prosperous, would be met with a bunch of locals with shotguns and told to go back and mind their own business.

But then in my ideal world, the government leaves the people alone, except for guarding the borders and minding the highways.

Which means my ideal world might as well be Narnia, considering how unreachable it is.

All in all, it makes me even more upset about “In the Ghetto” which seems to be the rallying cry of the do gooders, making the uninformed all worked up about a problem that might or might not exist, and weaponized to go interfere with someone else’s life.

And that’s my own, semi-informed and pretty ranty view of the matter.

Yesterday I accidentally listened to Elvis Presley singing In The Ghetto. Accidentally because I try not to, at least in public, since it’s one of the songs that make me talk back. I also read this post by our very own Phantom. And this is my way of talking back to it.

“Now, Phantom? NOW? The left has always been about discrediting free will or what we now call individual agency.”

Take “in the Ghetto” — do, I don’t want it — yes, I know that all of Elvis biographers go on about how he was being caring to sing it. Maybe he was. Or maybe he thought he was. Maybe he even believed in the message, though G-d only knows why given his own life trajectory. And maybe the reason everyone thinks this song is “caring” is that they have a massive Marxist black hole in their heads.

Because what “In the Ghetto” does is show someone whose life is pre-determined from the fact he’s born black, in the Ghetto, to a mother who doesn’t want him because she doesn’t need another “little hungry mouth to feed.” He’s going to grow up to be an angry young man, and try to steal a car and get shot. It’s DESTINY. It’s all PREDETERMINED.

It’s tripe. It’s insulting tripe at that. No, it’s really insulting tripe. I won’t call it racist, because honestly Elvis probably never thought of race as a factor in it, just of poverty. And never realized how insulting that was to most people who are born poor. Because the vast majority of people who are born poor NEVER steal cars or try to shoot people, okay.

They might not get very far. I’m not going to pretend the circumstances of your birth don’t influence your life. Of course they do. Of course people who are born poor are more likely to live at that level of society than people born to a multimillionaire family. BUT THEY’RE NOT MORE LIKELY TO BECOME CRIMINALS. Maybe more likely to be caught and not to be able to get our of the charges — stares Hunter Bidenly — but that’s about it.

Here’s the thing, though: most people who are born at whatever level tend to stay at that level. Downward movement is slightly more likely than upward, but even that is not extremely likely. And the reason is not that their future is predetermined, but that most people tend to understand and like the subculture into which they were born and in which they were raised. That’s all.

Look, I look at the way a lot of other people — richer and poorer than I, to be fair — live and I don’t want that. I also don’t understand why anyone would like that.

Let’s take richer, first. I could have chosen to become a lady who does lunch. It would have meant a considerable reduction in our real life quality, as it would be hard to find time to write, or read as much as I do. And I’d have had to zip my lip. But the thing is, I’m an introvert. Cons are a chore as much as I love my fans. If I didn’t love my fans and meting them, I’d never go. Why would I want to have that kind of social club close up and personal. Yes, I do realize it might have helped with Dan’s work opportunities, and heck, with opportunities for the kids too. And all sorts of access. I mean “Ladies who do lunch” work. And the work helps their families. It’s just a different kind of work. And one I’m not suited to and which would make me mortally unhappy.

I no longer do much furniture refinishing and such, though Is till do house repair and fixups and probably always will. But the thing is I realized long ago if I won the lottery, I’d still live more or less as I do. I really don’t have interest in the “finer things.” We’d still buy our cars used, because buying them new is wasteful. I’d still repair things rather than replace them, because to do otherwise is wasteful. And though I’ve been forced to give up buying clothes from thrift stores, because they suck in this area, if they didn’t I still would. (You pay in time rather than money.)

I can imagine something from an “upper class” wondering why I don’t do better for myself, and sneering at me or imagining that the circumstances of my birth pre-destined me. (Though how you would, considering the absurd life I’ve lived I don’t know.)

In the same way it took me decades to understand that those who frustrate me, because they could better themselves and won’t are perfectly happy where they are. To me living on bare minimum and having to make all sorts of compromises sounds hellish, but they know how to navigate life at that level and are self-obviously okay with it.

What makes it seem like they aren’t and makes people wonder why other people don’t “better themselves” and make something of their opportunities is that most humans — not just poor ones — do kind of wish their lives were better. But they wish for this in the abstract and without considering the costs. As in, I don’t know anyone who is poor and doesn’t dream of a “lottery win.” And heck, I do too. Periodically I even buy a ticket (usually when trying to get change and not wanting to buy a candy bar) but I also know if I ever win the lottery literally no one will know. Or people will, but only if they look closely. Because if I won the lottery, I’d have a full time assistant, who also does things like proofread. And I’d have a house cleaning person. And Dan could quit so he can work at the things he wants to do with writing, music and math. And other than that…. oh. Pretty much the same. Okay, fine, the cats would have the fancy food they love ALL the time, instead of once a month. And the boys would each get a house and new cars.

But would our life change? Not really. Nor would most people’s. Most people spend a lottery win within a couple of years, no matter how large, and then go back to living as they always did.

“But Sarah, you’re saying it’s predestination.” No. I’m not. I’m really not. I’m saying most people make the effort needed to live the way they want to, and not a little bit more.

Which means, yes, people born poor and used to being poor are likely to stay poor. They can escape — even in more stratified societies than ours people manage to leave their past behind and climb up the ladder. The cost just starts at high and goes higher. — but most of them don’t really want to. They just vaguely wish things would be better.

(Sometimes I wonder if that’s why most other countries hate America and Americans. Because we’re sort of a middle finger to the face saying “yes, you can escape and do better” — because even our poor are better off than most of the world middle class — and yes, there is a price here too. Americans work longer, and have a different mind set about work than most of the world.)

But other than the fact that humans are lazy, individual humans have agency. Do I need to say that? Of course we do. And what any human can accomplish given enough wish to is almost infinite.

While the majority of humans are willing to do the minimum work needed to perhaps live a little better than they were raised, civilization is built by those who have ambition and are willing to work for it. Those who figured out how to domesticate animals and grow what vegetables they wanted instead of hoping those randomly grew, are the first in a long chain of innovators, trying to improve their own lives and thereby improving everyone else’s.

Does any of that prove that there is individual will, instead of predestination? No. But predestination and the idea that humans were all somehow programmed is idiocy anyway. Idiocy at the level of “If it were true, what would it matter?” and “All it does is make humans into widgets who don’t count, so why would I believe that?”

And this btw, even though Heinlein said it, is why I hate the idea that humans don’t reason, they just pretend to. True in some circumstances. There have for instance, been presidential candidates I dislike at a gut level so much I could never rationally consider them. (Coughs. Clinton.) But even so I tried. And they didn’t help their case.

Not true in every circumstance, and also avoids facing the fact that humans often reason at a level they’re now aware of. For instance, I knew there was something “off” with the whole covidiocy before I found out the facts of the Diamond Princess. Had I made up my mind before I studied those? Not really. I just felt uncomfortable about it. But I’m sure it means my subconscious had caught on to a lot of the inconsistencies and nonsense in how the “emergency” was being handled, not to mention the air of glee of bureaucrats and kleptocrats viewing it as a golden opportunity to consolidate power and control elections. Was it “pretending to reason?” No.

None of this “You were predestined to do that” passes the smell test. Predestined by whom? And how? If it’s all a game of inevitability since the first cell came to life, what’s the point? And why would anyone who believes this bother to stay alive, even? And yet they stay alive and strive, which means they don’t really believe it. (And we’ll leave aside the very weird religious creeds that believe this. Yes, I know some of my readers belong to those. pardon me, but you’re very weird. I won’t pronounce on your concept of G-d. Heinlein already did for one. For another, my religion is funny too. But that’s all different from pretending that predestination makes ANY rational sense in the secular world and absent divine revelation.)

More important here, though, is that the left has always believed in predestination. Or at least always believed that individual humans have no agency. Now this might be because the entire Marxist theory is the creation of a man who obviously didn’t believe any other individuals existed or were capable of agency. Look at his conception of the world as a giant game of oppressed and oppressors engaged in eternal tit for tat. And how the only things with agency were “classes” as defined by someone whose understanding of humans might lead one to believe he was an alien spider from Alpha Centauri.

Unfortunately this leaked out as his followers took over education and entertainment and news. People got bombarded with this idea so much that they came to believe utterly bizarre, mind boggling lies like “Poverty causes crime.”

Due to various bad habits of mind, it might be more accurate to say that crime causes poverty, to be fair, but at best the two are weakly linked mostly due to the fact that again you’re more likely to get caught and punished if you’re poor.

But tell me, given Hunter Biden’s economic circumstances of birth, would you have predicted his trajectory? Why on Earth does he need to be criminal, when he could simply be lazy and charming? Of course, if you understand his father, you start to see, yes, it’s what he was raised in and what he’s comfortable with. (Except for maybe some vestige of conscience which he must dull with crack.)

There are, I bet, as many shiftless criminals among the very wealthy as they very poor. Most humans just do the bare minimum.

This whole idea that humans have no agency is fueled by people refusing to understand other humans don’t want to live as they do. That other humans are genuinely different.

And the left has always thought humans had no agency, because if they did it left precious little room for bossing them around, let alone for the graft and corruption that is the life blood of Marxists.

If humans don’t really have individual agency, that means all humans. And what difference would it make? We’d all be G-d’s NPCs. And He’d be playing the world’s most boring game. And us arguing about predestination is predestined, and just another boring scripted argument and the only mystery is why we haven’t all opened our veins in a warm bath, except of course, we’re not predestined to.

But in this as in everything else, the left always excepts themselves. Their argument actually goes: “Other people don’t have Free Will as I do. And that’s why they should live according to my mental script. Because that’s better for everyone.”

To which my answer is two middle fingers straight up. Yeah, maybe in the boring game of the universe, I was scripted to do that, but the so called elites better learn to enjoy my digitus impudicus waved in their faces.

Because that’s all their cute little idea that I’m a widget will get them. And it will get them that in great abundance.

Magic of Destruction by Bob the fool

If you are talking to a communist, or another religious believer in science or theory, they will want you to prove that you are correct if you say that they are practicing magical thinking.  Since magical thinking was evolutionarily favored for reason of making reactions fast, without stopping to reason, evaluate proofs or logic, a magical thinker might be closed to the most obvious proofs that they are indulging in such.

‘Mathematical’ Preliminaries

Magical thinking exists in every human because it is a time saver.  If you rigorously avoid magical thinking to question ‘is it bad to be eaten by the Tiger’, you get killed by the Tiger before you really get started.  Exactly how time consuming it is to avoid magical thinking may not be apparent to everyone.  This is partly because most people aren’t aware of performing magical thinking.  Stopping such, can be very specialized training or experience, and the skill may not be very general.  Another part, you may not actually have a very strong need to avoid magical thinking.  There are circumstances where it is incorrect enough to matter, but that is not every time.

Nobody has enough time to avoid magical thinking for every single thing that they do.  Sometimes you come out of the rain by habit, and it does not matter if you precisely evaluated how much you really needed to. 

Generally, people who say that they never practice magical thinking are not introspecting properly, and have overlooked one or more elements of their thinking.  Non magical thought processes are not perfect, and are expensive, so there is little real motivation for ensuring that they make up all of one’s thinking, and many motivations to prefer action over eternal naval gazing. 

I think many of the motivations for believing one is always uses reason are magical thinking.  Not understanding the limited utility of logic, and magically thinking that it perfectly answers all problems, might motivate a person to identify as being purely rational.  (Logic depends on your assumptions. GIGO.  If you do not have a habit of testing and retesting your assumptions, you have no idea where logic is misleading you.)

It is a ‘if you do not know who the mark is at the poker table, you are the mark’ problem.  If you do not know where you tolerate magical thinking in your internal practices, it is buried somewhere that you do not realize. 

Choice of magical thinking matters

What we call sanity and culture are downstream of individual selections of magical thinking.  Which thoughts you repeat over and over, which thoughts emotionally draw you most strongly.

This stuff matters. 

It can be hard to see by direct observation, hard to learn how to see, and hard to teach others to see.

State cult of the Aztec Triple Alliance is a perhaps sufficiently alien example to be useful.  Mexica nobles of the Aztec Triple Alliance practiced pain magic in their daily lives.  As in, they inflicted pain on themselves personally in ritual, and perceived the magic as real and productive.  This directly overlaps with why they thought everything else they did was of real effect.  This is why they did human sacrifices for everything.  This is why they thought the sun would /die/ if they did not cut out enough hearts. 

The choice matters

Christianity and Judaism are religions, and it is not generally required that we prove or explain that.  There are most definitely specific patterns of magical thinking which are reinforced by those practices.  Certain other patterns of magical thinking are basically omitted or discarded. 

This has some critical implications missed in a lot of modern histographies.  That lasting peaces are downstream of a consensus about magic in a culture which limits capricious beliefs that those other people over there can violate the peace agreement by witching you somehow. 

Full discussion of comparison and contrast in magical thinking types is omitted here for space.  Contrast Christianity versus liberation theology.  Judaism versus those reform Jews who conflate leftism with the Law.  

Christianity is a heresy of Judaism.  Judaism had some very good mind genes, memes in the original sense.  See, forex, the Samaritans.  Those translated to the heresy of Christianity being itself fairly functional, and spawning some heresies that while perhaps wildly dysfunctional, may not be obviously so in their initial stages. 

The most widespread heresies of Christianity are Islam and communism.  (Islam hates Jews and Christians, because Jews and Christians have the information to show that the ‘prophecies’ of Jesus are pretty much all claims that Jesus is divine.  Islam requires that Jesus make true prophecies, while also not being divine.)

Communism, in comparison, is playing a complicated motte and bailey game with ‘children of God’. 

Communisms are cults of power, that use leadership magic to accomplish goals in this world, and play cheating games with what Christianity and Judaism would consider clear cut questions of good and evil. 

(The party truth stuff, and inner and outer party stuff, is a wee bit diagnostic of magical thinking.  Wishcasting word/consensus magic, and also fear of not participating in the ritual.  Stalin would murder folks, capriciously and also purposefully.  This made people afraid to verbally deviate from his proclaimed “wisdom.”  This shows up in all the left, and means that they care much more about updating verbal positions to current expedient ones, then they do about the exercise of testing positions against each other.  (One bit of evidence is how rarely the folks are willing to deviate on points.)  From the Party’s perspective it is not possible to innocently be out of step, it is always deliberately an act of wrong doing that must be punished.  Speech is part of the leadership magic that the party provides.  The oft overlooked implication is that as long as this behavior continues, communist revolutions will always be ‘usurped’ and ‘stolen’ by ‘facists’.  The communists give bad actor leaders too many tools for seizing and abusing power.  This attracts a ton of bad actors to communist leadership positions.)

Destruction Magics

Communist theory/theology implicitly outlines the magical ideas practiced by repeating it, and by feeling it is important.

The split into victims and oppressors is pretty key.  This is the cheating game with ‘children of God’, and with clear cut matters of good acts, and evil acts.

It is also a center of the magical thinking around destruction. 

They do not say oppressors, victims, plus some people who are neither, and some people who are both.  Oppressors and victims are defined necessarily as  sets that are mutually exclusive, and exhaustive. 

Consider high nobles of a German empire.  Communist theory is that they are necessarily oppressors.  One implication, peace consensus is not valid because the nobles are witching everyone else.  Two, nobles must only be in a situation that is good for them by causing harm to others.  There is no room in communist thought for circumstances in which ‘actually, it was mutually beneficial, and both parties profited from the arrangement’. 

This is an aspect of zero sum ism. 

(Christianity and maybe Judaism are opposite.  Locally you can have from individual action good or bad results that are not balanced to, coupled with, or conservated over an aggregate.  )

I am a white dude.  Critical theory teaches that any good thing I have was obtained by false premises in ancient times on my behalf by magic workers. 

Rituals of destruction

Because of this, Communism predicts that if you destroy a good thing associated with an oppressor, it automagically helps out one or more victims somewhere.

Communism also predicts that if oppressed hard enough, oppressed rise up and over throw the oppressors.

Communists also understand that desperate people are more easily motivated to turn to communists for leadership magic with which to fix problems.

All of these are reasons rooted in magical thinking for communists to willy nilly proceed with destruction magic everywhere.  Furthermore, communist prediction of evil leadership, primes them to accept evil from their leaders in an effort to have their own leadership magic to offset the leadership magic that ‘oppressors’ ‘have’.  This means that opportunistic assholes seek out leadership positions among communists, because they will have greater license to get their own jollies by hurting people. 

There is a systemic hazard wherever communists are employed.  If you employ them to take care of your cows, they dislike you for having the money to pay them, and your having cows is a crime against them.  Which thereby makes you an oppressor. They think that killing your cattle is productive, and a righting of wrongs. You have to make it worth their while not to kill your cows. 

Communist green and environmental politics?  The analysis is not quick to reiterate, but the destruction is to the most fundamental elements of agricultural and economic efficiency, and thereby causes greater poverty and want.  Public education?  If it were not deliberate sabotage, they would accidently miss opportunities to cause harm and suffering at least sometimes.  Welfare?  Law enforcement?  Employment law and corporate law? Everywhere communists get the upper hand destruction follows. Therefore destruction must be the desired result, or it would not be so consistent.

There are several positions among those who have not made themselves communist by practicing those specific magical ideas:

One is to be willing to murder communists, but also sees the murder as in itself a good.  This magical thinking about destruction results in them turning everything they touch into shit. 

Valuing the innate dignity of humans turns out to be fundamental to preserving value, and aggregating much wealth.  If you do not capriciously destroy what a human accomplishes, because you respect that human, there may be a lot of accumulated surplus, and great wealth.  Murderous idiocy is almost always bad, or could be outright always bad. Whether practiced by communists or not.

A second flavor of non-communist does not buy into mass murder, and opposes mass murder, but ignores the destructive trend in communist thinking, and hence compromises with communists in destructive rituals. 

There are also non-communists who actively recognize communists as crazy and evil, and refuse to participate in ritual.  But, they do not confront the communists, and do not make a show about their resistance.

Now, communists cannot really be negotiated with.  And they aren’t aware of their own magical thinking, and therefore can’t reason themselves out of it. They are not really willing to deliver on anything unless forced.

Trump’s success in enraging the communists may be downstream of his efforts to negotiate.  He is not strictly avoiding left ideas.  However, he does see them as another party.  So, as a basis for negotiation, he does not concede that any of their ideas are a good thing he would do anyway for free.  To participate in any one ritual, he wants a price paid to his faction.  And that price must be paid out of the communist ‘budget’ for rituals of destruction.  This had the consequence of limiting the effect of rituals passing through the US government.  Which in theory made it possible that the American population could get ahead of the destruction done by the communists, or for the communists to fall far behind. 

Was Trump a perfect instrument of this?  No.  He was human, he thought he was negotiating and getting the communists to deliver, and also doing this on purpose might be hard. 

However, so far it is the best we’ve seen.

Perhaps curing communists of this magical thinking is impossible. It may be possible for communism to mutate into a more sustainable religion, not my call.  Evangelizing individual communists should also be possible.

It should not be impossible to stop them indoctrinating new generations. As a starting measure, if we do not grant their positions the superiority they demand be granted, if we force them to prove their destruction magic can do anything more than destruction, it might slow them enough for us to rebuild civilization and stop the infection of new generations and new structures.

Until someone comes up with a better method.

There was an Argentinian (I think) comic I read when I was young that had a strip saying something like “Why can’t we have government by the people?” “Because then government would be full of sandwich wrappers and sausage casings.”

I found this hilarious, because the fight to get people to stop littering is still ongoing in Portugal. (Partly due to a lack of adequate trash service, partly because Portuguese have a problem understanding laws apply to each of them. They tend to think of laws as things that happen to other people.)

However this is the sneering attitude towards “the people” that we’re finding from our “elites.”

Look, sure, you don’t need to talk to me about the “dangers of populism” viewed as “of large masses of people wound up and thrown at someone.” I remind you I grew up with crowds of people with raised fists and screaming “the people united shall never be defeated.” Weirdly our elites approve of that kind of thing, as well as of “direct democracy.”

Or actually, not weird at all, since what they want is the APPEARANCE of having the people with them. That’s not, apparently, “populism” not in the sense that populism is bad.

And here I’m sure I’m going to piss off some of my libertarian friends who’ve become used to sneering at Trump as “populist” as though that were a bad thing.

Get a grip, okay? First, Trump is not “populist” except as understood as “the people want him.” Because the people obviously do. Is he saying things to be liked? Are you for real now? Give me the name of a politician who doesn’t. And at that, Trump is the one who does it least in my memory.

As far as that goes, Trump is less likely to use “populist” rethoric, as it always was understood than practically anyone else in politics in the last hundred years. Think about it, please. Does he get on a podium and talk about crushing the Russians, the Chinese, minorities, or whoever the grand pubbahs view people as hating?

If you’re going to talk “says what the people want to hear” Ron DeSantis is far more populist than Trump. (I mentioned long ago that it struck me wrong that all the things DeSantis preened about where “socon goals.” And I say this as someone who agrees with a lot of those, like “keep pron out kids’ hands” and “Parental rights trump state’s rights.” BUT the fact those were the achievements he touted above any others struck me as profoundly wrong in the sense of “what government thinks the people want.”)

Trump has principles. They’re bizarre as you’d expect of a NYC real estate developer. But they are his, and he’s not selling them to anyone. He hasn’t touted a big religious conversion — and every politician thinks the way to appeal to people is to be hyper-religious. Particularly if they’re not — and his own rather muddled views come through. He hasn’t scrupled from having gay friends, and he had gay appointees. He refused to stomp down on the BLM unrest because he didn’t want to usurp states rights. (Same with lockdowns. He asked governors to lift them, but respected states’ rights too much to ORDER it.) Just about the only thing he promises that people really really really want — okay, two things — is a stop to unending open borders, and drill, baby drill. And if you really are against those, I would like a cogent explanation. Because the people on the ground, facing the consequences of untrammeled immigration with no assimilation (in a welfare state) and of very expensive fuel are for them for a REASON. It’s not unthinking.

If he’s a “populist” he’s a very weird definition of one. Or not one at all. The truth is that “populism” is now being used as “Someone the majority of the people like.” And using populism in that sense is the equivalent of our elites saying “We know we stole the election and no one wants us here. So we will demonize the will of the people, and make it seem like people getting to vote for their representatives is WRONG.”

Look at Nancy Pelosi railing against the “Populism” that prevents people from giving up their guns, and has them too blinded by G-d and “gays” to see how the progressives want to do good things for them.

Look, her opponent is an idiot — and not an American — by saying that Trump should have “Accepted” the election results. I’ll assume he doesn’t understand mathematics or didn’t watch the results come in. NO ONE should accept impossible results that almost guarantee an election was tampered with. That’s known as disenfranchising the people, and any American should be revolted at the idea. There’s nothing sacred against election results. If there’s sufficient reason to SUSPECT let alone prove tampering, they should be examined, investigated and dissected. Which always happened till 2020. In 2020 the results were untouchable because they couldn’t stand examination. In the same way her opponent seems to only know the “made for TV” bs about January 6th. Taking a guided tour of the capitol is no insurrection, and no one should feel they have to bow to little Nancy’s insanity on that. Between the grey goose and the botox her two brain cells might be addled enough she believes it was an insurrection, but we don’t have to indulge her.

However, he’s right on populism. What is wrong with populism, or with listening to the people? What right do people like Grey Goose Nancy have to determine what’s best for us and cram it down our throats?

Sure, I’m religious. I do not however have a problem with either gay people or atheists. Do other people? I’m sure there are some. In the vast expanse of the US there are probably some benighted communities that dislike gays and atheists. Are there many that dislike them enough to violate their rights? Well…. We do have some majority Muslim communities I wouldn’t encourage Queers for Palestine to invade. But other than that? By and large, with the exception — always — of running into outright crazy people, no matter what TV delights in making up about flyover country, the biggest danger gay people or atheists or even gun grabbers run in flyover country is having someone be very rude to them. Or more likely — as someone else who tends to ping isolated communities as an outsider — have someone be VERY NICE TO THEM with a PATRONIZING undertone. (Please for the love of Bob, don’t shout at me. While I’m deaf, and I have an accent, I DO in fact understand English. Because of the quality of my deafness shouting actually makes it less likely I’ll understand you. And don’t for the love of Bob try to explain words like “warning” to me. Okay? I know this is all because you’re trying to be nice, so I’ll grin and bear it, but really.)

Americans by and large, possibly because of pioneer background, but more likely because of immigration in the 20th century, tend to be more live and let live than any of these would-be-elites understand.

The truth is the entire “anti-populism” movement is that of the “educated” trying to distinguish themselves from the masses they consider too stupid to know their own good. In its kind, it is an explicitly anti-representative-government movement. And as such it should be despised by all thinking human beings.

I don’t care if Nancy disapproves of my religious faith. It is none of her business. I don’t care if Nancy thinks she wants to do something good for my gay friends, who I’m sure would far prefer to be armed and left alone. (My gay friends are mostly sane. Also libertarian.)

In fact, I don’t care what any experts say about what I believe or how I should be living my life. I don’t even care if they sneer at me and call me stupid. I’ve been called stupid by FAR better people than they are. (And in a couple of instances, I actually was being stupid.)

I’ve also been sneered at and called stupid by mental midgets because I refused to follow the crowd and parrot back “the smart thing” of the moment. Like, say, most of the traditional publishing establishment. I was outright told my books would be pushed, if I wrote as I was instructed, and I refused to do it. How can that be anything other than stupidity?

And that’s part of it. The “elites” have no principles and no morals. They move only by the rule of “what’s good for me” and “what will give me power.” Therefore they’re curiously blind to anyone following higher principles. And they class those as stupidity. So to them the vast majority of the West is filled with “stupid people.” (And this is before we get to the rest of the world, of which they know nothing.)

Their use of ‘populism’ means “what those stupid people want.” And therefore they feel entitled to override it, because after all they want to do what’s “best for them.”

But PERSONALLY? I’m not going to tell anyone they can’t want to live in fifteen minute cities or eat the bugs, but I don’t want it.

I want to live as I want to, and not have “elites” try to force me into doing it their way.

Is my way better? I don’t know. But it’s mine, arrived at using my own mind, my own circumstances and my own beliefs.

And if most of the people happen to agree with me — looks like they do, in the US at least — and the elites don’t like that, they can call me populist all they want to.

If “Populism” means “what the majority of people in a polity wants that disagrees with the trained-elites” I’ll proudly call myself populist.

Because if there’s something that the last four years — not to mention the bloody slog of the 20th century — have proven is that never, ever, ever should we give power to a self-proclaimed elite, educated in the “best” establishments and residing in some central point to control our every day lives.

That way lie mass graves, grinding poverty, or at the very least people treated as cattle.

The people — unless propagandized — aren’t united, and heaven knows the bureaucrats can yet again manage to defeat us.

But while they can suspect the mass of the people are idiots, we know the “elites” are idiots. The mask fell off these last four years.

We know them for idiotic, petty, and toddler-like in their tantrums.

And what’s once seen can never be unseen.

Ahoy the people. Let’s hear it for refusing to bow to the experts and massive passive resistance.

Let’s make them really hate us.

Book Promo

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

FROM PAM UPHOFF: 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 ALMA T. C. BOYKIN: Hunter of Secrets: Familiar Generations

Secrets lurk below the surface, waiting, watching, restless …

Jude Tainuit, once alone and outcast, plans for his wedding. And wonders if is sister-in-law elect will survive his fiancée’s growing irritation. Aunt Martha has filled a freezer and a half with baked treats in anticipation of the pending nuptials.

Darkness rises in the north …

Jude and his Familiar, Shoim, go on alert as strange creatures fall into Devon County. Power calls them, rips holes between the planes of existence, something corrupt and blood-laced. The twisted magic beneath the Beck Farm stirs, summoning the Graff Rider. The pale horseman and the Becks share a tie, one Jude and Shoim must unravel before twisted evil reaches the surface and tears the land apart.

Secrets swirl around the living and the dead, secrets that a Hunter must unravel or all he has hoped for will be lost!

FROM NATHAN SHUMATE: The Shadow Over Vinland: and Other Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos

From the imagination of Nathan Shumate, the man behind the Space Eldritch and Redneck Eldritch anthologies and The Last Christmas Gift: A Heartwarming Holiday Tale of the Living Dead, comes this collection of ten stories of cosmic Lovecraftian horror: from the deepest prehistory to the darkest future, to that innocuous neighborhood just down the road…

FROM DAVID COLLINS: The Wrong Button

Jerry Anderson was an astronaut faced with an impossible choice: die of asphyxiation in a few hours or see if the alien pod he was transporting really was an escape pod and find out if it could actually save him.

When he enters it, he finds that the controls are unreadable, lacking anything to go on, and rapidly running out of air. He presses the blinking green button.

The next thing he knows, he isn’t human anymore, and he finds himself on a seashore, next to some birds feasting on a body that looks very similar to his new body.

He is alive, but staying alive will be a challenge, and he will be able to communicate with the locals, assuming the next ones he finds don’t kill him on sight.

FROM J. W. KERWIN: Only In Clerksburg (Brendan O’Brian Legal Thrillers Book 4)

During prep sessions in the office, Wally Pratt appeared to be the perfect expert witness. But as soon as he took the witness stand, instead of telling the jury about a shipment of gold coins that had gone missing during the Civil War, he began talking about space aliens and mind control.

Brendan O’Brian travels to the little town of Clerksburg to assist a fellow attorney who is representing professional treasure hunters suing the federal government. When the attorney mysteriously disappears, O’Brian’s one-day court appearance turns into an extended stay.

O’Brian quickly discovers that Clerksburg is anything but an ordinary town. The bank manager attempts to rob his own bank. The minister’s wife does a public striptease. The local judge has a penchant for handing out ten dollar fines. And the mysterious Merchants Association seems to have more power than elected officials.

But perhaps the strangest thing about Clerksburg is its relationship with the military base in the national forest north of town. And that turns out to be a key factor in the treasure hunters’ case against the government.

FROM TERRY M. RUWE: Space Ranger: Down the Event Horizon

Leaving the Rangers was Eddie’s way of dealing with tragedy, but the Rangers weren’t going to leave him alone even as a regular in Space Force.

When a high tech weapons theft involves Eddie’s new ship, he has to get involved. Can he stop the transfer of the stolen goods to the Alliance’s adversaries before the whole situation devolves into war? Can he save his shipmates from becoming cannon fodder?

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Last Pendragon (Legends Book 1

“The last thing I expected when I went to grieve in the mountains was to get chased by werewolves, kidnapped by a dragon, or meet a legend. But that was exactly what happened.”–Sara Hawke

Sara Hawke, a highly-educated former PhD candidate in Linguistics, is plunged into a situation that strains her skepticism: first she meets a pack of werewolves while camping on the night of the full moon, then she’s rescued by a man the werewolves seemed to fear. Her rescuer then decides that she’ll be good company until he decides to let her go. Then he tells her that she has the potential to be a sorceress, and offers to teach her.

Along the way, she learns that legends aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be, and are occasionally more than they seem…

FROM KAREN MYERS: The Chained Adept: A Lost Wizard’s Tale

MEET A POWERFUL WIZARD WITH UNANSWERED QUESTIONS–AND AN UNBREAKABLE CHAIN AROUND HER NECK.

Have you ever wondered how you might rise to a dangerous situation and become the hero that was needed?

The wizard Penrys has barely gained her footing in the country where she was found three years ago, chained around the neck and wiped of all knowledge. And now, an ill-planned experiment has sent her a quarter of the way around her world.

One magic working has called to another and landed Penrys in the middle of an ugly war between neighboring countries, half a world away.

No one has any reason to trust her amid rumors of wizards where they don’t belong. And she fears to let them know just what she can do — especially since she can’t explain herself to them and she doesn’t know everything about herself either.

Penrys has her own problems, and she doesn’t have any place in this conflict. But they need her, whether they realize it or not. And so she’s determined to try and lend a hand, if she can. Whatever it takes.

And once she discovers there’s another chained adept, even stronger than she is, she’s hooked. Friend or foe, she has questions for him — oh, yes, she does.

All she wants is a firm foundation for the rest of her life, with a side helping of retribution, and if she has to fix things along the way, well, so be it.

The Chained Adept is the first book of the series.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Phoenix in the Machine

Dreams come true in cyberspace — but so do nightmares.

Roger remembers dying in a fire on the launchpad. He’s reconciled it with being alive again. However, being an infomorph in a simulated environment has been a difficult adjustment. Toni tells him he went mad the first time he awoke, and she had to crash the computer.

Now he helps her playtest the games her employer designs. But cyberspace outside Toni’s local area network is a dangerous place. A disastrous experiment in Bangladesh left the world in a moral panic about AI and machine consciousness.

When a careless connection betrays him to those who cannot distinguish between an AI and a post-biological human being, he and Toni must flee. Their cross-country journey will either destroy him or deliver him the spaceflight he’s awaited for a century.

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: desert

No, I’m not doing a location reveal.

This is more under the guise of explaining what’s been going for almost two weeks and really the last couple of years.

For the record I don’t look like the picture above and never did (I wish I did, okay.) And I’m highly amused by the name of the typewriter which is apparently HerVeyns As Hons. Parallel universe brand, no doubt. I’m also amused by the fact that the pages near the typewriter are handwritten, there’s no paper in the machine, and the machine might perhaps have an internal light. Never mind. Now I’m done dissecting the picture so you don’t have to, moving right along.

For the last almost two weeks, I’ve been sicker than I’ve been since Jan. 2020. As in, not dying level of sick, but extreme tiredness and JUST not functioning. And being unable to fully kick it. Festivities started as in 2020 with some kind of stomach symptom, then moved to a double ear infection (which always makes me daft) and then settled into a sort of general malaise. This is the first time in two weeks my head is semi-clear and typing a few sentences doesn’t make me want to take a nap.

I feel terrible because I’ve not been posting Witch’s Daughter on substack and have made no progress at fixing Winter Prince. And though I’m writing No Man’s Land, because it won’t let me NOT write it, I also haven’t posted that. Other things I haven’t done include cleaning the litterbox, which I’ll be dealing with as soon as this is done.

More generally I feel horrible about fulfilling pledges from my fundraiser in 22, partly because it’s hard to tuckerize someone when your writing has been stop and go but mostly stop.

In my defense, I grossly overestimated the rate of improvement once I came to lower altitude. I am improving, mind you. Various symptoms and medications have been cut back to an almost miraculous amount. But one of the triggers of my auto-immune is stress and between the national situation and … moving. Not to mention various family events (good ones, but still stressful) my autoimmune keeps throwing me back health wise.

All I can do is promise I’ll get to mailing out books and tuckerizations that are grossly overdue, as well as the USAian Anthology being assembled, and beg your pardon. My body is as usual on a journey to kill me, and all I can do is work around the edges of that. I have hope it will get better so I can finish books before I die.

What I have almost finished is the next Rhodes and two of Dyce which I hope to have out before the end of summer, and the three being serialized in Chapter House. It would help if No Man’s Land weren’t eating my brain, if it weren’t now 125k words and just starting to unravel the mystery towards solution (even though it’s not a mystery. You know what I mean) and if it let me go long enough to do other stuff.

Anyway, the last two weeks have been bizarre, and possibly prolonged by my trying to ignore being sick. (Naaaah!) The only reason I know it’s not auto immune is that Dan caught it too, and this week got bad enough he took two sick days, which hasn’t happened except for doctor’s appointments in…. years, I think.

And that’s where we are and where I am right now. Once I post this, I’m going to eat something then clean litter boxes, put stuff in the washer, and see if I can get the next couple of chapters of WD up to going up on chapter house substack. (I have them written but they read blah, and I don’t know if that’s because I was ill while going over them, or they are actually blah.)

Quick notes: With the check donations in 23 I got a small pack of coffee, and someone asked me not to have it until I had emailed him. I did, but got no response. And now I’ve lost both sample and email. (Well, I AM ADD. I lose everything including my mind, often.) If that person is reading this, please ping me. I will endeavor to find the coffee.

Also to the person who left me a comment detailing the connection for him between eczema and aspartame. I can’t remember if I posted this before, but the same link seems to exist for me, and being aware of the possibility stopped a massive outbreak cold. (Though there’s still a very minor one going on.)

Oh, and before you yell at me, I promise not to overexert in cleaning. I’m just going to do a “lick and a promise” so I can settle to write then take it easy for two or three days, so I can recover. Pinky swear.

Until Monday.

When I was growing up, it was taken for granted that eventually the USSR would win the cold war.

Look, we knew what was happening abroad. The US had feckless leaders, and it was too soft. The USSR took and took and took, and the USA just kept folding before it as whole countries were swallowed. Eventually the USSR would get tired and swat the US. And that would be the end. We’d be living under tyranny. A boot stamping on the human face, forever.

That was fifty years ago, and we’ve all passed a lot of water since then. We know now that the USSR was a hollow shell. They took what they could, but they really couldn’t do more than they did. They simply couldn’t. They didn’t have the ability. They didn’t have parity with us, let alone superiority. They were — as the Chinese said — a paper tiger.

And then … Japan was going to eat our lunch economically. Somehow that also didn’t happen.

Oh, yeah, and France was going to beat us to the internet, because the government was funding their entire effort, and they already had so much. It didn’t happen.

Then there was China. They were so organized, so stronk– we know that they are in the process of falling apart. They are, as Dave Freer told me, 20 years ago, like a beautiful lacquered vase, full of cracks underneath the finish. We might be in trouble, but they… oh, boy.

As for corruption…. well, there’s always been that. My friend Charlie was talking about (local) stolen elections back in I’d hazard the 70s. And the late great Lou Antonelli talked about cleaning up the elections in TX.

We’re two hundred and fifty years old, and we’ve already had a civil war. And yeah, government here as everywhere is full of crooks and cheats. And sometimes the cheats win.

Thing is we’re not alone in our trouble. Right now, all over the world, there’s this huge fight going on, because technology has turned from mass and centralized, and politics and society hasn’t adapted, because cultures turn kind of slow. And have a heck of a turning circle. Kind of like my old Suburban with a front end shoved in and the bumper missing. (I bought it that way.)

But like that old Suburban (gee, I wish I had a picture of it!) we take a beating and just keep on ticking.

In every adventure group, there’s the wild card. We’re the wild card of nations.

Our end has been predicted over and over, but you know what? We’re still alive. And we’re going to stay that way.

And through disaster and horror, and hopefully NOT another ACW, we’re going to get this show back on the road. We’re going to dust off the constitution and we’re going to survive.

I have seen so many science fiction anthologies claiming the US will be gone by its three hundred anniversary.

But we’re not going to be. As countries crumble around us, and as turmoil engulfs us, we’re going to survive.

We were born in chaos, birthed in confusion, and survived in improbability.

This country was made for our times.

Sure, things are going to get kind of rough. But we’re going to survive. Even the current bunch of Kakistocrats. We’re going to survive worse too, if it’s waiting for us ahead.

And we’re going to the stars.

Be not afraid.

Yesterday talking to a friend, he said that it seems like we’re living through a shoddy version of the seventies.

But that’s not QUITE it. It’s more complicated. It’s more like we’re living through a performative version of the seventies.

It’s like all the recasting and re-doing of classic movies and series, at this point even those that weren’t particularly successful: it feels like Hollywood is just redoing these things out of some sort of dinosaur brain memory that they were successful. However, the people in charge no longer have any idea why these things were successful or why they resonated or achieved the results they did.

So the re-casts/re-dos sound hollow and strange, and would even if they didn’t use them to push their weird personal current obsessions. (All heroes must be women and black and increasingly of some odd sexual identity! Only villains can be white!) Because the car is there, but the engine is gone metaphorically speaking.

All these redos and recastings and all are just shells of what the original was. And imbuing them with current wokeness doesn’t make them massively popular, because it doesn’t have that kind of purchase amid the public.

The left and current “Cultural gatekeeping elite” doesn’t seem to be aware of this, or aware of why they fail. In fact, each failure baffles them.

I could be snide, here, and say that it’s because this entire administration, and in fact, the entire upper-crust/controlling layer of our institutions are profoundly untalented theater kiddies, who have no creativity but love the style, and so are trying to do performance of what they think should be there, in the hopes it will work. And are forever baffled it doesn’t.

The truth is not quite that mean, but it rhymes. They are people of a certain frame of mind. In most places and most times, this would make them profoundly “conservative.” Frankly they are, because 100 years into the “progressive” project, those who support it are conservatives. But it’s a weird sort of “conservatism” because what they’re conserving is the cult that tells them if they tear Western civ apart paradise ensues. The whole just-so cult of Marx as filtered through their parents, grandparents and great grandparents.

Part of the whole Marxian philosophy is that it’s a self-contained system, congruent within itself, and with no basis in reality. This makes a certain type of mind susceptible to it. In other centuries they’d be religious fanatics, missionaries to the heathens and zeal-burned puritans.

That type of mind tends to think of things in terms of pre-ordained and fixed narrative, not wildly creative and innovative. That THEY think of themselves as creatives is the insanity of the current system and the Marxian corruption of institutions. They are not actually capable of creativity, only of passing on the received word.

And so we get to the other side of the rerun of the seventies: These kids, by and large, grew up with everything from schools, to TV to even their parents (for the children and grandchildren of boomers) being sold a version of the sixties and seventies in which protesting on the street, behaving badly and destroying property was being passionate and fighting for the voiceless and by itself meant IMPROVING SOCIETY and MAKING THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE.

So the most gullible of this generation are rebels without a clue. They must perform the hit the streets and protest, but they lack the immediacy of the draft to make it personal, and they lack anything like civil rights to make it righteous.

Instead they attach to any stupid cause they can find or which is handed to them by manipulative SOBs. So, you know, it might be saving the endangered Prebles Jumping Mouse, or perhaps saving old buildings, or even well… Lately Occupy Wall Street, BLM, antifidiots and of course pro-Hamass.

Sure, some of these people are paid. I still feel I owe massive apologies to the young lady 10 years ago who told me it was all for money, because her generation was desperate for money. I didn’t believe her, but to a great extent she was right.

But those not being paid? They’re there because they were told they have to protest something to be good people. They have to stand up to the man and take to the streets. This has been drunk with mother’s milk and held up to them as the greatest good. Therefore they must do it.

They don’t understand the issues. They don’t get any of it. In their minds, though the very fact they’re protesting and sometimes clashing with the police means they’re changing the world (No one ever asks if changing is for the better) and being stunning brave and “activists” and therefore good people.

Only this explains bizarre things like Queer (or Feminists) for Palestine. Which is the logical equivalent of Chickens for KFC.

This is also why they become hysterical and unable to cope if challenged. They just have to do this performative thing and paradise will happen. Why are you stopping them, you bad person, you?

The thing is, as with their attempt to recreate WWII emergency state with the covidiocy, that it’s like the reruns. It’s hollow.

Even BLM didn’t “take” amid the people, and that was arguably, as presented, a more compelling cause, because it was at least over here, and it was wrapped around a case presented as wrongful death at the hands of a state agent. (It wasn’t that.) Which resonates with a lot of people.

But this? Most people who are aware of politics know about 10/7 and these theatrics for the aggressors aren’t even at the level of being tolerated. And even those who don’t know politics are aware Islamic terrorism is a thing. The only people approving are terrorist supporters, many of them recent immigrants.

This rerun, like all the others, is headed for the crapper. And the woke will be baffled as to why the people didn’t “rise up” to support them.

Mostly because all they know are the gestures to repeat, not what they mean or what was behind them.

Honestly? It would have been kinder to make them Bible-obsessed puritans going off to convinced people in tropical climes to wear pants.

At least, even if they got eaten like uncle Bosey (snarf) it would have given their lives purpose, without messing up other people’s lives.

Unfortunately they’ve been taught to act the savages instead. And getting them out of this rut is going to hurt. Them, us, and all of civilization.

Briefly.

Comparative Advantage- by Ian Bruene

A couple weeks ago Our Hostess posted about Economics being real and not some random studies degree or other nonsense. In the comments someone decided to deny the existence of Comparative Advantage, or rather, he didn’t strictly speaking deny it, he merely implied that it held the same status as employment statistics or money supply numbers; something artificial which could be “tweaked” at the government’s whim.

This is not true. This is not even close to true. And the failure to understand why it isn’t true belies a failure to understand not just this detail of economics, but what economics is about in the first place. Now admittedly these are common errors, so there is relatively little guilt in that ignorance. So common in fact are the errors that most of the people who call themselves “economists” still make what should be a five year old’s mistake.

So let us see what it is all about, using a seemingly unrelated story, which in the end will teach far more than just the concept of comparative advantage.

I currently work at Walmart, these days mostly in the back room sorting stuff. In the mid to late part of my shift this turns into sorting apparel into hanging / non-hanging, and between the different departments. For this story what matters is the hanging apparel, which is stored on wheeled racks so it can be moved around the back room and out to the floor as needed. These racks have 4-8 adjustable bars to hang apparel from, so the rack can be customized for what is needed. For a simple example; the intimates department has both bras, which take up less than a foot of vertical space, and also pajama sets, which can easily take up four feet or more of vertical space.

So, we are in the back. We have lots of boxes of clothing to sort through, and we need to efficiently use the racks we have because we don’t have an infinite number. Ignore for a moment the different departments and non-hanging clothing. All that matters is using the rack well.

The rack has 4 bars, set up for one tiny space, two medium size spaces (one on top of the other), and one giant space.

I pick up a pair of shorts. Where do I put them?

Well the rack is empty, so it doesn’t matter. I toss the shorts onto the nearest spot which happens to be the giant space which has plenty of room to fit them and move on. In fact after a little thought I realize that I should be using that largest space: it is objectively the best one, because it can hold any size garment, while the other, smaller, spaces have limitations and cannot hold larger garments.

I continue working, more clothing is put on the rack, eventually the giant space fills up. Oh well, that was bound to happen right? The rack is not infinitely sized. So I start putting clothing on the medium size sections. They might not be as good as the large one was, but at least they aren’t as small as the tiny space. Unfortunately dealing with longer dresses and pants is now a hassle, because the bottom bar is too low and they drag on the ground, so I have to put them on the top bar overlapping the stuff below and causing the whole rack to bulge out. It is annoying and frustrating, but can’t be helped after all.

Or could it?

I’m sure everyone caught the mistake – I certainly dropped enough anvils about it – but it bears articulating anyway. It is true that the giant section can hold any size garment. But thinking of it as “this can hold anything!” is backwards; the correct attitude is “this can hold things no other section can!”. That flexibility means every time I put a pair of shorts or a bra on it, I am sacrificing the ability to put a long pair of pants or a dress on the section which is the only one that can hold them. In doing so I reduce the total quantity of apparel which will fit on the rack.

Instead I should put the shorts and shirts on the medium size sections. I should put the bras on the tiny section. Only if something doesn’t fit on any of the other sections do I put it on the giant one. At least while there is room on those other sections: eventually they will fill up, and then I move to the next-smallest section which will hold the garment.

This is Comparative Advantage. This is not an analogy for it. Nor is it a hypothetical situation – I deal with it nearly every day of the week. This is the concept itself, stripped of the distractions and opportunities for excuses which are used to cloud the matter. And it is interlinked with many economic concepts which people do not understand but are fairly simple to explain.

First of all, there is no money involved. Because Economics is not about money. In fact the fastest way to tell someone doesn’t have the faintest iota of a clue about the subject – short of wearing a sickle and hammer – is that they think economics is about money and finance.

The technical definition of Economics is that it is the study of the allocation of scarce resources which have alternative uses. All of those parts matter: Scarcity, because I do not have infinite racks, and a given rack cannot hold an infinite quantity of apparel. Alternative Uses, because I could use a spot for this garment, or that garment, or a garment I pick up ten minutes from now. And Allocation, because I have to choose how I am going to divide the garments between the sections.

Second is Cost: a cost or price is not a dollar value. It is all of the options you sacrifice to choose this option. If I place a small garment in a spot where a larger one could go I am sacrificing the ability to put a larger garment there in the future. Or in monetary terms, If I go to Scheels and buy a box of 6.5 Grendel today, I am sacrificing the ability to use that money to go to the local Mongolian BBQ, as well as the ability to have that money in the bank to cover a bill, as well as an infinite number of potential other options I could have chosen.

Third is Value. In the same way that Cost is not Money, Value is not Cost. Value is a subjective thing to decide which costs you are willing to pay. If you pay a cost to get something then by your actions you prove that at the time of decision you value that something more than any of the alternatives you sacrificed to get it. Importantly Value must be subjective, because every attempt to define an objective value theory slams into fundamental problems, such as the classic “what is the value of a glass of water?”. Objective / Inherent Value Theories can only pretend to sort of badly fit reality by bolting on epicycles until they contain an ad hoc, badly-specified, incoherent, poorly-predictive implementation of half of Subjective Value Theory.

But in the end, why does any of this matter? That’s all a nice theory and has some cool quirks, and maybe it is more efficient and GDP number go up, but that isn’t what’s really important right? Who cares if you have 5% fewer luxuries; that doesn’t matter, and they are probably making you soft and weak anyway.

I’ll leave that last one for now. Beating that particular pinata might be fun but isn’t the subject at hand. The problem is that economic efficiency is not about trivial luxuries, or GDP number go up, or scummy businessmen benefiting themselves, or scummy politicians benefiting themselves. Instead economic efficiency is everything. And the only reason it can seem trivial and unimportant is because everyone reading this has lived in such unimaginable wealth for so many generations that the choice “do I starve today, or do my kids starve today?” because there isn’t enough food getting produced is not even in living memory any longer. Those “trivial luxuries”, are the reward of a culture not being moronic being less moronic about economic matters than is typical throughout human history.

Going back to my story: if I declare that using the rack efficiently doesn’t matter, I make my job harder. There is a very good chance I make my job impossible and have to leave boxes of clothing for the poor sod who sorts on the next day. Which will very likely be me.

To borrow a term from The Enemy: when you dismiss economics, you speak from a position of unimaginable privilege. If you aren’t simply ignorant of history, then you probably are one of those scummy politicians or scummy businessmen and think that economics is something which happens to other people.

*THIS IS SARAH: Ian Bruene, besides his make-ends-meet-job between-jobs is also a budding entrepreneur. If you buy gaming figurines, you could do worse than do it from Murphic industries.*