“We’re just like Rome in the Decadence.” “We’re decadent, and we’re going to fall.” “It’s all scripted, we can’t escape it.”

What if I told you that you sound like a true believer in “climate models?” Or perhaps that cute little model about how Covid-19 would kill millions! Millions!

First of all you can’t hit me, because I’m on this side of the screen, and you’re not. AND furthermore, every night I pray G-d to give me one superpower. Just one. The ability to reach through the screen and bitchslap the heck out of idiots. He still hasn’t given me that, so I doubt he’s given it to you. For one, wanting to bitchslap people isn’t very holy — I’m told — so no miracles for you. Ahem. Now that we’ve established that very important point, let’s move on to the main point.

Yeah, yeah, those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. But it’s not an inescapable model or an exact repetition. It just tells you how humans are supposed to react to “situation x.” Not “factor a b and c are in play. So x will happen.”
Yes, many science fiction authors have forecast the emergence of such ability. Psycho-historical equations make a great story, of course, which is why the mind is attracted to it.

The problem, same as with climate forecast are all the factors. You can’t tally all the factors that went into something that involves more than one person. Let along something that involves more than one person, and which you only have access to via reports from people who were there. Or, more likely people who knew people who were there. And all the people involved in the transmission of knowledge are people who were raised in a culture so different from yours that you can’t guess their bias fully. You can get some idea, but you can’t guess all of it.

What does bias matter for reporting what happened? Oh, hell.

Having transferred between cultures and acculturated, I can tell you bias makes you see different things when looking at an event. Yes,okay so it’s a given, for instance that Portugal is a far more “patriarchal” society than the US. That doesn’t mean that women and men are the same, but the rules are different. It means that even an odd duck “liberated” woman — which I was by virtue of never caring about people’s expectations for me except for not giving scandal to strangers and by not upsetting people without a good reason — like me was running different software in the head.

When I was traveling to the US to marry Dan, in the airport, there was a family with mom, dad, and four teens. All boys. At the time I thought the other utterly ridiculous. Why? Well, her hairstyle was about 20 years too young for her. She just had straight hair, worn long. And she was ordering everyone around and telling them what to do. It seemed stupid to me. Would my evaluation be the same now? Well, there isn’t the back brain assumption that married women will either confine their hair or wear it short. So her hair would probably not bother me. As for ordering everyone, my guess is I’d see a middle aged woman exasperated by clueless young males. Heck, I’ve probably been that woman a number of times. “Have you gone to the bathroom? Remember you don’t want to all rush the bathroom on the plane.” “Did you have breakfast? No? Maybe you want to go and get a sandwich, before we board.” “Pull your pants up, I can see your underwear. Do you have a belt? Put that one.” etc. etc. etc.

What you report changes. My first one would be “Geesh, this woman was harassing everyone, and she was nuts because she had a far too young hairstyle.” My second would have been “This poor woman, was trying to keep the kids from doing stupid stuff, and it was a full time job. Even if she was fussy.”

Now, the difference between Portuguese culture and American culture is almost non-existent, compared to the difference of head software between us and the average Roman.

On top of that, people see different things. No? Find a cop. Ask him about witness reports. Oh, ask Lawdog for instance. I’ll wait. Yeah. Now ask him about witness reports collected a year later, or collected by hearsay.

This is what we’re dealing with in history, adding in the fact that the person who wrote down “history” had an ax to grind. Usually a very personal ax.

I am familiar with a lot of it from when I write historical novels. One of the things that amuses me immensely is reading someone else working the same time period I do. Say Tudor England, or Dumas musketeers. The names are the same, but the actual place is completely different. And it’s not that their research is wrong — because I don’t read those. I fling them against the wall with force — but that what they focus on, or how they interpret the reporter’s bias is completely different. Take Kit Marlowe — please. I’m tired of having him haunt my stories — I can write him as an ugly customer, or a triple agent spy, or a confused, lost young men, caught in a web that he doesn’t fully understand. And that’s not counting writing him as gay, or straight or bisexual. (And — speaks sternly to back brain — I’m not writing Kit Marlowe erotica. No. Drop that idea right now. I am serious. Don’t make me get the chancla or doom. Ain’t nobody got time for that.)

Then there’s propaganda. Rome and in particular “decadent Rome” has been the object of propaganda since it was still very non-decadent by our lights, to when it had been fallen for hundreds of years.

You’ll hear other Romans screaming the equivalent of ‘get off my lawn’ almost from the inception of Rome, because kids those days refused to live in a hut and grind acorns for their bread, or didn’t beat their wives into submission as is right or proper, or insisted on bathing, which as we all know weakens the blood. Those dang kids. Decadent.

Now, are there a ton of “vices” humans indulge in as soon as they’re a little above extreme subsistence conditions? Yeah. Look, we’re apes, okay? Sometimes really creative apes.

Give us a surplus of food, and we over indulge. Funny mind-altering substances and some of us will indulge. (The fact I hate to be out of control of my own mind makes me a very odd duck, so I won’t, but trust me, I’m the exception.) Nice clothes, and we’ll probably own many more than we need. Or comely whatever partners of whatever sex — or yes. Shut up Marlowe! — and a great portion of us will screw their way to glory or at least exhaustion.

Few of us indulge in too much work, too stern a discipline or too exacting a diet. Although it’s been known to happen.

So, given that America is the most prosperous nation the world has ever known, you’re darn tooting we will be compared to “decadent Rome” the most prosperous nation the world had ever known (for its time) before us.

But does that mean our fate will be the same? Well… probably not. Humans might be the same, but the software in the heads is utterly different, technology is different, and the way America relates to the world has nothing to do with how Rome related to the world.

If you assume it will be the same, you’re ignoring all other factors. You’re also being oddly Marxist, because he viewed human differences, etc. as meaning nothing. We’re all widgets, in widget landia, and running this program. Of course, to get his “program” he relied on a highly simplified version of history that abstracted “factors” and treated them as immutable.

Cue “this is not how any of this works.” Not even vaguely. Which is why all his predictions have turned out wrong.

So, should we study history at all? Oh, hell yes. For one because it helps you understand what your culture assumes and why.

But unlike Marxist-history, which is what I learned in Europe, which is all about “the factors of the time, leading to” and individuals don’t matter, because another individual would do the same, we should study both the ethos of the time: technology, commerce, beliefs, and the biographies of influential people. Both because it helps us understand how they were and if typical of their time or not, and to understand “the individual as a factor in what actually happened.”

Imagine the leader of the continental armies was Benedict Arnold, and tell me the revolution would turn out the same, and we’d have the same USA, save for the capital being called Arnold? Uh uh. Sorry, no. (Though starting a short with someone flying to Arnold DC.. well… And I could probably sell “very similar but different’ in a short story. In a novel, it would all apart. The personalities were too different, the trajectory too different.)

So right now? Yeah, we know we’re in trouble. And I think, though I’m open to other opinions, that the best model for what we’re going through is not “Decadent” (For one, because in our case that was USSR propaganda. Yes, we have tons of vices, but we’re not terminal on any of them. No, we’re not. See how we resist vices imposed from above.) but “Occupied land.” We were overtaken not by another nation, but by a small minority indoctrinated to hate us. To the extent this minority is international, you can see our struggle mirrored all over the world.

I’ll add that all over the world, Marxism and it’s offshoot of internationalist insanity is on the run, and having to cheat and go violent to stay in power. This if one looks on history for a guide, would seem to indicate it’s doomed. How soon? What form will their fall take? What does it mean for us?

I don’t know. I have feelings more than clear ideas. But I do know it won’t be “like the fall of Rome.” Because that model has nothing to do with anything. (And for that matter we don’t know really why Rome “fell”.)

I do know the last time a “conceptual model of society” — absolute monarchy — was on the ropes this way, it took more than 200 years to fall, and a lot of the falls were bloody messes.

OTOH, history seems to move faster now, (probably because communications do) and Marxism is nowhere near as deep set or as close to the basics of human nature as absolute monarchy was. (Though it shares with monarchy the belief in anointed ones. Just different annoying.)

The one thing I know from history is that once the philosophical underpinning of the order, whatever the order is, is fatally damaged in the minds of those living under it, fall will come.

How soon, when and how….? Well, that depends on many many factors, some of which will be unknown unknowns.

What will come after? I don’t know. I have a feeling it will be better. But it’s a gut-feeling, based on factors I probably can’t fully articulate.

I can also tell you that getting there will probably hurt. Though a miracle could occur.

Go ahead and study history. And even feel free to apply it as a predictive model.

But at best remember what we have of the past is a pretty, pretty picture with all the messiness brushed away. In the present? All we have is mess. Comparing the two is imperfect at best, insane at worst.

So when you apply the predictive model, use our different tech, and our different software as factors.

Will you be able to predict the future? No. But it might give you a rough guide. However, stay ready to incorporate things that aren’t exactly as you expected they would be, and to change your model on the fly.

Part of the issue with the climate models, or Marxist models of history, for that matter, is that instead of changing the model to accord with reality, they try to wish reality away, so that the results will be as foretold by their system.

Don’t be those guys. Always incorporate the new systems as they appear.

By all the factors I can tabulate we win, they lose. The only question is how soon, and what the butcher’s bill. And those, I can’t answer. I have ideas. They’re probably wrong.

There are too many factors, and it’s too complicated. The best we can do is work for what is best and endure.

Till we come out the other side.

The future is not scripted. Go do your best to fight for a good one.

I’d like to pick up on Holly’s guest post of yesterday.

When I was reading it occurred to me that the problem of art is the problem of traditional publishing, it’s the problem of any centralized power and information.

We are social apes. Naturally and instinctively we tune in to the group we live or work with. It’s normal. We have all been members of groups that skewed slowly off normal — in minor and harmless ways, normally — and which made adjusting to the rest of the world more difficult after. (The gentlemen who said “Yeah, this comment section” can go to the corner for half an hour without books, thank you.) I mean even my writers’ group gave me a wicked addiction to popcorn, since that’s what we always ate when critiquing.

The problem comes with concentrating functions of society. When it’s something free-market (ish) based, it just means the entire field will fail. But when it’s government supported and/or subsidized it just tilts away from what the people would do with their own money, and gets more expensive and utterly offensive and useless.

So, take what Holly said about art. Public art, paid for with government money, might be good art (maybe) but it’s good art for people who are immersed in art and art education. Which means for the normal human being, it’s either stupid, useless or outright ugly.

In the same way, though in a free-er (look, the centralization of publishing itself was part the result of technology, and part the fact that the government puts its thumb where it has no business being. Tor power tools is one of the least egregious though most recent thumbs on the scale.) market, publishing, particularly genre publishing having relocated to NYC and being a small, incestuous field, where everyone knows everyone else, and where everyone goes to the same parties and the same restaurants, it started mostly catering to itself.

What do I mean by this? Well…

Take cozy mysteries. They were incredibly popular, but then for … reasons all the publishers started talking about how cozies weren’t real mystery. And it should be absolutely forbidden to have amateurs solving mystery, because the professionals were best qualified. Etc., etc., etc. And then they stopped accepting cozies.

You see, two things made this easy. The fact that everyone else who worked with them thought cozies were stupid, and the fact that they could stop just accepting them is because by that time for various reasons the publishing houses could determine if a book swam or sank. So curtail cozy distribution and publicity, have it not sell and then go “see, cozies don’t sell. Nobody wants it.” And stopped accepting it.

I don’t know what happened there, if it was just a happy coincidence with someone publishing this one off craft mystery and its doing really well or if the bottom line crashed so badly they tried to accept cozies without accepting cozies. “We know cozies don’t sell, but how about with crafts?” And then those sold, and suddenly were everywhere.

Same happened in science fiction with space opera and then with all of science fiction in favor of fantasy. Baen was about the only hold out on that. Because, of course, if the only science fiction you allow is hard sf you’re only going to hit a small group of connoisseurs, while Planet Stories was wildly popular. (Yes, yes, there’s a post on science fiction, possibly, eventually for Mad Genius Club.)

Same with “clean” romances. The editors were tired of them, so they didn’t want that and–

Fortunately with indie publishing all the “but we don’t like it” are making a come back.

But the same type of thinking, the same “but our in group doesn’t like it” is now dooming Hollywood. They’re essentially making movies for themselves.

It’s not even malicious. It’s that they’re tired of the things that the public perennially loves. Because they see a lot of it and it gets boring. And they forget the public hasn’t seen it every day for years. And they forget that whatever they think is virtue signaling woke in their circles is not hot at all in ours, but boring because we get it from every institutions and often our jobs.

And upper education. And educator “certification” is insane bs, that concentrates and distorts teachers into an in-group. Which in turn hardens a lot of insane ideas into what the entire group thinks, and tries to push on the kids (or adults) they teach.

And this is why government is in the mess it is in. Exact same reason. Even when they’re not raging commies, government employees as a group are obsessed with problems that aren’t problems: Income inequality, climate doomerism, etc etc. TO THEM these are vital. And they don’t understand the rest of the world is not really interested in any of this and in fact that most of these are only a problem in their minds.

Again, this is a reason for government being as distributed as possible. And where everyone, including bureaucrats are routinely changed. It should be normal for the president to fire everyone int he bureaucracy and hire his guys. Yes, yes, that means a period of confusion where no one knows “how things are done.” Too bad so sad. Perhaps “the way things are done” has tilted so far away from normality that it should change. And perhaps resetting to normal humans on the regular would stop us having government only interested in its own obsessions and at war with its people.

There is a trope that the right in America is Masculine, and the left is Feminine. This is not precisely true. There’s plenty of women on the right, and they’re the most feminine women where it counts: Married women with children.

But in general, it kind of is true. Or at least the argument of the right tend to appeal to a more “masculine” stereotype mindset, and the ones on the left, to a more “feminized” stereotype mind set. There’s more socializing, more mind games, and an approach to life that’s designed to make everyone “behave” the way they want you to. There’s also a lot of social signaling, and women, being hypergamic, tend to do that more.

Mind you, of course, a more feminized approach refers to the stereotype, and there are men and women on the same side. However on the whole, overtime, this image was true.

Was? Oh, yeah. Starting with the fall of the USSR and then definitely with Trump’s election, and the widespread rejection of the left’s long term projects, it’s more like…. our left is America’s crazy ex girlfriend.

She refuses to let you leave. I mean the way the elections are rigged? Not to mention the way they keep telling us we deeply care about climate change or whatever her obsession is. It’s like she’s telling you that you just can’t break up with her. And when you change the keys, she jimmies the locks to get back in.

She eats our food, tears up our stuff, runs up our phone bill talking trash about us to everyone else. She lets homeless men in to sleep on our furniture, poop on our carpet, kill our pets and set random fires.

Every time we try to get rid of her, she tells us we really love her, and if we say no we don’t, we’re breakup-conspirators and she threatens to get us locked up.

She steals from our wallet too, in ever increasing quantities. And keeps calling our boss and getting us fired.

The question is, how do we serve her an eviction notice?

I will do a real post later. I meant to clean the house all weekend, because we have company, so of course I COULDN’T. It’s not just writing. I’m haunted by a spirit of the contrary. Or gremlins. Whichever.

So, going to clean. Post later. One of the cats WENT somewhere. From the smell, accident. But it smells.

So, later.

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: Out of Contact (Chronicles of the Fall Book 6)

Radmir Gagarin is not an Exec, he just does the job of one. Working for the richest man in the Alliance, Lord Diomid Devi, is not easy, even though he’s retired. And it gets a lot harder when the Plague strikes the World Lord Diomid purchased as his personal retirement home. And then the invasion . . .

As the Three Part Alliance crumbles, it’s every world for itself, and even a man so rich he can buy an entire parallel Earth to retire on, can find himself in a lot of trouble!

FROM MACKEY CHANDLER, AUDIO BOOK! April

April is an exceptional young lady and something of a snoop. After a chance encounter with a spy, she finds herself involved with political intrigues that stretch her abilities. There is a terrible danger she, and her friends and family, will lose the only home she has ever known, and be forced to live on the slum ball Earth below. It’s more than an almost fourteen year old should have to deal with. Fortunately she has a lot of smart friends and allies. It’s a good thing because things get very rough and dicey. They challenge the political status quo, and with a small population the only advantage they have in war is a thin technological edge. The entire “April” series is building towards a merge with the future series that starts with “Family Law”.

FROM SHANE GRIES: Ashes of Empire: Last World Volume 2

When the royal government of the Interstellar Commonwealth was overthrown, the Imperial Family fled into the forgotten depths of space, seeking a colony that had been abandoned thousands of years ago. After a hasty jump and then five years of grueling sublight travel, the battered fleet enters the system to find a thriving pre-space flight human culture. A culture that remembered nothing of their origins.

Once contact is established, the refugee spacefarers embroil themselves in the politics of the warring nations, using their superior technology to play one side against the other. Imperial Marines in power armor go up against semi-automatic rifles and tanks, winning and losing their lives in a long term plan to turn the world into their new empire. Meanwhile, far above in orbit, the deadly games of the court continue with political intrigue, backstabbing and deadly rebellion.

FROM JAMES TOTTEN: The Old Heads and Drone Drivers: Breaching Ain’t Easy (Breaching Ain’t Easy! Book 3)

War is hell and getting worse. Russian leaders want payback for losing Poland. New weapons bring new opportunities. Retired Soldiers get called back to serve. Major Brown is right in the middle of it managing the madness. Look out for the dad bods, they have the skills to kill!

FROM MARK BOSSINGHAM: Chasing Naomi (ALLIE SPACE OPERA Book 1)

July 1969. Clive, Iowa, Earth. Sixteen-year-old Allie has a big decision to make: Watch the lunar landing with her mom in their run-down double-wide trailer or boost to the stars aboard a grumpy, sentient deep space exploration vehicle (DSEV-424) buried in her backyard for 5,000 years.

Accompanied by Gem, a dead space captain, now a glitchy hologram, Allie stops on the moon and surprises Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin aboard the Eagle lunar lander. (Neil never mentioned the encounter to Houston).

With Gem as her guide, Allie survives her first space battle and drops Gem off at a military regrow center in the middle of a spaceport casino. The teen’s adventure lifts off at a military space academy, where she faces danger, makes friends, battles enemies, and discovers her own surprising abilities.

Along with Rin, Sky, and Gem, Allie sets out on a mission to locate and defeat a rogue fleet led by Naomi, a mad-as-a-hatter warship, all while navigating the complexities of growing up and finding her place in the galaxy.

FROM DAVID COLLINS: Carbon Copy: An AI Doppelgänger Story

Kaylee Green was an Illegal Alien, only not someone who crossed the Rio-Grande to reach the USA. Instead, she had traveled 45.7 light-years to get away from her pursuers.

She is now a recent college graduate and has lived happily with her boyfriend for four years.

Then the police show up asking about a severed hand from a six-year-old cold case. They want to know why her fingerprints and DNA both match the hand.

Her carefully crafted false identity was rapidly falling apart. She wondered what else could go wrong?

The answer was that visitors from 45.7 light-years away were about to arrive.

FROM TOM VEAL: I Went to the Fantasy Fair

In Angland, matter obeys mind. Upon demand, raindrops swerve to avoid drenching pedestrians, walls change from opaque to transparent and back, coaches push themselves forward, quill pens take dictation, and sky-ships sail among the clouds. All that is quite ordinary and dull. Imaginative souls conceive of wondrous mechanical devices: steam locomotives, flying machines, jet engines, radios and a hundred more.

Aethelstan Tiefring has no particular interest in “technofantasy”. He has made his career as a renowned art-wright by directing pigments to recreate the images that he sees in his mind’s eye. Then his beloved wife succumbs to a mysterious sickness, her body vanishes from its casket, and he is stricken with overpowering melancholy.

His recovery begins when a glorious sunrise inspires him to resume painting and, on the same day, he receives an invitation to cross the Sea of Atlas to deliver a series of lectures to Atlantis’s foremost art institute.

He sets out for the New World, traveling in a sky-ship guided by golden swans and accompanied by his beautiful, flirtatious daughter. Lyonessa Tiefring has just turned down a shameful offer from the nephew of a powerful nobleman. She does not know that the disappointed suitor’s vengeance pursues her.

The journey will take father and daughter farther than they can imagine: to Atlantis, to the gathering of technofantasy enthusiasts at the Fantasy Fair, and then through death to a universe governed by entirely different natural laws.

FROM SCOTT MCCREA: Finding Bradigan’s Mountain: A Mountain Man’s Revenge (Bradigan: Mountain Man Book 3)

A brand new Mountain Man adventure from Scott McCrea!

Mountain man Richard Bradigan goes on a deadly cross-country trek to save the girl he loves from his old nemesis, the sadistic Colonel Sauvage. With him are the outrageous Bon Chance Legrand, dime novelist Fred Stryker, and disgraced soldier Captain Burr. But time starts running out for the searchers when they are pursued by some of the most dangerous badmen to ever come out of the West.

One thing is guaranteed – it will all end in blood. But who will live and who will die?

A Mountain Man’s Revenge is the pulse-pounding conclusion to the exciting Finding Bradigan’s Mountain trilogy.

The Critics Say:

“Well done, Mr. McCrea.” – Western author Jeremy Perry

“It’s easy to read; fast paced; packed with action; and full of characters you’re soon rootin’ for, as well as those you can’t wait to meet a grizzly end. It’s great fun to read.” – Western author Andrew Weston

“Scott McCrea’s prose is tight and smooth, and delivers a fair number of smiles.” — Evan Lewis, Davy Crockett’s Almanack

“Recommended!” — Jeff Arnold’s West

“Looking forward to the next one!” — Toby Roan, Fifty Westerns From the Fifties Blog

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Dragon’s in the Details

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

FROM DALE COZORT: Snapshot-42 Book One – Stalingrad Run

At the height of World War II, an apparent time anomaly cuts Europe and part of the Middle East off from the rest of the world. Trapped in Northern Iran, with no way to contact the world he knew, United States Army Engineer Jim Edwards is forced to flee from both the Germans and the Soviets. His only companions are a mysterious Russian woman who may be trying to assassinate Stalin, and a man who calls himself “Loki”. Is he any more trustworthy than the Norse trickster god he’s named after?

In a desperate bid to get to Great Britain, Jim finds himself in a treacherous race across Nazi-occupied Europe. His mission? To prevent the Nazis from overrunning Europe, then sending their war machines against an alternate United States that’s still armed with black powder muskets. The freedom of mankind’s future may depend on his success.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Sound of One Child Crying

Who is the child Reza can hear crying every time she goes to the new addition to the Royal Library? Her boss insists there is no child, that it is nothing more than her uncanny sensitivity to the unseen world making a nuisance of itself.

Worse, searching for answers gets her angry rebukes about respect for the dead. The further Reza goes, the more certain she becomes that someone is hiding an ugly secret.

It’s a secret that traces back two generations, to a dark period in this land’s history. A time most people would prefer to forget, not caring that denial doesn’t make a problem go away.

The truth may set you free, but not without a price. And Reza fears that death itself might turn out to be an easier price than the one demanded of her.

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: WORD

So there is this thing going on around twitter that says that what is sinking Disney is not wokness, it’s bad story telling.

Of course, my immediate reaction was:

But yeah. Indeed, it’s the storytelling. Or it’s mostly the storytelling.

Look, partly it’s that they used to have much better story telling skills, which means that we’d swallow more.

As some of you know, I’ve been re-reading a series, which I just realized must have been published in the eighties. I read other stuff in between, but go back to the next book when I’m depressed or out of it. It’s been that type of week. The series is great, if you ignore the initial dubious premise for how the war started/is set up. It’s not — quite — mil sf, in that while in the military, it’s a small detachment given special missions, outside the hierarchy. I.e. the kind of “mil sf” I could write myself. And there’s righteous fights, an evil villain, misguided support stuff, etc. etc. etc. Just… fun.

Except on book 9 I came across a long long long screed on how both the US and the USSR wanted the best for their peoples and maybe the ‘true way’ lay between their approaches. There was much handwaving about Unions and evil capitalists and “just as bad.”

Now, what’s miraculous? I didn’t remember this AT ALL. And it’s one of the books I read before, because I came across it while unpacking the fiction library. But I had no memory of that.

I also had no memory of several pages and pages and pages talking about how terrible global warming was, and hydro carbons and — stomp stomp, panic panic — nuclear power, because of Chernobyl.

No memory of any of that either. Though if we’re going to consider which one is more outrageous is my forgetting the “The USSR and the US are trying to do the same” which I call the “both sides” fallacy. I’ve always despised that with such a white-hot rage that I once almost punched a close friend (and he was a close and true friend) for casually saying that.

But I’d read that at one time, and completely forgot it. What this tells me is two things: it was so pervasive in everything that I just ignored it/skipped over it, like graphic sex in romance novels. (Not because I’m prudish but because most of it is unnecessary and tedious.) And that the series was still good enough to be fondly remembered.

This combination worked. See my friend, not a stupid person, parroting that line at me of all people. Because it was so pervasive you assimilated it, even if you only read it a couple of times per year. And you repeated it either because you believed it or because you assumed everyone else did.

This way was the overtton window moved.

It had help. Unless you really trusted someone, you didn’t talk about your real beliefs/politics. Because thing is, with the media, and art and everything controlled by them, you (we) thought you (we) were alone. Or a very tiny minority. A lot of people on the right who are more respectable than us (coff) and rely on the MSM still believe this. It’s part of the reason for so many RINOS. They think they’re fighting a rear guard.

But the left knows they aren’t. In fact, as reality came out to smack the left again and again, starting with the fall of the USSR and moving on to the internet giving us a forum and us realizing we were far from alone, and might be (are, trust me) the overwhelming majority, they’ve grown more hysterical and desperate.

Part of that desperation has translated into more and more esoteric involvement in things like Gramscian ideas about races that are natural communists, and therefore attempts to create a for-real racist class system in the US. Just reversed from what the democrats supported 100 years ago, but just as evil, made up, and dividing people in “what now?” categories then treating those as absolutes.

The other part has been how rapidly their focus on “what must be said/done” today shifts.

I told here before that when I first broke in, early oughts, I believed staying quiet was enough not to be blacklisted/cancelled. Turned out either it already wasn’t, or ten years later, you needed to be VOCAL in your support for the VERY LATEST crazy, or you’d be at best sidelined, at worst suspected of being the enemy and driven off.

The problem with demanding “affirmative support” is that it does something to the creative brain. No, seriously.

I started hitting editors asking me what the “thesis” of my novel was. This would shut me down hard. Even when it was from a friendly on-my-side editor, it shut me down hard. Because that’s not how my brain works. Sure, my beliefs and ideas come through — mumbles again in “I wanted to write a space regency, WTF it’s all about individual liberty, suddenly?” — but the story is the story. Sometimes I figure out what it’s about half way through — cough A Few Good Men — and sometimes I figure what it’s about as people start emailing me to tell me they loved x. Because to me the story is about the story, and making the story satisfying and GOOD.

I think the pressures of “you must affirm all our principles, and the story must be shaped by our” — increasingly crazy — “ideas” is shutting down the true creatives.

All they have left are the people who can write to the last yota to speck. Now, mind you some of those are competent. But when you demand they cram in a whole bale of insane, even the competent ones will buckle.

I bailed from everyone but Baen 21 year ago, and so am not sure how bad it is, but the tearful comment from a young writer on a panel saying this had hurt her novel that “You’re not allowed to have women have defects or weaknesses. It makes them so boring as characters” is a clue to how far the crazy has gotten. She worked for a big house. Rhymes with bore. So, you know….

I think it’s literally impossible to tell good stories in those circumstances.

Fortunately we have indie and reissued old stuff. And the reissued old stuff is not going to sell “both sides” crap to most of us now. And the global warming… well, those with memories aren’t going to panic, either. (I think right now, where I type this, I’m supposed to be under a mile of ice or so, if you go by the 70s established science.) And that I know — I only follow a few authors — most of Baen is still quite readable.

And I have gone indie and freed myself to write what I need to write. Even the stuff that’s a wee bit nuts. Because hey, someone has to and I can.

Anyway, the good news is that the more crap they produce the more people find the alternatives. And the harder it becomes to sell their communist week-old-fish.

Movies… well, my husband has been playing with AI. Yes, I know, but honestly, if I had the time, I’d do it myself. (No, he doesn’t have the time either, but we’re trying to work at finding him time.)

We are actually and for real winning the culture war. Because they thought it was a top down thing. And it was for a while. However, the table is about to flip if it hasn’t already.

Which means in the end we win, because culture goes before politics.

Much better than 40 years ago when we assumed only the left could create and therefore swallowed the sewage with the wine by default.

Be not afraid. We got this.

This was going to be a completely different post. I’ve been reading about the culture war and how the preponderance of bad movies, books, comics, etc. etc. etc. is due to bad story telling, not wokeness.

This is not wrong, because we used to swallow a lot more preaching when the story was better. It’s just that I think both the preaching has got thicker and the story telling worse.

Let that idea rest. I’ll do it tomorrow. But as I was planning the post, while painting the new portion of the deck, I thought of the series I’m re-reading which must have been originally published in the eighties — I have part of it in paper. I’m just being lazy about going to the guest room (where the fiction is) and checking. And the author doesn’t get the concept of “re-issue” so it’s not in the electronic version — because the USSR hadn’t fallen.

In the middle of book eight, I found myself reading a three page thing about how the USSR and the US both wanted the best for their people, and perhaps the right way was in the middle of our systems. (I’ll have more to say about this tomorrow.)

And like that I thought that you know, fraud was probably already massive then. But with all the preaching and stuff, they made the lefty wins seem plausible. This linked to Nikki Haley in my head, and I saw with startling clarity why she’s staying in the race, heavily financed by the left and still saying she will trust the American people to reject her if they want to reject her.

This also made perfect sense of their running the corpse again and being fairly certain he’ll “win.”

It should have occurred to me before, because they have basically one playbook and run it obsessively. If it fails they double down with a surer thing.

I was right about the DeSantis campaign, though I’m relieved to say probably not right about DeSantis.

What do I mean by that? Well, the reasons I didn’t throw in behind DeSantis as all the commenters online were hailing him as the second coming of Trump but with less uncouth were three fold.

Number 1 and the most important was that I didn’t think it would do any good. Right-of-Lenin commenters online are its own little micro-cosmos and they can turn into a bit of an echo chamber. To them/us DeSantis looked good, because they/we were diving down on politics and looking at what he’d done, etc.

But that’s not how the average person votes. Not even those who aren’t LIVs. They vote on gut, sympathy, being swept up. But MOSTLY and this is mostly the LIVs, but also those who simply don’t care enough for politics but want to change things, they vote on name recognition. And name recognition is a huge, powerful factor. I bet you — not now. My cohort is diminishing rapidly — 20 years ago a GOP contender named Reagan would have a huge leg up, provided he could breathe and had a face in the shape of a face.

Trump not only has name recognition — I think The Apprentice is why he won in 16 and the left are morons not to have seen it coming — but he was president before, and people remember until the Covidiocy they were better off. This gives him an enormous advantage, should he choose to run (this was before he said he would. BTW I suspect he wouldn’t have if they’d let him alone. But the lawfare made it clear to him that if he let himself sink into anonymity neither him nor his family would survive.)

Also we’ve driven a lot. A lot a lot. Since 2020 road trips have become our main form of travel. There are various reasons, some of them personal, but well… we’ve driven a lot. In the highways and byways of America, you saw Trump signs still everywhere. You still do. Some have been up since 2020. Speaking to our handymen and plumbers and people who came by to trim trees and dig whatever up (this house had almost no maintenance for 20 years and we’re now paying for it) Trump got a smile, DeSantis got a “Dewho?” Or for the more informed “Isn’t he the Florida guy?” Yes, that could change with time, but it was a hell of a lot to come back from behind on.

Number 2 while everyone online on the right-ish was screaming about how Trump was attacking DeSantis for no reason whatsoever, I could see the ah prods being extended by DeSantis surrogates to make Trump scream.

While I realize that’s politics and whatever, I grew up in rough playgrounds and people who did that — the underhanded poking and prodding to make the person scream or pound so the other person would be in trouble — were the ones I sought out after school to give a good beating to, until they mended their ways. I held it against no one if they came at you wanting to smack you, but the underhanded sneaks who looked like butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths while trying to get other people in trouble were the worst kind of bullies and frankly outright evil.

Now even then I wasn’t sure if this was DeSantis or his campaign, but in either case, well… call me infantile, but lessons from the playground stuck. I’d rather back the guy who was brash and outspoken than the underhanded hitter.

I also noticed as the campaign went on that the campaign, and the scripted stuff for DeSantis was more about hitting Trump than the left. Now, while that is understandable in the primary, it really was almost exclusive and… well, you have to sell yourself to the right, so it seemed odd.

Number Three – His “but he doesn’t have the Trump negatives” was a bullshit sales pitch. Trump has negatives because he’s been under steady attack for… almost eight years now. I saw the left make Romney “I tried to hire women over men” into a misogynistic “binders full of women” thing, which never made any sense, but they sold it as a negative, anyway.

I’ve seen Trump’s “Women are hypergamic” saying that if you’re rich women let you grab them however into “He did this.”

And boy, howdy, I knew they’d already done that to DeSantis IN FLORIDA WHERE HE WAS KNOWN. Half the people there are convinced he’s DeDevil.

So once the mass media got going? Yeah. Devil.

Now, I don’t want those points jumped on in the comments before you read the rest, okay. Because what you say is probably moot, considering what I came to realize.

Anyway, given all that, the crazy enthusiasm for DeSantis in the talking heads made me suspect we were being played.

Now, I will grant you I’m paranoid as all get out. But that’s what made me see through Covidiocy. And long before that, it kept me alive a number of times.

So I thought “Uh. Given all that, why is DeSantis running NOW?” And “Why are a lot of people who are — ahem — at best RINOS throwing money at him.” And “Why his campaign messaging mainly aiming to destroy Trump’s image.”

And the smell I got was “Why indeedy, he’s Ross Perot.” (I’m going to say right now, I don’t know if Ross Perot was manipulated into running, etc. But we all know the result of his run.)

I thought that the left realized a straight up repeat of 2020 is impossible. People WILL notice, and the herd is restive.

On the other hand, drum up the “no one really likes Trump” (note they’re still doing that) and run DeSantis as the plausible candidate people like. Then when Trump barely won the primary (the left are such elitists. They counted on the online commenters to pull that off) DeSantis would refuse to concede and run as an independent. And then, split three ways, with a little fraud (yes I think fraud would still be needed) the Biden-corpse could squeak a victory, and anyone saying there was fraud would be stomped with “idiot” and “irrational” because obviously, Trump’s negatives were just so great, it split the vote.

Well, I might have been — still think I am — right about DeSantis campaign, but I wasn’t right (I’ll admit it) about Ron DeSantis.

Whatever made him run (and I understand it can be heady, also when he started the first moves, Trump hadn’t announced) he saw the writing on the wall, and probably figured out it smelled, eventually. So he conceded early. Because he’s an honorable man. And yes, there are ways to work around the same state thing, and if Trump chooses him as VP I’ll vote for that ticket with no qualms and — a miracle happening — I’ll vote for DeSantis in 2028 when he steps into the prime slot with no problems. (Note that this would be best for him, too, as Trump will take the hits for straightening the mess he’ll inherit, and DeSantis will have a much less fierce battle. And can be more of a uniter.)

I’ll note when DeSantis threw in the towel there followed a very amusing spate of panic on the left, but the panic now seems to have calmed down. Weirdly. Or is it?

Well, the left really only has one play. So there’s Nikki Haley. Second to None Nikki. Who is being financed with the big bucks, and who will not give up. No way no how.

So, Nikki….

You guys say she’s hoping Trump gets killed. And note, it’s not even needed to be an assassination. The man is taking hits from friends and people he thought were his friends, and the place he called home and loved most of his life, his homeland, has turned on him. I know — TRUST ME I KNOW — what that does to a person. And I’m much, much younger. I’ve seen what it did to my friends, too. It’s dangerous from a health POV. Or you guys say she’s hoping his legal troubles will take him out, and that’s possible too.

But… But… If none of those happen, the ultimate plan is to have Nikki run as an independent.

And then to say she took votes away from Trump. Trump is so unlikable, you know, that Second to NONE Nikki will steal votes from him.

She will too. Those Venezuelan-designed machines can do wonderful arithmetic, I tell you.

I’d like to tell you — boy would I — that the American people won’t fall for it. That they’ll know the fraud is there and dancing naked in our faces.

I can’t begin to tell you how much I’d like to believe the people as one will say “Second to None Nikki took half of Trump’s vote? Pull the other one, it plays jingle bells and lights up.”

Oh, maybe it will happen. I give it maybe 25% of chance, just on gut feel.

The problem though? If you say that and see it, you have to do something, even if it’s just a general strike or something equally strange.

… And people really, really, really want things to be normal. Hence the chorus of people on our side saying the fraud is small and it wasn’t the deciding factor. (They’re also worse at math than I and that hurts, particularly when I know they aren’t, or their profession calls for them not to be.)

I’m very afraid the Nikki play will have people upset, but shrugging and thinking “Yeah, it was a three way split, and that’s why we have the corpse again and he’s going to kill us” and not being able to say there was fraud or hound the fraudsters from office.

And that–

That means it will be the hard landing and the blood on the streets when it comes. And the breaking of everything at once, before we can rebuild.

I think that’s the play being run. And I wish to G-d I could tell you it will not work.

I’m not going to tell me there will not be a post. I know your ways and am wise to your rebukes. You will tell me this is a post.

Instead I’m going to tell you why the post is this late.

Yes, there was another death in close friends, which I learned of in a phone call from mom. I have talked about it in a post on Sarah’s Diner on facebook, so some people would know I’d be unusually weird for a little while, but I’m not ready to discuss it in public.

Instead I’m going to talk about the part of my troubles that amuses you fiends. There’s no use denying it. I know it does. Though I’ll maintain the reason it amuses you is that you don’t have to live with it, yourselves.

This. This right here is the shape of our problem. Though their buff Siam-Musey sister might contribute. If she does it’s as a mastermind.

She’s silent and a hooman “influencer.”

All three of them seem to have the intelligence of a bright, pre-verbal toddler. Indy is a little more…. experienced with things is all. But I’ve observed them all three in “let’s pretend” play, where they hide a toy, they pretend to look for it before “finding” it with “Surprise” something that I’ve never seen in other cats. The girls also…. throw toys for each other. Don’t ask.

This morning we woke up to the house upside down. There were curtains down in the dining room, which I didn’t notice till I’d had my coffee in my nightgown, in front of the neighborhood and passerby. Now my nightgown is huge and covers me from shoulders to ankles, so I’m more likely to be thought of as a ghost. I’ll grant you that, but it’s the principle of the thing.

Someone, probably Valeria had thrown up all over the house, but that’s not so much being bad as poor girl is sick and getting thinner and thinner. Well, that’s life, I guess? We treated the UTI and the peeing everywhere has stopped, but she’s not gaining weight. There are more tests in her future.

Meanwhile, as Dan got up, we not only found that the water fountain downstairs had been taken apart again, but we caught CIRCE taking the one upstairs apart under the supervision of her older brother. And arranging the pieces by size and type, of course. The fountain was unplugged, the cord carefully wrapped around it, as Indy does to keep his sisters safe.

So, it’s official. The Engineer Cat now has an apprentice.

Fortunately I was ready. I’ve bought ceramic fountains, the components just too heavy for them to move. Unless Indy discovers levers. Something I’m not putting past him.

I’ve now installed the ceramic one downstairs and will probably do the upstairs one tonight or tomorrow morning.

They were much disgusted with my wrecking their fun downstairs. They are now on the sofa being despondent.

I told them “It didn’t have to be this way. But every morning Indy gets up and chooses engineering. And now he’s made your apprentice. I had no choice.”

Both of them are upset with me.

*This post had a lot more pictures, but wordpress is being a pain. If I can I’ll post more pictures of the feline delinquents later.