FAKED PHOTOGRAPHS, A CONSPIRACY THEORY a guest post by FoxFier

A “conspiracy theory” mind you which has been confirmed for over a decade.  Almost two, actually.

When it was known as either “Reutersgate” or “The Adnan Hajj photograph conspiracy.”  Or more likely “Oh, wait, you mean when they had to be told that the really bad photoshop jobs were fake? Zombie Time has very nicely organized writeup that came up in the discussion, broken down into types of fraud– digital manipulation, staged events presented as spontaneous, photographer staged scenes, and inaccurate captioning of real photographs.)

Oops.

This came up because of trying to find the name of that photographer who admitted to carrying around a red tricycle and other brightly colored toys in his vehicle to help “give focus” to his photographs.  This was, per him, not considered Pallywood.  Which doesn’t exist, and is probably racist, and how dare anyone question things like how many people are supposedly killed in strikes that turned out to not happen.

Ignore a French journalist saying things like“Karsenty is so shocked that fake images were used and edited in Gaza, but this happens all the time everywhere on television and no TV journalist in the field or a film editor would be shocked. This has become more about him than anything else.” in a 2007 article.

Unfortunately, due to search engine “improvements,” I was only able to find mention of the planting-toys “conspiracy theory on right wing blogs” via an old New York Times article interviewing a photographer about the amazing popularity of Mickey Mouse toys in the middle of bombed streets in Lebanon. “It Was All Started by a Mouse (Part 1)”, Errol Morris, NYT archive for Jan 3, 2010. That’s mentioned in the Zombie Time article, at the bottom of section 3.  (Note, that would be Hezbollah, not Hamas; as best I can tell, Hezbollah does back Hamas, including publicly.)

I only found that mickey mouse article (in both meanings of the phrase) because of mention of a photographer, Abid Katib, who has amazing fortune in finding brightly colored shoes in dark places. (Being from nearly fifteen years ago, most of the links have died.)

This conversation came up, of course, because of the whole ops Hamas had paid reporters with them during the terror invasion revelation.

 Which brought up the church that’s been leveled twice, now, with major casualties, but is amazing (as of the last time I heard) still standing, or the “Israeli strike” on a hospital that set off secondary explosions on video…and turned out to be a Hamas rocket that fell short and blew up their parking lot, and oops not actually the mass casualty event reported, and it’s a well known Hamas command center anyways.  Which came up when the UN Secretary General threw a fit about reports Israel had targeted ambulances, and got called out for completely ignoring the systematic destruction and slaughter targeting Israeli emergency responders on October 7^th.

Which brought up other claimed attacks, like the Red Cross Ambulance Bombing, and worse the debunked Human Rights Watch debunking of the same.

But, to get back around to the point… does anyone remember something about the guy who actually admitted to having the toys and packing them around?

Or have some really good examples of Pallywood?

A friend said that the right is addicted to losing and to self-flagellation.

He’s right on the second. The first is a by-product.

It never fails to astonish me the chest beating, the “how did we fail” when things don’t go according to plan and its twin, the ridiculous and rage-inducing “I guess people want socialism/communism now.”

The number of people humans have willingly voted for and wanted communism and socialism since the end of the twentieth century is not zero. But it’s not far off. And in the US it might very well be bloody zero.

Oh, sure, your crazy aunt Marge. Have you checked that she’s actually human? Kidding, kidding. Yes, there are groups of people among us, usually the exquisitely indoctrinated, who willingly vote for socialism/communism. Note that a lot of them have no clue what such a regime would do, or what the consequences would be for them personally.

Yeah, I know they exist. The fools shall always be with us. That’s written in the good book, somewhere. Well, a good book, at least. And it’s not, I’ll be sure to write it in one, and make it as good as possible.

They are nowhere near a majority and they’re a minority more and more with each passing year, and yeah, I can prove that, but hold on, okay?

First let’s talk about the right receives news that they failed at some election. They never look at the things going into it, which more and more are massive, obvious fraud dancing naked and brazen in front of our eyes.

The right immediately says something like “Oh, yeah, well, sure there was fraud, but still, we shouldn’t have lost. It was our message. It was our candidate. It was the fact that everyone out there really wants socialism.”

Twice, I stopped writing for a “right” site after elections. In 2012 I stopped writing about politics, because it was decided we really were all socialists now, and so it was needed to work on the soft culture. In 2020 I stopped writing altogether, because I was told we weren’t going to do what the left had done, and spend four years screaming “fraud.”

Both times I was shocked. Both times I knew the amount of fraud is extraordinary. (Yes, 2012, already.) I do understand the impulse, to an extent. You see, if it’s fraud, there’s nothing we can do. If it’s not fraud, then we might be able to reach a crucial number of people and–

But what this results in — and I have reason to think this has been going throughout the second half of the 20th century, though it wasn’t so perfectly sewn up. The person who said the last true presidential election was JFK does deserve to be laughed at though. Loudly — is losing. It results in losing, because the right is trying to “meet the culture” that doesn’t exist “in the middle” that is halfway to the left that largely exists only as electoral fraud. So, being addicted to self flagellation lends itself to losing, and my friend is right, but in a sideways way.

Now, how do I know it was fraud?

Well, first of all, you know, the reason to prove there was no fraud, is to allow investigations.

While both sides claim fraud when they lose, the left officially, and the right from the grassroots, the right obsessively allows investigation and investigates its own fraud. (Which is why we know that save for two or three very particular local races in the last 20 years or so, the right doesn’t fraud. It’s not a “both sides” problem.) The left always claimed there was no fraud on its part. (I have a theory they actually believe this. Or at least believe they only fraud as much as the right. You see, I don’t know what’s in their heads but they don’t believe the grass roots EXIST. They were sure the tea party was astro turf. And they’re sure people on the right MUST be frauding, particularly when we beat their fraud.) But more and more, increasingly, they also try to criminalize the claims of fraud from the right. And they try to stop all investigation.

This is the most crucial point. A left that was triumphant and ascendant (yes, middle 20th century) had no need for ever-tighter censorship. They had a vision of the future (more on that later too) and an attractive “culture” that catered to the educated. They were a positional good. If you were “smart” and educated you were leftist. (Yes, they’re trying to hold onto that. It’s been fraying badly the last 20 years.)

Now, they are trying, increasingly, to censor everything. They don’t want you to question elections — and that’s the most important thing, which is kind of amusing — but more and more they don’t want you to know what your friends and neighbors think about anything at all. The pinnacle of this, I swear was the lockdown and masks. They wanted us isolated, so people didn’t know how vast the fraud was.

Biden’s election, too, has two hallmarks of “fraud so vast that we don’t think legitimate votes for him were needed” (Though undoubtedly your aunt Marge and her ilk did vote for him): First, he didn’t even pretend to campaign. And as far as he campaigned, he issued a series of threats. “We’re going to stop you drilling for oil.” “We’re going to open the borders.” “We’re going to tax you more.” (No, other than your aunt Marge — have you really checked she’s human? — these aren’t popular ideas. They weren’t back then, either.) Second, after he “won” he turned DC into “fortress capital” and mobilized state guards to come and defend him from the “right wing extremists” whom they were sure were about to storm the white house, drag them out and shoot them. This is because they knew they’d performed a coup d’etat, and they knew what they so richly deserved.

But the nonsense has been going on for a long time, way since before 2020. Roughly, the right wins when it surprises the left enough to have more votes than the left counted on. (Particularly when the left is trying to keep it plausible. They might or might not have given up on that. We’ll see in 24.)

Motor voter was an attempt at making fraud too massive to circumvent. As was machine voting. Note the left accused machine voting of fraud, which is typical of things they intend to do, because they know the right won’t then do it, because, well… “We’re not like them.” (Laudable, but dumb.)

As were a ton of other measures, from voting without an id, to “early voting”, to mail in voting. At this point, at my estimation, a good 80% to 90% of the left’s vote is fraud. Yes, your aunt Marge exists. As does her ilk. But a lot of them don’t even vote, because they’ve gone off the deep end, to “But the left is also capitalist” and would only vote for someone promising to stop all agriculture and herding because plants and animals want to be free.

And yes, the youth is largely still indoctrinated (they do snap out of it at around 45 give or take ten years) but the thing is mostly the youth vote fails to show up. At least when it’s not frauded in.

Note that the left defends each of the dubious voting measures to the death every time we try to stop one. Note also that things like mail-in-voting are typically instituted the moment they get hold (however marginal) of a state, and that it never after that goes right. EVER. It’s like it’s magical, right? If it’s not fraud, it must be that the sight of envelopes makes people socialist. (Bah.)

A small note on this is stuff like Long Island going red, even while we ‘lost’ everywhere else. How could this happen? Well, it could happen because they didn’t expect it, were busy frauding elsewhere, like Virginia and Kentucky, were it was grudge matches. This is why in 2024 the two states most at risk of being “swept by a blue wave” are Texas and Florida, both of which are grudge matches. Because it’s the fraud stupid! Colorado earned itself the massive frauding by passing ammendment two, which DARED make raising taxes something that had to be asked for every single time. Oh, and by saying that gay shouldn’t be a protected hiring category at state level. (TBF I think freedom of association should rule. But back then “gay” was the important thing to the left, their proof they were on the side of angels. Now they’re underbussing gay people at speed, in the name of trans.) So, it was the “hate state” and HAD to be turned. It was a grudge match.

So, the fraud is massive, pervasive, and the fact that it can be done “by computer” (So futuristic, so progressive!) means it can now be done in small elections as well as large, in mid terms as well as the national elections, etc.) what can we do?

Very little. Or very little individually. This won’t last, because it can’t, and I will explain why. In fact, in the history of ideas that are so fricking bad only an idiot would try it, thoroughly corrupting the voting system of the US so the input doesn’t matter to who is elected might rank up there with China’s one-child policy or little Kim ordering his people to eat pine-needles.

But on the individual side, there is pretty much almost nothing we can do. Except one thing: We can refuse to buy that there was no fraud, or that “everyone is socialist” now.

Because if you buy that, you’re trying to adapt your mind to something that doesn’t exist, and trying to reach across the isle when there’s nothing there. And then you become Pierre Delecto, wondering why no one loves him.

Also we can refuse to shut up. Make them ramp up the censorship to absurd amounts, and still keep talking. Because frankly, as with the fact the population is not in fact exploding, the fact there is massive and pervasive fraud is beginning to win the war of ideas. The left can try to shut it down, but it keeps cropping up, because it’s obviously true.

Besides, turning on our candidate, our own platform or our voices is stupid and counterproductive. Look, Trump might be what he is — eh, you know, I wouldn’t date him. But that’s not required, is it? — but he’s put everything — EVERYTHING — on the line to run and oppose the left. Turning on him only signals to anyone else brave or foolish enough to do it, that we’ll hang you to dry as soon as the left frauds you out. It’s stupid. Most people don’t have his resources or his ego. They can’t withstand that abuse.

As for our platform….

Yeah. Yesterday I already heard “Maybe we need to ditch opposition to abortion.”

Look, abortion is a legitimately divisive issue, for a million reasons, and I know a lot of social libertarians, legitimate freedom lovers, who will support it. I don’t for a ton of reasons, among them because I believe “you’re human if mommy says so” is a lousy way to run an ethical system. And after all personhood is at the basis of everything in a society based on the rights of the INDIVIDUAL HUMAN.

Should it be part of the GOP platform, one way or another? Nationally? Probably not. But candidates who are anti-abortion should be able to say so, and regionally of course being anti-abortion and on the right is a thing. For one, it’s also a sizeable voting block, and one that for some reason terrifies the left.

Actually I know the reason. It’s because it’s an issue they’re losing on. And it doesn’t matter if they put it in every state constitution (Except the way it’s written in Ohio it will turn into “permission to trans children.” BUT that’s something else, and will be figured out right quick.) Abortion has been falling, in total numbers, year over year. The opinion n the street is turning against it. John Ringo is absolutely right as to why, and it’s not something political, nor something laws could do.

Look, for centuries, murdering children was illegal, and children got routinely exposed. (And murdered, sometimes creatively. The number of women who “rolled over” on their infants is amazing. No, seriously. Do you sleep with a cat? How many times have you rolled over on him/her? Because I can count …. once in 35 years, and even then I stopped halfway through.) You see, the abstract morality was up against the fact that people simply couldn’t afford another kid. Or there was something wrong with the kid. Or–

And humans aren’t ideal creatures. No matter how wrong something is, people will do it. Oh, there were all kinds of dodges, including the belief they would, after all, “go straight to heaven.” Or you exposed them, and hoped someone would pick them up.

Then the exposing of children stopped, because…. well, a wealthier society. We could afford more kids. But eventually abortion picked up.

I know you kids will have trouble believing this, but my generation really believed that until like six months, it was just a clump of cells, or a tube with two openings. (In retrospect, that later is true. For adults too.)

But now abortions are falling, year over year, in absolute numbers, and John Ringo is right. It’s not the laws. It’s ultrasounds. It’s the pictures on the fridge. “This is my baby at ten weeks!” It’s giving them names before they’re born. “Little Jason is very active today!” It’s the fact that long before they’re born they’re becoming part of the family, and that you can’t deny they’re human.

I suspect, just in the trend of the culture, in twenty years people will look with horror at “they allowed abortion till birth!” and might very well do it on “they allowed abortion till fifteen weeks.”

The law will follow culture. And it will be obeyed. Save for extreme circumstances, which yeah, will happen.

BUT meanwhile? Yeah. It is allowed to be part of someone’s platform. And it is not why people are “voting left.” Sure, any number of young people have been scared by the left’s crazy ads. And a lot of the old, bitter left will turn out to vote for abortion if for nothing else, because they did it, so everyone should. And a number of civil libertarians will vote for, because they think people should have the option. (They’re not wrong, except for the fact that it’s a multi million dollar industry, and that it enables the abuse of women and the de-personalization of the individual. But that’s an argument for another time.)

Mostly the “abortion” thing is being used as a cover for fraud. “Look, people are voting left, because they love abortion so much.” It’s all. The main issue is not abortion, it’s fraud. Diagnosing it otherwise is stupid and counterproductive.

It’s like, I can tell you they’re going to use RFK’s candidacy to explain why Trump will lose in 24. I’ve already seen articles that RFK is pulling 30% of voters away from Trump. On right wing sites, at that. I don’t know what they imagine they’re saying. Sure, RFK resonates with the right about COVID and a hatred of the CIA. And? He also believes in open borders and socialism. And if you’re going to say his “style” is more appealing than Trump’s, it’s because you never heard him.

Yes, I can see him being appealing. mostly to your aunt Marge and her ilk. Old hippies, crazy left, Kennedy fans. About 0.5% of whom are on the right.

It is however a great excuse to reelect the zombie. (Yes, they want the zombie to quit, because that would be more plausible. except I doubt he will. You see, if he quits — if Dr. Jill lets him — he’ll be exposed to have all his own personal corruption exposed, and his family destroyed. The Bidens won’t do that.)

So, that’s something you can do, you can believe there’s fraud. You can believe it happens. You can scream about it.

What else can you do? Well, you can wait.

You see, I said this is a stupid idea, and it is.

Elections are a safety valve. Yes, the left has frauded for a long time. But there used to be fraud on the right too, before the twentieth century. And except certain places and times, the fraud was at the margins. You still had to appeal to the public to an extent. You still had to be careful and not totally stomp on things people wanted/didn’t want. You had to stay responsive.

This is why having people elect their government spread and became popular. Absolute kings suck absolutely. Even with the best of intentions. And most of them didn’t have the best of intentions.

Sure, in the early twentieth century, the left cheated their way into power to usher in “progress.” I stand by my belief that the only two things that government does well are to steal from their own people and kill them in batch lots. But national highway systems and electricity and such, did help the people. Probably. And would have taken longer without fraud getting “progressives” in.

But now? Now the fraud is out of control, and “elections” are as completely divorced from voting as in the old USSR (or the new Russia) or China, or…

You can see why the oligarchs love it. They can rule forever and ever, undisturbed.

This means they learned nothing from the fall of the USSR, or the dire straits China finds itself in. This means they’re very, very, very stupid.

What they’ve done is break the fire alarm, and now think they’re safe from fire.

Yeah, this means they’ll “win” elections, just like they “win” elections in states that are all vote by mail.

And in other times and places, it might secure power for them for …. sixty or seventy years.

The problem for them is this is not another time and another place. The problem for them is that tech is moving to the more distributed level, no matter how many happy-slappy executive orders the zombie signs.

The problem for them is that people are communicating in newer and more complex ways every day, so their screaming and propaganda, their blatant censorship, their command that the arts echo their message?

It’s all for nothing.

Things like “it’s the fraud” keep propagating. As well as knowledge that it’s not in fact overpopulation causing our problems. Or the knowledge that global warming is a crock.

Their crazy attempts at getting us locked up again are ridiculous, and have failed in amazingly obvious ways.

Their attempts at making us give up our guns just cause us to buy more guns.

Their attempts to start world war three have failed, mostly because no one else can do it, and they haven’t — yet — decided to nuke one of our own cities. (The danger they’ll do it is still there.)

They had a vision, once. No, they really did. It was hippie dippie and utopian, but they genuinely believed in it. You catch echoes of it in classical science fiction, yes, including early (mostly) Heinlein.

You see, if only humans didn’t “want” — if there was nothing to crave — if food, and the necessities, and even sex were all freely available, then there would be no greed and no striving, Humans would be perfectly happy. It would be utopia.

Most of it was based on Freudianism, and the Margaret Meade’s fraud, and propaganda from the Soviet Union. But the young really believed, and it was a positive vision. If only they destroyed the stodgy, restrictive society, everyone would be free and equal and HAPPY.

Turns out it was all bullshit, between pseudo-science and outright lying. Heck, the only thing that pushing sex as ubiquitous and fully available seems to do is make people not want it, though they might still be bitter about not getting it, since “everyone else is.” I mean, honestly, I suspect — impossible to know for sure, but the testosterone levels tell a tale — the young are having less sex than even my generation. And we were the ones reacting against our parents’/older siblings’ crazy coupling. I suspect for the thirties and unders, the biggest issue is loneliness. And the crazy war between men and women that the left loves so much is helping none of it.

So, now, they don’t have a vision to sell. Okay, they’re still trying to sell it, particularly in the “victimhood is sanctified” sense. But it’s a negative vision. It’s a “don’t you dare think/say/do that” vision. It leaks out in lists of things that people can and cannot write about or think. You live in danger of excommunication if you forget Lisenkoism is in this week. Or out.

There is no glittering vision to aim for.

And Trump — ah, why they hate him, likely — did people see a very humble “vision” to aim for. You know, almost no unemployment (yes, I know the numbers now. They’re wonky. I know a lot of skilled people desperately looking for work), thriving economy, cheap energy, world peace.

Sure, it’s not everyone gets sex and three meals and a state apartment. But it’s — for most of us — enough.

The left can’t match that. All they can is guilt, scold and censor.

And that doesn’t hold. No, listen to me, that doesn’t hold.

It has held, sort of, in other countries, but remember, even Venezuela sends us (and other countries) their malcontents.

There is nowhere for Americans to go.

More importantly, the people they keep frauding in start at incompetent, and rapidly head to bloody insane.

Their ideas can’t and won’t work. For one, they’re not a coherent whole, but a collection of screaming slogans. They’re already experiencing that whole sanctuary city thing not working as they thought it would.

And there’s a lot, a lot of other chickens already on the wing, coming home to roost.

Yeah, I know we’re locked in here with them. But listen, we are also getting ready for hard times. They, by and large, are not. And we have basic competence. The “left” to the extent it’s your aunt Marge and her friends, really don’t.

More importantly, when the wheels come off in America, there is no one to feed us and look after us, in our socialist “paradise.” There is no one we can invade and steal from, as the USSR did for decades. Come on. At our size? No other country could. More importantly, we’re not Chinese peasants used to being trodden upon.

Yeah, the right will sneer at “urban” people, and use all of the Freman myth to tell itself that people really want/vote for this. it’s still bullshit.

What’s more, the left KNOWS it’s bullshit. They’re flailing wildly and insanely more and more. And they’re actually scared for 24. Which they shouldn’t be, given their ability to fraud. But they are. You can see them sweat. They’re like the crazy person compulsively checking all their security systems.

And trying to stomp us into giving up our guns.

My guess is that their own fear will make them do something incredibly stupid right about next Spring. I have no idea what that will be, but I get a feeling of something as stark, stupid and suicidal as Hamas did on 10/7.

And all it will do is wake up people.

If they can avoid that, people will still wake up. Because the zombie enables the enemies of freedom — like Hamas — and causes them to do stupid things. And then your aunt Marge and her friends — and their college students — think victory is at hand and take the mask off.

This means some group — probably a lot more than one group — that the left relies on for their fraud machinery is going to take a look at the hideous face of what they’re supporting between now and the elections in 24. The ones in 26 at the latest.

The preferable end to this is that those suddenly red pilled expose everything, and the machinery of fraud is bloodlessly dismantled.

And maybe we’ll be lucky. Maybe we’ll get very very lucky.

Of course, they call it getting lucky because the chance runs against it.

So–

Keep your powder dry. Keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.

The map is about to get very arrowey and pointy indeed.

And what emerges on the other side is anyone’s guess. I think it’s running the way of freedom, but it doesn’t mean that there won’t be attempts at totalitarianism from the other side. After all, I was born and raised in a country that careened from anarchism (what commies called themselves before WWI) into national socialism. It’s not unheard of.

Except that national socialism, like its red sister, doesn’t really have a vision anymore. Not much beyond “Our country is wonnerful, our genes are a racial division, we are pure and stronk, do as we say.”

It might work for Europeans. But that’s not the way of America. And when in crisis, countries go back to their fundamentals. Our fundamentals not only aren’t but can’t be “blood and soil.” (Can’t be, because it makes no sense, logical or illogical. Hell, the only place it might work is in the West, if Mexican origin people claim it. And dear Lord, I hope not.)

So–

So, call off the circular firing squad. Have the courage to call fraud fraud. Trust the rest of the country to be incredibly silly, but not evil or self-harming. Because all the signs are still fraud. (And that Long Island thing makes me believe the people who think NYC went Trump in 2020 might be right.)

And stand by. Because one way or another, we will need to reinstall the fire alarm. Elections will need to be cleaned.

It’s going to hurt like a mother, because there’s a lot of people whose LIFE depends on fraud and theft.

But fraud and theft can’t win. Not “won’t be allowed to”. Can’t. Long run they destroy everything. And the world is used to America at least semi-working. They can’t live without us functioning.

And we can’t live without functioning, either.

Take a deep breath. The next decade or so will be like eating live frogs. But once that’s done, nothing as unpleasant will happen to us. (Right?)

And the future belongs to free men and women. Because we’re the only ones who can create it. Be not afraid.

For The Times They Are A’Changing a blast from the past from August 2016

Blame this on the head cold I’m almost over (truly) and the mild fever that accompanied it.  Blame it on the change of weather, that had me getting up in the middle of the night to close windows that had, sudden and inexplicably, become openings to the arctic.

Blame it on my dad giving me all the books of legends of the region that he could gather on short notice.  Yes, I also got books on the history of the City of Porto and surroundings, but when it comes to Fantasy it is easiest to dip into the legends.  And these legends are full of changing times and changing circumstances, of the tumultuous succession of Romans and Swabians, Moors and Christian crusaders, absolutist and parliamentary monarchists, republicans, French invaders and British liberators.

Most of the legends are just that, legends, though I suspect a lot of what the guys writing these books ignored is that that type of popular memory might be wrong in the particulars (So it wasn’t that particular Caliph, but something happened here, perhaps a hundred years before or since.  I know from my own experience it’s very easy to confuse stories your grandmother told you for things that happened in her life time and that you find, once you look into it, had to have happened in the time of her grandmother’s grandmother, and which she told me as had been told to her.  — Confusing how many grandmothers ago is particularly easy since her introduction was always “My grandmother told me that once upon a time, this street–“) but is often right in the details, particularly when various local legends chain on each other to form a coherent whole.  (A Moorish defeat in one place, leading to a Moorish route passing through the next village, leading to–)

Anyway, legends seem to cluster around times of great change, times in which lots of things were happening, times of turmoil and movement.  As did, I’ll admit, my grandmother’s stories.  Humans seem to have an innate predilection for stories in which stuff happens.  (I know.  It’s astounding, right?  It’s almost like there’s a difference between stories and sermons.)

My favorite — I’ve been crashing early, but having trouble sleeping, so chain-reading these little one to two page stories, until I physically can’t hold the book up — was the story of Wellington taking the city of Porto and eating the lunch originally cooked for Soult.  While Soult wasn’t waiting around to eat it, and had prepared to leave the city in the morning, it is easy to believe the servants of the house he was occupying went around preparing lunch, as they would have done, anyway.  And of course Wellington would have eaten it, and probably toasted his victory, as befits the gallant spirit of the age where being seen to do something with flare was even better than “just” doing it.

Then this morning, I woke up and caught up with Mad Genius Club, where Dave Freer has written a post about the changing state of our field. (Last Monday.) Changing Spots.

In it he notes many things I have myself realized, including that it’s d*mn hard to plan for the future in this time of turmoil we’re entering.

And it’s not just in publishing, of course.  If it were just in publishing it would be easy.  One could after all fall back on the rest of the “stable world.”

It’s not just in publishing.

It’s everywhere we look, and part of this is that we’re in the middle of one of those macro conceptual changes the human race goes through now and then.  You know, nomadic to agriculture, agriculture to cottage industry trade/cottage industry-trade to industrial/ industrial to mass production/mass production to personal-individual-small scale.

All of those are accompanied by equivalent turmoil: political, scientific (as the conceptual change spreads), territorial.

All of them.

So, things to remember:

-It is only beginning.  Someone on Facebook said we’re living through the period of history summarized under “causes leading to” before the map gets all arrowy and scary.  And they’re not wrong.  What I have a feeling though, is that we’re living through “Factors contributing to” the “causes leading to.”
Things are still working themselves out, and the economic fall out of what seemed like the relatively simple innovation of instant communication around the world and portability of data hasn’t fully worked itself through yet.  When will it work itself through?  When you see land in “states with no jobs” pick up on sales.  You’ll know we’re halfway through the transformation when pay scales start to balance between KS and NYC. (Not quite.  Very large cities will always have a pull of their own.  It’s the mid range cities that will balance and empty. But you know what I mean.)  You’ll now we’re almost done when telecommuting is the ASSUMPTION for any job that can be done this way.  I don’t expect it in my lifetime.

-The very beginning is enough for craziness and dislocation, war and rumors of war.  Trust me.  So, we’re living through that.

-The Future won’t look anything like those people who think history comes with an arrow think it will look.  It also won’t look like the dreams of those who wish to hurtle back intot he beginning of the 20th century.  (No, seriously.  They’re the romantics of the present day, wearing their retro chic opinions like people who built “ruins” on their estates.)  It’s an hysterical reaction of scared children in either case.

-It is entirely possible that the future won’t look like anything any of us CAN conceptualize.  Start working through the consequences of a truly decentralized, not-space-attached workforce.  Real estate? Dating? Family structure? Education?  If you really think it through it will make your head spin, particularly as you get into the consequences of the consequences.

So, what to do?  Try not to get too excited.  Stay flexible.  Be able and ready to jump.  Don’t try to define the present based on the past: it’s likely not to work too well.

In practical terms: take care of yourself.  Make connections. Teach your children well.  Don’t let yourself be gaslighted. Learn.  The more options you have the better.  And stay awake. Falling asleep is to fall behind and lose touch with what’s happening.

Most of all don’t give up.  There is a good chance the future will be better than the past (though some disgusting interludes do occur.) and if we don’t live to see it, other humans will.

May you thrive in interesting times.

It is important to judge people and events in their own time. First, because that’s the only way we really can judge them.

You can’t judge people on actions they didn’t know were wrong, or on things that were hidden from them, which only time has revealed. Or rather, you can, but it’s deranged. What you are holding people guilty of is not being psychic. Not being able to foretell the future. Well, none of us can. Not with any accuracy, and never about things we want to. (Yeah, sometimes I get something like glimpses, but seriously? Do you see me among the lottery winners? No? That’s because I can’t see the future in a significant way.) Go ahead and despise people for that failing, but be aware you’re being deranged.

Also, unlike the people on the left, most of us are aware we, ourselves, are not infallible, and our time is not the pinnacle of knowledge and morality. Things that seem right to us now — or at least not markedly wrong — can and will be reviled by future lovers of liberty.

Already, in my time, I have taken positions and done things that I’m sorry for. I mean, voting for McCain was — maybe — the least of the bad choices. Maybe. Do we know what he might have done in the presidency? We do know he wasn’t a good man. And would either he or Palin been able to withstand the treatment that Trump endured and endures? Because it would have been visited upon them. And I have my doubts. As for Romney… well, I thought he was the least evil choice. As things turned out, G-d might have been looking out for the United States of America when it let the Light Bringer (oh, Lucifer, son of the morning…. What? Tell me you didn’t think of that! Okay, maybe not. Not everyone thinks in allusions and poetry.) cheat his way into a second term.

George W. Bush? I am divided. I mean, coming out of the presidency and announcing he is practically Clinton’s brother clarified much. But then again, the alternative was Al Gore. Or, heaven forfend, Jean le Kerry. Shrug. There might have been no good choice there. But the truth is I didn’t vote for what I thought I was voting. Not even the second time. And the results of his subtle actions have us more in the thrall of the left than we’d otherwise have been.

I have to judge in that time.

Why this? I’ve come to doubt the Cold War was needed. I’ve come to doubt the Soviet Union was ever the threat we believed. It’s almost sure it would have been unable to retaliate, had it come to nukes. It’s almost sure it would have been destroyed and not able to fire back.

Which makes the entire corrupt business of letting the Soviet Union swallow more than half the world and infiltrate the rest to avoid a nuclear exchange even more corrupt and criminal than it sounds. Sure, I’m speaking very glibly of maybe nuking to dust all of the Soviet Union’s major cities — 3? — which would mean the death of a couple three million people or so.

On the other hand, think of the misery around the globe. South America and Africa alone bled people and wealth thanks to the Soviet Union. And the Soviet Union corrupted China, whose death count was much higher than…. well, anyone. And think of the horrors endured by Cuba and North Korea to this day. Think of what is happening in Venezuela. Think of the corruption and destruction caused by international Communism.

On the other hand–

The Soviet Union was good at one thing, and that was deception and lying. And whether driving long tubes around the country in trucks, or making up wholly fabricated numbers, it gave the impression to our, perhaps overly gullible, establishment that there was a credible threat of mutual annihilation.

This in turn means we let the Soviet Union get away with — literal — mass murder, destruction of wealth, imperialism, because we were convinced — partly because of Soviet propaganda and our corrupt science establishment — that any exchange would not only kill its targets, but cause nuclear winter and destroy the planet. (No, there is no reason to believe this. Seems to be another fable, of the kind Paul Ehrlich loves.)

Did anyone know? I’m sure there might have been a few people who knew. Probably a very few. And even they might not have been aware of the full scale of deception, of how much we were cowing to a non-existent threat.

Most people though, even when corrupt, even when lying about something, were corrupt in something minor that they thought insignificant, or even a white lie for good. Say, exaggerating the bad effects of a nuclear exchange. Some scientists might have known it was bullshit, but hey they were prevent bombs from flying and killing innocents. That’s to the good, right? I mean, can you blame them? (Yes, yes, I can. there is a reason Jordan Peterson says “Tell the truth, or at least don’t lie.” Your piece of the lie might seem inconsequential, but added to other lies, it could destroy the world.)

Good people; people with a decent brain, and unconventional thinkers at that, like Robert A. Heinlein, did not see the Soviet lies. (Not even when he realized how much smaller Soviet population was. Even holding our spycraft in utter contempt, as he did.) That means a large number of people earnestly believed the lies. And given the lies, they were acting in the most ethical manner possible.

In fact, given the effect of the lies in the world, onto our day, most people believed the lies and were, at least to an extent, justified in believing the lies. The “War on Terror” and “Winning Hearts And Minds” or as it’s known in the real world, fighting with both feet tied together and your right hand strapped behind your back might have been stupid — was stupid — and carried on in a way that mostly enriched the various special interests that feed off big government.

On the other hand, it was the result of “lessons learned” and never questioned from the Cold War. That those lessons were wrong, and the threat largely one we enabled wasn’t obvious TO ME — and I’m, as you know, a very unconventional thinker — until I saw Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and started having reason to doubt they have any of their nuclear arsenal ready to fly. Most people here and elsewhere still view them as a credible nuclear threat (Pfui, I say onto you. Putin would have used a nuke by now, if he could. To stop dissent at home if nothing else.)

So, can you hold people during the Cold War responsible for not knowing? No.

You — to quote Mark Alger — go to war with the underwear you got on. Or if you prefer, you do what you can based on what you know then.

However, when that knowledge changes, when a complete outsider by accident and sideways becomes president and reveals that things like “War in the Middle East” are not inevitable, if we just don’t act according to things we now know are erroneous. If we act like everything we know is wrong (more or less) and consider it anew, it behooves us not to assume he’s crazy. It behooves us to consider the situation and change what we think. Because having been lied to is not a pact to continue acting like complete idiots forever.

In the same way, take the Covidiocy. No amnesty! Why no amnesty? Well, because with a very few exceptions, most of the people — particularly the doctors at the top — leading the charge to destroy your liberties knew very well what they were doing, and how exaggerated the threat was.

In fact, many of them, and politicians in the pay of China, might have been aware the “videos” leaking from China were fiction to rival anything that Pallywood dishes out.

But even assuming none of that was true, any of them — any of them at any time — could have looked at the Diamond Princess numbers and seen how the threat was not that big. Bad flu numbers, at most. Does this indict Donald Trump? I don’t know. As you guys know, I’ve been very angry at him since the two week lockdown. Should he have looked at the numbers? Sure. On the other hand, as a business man, he’s used to trusting engineers and other experts. I don’t think it occurred to him someone would perpetrate a lie of that magnitude. Time and again he showed that his big blind spot was his actual love of nation, and his inability to realize how many people are willing to sell this country out with nary a thought. In other words, it’s his Paladin qualities that betrayed him, not something I expected.

Should he still have checked? Aye. But note he’s not the one who locked you down indefinitely, and made you wear masks, and closed your churches. Hold the two weeks against him as much as you want to, but after that? Oh, hell no.

That was his refusal to trample regional rights. So, again, his Paladin qualities, curse them.

Note, still not happy with him, but he might have been the best we could get. He might still be, at that. I’ll hang loose and act as possible.

Now is it possible that some of the things we think we know now are wrong? Absolutely. In fact, I’d guarantee it.

Forgive yourself too, looking back. All you can do is all you can do. All you can know is all you can know.

Do your best with what you know at the time.

We are told that in the end of time, the truth of every heart will be laid bare. I’m not going to lie and say I’m looking forward to mine being laid bare. I know all of us have things we’d rather not admit. But– But at the same time, perhaps it needs to happen to set reality aright. And don’t we all wish we could know.

But the end of time is a long way off, or perhaps metaphorical. Until then, each of us knows what each of us knows. And we can’t be responsible for knowing more than we can find out.

Nor can we hold people who believed the lies of their times responsible for not being future-seers.

Most of the liars and the duped of the 20th century are dead.

What we can do is face what the lies were, and not compound them.

You’ll forgive me if I say this, but all of you who were born and raised in America are the children of the good times.

This is not a disparagement. As I have said before, there is a lot of nonsense — for that matter a lot of what appears to me to be a lot of imbibed third hand ROMAN nonsense — about the whole “good times make weak men.” (They don’t. Not if the children are properly raised. The defect is in the good times the parents pursuing things other than properly raising their children, not the good times themselves. And bad times have other pathologies that have nothing to with making people strong.) It’s an observation.

Most of us in most of the world, now and throughout history, were “born owing money.” Life was hard, and we knew our parents had made significant sacrifices for us. So we felt we had to justify our existence. The level of justifying varied. But justifying happened. Some of us, at the beginning of our sixth decade, will catch ourselves, late at night, cataloguing everything we did that day, to justify being alive.

Most of us, in most of the world, now and throughout history, knew that surviving childhood left you injured, often maimed. Because there was a never end of childhood diseases, and that scar that you have from when you tore your leg open. It was worse (still is in the third world) before the twentieth century, where even in your twenties, you might not have full mobility of balance, because of the foot the cow trod on, when you were minding the cow at four or five.

These are not badges of honor. They’re ways people arrived at adulthood maimed and broken, and knew they would never reach their full potential already, even when at the height of their strength and mental power.

Children of the good times are different. They were born because they were wanted. They might be neglected in childhood, which brings on its own issues, and more on that later, but they don’t know what it is to go hungry, or not to be sure where the next meal is going to come from.

They might be sick, now and then. Ear infections, maybe bad colds. But very few children of the good times were ever in doubt they’d survive, or had to submit to dubious medical treatment in hope of surviving.

Physically they are stronger, taller, clean-limbed, bright eyed.

The problem is psychological. And to an extent it’s not even a problem.

Growing up unaware that you are immensely fortunate because everyone around you is similarly fortunate is not a problem. Wanting the best for yourself and your children is not a problem. Reaching and working for the best is not the problem.

The problem is not being aware that there are limits. That the world is broken at a very fundamental level. That the very realm of physical existence imposes its own limits, its own deficiencies. That you might be the best you could be, but the human genetics, too, have limits. As does the span of our life. The wisdom of our heart. The reach of our minds.

Now, this might be complicated in our days because for three generations now, the children of previous good times (no, trust me, historically speaking, not knowing a famine or a war in our land is good times) plunged into the pursuit of the perfect life, and didn’t pay much attention to their children. Or at least not the attention children of the good times need to understand the limits of life.

I don’t know. I know that in our post-religious (yes, a lot of us are religious, but society at large isn’t) post civics-religion (no longer taught, even in America, that idea you owe a duty to the family and country that spawned you) world most people spend their lives crying for a perfection that can’t exist, and feeling cheated they don’t get it.

Yes, some of us know we need to “work on ourselves” and we do. But the reason for that is not that we expect to be perfect but that we owe a duty to those around us not to live our lives locked in a permanent scream of “But I don’t want it” or to fall into depressions we don’t even understand. Also, we are all too aware we can’t do our work while being crazy.

But we don’t have religion or philosophy to tell us neither us nor others will be perfect, nor that there is a limit to “fairness.”

Look, I was a child of good times enough that in my teen years, in a very traditional society, I rebelled against the idea that, as a woman, my aspiration should be to have children, and the females among them would aspire to have children. It seemed silly.

Throughout most of the human race’s tenure on Earth having children and bringing them safely to adulthood and their own children was aspirational. Something to dream of and strive for. But even I, to an extent, was a child of the good times. I wanted perfection, and emotional satisfaction.

Which is part of it. When you are a child of the good times, physically, you see your psychological injuries much larger. And you think yourself more unfortunate than most, when in fact you are a pampered princeling in relation to most of humanity living and ead.

Now, everyone who can sniff the air, and yes, myself, knows that there’s turmoil ahead.

I’m perhaps among the very few who thinks it will be brief, and the good times will continue

And with them, the children of the good times.

As such, I must tell you that part of the “raise your children well” is both paying attention to them, so you know how their minds tick and making them aware how very fortunate they are.

On top of this you must layer a sense of duty; a sense of living for something. I can’t tell you what. I’m not you. I don’t know your kids.

I know for my kids, I tried to imbue along with our religion, the idea they owed a duty to their country; that they, inheritors of liberty, should protect it for future generations. And I tried to pass along a duty to “labor truly in the position appointed to them.” (Or, us being American, the one they aspire to reaching. And labor for that too.)

Look, it’s not just for the children. Raise yourself, too, no matter what age you are. Raise yourself to understanding you’ll never be perfect. In fact you might be so broken that achieving a little thing every day is a feat.

But you must try. You must try to work on yourself so you’re not a burden to others around you; you must try to “labor truly” either at your job, or that other thing you do, so you’re a net positive on the world; and you must understand things will never be perfect.

Things were never perfect. They never will be.

Compared to most of the world and history, you already live in paradise. That doesn’t mean you can be “like onto gods.” But that you have it very, very good. And you should strive to enjoy it, work on it, and pass it on to others as good as you found it or better.

That’s all.

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 CEDAR SANDERSON: The Groundskeeper: My Ghoul

Chloe Brandt got more than she bargained for when she took on the groundskeeper and caretaker position at the old cemetery of Belleview. Chloe is still learning just what her job duties at the big cemetery are, and how far they will take her. Just what mysteries are her responsibility? When the ghoul asks for help, she’s willing to try…

A novella

FROM MARY CATELLI: Treachery And Spells

Two novellas of magic and adventure. . . Caught between pirates who would force him to use wizardry in their aid, and a king who would force him to spy, Alik will need every scrap of wits and wizardry to forge his own path. A curse of ill luck leaves Perriel and Gareth trapped in an endless winter, with only the faintest hope of breaking free.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Other Side of Midnight

Life has been a nightmare for Mitya ever since he was arrested on trumped-up charges and exiled to Siberia. But this labor camp in the far north of Magadan Oblast hides a secret far more terrible than the merely human evils of the Great Terror. For the universe we know is not the only one, and there are places where it interpenetrates with universes where the laws of nature as we know them do not operate, where humanity has no place. Worlds inhabited by beings ancient and terrible, to whom humanity are slaves, playthings, food.

BY EDMOND HAMILTON, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: The Vampire Master: The classic weird pulp horror novel

A thrilling novel of corpses that would not stay dead, and a gruesome horror in the hills of New York.

• This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction giving genre and historical context to the novel.

BY THEODORE ROSCOE, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: A Grave Must Be Deep! (Annotated): A Weird Pulp Mystery

Voodoo Magic was not the only sinister guard over that blood-drenched Haitian inheritance. There was Uncle Eli’s bizarre will, the half a dozen other potential heirs, who inconveniently kept dropping dead, and the local police, who are all to suspicious of a pretty American lady, and her supposed “artist” of a fiancé. Then the locals began an uprising, with rumors that they were lead by a zombie!

• This iktaPOP Media edition includes an introduction giving the novel genre and historical context.

EDITED BY NICK STEVERSON AND MARISA WOLF WITH STORIES BY STEVE DIAMOND, D.J. BUTLER AND KACEY EZELL: Thirteen Stories of Horror: Volume 1

Thirteen tales of Horror, perfect for a dark and stormy Friday the 13th…or a sunny Tuesday afternoon.

From science fiction to classic European horror, interwoven with layers of creep factor, gore, and mystery that will keep you turning the page…and looking over your shoulder.

So, light the candles, stir the cauldron, and check your ammo count, because things are about to get dark!

FROM THADDEUS BLACKHEART: Succubi Harem

Mark Sheppard knew he was different, but they kept him in the dark about how different he was until he was old enough. Then he learned what he was. He is an Incubus. Now it is time to fulfill his duties as an Incubus. Those duties include building a harem of Succubi.

Unfortunately, the mythological stories omitted one crucial part. Succubus are several times stronger than humans, and they go into a bonding hunt at the first scent of an Incubus. They have only one thing on their minds, and sex is the key part of the bonding.

After the bonding, they become “almost normal,” assuming that normal means a sex-crazed nymphomaniac.

Succubi outnumber Incubuses by ten to one, and they must be bonded to an Incubuses to survive past age 25.

He finds out that Incubi and Succubi are not the only paranormals out there and that Incubuses also attract other female paranormals.

This story is quite humorous, and while it is 18+ (it is not fade to black), it concentrates on the story and character development and does not stretch out the sex descriptions to an excessive number of pages.

You will find Elf attributes extremely amusing, ;)…

FROM BLAKE SMITH: In Pursuit of Justice: A Novel of The Garia Cycle

Garia and the East Morlans have been on increasingly rocky terms for years, and when Téo and Zara ran away together, they touched off the powder keg of war between their kingdoms. Now they have to fight for their lives while learning to live in a foreign land.

In the Morlans, Hanri and Alia are facing their own sets of problems. He must control and divert the single-minded vengeance of his father King Reynard, and she must sort the gold of information from the dross of gossip in a palace swarming with rumors. It could mean the difference between life and death for all of them.

FROM CELIA HAYES: My Dear Cousin: A Novel In Letters

When Peggy Becker married Englishman Tommy Morehouse in San Antonio in the spring of 1938, her cousin and best friend Venetia “Vennie” Stoneman was her bridesmaid. After the wedding, Peg and Tommy traveled across the Pacific to Malaya, where Tommy managed his family’s rubber plantation. There they expected to raise a family and live a comfortable and rewarding life among the British expatriates in the tropics, while Vennie returned to Galveston to continue training as a nurse.
The start of the Second World War changed those comfortable, settled lives: Tommy Morehouse became a prisoner of war, Peg barely escaped the fall of Singapore with her small son, and Vennie Stoneman was a nurse in the US Army Nurse Corps, tending to battlefield casualties in North Africa, Italy, and France. In Australia, Peg waits out the war, wondering if her husband will survive brutal captivity by the Japanese, and Vennie risks her own life as an air evacuation nurse. Throughout all, the two women write to each other, of their lives, loves, of Vennie’s patients and comrades, and Peg’s children and the woes of running a wartime household among rationing and shortages of shoes for her children.

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: EXCELLENT.

There is this platonic ideal of our lives, inside our heads. Looking back, I know what I SHOULD have been doing at any given time. It’s rarely what I was actually even close to doing. And it’s not that I didn’t want to do it as such. It’s…. other things.

Yeah, I have this fantasy that if I could only send my mind/knowledge back in time, to say when I was 18, and known how things would hit, particularly Indie publishing, I’d be so much better positioned. Or blogs. Or…. you know?

But it’s not that way, is it?

I mean, if I could send my mind back in time, and I weren’t submitting stories, because I needed to sell, because baby needed shoes, what would have happened? I probably would have let the world and the daily necessities overwhelm me, and nothing would get written, and 2011 would come around, and nothing in the drawer ready to publish, plus a whole lot of not-learning-to-do-it. Unless I’d managed to send “craft” back with my mind, too.

The truth is I know perfectly well what I’m supposed to be doing right now, to fulfill my prime directive: write a lot of books, get more readers, get worlds out of head, make money for our retirement, money to help the boys, etc.

I should be writing. 9 to 5. Like a real job. And Saturday I’m supposed to do publishing/recovering, etc.

Unfortunately life happens and I’m not an automaton.

This year has been a lesson in “life happens” and the machinery of — mostly — grief. Though stress too. Look, it turns out grief can make you ill, and repeated hits can make you depressed…. and….

And even when nothing big and metaphysical is going on, there is other stuff, like–

Last night, we went to bed, and I realized my PILLOW was wet. No, really. It didn’t really smell, and was wet with clear liquid and… Yeah, Val cat is having kidney failure. She doesn’t concentrate her urine really well. BUT she knows if she pees on my stuff enough, then I will leave, and she’ll have Dan all to herself. Senility and kidney disease, basically.

Well, we had sheets and pillow cases, but the pee had gone all over (though most of it stayed IN the pillow, yay me) and we had to clean the mattress and dry it, and it was 3 am by the time we were in bed, upset and cranky and having trouble sleeping.

So today…. is as you expect.

I know what I’m supposed to be doing. Plus I need to clean the back porch so I can paint it in the last above-freezing days we have. What am I doing? Oh, yeah. Sitting here, trying to think.

I swear it’s been like this every day for three years. Only, other reasons. The sort of thing you look back and can’t even remember, either because so many of them, or so seemingly minor.

Perhaps this is the way G-d makes sure each of us doesn’t take over the world (And leaves it strictly alone.)

It’s more really, that we are not pure minds, interacting in a world of thought and archetypes. Plato’s cave is cold, it smells, and there’s something dripping down the back of my neck, and a spider just nested in my hair, so who is paying attention to those shadows on the wall? Much less trying to direct them?

Here’s the thing though: You get up, you get dressed (my goal is to do this before 1 pm, today) and you try. You TRY.

Maybe today you’re so sleepy/sick/depressed that all you manage is to put up one of those covers you rendered, that are waiting to go up. Or maybe all you do is typeset the redarn Christmas collection. Or maybe– 500 words, which might get ditched tomorrow. Come on, give me 500 words. In something.

YOU TRY. You do just this one little thing.

And the same way that a year — or ten — can go up the spout in a flurry of “today the cat peed on my bed; today I have a blinding headache; now I need to fix the vacuum; today I painted the blinds” the same way the little things you did “Hey, I wrote a short-short; hey, I did a new lettering on my cover; hey, I typeset this thing; hey, I researched fishing in the middle ages” eventually can lead to something huge that you never saw coming. Like starting a blog you barely kept up for publicity, eventually turning into a whole community. Like the book you wrote in a month, because no one was buying anything, and you had to do something for your own sanity, eventually 13 years later winning the Prometheus, like your dreams of being a writer actually coming true, despite you being ADHD AF and incapable of coordinated action to save your life, let alone to have a career.

Here’s the thing, looking back, all that flailing around and uncoordinated movement did get me somewhere. Maybe not optimally and heaven knows I never had a storied career, but for someone with no contacts to get published at all in trad was rare. To get published and have a 20 year career was almost impossible by the time I broke in. Particularly if you’re ESL and with no contacts and with weird politics.

BUT it happened. Because when I could, I did a little thing. And then another little thing.

The trick is not stop.

No matter how broken, how beset, how incredibly tired, how depressed: Do a little thing, when you can. When the rain lets up, go and do a tiny thing. Most of the day might be a waste. But do a tiny thing. And then another tiny thing. And then another tiny thing.

You’re doing great. Just keep putting a foot in front of the other. And don’t kick the cat. Even if she deserves it. Just. One foot. Then the other. Don’t stop. Aim for your objective, and keep walking.

You’ll get there. We’ll get there. It seems like we’re standing still, but we’re not.

We’re only human. But that’s enough.

Keep walking.

The most pernicious doctrine of modernity, which informs Marxism via having been in the air — thanks, Rosseau — when Marx, the synthesizing plagiarist concocted his abortion of a theory, is the idea that all evil must have causes.

The causes can’t be “because this person is broken and enjoys tormenting others.” No, because, again, thanks Rosseau, all babies are born utterly pure and wonderful, and it is only their upbringing and what we’ll call “civilization” that corrupts them and makes them evil, when someone acts in a way that destroys others or everything, it must be the fault of something done to them.

Now, if we’re going to discuss nature or nurture, we’re going to be here all day. I suspect the answer is “yes.” Like most people of my generation, I used to think that it was all mostly nurture. There have been case studies of people brought by adoptive parents where, barring mental impairment, all children mirror the parents high-IQ. Beyond statistical chance. (From something I heard from a psychologist long ago, though I think those cases are highly publicized and…. rare. So it might be luck of the draw. But never mind. We never hear of the rest.) And after all, we all know families that have certain characteristics, that would not seem to be — possibly — genetic.

Then I became a mother. Younger son is, barring small bits, like having my husband’s much more acceptable nose, my father come again. Seriously, it is to the point that if Dad weren’t still alive, or hadn’t been alive at the kid’s birth, I would fully believe he was dad’s reincarnation. It’s not just that their minds run the same way or their gestures and way of being in the world. It’s not even that they have the exact same taste in women (no, really) but that they do things that no one should do unless they’d learned it, in the precisely same way. What convinced my dad was watching my son, then three, eat an egg over easy. Both he and dad eat the white in a spiral towards the yolk, which they eat last. Son had, at that time, not seen dad since before he was eating. We can come up with some truly bizarre subconscious learning explanation, but I don’t think I’d seen dad eat an egg in years, so I even didn’t remember, much less the kid having seen it. (Like many his generation, dad fell victim to the demonization of eggs. Now in the past, fortunately, since it’s favorite food. As it’s son’s.)

Raising that kid was an education in “What is genetic.” Does he cope with the innate differently? To some extent. He’s certainly picked a different path in work, for which I’m grateful, since it seems less stressful, but then what he’s doing is something that is not viable as a career in Portugal, not unless you’re born to it. But that the base on which nurture writes is identical, and that nurture — in a different country, with a different language, with parents that were completely different than my grandparents — had so little effect blew my preconceived notions out of the water with a high depth charge. (Yes, I call him my male clone. Well, dad and I are very similar, but compared to those two I stick out like a sore thumb. Perhaps for being female. They are more like each other than either is like me.)

Anyway, I have to believe younger son is an outlier. Mostly I have to believe it, because I’ve seen people rewrite themselves from the ground up. (As much will power as that takes.) But I also have to believe it because otherwise we’re all just pre-programmed units running through the world, doing our pre-programmed stuff. Like the theory of Predestination, that’s an evil thing to think. Even if it were true, it is an evil thing. Because it robs humanity of meaning. (My apologies to those who believe predestination religiously. It is still an evil belief in a society.)

At any rate, we have proof that nurture does change us, in the movement of humanity through history. We know for a fact that people learn, and people change. That humans are a self-domesticating animal, that learned to live in close quarters with those not of their blood without instant violence.

The error of attributing too much to nature is that it causes us to fall into despair and despondence, and at society level it causes judging people not as individuals, but as units of their family. It establishes a society of castes and punishing the children for the sin of the fathers. It is the doctrine of the Eugenicists. If it were true, killing vast swathes of the population would be the path to progress. Which is why the science fiction books of the 20s are full of nattering about “racial hygiene.

The problem — besides the fact that you have to choose whom you’ll kill based on your inherent biases and what you place value on (more on that later) — is that you kill millions or billions of people. Or at least prevent them from reproducing, which seems the path the WEF would like to take. For many many reasons this is morally unacceptable.

It is also, ultimately, intellectually rock bottom stupid. Look, we don’t know enough about the human genes and what they convey to weed out people with undesirable characteristics. And if we did, we wouldn’t know what characteristics the future will require. And if we did, we would become bananas. No, literally, we would become like bananas.

Here’s the thing: We do not know nearly enough about the human genome. And the truth is we might never, because it’s like studying a novel while it’s being rewritten.

Human genes are constantly recombining and changing and mutating. We do know that. Because that’s the point of gendered reproduction. It’s not one clone reproducing himself forever, like say bananas, but a recombination of characteristics, which then recombine again the next generation.

Whether you believe we got here through evolution or not, we know evolutionary selective pressures work. We know, because we apply them artificially. Before we even became agriculturalists, by simply selecting and propagating the seeds of the plants our gatherers found most useful, we had changed most plants we ate beyond recognition. And we have evidence of species changing all out of recognition as their environment changed for long enough. (Whales. No, seriously, whales.)

So yeah, the mutations and other recombinations get selected for or not, but where’s the thing: every generation there is myriad little changes (unless you’re number two son.) Most of them are neutral. Not good, not bad. Good and bad in relation to survival. They have bloody nothing to do with our own judgements, that’s for sure.

However, an illiterate mathematical genius in the middle ages might be better at making change and calculating his own household usage of various things, but he’s not going to have the impact he’d have in the world today.

And we don’t know what will be needed in the future. Nor what “undesirable” characteristics come with it. We do know geniuses are prickly and tough to get along with — for the most part — but most people don’t know that 99% of them are also not particularly successful at working or making a mark in their chosen field. (Depending on the field.) So if we weed out for lack of agreeableness and inability to make a living, we’ll be taking out that genius in 100 that would make a difference.

Since sometimes a genius can win a war, or feed the world (no, seriously, look it up) the weeding out of such a genius is stupid and will kill millions, no matter how much he might be so annoying we want to drown him in his coffee cup. (What? I am the dumb one in the family, guys. There have been days.)

To make things worse, most of our eugenicists, like the ones of the 20th century are hung up on completely irrelevant characteristics, like the color of skin/hair/eyes. While you can make sweeping generalizations about vast portions of the world based on IQ tests, or how well those regions do, that’s poppycock, not science. IQ tests are relatively useful in a more or less homogeneous culture (even one like ours) and even then not the way most people think. (There’s a sweet spot for success. Up or down from that is bad, bad, bad.) But once you apply it to other cultures where nutrition, early learning, etc. are different, the result will be utter garbage. And yes, nutrition makes a huge difference. One of the ways in which younger son is different from dad is an additional 3 inches, bringing him to 6’4″ a height he doesn’t have any ancestors having on either side of the family. But you know, childhood nutrition, and not being victim to constant infections before the age of six make a difference.

What we do know is that there is no linkage between how dark or light your skin is and your mental prowess, ability to plan, or basic human decency. The moron (real one, though probably not genetic, since her kids are normal) in my elementary school class was blond and blue eyed.

Yes, all cultures make broad assumptions about physical characteristics associated with “smart.” The one that amuses me most, coming from a family of mathematicians and scholars who are built like the hulk, is that all geniuses are tiny and skinny. Every year at the beginning of school, my teachers would ask me how many years I’d been held back, and proceeded to treat me like a dunce until the first test. After which they were very confused.

Is there a relationship? I don’t know. It would seem to be small and slim would select for high functioning intellect, because… well, you have to survive. And I confess that through their schooling career, my kids looked like four of their high-achieving friends glued together. But is the relationship unbreakable? Uh. Obviously not. (And my school friend who coined the “For the love of heaven, just copy my answers. Don’t think. When you think you ruin everything.” Was tiny and very smart looking. Note LOOKING.)

At any rate the human race is not as genetically diverse as you think. I don’t remember right now if we’re more or less inbred than house cats (why, yes, reading someone with ADHD is like micro-dosing wikipedia. Deal.) but we are inbred enough not to have crazy genetic variety. And genetic variety is important because some people will have a natural immunity or ability to survive a pathogen or a cataclism. We take those people away and we become bananas: a species so inbred it can be completely wiped out by any shock.

Which would seem to be the opposite of eugenicist aims.

But I’ve spent too much time on nature — I need coffee — perhaps because antisemitism is rearing its ugly head and giving me 1930s vibes all over again.

The major danger of our age is nurture. If you believe everything is nature and MORE IMPORTANTLY that you can trace defects in character or breaks with civilization to this or that specific action, you’ll distort society beyond belief. Which is what we’ve been doing.

I confess to having believed it at one time. I think most of us did. It was drunk with mother’s milk. To an extent, the Puritans were already trying that, though their belief was that we were broken by trifling too much with the world and being too easy on ourselves. After that came Rosseau and his belief that people were born perfect, and if we just let them be they’d grow to be noble savages. (A creature, that, like the successful communist society has never appeared in the real world.)

This influenced a lot of the way the West developed. And frankly, since their (deranged) revival in the sixties, the Rosseaunians are now the dominant intellectual/political/moral force in the world and what they are imposing on the rest of us is destroying civilization and can destroy humanity. (The fact that they are also eugenicists, often the other way than they claim to be just makes them extra poisonous.)

Right now, partly through being “anti-capitalist” the left believes that our society — capitalism, the demand for civilized behavior, etc — is responsible for everything an individual does wrong.

And therefore “It’s a fair cop, but society is to blame.”

And therefore, no one should be punished for crimes they couldn’t help committing. Hence, the lawlessness in our big cities, but that’s not all.

This belief also feeds our welfare programs, because, you know, if people steal and rob, it’s because they’re poor. If we stop them being poor, there shall be no lawlessness. This is btw impossible to falsify. If they’re not as rich as the richest, this might be what causes them to commit crimes. (Look, seriously, no. It has no correlation. And where it has it it’s the other way. Those who are by nature lawless tend to have other problems that get in the way of staying relatively prosperous. I’m not going to say our legal system treats the poor well. At this point our legal system needs a kick upside its behind, as it doesn’t treat anyone well, but simply that to the extent there’s a covalence, it goes the other way more often than not.)

And this applies internationally. All that foreign aid is 80% “If we give them money, they’ll be as wealthy as we are” they won’t be violent. Letting the “refugees” come in by the bucket load, is ultimately “If they come in here, we’ll look after them, and they won’t be criminals.”

Add to this a belief that all the people who are crazy and can’t function are so because they have been mistreated by “capitalism” and you have all the homeless everywhere, who can’t be punished for anything, because somehow nothing is their fault.

The amazing thing is not that we are breaking down as a civilization, running as we do on a belief that not only hasn’t been proven, but which has been disproved over and over and over again.

What’s amazing is that we still function at all.

And yet, the chasm between the assumption that “People do bad things because bad things were done to them” and reality is a dangerous one.

Take the matter of what the Gazans did in Israel in 10/7. Those horrific actions, to the west, must only mean that these poor people are so horribly oppressed.

In fact, they wouldn’t be completely wrong. These poor people are horribly oppressed by their violent, hateful culture which has institutionalized envy and entitlement to a level even the Marxists can’t conceptualize. Which is why none of their Arab (or Persian) brethren has offered them asylum and instead will do everything to keep them out of their own countries.

Because their culture is evil and broken, and like the mind of a psychopath, urges them to take “revenge” for wrongs that were never committed. In the end what they are taking revenge for is other people’s ability to live sane and productive lives. They are consumed with envy at this and hate everyone who is more productive or happier than them. Which, btw, is not only the Israelis, but all of us. Heck, it’s most of the Arab countries, and most of the East, and probably vast portions of Africa.

They are indeed a vast open air prison, but not through lack of opportunity, or Israeli “oppression.” If you want to weep read up on the aid that has been poured into that hell hole. It could have been used for all sorts of things, including starting industry, educating children to do something, anything other than monomaniacally hate everyone not of them.

However, regardless of money pouring in, regardless of what they’re given, themselves — their unjust wardens over themselves — keep the population focused only on envy and hatred, and have children’s programs glorifying suicide bombing. Which is why all the money goes to weapons and terror tunnels.

I don’t know how that can be solved, short of taking away every child under three and distributing them to sane, civilized families the world over. And thus ending the problem in a generation.

But I know it can’t be solved by giving in and giving them more money, and stopping the retribution for their horrific actions. Because what we have taught that culture is that the more horrific their actions, the more the west will give them and treat them as victims.

And that is destroying them further, and making them a gun pointed at the world’s head.

Envy is a sin for reason. Whether or not you believe in punishment after death, envy destroys people and their ability to live now. Both those who envy and those they envy.

(This is by the way why the deranged leftist fight against inequality is deranged. There is no way of making a society perfectly equal, short of killing everyone. The root of the problem is envy, not inequality.)

I see the Bidenmites, that cursed tribe, have used their sock puppet to call for cease fire. This is ridiculous. No cease fire without total surrender. And the punishment at that needs to be hard enough their grandchildren know about it.

A total ceasing of Western support and cutting off their sources of aid from their terror sponsors would do it. Starvation and lack of modern conveniences has a way of concentrating the mind and making a culture change. And change fast. Oh, not to sweetness and light, maybe, but definitely towards “Will not attack, because that hurts.”

The burned hand teaches best. No, it doesn’t make those who burned their hand go and stick it in the fire because they’re mad. Or if it does, well, maybe the eugenicists have a point there. Such a short circuit in the brain would definitely make survival impossible, and perhaps should be allowed to perish. (Yes, I know that’s not what it means.)

The problem is convincing the Rosseaunians that this is needed.

Their wrong model of reality will kill us all, otherwise.