As the armies range on the side of Trump or the side of DeSantis; as heated words flow; as each side is incredulous the other can be in earnest — other than finding myself vaguely amused at American Greatness and their attempt at running equal and countering editorials for one or the other — all I can do is shake my head and think that the game isn’t worth the candle.

Look, I have a mild preference for Trump, simply because I’ve seen how he governed. And because DeSantis is a career politician. Yes, you can be shocked at that, but not if you understand what I view as the only function a President not sold to China can perform in the present place and time to be a lance to the heart of the status quo.

You shouldn’t be shocked at this. I know I try to be a voice for calm, and perhaps more than any of you I am aware of the price one pays for civil disorder. But I also know better than any of you what international socialists can do to a country, and there is a very angry part of me that wants to burn it all down.

That’s not what I am for though, when I say I want a lance to the heart of the status quo. A president as such a lance has the enormous advantage of exposing the rot and the corruption, of removing masks and doing it without overt violence. It gives people a chance to wake up and maybe stir us off the rocks. I think we were headed towards that and a less apocalyptic convulsion in 2020 when the left played their most evil game yet.

And before you tell me that Trump isn’t who he was, or that his 2016 campaign was much better than today’s, let me PSHAW loudly. LOUDLY. Have you forgotten his alleged twitter tweeting out a Nazi symbol on the fourth. Have you forgotten the message tweeted out saying that he loved Mexican food, and had got some from the restaurant on Trump tower, showing a badly Photoshop photograph of his eating a taco salad. There is no such restaurant and the Photoshop was so bad he had three hands.

Those were almost certainly the result of his campaign being infiltrated in the same way that his later administration was infiltrated. And those who say “Why can’t he hire good people?” Well, because he has to hire from a pool of people who do political campaigns, and trust me on this, all of those are at least soft left. Also for the “He hires people and then he fires them” — well yes. His training is in business. That’s what one does in business. It is in fact something we could use more of in politics.

However his campaign in 16 was such a sh*tshow I was sure it was a front and even more sure that if he were elected he would be only slightly better than Hilary Clinton.

His own words didn’t help. I’m told that throwing out hot words and crazy accusations is the New York state of mind, to coin a phrase, but seriously. Has every one of you forgotten Trump himself accusing the Ted Cruz’s father of killing JFK? Because I haven’t.

I finally decided to vote for him on the day before the election and only because of three things: Two of them were earnest talks by L. Neil Smith and Jerry Pournelle who told me I should. Look, if those two agreed, it was time.

The other was an earnest analysis that told me he was SLIGHTLY less likely to have me shot on the back of the head than Hillary Clinton would. Note, I didn’t expect it to be UNLIKELY. Only slightly less likely.

However, his presidency was glorious in many ways, even with all the resistance he faced, and that’s enough to give me a very weak preference for Trump. Very weak, in fact, because I’ve not forgiven him for falling for the Covidiocy yet. He should have pulled a Reagan and gone to the people. Let the intelligentsia pillory him, but go to the people and scream from the rooftops that this was nothing. Keep hammering the numbers and how hollow they were, and how this was a psi-ops from China.

Would he have sounded crazy? Possibly. But if I could take the people — even people I liked — coming by to tell me I was crazy or evil, certainly he could. He should have shouted the truth and shamed the devil.

Except that he FELL FOR THE SCAM and remains convinced.

I don’t understand it, except that in talking to friends the other day, we realized in our group, the ones that believed in the covidiocy wholesale are for lack of a better term, the Paladins. The people who can’t conceptualize utter evil.

Because the covidiocy psi ops, as it becomes obvious that the death rate didn’t really go up, that no one died of it who wasn’t going to die of any flu or other rampant virus, and that all the measures deployed for it did nothing and were often counterproductive, does nothing — nothing — but convince me it was an evil plan by the Democrats in conjunction with Chinese idiots. (Idiots because they don’t understand, even now, that if America falls they starve. What Marxist education does for you.)

Perhaps I am the only person who remembers how desperate, in Jan of 2020 the left was for something to wreck the economy or they couldn’t defeat Trump. Well, they found it. I don’t know if on purpose or not but they were clearly willing to extend an economy-killing lock down which btw destroyed the economies of other countries as well, just to get their vote by mail and fraud their hag-ridden, brain dead zombie in. (They knew vote by mail and machines could do it, because that’s how they took over Colorado, which they admit is their model for taking over the rest of the country.)

The sheer evil of the operation, even without getting to pumping an experimental vaccine of a type that had never worked into as many veins as they could by mandate, is simply impossible for the good people of the world to conceive of.

And trust me, this is not in Trump’s favor as I say it: that man must be the most unlikely Simon-Pure-Paladin to walk the Earth. I’ve already been floored at how friggin’ clean he is that all their digging has not found anything terrible in his past. But his inability to grasp the sheer unmitigated evil of the psi-ops run against him puts the cap on it. I salute him, and I wish he’d grow a little more suspicious and paranoid, because this is ridiculous.

DeSantis? Yeah, he has done well for Florida. But how most of you view him has had a good bit of help from adversarial media. Or is the media truly adversarial? Have they learned — or think they learned — that we’ll run towards whomever they attack? Because I’ll note their attacks gave DeSantis credit for not locking down and challenging the Covidiocy but lots of other states did it. In fact there might be more states that did it than not. People from Iowa are known to huff when Florida is extolled in this respect, and heck, people, in crossing the country by car in the fall of 2020 I found most people weren’t actually locked down. They only had an iron grip on the states they meant to steal (and which mostly had leftist governors.)

Now, what do I have against him?

Not a lot. He’s a career politician. Is that enough to damn him? Probably. Look, we’ve had mostly career politicians as presidents in the 20th and early 21st, and look where they have taken us. Look, I can’t be the only conservative looking at all the wars — in the face of how “easy” it was for Trump to get the Abraham accords and start clipping China’s wings — and wonder if we were rooked for over 100 years. Yes, I know it’s not that simple.

But it’s entirely possible that the politician way of thinking is…. towards the kind of cycle we’ve endured for a century.

And then there’s “he does things”. He does. He flexes his muscles. He goes after — mostly — targets for social conservatives. Look, I’m not even kicking too hard on this. The left has gone far enough that social conservatism is needed.

On the other hand, on the other hand…. That’s in Florida. So, say we send DeSantis to DC….

I must ask, clearly: What pool do you think DeSantis will hire from? No, seriously. Very seriously. “Oh, he’ll bring his own people” — snort giggle — those will have fun against the permanent bureaucracy in DC. Those who can’t be corrupted will be destroyed, but there’s a lot of money and favors in DC which will buy most of them. They will be eaten.

And he’s already hiring from the GWB school of election consultants. And he’s getting donations from establishment Republicans. Now, he can no more control that than I can control who reads me and reviews me.

But…. but it worries me. They are donating because they either think they can control him, or they can use him to explain away the loss in the elections as not fraud. (And if you think they wouldn’t like to do that….)

And if they control him, if the establishment succeeds in using him, the best we can hope for him is the jackboot in the other foot. Authoritarianism for causes we like. It’s still Spinach, and it should still go to heck.

Against him, personally, I have but one thing: He’s engaged in underhanded attacks, to get Trump to respond and SEEM to be attacking him for no reason. Yes, I do realize it’s a good strategy to raise his profile. It’s also unspeakably SLIMY.

And if you’re going to say I can’t be against one of them for being a G-d blessed paladin and the other for using slimy tactics? Watch me. Yes, I can.

In many ways yes, DeSantis would be a better manager for what the American State has become.

But that’s not why we voted for Trump. We didn’t want a manager, we want an IED in the heart of the establishment.

I will submit to you we can’t have Trump without the negative stuff. Heck, do you remember what they said about milquetoast Pierre Delecto during the campaign? They’ll find things to say about DeSantis if he’s the nominee. And they will be horrifying.

And if he actually DOES oppose the establishment on the right? Yeah, you’ll find really quick that he’s mean, evil and has tons of things they can attack.

HOWEVER AND THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT: if DeSantis is the nominee, I’ll crawl over broken glass smeared with lemon juice to vote for him.

Because I’m not sure my beloved country can take much more of the international socialists.

There are people supposedly running I won’t vote for because I don’t trust them even against the international socialists. Yes, I’m looking at Pence and Chris Christie. But I’ll vote for DeSantis without blinking.

And yet the game isn’t worth the candle.

Why? Because you know and I know that all this fighting will just give the left an excuse for when the zombie wins with four hundred million votes.

America has electile dysfunction. And until we fix that, none of this — none of this — matters.

Until we get the fraud out, we can vote to make us feel better, but it will make no difference. It just gives them excuses.

Until we get the fraud out, all we can do is build under, build over, build around.

Oh, sure, vote. Make them work for the fraud. But don’t get too excited about who’s running on our side.

Chances are we won’t be voting for a champion sans peur and sans reproche, but for someone who is slightly less repulsive than Zhoe Bai Den, by the grace of Hell Xi the Poo’s vice-roi in the USA.

And that it won’t do us any good. We must do it nonetheless. Force to fraud ridiculously, in front of G-d and everybody. AGAIN.

Meanwhile…. Meanwhile be not afraid, and do your best so we might, maybe, get our republic back, if not in our lifetime, in the lifetime of our kids.

Go build.

Banks and You by Francis Turner

Q: What’s the difference between Hunter Biden, Konstantin Kisin and you?

A: Access to banks

Let me explain.

Recently Konstantin Kisin (a UK comedian/commentator) got a message from the company that was acting as his bank for a podcast he does with some other people.

There then followed a certain amount of hilarity as Mr Kisin asked (not unreasonably) for a reason why and received a number of non-answers.

TRIGGERNOMETRY BANK ACCOUNT SHUT DOWN

Dear @OliverPrill, could you please explain why your bank, @TideBusiness, is shutting down our bank account with no explanation despite a healthy balance and transaction history? pic.twitter.com/kL0ibpgWZN

— TRIGGERnometry (@triggerpod) May 19, 2023

Despite numerous attempts to get clarity on this issue we have been repeatedly fobbed off with non-answers…. pic.twitter.com/EbYgi1ljeg

— TRIGGERnometry (@triggerpod) May 19, 2023

There are some interesting curlicues to this case though.

Starting with the fact that the “bank” isn’t actually a bank. There’s nothing wrong with that, what they’ve done is partnered with a couple of actual banks to offer a banking service that is more convenient for small businesses than that offered by a traditional bank. This is no doubt one reason why Mr Kisin decided to use them. However it probably gives them rather more flexibility to discriminate that they would have if they were an actual bank.

Mind you in the T&Cs there’s this:

So it would seem that the lack of initial explanation means there’s a “legal, regulatory or security reason” for the decision. Now, as someone who works in cyber-security, I can say that this vagueness is typically there so that the company has a get out when closing an account for a “Nigerian Prince” that offers exciting opportunities to for suckers to work from home while enriching some Eastern European cyber-criminals. BUT short of Mr Kisin running a scam, which seems unlikely given his relatively high public profile in the UK, and given that the account seems to be tied explicitly to a locals account where he and a colleague do video interviews for subscribers the “involved in (cyber)crime” excuse seems highly unlikely.

So the more likely reason is that the “bank” doesn’t like Mr Kisin’s generally unwoke and skeptical viewpoint on matters and is now desperately trying to retcon a reason. Quite possibly the root cause is that some SJW activists figured out that Kisin used Tide as a banker and caused some regulatorily complex work to be done on his account which meant that Tide was spending a lot more money responding to them than it could possibly make from Kisin’s account.

I should note that the excuse about third party payment processors and validation simply doesn’t pass the giggle test. TRIGGERnometry uses Stripe (as part of its locals based subscription service) and Paypal (linked from twitter and youtube for donations and in the shop part of the website) and as far as I can tell that’s it. Lets start with Paypal, which has had its own free speech issues (see this for example), and which seems more likely to be the source of donations. Paypal knows the email address and credit card (or bank account) details (including the address) of everyone using it and there is no effective difference (to the recipient’s bank) to a payment made for a purchase of goods/services and a donation. Moreover it stretches credibility that no other Tide customers are using Paypal to receive payments.

That’s the very slightly more plausible 3PPP. If Tide has problems with Stripe then I guarantee that TRIGGERnometry is far from the only organization that banks with Tide that uses Stripe. Stripe is ubiquitous and one of the reasons for this is that it is very good at reducing fraud, which it does by precisely the sort of validation that Tide says it can’t trust. Now I suppose there’s the vague possibility that somewhere on an older website that I can’t find the TRIGGERnometry people have a different payment processor, but that seems unlikely. Aside from anything else if one particular 3PPP was problematic, the obvious thing for Tide to do is to mention that they have a problem with 3PPP X.

Since, rather than say that, they originally gave notice of closing the account and only a week or so later came up with 3rd Party Payment excuse we can be almost certain that Tide simply don’t want TRIGGERnometry’s custom but aren’t willing to come out and say so.

Anyway, moving on. In one of the threads on twitter discussing this there was reference to an excellent, but older, thread by Patrick McKenzie (of Bits About Money):

Unfortunately the way this is usually implemented is “X stamps and we fire you as a customer.”

In much of the world, banks are not obligated to continue doing business with people who cause them lots of headaches or cost, and the headaches/cost are not evenly distributed. https://t.co/tufbFyRitG

— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) September 20, 2021

Assume everything you’ve been taught about the 20th century is wrong. Okay, so most of it isn’t if you’re going with facts and figures.

But if you look at the conclusions drawn from events, at the bigger movements you were told were behind things, everything you were told is a lie. Pretty much. Except, of course, that sometimes the people telling you the lies thought they were telling you the truth. Either because they, themselves, had been lead up the garden path by philosophers or (and often and) because they couldn’t endure the truth. It didn’t fit with some incredibly appealing theory they had been sold, and which demanded the plainly obvious reason for something not, in fact, be true. Even when it was.

Yes, we’re back again to the vexed topic of World War I. And thereby to the topic of all the wars of the twentieth century. And the vexed topic of military service for “your country right or wrong.”

In the comments on memorial day someone left a comment saying “Whatever your politics, thank the war dead for your freedom.” Or something like.

Look, I’ve been surer or that than I am now.

Um… I am okay with thanking the war dead, because at the very least they thought they were defending freedom and the principles of our constitution, but as a friend (who is a veteran) said in his memorial day post, it is hard to imagine any of our honored military dead coming back and seeing what’s happening in our land and not being profoundly confused, if not disappointed. Because in fact our own — corrupted, frauded in — government is indulging in the sins of the Kaiser and often — sorry — using the tactics of the German National Socialists.

They’re doing this despite the Americans who shed their blood to stop crazy globalism, and partly because their government, their education and, oh, yeah, definitely their bureaucracy is running a program resting on the wrong conclusions taken from the clashes of cultures of the 19th and 20th century.

Look, I can never do this as a scientific theory, not because I can’t develop methods to test it (though those would be mostly examining history) or accept or reject my hypothesis, but because the “science” of sociology currently is caca, and I’m not going to give any college my head for washing to get the right credentials.

So, instead, I’ll write it into science fiction books, and maybe sometime in the future someone can codify it.

This is the thing, though: As far as I can tell, both from observation and experience (acculturating (twice)) and from reading history, cultures are not just the assemblage of a bunch of people under more or less arbitrary rules, which they follow because they’re conformists or stupid or something. Cultures are also not (rolls eyes) born with the person, nor do they transmit genetically. Yes, we do know from animal husbandry that individuals can be born more docile or rebellious, more people-oriented or introverted, etc. and that those traits are inheritable within reason. (There are always sports.)

However, humans are not just creatures of nature, and on the nature nurture puts a veneer that puts limitations on or enhances traits, that rewards certain behaviors or suppresses others. So, even though most people in culture x might be docile if a baby is brought to a highly rebellious culture, like the US and raised in it, he or she will “conform” by being rebellious.

I, myself, had no idea I was introverted. Not a clue. Why? Because Portuguese culture is highly gregarious and group oriented. So, even though I was considered weird and standoffish for there, once I got to the US everyone thought I was very gregarious and people oriented. The one and only tell is that I’m utterly wiped out by being around people too much — the definition of too much being way more than I’m used to — and I either have to get some time away (when I disappear from a con, I’ve usually run to my room to read or listen to music, or do not much of anything. And Dan and I have been known to run away and have dinner by ourselves) or I start showing weird symptoms, like losing my voice. Until I figured that, I thought I always got sick after cons. Actually most of the time I don’t. I’m just wiped out. This is because my natural introversion was shaped by the overlay of a culture where everyone lives in everyone’s pockets, all the time.

Anyway, though, I have come to the conclusion from observation, that while individual humans are plastic to a certain extent, humans in a group, all belonging to the same culture are harder to mold and shape arbitrarily.

It is probably part of human evolution, that cultures react like sentient group entities when attacked, destroyed or occupied.

There is only one way — known for sure — of destroying a culture utterly without killing every member of that culture, meaning it’s eradicated and doesn’t surface again, ever. That is to kill everyone over the age of 3, adopt the surviving children and raise them as yours with no awareness of a separate entity.

Even our savage ancestors didn’t do that, that we know. Oh, in pre-history — even modern primitives (for lack of a better term. Cultures with no writing, and sometimes no future verb tenses or a limited language. Yes, they exist. Mostly tiny tribes in remote places — it was fairly common, as far as we can tell, entire bands and tribes were completely wiped out, their culture leaving absolutely no trace in the future except maybe as a fragment of much-distorted myth. And probably there were times when only the babies were taken and adopted. (Or eaten. Look, there are no noble savages, okay?)

Most of the time, though, throughout most of history, fighting men (or all males) were killed and women, children and non-fighting men (maybe) enslaved.

Because of this, cultures developed what I can only call evolutionary adaptations to survive those events: the women become whores (usually for he conquerors), the men become submissive, and children learn the new language and lose the old, oh, and full blooded children of the old culture stop being born.

In fact most of the symptoms of what we believe are “decadent cultures” aren’t. They’re wounded cultures. Cultures which, sometimes wrongly, assume they’ve been conquered, and therefore go into “survive conquest” mode. This is the mode that will allow some (or most) of its traits to survive, by being passed on in stories, in what you teach the children, in “this is how we do things” even when a majority of those who carried the culture are killed or enslaved.

Now, when I talk of cultures deciding something it sounds like I’m going to break in paens of the Ashkantic records (sp) or perhaps start talking of the collective unconscious. It’s not. It’s a short hand. Because, you know, we are social creatures (even those of us who prefer to make friends over the internet and only see our close family on a regular basis.) This means when your subconscious adds two plus two and gets aardvark, you give certain signals most of them non-verbal. And when everyone does that, the culture acts like a collective entity. I refuse to explain this every single time, so I’ll say the culture does this or that. You will most assuredly deal.

Our culture, yes, is acting like a conquered culture. This is because through most of history for someone to come in and impose on you “new ways of doing things” and trying to shape you into something different, meant that you had lost a war and a lot of you were laying dead.

In our times this is because our intelligentsia was converted against its own culture (while still being part of the culture, which makes them funny. Or they would be funny if this were happening to someone else long ago) by Marxist and “progressive” theories that purport that both humans and cultures are infinitely plastic. Being part of the ruling bureaucracy and class, they imposed arbitrary rules from above, which felt to our subconscious like conquerors giving commands.

Which brings us back to colonialism. As we all know the left considers colonialism evil. It probably is, at least when engaged in from above and arbitrarily. What I mean is, if you conquer a people and impose your ways on them, they’re going to suffer and their culture is going to become corrupted in weird ways. Sometimes…. sometimes that’s an improvement. For all their — many — faults, the Spaniards did stop human sacrifice to the South of (and in some portions of the Western states of) the US.

But it is strong medicine and a high price to pay. Also the reason why all the dreams of the early science fiction writers (and the retarded would-be techno lords of today) of a world government are not just impossible but utterly and unspeakably evil.

Because if you try to impose a culture (and the current idiots it’s not even a culture, just the Marxist virus) on the whole world, it’s going to …. change. And what it will become is not what you set out to impose, but this weird, bizarre amalgam. When you take in account all the cultures of the world, that means what results will be … uh… alien is a good way to put it. And probably mostly Chinese. (Because their culture is older, and frankly while judged in terms of comfort to humans and ability to provide completely nonfunctional, nonfunctional in a way that has created mechanisms to increase the cyclic dysfunction. And those mechanisms will survive and infect everything.) And on the way to installing this maimed and maiming thing, you’re going to kill most of the population of the world, and only a few outright. Most of them with depression and internal destruction.

And here we come back to the age of Empires from oh, the mid-fourteenth but more obvious from the mid-19th century to World War I. That was straight up internationalism.

Cultures that were in the industrial revolution and needed resources, but more importantly, cultures that were absolutely convinced they had the right way to live stomped around the globe showing everyone else how to live, and sometimes hard-enforcing it.

“But Sarah, that’s nationalism,” you’ll say. Oh, is it? Because what they were trying to do was create international empires, all over the world, and enforce the one culture, with, in some cases (hi, Germany) the idea that eventually the whole world would be like them.

I don’t care what they call it. Particularly when you look at the alliances of the ruling families (kings, queens, emperors, empresses, and princes and princesses) it becomes obvious that it was an overarching supra-national elite trying to add more regions to their already vast domains, and make their dominance world wide if possible.

They were not, despite the nationalism of those in the trenches, fighting to preserve their own tiny countries, but their vast international alliances and empires.

Yes, the Germans were the most rampant case of this and they were stopped by the sacrifices of those in World War One and World War Two. And we’re grateful for that.

Our degree of gratitude doesn’t change, but their wasted sacrifice might make us furious when we see the global elite has either achieved their objectives through other means (We’re looking at you EU) or are trying to achieve the rest of it by even stupider means (We’re looking at you WEF.) Oh, and let their buddies in the Soviet Union go a-colonizing for most of the 20th century, and would do it again (the Soviet Union never really existed. It was always Russian colonialism) given half a chance. And are now trying to distract us with a fun proxy make-believe war.

World War I was not caused by nationalism. Though it shocked various internationalists, including the Marxists, that individuals would fight to preserve their countries against internationalism, rather than the workers of the world uniting.

It was caused by colonialist impulses and imperial land grabs.

We — nationalists — have been at war with internationalism for a long time, and it’s time we recognized it, shedding the wrong stuff we were taught.

Yes some cultures are appalling judged on the only standard that counts: Do they promote human productivity happiness and health?

Yes, cultures can change. What they can’t is “directed change.” America has infiltrated more cultures than I care to mention from the beginning, purely by example. Yep, some of the results — I’m looking at you, French revolution — were appalling, because they were the result of our principles being taken up by an entirely different culture, that couldn’t process them as we did. (Not wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Note this is what I mean that a world-culture would be unspeakably alien.)

It’s entirely possible overtime we can change most cultures into being more functional and better for their members. But we can’t do that by imposing it from above. (Is looking seriously at the EU where most of the members are behaving like conquered cultures. And therefore becoming increasingly more dysfunctional.)

Colonialism is evil because it wounds existing cultures, and often imposes more dysfunctional ones. But even functional cultures, as colonizers, can cause splintering they don’t understand and can’t prevent. It might be needed but it’s always a form of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Imperialism, the formation of vast international empires, is a form of colonialism, whether under the banner of the Soviet Union, the WEF or Kaiser Wilhelm.

Cultures evolve in isolation. In our hyper connected world, they’ll change and meld through contact. The best we can do is denounce the bad changes. And keep the local identities as much as possible.

Because in the end, nationalism is good. Despite our fantasies — and I often have them — both a culture imposed from above — whether a real or synthetic one — and a world in which our physical location doesn’t matter are unworkable. And if they worked, they’d be nightmares.

Even as we live and work across borders, even as we borrow each other’s food and clothing, it is important to remember that the national culture evolved for a reason, and that everything we experience of other cultures must be experienced through our culture.

It is important to remember other cultures we come in contact with are intrinsically different and shaped through millennia (or in our case centuries. Hey, we’re the annoying genius kid) of different evolution. Evolution suited to the needs and location of the majority of people.

It is important to remember that every immigrant-group will bring culture with them, and that they will process their acculturation through their culture. (For individuals acculturation is more complete and faster. Not to say that it’s always 100%. It’s not. See my figuring out I was not an extrovert.) This is one of the reasons open borders is stupid. (Sorry. Yes, I badly wanted to believe in a borderless world. But that just guarantees the least functional, most predatory culture wins over all. No.) It is also one of the reasons that countries should be able to vet who comes in, and keep it — if possible — to individuals. And countries must demand and enforce acculturation and integration.

Because cultures will war with each other, openly or not. And because there are no noble savages, and the deep background of our culture was formed in a time of utter savagery, if you let cultures war, the least functional will win.

Cherish your national culture. Protect your national borders.

The dream of a borderless world is a nightmare, where elites completely divorced from the regional beliefs and needs rule all, according to their arbitrary will and their philosophical illusions.

Think of the different cultures as the founders thought of states: Little laboratories of humanity, competing (but not warring. Not if we limit immigration and don’t try to grab each other’s land and people) to see which is best for humanity. The best at achieving prosperity freedom and innovation will spread naturally.

Which is why all over the world, the future already comes from America.

Let’s make it a functional future. Let’s make it an American future.

Get to it.

Stock Up Now for Galt Month By Overgrown Hobbit

June is supposed to be Pride month. I was told I’d need to apply for a religious exemption to avoid being mandated to celebrate it.  I shouldn’t be suprised: Corporate is also keen on Greed, Gluttony, and Wrath year-round.

It’s tragic. It’s horrifying that virtues like self-mastery, charity, or humility are opaque to these perverted aristos. Who do we little people think we are, wanting honesty or dignity? It’s “See deer, point horse, peon.” We’re supposed to know our place as demoralized consuming/producing mules in their economic fiefdoms. Up is down, down is up, cruelty is kind, and decency is perverted: All the better to enslave you with, my dear.

So let’s not. And not tell them we did.

I know loads of us are already trying to follow the advice of Mr. Niemeir here. But it’s tricky, and hard to disentangle oneself completely, all the time. https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Give-Money-People-Hate-ebook/dp/B087C4V1GM

Maybe it’ll be easier for just one month, eh?

I ran across a suggestion a commenter I know posted over at Rod Dreher’s blog:

This year, let’s kick off a general economic strike on June 1st.   Don’t buy anything not absolutely necessary. Buy your groceries: That’s it. Whatever you can buy from farm stands with cash, do that. Planning a major purchase? Punt it to July. We’ll be washing dishes by hand for thirty days. Make do with clothes, shoes, what have you, until after June 30th. Find ways to avoid all but your most essential purchases.

I think a sudden drop of 10 – 15% in expected earnings could really drive the point home, especially since June is the end of the quarter. I’m told these sociopathic pool noodles live and die by their earnings reports.

If enough of us #GoGaltJune maybe the oligarchs will get it through their thick heads to just quit with the whole patronizing proselytizing Pride malarky* already and leave us alone. Leave our kids alone.

Me, I’m off to fund the The Wise of Heart

https://www.fundmycomic.com/campaign/113/the-wise-of-heart

and Draco Alchemicus https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rachelfultonbrown/draco-alchemicus before May 31st.

How ’bout you?

Godspeed.

*This is Sarah. I’m not overgrown hobbit, the author of the guest post above. And I didn’t originally have a problem with Pride parades. Look, in most cities it was rather dorky people shouting “We exist and are allowed to.” That’s …. whatever.
HOWEVER the “Pride month” and “Mandatory celebration” have stepped on my LAST NERVE. People are what they are, and being gay is not the worst thing, but why the heck would we “celebrate” it for a whole month? Even motherhood is celebrated ONE DAY a year. And corporate-mandated celebration? No. I realize they want a fascist state, but just no. These are my middle fingers. I endorse this here hobbit’s suggestion. – SAH*

In Flanders Fields

By John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

    That mark our place; and in the sky

    The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

    Loved and were loved, and now we lie,

        In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

    The torch; be yours to hold it high.

    If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

        In Flanders fields.

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 SARAH A. HOYT: Barbarella: The Center Cannot Hold #4

Prepare to enter the ultimate unknown! Barbarella, Vix and Taln know where to go to discover the galactic secrets of the Unnamable. Unfortunately, that means travelling beyond the edge of our galaxy and into the next — assuming they survive the termination shock on the way through! It’s a massive risk, but the chance to avert a galactic war that would kill trillions makes the lives of two females and a male hologram seem small by comparison — though maybe not to them!

FROM JONATHAN SOUZA: The Winter Solist: The Last Solist #2

Adelaide Taylor has survived her first semester at school and as a Dawn Empire Solist. She’s found her first Companion, Sayuri Suisha. Sayuri’s grandfather wants to meet his only grand-daughter’s new friend. In Japan, just before New Years. Along with that, she’s gotten a warning-one of the High Fae is hunting her and is planning to ensnare Adelaide in her schemes.
There’s a girl in her school that has been set up as a tethered goat for Solists.
Her local and very Catholic high school is putting her into places that shouldn’t happen at a Catholic high school.
And there’s a monster eating prostitutes in Queens.
Nobody ever said being a Solist would be easy…

FROM C. V. WALTER, JACK WYLDER, JESSE A. BARRET ET AL, AND WITH A COVER INSPIRED BY BRIAN LEE GNAD: Postcards from Foolz: Postcards from Foolz .

The rules of the game were simple: one image. Fifty words.

Twenty authors met the challenge and excelled, and this volume records their efforts. Between these covers are complete stories that will take a moment to read, and ages to forget.
If your appetite is whetted, you’ll also find that images have been provided for you to practice your wordsmithing skills. So that you, too, can try the next Postcards challenge.

Go on. Write!

FROM DALE COZORT: Snapshot II: The Necklace of Time

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Secret of Pad 34

Who would put a ceiling on humanity’s expansion into space?

That’s what Gus Grissom wants to know. While fishing offshore from Cape Canaveral, he glimpses a mysterious undersea city of unearthly geometries, marked with a strange three-armed cross symbol.

His efforts to research it bring him veiled threats from strangers at his door. Trouble blights an exemplary career. However, Gus refuses to be cowed into silence, and pursues every lead he can find.

HP Lovecraft wrote that we live on a placid island of ignorance and were not meant to travel far. This is the Space Race in a world where the Soviet Union is not our only adversary.

FROM DANIEL ZEIDLER: The Standard-Bearer’s Oath

Avenge the fallen. Restore honor to her people. Someone else can be inspired to liberate the kingdom.

Fourteen years after Sarbotel fell to the armies of a mad alien mage, Ilse is the last surviving member of her resistance cell. When she’s offered a chance to return to her homeland, she chooses vengeance instead. Allying with an immortal Guardian who has reasons of his own to want the mage slain, she’s out to put an end the Tyrant’s despotic rule.

The stakes are higher than she knows, for if Ilse fails to defeat the Tyrant, the entire planet may be destroyed…

FROM KAREN MYERS: Monsters, And More: A Science Fiction Short Story Bundle from There’s a Sword for That

A Science Fiction Story Bundle from the collection There’s a Sword for That

MONSTERS – Xenoarchaeologist Vartan has promised his young daughter Liza one of the many enigmatic lamedh objects that litter the site of a vanished alien civilization.

No one can figure out what they’re good for, but Liza finds a use for one.

ADAPTABILITY – The Webster Marble Deluxe Woodsman, Model 820-E, has been offline for quite some time. Quite some time indeed.

Good thing Webster has a manual to consult, and a great many special functions.

FROM MARY CATELLI: Enchantments And Dragons

A wizard must produce justice enough to satisfy a dragon.

A young man tries to rob a tiger’s lair.

An enchantress tries to keep a court safe while they ignore the perils of misusing her magic.

A lady finds that court intrigues can spread even to the countryside.

And more tales.

Includes “Over the Sea To Me,” “Dragonfire and Time”, “The Maze, the Manor, and the Unicorn”, “The White Menagerie”, “The Dragon’s Cottage,” “Jewel of the Tiger,” and “The Sword Breaks.”

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: SEEMLY

Like sand through an hourglass indeed!

I wonder how much of America’s tendency to get mad slow (and burn very hot when we get to anger) is because we’re all very busy living our own lives and barely have time to stop and think?

Having lived in other countries, most others have more free time. Now, they pay for it in various ways, mostly in reduced opportunities/ability to do things. BUT they still have more free time. Time to sit around in coffee shops and to se bavarder about politics. In the states, not so much. We still work, often even on weekends, just on things we want to work on, rather than our jobs.

On the other hand, all of the world is busier than it was, even a century ago. There are multiple reasons for this: mostly because the government takes so much of what we produce that even most women have to work outside the home. It’s not a choice.

But also because well, even in the rest of the world it has become much easier to do or be or learn something else after work hours.

This is unheard of. Part of the reason for much slower narrative styles in the past is that people had a lot more free time filled with boredom. Well into the middle of last century.

Looking at the outrages perpetrated and the fact people haven’t rebelled makes me wonder about… well, about the perennial “why people haven’t rebelled yet.”

Because we’re busy. And tired.

Yes, demographics has to do with it. Demographics and corruption of education means most working-age people are working their behinds off.

And there is lack of ability to do much beyond being mad. Younger people, like in France, do have time to protest, usually on the stupid side, and that too is because they can’t find work. (See corruption of education. And yes, Pope Francis is often an *sspopehat but when he said the biggest problem confronting the world was youth unemployment, he might not have been wrong. It’s just that his solutions are likely to break everything.) But there aren’t that many young people. So they’re not going to be a force as they were in the sixties and even somewhat seventies.

This is why the Tea Parties and the Gillettes jeunes (I’m sure misspelled. It’s been years, and I’m dyslexic) of France were a big deal. It was the Silver Hairs getting involved.

It should have been a warning to the governments and the social-distractors.

We’re very busy, but not so busy that we can’t be angry. And we’re angry.

Remember mom and dad’s injunction? Don’t make me stop this car and come back there!

Well, if you make us stop our very busy lives and come back there, you won’t like it. It won’t be pretty.

But we’ll take care of the problem fast and set things right, because we have work we need to get back to.

And we’ll give the statists and the kakistokrats something to cry about.

We’re almost at stop the car and come back there. I can feel it. And all I can do is pray it’s not violent and doesn’t set the world on fire.

Of course it’s useless to tell the idiots to stop — metaphorically — touching their sister.

All we can do is keep our tempers hot but in check, and come up with solutions that don’t burn everything down.

If you’re a praying kind, pray.

Because it’s going to be difficult. And we need a miracle.

Distraction only works for so long. And makes everything worse when people get tired of it.

I’m okay. I was finishing setting up my office.

For explanation, I don’t talk very well to myself, so I have to look at my behavior to see what’s wrong. For months now, I’ve been working from the lazy boy in the family room. This is fine, of course, except that I’m working on the laptop, which has all the social media. Which means I haven’t been able to stay out of it, which means…. writing is slow.

It finally dawned on me that my previous office was the darkest room in the house, despite my lining every possible surface in mirrors. At the same time it dawned on my husband that us being in separate offices because of our music dueling didn’t work very well since our offices were side by side, and pointed out our happiest days were working in the same office.

So…. I am now in his office, having moved all the hobby stuff that used to take up most of the room where he had an office in the corner. It is now in the former office.

IT SHOULD HAVE TAKEN me a day. Anyway, yeah, all week. Apparently I’m not 35 anymore.

However the new setup should help with productivity.

Meanwhile, I bought the two little tigers a magnificent play structure. Dan says it’s way too extravagant, but–

That’s Indiana-Pollux. We don’t know where the very beautiful Helen is. Probably downstairs, cuddling Havey. She does that.

When I was little I was punished for telling lies. It didn’t help my budding sense of morality that half the time the lies that I was punished for were the truth, sometimes expressed bizarrely because I was kid.

Look, I know why the family didn’t believe I’d met a bubble gum pig. But it was pink! Really pink. And I did come nose to snout with it.

And kids, should, indeed be told lies are wrong. For why go and see Jordan Peterson.

However, for truly screwing up people look to official education and/or the activists with agendas that captured it.

I don’t know who thought it was brilliant to tell black people in the US that they were the first people enslaved in history, ever, and that it was all due to racism. I know they were already doing this in the 80s and before, because, after finding out a black friend believed this (and disabusing her) I confronted another friend who was a history teacher and she told me that of course they couldn’t tell black people that slavery had been endemic since pre-history, mostly among groups so homogeneous we can’t tell them apart, or that most black people brought to the US were enslaved by Arab traders. Why couldn’t they tell them that? “It will hurt their self esteem.”

I don’t know about you, but to my mind that is bizarre and exactly opposite. To think my people were the only people so weak as to be treated as chattel by other humans, and/or that every other race hated us would instead reduce me to a gibbering mess, and it probably explains the demand for reparations from people who were never slaves paid by people who never held slaves.

And before the usual “oh but other slavery wasn’t slavery. Slavery in the US is uniquely–” can it. Depending on when and where slavery could be — and still is, because it still exists — far worse than US based slavery. Yes, masters could kill slaves out of hand, including in ancient Rome for vast periods of time. And in Africa the Dahomey sacrificed slaves they took over the tombs of their kids. They sold the leftovers to America. Slaves in other places can be and often are treated much worse and much more as chattel than black people in the US. In fact, the US had a higher slave-survival rate than practically anywhere, and frankly there must have been a ton less rape on average. Why? Because black people are still — waggles hand — theoretically recognizable as such in the US (seriously, Megan Markle is less black than I am, in appearance.) Because in other places, the ones that didn’t die were um… integrated. The entire population became slightly darker. (Yes, there are other things at work there, but still. Given enough rape there would be no difference. See blue eyed Indians. And the rape there went both ways.)

So why tell people poisonous lies that will cause them to hate their country for no reason that makes any sense historically?

Every country had slavery. In the Iberian peninsula Moors and Christians enslaved each other with such gusto that being redheaded or blond was more likely to be true of Moors. (Visigoth slave concubines.) The US? it was questioned from the moment of its formation. Because our Constitution is antithetical to it. The Civil war was baked in from the beginning.

Sure, there were a lot of eugenics-like-writings here and elsewhere to justify black slavery. Because at some level Western conscience was prickled by it. Doesn’t mean it was universally accepted. No one writes essays on walking on two legs and those defending wearing clothing are rare. Because these practices are not controversial.

So, why lie? Unless you have rats in your head and think victimhood is a good, this lie is nothing if not poisonous. It robs people of their true history and weaponizes them as the tools of the “activists.” The answer to “You had slave ancestors” should always be “As does every human. They might out weight free people as ancestors of everyone.”

The same is true for the condition of women. Ah swear to bog if I hear one more frigging line of bs disguised as Regency books, on women being utterly without agency and unable to own property till sometime in the 20th century I’m going to pop a vein.

Yeah, the upper classes were different, but even in Regency England, women owned property and controlled it. Women started and ran businesses and even the richest and poorest of women contributed financially to the household. It was different in noble households because NO ONE was supposed to have a money-making job. (The newer kids equating noble with financier is hilarious. That’s not how any of that worked.) Women still were supposed to have dowries set aside for them. In fact, the whole problem with eloping is that you’d have no protections against he man grabbing your money. But most women didn’t elope. (Whatever the romances show you.)

And in the poorer households, women absolutely worked. It might be “just” keeping a garden and poultry. There’s a reasons people talked of “egg money.” Or it might be weaving or piece meal work at home.

Now this was mostly woman’s work: Inside, safe and boring, with a side of can be done while minding the children. Like my writing. And it brought in proportionately about what I brought in the first ten years after the boys were born, somewhere between 5 and 10k. But my contribution allowed us to live in a house we couldn’t otherwise afford.

My mom not only made most of the money in the house — yes 20th century. Portugal. You needed permission from your husband to work outside the home, didn’t have the vote, and had no right to your own kids in case of separation — but also started investments from saving on the kitchen expenses.

To say women had no agency at all till they were allowed to work in the public sphere and take leadership positions there is nonsense. Women always had agency. In many ways, women make society exist.

The problem with the lie that women “took” their rights from men, instead of being given those rights by men who knew it was fair and just is that it sets men and women on an adversarial footing and prevents women work from being valued.

This is how we got to the best women should be bad men. And it’s wrong. And we’re dying from it. There is a great loneliness stalking the land, and meanwhile women are worried about men “taking our rights.” How they think men can do this is beyond me. Sorcery?

And if it were possible, the crazy adversarial fixation is more likely to ensure it.

Look at the lies. Particularly lies about history. We’re being robbed of our history. And all the lies told to us all through the 20th century haven’t helped anything.

Find out the truth. Then disseminate it. Because a false past, no matter how pretty, won’t help anyone.