When my kids were little, I often had the strangest of experiences, at least for someone who was raised as I was, in a place small enough that every adult felt entitled to laying down the law (sometimes resulting in their getting a correction from my mother, because what I was doing was approved of in the family, if not in the village) so that if you stepped a foot out of the true path, you were likely to find yourself at the vortex of a converging tornado of grandmothers.

Sometimes, mostly when the kids were very young, and I was waiting on the playground for them to go in (I walked, so I always left enough time, and often this resulted in waiting for the teacher to let them in) I’d see a kid doing something dangerous to himself or others: Dancing on top of the six foot retaining wall; swinging a branch within two inches of another kid’s eyes. For the other stuff, like manners…. well, it was none of my business, and I wasn’t about to start a feud. But “danger to himself/herself and others” would get me to put my book away and hurry to the kid to say “No. Don’t do that.” in as firm a voice as I could.

The weird thing was the look I got back. Gape-mouthed, eyes wide, it would have been a look that was warranted if I’d told the kid “I’m an alien from Alpha Centauri.” A few of them gave me the key to their shock by saying “You can’t tell me no” or “You can’t tell me that” or “I do what I want.” Not one of them EVER told me “You’re not my mom” (Which is hilarious since my kids, when very young tried that at least once a year, like I’m that stupid.) Which meant it wasn’t a matter of correction by a stranger, it was a matter of “no one ever told me no.” (BTW without touching them, just with withering correction and contemptuous voice I dispelled the notions of those kids. Yeah, I was the person to go to for Kleenex and to get your shoes tied, but I also became the person that if you wanted to misbehave, you had to hide from. Which means most of the time it really was “NO ONE EVER TRIED TO CONTROL THEM.”

Yesterday, here, someone was speculating on the cluster fark of idiocy that our current “holy marxist rulers” have unleashed and said “Well, they didn’t expect to have to perform.”

But it’s not that. They never really intended to perform. You see, they do what they want. They should just “be” and be applauded for it.

Part of the issue is that no matter how you’ve been trained, humans need other humans to set boundaries. Piaget was wrong about that, to an extent. Sure, it is a developmental thing in childhood to realize that others are beings with self-will. But it can be forgotten has an adult, or restricted to a small set of people who are “real” where everyone else isn’t.

People who are isolated from other people go a little bit loopy. (An effect our idiot would be betters are shocked to find followed their idiotic lockdowns.) Sometimes “eccentric recluse harmless loopy” and sometimes “The dog is telling me to chop up the neighbors and put them in trash bags loopy.”

We are social apes, and we need the corrective reactions of others to realize when we’ve gone too far/too weird.

This is particularly true for people who consider themselves “good people” because their intentions are pure, and who never confront the demons inside themselves. (We all have them.)

The problem is that the rise of “mass industrial society” coincided with the left/Marxists seizing control of all communication, including the arts.

Look, Marxism and mass production is a marriage made in hell, one feeding into the flaws of the other. Perhaps it was inevitable, since Marxism is as much a product of the industrial revolution (and one man’s retardation) as it exacerbates illusions of central control.

But having established themselves in control of journalism and the arts by the middle of the last century — to an extent no one not in the field couldn’t even know. I mean, perfectly sane people think that non-Marxists are just not creative. (Casts an eye towards Hollywood. Yeah.) — leftism made itself a positional good. Every feedback from the mass education/information industrial complex told you that to be leftist was to be forgiven everything, to get away with everything and to be automatically, by fiat “good.”

And the problem with that is that no corruption, no evil, not unbridled wish for power would be punished, or even mentioned. To be leftist meant that your private peccadilloes would never be held before your eyes. And often those grew into crimes — looks at Clintons, Obamas, Bidens — and those too would go unpunished.

The problem is these are the children who were never told no. Except they’re not children.

Their unbridled century long indulging of their darkest wishes and urges has left them curiously unsatisfied, so they keep reaching for more and more.

At the same time, society has changed, and we can talk to each other outside their control.

Things like the election they had to steal in plain sight have to give them the cold grue. Not that they can process it, because no one has ever told them anything but that they’re perfect.

So they waver between imagining everyone else must be worse, and thinking that there is something wrong they don’t know.

But at the back of their minds, they know something is wrong. They know they are wrong. Which is driving them ever crazier.

The bad results are not unintentional. They’re spoiled children breaking the whole toy box because they weren’t allowed to beat the quiet little girl with the toy hammer. They might not confess this even to themselves, but they destroy because they’re throwing a massive tantrum.

The problem is this: Children and adults need feedback. For their own protection. Because there’s only so much society at large will tolerate, as Heinlein exemplified with the story of how to train a dog (child) in Starship Troopers.

You can’t let a puppy grow up making messes and excuse it because he’s just a puppy, and then at one take him outside and shoot him. Same with “juvenile delinquents” of course.

BUT–

The same goes for a political faction. You can’t let it go unpunished and praised for the most horrendous power grabs and evil, and tell them they’re good, without eventually having to deal with it.

I think at the back of their minds, dimly, they see it coming. But they don’t know what to do about it. After all, nobody ever told them no, and they are the good people who do what they want.

Keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark. And be not afraid.

In the end we win, they lose. But it’s going to be a mighty rough patch in between.

Busier than a one-armed paper hanger. More later.

I was raised to be a gentleman.

And before any of you raises an eyebrow, no that had nothing to do with my sex or gender, or my pronouns or whatever.

My being a woman of …. odd disposition, I think my parents decided I’d never marry when I was around 3, maybe 4. (They weren’t entirely wrong for that place and time. Any of you women who want to hold forth on the unbearable patriarchy in the US, let’s find a quiet corner where I can slowly beat you to death with a wet sock. Because you have NO idea. NONE.)

So, my parents decided early on that I’d most likely have to earn a living. Which is why dad trained me to be a gentleman. In business. In private life, I could be — and was — as feminine as I wished. Okay, most of the time I wasn’t because I fell in the broad category of “women who do carpentry” and “women who play with gears” so, stereotypically speaking, and in every other way as well I was …. odd. Not to say strange. But I loved (still do, though alas my hips disagree) pretty high heels, and I do crochet and embroidery. So stereotype by stereotype it kind of cancels out.

OTOH I sucked at the non-stereotypical parts of being a woman. The ones the culture doesn’t talk about. The politics of the serraglio: undermine the rival. Kick them while they’re down. Start character-tearing campaigns. Sleep your way to the top. Emotionally manipulate everyone.

I don’t know if I suck at it because my instincts are broken, or because I was raised to be a gentleman.

What I do know is this: “gentleman” mode is the mode to keep society functioning. Every company and institution that gets taken over by the politics of the serraglio subverts its own purpose and ends up unable to function. Because women in that mode don’t care about the shared purpose, and can’t be depended on. They do what AT THE MOMENT seems to help them. And they have no loyalty or honor.

Most of our society has gone that way. Even men operate in serraglio mode now, because it’s all they’re taught.

I have absolutely nothing against women working for a living, be it as janitors or as managers. But women need to be taught that in the realm of business they have to be gentlemen: keep your word. Pay back kindness and favors. Be generous to rivals. Be honorable. And above all, work for what you’re supposed to do/were hired to do. (Which falls under “keep your word.”

Teach yours sons, and especially yours daughters to be gentlemen. It’s inconvenient and troublesome, but it’s the only way civilization gets to come back.

Not that I could do a jointed observation right now, because I’m not even in Colorado, and I am allergic to the stuff anyway….

So, whatever we’re doing, it’s working, in the sense that we’re not falling into traps. Of course, perhaps what’s working is that our idiot opponents are really and truly idiotic.

I mean, seriously look at it, they have identical sunglasses….

I mean, seriously. They think they’re smart, so they keep imagining we have the IQ of paste. Sigh. These are idiots-arrogants. They’re too dumb to figure out they stick out like sore thumbs, and smugly satisfied in their stupidity. How do they get like that? The left’s takeover of their field. They remind me of trad pub editors circa 1995. (Not that they’ve improved, but now most have the puzzled and vaguely malevolent expression of stupid people who suspect someone is putting one over on them, but know it’s impossible because they’re so smart. Or something. Not that the editors were stupid. Just smug and unchallenged. Same here.) And this ladies and gentlemen are the people we trust to ferret out threats in the world at large.

This is ultimately what is at the bottom of the Afghanistan disaster, what caused us to spend almost a century taking seriously the Soviet Empire and how well equipped they were as enemies, when these people in fact were doing things like driving trucks of tubes around, to pretend they were missiles.

At another level, these are the people who earnestly believe the real threat is global warming, that communism works, and that we’re all white supremacists.

The good news in this is that these people are not on our side. These complete and thorough idiots are in fact trying to destroy America in the name of some supra-national government which will be better. Or so they imagine.

What they’re actually trying to do, of course, is stay seated and apply spurs and not allow us to resist them. Because having completely subverted the elections, they think they are in power forever. (Which means these poor deprived adult children never heard stories like the goose that laid the golden eggs, or other stories of “F*ck around and find out.”)

Which is going to be really hard, since they have not a brain cell among them.

Sorry, but even if there are good field agents, our intelligence agencies were always a festival of fail that could only be more obvious if it wore a fruit hat and shashayed to samba in the Carnival in Rio. I mean, they believed the bullshit fed to them by Russia and China to the point they put them in the CIA world fact book. Including the blooming soviet economy. Bullshit a kindergartner wouldn’t believe.

And since Obama and his cronies took over the structure, their abilities have taken a nose dive. (Which must have involved a super-powered escavator with stainless steel blades.)

The bad part?

Some of the fields they’ve taken over are still vestigially performing some functions we need, if only to provide and “official” channel for something.

And don’t fool yourself it won’t hurt when it collapses (with an Earth shattering kaboom.) And I’d be surprised if that’s past the end of the year, given the world-class-brains we’re dealing with.

Be ready. Be alert. Keep your clothes and weapons where you can find it in the dark.

And get ready to take the weight when it falls. Because Atlas supports civilization.

And tag, you’re it, you’re Atlas.

Sorry, guys, was driving all day yesterday, with no connectivity, and now we’re moving stuff around the new place.
More anon, though it could be tomorrow. You’ve been warned.

The Mouse Sander and the Coffee Cup

“Quick. She went to answer the door,” the woman said.

He hesitated, by the blue glowing oval of the time portal “Are we sure we want to do this? She’s a minor author of no consequence, at the edge of the turmoils.”

The redhead, lifted her head from the time-scope. “Oh, come on, Bril, you know how hot all the antiques from the 21st century are. And the fact she was a minor celebrity helps.”

Bril sighed. Someday he would learn to say no to pretty women, but probably not today.

“Do the records show how long she is by the door?”

“Are you kidding? Most was lost in the turmoils. Just go.”

He hurried through the portal, shuddering as he crossed the time barrier. On the other side, he found himself in a small hall, filled with a bewildering number of boxes. The woman was at the door, speaking to a younger man.

He was so afraid she’d turn, he grabbed the first two objects he could reach and ran back.

Turned out what he’d brought back was a cup still filled with coffee — apparently King Harv’s Coffees Earth blend, if the timescope showed the package on her counter right — and a small sander.

The objects fetched a good price at auction, not the least for the possibility of recreating 21st century coffee, but also stray author-DNA on the cup’s rim. The sander fetched less.

But Bril and the girl got to watch the minor, irrelevant 21st century author wander the house cursing up a blue streak for losing her coffee and what she called the mouse sander.

“They sanded mice in the 21st century?” The redhead asked.

“I don’t know. The whole time was psychotic. That’s how we got the turmoils.”

“Yeah. Maybe. I’m glad I’m here with you now, instead, Bril,” the redhead said.

…. And that’s my story of what happened to my coffee cup and mouse sander yesterday morning, which we haven’t been able to locate no way no how. And we include a contractor who might have been sent as the answer to a prayer, so I don’t die doing this.

I’ll be going home for some portion of the weekend, to see my husband and cats, but I will try to post. This house will, unfortunately, probably take another week.

However a huge burden has been lifted from my shoulders and things look doable.

Supposing we don’t go over the edge in the next month, we’ll be okay. So, fingers crossed.

You guys behave, while I get this finished.

Okay, the cats are still hiding. But I need to go home….

And I don’t think I’m going to make it this week.

I’m in too much pain to even try to post a guest post, I’m sorry. If I survive this, I’ll make it up to you.

Genies and bottles; Tigers and tails; and other Good Ideas that Bite – a guest post by LawDog

In 1998 a record-breaking settlement was reached against the tobacco companies for providing a still-legal product to consumers.

Shortly thereafter, and citing the tobacco settlement, litigation started regarding ETS (Environmental Tobacco Smoke, or “Second Hand Smoke”). This boils down to: Joe smokes; Frank doesn’t. Frank decides that Joe’s smoking has harmed him in some nebulous way, so Frank sues the tobacco companies.

Let me state that again: Frank sues the tobacco companies for providing a perfectly legal product to Joe. The end game is clear: some folks don’t like tobacco. They can’t get this legal product made unlawful, but they discovered they can litigate it to the point that the producers can’t afford to supply it anymore. Voila! Banning a product, without the cumbersome, uncertain process of making it unlawful!

Anyone following the gun debate in this country knows that the current hotness is suing the gun manufacturers. Joe acquires a gun, does something tragic with it. Frank gets a case of the hips, fails to sue the critter, you know, who pulled the trigger, instead he sues the gun manufacturer for providing a perfectly legal product to someone (someone, not Frank).

Again, the endgame on this is clear: the gun banners can’t get guns made illegal, but … if they can litigate this perfectly legal product to the point that the gun makers can’t afford to make guns anymore … well, they don’t have to try to get politicians to make them illegal, do they? Voila! Banning a legal product without, you know, banning it.

If you’re following the watermelons, you’ve no doubt heard of the lawsuits being filed against the petroleum companies for “Global Climate Disruption”. Several dozen, as I write this, filed by various and sundry individuals and politicians.

As above, it boils down to the fact that fossils fuels are not going to be prohibited. However, if it becomes too expensive to produce this perfectly legal product …
So, several hundred million Joes are driving their cars around, or flying in planes, or heating their homes with dinosaur squeezins, or using plastic products, so Frank sues the petroleum companies.

As is the case with the examples above, the desired result is not any recompense for damages to Frank, the desired end result is to litigate the petroleum industry out of business, and thus ban perfectly legal petroleum without, you know … banning it.

Got a feel for lawfare now? You think a legal product/service shouldn’t be legal. You don’t have enough votes to convince politicians to make laws against the product/service, but if you sue enough, sooner or later a sympathetic jury will make it too expensive for the product/service to be provided. It’s a nifty little legal end run around American lawmaking.

Now let us cast our eyes to Texas, where some State lawmakers decided that “Sauce for the gander being sauce for the goose and all that”, hauled off and made it official that Francine could sue the legal provider of a service used by Jo-Betsy.

Cue the wailing, the vapours, and the rending of garments. And more than a bit of teeth-gnashing.

Sigh.

One of the juvenile traits of the American Left that tends to stick in my craw is their tendency to gleefully go for the political/legal nukes against the “loyal opposition”, but then squalling like kicked pups when those same nukes get used against them.

Case in point: The Democratic Party holding multiple solemn press conferences when they did away with the 67% of the Senate to approve a Presidential nominee; replacing it with a simple majority. The worm turned, and the Republicans stated approving nominees with a simple majority, and the Democrats screamed bloody blue murder. Y’all set the damned precedent, quit whinging.

I’m here to tell you that the Venn diagram of folks who think the gun makers should be sued out of business; and those who think that the petroleum companies being litigated out of business is perfectly okay is damned near a perfect circle with the “My Body My Choice” crowd.

Y’all grabbed this tiger by the tail and used it to savage people you didn’t agree with. Now it’s biting you. I find myself completely unmoved by your protestations. You uncorked the genie and used it against the politically icky, and now that it’s at your door, you’re screaming about how unfair it is. Wah.

Y’all set the damned precedent for this law, and continue to do so. I have no sympathy.

This is your wakeup call: Stop using the courts to get around Congress.

Idiots.

I woke up at almost four am with horrors. In this case it was an infinite sense of grief and loss, like I’d just seen a loved one die before my eyes. And it wouldn’t dissipate. It just wouldn’t.

Eventually I picked up the computer and started poking around. Anything not to be alone, with that sense of dread. Which considering how tired I am… (And yes, I have thought it is a mercy of the Lord that I’m in this endless project right now, kind of like being laid down with a fever when you’d otherwise go berserk. Though the fact Dan is moving tomorrow and we will follow when this is done (there are reasons) doesn’t help. This is no time to have the family separated.)

I think — hope, rather — it was just the date. That’s bad enough.

But the events since January have left us open to a lot of other attacks that are similar or worse. I won’t list them. You’re political junkies. You know.

Though the sheep on the street might not get it, our government is acting in a way that will bring attacks on us in a thousand ways in the next ten years. Children playing today will die because of this idiocy which they won’t even be aware of.

Even the first nine eleven shouldn’t have happened save for institutions that consider Americans the real enemy.

For me? I can’t believe it’s been twenty years, or the friends — entire circles of them who went insane in this time.

They went crazy. I reported (in the sense of reporting for duty.)

Even if my stand didn’t make them froth at the mouth, our views of the world would be too different.

There is a world in which 9/11 never happened, and I’m writing my stories, and no one has any clue what my politics are. It’s not the world I have to live in.

Perhaps better, perhaps not. To quote the song linked above “I wouldn’t know; I’m just holding the fort. Since that day they wounded New York.”

But where we are twenty years in, it’s time to remember we’re Americans. Sure, our government is worse than poisoned wet kleenex when it comes to protecting us, and we might have to protect ourselves from it.

But we’re Americans. Land of the Brave, home of the Free. Not because our government and laws make it so, but because we are.

Remember that.

Remember we have heroes in whose footsteps we can follow, too.

To the Eternal Glory of the US of A, shines the name, shines the name of Colonel Cyril Richard “Rick” Rescorla!

As he performed his duty, 20 years ago, in the face of death he sang two songs. Let his memory guide us with them today.

Remember you’re Americans. Americans aren’t afraid. Oh, some of us at times, but not Americans as a whole. we’re the ones who bite and kick and fight back. We’re not tame.

And we will not be tamed or cowed. Come what may, even if that sense of grief in the night was a premonition be right. Come what may.

WE THE PEOPLE. WE. WE THE PEOPLE OF THESE UNITED STATES, having suffered a long train of abuses and infringements, Biden Junta, are at our wits end with your fuckery.

WE.

But your FICUS (Fraud in chief of the US) is not a we. He’s probably not even an I, being an empty shell of a depraved, self-serving, immensely stupid, bizarrely short sighted, blatantly corrupt, insanely malignant piece of shit man. Which is why I’m not in the least chagrined that you’re using him as a demented meat puppet who mutters and mumbles about having his butt wiped. It’s like a Victorian play where bad people come to rotten ends.

BUT YOU malignant Junta of a malignant pretend-president installed by China over our fair land are NOT a we. Not unless you’re a we in the sense that you’re a hive creature, full of malice and evil and with no resemblance of humanity. If that’s what you’re saying, then let us hear it. Because we know how to deal with hive minds. We’ll bring DDT back into use!

Or in other words — and in case you can’t tell my fingers are almost shaking too much to type — get a load of this bitch:

“Our patience is wearing thin?” Our, you scrofulous bitch of a Xi dog? OUR?

Who the holy fuck do you think you are, you evil bastards?

WE THE PEOPLE ARE SICK AND TIRED of your shennenigans. You hell hounds, you filthy spawn of the ass of Mao, you disgusting magots on the corpse of communism. Get back to the hell that created you, before we send you there.

To quote a friend in chat a few minutes ago:

“Yes, yes. Strife, death, societal collapse. If my options are those things vs a fascist or communist, I’m on board with strife and death. Hell, I’ll invite Death to tea and serve him fancy cookies.”

I might even serve him the fancy store bought cookies.

Do not threaten Americans. Do not threaten Americans when our patience is already thin. OUR patience.

You’re not our father, you’re not our mother, and you’re most certainly not our president.

You are at best a demented and corrupt despot manipulated by overgrown children who don’t know they’re playing with nuclear fire.

DO NOT THREATEN US. DO NOT TALK TO US. LEAVE. DEPART FROM OUR SIGHT, before we make you.

We suggest China for your (very brief) retirement.

You leave us a terrible mess, but Americans will cope. We always do. Which you would know if a single one of you were Americans in your minds and heart.

Now go. While you can.

We the people have had it with you.