On this occluded independence day, I beg you to read the declaration of independence.

I think it’s a mandatory religious observance for my fictional (mostly) USAians on their high holy holiday, but hey, it won’t hurt you either.

Most of all, remember you’re Americans. Remember the words that make men free and make tyrants quake.

It is our duty, our obligation and our very great privilege to make sure that in the next decade, in the next century, in the next millennium, on Earth or in the far flung stars the words carry on, liberty carries on, and tyrants are powerless against them.

Yes, the danger is great. And we must grow to meet it.

Go and light up the skies with fireworks, so we can see our flag by the rockets bursting in air.

Be not afraid.

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776 The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

hen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

I seem to have woken up without a brain, its space replaced with a massive headache.

I really want to work on bowl of red, and will if brain comes back later.

For now, have this, the snippet of what I’m afraid has become Tom and Kyrie’s Wedding, Enter the Dragon.

Bowl of Red

Sarah A. Hoyt

1

Atop one of the highest mountains of the world, there lived a dragon.  And the dragon was the most powerful beast in the world, able to listen to and control all of the magical animals everywhere.

And the dragon said to his bride, “Are you sure it will be all right? Closing the diner for a whole hour?”

Kyrie Smith, the dragon’s bride, a panther shifter and co-owner with the dragon – her very beloved and permanently worried fiancé, Tom Ormson – of the George Diner in downtown Goldport smiled while shaking her head, and pulled back a strand of curls that had worked free from Tom’s  pony tail.  “It will be fine, love. It’s just an hour, after lunch hour.”

Tom still looked worried. Well, Tom always looked somewhat worried, it was part of what was so endearing about him. But Kyrie had worked hard at blocking the time three to four pm, so they could get married in a modicum of privacy.  Well, the right kind of privacy.  Though every table was occupied these were their friends – a lot of them from the police department – and people who mattered to them, not whatever random might wander in from Fairfax avenue.

Rafiel Thrall, one of Goldport’s finest, and a lion shifter, patted Tom on the shoulder, “Come on. You’ll fine.  It’s actually impossible for the diner to go under in the time it takes Anthony to pronounce you man and wife.”

Anthony, server extraordinaire – he’d taught both Kyrie and Tom a lot of the tips and tricks of table service – stood nervously between the salad station and the corner booth, wearing a dark suit.  The bridal cake, four layers, created by Laura Miller, the Diner baker, who waved away any attempts at payment, was topped with a couple, created by another diner regular – by bashing gaming figures – and didn’t look particularly like Tom and Kyrie, except for haircolor, but they were both attired in aprons that said “The George.”

Kyrie thought that all in all it was a very fitting set up.

Conan Lung, former enemy, and now friend, sat at one of the small booths by the window, dressed in the western wear he’d adopted when his country and western singing career had started showing signs of life.  He looked a little lost between the ten gallon hat and the cowboy boots, but no one had the courage to tell him, and at any rate, his fiancé Rya liked him that way, so who were they to say anything?

Kyrie herself had just switched her normal jeans and t-shirt and apron for a short formal dress in ivory. This had been done at the insistence of everyone else who said she should have a wedding dress. It was just that wedding dresses rarely came in maternity sizes, and she was aware of her belly bulge showing rather indecently.  But Rya and Bea – the dragon shifter who was dating Rafiel – had pinned a short veil over her hair.

Rafiel pulled Tom towards the front, near Anthony, and Kyrie backed way back, to near the cash register. Tom’s dad, the only parent in attendance, came up from where he’d been waiting at the door to the annex, and gave Kyrie his arm. Because she didn’t know who her parents were – having been found, newborn, at the door to St. Anne’s Catholic Church, one Christmas eve, and having been raised in the foster system – Tom’s dad had agreed to do the honors.

She couldn’t say the man had matured much, since he was a lawyer working for the Triads in New York City, but he’d… Grown in different directions.

Tom said that his father was trying very hard to be a good father, and prospective grandfather, it was just that he had never really learned how to be an adult, or any of those things, so he mostly got very excited about the idea of being a father or grandfather, but forgot the day to day work. Still, he was the best they had, and he was wearing a very handsome tuxedo, and looked the part.

Even better, Kyrie thought, he’d stopped showering them in the weirdest baby gifts ever, from little squeaky mouse toys, to little nets, which he thought would be necessary since he was quite convinced that Kyrie and Tom’s babies would be born as “kitten-dragons.” Kyrie hoped she had finally got it through his head that the ultrasounds showed a human baby, male variety.

But she’d rather not make any bets.

With Conan playing the bridal march softly on the guitar, she walked up to the salad station.

Tom turned, and still looked slightly worried, but beamed at her.

A ray of sun came out and gleamed off the polished surface of the very expensive frier that consumed most of Tom’s worry.

It was going to be all right, Kyrie thought.

She realized her mistake immediately afterwards when something behind her exploded.

Not on paper yet, because there was an error between chair and keyboard, or between gray matter and fingers. I think. Amazon tells me to fix the highlighted, but I can’t find anything highlighted. Will try again today.

But anyway, ladies and germophobics:

OTHER RHODES:

Lily Gilden has a half-crazed cyborg in her airlock who thinks he’s Nick Rhodes,

a fictional 20th Century detective.  If she doesn’t report him for destruction,

she’s guilty of a capital crime.

But with her husband missing,  she’ll use every clue the cyborg holds,

and his detective abilities,  to solve the crime her husband was

 investigating when he disappeared.

With the help of a journalist who is more than he seems,

 Lily will risk everything to plunge into the interstellar

 underworld and bring the love of her life home!

Sound the tocsin. Mayday. Mayday. Sauve-qui-peut.

If you heard those cries in the night, what would you do? Would you turn over and go to sleep again?

If someone rode to your door, their horse all a-foam or their car boiling over and screamed “the English enemy is coming” would you fluff your pillow and think “I’ll just give them a warning and call them back from the ledge. They’re stupid and misguided. Once they are informed, they’ll be fine” and go back to blissful sleep?

And no, not us: THEM. Our side is prone to its own mental issues, mostly depression, so we actually — like Zero Hedge — have predicted a hundred out of zero instance of the left actually trying to herd us into camps (note I didn’t say wanting. I said TRYING) and a hundred out of every one instance of them jailing us on political grounds. (Used to be zero, but hello January sixth 21.) Hence what I think is my curious calling: a profound and unremitting pessimist who has the duty and honor and (shakes fist at sky) G-d given mission of reality checking for conservatives.

I’ve never believed in Freudianism. Not really. I find it mostly a foundation of just-so stories that only fitted one extremely disturbed individual.

But a friend recently reminded me of the old joke “Freudianism is when you say something but you mean your mother.”

I’m not fond of that “This is what you really meant” because I’m sick and tired of the left pulling that nonsense. They seem to have forgotten that to psychoanalyze someone you need to have a set of data that makes sense, or, for that matter, a set of data that’s applied equally. Instead, they just decide that we “really” are racists, sexists and homophobes (there is an epistemological reason for this, but it is rooted in their philosophy, not ours.) And when we fail to sound/act/do anything as racists/sexists/homophobes, and in fact are much more tolerant than their side, and more interested in helping individuals of any shape and color and inclination, they decide we must be speaking in code and that it’s a “dog whistle.” It apparently never occurs to them that communicating such codes and dog whistles would take a 24/7 effort, a vast network and…. oh, yeah, individualists following a plan. My friends on the left, je suis desole, and I agree with you that this is frustrating as heck, but the individualists always fail to organize. You’d actually know if we had a code book, and dog whistles, not because you’d intercept them, or because you’d have to look for them, but because all over this great land of ours people on the right would be shouting at each other in offices, getting in fisticuffs on the street, and hair pulling in supermarkets and the great sound going up would be “Damn it, Bob. I told you Purple Ant means immigrant. Why do you insist on thinking it means gay?”

The only reason I can imagine for them not to perceive that is that they are locked in a philosophy that denies the validity of all other philosophies. Or if you prefer, in a cult.

Any philosophy that says “and it’s invalid to disagree with us. And if you express an opinion/idea/analysis contrary to ours you are a hater who hates” is a totalitarian philosophy. It might not have armies or the control of governments (spoiler, it does though in the US…. well, you’ll see) but if it had them it would already be stacking bodies several deep. And in Europe, where they rule in a velvetish way they’ve taken apart a centuries-old civilization and are in the process of killing entire countries slowly, through denial of care to the elderly and discouragement of births. Because nothing must exist outside it.

You see, their philosophy tells them that destroying civilization is CARING and that after they do that, everyone will be free, the environment will be perfect, we shall study war no more, and it will be paradise. How could you be against that? (Kind of like the puppy kicking morons who thought the only reason we could oppose the craptastic shit they’ve been giving awards to is that we oppose the “inclusion” and “diversity” of the awards (which mostly translates to white, well-off females, sometimes with an Asian female, a white female in a bad perm and fake tan, or a guy in a fright wig) and are afraid for our “privilege” as “White males” — since only one of us was a white male, none of us ran publishing houses and only one was a best-seller, you’d think they’d see the problems: we had no privilege, and frankly I’d like a hell of a lot more diversity than their stultifyingly white and Marxist circles promote. But I’d like it naturally, and for good writing. Good writing doesn’t even enter the equation for them, because they’ve been told that “good” means “Preachy” and “diversity of authors.” Bah.)

Again and again, even as they control society and for the last 20 years at least have been brutally ruthless about suppressing anyone who disagrees with them, they tell us the only reason we disagree with them is “privilege.” And since we have no privilege and they know it, they are now desperately hunting in the weeds for “systemic privilege” which is an invisible thing that only they can see. If they could they chuck us in ponds, and if we drowned we wouldn’t have privilege. (But still be dead.)

Anyway, so I tend not to believe in “coded messages.” Or saying one thing over and over without realizing you’re doing it. Life has very few messages from Fred.

But there are some. And holy hell, I can read print when it’s six feet tall and written in indelible ink.

Which this is.

Look, they’ve gone rabid since 2016. They didn’t see the loss coming. They were planning for everything to go smoothly, as the narrative in their head (The future belongs to them, you know) and what they’ve been taught told them it would. And then…. WHAM.

I don’t know if they realize that the internet totally changed the game. I suspect not, because if they did, they wouldn’t run around doing the world’s stupidest shit while trying to control it.

I suspect they know something has changed, but they have no idea what. And I don’t think — at least consciously — they know they’ve pushed too far, or that they’re at the edge of a massive preference cascade, or that the more they push now — and 2020 was already an excess of panicked pushing — the worse it will get, the faster the flip will come and the harder and more violent it will be.

Subconsciously. Well, there is a reason for a while there they were running around on social media trying to keep the word Romania from being mentioned, or the flag of Romania from being posted.

And that’s what this post is about. The left KNOWS. Subconsciously they KNOW. They’re getting more and more scared that they are about to get a Ceaușescu Christmas gift.

But because their conscious can’t process the threat — because they know — know, I tell you — that they have the majority of people with them; that the youth particularly is theirs now and forever; that those of us who oppose them are poor, ignorant and stupid as well as very old (we’re also rich, machiavelic and full of power. No. Don’t ask me how. Shape shifting?); and they know they’re the good people, and if they question any of those assumptions they’ll stop being good and will be shunned by all the good people — they are acting like rabid weasels in a trap and snapping and pushing ever more loudly, like that will save them.

Save them from what? I don’t know. I mean, the crap that Hunter was up to, in and of itself is bad enough, but one gets the feeling as panicked as they are, there must be far more terrible things hiding in the shadows, things that if they came out would rob them forever of credibility and power, if not outright get them that “Christmas gift.” (Honestly for them losing power and face is worse than death.)

And so–

And so looking at their actions gives you a curious double vision. I said before that I feel like they’re trying to establish the Soviet Union as the Berlin wall is coming down. That’s still true, but everything they do is like that.

Look, they believe they have the majority of people, and yet they massively rig elections. Then they run around telling us we can’t investigate, because that will weaken belief in elections. Yeah. Because “shut up peasant and believe the impossible numbers” builds confidence. They locked the entire country down for a severe flu, on nothing much. They are trying to get everyone to take a vaccine that is not needed for most and makes little sense for anyone but the most at risk (and maybe not for them, since I suspect we already had herd immunity); they are destroying the cities they hold; they are amping the indoctrination in schools to the point even suburban parents finally see it. They are demanding loyalty oaths and Maoist struggle sessions in corporations.

They are what can only be classified as completely and thoroughly insane.

But their subconscious keeps sending out signals. They rigged Jan. 6th but they still were really scared. Scared out of all proportion by a group of patriots carrying flags and signs. At the same time they were also using it for propaganda. I’m sorry, I’m using meme pictures because it’s easier. Also because yesterday a friend posted this meme:

And someone said “Who is taking the pictures? If they were that scared, how come the photographer wasn’t?”

Again, it’s a duality of mind. Their own side was using this for propaganda. For propaganda the representatives needed to be scared. And they were scared. Particularly the ones on the supposed right, which is amazing (and probably means they know better than anyone how pissed their constituents are). But at the same time the photographer wasn’t, and this meant nothing to them.

Because their terror has nothing to do with a group of people they knew were inoffensive and set up for a fall. It has to do with the reason they felt the need to set up a fake “attack” at all. Because they are scared. They are terrified. Despite their philosophy that tells them they can’t lose, they know their loss is inevitable, and are insanely, haphazardly, in a panic, trying to delay it. When each attempt backfires, the panic and the double vision increases.

This all became clear in my head today when I saw this meme:

Ignore the joke. Okay, you’re allowed to giggle. But ignore the joke. I haven’t received the dire warning yet, but all my friends have (yes, I know) always on the “right wing” content.

As far as I can tell, having seen some screen caps my friends have done…. the wording is spot on.

Look at that wording. They admit enough people are angry to warrant this warning. ANGRY. And they of course put disappointment in there, because since we’re pre-ordained to to lose, we MUST, of course, be disappointed, right? That’s their sop. But they know we’re angry. Angry enough they’re trying to silence us.

Look, our side has been coming out of depression — partly because the depression needed the continuously reinforcing push from the information entertainment industrial complex. We’ve largely escaped that and found each other. The reason the gaslighting was so needed is that look, guys, there was never a reason for collective depression, because we’ve had two transformative presidents in the last 50 years: Reagan and Trump. And the left never recovered and will never recover — and the first stage of coming out of a deep, suicidal depression is (TRUST ME ON THIS, chilluns) raging anger. I’m seeing the most quiet and sweet people posting things that even the hot heads didn’t post five or six years ago.

And that is the tip of the iceberg. Because the left’s grand-unified-plan to steal all the things involved destroying the economy and giving us more than enough reasons to be righteously pissed — IF WE HADN’T BEEN BEFORE — so the anger I sense, just off common people on the street is… well…. the very quiet and eery calm before the storm.

Which is why the left is trying to… stop the signs of anger. As though that would stop the anger. Because we can’t be angry at them, right? They are the GOOD people. And if they just do this one simple trick, and don’t allow our simple minds to realize we’re NOT the only ones angry, this will all pass.

They can ignore the screaming outside the window, the bells ringing in the distance, and the smell of fire, and turn over, and go back to sleep. And it will all be all right, because their win in the end. Their philosophy says so.

Wait! It’s not working? They must tamp down on the signs of anger from those very stupid people harder and with more force, and explain their philosophy louder, and make up “lying but true” stories about out history, so that the stupid people will see the invisible demons they’re seeing.

There is only one, very narrow path in which they don’t get a (probably early, if I’m honest) Ceaușescu Christmas gift. One that, yeah, sure, will destroy them, but will also leave a scar in this nation’s psyche that will take centuries to wash off if ever.

And that’s to shock them enough that they realize their philosophy isn’t inevitable, their victory isn’t fated, and that at this point they need to stop being “woke” and actually wake up and engage with the rest of the nation on equal terms, and actually talk.

Before I’m accused of blowing smoke up y’all’s asses, no I don’t think it’s possible. Someone here described the reaction of his autistic son to having his lefty beliefs questioned. But it’s not just the autistic. This is the reaction of cult members. They can’t question because if they do they lose their identity as the “good” and, oh, yeah “the smart” people. And they can’t face that. Just can’t. Or at least most of them can’t and won’t.

Maybe. I mean, they are very scared, and there is a point at which programming breaks. We know that from doomsday cults.

Yeah, okay, it’s a million to one chance but miracles do happen.

And anyway it’s the only thing we can do right now, when the birds have gone silent and the clouds gather in the horizon.

I wonder if humans were always so prone to thinking “if we can control everything from one central point, that will save time and money and make everything perfect” or if where we are is a deformation from generations taught this fallacy which is at the heart of socialism/communism/totalitarianism.

As much as I like blaming everything on Marx (the fact that there is no dedicated pissoir installed on his grave is a reproach on our civilization) the truth is that there was this kind of insane idea at the back of minds going back as far as I can read. You know, the idea that it’s all mechanical, and that most humans are interchangeable widgets who can be controlled by the ‘superior beings’ in the center.

I’m going, however, to assume that it got worse with the industrial age and mass production. Because humans are very good at reasoning from one incident and creating a whole category/class/order. Arguably this was largely responsible for our survival and ascendance to dominant species. Because we learn from very little, and extrapolate whole classes.

We don’t go “Grorrg went into the forest alone and all we found was a mangled hand and a bit of his liver. It’s an isolated case, and we can all totally go to the forest alone.” No. We go “Very bad things in the forest made this happen. Don’t go into the forest alone, particularly at night.”

Of course, half the time this is a misfire. I mean maybe Grorrg was a complete ass who was having affairs with half the women in the village, and he didn’t in fact go into the forest alone. No, he went into the forest followed by every man in the village, plus Mkrog’s pet tiger, and he got no more than he deserved.

But “Don’t go into the forest alone” still makes sense, since we know there are things there that could eat us, except for the little bit of liver.

So, because we are prone to doing that, it’s common to think and say things like “I did this, it worked for me. You do this.” In fact, half the people in the world go around pissing off the other half on any given day by doing that. Only, of course, you know, the halves switch regularly, so it’s impossible to catch all the assholes and beat them with the two by four with the nails in it. Sometimes we are the assholes.

But why is that incredibly annoying? If something works for someone, why wouldn’t it work for you?

Well– yeah. Okay. Look my best friend, growing up, who was closer to me than any sister could be, was very good at ballet. Fortunately she had known me from birth, so she never told me “well, if you need to relax you should learn ballet. I always feel happy and energized.”

She didn’t do that, because she KNEW me. She knew I had two left feet, no spacial visualizing ability and no memory for movement. Which means even in normal aerobics classes (which was the gym classes we had, by and large) I usually looked at what the teacher was doing and then executed it backwards, sideways and tripping on my own two feet at the end. In fact, it should be impossible to mess it up as badly as I did, and most gym teachers refused to believe I’d done it accidentally and instead insisted that I was mocking them…. Add to that that while she was this lithe, elfin critter, I was taller than most men by 12 (for those who met me, yes, Portuguese men were tiny back then) and had shoulders like a lumberjack.

In the same way, knowing she was desperately dyslexic, I never told her if she wanted to know the end of the story to something I’d started, she could d*mn well write it herself. (No. I’m dyslexic too, but …. something happened to things that went in her head and needed to come out on paper.)

So my solutions didn’t work for her and hers didn’t work for me.

We all have had relationships like that and understand that. It’s just when you go from there to characteristics that are…. less tangible, like will power, ability to concentrate, ability to memorize, or even — just — ability to keep interest, we forget we’re not all the same and attribute the worst possible motives to someone — including ourselves — when the good example fails to stick.

Look, take me (please. Most of the time I’m very tiresome.) I’ve been blessed with more talents and opportunities than I ever believed possible. Particularly when I was crying every night before gym class. So, if I am so smart, why ain’t I rich?

Well…. many things. In theory I know what to do so we can be debt free and doing very well indeed. In theory I know what to do so my career takes off, too.

The devil is in the fiddly bits. (Not those fiddly bits. Take your minds out of the gutter.)

For instance, sure, I know the theory of how to save money and invest, and…. but my brain finds investments all too risky. And besides, it rather have food and things, so we have them if we need them.

As for the career….

I figured out part of the problem — besides ADHD etc. — yesterday, because I was talking to younger son who said something like “Portugal is choc full of talent. Choc full of people who can perform miracles with inadequate materials and training ONCE. Then abandon whatever they just did and go off to try more difficult things.”

Not only is he right, but holy hell, did it hit hard. You see, as I’m packing my hobby materials, and realizing some I’ll never do anything with ever again (and getting rid of them) I realized that I tend to buy/find things to do and be obsessive about them till I do them well. And then lose all interest. Worse, I don’t really have any interest in the things I make. I just want to be able to do them. (Hence the strange saga of egg carving. Don’t go there.) Now this was part of son’s pitch for “Since you’re going to make weird crap, let me sell it” but you know, temperament is in some measure inherited, and–

Well, you see, that’s the problem with writing. Writing is very easy to succeed at if you do the same book over and over, with minor variations on a regular schedule. So, of course, I need to write in multiple genres, and my books CHANGE because well, otherwise I get bored. And….

Now the second is semi-controllable. I have after all managed to write sequels. And I’m working on it, because unfortunately professional success passes by series these days. But it took forever to discipline myself enough to approach it this way.

Hell, it took forever to even understand it about myself. And the dime only fully dropped this week.

You’re probably going to say most people are not that complicated. But I really think that most people are. They just appear simple from a distance.

So “From each according to his ability; to each according to his need” sounds great…. from a great distance. But who determines what each needs, when some of us take years to figure it out and have to make mistakes to find out.

I mean, look, how would I guess I was an introvert who needs to see some people every day? I should have been happy in the suburbs. I love not seeing other people from my windows (or not that many people.) I like well tended gardens. I — I go berserk and put myself under house arrest, because when I walk out it’s like walking through blasted land, with no human beings in sight. And the back of my brain panics and goes nuts…. and then depresses me, because it’s obviously not safe out there — where is everyone? — and so I shouldn’t go out either.

Now try being a central planner, planning for millions and millions (or if the one-world-government ever got their way) billions of people.

To do that, you have to imagine people as spherical balls, all alike. We know if we roll them down a slope of niches, most will end up in one, right?

Humans are not like that. Humans are like pieces of a very complicated, intentionally designed to deceive puzzle, so it’s impossible to tell if you’re looking at part of a sofa or a cat’s tail.

You make it impossible for humans to find their own niches, do what they want, and adjust to their peculiar brains and circumstances and you’re going to have unending misery, uneeded death and terrible suffering. Or as we call it: communist countries.

You give humans the same basic start and conditions: like, you know equality before the law, and stability and let them act each in his own self interest and boy, howdee, you have miracles of tech, more food produced than could ever be needed, and a world full of wonder.

No, people won’t all end up in the same place. How could they? Not only do they all have different abilities and capacities and problems, but they deal with them differently. So, yeah, some people will be a lot richer than others. But the point is, in a free society, “poor” is what middle class is in a lot of the other world.

Oh, sure, there will be the very poor and dysfunctional, like the homeless. But there is a level of damage at which you can’t really make people function and work in society. At best you can ensure they don’t starve to death, which mostly the free world manages.

But you can’t save every one all the time. Horrible things will still happen, because humans aren’t all the same, and some are completely messed up, whether it’s their fault or not. (And we can’t know.)

It’s a terrible thing to accept, if you’re halfway competent, but no. You can’t bring everyone up to even half your level. Best you can do is look after yourself and those you love. And even then, sometimes, you fail with those you love best. Because humans are complicated.

But central planning doesn’t solve that problem. It solves the problem of making sure that all identical spheres end up in identical places.

And because humans aren’t identical spheres, it tries to grind, shave and shatter the irregular puzzle pieces into spheres.

Which works about as well as you’d expect. In the end you have useless pieces, and a complete mess.

It’s time we start proclaiming loudly that humans aren’t identical widgets. And refuse to oblige them when they insist on shoving the cat into the sofa.

Somewhere, in a notebook from when I was maybe 12 or 13 which, if the fates are merciful, has gotten eaten by Portuguese rats (last found in the potato cellar at mom’s house, with a ton of my other stuff from that time. In a box. Note I didn’t bring it with me. No complaints) was a phrase penned with great solemnity by adolescent Sarah: The important thing is not to be happy. The important thing is to be useful for something.

Now, look, it wasn’t even a bad idea for a creature caught in a vice grip of hormones to fixate on. I mean, not so long as I only applied it to myself (and I only did.) It gave me something more useful to do than focusing on what made me happy, particularly since at 13 happiness is a moving target, and a thing of passing state of mind. Something that doesn’t last, and has nothing to do with what adult-me comprehends as happiness.

It was also a key to … becoming who I wanted to be. After all to be useful, you have to have practical skills, right? It probably led me into languages, when I could easily have studied something I could do in my sleep, like philosophy. Mind you, languages haven’t been impressively useful in my life, but that’s because I took a sharp sideways turn and chose another fate. If I’d stayed in Portugal, it was a practical and useful degree. (Even if I didn’t like it.)

It also led to things like learning to keep house (more or less in the face of mom’s baffled protests, since I was on a college track and college track means “never having your hands in dishwater.”) and cook, and how to make at least some things.

No, the problem with that maxim is when you take it out of the real of trying to shape your own character. Or of course when you take it to excess. (Excess, me? Don’t be ridiculous. Moderation is my middle name. My very occluded middle name. Spelled in invisible ink. At midnight. In an alien alphabet.) When you take it to excess, you’ll torture yourself trying to be useful, get upset when you have to take a day off because you’re sick/tired/depressed, and generally treat yourself like crap. Maybe it’s better than being useless, but speaking for a friend — a very close and personal friend who shares the space behind my eyes — you’d have to look at it from outside. Because being a neurotic mess who routinely fails at self-care has its own price. As do my occasional total depressive shut downs when the bitch who runs my subconscious decides that writing isn’t important and won’t change anything, and I’m a useless waste of breath, because that’s all I know how to/can do. (And no, the bitch isn’t amenable to my pointing out that on various occasions books — written by others — have saved my sanity and once or twice my life. She’ll just sneer I’m not Heinlein or Pratchett or any of those other “real” writers. They might be good for something, while I’m mostly good for occupying space.)

However the real evil of it is when you turn it outward and start applying it to… well, everything else.

Today I read one of the most shocking headlines I’ve ever read. “What are pandas good for?” And then the entire article went on to evaluate how each species isn’t or isn’t good for the “environment.”

What in the name of holy fandago is that shit? pardon my Scroladian. First of all, when has the “environment” become something away and aside from the species inhabiting it, and some ‘scientist’ or idiot with too much time on his hands and a bureaucratic job gets to decide what is good for it or isn’t? It’s like they imagine themselves priests of the “environment” interpreting its needs.

Which is the other side of this: when you or anyone else in power decides what is good for something, and what is good for nothing, it’s going to end in tears. When the purpose of everything — particularly living things — has to be justified, it means the default mode in your head is non-existence, and everything that exists has to justify its existence.

It means that your “environment” ideally is nothing. Not even rocks, because rocks exist.

At which point I have to ask…. Where precisely do you come from? The void, without form or being? May we request you go back there, then?

The worst regimes of mankind came from people who decided who was useful and what they were useful for.

In the entire sorry history of tyranny, mass graves and suffering caused by such regimes, there is one thing that was never recorded: a decision that made sense or was justified by its results. Unless of course, the results desired were death and “void without form or being.”

It doesn’t matter what they considered useful, or preferable, or what philosophy they used to justify giving someone the power to choose, the result is always death in batch lots, both for those slotted to die, and for those who die later, because those people knew how to do things like raise food, and int he dark ages that come after the massacre, no one knows that.

Utilitarianism has been applied to people for my entire life. And those of us who know history and have more than one functioning brain cell, have screamed against it. Because sometimes, someone’s entire life might seem like a waste, until that crucial moment when their being there keeps a car from running over the much shorter kid they’d never see; or their lending a helping hand keeps someone alive another day, who in turn keeps someone alive another day; or their lending a ear makes someone’s life burden a little easier, and allows the other person to create something that improves lives for millions.

The world and life is a complex tapestry. There is no one who has perfect knowledge of it. And no one who can decide who needs to be here and who doesn’t, who is useful and who isn’t.

Heck, we saw during the covidiocy that the decision on what was essential and who was essential were a comedy of errors. The dairy plants were essential, but the factory that made the essential filter to make that milk legal to sell wasn’t, for instance.

How much more difficult is it to decide if someone should be alive at all or not. And why should anyone?

Over a lifetime of arguing with friends who are abortion advocates, the most hilarious of arguments adduced by their friends is that it’s better for an unwanted baby to never get to be born, because they’d be unwanted, which means unhappy and probably criminal and destructive. (My husband and I would very much like to show you our middle fingers. We have TWO complete sets. Sure our life is not unalloyed bliss, but by and large we do better than most. And better than a lot of extravagantly “wanted” children.) Coming down on “these people aren’t useful because they won’t be happy” is perhaps the most hypocritical weasely position in the history of weasels. Who are you to judge who is happy? Or what leads to happiness? Or even what is happiness for someone else. There have been times when sitting on a sunny chair by the window and reading a not totally repulsive book was happiness to me.

But applying that to entire species?

I’m used to the insanity of applying it to humans. “Humans are bad for the environment” say the half educated morons, as though humans weren’t natural creatures and as such part of the environment. (Yes, natural. Last I checked I’m not even a tiny bit unnatural. No preservatives or colorants went into making me, last I checked.)

But now apparently the crazy idiots (do they still call themselves greens? I don’t think they like plants very much) who want to kill the environment in order to save it are extending this to other species.

I will make a prediction that before another year passes we will see articles on how some species should be “eliminated” to “save the Earth.”

And of course it will be species like pandas which are cute, and relatively inoffensive. Though I suspect they’ll start with apes first, because they’re most similar to humans, and we know these asshats hate humans most of all.

We’re going to swing from “ALL SPECIES AND THINGS THAT LOOK LIKE SPECIES MUST BE PRESERVED AT ALL COSTS” to “ANY SPECIES THAT ISN’T USEFUL MUST DIE.”

I have no idea who they think they are to decide whether a species is needed or not, or whether in the vast, unimaginable panoply of the Earth or even the Universe it might not be a panda, or a naked mole rat, or perhaps a sloth who provides the final piece of the puzzle, be it psychological or physical that propels humans (and with it all of Earth life) to the stars, perhaps filling a desolate and empty universe with life and purpose.

I suggest next time they start intoning in polysyllabic words about how a species is or isn’t “necessary” for “the environment” we take them to the nearest zoo and tip them into the tiger pit, thereby allowing them to attain their highest purpose in life.

And if there is no zoo in your area, a landfill will do. The rats are small but very industrious.

Or at least I suggest we take them to that location and suggest this could be their utility. Make them wake up before it’s too late.

Because the poisonous idea that one person, or even a group of them gets to dictate what person, what animal and what rock has purpose, and what should be destroyed is obscene.

And it consumes everything till nothing remains. Because in the end, in the vastness and emptiness of chaos, nothing is useful for anything.

Sure. Perhaps they are tools, and as such only good for one thing. But anyone else, including pandas has purposes they can’t even guess. Even if it’s (just) sitting in a patch of sun, gnawing on bamboo, while a little kid watches them enthralled.

Before we get off the ground on this post, let’s establish that no, no one creates anything ex nihilo. Or as one of the prime examples of the people we’ll be talking about said “you didn’t build that.” (Turns out he’d stolen that phrase from one of our current afflictions as is, and she’d probably stolen it from someone else. Which is rather a telling point.) That phrase is in fact at the crux of the divide in America and probably a bigger problem than any other, because I think the others flow out of it.

None of us creates anything out of clear nothing. For instance, in my work I use words, and that’s before getting to the computers and networks that allow me to distribute it. Maybe there was a pre-human somewhere at the dawn of time, who made up the words so he could tell a story. Maybe. I find that somewhat hard to believe. Language tends to come by accretion and use. Not “Hey, look, I created a whole new language and you’re supposed to learn it.” (In fact, I’m fairly sure that’s a mental illness. Or a sign of being a very gifted young kid. My sons tried this trick a number of times.) Particularly if there is no concept of language.

But all that is to our purpose nothing. Given that we start out as humans with language, and that there is a fund of stories we were told and on which we can draw for inspiration and structure, there is a vast amount of creativity you can employ in writing a story.

It can be — and sometimes even is — something completely new (if written with no known structure, these are also usually very bad. Not always, but usually.); it can be something that is new of its kind; or it can be a rehashing of a story that’s been told a million times, this time with a big difference; or a small difference; or no difference at all, just told anew.

All of these involve different levels of creativity. There is another level of creativity that is sort of down or sideways from there which is “Assembly story” or “paint by numbers” (though paint by numbers normally refers to following without much inspiration and can result in weirdly compelling stories, so we’ll call it “assembly story.”) This is more like creating a toy from a kit, or embroidering on a fabric that’s marked. There is work but no real creativity involved.

If you are saying “Ahah, Hollywood” ont he last three (from rehashing a story on) you’re not wrong. It’s also the vast majority of traditional publishing.

There might be a reason for that. And I mean a neurological level reason.

I know I have said that the left are the “Good Boys and Girls.” Understand I say this with derision and not derision at morality. They don’t really have morality. Or if they do it’s not traditional morality. They are guided mostly by “want to fit in” and “want to look good for Sempai.” So, they’re those annoying kids in school who were always “behaving exactly the way teacher said to” even when it made no sense or was annoying. Also, they were the ones who would turn on us when we expressed doubts or asked questions.

I never really thought about it, except for the (understandable for someone of my stamp) desire to give them a good thumping behind the bike shed. Not that I did, unless they really upped their game to tattle telling or physically messing with me or those under my protection. I’ve said it before, what keeps me from being a terror is that I’m too lazy. And besides, the schools never even had a bike shed. But I did sneer at them a lot, with curled lip, and took the opportunity — real, imaginary or created — to slipt he verbal knife in. Not that they cared. They were in it for Sempai. Or virtue signaling. Or self admiration.

What had never occurred to me before is: What if they’re that way because they can’t imagine another way of being? “Can’t imagine” being the operative words in that sentence.

You see, recently — take that as the last three years — I’ve been getting weirded out by one, very particular form of trolling. I see it on this blog, and most recently I saw it at another blog, whose owner, once wrote a novel (though that’s neither his profession nor his main thing in life.)

The attack goes something like this “Why would I believe your analysis. You’re a NOVELIST.”

In my case, they have been known to take that further to “you write fantasy.”

A friend says — and he’s not wrong — that they will use anything to dismiss a POV they don’t like. Yah. Sure, they do. And they have.

But that one is a particularly bizarre one.

Why would the fact that one writes fantasy for a living — or that one ONCE wrote a mainstream novel — mean that one cannot trust any analysis from that person, including number or sociological analysis?

If you dig down, what they’re accusing us of is this: You live in a fantasy world, so you don’t speak from reality.

This is bizarre, because of course we don’t live in a fantasy world.

Look, as most of my fans know, I prefer science fiction, even when it’s mostly so far in the future there is little “real science” because “it’s maybe possible in the future.” BUT that’s neither here nor there. I can write about people who change into animals. That doesn’t mean I THINK I CAN CHANGE INTO AN ANIMAL. I mean, sure we joke about it or play-tend about it in comments all the time, but we are not that. We do understand the rules of the physical world we live in.

Or take darkships. I am quite, QUITE aware we have neither flying cars nor some kind of energy weapon that performs outside known physics, nor anti-grav nor genetic engineering. I mean, dude, seriously. WHY wouldn’t I be.

Sure, I can sit down and spin out a world quite different from our own. And? That doesn’t mean I don’t know what our world is. One could argue I really need to know what our world is, and understand cause and effect really well before I know how to make a world that reads plausible to ANYONE.

And once I started thinking about it, I started remembering other instances of the left not seeming able to figure out what “creating something” means.

Like, you know, the idiot on the left who did a dive into my books and psychoanalyzed it as though my female characters were all me. (And for those who read me, yes, he thought both Athena and Dyce were me. Not to mention Kyrie, who is rock bottom practical.) He then proceeded to deduce what I wanted in a man from it. Like, because Kit and Thena have a telepathic bond, that is REALLY what I want. (Yes, it was useful for plot at that time and in that place. And I usually feel guilty when I use the convenient. OTOH, well. It’s part of the world building and is used later.) Or the fact that Dyce gets involved with a police officer means I really want an authority figure. (Seriously, dude, read some of the genre. It’s a trope.) And I don’t remember what his major dysfunction was about Kyrie, but you know, it was again stupidly based on the idea all my main characters — particularly the ones written first person — are me.

It never seemed to occur to him “why should they be?” or even that these three women are all completely different. (And apparently he couldn’t fit Luce into the picture, so he ignored A Few Good Men. Possibly because my being a six foot six scarred blond male was too much to understand, but it had to be me, right? because no one can make anything up, right?)

Then there was the leftist writer with whom I tried to collaborate some years back who had a collapsofit and became unable to work with me, when I couldn’t tell him about the real people I based my characters on (on account of they don’t exist.) I think he stopped believing me after that, so you know, all understanding was at an end.

Or take the “serious” analysis (Spoiler: it isn’t. It’s part a belief they’re psychic, and part relying on stupid tropes) they do on the Greats books that all assume it’s either “dog whistles” or hiding some deep desire for something or other, or reflecting the author’s life.

At the heart of it there seems to be the certainty no one can MAKE UP anything. That all we can do is spin and recycle, either the work of other people, or things we SEE AND THINK ARE REAL.

This is part of the reason they’re so scared of us, and so convinced we are insane. Because even our casual jokes about lizard people, they think we think are real. Must be, otherwise, how would we make jokes about them so off the cuff.

I want to point out here this has NOTHING to do with intelligence. I was in gifted classes most of my school life (for my sins) some truly aimed at the gifted and not the “notice me Sempai” smart enough to fake it to perfection. And yet, when there was a creative writing or art exercise, I found half of what my classmates turned in was rehashed what we read last week and/or at most a mash up of two things.

Now, I’m not a stunningly creative person. At least I don’t think so. Or at least, I trained myself to work within a certain framework. Part of everything I read is part of me, so it’s part of my work, in a way. But, oh, dear, miles and miles away, sideways and upside down of most people in those classes.

And of course, I get characters for free, and they tend to be their own persons. (Though I mined my kids for Dyce’s son, but that’s partly because I’ve actually not been around a ton of kids, so I lack range, but also because eh my kids were stunningly entertaining.) Not me. They want their own stuff and do their own stuff. I use friends and family for walk ons and sometimes very minor characters because it amuses me and pleases them, but the main story drivers I get for free.

But even this level of creativity renders me suspicious and scary to the left, who think I apparently walk through life having illusions about flying cars and dragons.

Suddenly the run of warmed-up reboots and sequels (“Stunningly different. Now with more victimhood”) from Hollywood make sense, as does the bizarre point-counting of traditional publishing. (One oppressed minority, ten points, one trans trendy character, twenty points, one rape, ten points, three pages of Marxist theory fifty points — I believe this one will get push and win awards!)

It also explains how they come up with their theories of society. You know “we pass a law and bad thing goes away/stops being done.” Or “police cause crime, because neighborhoods where police don’t visit as often have less crime.” Or ‘if we give kids tastless lunches we consider healthy, they’ll eat them and be healthy” or “if we give people mortgages, they’ll become worthy of mortgages.”

I’ll be honest people: these are people not only not capable of rebellion, but only understanding rebellion in terms of cosplay. They think we’re stupid, because we’re not doing exactly what the teacher wants, and there is no possibility that we think the teacher is wrong, because reality is consensus and the teacher dictates it. People who believe/create other things must be crazy and see things that don’t exist.

I don’t know what this means, or how to reach them. Or how they became that way. Perhaps they are the default human, and we’re in fact weird? Or perhaps they were made that way by something?

And in either case, how do we get them to believe we exist: as in we’re a different type of thing, and not whatever they come up with to explain us?

More later. Sorry. I forgot I had an eye appointment. We go to same doctor we have gone to for 30 years, which means Colorado Springs. And the roads are terrible and traffic worse. So I just got home and have a ton of things to deal with I should have done this morning.

Maybe more later, but for now, please forgive me.

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I am on a panel on writing totalitarian societies, and attempting to cause trouble on discord, but everyone else are responsible adults, alas ;)

*I think Frank’s Guest Post has enough validity to be published here and discussed here, but I have some quibbles with it. Not enough to be “disagreements” as such, but serious quibbles, so I am going to list them:

1- True a wall won’t keep TRULY DETERMINED immigrants away. However, most immigrants (unless bizarrely desperate) aren’t THAT determined. Most people — trust me on this — don’t want to go to a strange place and live there. We don’t need an absolute barrier, we need a DISCOURAGING barrier. Which is why Trump’s wall slowed immigration way the heck down. This is the principle of a fence around your house. Or a house alarm. As an alarm salesman explained “The sign alone will stop most would-be-burglars. It might be a fake, but it’s too much work.” This is what we want in place. For one, the people really determined and crafty enough to get in, have already passed a test of sorts.

2- It’s not Mexico. That open border is open to the THE WORLD. we can’t have the world here.

3- Soros wants one world government because he knows it will be a tyranny. It’s impossible to be responsive to everyone in that big a polity. we might already be too big, (but thank heavens we’re ornery.) A one-world-government will be an intolerable tyranny to 99% of it. Also, the most ineffective government ever. So.

4 – I don’t object to your method of making citizens. I would limit the velocity of it. There are problems with having mostly foreign-born people. Ask the Romans. And there is a problem with too many immigrants. TRUST me.

5 – A better solution, in my opinion and perhaps as practicable is to stop welfare to immigrants. ALL forms of welfare and benefits paid for by citizens, including but not limited to schooling and medical care (no worries. Some charitable organization will pay, but with more supervision than the government.) until two years after citizenship. (That last one might not be constitutional, so it can be “till citizenship” and make that a minimum of 7 years, by which point you’ll know if you’re going to want to go back.

That’s my quibbles and counter-proposal. – SAH*

How to Solve America’s Immigration Problem (and Save the World as a Side Effect) – by Frank

America has an immigration problem. Even those who want the world to have unfettered access to America recognize that our laws do not allow it, so we must either change our laws or change the circumstances. Unrestricted immigration advocates like George Soros would do away with the nation state in favor of a one-world government. How that government would be organized is an open question, so that is hardly a solution. Changing the circumstances is more difficult, but could go hand-in-hand with changing the law.

My wife, the chemist, explains that the root of the problem is entropy. If you pour a tea kettle of hot water into a bowl of cold water, pretty soon you have a bowl of lukewarm water. Putting a barrier (like a border wall) between the hot and cold water only slows down the exchange. Canada and America have very similar levels of economic opportunity. Hence there is no great rush of Canadians to America or Americans to Canada even without walls or even rivers dividing most of the 1900-mile border. The 1900-mile border between Mexico and the U.S., despite numerous lengths of wall and many law enforcement patrols along it, proves a much less hardy barrier. The economy and job creation level in America is just so much stronger than that of Mexico, that America proves an irresistible draw to much of Mexico’s impoverished population. Even at the lower rungs of the American economy, the opportunity is so great that Mexicans living in the U.S. sent 26 billion dollars back to their families in Mexico in 2017.

So how do we solve the root of the problem? Well one solution only proposed by those most impervious to criticism is to invade Mexico and fix it by reconstituting their government along American lines. No one who’s been there can realistically deny that if the Gadsen purchase had included Baja California, that region would be an American Riviera filled with huge hotels and resorts and positively booming with economic activity, rather than the lackluster backwater that it is. But changing the culture and mores of a country is not something that can easily be imposed by an occupying army. The former British colonies around the world show what a spotty record results despite a century or more of trying.

Demonstrably, more people want to come to America than currently live in America, and certainly more than the vast majority of Americans are willing to accept. So how do we change our immigration laws to, as President Trump suggests, let the right ones in? Sure we could just let in the doctors and engineers and such, but what about those poorer immigrants who have later so enriched our country? Do we want to close our doors to all of them? How could we convince ourselves that those we let in want to continue to support the great American experiment even if they aren’t credentialed yet like Anheuser and Busch or Carnegie? Well, we already have laws on how to become American citizens. What if we require that any non-American who wants to move to the U.S. learn English and pass the citizenship test before ever coming to our country? To facilitate this process, we will have to turn our embassies and consulates into training centers in English and the Constitution. Once a would-be immigrant has passed the citizenship test, he would be added to the list of eligible immigrants. At that point those on the list would be allowed in based on the order of their seniority of having passed the citizenship test and on how many immigrants America decides to allow each year. Maybe we could even make a big live TV show of the list announcement like the NFL draft. Of course we would have to be vigilant to make sure the citizenship test remains valid and fair and not allow lowering of the standard. Nobody said it wouldn’t take constant vigilance. Heinlein’s concept of requiring military service as a prerequisite to full citizenship might be a step too far, but how about requiring even native-born Americans to pass the citizenship test to be able to vote. They might be forced to learn something other than anti-Americanism in high school.

But, you object, there would still be hundreds of thousands, maybe millions who would go through the training, take the citizenship test, but still have to wait for years to get into this country. Exactly! And what would they do while they waited? Would they become impatient with the governance of their own country that led them to want to emigrate to America in the first place? Would they seek to make their own country run more like America in the respect of the rule of law over tribal and familial relationships or raw exercise of power by those holding government positions? Might we create a cadre of millions of wannabe Americans armed with the knowledge of how America came to be a country better off than theirs? Might it not occur to those people that they would prefer to make their government and economy in the likeness of ours while continuing to hold onto all their own cultural heritage? Wouldn’t it be great to have a world still made up of many diverse nations, but where everyone had the opportunity to be prosperous?