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Things have been drifting my way that make me raise eyebrows and say with Inigo Montoya: I don’t think that word means what you think it means.

Apparently believing abortion is wrong is out of the mainstream; believing gay marriage is wrong is out of the mainstream; believing transexuality isn’t the load of hogswallow that our society is being fed is out of the mainstream; being a Christian is out of the mainstream; and being convinced that you have rights as an individual which were granted to you by G-d and the government can’t take away is out of the mainstream.

What they aren’t actually telling us is: Out of the mainstream WHERE?

I mean, of course all of those are out of the mainstream in our better universities, where no one would go so far as to espouse one of those opinions, where they might be overheard and mocked — mocked! — as being gauche by their fellow socialist pudding heads.

And some of them are out of the mainstream in various places around the world. I wouldn’t advise you to go to a non-European Catholic country where faith is taken seriously and start babbling about how men can be women, women can be men, and it’s all about just saying so.

For that matter, I wouldn’t advise you to go and be flamboyantly gay or trans in an European country, out of the hangouts of the bien pensant, and where the authorities can’t hear you. Take it from someone who has crossed Europe, inconspicuously speaking the local language, and too poor to stay in even medium-expensive places: the urbane European is a myth. The woke European is a myth. There might be a few, again, in the academic hangouts, but if you get them to let their hair down and speak frankly, after hours, you’re going to find yourself blinking and being rather puzzled. Because the imaginary “hatey” rednecks of leftism’s fevered imagination have absolutely nothing on a “Sophisticated” European when it comes to hating anyone who sticks out and is not “normal for local populations. A lot of naive Americans have found that to their shock.

As for most of Africa and the Middle East? Well, you know, local tribal customs might vary on what is homosexuality and transexuality throughout Africa (and trust me, okay? EVEN what looks like transexuality to western eyes often isn’t and is in fact a rather horrible situation that works — maybe — as well as anything works where you live close to the bone and life is a constant struggle. It ain’t because they’re “enlightened” or “more tolerant.”)

In the middle East…. I have absolutely no idea what Islam’s view on abortion is, though judging from some of its other dictates, I presume it’s a child if the father wants it, and not if the father doesn’t. But pretty much all the other things, other than individual rights — and individual rights aren’t believed in anywhere out of the West, and even there…. mostly in the US — are not just “disapproved of” in Islam. They’re crimes. Punishable by death.

So, yeah, I do realize the US is out of the mainstream with most of the world. At least in believing in individual rights.

Because we believe in individual rights, we’re also way more tolerant of individual quirks. Mostly gay marriage didn’t raise a lot of eyebrows. I mean, a lot of us would get pissed off at forcing churches to officiate at gay weddings, and don’t get me started on the idiotic lawfare against Christian Bakers (Look, it’s idiotic on both sides, okay? You’re allowed to think a “gay marriage” isn’t a real marriage, but realize it’s real to the people celebrating and do the cake on that principle. Like, I have a friend who is Hindu, but he’s okay with buying fake leather sofas, okay? I have no idea if he’d design one for them, but I imagine if his avocation ran to couture he’d be quite happy to make a fake leather jacket. Now, when it comes to stupid cakes with the devil and dildos? The chick engaging in that lawfare should be taken out and beaten in the public square for having the worst taste since Hillary Clinton wore a yellow pant suit. And OF COURSE if someone doesn’t want to bake a cake for sale — for any reason or none — the client should go elsewhere. THAT frankly is the biggest stupidity ever. The courts should throw all those cases out for the plaintiffs being too stupid to not drown when it rains. “Waitaminute…. you know this person disapproves of your choice, but what will make your day complete is having him bake your cake. You’re either dumber than your common garden rock or you are trying to get someone to engage in bondage and domination play with you without their consent. I do suggest you withdraw the suit, before I throw you in jail for rape.” ….. yeah, I know, I have beautiful dreams.)

Sure. A lot of people think is a sin, but they also know they, themselves are sinners. Among my inner circle are gay couples and committed Christians, and believe it or not no bonfires have been lit when we all get together; no one has dragged anyone to the roof, or dropped walls on them. Actually, I don’t remember any harsh words. Mind you, the subjects under discussion are usually science fiction, fantasy, politics (and our POLITICS) tend to be in tune or house decorating, not what anyone does in bed. Because seriously, who discusses that at a barbecue? The essence of it being that most Christians would think their engaging in it is wrong (though some still do, because they’re human and broken) but they’re not going to judge, lest they should be judged. And we’re wealthy and well mannered enough to live and let live.

In the same way if you come into our group, claiming to be a sex you obviously aren’t, most people will shrug and go along, because why not? I mean this was true in the eighties when a six foot seven Marine who looked like his face was ripped with an ax off a mountain crag lived under the charming delusion that when he dressed in a dress or skirt, with a wig EVERYONE thought he was a beautiful woman. Even though he wore size 14 wide seven inch heels.

Our group of rather introverted geeks would shrug and go “sure, why not. At least he doesn’t think he’s Napoleon. Addressing him as Emperor with a French accent would get old.” I objected to his hitting on me in the kitchen, but not because at the moment he was wearing a dress and thought he was female. I objected to it because he was coming on to a married woman and being obtuse about getting it through his head I really meant “no.” (No touching, otherwise I’d have done something interesting with a knife — even though he was a marine — but really stupidly persistent.)

Was he really trans? Don’t know. Don’t care. I’m not paid to evaluate the minds of others.

I do sternly object to having children on puberty blockers, because I know someone whose children have to be on these due to a rare genetic condition. When they were first prescribed he acquainted us with all the side effects. And you know what? NO ONE SHOULD SUBJECT A MINOR TO THAT UNLESS IT REALLY IS NEEDED FOR A PHYSICAL, NOT A PSYCHOLOGICAL CONDITION. Adults? Well…. if one of my kids were considering it, I’d argue like hell against it, not just because they’d make the world’s ugliest women, bar none, but because — seriously — even in cases of “real” gender dysphoria, in the present state of science it’s a very high price to pay to be a pretend version of what your mind tells you that you are.

ONLY if you absolutely have no other choice, should you consider it. And if you really want kids, have kids before. I’m not going to say there aren’t cases in which transitioning isn’t actually warranted. I’m not other people. I don’t know. But I’m going to say the process is horrific, and most people end up stuck somewhere neither fish nor fowl nor good red meat. That means for a lot of the rest of their lives, they’re going to be given very weird looks. And feel out of place. Still, as someone who immigrated and also inhabits a limbo region, at least as soon as she opens her mouth, I’m not going to say some people won’t prefer that to the natural self. I’m not them.

And I think most Americans are kind of in the same place.

Abortion? I am out of the mainstream here, for various reasons. And have changed my mind on it over my life time. I don’t think anyone should have an abortion, unless it’s medically required. There’s a ton of reasons, including the fact that I knew within five minutes I’d conceived older son and that he was a boy. Never wavered. And never had that before, despite trying for six years. Younger son, OTOH? Well, I still can’t “sense” him. Possibly because he’s too much like me. Who knows? Anyway, between that, the fact that I’ve seen women in abusive relationships get bullied into abortions, and the fact that there is quite safe contraception generally available, I think the bar for “I want an abortion” should be much higher.

BUT note, please, that I’m out of the American (and possibly the west) mainstream here. Most of America believes an abortion is okay up to ten weeks, and after that it should be restricted/forbidden. Or at least that’s what polls keep coming up with. That is in fact the law in most countries that allow abortion.

The crazy “abortion at any point for any reason” is not majority opinion here or anywhere in the world. So Governor Northam and his post birth abortion can go right to extremist hell.

As for being a Christian, it is, if not a majority belief certainly a widespread one worldwide. It is still a majority in America. How can something most people believe make you an extremist? I don’t know. Ask them.

Then there’s believing in individual rights. And they’ve got us dead to rights, there, boys: in a world filled with absolute monarchs, satraps, petty despots, totalitarian horrors (and Methodists! — reference joke) we are indeed unique and “Extreme.”

Should we suppress our extremist beliefs that we have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness unhindered by an abusive and intrusive government?

WHY?

The first question, of course, is who benefits. Certainly not individual Americans. So, why should we do it? In which way is it good for us?

Looking around at other countries where the belief doesn’t exist, what is in it for us?

I say often that the future comes from America. You might not get what I mean by that, but trust me. Almost all the innovations that make our life fat and comfortable started out in America. Sometimes Israel pitches in and more rarely another anglophone country.

However, most of what the rest of the world does is take what we invent and develop, or write, or put on screen, and try to give it some kind of a personal spin. But without us? none of it would exist.

Now, because America is a multi-racial nation, picking up the best from all over the world (and keeping it) this can’t be due to our vaunted blood lines.

So what is it due to?

Unless you’ve visited Europe, and, say, been sealed into a rapidly heating train in summer, despite the railway company knowing that the air conditioning is out in that carriage, you don’t appreciate how much that belief that individuals get to make their own choices matters in America.

The rest of the world, and those who are no longer our countrymen rail against central heating and air conditioning. Now, part of it is that none of these winnies know the climates most of us deal with. Sure, Portugal can go without central heating. Comeovertomytown and try it, in the dead of winter. Go to North Carolina in the heat of a very humid Summer without air conditioning. Then come and talk to us.

But the other part is “because we can.” And because individuals can choose to be comfortable. And most do.

Could we survive without those creature comforts? Sure. The pioneers did. And I once lived through a summer in Columbia South Carolina without air conditioning. You don’t want to know. Weirdly, too, I did no work all that summer.

And I remember being in Portugal — which is temperate if anything is — without air conditioning and/or heat, and let’s say most of my year was a lot less productive than it could be, because you’re not functioning very well when you’re dealing with extremes in weather.

So the American “extremism” of believing in individual rights is both more comfortable and more productive.

Therefore why call it “extreme” or try to suppress it. Unless you want to take those rights away so you can have absolute power, of course.

In which case you need to be aware you’re not G-d. Either real or imaginary. Your wants are not the law to me (no, not even if you’re a fat bastard who said that you believe in the rule of law and what you say is law. It ain’t. And I’m forever surprised you are smart enough to remember to exhale after each breath.) Nor should they be.

I’m not extreme. You are. You are an extreme, out of control loon who thinks that if everyone did what he/she said the world would be perfect.

I recommend you amend your extremism. Because in the path you’re taking us careening down, tolerance vanishes, and things get very very bad.

Places where there’s no bread, everyone argues, no one is right. Or if you prefer, societies that live close to the bone don’t believe in individual freedom. They also don’t believe in much of individual anything.

And the table is always set at the cannibal banquet.

Before you declare the US is “extreme” consider, in your heart of hearts what might happen to you if we weren’t.

And then, unless you’re as stupid as paste-eating Polis, you might consider giving thanks on your knees and fasting, that the rest of us are not in fact “extremist.”

Running Out The Clock A Blast from the past from September 24 2012

*Reading this now is interesting. And I thought they were insane THEN. The amazing thing though is how decisions, like betting on paper for trad pub were crazier than we thought when crazy governments decided to shut down all retail. – SAH – 2021*

Lately, in politics, in publishing, even in industry, I keep wondering what rabbit hole opened up and swallowed me whole.

No, I’m serious.  Listen to me.

We have publishers who choose to try to kill ebooks to “advantage” hardcovers, something that should be self-obviously out of the realm of sanity, because… well… for one we’re in a recession and hardcovers always do badly in those, second because people who’ve decided to go mostly e-book aren’t going to buy the hardcover.  They’re going to wait then let it drop.  By the time the ebook comes out, they won’t remember they wanted to read that book.  So, it’s a huge fail.  But the publishing houses are committed to this strategy.

And you wonder – are they insane?

We have journalists who don’t seem interested in investigating anything at all and who – please don’t argue with me.  I’ve seen the emails from journolist and it’s disgusting – think their job is (just as the publishers think their job is) to control the outcome of things that should be beyond their power.  To “push the right view” as it were, instead of the truth.  They have to realize (round ’bout the second summer of recovery malaise they should have realized it, but even the WSJ was buying into the hype and singing from the hymnal) that even if people wanted to believe them, they’re going to believe their lying eyes FIRST.

And you wonder – are they insane?

Don’t get me started on our government, which seems to have crossed entirely into the realm of fantasy, thinking that wars can be stopped by apologizing to people who want to kill you (listen, dork, this is not your freshman seminar.  In reality people who want to kill have other issues with you than that you might have been a little too forceful with them, mkay?  In the case of America the problem they have with us is that their kraptastic leaders have convinced the people of some countries that WE are responsible for their misery.  This keeps the leaders in power and the masses howling against the Great Satan.  I think the leaders of those countries might run some publishing houses too.  See behavior to Amazon.)  Or thinking that we can conjure money out of thin air and this means we’re CREATING value.  Or thinking that taxing “the rich” means more money, instead of “the rich” leaving for other countries or stopping money-making activity.  (Hint, taxing doesn’t happen in a vaccum.  It changes behaviors.  That’s the whole point.)  Or thinking that they can support a fast-aging group with a shrinking youth when the youth has neither jobs nor enough numbers.)  Or…

And you wonder – are they insane?

Then there’s Hollywood.  Even accounting for the fact that they get a lot of money from overseas, surely it wouldn’t be that hard for them to make movies that appeal to both?  And even overseas, frankly, certain types of flicks sell better.  Instead we see the politically correct take over and over again, and – as in books – it’s boring and it no longer sells, and yet they keep doing it.

And you wonder – are they insane?

And I’m sure ALL OF YOU – all of you – with expertise in fields that I don’t know are observing the same effect.

And wondering – are they insane?

They can’t be, right?  Even accounting for third-generation stupidity —  meaning that in many fields for three generations the “search” has been for people with certain political opinions, not the best at whatever the field is – even with the fantasy land most of our education has become, people can’t be THAT stupid.  They have to realize what they’re doing isn’t working or is having the opposite effect of the desired, right?

And then it hit me: they’re not trying to adapt or adjust to the future – they’re running out the clock.

You know what I mean.  There’s a football game where one team is barely ahead and the time is running out and instead of pushing for scoring, the team is just blocking and running out the clock.

Seen from this perspective the picture suddenly makes sense.

No, this is not a boomer-bashing post, but it is undeniable they are the largest age-cohort to come through in a long month of Sundays.  And here statistics don’t lie and the trying to co-opt my age range doesn’t work.  The boom stopped around 53/54.  And they are… shall we say clannish?  For a long time it was a more or less open secret they preferred to hire their own cohort.  Now, I’m not sure because I don’t care anymore.

What this means is that when I started getting published most of the publishers/editors were ten to twenty years older than I.  Their interchangeable assistants (Baen always excepted in these things) were ten to fifteen years younger than I.  Most of those are gone, and there are other bright, doomed and clueless faces there.  BUT the main editors/publishers are still the same.  Still making the decisions.  Still… running out the clock.

I’ve heard comments to this extent once of twice.  Most of them are now either at or past ages when they could retire.  Their stocks aren’t doing too well, but if they keep the houses going to a point they can retire, then they’ll have their pension or whatever.  And what happens to the industry/government/art when they’re gone is of remarkable little concern to them.

This is not an effect of the boomers being evil.  It’s an effect of a massive bump in the population that was then followed by a contraction in birth rates.  It means that the people who are now in control are in their early/mid sixties, with a few older ones.

It means both they have trouble adapting to new situations and catastrophic change – which we’re surrounded by on all sides – and conceptualizing or caring about things in the future in ten, twenty, thirty years.  This is compounded by the fact that in my field at least most of them are childless.  (And in other fields a remarkable number of them are childless.  Both the demands of a career and economic pressure did that and account for the baby bust following the boom.)

So, in enlightened self-interest, people who have no investment in the future are running out the clock.

What I think they’re failing to take into account is: what happens when the last tick echoes?

Earlier this week, I shared this facebook post from my friend Robert Bidinotto on Instapundit. (Link goes to Robert’s thrillers on Amazon.)

A BRIEF, OPTIMISTIC THOUGHT ABOUT CULTURAL CHANGE.

I have heard a great deal of despair lately about the state of our culture. Reading self-defined “cultural conservatives” (such as Rod Dreher) wailing that “all is lost,” it is easy to give in to pessimism.

Such pessimism seems warranted if you define the cultural battlefield in terms of *existing institutions.* After all, evidence of decadence and decline is pervasive within our political, economic, educational, entertainment, and social institutions. Most have become captives or accomplices of the left-nihilists.

But is that really the battlefield? History reveals to me different lessons. Such as: how a Renaissance and Enlightenment can emerge from the tribalism and mysticism of the Dark Ages, in which all institutions were hopelessly corrupt and coercive. Or how America itself could emerge from the historic swamp of universal despotism.We can learn from our enemies, too.

The so-called “Frankfurt School” started as a mere school of thought — a bunch of Marxist professors in Germany. Ditto, the Fabian Socialists in the UK. We should study how they accomplished what they did, and take notes.We also should take lessons from what the military calls “asymmetrical warfare”: how a small group of insurgents can fight a much larger, better equipped and supplied force to a stalemate — and even eventually beat them. (Study George Washington and Francis Marion, for examples.)

No, I’m not being literal; I’m arguing that the military analogy applies to the cultural battlefield, too: the battle over ideas and values.But creating new ideas, arguments, perspectives, and inspiring *visions* is not a numbers game. The creators of new ideas are always few, and usually solitary. Yet those few can eventually serve as navigators for an entire society. It was that truth that led Percy Shelley to say that “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”

The same can be said of an influential religious leader, philosopher, or narrative artist: think Jesus, Aristotle, Homer.

Throughout history, these visionaries have been the de facto “asymmetrical culture warriors” of the world.Today, would-be asymmetrical culture warriors have access to technology, even at the individual level, that those earlier purveyors of ideas and values couldn’t have dreamed of — technological innovations that the military would call “force multipliers.”

So, rather than gnash our teeth at the reach of mainstream- and social-media giants, or the influence of big corporations, schools, and governmental bodies, we “outsiders” can use technology to “hit them where they ain’t” — to spread our ideas and values in new forms, among receptive target audiences.

This is way too big a topic for a Facebook post. But those of you with individualist perspectives in our collectivist era — especially, those of you in the storytelling arts — ought to think creatively about this. Above all, remember the unstoppable power of a captivating idea or perspective — and the fact that it takes only a single creative visionary to give it life in the world.

Robert Bidinotto, Facebook

If you haven’t come across this quote in your feeds, I encourage to read it now, and pay attention. He’s right even if he doesn’t go far enough in some directions.

Look, I’m always amazed when people tell me that I’m so optimistic about our country and the future. Not only because I’m by nature depressive, and only maintain equanimity and ability to function because I trained myself from about age 8 to look at facts and not follow my feelings (which either stood me in really good stead this last year, or made me despair because people insisted on running around with their heads on fire and giving up their civil liberties. It’s one of the other.)

But in this case I’m not actually optimistic. What we see happening is a case of a faction that hates not only the country but every single American, seizing power over the backs of our broken or suborned institutions, and then using that power to impose clear and obvious insanity on the country.

We’ve seen this before. When Germany went howling into insanity is probably the clearest parallel. First, because despite their insistent they’re totes anti-fash, the current afflictions are trying to play the fascist playbook to the hilt, from the economic system of corporations, taken over and commandeered by the government, to the “superior race” which in the words out of their lips are those who tan, but in point of fact is the same old shite of “whites who adhere to party lines.” But then again, Hitler was not of the subrace he claimed to idolize (I believe in Man in the High Castle, one of the lines was “As blond as Hitler wished he were) and these paler than milk people claim that black people are the superior race mostly as a means to convince them to allow themselves to be ruled. In one case and the other, they’re all full of the rankest shit, and merely trying to divide and conquer.

There are other parallels, but they are not as obvious, because frankly both Russia and China — where the insane regimes lasted longer — were used to insane, autocratic leaders… and even as China devolved to the most obvious fascism, and Russia to whatever the hell they are — I think the corporate form of fascism — the most clear characteristics are “insane and autocratic.”

Cuba, once an “island paradise” takes its governmental ideas from Spain, which ultimately means “from Rome.” Which means they ultimately believe that “good families” should rule. It just so happens this particular “family” is out of its mind insane. I suspect things will work themselves out there, sooner rather than later, because frankly they’ve been papering over the cracks of insanity with tourist money. And considering that the “civilized world” is taking a turn on the insane carousel, they must be hurting more than usual now.

And so it goes. But as far as a sane country descending howling into authoritarian madness, Germany in the 20th century is the closest parallel.

Of course, the idiots driving this train — if they understand the example they’re following, and I’m divided on that, because I think half of them are following China, without realizing that China ended up following Germany — don’t realize the system works in China — sort of. There are already cracks — because China is China. They see the absolute power and they want that. They want that so badly. They can taste that. And (possibly un)like Winnie the Pooh’s shit eating brother, they think they’re building an empire of a thousand years. Oh, wait, so did Winnie the Xi’s model.

Well, his model might have done enough damage for a thousand years, including allowing the idiot Marxists to set themselves up in “opposition” (to the rhetoric, not really most of the practice), blame “nationalism” for the long war of the 20th century, and go stomping into universities, preaching hate of nation, hate of culture and ultimately hate of self to the fractured youth of the 20th century west.

And they created more obvious and in your face damage, in the removal from our midst of probably six million people (or more) and all they could have done and created.

But in point of fact their brief, horrific reign was barely over a decade. And that was in Germany, where most people might not have supported them, but the bizarre eugenics idea was ascendant (in the US too. In fact, all over the world) as well as — it was an industrial era thing — the idea that the future was bigger and bigger governments controlling everything down to the most minute and personal of decisions. In other words, as much as Germany in general did not revere Hitler (partly because he was a parvenu) the ideas being proclaimed from the command tower (as it were) were in fact in accord with the kitchen table ideas.

However, unless you were either exquisitely indoctrinated in school, or you are being a mobi because your bosses were, the ideas of our very woke and completely insane minority are not in any way shape or form in congruence with what’s in the minds of your average American.

In fact, even though our media did their best to hide the fact that the implosion of communism was as bad and revealed as terrible a devastation as the implosion of fascism, you truly don’t hear anyone on the street thinking that the USSR was paradise, or that China is the place to live. You do hear the power-hungry talking about how efficient and great at development they are, but only the power hungry. The idea of crumbling buildings and ongoing genocide has percolated to street level, and what came out during Covidiocy did their image no favors.

In point of fact, in the face of unprecedented — what can only be called psychological warfare — against our own people and heavy propagandizing and demonizing of all enemies intensifying during the Obama years and going off the charts in 2020, not only did the American people not vote for Obama’s “chosen successor” but they voted for Trump in such massive numbers in 2020 that the left were forced to fraud openly and in your face.

Their ideas are insane, and frankly everyone knows it. Even those who were propagandized in college, might mouth the pieties for the sake of jobs and advancement, but they know it’s outright crazy. Their belief in woke religion and branch covidian dogma is in fact of the same order as the decaying nobility of France claiming to believe in Catholicism, while rutting around like insane rabbits, and generally professing atheism in private.

You see, part of the problem is that the left is trying to impose on us a “back to the past” philosophy. At some level, through the fog they’ve tried to cast on history, they know the ideal time for communism (and note that ideal still didn’t make it work) was the early 20th century. They lust particularly after the early 20th century in America. That’s what they’re trying to recreate, and why they reflexively open the borders.

What they want is the masses of immigrants, assimilated into the leftist machine via their unions and kept in the plantation for the next 40 years, because the left brought the money, while the left also controlled the minds of the so called robber barons with the idea they were more ethical and helped the common man, and so ended up in control of those fortunes in various trusts and foundations.

They understand, dimly, through the thickness of granite around their skulls, that to do this they need large cities, ruled by implacable mayors; they need vast masses of dispossessed and ghettoized new immigrants who don’t actually speak the language; they need massive companies that are the source of all employment, against which unions at least pretend to protect the hapless workers, they need a controlled press singing the praises of “Mr. Roosevelt” and his “jobs program.”

They need in fact the early 20th century.

The problem is that we’re not in the early 20th century and that their efforts to replicate it range from “might work, but not the way you expect” to completely out there cargo cult insane.

So, yeah, they can create vast masses of dispossessed and ghettoized workers…. for a time. And as long as the taps of welfare flow freely. Which I expect will close or become irrelevant sooner rather than later. Because frankly, all cash money will become irrelevant at the rate they’re burning through it to try to create a false 1930. And they can break all small businesses in America, hanging over the store to Walmart and Amazon with their supplies from China. For a time at least.

It’s just they don’t follow that to the next step, because they bought into the ridiculous monetary theory that you can create endless fiat money with no actual connection to…. anything, and it will retain its value. Because in breaking the back of the ways people earn money here, it means people will not have jobs. Not even make work ones. It also means ultimately China starves, because Americans are no longer buying cheap shit by the truckload (in fact, though not mentioned, I expect China is already being pinched hard enough to squeal.)

They also don’t get that these are not the Italian and Irish immigrants of the early 20th century, who paid the cost of a mansion for their ticket here, and then had to stay even when the economy went into depression.

The people coming over the Southern border, these days, are coming for the free education and free healthcare, and free everything they have been promised. And they will melt over the border again, like snow in June when the economy goes sour. It happened — unreported — under Obama. And twice as fast if it comes to a butcher’s bill (and I’m very afraid it will. Because we need our institutions back, and the crazy cultists won’t let go.)

They can’t fully control the press. Sure, the control they have was enough to sell the covidiocy, and part of it, honestly, was that Trump went along with it. I still don’t even understand why, but it was obviously a weak psychological point and he caved.

But that’s because for a century people have trusted storm warnings, disease warnings and other seemingly non-political emissions from central government.

That is breaking down now, and I expect the plan of the left to make Americans stop working and all live on welfare and buy Chinese crap to fall apart in the next six months. Already, the reaction to this latest “stimulus” was not, like the reaction to the first “oh, thank you, we needed this,” but more “You son of a bitch, what I want is my life back.” Oh, yeah, the usual hold outs, but not nearly as many, because people are starting to realize this is all a sham. Look, you can’t drive across several states without seeing that with the unequal enforcement, if this were a true plague we’d ALL be dead. And because of the mask idiocy of the airlines, we’re all driving a lot more, and cars are almost impossible to rent.

Because word still gets out. Even with the social media stomping all over. As Robert Bidinotto points out above, we’re not in the early twentieth century. The technology and resources at our disposal are much easier.

In the 20th century if you wanted to start your newspaper, you needed a lot of money. And if you didn’t want to give it away for free, you needed people to trust you enough to subscribe. And you needed to pay reporters to get the facts on the ground, which was a lot more expensive, because both transportation and person to person communication were.

Right now my morning “howdy” includes talking to people around the world. And sure, they’re doing their best to shut down all those channels, but I don’t think they can.

More importantly, just like to try to force us to love Obama and vote for Hillary they burned most of their “star power” and what remained of Hollywood’s glitz, to bring about the Covidiocy and try to do every other thing in their program, they burned people’s trust in schools, traditional publishers (mostly because bookstores are closed), the news (this will become more obvious as people perceive the size of the con, and they are starting to), government anything, elections, our institutions and are in the process of burning the trust in the new tech conglomerates. Oh, yeah, and big cities are pouring out and I doubt they’ll come back. And the new tech trying to be hegemonic is really cute, too. Because, you know, this tech that the conglomerates are built on is something that gives an ephemeral advantage, but likely to change as the tech is superseeded. They’re no more permanent than IBM’s vaunting supremacy.

Now yeah, sure, it’s probably going to get really bad, because they are destroying some institutions that are absolutely needed. It’s particularly going to be tough in spots, and some spots will inevitably surprise us. And there will be a butcher’s bill, both from their idiot over reach and from resistance to it. And don’t get me started on what already-wounded China and Russia will get up to while we’re unseating the idiots.

The entire world is about to get another lesson on “insane regimes, and why encouraging insanity in your institutions in the hope they’ll eat you last is bad, ‘mkay?”

So, no. I’m not an optimist.

But on the other hand, everything is proceeding as I’ve been saying for over a decade, just accelerated due to the branch covidian cult. The institutions are going to collapse, as I told you they would.

Which is why we need to build over, under and around.

Sure, it’s hard not to get discouraged, because even best case scenario, things are going to get weird and confusing, and even a very short upheaval that destroys all the corrupted institutions means I’ll spend what I can anticipate as the rest of my life rebuilding. As will the rest of us. That’s fine. We don’t choose the time we live in, and in many ways I’ve been blessed and got to see amazing things. And I doubt rebuilding will be any worse than the life most people had throughout the end of the 19th century in the west, or still have in most of the world. (Heck our 19th century was better than most of the world now.)

But the ravens crying “nevermore” and “We’re going down forever” aren’t helping.

They might not be on the other side, but they functionally are.

The left would love nothing better than for all of us to plunge into depression, shut up, and stop fighting back.

So ignore the ravens. We have our work cut out for us, and no mistake.

Go write, make, create and build. Get ready to hold up the world on your shoulders when the institutions break. It’s really close now. Get ready to rebuild.

Though I understand Atlas’ disposition to shrug, shrugging would actually enable the left idiocy to last longer Sure, don’t support them. But build your own thing and hold on.

What rests on your shoulders is liberty and the future of humanity.

Book Promo

*Note these are books sent to us by readers/frequenters of this blog.  Our bringing them to your attention does not imply that we’ve read them and/or endorse them, unless we specifically say so.  As with all such purchases, we recommend you download a sample and make sure it’s to your taste.  If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. I ALSO WISH TO REMIND OUR READERS THAT IF THEY WANT TO TIP THE BLOGGER WITHOUT SPENDING EXTRA MONEY, CLICKING TO AMAZON THROUGH ONE OF THE BOOK LINKS ON THE RIGHT, WILL GIVE US SOME AMOUNT OF MONEY FOR PURCHASES MADE IN THE NEXT 24HOURS, OR UNTIL YOU CLICK ANOTHER ASSOCIATE’S LINK. PLEASE CONSIDER CLICKING THROUGH ONE OF THOSE LINKS BEFORE SEARCHING FOR THAT SHED, BIG SCREEN TV, GAMING COMPUTER OR CONSERVATORY YOU WISH TO BUY. That helps defray my time cost of about 2 hours a day on the blog, time probably better spent on fiction. ;)*

FROM ALMA BOYKIN: Malevolently Familiar.

Caught between the Old Lands and the New . . .

Less than a month after confronting an ancient evil, Lelia Chan, her Familiar Tay, and their allies meet an unmovable object. Meister Gruenewald needs their help. A new danger rises across the Great Sea, one that requires more than just his knowledge and power.

What Lelia and Master Saldovado find in the Old Land triggers a race. Can the shadow mages and their Hunter allies bring a power-obsessed sorcerer to justice? Or will his twisted idea of paradise destroy all they have fought to protect? Light-side magic workers have tried to stop the sorcerer, and paid with their lives, struck down by a creature from Elsewhere. One with a grudge.

Worse than death awaits Lelia and her chosen family if they fail.

FROM T. L. KNIGHTON: Army of the Forsaken

Korr has watched as the young, exiled King Darvos is coming into his own, but he still has much to learn. That education is interrupted by a threat to the Bohgan lands they have called home.

Meanwhile, Duke Orlandis continues to seek Darvos, the last real threat to his claim on the Altrian throne. To find him, he’s enlisted the most despicable allies possible.

When these forces make a mistake that could threaten a budding alliance, Princess Lauranna and Darvos find themselves knee deep in a fight of their own.

FROM PETER GRANT: Brings The Lightning (Ames Archives Book 1)

When the Civil War ends, where can a former Confederate soldier go to escape the long memories of neighbors who supported the winning side? Where can Johnny Reb go when he can’t go home? He can go out West, where the land is hard, where there is danger on every side, and where no one cares for whom you fought – only how well you can do it.

Walt Ames, a former cavalryman with the First Virginia, is headed West with little more than a rifle, a revolver, and a pocket full of looted Yankee gold. But in his way stand bushwhackers, bluecoats, con men, and the ever-restless Indians. And perhaps most dangerous of all, even more dangerous than the cruel and unforgiving land, is the temptation of the woman whose face he can’t forget.

When you can’t go home again – go West!

FROM D. REBBIT: Fulcrum: The Globur Incursion Book 1

John Forest was famous. His intervention piloting an experimental fighter at the Battle of the Markus Nebula turned the tide against the Globurs and made him a hero. That was over 20 years ago. Now, he is recently retired and trying to settle into his new life on Earth.

The imperial senate called the war and ongoing skirmishes an “incursion.” Globurs probe for weakness and attack without mercy. In the interstellar space along the rim frontier, fleet outposts and patrolling task forces continue to defend humanity in a stalemate that has lasted decades. Now, the stalemate has been broken. The lives of billions are at risk.

An intractable enemy, a desperate mission, and a shocking secret. Fulcrum reveals, new worlds and new technology in humankind’s first contact with sentient alien life.

FROM DAVID L. BURKHEAD: Alchemy of Shadows.

I was born in the year 1215, in a small town in Westphalia. As a boy, my parents apprenticed me to the famed alchemist Albertus Magnus. Under his tutelage I grew to adulthood and learned the mystical secrets of alchemy, including the manufacture of the Elixir of Life. I have gone by many names through the centuries.

I was already centuries old when I encountered the creatures of darkness made manifest that I know only as Shadows. They have chased me down through the years for reasons I have never understood.

Light was the only weapon I had against these Shadows, light that could drive them back but not harm them. And so I ran. Every time the Shadows caught up with me I fled to a new identity, a new life, until inevitably they found me again. At long last, with nowhere left to run, I had to find some way to fight the Shadows, not just for myself, but for the people I had come to care about.

My name is Adrian Jaeger. This is my story

FROM KACEY EZELL: Sundown (Murphy’s Lawless: Watch the Skies Book 1).

Taken from their planet and their century, they are…the Lost Soldiers.

It’s been six months since the daring raid that destroyed the makeshift transmitter which would have summoned the satraps’ vastly superior off-world allies. The Lost Soldiers followed up that victory by scratching out a permanent base on R’Bak and spearheading the further attacks of their indigenous allies throughout the region. But the continued support, cooperation, and—above all—trust of the space-dwelling SpinDogs will be required if the Lost Soldiers are to maintain and expand their area of operations.

The key to good relations with the SpinDogs is the baby Major Mara “Bruce” Lee is carrying. A child of both cultures, the infant would be a bridge linking the two societies. But that link is still uncertain. For an Earth-born woman like Mara, pregnancy on the spins is likely to end in a spontaneous late-stage abortion…unless she receives one of the planet’s near-miraculous drugs.

Unfortunately, that drug is no longer available. The satraps are grabbing it—along with R’Bak’s other medicinals—in anticipation of the arrival of the Kulsian “Harvesters” who covet the exotic compounds.

When Sergeant Elroy Frazier, Bruce’s crew chief and closest friend, hears that raiders may have some of the needed drug, he goes off on his own to track it down. For him, it’s a matter of life and death for a friend. But failure could also mean the end of the fragile alliance with the SpinDogs. And, in turn, the end of all the time-stranded soldiers known as Murphy’s Lawless.

FROM CLAYTON BARNETTE: Worlds Without End: A Sequel to Echoes of Family Lost.

Their minds modified by the Machines, the Hartmann siblings see worlds differently than others do. Gary looks to a future where his A.I. girlfriend, Henge, can live with him. Faustina looks to her friend Tracy, whom she calls a goddess, whose soul has been lost in the internet for a decade, for a new kind of life. A half-generation on in post-Breakup America, they, along with their family and friends in the city-state of Knoxville, try to make their way forward. Social and technological unknowns may hinder them, but beyond those, the worlds they seek are threatened by a madman’s nuclear fire and a politician’s intrigue.[Picking up ten years after the breathless conclusion of “Echoes of Family Lost,” this new novel of Machine Civilization follows the relationship of human Gary Hartmann and his machine fiancée Henge. While centered around, them the book is broken into two parts: the desire of a human to leave our world and pass completely into the ‘net and the desire of an AI to cross in the opposite direction.]

FROM ANDREW FOX: The Bad Luck Spirits’ Social Aid and Pleasure Club (Fat White Vampire)

A startlingly original dark fantasy set in the New Orleans of the acclaimed Fat White Vampire series. Takes place between the events of Bride of the Fat White Vampire (book #2) and Fat White Vampire Otaku (book #3).

Who Knew It Would Be So Easy to Destroy the Big Easy?

Have you ever felt cursed by bad luck? Everyone living in the path of Hurricane Antonia knows that feeling. In their case, it’s justified! A confederation of trickster gods and bad luck spirits schemes to take advantage of inept political leadership and midwife a catastrophe so overwhelming it drives every human inhabitant from New Orleans! They name their scheme “Operation Big Blow”. Who stands between the Big Easy and obliteration? Only a lone traitor, human-loving Kay Rosenblatt, the weakest member of the mysterious Miasma Club… also known as the Bad Luck Spirits’ Social Aid and Pleasure Club!

FROM MCA HOGARTH: Earthrise (Her Instruments Book 1)

“The thrills are nonstop, the alien cultures and races are well developed and fascinating, and there’s just the right amount of humor to keep the whole thing fizzing.” — Analog Science Fiction and Fact

Reese Eddings has enough to do keeping her rattletrap merchant vessel, the TMS Earthrise, profitable enough to feed herself and her crew. So when a mysterious benefactor from her past shows up demanding she rescue a man from slavers, her first reaction is to run for the hills. Unfortunately, she did promise to repay the loan. But she didn’t think it would involve tangling with pirates over a space elf prince…

Book 1 of the Her Instruments trilogy is a rollicking adventure set in the expansive Pelted universe, and kicks off an epic space opera series where the fate of worlds hangs in the balance. Fans who enjoyed Firefly or Andromeda will like this series.

FROM MARY CATELLI: Curses And Wonders.

A collection of tales of wonder and magic. A prince sets out to win his way to the dragon’s lair. A woman fights a curse on her lands. A man returns to his castle, bringing a magical sword, and worse things. And more tales. Includes “Dragon Slayer”, “The Book of Bone”, “Mermaids’ Song”, “Witch-Prince Ways”, “Sword and Shadow”, “Eyes of the Sorceress”, “Fever and Snow” — and “The Emperor’s Clothes”, which is not sold separately.

FROM BLAKE SMITH: A Kingdom of Glass.

Zara hasn’t seen her family in eleven years, but she doesn’t mind. They sent her to live in a neighboring kingdom when she was small, and she’s adopted her foster parents in their place. She lives the life of an aristocratic Garian girl- riding her horse, shooting her bow, exploring the castle with her friends- and she has nothing to wish for.

Until she’s summoned home, to a prospective marriage she doesn’t want, family she doesn’t remember, and a poisonous royal court that threatens everything she’s ever known. The East Morlans are nothing like Garia, and Zara struggles to find her place among the scheming Morlander aristocrats. Along the way, she makes new friends, meets enemies, and falls in love. But secrets abound in the glittering palace, and Zara must discover who she can trust as she fights for her life and freedom in a fragile, beautiful, kingdom of glass.

EDITED BY ROB HOWELL, AND WITH A SHORT STORY STORY BY SARAH A. HOYT: Songs of Valor

WITH STORIES ALSO BY SOME PEOPLE LIKE LARRY CORREIA AND DAVID WEBER AND KEVIN J. ANDERSON AND SUCH!

It is a time of high adventure! A time for heroes to say “No!” to the evils that will befall their families and friends if they don’t rise to the task at hand…even if they don’t want to! If they won’t take up arms and spells on behalf of their people, civilization will fall.

Fifteen exceptional authors have spun tales of reluctant heroes—people often like you and me, who didn’t think they were worthy, needed, or even “the right one for the job.” Sometimes all they have going for them is that they’re the wrong person at the wrong time. When there’s no one else, though, a hero must do what’s necessary, whether that’s fighting demons, the undead, or an unconquerable enemy.

Songs of Valor focuses on heroes rising to the challenge presented them. An untrained human facing an ancient dragon. A necromancer fighting a demon in the land of the elves. A dragon rider well past her prime coming back to protect the ones she loves. An over-the-hill fighter who does what he must to stem the tide of evil.

Inside are fifteen incredible stories of heroes rising to the occasion. Their willingness to brave the peril, though, doesn’t guarantee their success. If their valor should fail, all indeed will be lost! Will they succeed? Step inside and find out!

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: ITCH

Because here, high up in the Rockies, we’re down but alas not (yet) out.

I’m very busy today, and also have a blinding headache.

And by that I mean BLINDING headache. Which tends to make me rather testy as well.

So– This is your unscheduled return of radio free Colorado.

This one goes out to Dr. Two Masks Fauci:

This one goes out to the left who thinks that breaking the fire alarm is the same as stopping the possibility of fire (Note, “so you can wipe out that grin. I know where you’ve been. It’s all been a pack of lies”):

And in this day when Governor Paste-Eating Polis proclaimed a meat-free day to get used to a vegan lifestyle or some shit, and when we will therefore be having steaks, this song goes out to the paste eater himself with the admonition “You give up your favorite meat, and we’ll think about it.” Or if you need it more graphic “I know your favorite source of protein, bud. Stop messing with mine.”

(Those of a sensitive disposition, or more prudish bend, might want to pass on this musical selection particularly in conjunction with governor no-brain.)

As we’re looking at houses (for now remotely) in a potential landing place, because we’ll have to wait till this house sells to buy what we really want, and because frankly, we’ve always made money out of houses (like, we usually — except for our very first house — double our investment, no matter how long we stay in it) there is the temptation to buy something small and distressed, put most of our stuff in storage, and clean/fix/improve a home, then when this one sells buy a better one, and sell that one.

The drawback is rather obvious, of course. Well, look…. I’ve spent 20 years of my life getting at least a day a week eaten away improving Victorians.

I can do it. I understand Victorians. I can’t do roofing, and I’d prefer not to do electrical. I can do plumbing, but it takes a lot of cursing, and I tend to…. ah, over build because I hate leaks (No, you don’t get it. I HATE leaks.) I probably could do electrical, but it would take learning.

However, provided I choose a house that is okay as to roofing, electrical and plumbing (or where those are relatively cheap to have done, and for a small house even rewiring is not that expensive) I can do everything else. Worse, or perhaps better, I’ve learned workarounds, so things look good and are sturdy but aren’t exactly…. conventional. Partly because I collect books on renovating like other people collect cute statuettes, and I’ve spent a substantial portion of my life walking around hardware stores, lumberyards, or those construction thriftstores where they send the bits and pieces of demolished century old homes.

So you know, I can look at a wall that is completely irregular because over the years people have put layers and layers of walpaper in it, without bothering to rip out the former layer….

You can sand it, so it’s smooth and you can paint it (though I advise a good coat of shellack under the paint, or it will bleed down into the paper and you’ll have another kind of mess. And if what you’re dealing with is a bathroom, and one that will be used by your kids…. well. I’d recommend that. But if it’s, say, your front hallway and you really don’t want to sand (you really don’t want to sand. Even with an electrical sander it takes forever, and I guarantee at some point a big patch of the plaster and horsehair underneath will fall down, and then you’ll have to patch. You really, really, really don’t want to sand. Actually, in retrospect, what I should have done in that bathroom was put up wood paneling, give it a white “pickled” finish (the rubbed on thing you do, very Swedish and stuff) and then several layers of polyurethane. But it never occurred to me, and I didn’t know most of what was holding the plaster together was wallpaper. Some of which, judging by the color, probably contained arsenic.) you buy anaglypta and put it over the mess, then paint it. It looks (depending on pattern chosen) very Victorian, and you never have to know what you hid under it. Oh, and it wears like iron. Actually we’ve had it in a bathroom (WE didn’t install it.) And it held fine even though it was again the boys’ bathroom.

You can hide a multitude of sins under plywood veneer, particularly if you’re even mildly handy and can make it resemble an inlaid pattern.

And if you’re saying “Why the emphasis on hiding. Shouldn’t you be making it over again, and sound?”

Well, yes. Some things you absolutely want to. Like, for instance, electrical. And in Victorians you also know no matter how well you have fixed it and/or replaced it, you’re still going to be living with hidden stuff you can’t even dream about.

If you really want to know how the past is another country, buy a distressed Victorian and fix it. Take the house two houses ago, in many ways my favorite house. When we moved in, it had a new roof, new electrical, etc. put in. The plumbing, we contracted to have redone, within a month of moving in. And because we had two very small kids, and when we moved in I’d just torn my ACL (don’t even ask) and was in a leg brace, while we had the handyman put in a new bathroom and tuck point the basement (where we found out one of the foundation walls…. wasn’t. It was just dirt. Yes, we had a wall built in front of the dirt and supporting the wall above it, because seriously) we said “get the washer and dryer out of the basement. Look, there’s this tiny room with a toilet under the stairs, where you can’t use the toilet without leaving the door open. Obviously, there’s plumbing there. So put a washer dryer there.” This was a brilliant idea. Except for some minor things. One of the, was that he needed to enlarge that space (and we could BARELY squeeze the washer and dryer in. Also the dryer was venting into an abandoned fireplace. Do not go there.) Anyway, when he enlarged the space, he knocked out the back wall. And there, amid a pile of 19th century newspapers, was a live/sparking wire. From the previous system that was supposedly completely disconnected. You know, one of the antique cloth-wrapped wires. It was somehow double-connected to the switch to the attic (my office) so that every time I turned on that light, the wire went live. Yes, we removed it, and traced connections, so we could to the best of our knowledge eliminate the old wiring. But could we be sure? Well, no. Not short of opening all the walls.

And you don’t want to open all the walls. Why not? Well, same house, when we were getting ready to sell it. I’d done a half-assed job of laying in kitchen cabinets. Look, when we moved in, the kitchen had a small row of cabinets: sink and two cabinets on either side, and above it four small cabinets in bad shape. We were also broke which is kind of normal condition. Or rather, we had an extra 20k but it was going to new bathroom, new plumbing and remedying serious issues. Like no foundation on one side of the basement. Cabinets were not a structural issue. When I told my husband I had to go to re-store and buy cabinets he told me I could, if I could do the thing for under $100.

Now, this was probably okay if we were the type of family that just heats bought-food. We’re not. I’ve always cooked from scratch and we couldn’t even afford pre-prepared.

I could — have done it in other houses before — have built a moveable on-wheels island to help some with cabinets and counter top prep, but seriously, this kitchen needed a lot more than that.

So…I started scanning the free adds in the classified (like the free section in craigslist. Sometimes you strike gold. Most of the time not.)

Someone was remodeling their seventies vintage kitchen, and was giving the cabinets away for free to whoever removed them. Now, don’t get me wrong, okay? Most such deals are bad. This one was medium-bad. The cabinets were real wood, but I swear these people didn’t clean PERIOD. So there was a quarter inch coat of solidified grease on every surface. First step was taking the cabinets out — we looked it up in one of my do-it-yourself books — then I put them in the backyard, hosed them down with water and detergent, cleaned and bleached them, before bringing them indoors to install. After which I painted them white and called it good. But there were…. issues. Like the conformation required me to frankenstein two cabinets together to form a jumbo cabinet. On which the door was never quite right.

Also — this was not my doing — but the cabinet with the sink didn’t sit right and wasn’t level. Which was okay, when what I had on it was a formica counter, but before we sold we put in marble (because the formica was salvaged and in not great shape. And people don’t look past cosmetics.)

So I hired a handyman to come and fix those things and install the counters. Only he said the cabinet with the sink didn’t sit right (and movement had led to near-constant leaks under there) because the wall behind it was curved. And I — innocent that I was — said “Why don’t you pull the sink out and put something behind it that straightens that wall.” He looked at me like I was nuts and said “uh uh. No. I’ve measured behind it, and that curve is about two feet not accounted for. It could be a body.”

I thought he was insane but then he told me what he had found in other walls, and I decided, you know, that was cool. I don’t remember what we did, but it involved a lot of shims under that cabinet, and eventually floor bolts, until it was straight and didn’t move. We didn’t however open the walls.

Most of making a Victorian safe and livable, though, is covering surfaces. Hence, you know anaglypta. And if you must paint over old paint, do what you can to avoid sanding, because there was lead in old paint. And weirder stuff, to be honest.

The best you can do is make it so that stuff is not in contact with anyone. At least, you know, if it’s not structural. If it’s structural you sometimes do need to tear into the wall and make anew.

Our previous house, before this one, well… for instance there was the bathroom where you couldn’t use the shower without mushrooms growing in the corners. Yep, no venting. I think that bathroom was originally a not overlarge closet, and someone added a bathroom perhaps ten years before we bought.

That’s the other thing about buying a Victorian. You’re not just buying the house as it was built. You’re buying every mend, every patched-up do over over the century and a bit since it was erected.

And that means sometimes you get…. well…. there was a reason one of our bathrooms two houses ago was brown. Brown walls, brown tub, brown tiles, brown…. toilet. Which would be okay except for scaring the crap out of me to be in there for any length of time. There was this one TINY window. Yes, we changed those appliances out.

Anyway– given all that, I feel like I’m almost a lunatic for considering buying a small house in bad shape. (Well, smaller than we need.) But the price is right, and I KNOW how to deal with most of that stuff. So, it’s a matter of getting estimates on roof and electrical, and I’ll handle the rest. (Probably in a month upfront, at least for some them, because they’re not something I want to live with.) And honestly, the house that bit us in the ass hardest — the one before this one — was the one that looked move-in-ready, nothing to do. Actually that one and the one two before. Both had horrifying structural stuff that people had been hiding and patching and hiding, and which we HAD to deal with before we sold. (When we sell houses are mostly ready to live in, unless next person wants something drastically different. Because I’m neurotic, and can’t live with hidden rot or things that are unsafe.)

If you think about it, this here republic is like that. Part of the problem, as has been pointed out, is that we didn’t build new. We kind of did, but it mostly involved replacing the foundations, patching up the walls and maybe redoing the plumbing.

Because when it comes to human society, you can’t build new. This is where the communists and other arrant idiots routinely go wrong. It’s not that they look at the house they inherited all askew walls, twisted foundation, not enough cabinets and possibly leaky plumbing and go “this has to be fixed.” Well, of course it has to be fixed. The things people in the past lived with and thought were fine are not good enough for us, their descendants, mostly because through their efforts and their living in horrible conditions, we’re wealthy enough not to put up with that stuff.

But communists and other idiots faced with the idea that there might be a body behind the sink or that the wall surface is made mostly of wallpaper, don’t go “Well, okay. I don’t buy it on the body. It’s more likely to be someone’s silver someone hid against robbers, but okay fine. I can see where we’re already moving out, and if someone finds a skeleton (it would, by now, be a skeleton) it would cause a big problem.” They don’t go “Well, this is not a structural support wall, and it’s just the surface that’s a mess, because plaster and horsehair rot and crack in extremely dry climates.” They don’t go “How can I clean and retrofit these gross cabinets?” No. They go “There is a flaw in this house and it’s not exactly like the house of my dreams, so I’m going to tear down every wall and every support beam. And then I’m going to live in the ruins till something perfect automagically emerges.”

Which is why mostly they live in ruins and grub in dirt and talk about their great purpose and congratulate themselves on no longer having any of that icky stuff in the walls. Because they no longer have walls.

Human society doesn’t work like that. Mostly what human society is built on is other human society. And I know I joke — a lot — about how Rome never fell, it just exported itself.

But it’s not just Rome, it’s everything, going back to bands of vaguely human apes walking around the Savannah, and making the best of what they had. Something, btw, that the utopians of the left want to take us back to, so they can build perfectly this time.

Only they can’t because the flaw is in the ape. The only only to eliminate the flaw is to eliminate our corporeal form. Which of course the left is all for, btw. I think at bottom their hatred of everything human is because they know we can’t be retrofitted into perfect form. I still think when it comes to hating your own species, you should have the honestly of killing yourself FIRST.

Our republic wasn’t built like that. It was built to self-correct and fix, but most of all it was built on that one, basic fact. “Na kings, na queens, na lords na ladies. We won’t be fooled again.”

Of course the ape has been trying to “fix” that since it was built. And the republic, honestly, has been in serious trouble since before most of us were born, even the older ones.

None of which means that it should be demolished, despite all the crazy left running around with their little bulldozers and screaming “Build back better”. Sure, they’ve captured some important systems, and you really don’t wand to know what they’re doing to the plumbing.

They’re also living the doors open, in the hopes that different people will claim ownership and give them more power. (That’s not how any of that works.)

But you know what? We are still here. And the house is still ours. Yes, there is one, or several bodies in the walls, and the way the previous generations hid them weren’t very good. At least the holes the left has punched have shown that they have over time, termite-like destroyed most of the support structure of the republic.

You know what? It can be rebuilt. Now that we know where the problems are. And boy, do we know where the problems are.

Is it something we want to do? Well no. This is not the project I’d planned for my last twenty or thirty years. But it will have to be done.

We’re still here. We still don’t recognize their right to a boot on our neck. We certainly don’t recognize their right to run around with bulldozers. And you know what, most of the people who own this house know that if you knock down the walls a glittering, amazingly perfect building doesn’t emerge.

So — So.

We have this here property. It’s in bad shape. But it’s time to rebuild. As for the idiots who want to pull it down, it’s time they were recognized as pests and nuisances and sidelined. Maybe they can go back to wandering the Savannah until they figure out that mother nature is a bitch, not a goddess. Or considering most of them are paler than milk, maybe we can find a suitable arctic island where they can worry about global warming.

We have more dire concerns. The renovations of the late 19th century were iffy, but dear Lord, what were they thinking in the forties, the fifties, the sixties and the seventies.

And never again let anyone who believes Rousseau or his retarded disciple, Marx, had a point, near the plumbing. ever again. I think we’ve been dumping sewage in the cultural basement for almost a hundred years.

It’s going to be a mess to clean, right enough.

Fortunately we have experience with broken cultures. Humans have never had any other kind.

Even more fortunately, all the rot is exposed. Let’s rebuild.

As someone who has spent most of her life interested in Shakespeare and Shakespearean biography, I’ve pursued all the off-beat theories about who wrote Shakespeare. And I have to tell you, all of them were, to my mind, nothing and I remained a convinced Staffordian.

Take for instance the Oxfordians. Some people I respect and a good number of the science fiction community are Oxfordians. Which is plain insanity born of not knowing a heck of a lot about Elizabethan times, and therefore attach overmuch importance to the fact Shakespeare spelled his name many different ways, or the fact that he’s “elusive in records.” In point of fact, for records of that era, he’s one of the people whose lives are best documented. When writing the magical Shakespeare trilogy, I made great use of a site (I’m too lazy to see if it’s still up) which tracked Shakespeare day by day by documentation, and was searchable. Also if you know history of literature, you know the earl of Oxford could not have written those plays. Okay, perhaps you don’t know it, because you are not a writer. Oxford was impaired by an excellent education. His own work shows that every step of the way. I understand, because I too had an excellent education, and it took me year, as well as a lot of work to get to where I didn’t default to it as a matter of course. It’s a subconscious habit, trained early. Oxford would have defaulted to erudition, no matter how much he tried to hide it.

Only the need to earn a living finally broke me of such habits. But of course, Oxford had no such need.

The other hypothesis for the authorship of the plays are even more outre. The most laughable is probably that Elizabeth I wrote them (she presumably knew where Scotland was, and wouldn’t make the other various ridiculous mistakes the bard did — as an hack to another, often under the pressure of deadlines, I get you, brother.) In addition there are good chances she was busy with that Queening thing.

And then there are the utterly bizarre left-field theories such as that Antonio Jose da Silva faked his death and went to England to write Shakespeare. Look, I won’t even object to the idea that at that time and place for a Jew jumping from Portugal to England might be jumping from the fire into the frying pan — depending on the year — but seriously? His plays were more like Oxford’s work, the product of an excellent education. There was so little blood on stage, and so many messengers bringing distressing news it might as well have been a way station for messengers.

So until recently, and despite the hundreds of Shakespearean biography works I remained a convinced Stratfordian. I still am in a way, as I don’t think any one person other than Good Old Will Waggstaff wrote those plays.

However, recently some evidence has come to light, after centuries of hiding and obfuscation. It is not conclusive, of course, but I daresay it is a convincing theory, and one that will probably keep Shakespearean biography students hopping for the next century or so.

The evidence in itself is not much: a blotted manuscript for Romeo and Juliet, with plentiful of cat prints upon it and a notation on the margin “Bugger me if I sample my master’s ale again. Look how I’ve stepped all over this play.”

Then there are, carved in a piece of wood believed salvaged from the tables of the Mermaid Alehouse in Cheapside, the notations “Kit Marlowe is nothing but a cat.” And “And neither is Will Shakespeare.”

There are other bits and pieces, including a pen and ink portrait of two cats, one a light colored and one a dark, sitting on the stage of the theater and labeled Fair Youth and Dark Lady. There are upon the paws of the fair cat what looks suspiciously like dark ink stains.

Then there is the recently recovered missive from Robert Greene, playwright of the time, who was known to have a strong hatred for both Shakespeare and Marlowe and which refers at some length to the Fair Youth, that mangy cat of Marlowe’s which Shakestaff inheritted, and which taught Shakespeare’s cat to write plays. And how between the two of them they made a worthless poet a noted playwright.

Based on all this, I feel confident in putting forth the idea that indeed the works of Shakespeare were written by — two — cats. Well, except the sonnets and his long-form poems of course.

Also, I think we can fairly now assume that the sonnets refer in fact to the cats, forever dethroning the various competitors for Shakespeare’s mysterious lovers. In fact the personalities and disdain and all the varying affections would long since have made us see these were cats, were we not so willfully blind.

It explains also why Shakespeare’s early plays show signs of Kit Marlowe’s style, before it was tempered by Dark Lady’s more elaborate and less sanguinary pen.

But more than that, honestly, examine the relationships and events in the plays, and you’ll find they were obviously written by cats, since cats have always had more interesting lives than humans. This also explains why no human has been able to equal Mr. Shakespeare’s brilliance.

Note that not only does the Taming of the Shrew make a lot more sense, if you consider it an accounting of how cats tamed humans, but also Twelfth Night makes perfect sense: since humans of either sex look the same to cats, and humans are notoriously bad at sexing cats, a cat would presume humans just have trouble telling these things. And honestly, what is more cat like than the way the Elves in Midsummer Night’s Dream play with humans? As for Romeo and Juliet, both caterwauling beneath your beloved’s balcony and playing dead are cat’s favorites.

I will leave for someone with more time and patience — and who is not at the moment running a fever — to find the I’m sure inexhaustible supply of textual clues in the plays. For now, I’ll just leave you with a very few.

Take this quote from All’s Well, which clearly implies that cats and their owners are to some measure interchangeable “Here is a purr of fortune’s, sir, or of fortune’s cat”

Or this line from the same play: “For this description of thine honesty? A pox upon
him for me, he’s more and more a cat.”

And from As you like it, act III, scene 2:

“Let him seek out Rosalinde.
If the cat will after kind,
So be sure will Rosalinde.”

Henry IV, act III, scene 1, again posits the interchangeability of cats and humans:

Why, so it would have done at the same season, if
your mother’s cat had but kittened, though yourself
had never been born.

From Two Gentlemen of Verona, the same cat-man confusion:

my mother weeping, my father
wailing, my sister crying, our maid howling, our cat
wringing her hands, and all our house in a great
perplexity, yet did not this cruel-hearted cur shed
one tear:

Now while this hypothesis must seem far fetched, consider Will Shakespeare, waking, jug-bitten and feeling the effects of a night of drinking, to find full plays written. He probably didn’t even know that his cats wrote it. He probably assumed that the genius was in the pots of ale consumed the night before.

And while the idea of a cat handling the quill might seem far fetched, we have some indication that the cats of the time were very different and perhaps more dexterous than ours. Consider the Earl of Southampton’s cat visiting him nightly in the tower through his imprisonment there.

It’s time and more than time we cease our speciist views of the whole affair. Kit Marlowe and William Shakespeare where it pertains to the authorship of the plays were ultimately cats.

And perhaps, lords and ladies, so are you and I.

In atonement of my long years of blindness I now withdraw to finish my masterwork:

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are cats!

[Exits stage left — probably not pursued by a bear — to consume caffeine and ibuprofen, for the lack of which so far, you must thank for this post.]

Actually, I lie. This is beyond supremely lazy. Particularly because I’m right now working on 3 novels and a rewrite on a script at the same time, so you guys aren’t going to see this any time soon.

For the record, though, I can’t start every day with a dose of politics, because then it takes me till 10 pm to be able to write fiction, which means I get up late, which means…. yeah. That. And for some reason I’m not getting guest posts. I guess I’ve become a tad-bit radioactive. Who knew?

I do intend to do more very short science fiction tales, which eventually will be a companion volume to the fairy tales (which are “in the process. Trust me) but today I’m not feeling it.

I’ve been sleeping very badly, partly because I can’t go out in the sunlight, though I’ve been doing minimum 3 miles on the treadmill every day.

And sometimes, at least for me, sleeping very badly, means very weird dreams. why these weird dreams must take the shape of Pride and Prejudice fanfic, I don’t know.

I woke up with the whole of Pride Prejudice and Martians in my head, but I need time and possibly an extra pair of hands to type it in.

Husband says I need to buy dragon and dictate while I clean, so I have a time set aside for fanfic. He might not be wrong, even if it seems a little insane “I need to work while I clean.” Eh.

On the incidental front, this whole thing p*sses me off, since I have a DAZ3D model of a steampunk ostrich pulling a carriage, and if my subconscious is going to spit up crazy stuff, it should be something I could use that image for.

But of course, my subconscious delights in vexing me. Oh, my poor nerves. Someone pass me the vinaigrette.

Anyway, I woke up and wrote up the parts the made me giggle, so I’m going to share those. I want to point out these are NOT the H. G. Wells Martians, because those are kind of futilely defeated.

Oh, these bits are obviously not consecutive.

Pride, Prejudice and Martians

It was the Summer of 1811 when Mr. Wiggins, a noted amateur historian sat back in his arm chair, and rubbed at the eye he’d kept pressed to the occulus of his telescope for far too long.  What he’d just seen—

“Mr. Wiggins,” his wife shouted from down the stairs – she was a vulgar woman and prone to sudden screams.  “I demand you come down from that tower right away and help me entertain the vicar and his wife. You knew they were due to come to dinner.”

Mr. Wiggins sighed. Unless he was much mistaken, they were soon about to have bigger problems than the fact Mrs. Wiggins was quite uncouth.

That night at dinner, he failed singularly to explain the problem to the vicar, the learned but very unimaginative Mr. Blunter.

And yet, though he’d not live to know it, being carried off of an apoplexy when Mrs. Wiggins entered his tower to direct the staff in what she called “A good spring cleaning,” Mr. Wiggins was absolutely right.

In the Summer of 1811, England – and the world – were about to have bigger problems than Napoleon.

***********************************************************************************************

Mr. Darcy had always had a hankering to engage in mechanical inventions, but of course, he’d never talked about it. He was not Louis XVI th in his pretend workshop, designing new locks.

But surveying the devastation of his lands, and the smoking ruin of his tenants cottages, and while the servants pressed close around him, he felt a strange kind of freedom come over him.

He’d been reading on electricity and even stranger arts. And he thought….

No, he was sure. As the war machines moved on to cause devastation elsewhere and Mr. Darcy’s staff and tenants came out of the caves they’d hidden in to escape the devastation, he was ready to direct them.

They babbled that sometimes, when villages and estates gave signs of life again, the machines came back and destroyed them. He nodded sagely and told them that’s why they must help him build his workshop in the caves, before they started rebuilding the estate.

And when the machines came back in late September, he was proven right. As he’d supposed, a young man of large fortune defending his estate from Martian invasion must be in need of a plasma cannon.

********************************************************************************************

The Meryton assembly rooms looked quite altered, the ladies and gentlemen dressed in rough work clothes. No music. No amusement going on at all. As the Martian menace moved South, veterans of the war in the North had come South as well, to explain the implements and techniques of defense.

These were scarred men, who’d been fighting the invasion since last summer, and who had scored countless kills against the enemy.  Mr. Darcy was said to have invented the plasma cannon which stopped the machines in their tracks, and it was said he would have won the war by now, were the Martians not continuing to land in never-ending numbers.

But Mr. Blingley, Mr. Darcy’s friend, though he’d been through just as many battles, looked very conversable, eager to help. He was explaining the plasma cannon and its intrincacies to Miss Jane Bennet – known as the greatest beauty in the neighborhood – when he caught sight of his friend Darcy sitting against the wall, doing nothing.

He left Jane to finish assembling the mock up of the cannon, and came to remonstrate with his friend, “Come on Darcy, you must help teach. I must have you teach.”

“In an assembly such as this?” Darcy said, looking around with perfect disdain. “It would be insupportable. I suspect not one in ten of these rustics can grasp the principles of my invention. You are explaining it to the only intelligent-looking person in the room.”

“Miss Bennet?” Mr. Bingley said, looking over his shoulder and smiling as Jane’s quick fingers assembled the cannon.  “She’s very quick. Very intelligent.  But look, there sits one of her sisters. I would bet she’s also very capable.”

Mr. Darcy cast a disdainful look over his shoulder, “She might be tolerably quick, I grant you, to host a dinner or dance a reel. But she looks dull. I don’t think she’s alive to any suit. No, Bingley, go teach your pupil. Enjoy her responsive mind. I’m in no mood to give consequence to young ladies whose mind would be strained by the concept of zero.”

Overhearing this, the “dull” young lady, Miss Elizabeth Bennet, wondered if Mr. Darcy had always been this rude, or if the horrors of war had unhinged him.

As we sit here, waiting for the other shoe to drop, almost weekly, if not daily, I field the question “Why isn’t anyone doing anything yet?” This is usually followed by wails that we’ll do nothing that we’ll just sit here and take it.

There are two things to take into account. The first is that most people aren’t us. Most people aren’t political junkies who know every stupid, unjust and just plain suicidal executive order coming from on high, from the office of the vice-roi of the middle kingdom installed over us.

The second is the shock part of shocked disbelief. Which tends to delay reactions quite a bit.

On the first one “but how can they not know?” Well, because most of our media is and has been devoted to lying to the people. They are the propaganda arm of international socialism, drumming madly for their billionaire owners, who somehow have failed to read a single word of history and think they’ll end up on top.

No, forgive me. It’s not that. It’s that they don’t think at all. They want to be accepted with the “best” people, who at their level are the old aristocratic families of Europe, who of course are all on the spectrum of socialism/communism.

What our idiot noveau riche have failed to absorb is that these more inbred and pedigreed mental midgets might not know why they support the bullshit anymore, but it all started in the early 20th century with their being convinced communism was inevitable and putting on wolf suits before they were eaten by the wolves.

So we get back to the idiot millionaires and billionaires (hi Bernie!) are stupid and have never read history. After all they made lots of money in various ways that have nothing to do with learning history, so why should they bother.

And below them are the scrambling multitudes of the upper middle class who ape what they view as the beliefs of their betters and — when they attended college — the “smart people” who in turn were taught by the fossils of the 20th century that communism was inevitable and that all smart people are communist.

All of which amounts to: most of the people have not yet found out what Zhou Bai den has been signing at warp speed, or what it saddles us with. Fear not. These people are very very stupid, bordering on mentally slow, and they will make sure everyone knows, soon enough. Why, they’re proud of it.

People are already finding out retail, anyway. Very retail. As in, they are finding out every price is going up, and what was their very nice lifestyle is now evaporating before their eyes, as is any hope of getting better.

While we’re trying to effect our escape to Free America, we find that houses are getting sold from under us at speed. Now, part of this is simply that now that we can work from anywhere, most of us are trying to escape the metropolises that we were forced to live in. Though in my case, I’ll confess I wanted to live in Denver, and wouldn’t leave except for mentally retarded Polis having made it a hell on Earth with his own Middle-Kingdom inspired (Yes, I’m sure. You don’t get that retarded without help) Executive Orders that are making our city a mini-San-Francisco. And more on that later, because the Middle Kingdom itself is mentally handicapped as are all totalitarian regimes and is riding for a bruising fall they don’t see coming.

Anyway, I suspect the other reason for the scramble to small towns and hamlets is that you can buy a house outright for the profit in one of the houses we own, and all of us are seeing the belt tightening heading for us at speed. The problem being of course with those who can’t escape (and more on that later) because their jobs can’t be done remote. Many of them have already been raped by 2020 and 2021, and it will only get worse.

So, people haven’t really seen the damage yet. except for those who have: us and people slightly more aware than the rest. And we’re all sitting here with clenched fists, partly paralyzed by shock.

One of the things I read while I’m very depressed (thankfully I haven’t got that low in this last year. It’s more of a slow-burn depression) is true crime.

There is a technique to kidnapping someone or inflicting violence on them. You have to hit them very fast with the absolutely unthinkable, because it paralyzes them. You know, kidnap that heiress and rape her right off the bat, or starve her, or lock her in a closet. Or worse, that heir.

There is a reason those of us who have found ourselves in violent situations tell you that you have to vividly imagine it. If you can get a VR set, practice punching people in the face.

Oh, I don’t remember much of an hesitation — though after 35 years of peace I wonder if it would be easy — but I grew up in a rough and tumble time and place where 14 year old farm hands wouldn’t hesitate to try to corner a 6 year old girl in a back alley (Well, I did learn why that alley was forbidden, even if it was a short cut. And no, I have no idea what he wanted, and it might have been as “innocent” as wanting to beat me, because he could.) I learned to fight like a cornered cat before I ever heard of that as a fighting technique. (And surprise worked for me too. He never expected a carefully watched middle class little girl to scratch, bite, hit, and start pounding on him with a rock as soon as she could grab one. So he was distracted long enough for me to run out of the alley.)

But you guys are– Well, most of you grew up in cushioned and carefully protected conditions, particularly the women. So you aren’t conditioned to hit back. Your reaction to violence, particularly massive violence is usually to freeze. You can’t visualize hitting back. In the times that are coming I enjoin you, please, to visualize it. And as I said, if you can get VR and something where you have to fight.

America in a way, as nations go, is the pampered 21st century young lady, who’s never been treated with anything but respect. As the rough hand-servants of the evil Winnie the Xi hit her on the face and tear her clothes off, she’s standing, paralyzed, incapable of movement.

And I bet you money the ass monkeys of Emperor Xi think that it will stay that way, if not progress to Stockholm syndrome. They’re already started hitting her for daring to talk back, blowing it up as if an act of evil.

But the thing is, this America is not about to join the Symbionese Liberation Army. Look, let’s be real. Patty Hearst, as the daughter of “good families” had already been primed with the idea that she was guilty of inominable sins, for being born white and rich. Her family probably already displayed that sentiment for public consumption. That you know, they were on the side of the downtrodden, or some crap. Like all the rich families. Sorry, rich and stupid families. The two don’t always go together, but they tend to after a few generations.

America is not like that. Sure, the America that the Turtle Boys of Xi know is. They go to college, and learn that America is a terrible place and guilty of everything, and learn to hate their own homeland and their own people. Sure, if America in general were composed of them, we would be pucked.

America isn’t. Even the children of the middle class who learned this bullshit in college usually outgrow it within a few years. And are outgrowing it very fast, as the Wokeness and the gospel of New Marx are a) completely insane b) pushing everywhere and giving us no break.

America in general, though, takes her liberties for granted. And having an election stolen as blatantly as this one was is shocking. Kind of like being raped. She doesn’t believe it’s happened. She might not believe it till it happens again. Maybe. I mean, look, 2 years is a long time, and my gut still says by summer. And my guess is by summer these arrant fools are going to be stomping around trying to force us to obey.

Obey what? Well, there was Fauci claiming that if we don’t behave we can’t have a 4th of July celebration. My reaction to this is to say Fauci has just surrendered his citizenship with that claim and should be put on a plane post haste to Cuba, Venezuela or North Korea.

So they’ll try to make us obey. The year that was not only got us in shock over how far they’ll go to abuse us — and as more people wake up to the fact this was all a bullshit not particularly bad flu virus, the more anger builds — but it also got them addicted to the high of abusing us. And that means they need to keep amping it.

They are already sending us our own money and demanding we be grateful in advance of raising our taxes. Student loans are not to be forgiven and, oh, yeah, your eviction that has been suspended will be allowed to happen — they say June — as well as the foreclosure. And they’re throwing their weight around and saying we have to stay locked up because of “climate change.”

And the teachers don’t want to go back to teaching, and apparently some retail unions think their members should be able to abuse customers who don’t obey them. And the airlines… Don’t get me started.

Look, it’s like this: they think that by shocking us, we’ll be still forever, and perhaps try to be on their side.

But you have to remember they’re stupid Marxists. Marxism doesn’t deal with people or reality. It deals with “classes” of people, whom they believe will all react in prescribed ways. And the Gramscian rewrite making the classes into “races” is no better. For instance, it piously preaches that the darker your skin, the more Marxist, and then they’re completely shocked that Latin immigrants aren’t internationalists, that black people don’t embrace the brotherhood of the dark skinned, that–

On top of that, they don’t understand economics. And that includes the non-divine Winnie the Xi, Red emperor of the middle kingdom. He has a vague idea money comes from somewhere, but not where, and it’s probably just “redistributed.” At least in his head. And it’s not like anyone will tell the head of a fascist, genocidal empire that he’s full of shit.
This partly explains the shit show that is Chinese economy.

What it doesn’t explain is why our millionaires and billionaires (ah!) are equally Marxism-demented and don’t see where this is going. They are so dazzled with the idea of “sales to China” and of reselling here goods made with Chinese labor, they have failed to see things through. Mostly they’ve failed to see that Chinese economics is mostly make believe and mirrors; that they don’t have a middle class to buy anything; that our own middle class is getting slaughtered in this, metaphorically, at least for now.

I mean, look, how can they tax people who just lost their businesses, their jobs, will soon lose the value in their urban residences, and in general have nothing to give? You can’t take blood from a turnip.

Worse, in the US, a lot of us will buy a place outright and hunker down, doing the minimum needed to keep body and soul together, because why work more for the taxman?

Even worse, most of the people who can will go underground. I think it was in 2000 the last time I was offered half the price for a cash job. Of course I took it. Look, I don’t know why the workman was doing it, okay? Maybe he just needed cash in hand soonest. And besides, it’s none of my business. But I also know it used to be a standard offer for a while, particularly in the seventies. I read novels and bios from that time.

Why has no one bothered the last twenty years? At a guess because taxes haven’t been confiscatory. Yet. You wait. Half price for cash will become a thing. As will “yard sales” which might or might not contain crafts and items that are being resold at a big discount.

I’ve seen this before. I once lived in a country where practically everyone worked under the table.

The idiots don’t see this coming. This is unthinkable. To them taxes are the minimal due of the government. You’re lucky they let you keep anything.

But it’s about to make the American economy very, very strange. And practically invisible.

Now remember that America produces most of the food for the world. Sure, sure. His serene representative of Emperor Xi, Zhou Bai Den, is already sending our food by the kiloton to China at bargain prices. Don’t believe me? Search the price of corn flour and rice. Oh, and if you need either, stock up. Soy too.

But how long till you can buy ‘x amount’ cash, no questions at farms? Heck, I bet you anything you already can, we’re just not in that sort of area. And there’s co-ops where you buy the stuff in advance of planting and–

And high taxes for no reason but to punish us will take the economy completely underground. The food for exports? Oops? I guess it was a bad agricultural year.

As for the lock downs and willful destruction of big cities? Well, you know, Chinese were already buying real estate in our big cities by the block. Why? Well, it was better than ghost cities in China, right?

And by having Turtle Boy Polis, say, destroy Denver, it just means the subjects of his serene red emperor Xi can buy that real estate at bargain prices. Buy the whole city! And then when people come back–

And there hangs the sting on the back of the scorpion.

You see, people adapt very slowly to change. They can’t visualize change. There is a thing called “the bias of normalcy”. Which in a way is what is keeping the people ripping the country apart from the inside on this side of the grass.

But that same bias of normalcy is keeping them making plans that can’t come true, because things don’t stay as they are, once you destroy their underpinnings. Of course, Marxists are people of the system, who talk a lot about change but actually can’t process that anything changes, beyond the first step, and the way they want it to change.

So, Turtle Emperor Xi can’t imagine that once he gets his vice-roi to destroy the American economy, he won’t be king of the world. Surely, he can rule us, and steal from us and–

And the prosperity they’ve eked out by selling to America will be gone, if America doesn’t have the money for cheap Chinese crap. My guess is the gravy train is already slowing, but he wont’ see it till it stops. Till the other shoe drops.

And our serene traitor idiots, also don’t get it. They don’t get that people aren’t going to dutifully continue giving them money. The fates of all the Woke and Broke company should have awakened them, except they all lie to each other.

And the teachers fail to realize that not only can’t they keep their cushy work-from-home where it should be “work” arrangement, but the old ones are unlikely to come back. Because each week this goes on, another person says “f*ck it” and heads for the hills of homeschooling.

And the retail unions fail to realize that if their members harass the public, the public will go elswhere.

And the governors and mayors merrilly destroying their own cities, in the service of their foreign masters and cronies don’t realize that people can now work anywhere, thanks to the covidiocy, and they aren’t getting us back once we escape. Even retail and medical and others who can’t work remote are starting to eye small and still sane cities and towns.

As for the so called “tech lords” what kind of idiots, having made their fortune on the crest of rapid change, think that tech will stay the same long enough for them to control it? Or that their attitudes haven’t already started a million competitors working through the process? It will take time, but they are seriously going to regret they’re stupidity. Supposing they live to see it, of course. And I’d place no bets on that, since they’ve been financing Antifa, which is inevitably going to get shafted, because it has to be, either from the top, or because pissed citizens end them. And then Antifa, being communists will of course turn on the rich.

The future is distributed. And secretive. And not theirs to control.

Their continuous insistence that the future will be the same as the past does them no favors, either. It accelerates the whole mess.

Oh, yeah, and those kidnappers that shock the victim with unthinkable attacks? For that to work, you have to have a compliant victim, full control of the victim, and the ability to end him/her before he/she ends you.

In America? They have none of that. And they should get it through their heads that failing that, the delayed reaction is three times as strong.

When the other shoe falls, it will be an Earth shattering Kaboom. Do try to position yourself so you’re not squished.

We’re going to need you for the rebuild.

I’m feeling very guilty today, because yesterday I was kind of rude to someone on email, the someone having — admittedly — tried to put me in my place both as to my — rather hilariously presumed — youth and to my saying that he was underestimating the American people. This person might or might not be a living legend, (it’s a common name) but his message was a long “do you know who I am?” and also arrived at a time when I had an infernal splitting headache I’d been nursing for two days.

Now, this is not an excuse for being rude. Consider this a weird bend in my early upbringing that I’d be less guilty about having beat someone (with cause) than being rude to an almost stranger. It also shows, very bizarrely, that early cultural upbringing lingers, which btw is the greatest impediment to open borders, period. Because culture matters.

If after self-consciously acculturating as well as I could figure out how to, and making it my main task for five years — something few people are self-aware enough to do in the turmoil of adapting to just daily life in a different land (this can be difficult even across the country.) — I retain this idea that speaking rudely (which mostly means forcefully, btw) to a stranger is the worst sin possible, full acculturation might be in fact impossible.

But part of the reason I was forceful — which my back brain says is rude — at a stranger is that I’m getting sick and tired of people born and raised in America thinking they know America and Americans, our potential, and our abilities.

And mostly most American-born people think that Americans are JUST like the rest of the world. Or rather, I’m telling it wrong. American-born people assume, in their “never really understood how the rest of the world lives” little heads that the rest of the world is just like America.

Even Heinlein suffered from this, which means no amount of thought or intelligence can vanquish this mental map. He was absolutely convinced world-government would be a sort of Post WWII America written large. Everyone would become more or less American.

His belief that world government would be a good idea was defeated by a world tour, which means he was unusually thoughtful and able to see what was in front of our eyes, unlike most of our statist internationalists. He still had characters acting more or less like Americans regardless of country, culture and religion, which btw these days is the most unbelievable part of his work. Well, for me. I think American born and raised people don’t see how ridiculous this is.

Most of our open borders, kumbaya, everyone sing together internationalists, who want to be ruled by international law and the UN are in fact complete and thorough idiots. And most of them right now are ready to kneel to China, because they think it’s the proper model of what a world government would be.

I’m telling you right now and please believe me, no matter how much these clever fools want it, world government is beyond a pipe dream and the attempts at establishing it the complete idiots are making are only going to bring about a resurgence of nationalism like you’ve never seen it before. On stilts. With rivers of blood.

Man is a social ape. And the social ape we are lived in bands long before we learned about bigger units. Nation states for most of us slide in under the combined “territory defending” and “band.”

There is another set of fools, whom I love and whom I wish were right, but they’re not, and those are the Libertarians who dream of extra territorial nations.

This notion is amazing and could only occur to knowledge workers, so convinced that because their friends are spread out all over the world (my office-mates I keep in regular touch with …. well, some are on the other side of the world, so I get it) and they agree on many things, they should be able to form their own nation, more or less completely excluding those who live around them, and ignoring their dictates.

It’s a pleasant fantasy. But listen to the old ape in your back brain. Soil is a half of blood-and-soil. And you can dispense with blood — though it makes us rather insane, for a nation, it’s not unheard of — but not with soil.

Why? Well, as President Trump proved, you can’t have everything from essential medicines to armament made across the world and not risk having this used against you. You can’t trust suppliers or even visitors who won’t adhere to modern sanitary and health norms. You can’t in fact control soil you have no one of yours in.

So the charming idea of many many “nations of creed” living side by side and sharing a physical plant, while adhering to different laws is not in fact possible. And where tried those minorities in blood-and-soil nations will get destroyed. Or worse, used and oppressed generationally. We know that. This story has been told before. (Waves to friends celebrating Passover though heaven knows they’re not the only such minority.)

They were also, at least initially, an example of a creedal nation. Just like the US is — stop arguing. All the arguments are insane and mostly based on the left trying to pretend the constitution doesn’t matter for who we are, and that they are in fact still our countrymen — largely a creedal nation. The ancient Israelites could be joined by people who converted to their belief. “Wherever thou goest I shall go. Your people shall be my people. Your G-d shall be my G-d.”

Creedal nations seem to scare the spit out of blood and soil nations. I think it’s the idea that you can voluntarily sever the links to a tribe and join another because (and this is another argument against open borders and the world singing kumbaya together) listen carefully: 99% of people CAN’T. Yes, even those who immigrate here. 99% of them will go to their graves still part of the tribe they were born into. They usually come here to better their families and, heck, intend to go back “home.”

So the US, being an attractive nuisance on the world has been hated ever since it started existing. Yesterday I had trouble not laughing at an article calling Meghan Markle “American” because the British commenter thought her whining and perpetual victimhood was part of being “too individualistic.” At which point I banged my head on the desk. What it actually is is part of being Hollywood most of which is No Longer Our Countrymen. Victimhood is the desperate search for a tribe of the blood, and the conviction that if that tribe suffered this makes one special. (That last is part of Marxism and maleducation, of course.)

So, the rest of the world hates America, not knowing what America is, but perceiving it as a threat. As a place that can attract their best and brightest and seduce them away from the tribe.

And America meanwhile, like the aspergers kid in the kindergarten class, is utterly incapable of reading the rest of the world, and goes around in the amiable belief everyone is like us.

Don’t tell me that’s just the left either. Over the last three months three things have driven me UTTERLY insane.

One is the giving up, throwing oneself on the floor and saying all is lost. We’re now going down for the long count, worse than Venezuela. We’re going down like CHINA under the boot of the mandarins forever.

Look, can you guys stop that? My eyes keep rolling under the sofa and getting covered in cat hair.

We’re not Venezuela and we’re certainly not China.

All of Latin America goes dancing with the devil every so often. They can’t help it. I think because their system which is derived from the decay of Rome (Rome never fell. It just dispersed and went colonial.) is already based on castes, on have and have nots, on hereditary victimhood. You need to have attended an American college for at least a doctorate to be as completely messed up as a South American campesino. This culture both makes them vulnerable to communism, and makes communism sort of an “on steroids” version of their own governance. It’s just the reign of the crazy emperors, only more so.

Yes, Venezuela is an example of the applied principles of socialism. It was also allowed to go for a ride on the crazy train because its culture predisposes them to it and — listen carefully — because it could fall without destroying the rest of the world. Handouts from China and the mullahs keep them from outright starving.

China? Well, I doubt our homeless would want to live like the average Chinese peasant. Or be willing to. Or in fact be able to. The red emperors are just…. emperors. And because they are using the crazy cakes handbook of Marxism, the Chinese hegemony is circling the drain, after punching itself in the balls and putting itself in a downward population spiral.

That last worries me for America too, but then the whole world — as serious demographers are starting to catch on (this feels like more of the covidiocy. I’ve been screaming it for 20 years) — is on a downward population spiral. The best thing we can do for that is restore freedom and discredit colleges and from-the-top governance.

But other than that? None of it applies. American culture is not the same as the rest of the world. We don’t even pretend to be blood and soil. We can’t. Even those descended from revolutionary war soldiers (smiles across the hall at husband in his office) have imports in the last three generations. Other generations, mind you — looks bemusedly at her 23 and me report — are no more blood and soil than we are, but the mix is usually older and comes slower, so they can pretend.

And America is the power house; the economic engine of the world. If we went down for the long count and became as bad as China, then the rest of the world will be in the stone age. Yes, in my worst moments I think that’s possible. But I don’t think it is. Why not? Well, because we’d starve well before then. Communists always destroy food production, and there is no one to feed us, as we fed the USSR and as we to an extent — a large extent, or they wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of installing a puppet government — are feeding China. And because we’re spoiled. Americans aren’t willing to live like Chinese peasants. At the very worst, everyone starts ignoring the government, openly and obviously. The worst that will happen is anarchy, not China.

But more on how Americans are different later. For now, trust me that you are. And I am too, to the extent I’ve acculturated. We are a new thing in the world. Which is why the world hates and fears us.

Which brings me to the second thing that’s making me scream over the last three months. Would you crazy people stop making plans for where to move? No, I’m serious. And those of you who think you’ll be safe in Brazil need a special dose of reality check, and a smack upside the head.

At least those aren’t as bad as the rest of the idiots, because yeah, in Brazil your race won’t matter much, or perhaps at all. Brazilian notions of race are crazier than American notions (Trust me on this. Not having been raised here, I’m routinely surprised by people who claim to be black. Or white. Or martians. With the evidence to the contrary written on every feature.) Blood and soil won’t matter much.

Your problem rather is that Brazil is already what America will become if things go really bad: a barely controlled anarchy. Sure. Food grows really well. And if you’re going with a mercenary army of 400, and buying land amounting to several thousands of acres, you’ll be okay. Until the local government or the national one, decides you’re an enemy in their midst.

Eschew the idea that Brazil is the country of the future. It would be, if it ever got its act straight enough to have minimal law or property rights anyone can trust.

The same goes for most of South of the border, but with an additional caveat. You might not see it, but most of those are blood-and-soil. They can tell their difference from the neighboring countries. They’re also atavistic and tribal. Americans without the implied protection of a strong America will be known as prey. (Sometimes they are, anyway.)

Europe? Don’t be ridiculous. Europe will eat itself without America to keep it in order. And it might, anyway, even if we get our way out of this. Their intelligentsia is stupider than ours by magnitudes, and have told far more elaborate lies. More on that later.

But more importantly, Europe is blood and soil. I used to be able to tell the ancestry of Americans, the complete mix, because people in Europe know the physical difference between them and their neighbors, which often means two villages over. If you anticipate things getting that bad? you’ll be eaten first, because that’s the law of the tribe. The stranger gets killed when the tribe is pinched.

So, your best bet is to stay here. Your second best bet is not to count the US out.

Because we are different.

Beyond the realities of our size, and our economic importance in the world, and that no one will support us while we lose our minds, we are different. We are different at a basic, gut level.

Oh, perhaps not those of us who arrived from elsewhere and live in enclaves of their countrymen. But anyone who has been here for decades has insensibly become a little American. How little depends on how hard they fought it.

Other countries fear us — and imitate us — because our culture is viral. They in fact imitate us even when what we’re doing is self-hating and destructive, like most of Hollywood’s products.

They can’t help it.

And the left is trying to make sure we know we don’t have a right to free speech, because that’s at the base of what makes us different. That, and of course the ability to shoot them if needed.

There is a dog that didn’t bark in the night, in the rest of the world: the biggest difference visible in the age of instant international communication.

Other countries, other than the anglosphere and even there the other countries are more tentative, by and large don’t have blogs. They don’t take to the blogsphere to argue politics, scrum over economics, or report the news the “respectable” organs disdain to print.

In the rest of the world traditional news and traditional publishing remain safe professions with a future.

At first I thought “This is just because the rest of the world is not as technological.” But this is not true. They’ve taken everything else, except those.

Despite the fact that in most countries in Europe, the cost of living is such that an indie writer could live the life popular imagination associates with bestsellers, there are almost no indie authors from Italy or Greece or Portugal. And sales of indie books there are minimal.

And there are blogs for recipes and kids and trips and everything…. except matters of self governance and news.

This is a profound divide. Yes, I know, the British too have learned to lie to the polls and vote to spite the left, but they are the closest to us in culture.

Us? We are rapidly reaching the point of trusting NO institutions. This is actually unbelievable to Europeans.

Trust me, temperamentally, when it comes to politics, I’m closest to mom. And yet, I’ve exhausted myself shouting at her about the covidiocy and the lies she’s being sold.

She’s now scared of the British variant, the Japanese variant and whatever comes next, and convinced that mostly young people die from this virus.

Because she trusts the official news. Because THERE IS NO OTHER.

And before you say “oh, the laws” — laws my ass, this is the culture — Portuguese have never much obeyed laws. But the culture says that only those in authority know the truth. And btw, Portugal is relatively iconoclastic compared to the rest of Europe.

There are no news blogs, because they can’t imagine displacing the “official” news.

Yes, they’re going to fall hard, because you and I are in for a rough four or five years. And they don’t have the reserves (if you haven’t, please stock up on pet food. It’s having glitches in supply. And that means the human glitches are just down the road.)

But their most likely turn of events is going hard blood and soil. And it will take them a good three or four generations to get rid of socialism from their system.

They will never get rid of top down governance because that’s who they are.

That’s not who we are. We don’t recognize the right of “our betters” to tell us what to do. Sure, the covidiocy was dispiriting. It was also a novel approach to make people obey. And it’s fraying all over.

They burned the last remaining shreds of institutional credibility to get rid of Trump, because they thought Trump, Svengali-like, had hypnotized us into rebelling against the sages of socialism.

Because American leftists too are American. They think the rest of the world is like us. And if “sage” communists in China can govern that country forever, they can govern us forever, absent of course, the great hypnotist.

They don’t realize, in fact, they’re dealing with Americans. Americans don’t realize the left is dealing with Americans. Or what that means.

And it’s time we did. We need to be American as hard as we can. Which means ungovernable, unless we consent. And this bunch of mal-educated morons don’t even know how to earn our consent.

Hold on to the sides of the boat. Things are going to get rough. But not as rough as in all those countries where the dog has forgotten or never knew how to bark.