Between the ages of about ten and sixteen or so, I was desperately unhappy.

There were many reasons for this, and most of them, honestly, are no one’s business. Or they’re other people’s business, but not mine to divulge.

But a lot of it had to do with coming of age and going out into the wider world, and finding that I didn’t quite fit in. I don’t think I’m the only one who reads int his blog and thinks this. Because we are odd.

Do I belong to the autist creed? Well. It manifests differently in women than in men. In fact, i read an article — which I can’t find right now — that explained convincingly that a lot of what are considered transgender/masculine traits in women are a manifestation of autism. It’s possible.

I’ve also heard it said that every one in science fiction is on the spectrum, somewhere, and that sociologists and psychologists go to science fiction gatherings to study us because of that.

<shrug. I don’t now. I know I had the sensory issues that are part of autism until I was about fourteen. (To some extent still have them, but they’re negligible now.) And that there’s an overlap between those issues and “math brains” which I have despite digit dyslexia.

Friends who research the brain have been known to go on at length about brains that re not quantitatively different, but qualitatively different. I.e. brains that create more internal connections and are slower to prune them. This seems to have a covalence with autism. (And the terrifying idea is that the profound autism that manifests as mental retardation might be nothing of the sort, just brains so alien they can’t communicate properly.) And it seems to have a correlation to either not having normal instincts or not allowing them to operate because you “think too much.” (And yes, I got tired of that accusation by the time I was 12.)

Anyway, we know all sorts of things about people like us, including that other kids tend not to like us much, unless they are like us. (I don’t know. Is our behavior perhaps Neanderthal? ;))

So, by the time I started hitting puberty (hard, like one hits a wall) I was acutely miserable. The ever changing curriculum, (because revolution) and the fact that most of it was bullocks didn’t help.

But there was nowhere I could go. I dreamed of going, without having any clue where. (Okay, from the time I was eight I wanted to go to Denver, and be a writer. But that was not only not a plan of action but, considering I thought Denver was by the sea, it was a stupid and slightly insane dream, with no chance of coming true. (Look, I can’t explain it. Himself and His foreshadowing, okay?))

Mostly I escaped into books. As much as I could.

For all I knew, all that lay ahead was a life of living with my parents and getting old, probably teaching English to recalcitrant children, and never fitting in.

I read a lot, and because I was mostly broke (I hoarded my birthday money like a miser, and used it to buy books. Well, except when mom took it to buy me boots, because she thought not walking around with holes in my shoes was important or something. No, I still don’t get it) I read a lot of books five ro six pages at a time, standing up in a bookstore, ready to run when someone said “Miss, this is not a library.”

And I re-read a lot. Everything, really. If it came into the house, it was mine to read. And hiding it was no protection, because I could smell where people hid books.

I think my French and English got good because my brother started buying books in those languages, so I wouldn’t read them, if they were mildly (and I mean mildly) racy.

Oh, and I raided friends’ libraries. And their parents’ libraries. And considered standing on street corners holding up a sign that said “Will work for books.”

The problem is I read really fast, until concussion and eye issues slowed me down about 18 years ago. I’m still not that slow. But I got to the point I read six books a day.

And you just can’t keep up with that. Not on virtually no money.

Yes, I did have a relationship entirely based on borrowing someone’s books. And I’m not even sorry. Look, his parents bought him ANYTHING on condition he would read it. And he didn’t like to read. So I told him what the books were about and gave him lists. It was…. nice while it lasted. (And he turned out okay, I think. Despite being a weird-non-reader.)

So what do you do when life is terrifying and boring (and if you think it can’t be both, you didn’t live through 2020 and aren’t reading this in 2021) and you can’t get enough story?

I’d already started writing, but when I was about 12 it went weaponized. I had entire worlds, and I wrote about them, to remind me of what stories to write set in them.

Mostly science fiction, though I suppose some fantasy. It’s hard to tell, because I wrote this stuff before I knew there was a difference.

And I more or less lived in these worlds (I am, for the first time, now, at 58 writing space operas set in those worlds I created. Or at least writing them in English (I have no clue what happened to my notebooks of fiction in Portuguese) and in coherent form. That is what Schrodinger worlds — I swear coming soon — is about. All those worlds.) I drew house plans. I wrote notes on technologies. I wrote biographies and histories. I lived there at least as much as in the world in which my body happened to be.

Look, it wasn’t healthy. It was too much. And at some point one has to make a choice, to engage with the real world and learn to survive in it.

Which I did, more or less cold turkey at 18. And then I became an exchange student and met my husband…. which is weird since he was a character in my stories when I was 14. (Himself has a really weird sense of humor, okay?)

But I never completely discarded the dreams and the stories. Even when I thought there was no hope of ever being published, I’d dive into my imaginary worlds for a respite from the crazy world around me. Always.

There were two extended periods when I couldn’t do it, couldn’t day dream. The six months right after 9/11, and most of 2020.

It’s coming back, though. Which is good, because I need escape.

Which brings me to one of the first times I shared my fiction with a school friend. I let her read this story where some kids (I was about ten, I think) stepped through a time/space portal into another world where they had adventures.

This girl promptly scolded me and told me that I was bad for writing about people escaping instead of staying here and “solving the world’s problems.” Like, you now, at ten, I even knew what the problems were, much less could solve them accurately.

It will surprise no one to find that this woman grew up to write various books on serious “social problems” right? No I haven’t read them. I have no intention of. They’re YA books about people who are horribly mistreated and stay that way, from what I gather from the blurbs.

But the truth is that escaping does help, sometimes.

I’ve had fan letters about people who found relief in one of my books while sitting by a death bed; while they were themselves ill and immobilized, or simply while living through whatever fresh hell these days throw at us.

Sometimes escaping, even if momentarily, allows us to go on living or cheers us up, or even, after a sojourn in a place of the mind, gives us the solution to our current problem. Or puts it in perspective.

In fact, the older I get, the more I think that people who insist all books must be about “real things” and that escapism is wrong are people who want to control everything you do and think and allow you no escape.

In fact, the only people who object to escapes are jailers.

Part of my problem is that I hate editing, even myself.
But it needed to be done.
The Darkship series will take a little longer, because there is about 1/3 extraneous material per book. So I need smart and fanatic readers to tell me if there’s a scene they’d like to see, or something they’d like one of the books to show more of. Failing that, I’ll make Dan read them and tell me if he thinks they need something. (He’s pretty good at that.)
I know there’s maybe ten pages removed from AFGM in editing, (no, nothing off color, just a different editorial opinion) which I intend to put back in, but the rest is not as clear.

I’ve also started putting Kate Paulk’s Con series back up, (ConVent should be live tomorrow morning) hopefully to be soon followed by Impaler and First Blood and then the first of a space opera series.
Sorry all this has taken so long, 2020 was very bad for my productivity.

So, right now these are up (and yeah, I’m proud of myself.)

Draw One In The Dark

Something or someone is killing shape shifters in the small mountain town of Goldport, Colorado.
Kyrie Smith, a server at a local diner, is the last person to solve the mystery. Except of course for the fact that she changes into a panther and that her co-worker, Tom Ormson, who changes into a dragon, thinks he might have killed someone.
Add in a policeman who shape-shifts into a lion, a father who is suffering from remorse about how he raised his son, and a triad of dragon shape shifters on the trail of a magical object known as The Pearl of Heaven and the adventure is bound to get very exciting indeed.
Solving the crime is difficult enough, but so is — for our characters — trusting someone with secrets long-held.

Gentleman Takes A Chance

Family! Can’t live with them and can’t eat them.
Tom Ormson, owner — with his girlfriend — of The George, a diner in downtown Goldport, Colorado is well on his way to becoming a responsible and respectable adult, despite his rough start and the fact that he turns into a dragon.
But then the unpredictable Colorado weather, the ancient leader of a dragon triad and an even more ancient shifter-enforcer combine to destroy his home, put his diner at risk and attempt to kill him.
All this, of course, has to happen while Tom’s friend, Rafiel, is trying to solve a series of murders-by-shark at the city aquarium, and Tom’s newly-reconciled father is attempting to move to Denver.
Fasten your seat belts, a wild ride is about to begin.

Noah’s Boy

Tom Ormson and Kyrie Smith are suffering the growing pains of young romance and young business people. Tom worries obsessively about the new fryer in the diner exploding.
As though he didn’t have enough on his mind, though, life decides it’s time for a sabretooth with vengeance on her mind to come to town, and for the Great Sky Dragon to try to arrange a marriage for Tom.
Meanwhile, out at the old amusement park, the one with the really good wooden roller-coaster, a series of bizarre murders is taking place.
And, as if that were not enough, Conan Lung, dragon shifter, ex-triad member and waiter extraordinaire starts his country singing career with an original song “If I Could Fly to You.”
When Kyrie is kidnapped, it’s all Tom can do to make sure he protects her while not eating anyone.

And yes, I will finish Bowl of Red and All Hot to put out before Summer.

If it’s not obvious my schedule is suddenly very full, which is a GOOD thing. It gives me less time to read the news….

A Letter from a Plantation Owner – by Anony Mouse

While restoring a very old building in the South, used for a time as a post office, the following letter to the editor of the Picayune Post-Gazeteer was found under the floorboards….

Dear Sirs;

It has come to my attention that we, the fine upstanding plantation owners of the region, may be unknowingly harboring an Insidious and Malignant Evil, poised to destroy everything we hold dear. I speak, of course, of the seemingly innocuous Ornament oft found in the grounds and near the front stoops of many a fine house, the Lawn Jockey. “Tis but a harmless statue,” I hear you say, and indeed so it seems! But I have been informed that this same Statue is used to communicate secretly with the dastardly criminals commonly known as the Underground Railroad.

Using these Statues and certain signs placed thereon to communicate the safety of approaching a house in vile conspiracy with this so-called Railroad, the criminals, under cover of night, beguile our slaves with such tawdry superstitions as “freedom” and “humanity”, tempting even an obedient slave into discarding their master’s lifetime investment and care and instead, running off to distant and uncivilized lands (such as Canada).

The danger is imminent, and it is real! We must ban the display and manufacture of these violence-inducing lawn ornaments, used to incite rebellion and communicate the plans of thieves—and if that does not suffice to stop the plague of escaping slaves, the next step can only be the banning of any foolhardy enough to own such devices of insurrection and conspiracy. Do not listen to the naysayers that claim these rogues are only an idea, incapable of actual destruction! It has been well documented one of the so-called “Conductors” of this Railroad of Doom is a Female of the name of Tubman, who is widely reported to carry a firearm everywhere she goes. It is only a matter of time before she injures or even kills some innocent slaveholder!

I remain, Sirs,

your most Obedient Servant,

Beauregard Aloysius O’Blivion

Those of us who’ve read a lot of history, particularly those who grew up abroad and know there is a technique to reducing a conquered country.

In Portugal, we learned about what the Spaniards did, during the sixty years they occupied Portugal back in the sixteen hundreds.

To be fair, I know what the Spaniards were trying to do now. Not that it feels me with warm fuzzies, because there are echoes. But from their point of view, like from the point of view of the globalists, it made perfect sense, was smart and should not be opposed by the illiterate — shall we call them deplorables — of Portugal. Mostly the North of Portugal.

You see, after kicking out the Moors, Castille looked around and thought that what it really needed was a unified land mass: to wit all of the Peninsula. And Portugal was, to be fair, at the time, a rich morsel, full of colonies overseas.

So, through a series of rather bizarre alliances, plus buying the nobility of Portugal and fostering a sense that being Spaniards would be better for them, they eventually took over the land.

Fine and dandy. Well not. Because Portuguese, particularly the North, are a population affected with oppositional defiant disorder. I suspect it it endemic in the culture because of all the invasions or, as my kids put it, Portugal being the reservoir tip int he condom of Europe. (Hey, they’re my kids. They’re occasionally rude.) I mean, you’re invaded a lot, you either become complacent and let the shit roll over you, or you become hells own bastards. And by the way, I sternly resist any impliction this might be genetic, particularly because shut up.

So resistance started on day one and the “reduction” program didn’t work very well. And sixty years later they got rid of the Spaniards by defenestrating the governor. (It is a thing of joy and beauty to hear an entire class of ten years old girls answer the question of “What happened to the Spanish governor in Lisbon?” with an enthusiastic shout of “He was defenestrated.”)

The Portuguese don’t hold a grudge either — truly — which is why 400 years later we were still instructed by our elderly and very proper fourth grade teacher to desecrate the pictures of the Spanish kings in our school books, with swear words and devil horns, and “make them really ugly.”

The funny thing — stop me when this sounds familiar — that Spain would probably have won the battle, long term, almost certainly, if they’d come in and governed with Portuguese best interests at heart, and let the cultures and families merge.

Portugal didn’t even have a very strong sense of national identity at the time, and noble families had property in both families.

But they came in set on “reducing” the Portuguese. It involves a program of destroying the statues of the conquered people, and the stories of their heroes. It involves giving away prized possessions that brought in wealth (in Portugal’s case various colonies given away in the dowry of Spanish princesses) for the glory of the invaders. It involves forbidding the mother-tongue and replacing it with the invaders’s speech (A-men and A-women!) and it involves in general making the invaded country feel its humiliation, in the hopes of making it want to die.

It will surprise you to know this is not the technique of any successful empire ever. It was stolen by the Spaniards from the Moors, and is partly why the Moors will eventually herd camels in a desert where the oil is the most fit thing to drink.

The left, which learned all their conquering techniques from Russians and Nazis is using the same thing. They are trying to destroy our history, sully our heroes, make us speak a lingo that even they can’t do, and impoverish us to the point — they think — that we can’t raise our heads.

Oh, and all this in the service of ”more land.” In this case they want to take over the entire world, because for the left (and possibly crazy Spaniards) the government is best which is most distant and governs with complete disregard for local culture and conditions, by pretending every human is a widget who will follow written rules to the letter.

The fact that the Spaniards keep — still — having trouble conquering themselves, and that the USSR and the Nazis crashed in every way possible, and the USSR would have done it faster, had we not supported them for most of their existence means nothing to the left.

Both sides have weaponized autists, see. Ours are just more amusing and creative. On the left though, because it’s a cargo cult, they’ll follow the procedures, d*mn it, and they will have their wished-for result because shut up h8ter.

None of this will work the way they expect. They can’t even interpret what they’re seeing.

My prediction is a crash of internationalism, a revival of a love of nationality and each nation’s character and heroes, and a glorious upraised middle finger to those who’d be global masters, Winnie the Xi and the UN included, and possibly with petards.

The funny thing is that they could have taken us, in another generation or two. If they’d only pretended to have our best interests at heart, swallowed their phobic reaction to the flag and trappings of patriotism, allowed the working class to keep working, and took it slow.

Their schools, and particularly colleges, were indoctrinating our young in their death credo. In another generation or two there would be nothing to fight from.

But they hate us that much they had to treat us ike conquered land they wanted to reduce. And because they’re using those sectors they already control, like education and the arts, and even finance, they’re also being stupid and causing all of those to crash really hard, thereby destroying their influence.

Stay strong, friends. It’s going to be a few thoroughly unpleasant years, as the dying wild boar the left has become does maximum damage to everything, in the belief this strengthens their position.

But we’re not a conquered country. They captured the hierarchy of power. And that, you know, can always be got rid of — defenestrated! (Though not necessarily literally. Hey, I heard that “Aw!”) — but in the end we win they lose.

Be not afraid.

*UPDATE: On the page of author listings. It became immediately obvious we’d need a bigger page. So we have started putting up a site for this. And as the plans develop, I can honestly say you’re going to LIKE this. Give us another week or so. I promise you’ll like it – SAH*

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 LAURA MONTGOMERY: Out of the Dell.

On the planet Nwwwlf, in the lost colony of First Landing, the original settlers carved out one sylvan valley, a lone outpost where humans flourish. But their bright hopes and best intentions devolved over centuries into a rude replica of medieval feudalism.

Gilead Tan, who had been held captive for centuries in his sleeping cell, survived treachery and pain to free a small group of sleepers. But he and his friends now face the perils of life outside First Landing’s sanctuary–without their powered armor, their tools and technology, or anything else they need save for a few chickens.

Gilead must establish a safehold for his crew, but the alien environment does not welcome them and petty bickering threatens their meager resources. He hopes that a trace of smoke – spotted above a distant ridge – beckons them to a better place.

It doesn’t.

FROM MARY CATELLI: Queen Shulamith’s Ball

A ball, a ball, Queen Shulamith would hold a ball. . . .In the magical city that all kingdoms can reach, and none can conquer, filled with kings and queens, intrigues and wonders, that the reclusive queen would stage a ball was a marvel among marvels.It will mean much to many: a young woman newly arrived in the city; a woman and a bear who dance on the street; two small orphans sent to the house of their great-great-grandfather; soldiers staging an invasion; and a queen securing her position.

FROM PAM UPHOFF: Destroyer

Ice is back!

And back in trouble.

His mission–sabotage the Cyborg Empire–goes awry when the Cyborgs discover his dimensional gate, and Gior, the obnoxious young woman with the rare talent of being able to manipulate dimensional phenomena, is forced to close that gate moments before the Cyborgs capture her.

Now Ice is not just marooned in enemy territory, he needs to rescue Gior quickly, before they get a control chip into her brain.

FROM AMIE GIBBONS: Scorpions of the Air (The Elemental Demons Urban Fantasies Book 2)

There are more things in Hell and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy
Not even magic can trump terror…

Sarah Blakely fought off demonic possession last month, discovering she has powers she can use against the demonic forces of evil.
She’s ready to celebrate her birthday with a bang. But when a deadly variation of meningitis strikes Chattanooga schools without warning, the party isn’t the only thing shut down.

Children are dying, the doctors have no cure, people are panicking, and Sarah doesn’t believe anything about the sickness and fear drowning the city is natural.

With the entire city against them, and questions piling up, can Sarah and her friends stop the invisible specter haunting the city before it gets what it came for?

FROM DENNIS MALEY: Profane Fire at the Altar of the Lord

The bones of heretics smolder on the auto-da-fe’…

David is a merchant of deceit, a poet of lies. A dwarf, he claims to be a prince of a lost tribe of Israel. Along with his manservant Diogo, an actor, the masquerade enthralls the citizens of Rome. Jews whisper that David is the Messiah. Destruction awaits the Muslim Turks if Christendom joins with his powerful desert tribe. But why hurry? The food and beds are warm, the ladies plump and willing.

In faraway France, a warlord struggles to regain honor. He’s the Duke of Bourbon, the victor in a great military conquest who has lost his family fortune. His mercenaries go underfed and poorly shod. The money to pay their wages is in Rome.

Richly researched and irreverent, this story weaves actual historical characters and institutions into a wry tale of three men, each on a quest for fame and fortune.

FROM BLAKE SMITH: The Hartington Inheritance.

Almira Hartington was heir to the largest fortune in the galaxy, amassed by her father during his time as a director of the Andromeda Company. But when Sir Josiah commits suicide, Almira discovers that she and her siblings are penniless. All three of them must learn to work if they wish to eat, and are quickly scattered to the far reaches of the universe. Almira stubbornly remains on-planet, determined to remain respectable despite the sneers of her former friends.

Sir Percy Wallingham pities the new Lady Hartington. But the lady’s family will take care of her, surely? It’s only after he encounters Almira in her new circumstances that he realizes the extent of her troubles and is determined to help her if he can. He doesn’t know that a scandal is brewing around Sir Josiah’s death and Almira’s exile from society. But it could cost him his life, and the lady he has come to love.

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: LEAN

Errands run, but I’m very tired. I tried to do witch’s daughter but I’m simply not awake enough.
Post tomorrow.
Have a picture.

Hey, guys, I need to get a bunch of stuff done this morning. Just want you to know I’m fine. ;)

The Poison Pill of $15 Minimum Wage- by Jonathan LaForce

From Where I’m Standing, this idea is insane.

A federally mandated $15 minimum wage would likely see me lose my job. Yes, it’s more than I currently make (by $4.40 per hour). But what it does not account for is whether or not my employer can afford a $15 minimum for a semi-entry level job. Because it’s not just Jon LaForce who is affected, it’s the 6 guys and agal who are also drivers for our office. It’s the 3 guys and a gal we have washing cars 40 hours a week.  It’s the managers-in-training who don’t start for less than $13, and only go up to $15 after they’ve passed training while demonstrating basic knowledge and understanding of company policy.

All of that is affected. Financial performance incentives within my company are destroyed under the incoming POTUS’ economically unsustainable idea. We’ve already seen how this played out in Seattle and elsewhere. It was a financial loss for the very people it was supposedly going to benefit. If it was ever actually intended to benefit them at all.

If, as I stated a year ago, the ACA mandate regarding what is “full-time” status for an employee was reversed, I would be able to better support my family, without worrying about losing my job. Being hard-capped at 25 hours a week is utterly garbage. Prior to COVID, I had enough consistent work that I should’ve been enabled to work up to 39 without being full-time and a financial burden to my employer. Having an extra 14 hours a week on my time card is far better than no job at all. That is the reality of raising minimum wage to $15 an hour.

“Well Jon, just go get a new job.” Have you tried finding a job right now? Try finding a job that I can perform while being physically limited due to injuries. I don’t have a 90% disability rating with the VA because I was bored! Try finding a job in an economy and culture where a bachelor’s degree has been devalued by public institutions which prefer being degree mills instead of encouraging genuine scholarship. I have put out approximately 50 job applications just with the Federal government. The fact that I’m still driving cars for a living should tell you quite a bit about how slow the hiring process is. I’ll also tell you that I’ve been rejected for 10 of those jobs, without ever having an interview, or a background check. In nearly six months of applications, I’ve only started 1 background check, and that was last week. 

Somebody will want to say “Oh but we have the welfare net, what are you worried about, Jon?” People, when you remove enough of the gasoline, oil, and coolant, from a running engine, it stops working. We’ve gotten a taste of that with COVID. To continue to do so, intentionally drink the vile dregs, so pointlessly, is a waste. Removing more people like me from the system will ensure the engine of our economy crashes to a halt. This is not good for the health of our republic. Nor is it what I want for myself or my family.

I find a quote from John Wayne’s “McClintock” to be most appropriate to the current matter. “This that the white man calls ‘charity’ is a fine thing for widows and orphans, but no warrior can accept it. For if he does he is no longer a man, and when he is no longer a man he is nothing, and better off dead.”

We, as a culture and a country, need to stop taking counsel from our fears. End the lockdowns, begin isolating only those who genuinely need it, and return to normalcy. No more forced masking, no more house arrest. No more encouraging incivility with our neighbors.

If you really want to enable working class, blue collar laborers like myself and so many millions of my fellow Americans, quit working against our best interests. Quit undercutting us at every turn. Stop the senseless minimum wage mandate. Stop hamstringing the American worker with unsound economic theories. Let us work. And take pride in our work.

(*One thing Jon doesn’t mention that makes mandated minimum wage for the entire country even crazier is that there is a completely different cost of living in different regions of the country. I think mostly people in CO at least in the cities are close to a de-facto $15 minimum wage, except for “tipping jobs.” Because the cost of living is excessive. For instance I was shocked to find a friend somewhere else in the country had been the sole earner and put four kids through college on less than 30k a year. In Colorado Springs you could not do that for less than 50k a year unless someone gave you a free house or the family lived exclusively on rice and walked everywhere. So, you know. Different regions have different earning standards and different needs. A Federal minimum wage will devastate entire regions of this country for absolutely no reason. It might be incompetence, but it’s almost surely malice also- SAH)

Let’s talk competence, shall we?

Competence is not intelligence. Competence isn’t even innate ability. Competence is, instead, the ability to focus on and do the job.

Yesterday a commenter who has commented here occasionally, though not regularly, took exception to my guest poster (who, trust me, has reason to know — there’s a reason that wasn’t even under a nom de net or an anagram of the name) saying the left is not competent.

He (? I don’t remember the sex of that particular nick) said he knows many very competent lefties. And also that if the left weren’t competent they couldn’t take over everything.

Which I think is what necessitates this discussion, and this …. disentangling of the threads of “what makes someone competent.” And “what is competent?”

Individual leftists can be extremely smart. However you define smart. Whether it be knowing tons about an extremely abstract field or simply being able to run their lives such that you make tons of money, or even managing to make vast fortunes/careers from frankly almost nothing. I know several of those. Because of course I do. And FYI a vast core of Mensa is hard left. (Though again, Mensa is not everyone who qualifies, but those who joined. For instance our lower IQ son joined (because we needed to impress a school) but his younger brother never did (no point) and I haven’t renewed in nigh on 20 years. So Mensa is self selected for above a certain IQ (and it’s not amazingly high.) and “wants to be part of a society that defines itself by high IQ.” No judgement. At one time and in one place it was our best bet at making friends. And it worked. Since then…. not so much.) Which means there a lot of left-wingers who are in the top 2% for IQ. I’d honestly estimate there to be the same right and left percentage, or whatever the percentage is in the population.

And yet, this is UNDENIABLY true, and many of us have seen it play out real time:

So, why do they kill and gut the respected institutions — or businesses — or entire business areas?
You’re going to say it’s because they want to kill those, but that’s not always true. True, say, maybe of some conservative institutions or IDK oil companies. But not true when it comes to things like publishing or the news industry, which they hope to use for their purposes and which, therefore, they would do better with if it were thriving.

There is a side issue here with such convinced leftists (Obama comes to mind) that their entire set of judgement is not from reality, but that is perhaps best evaluated at the end.

So, let’s start with “leftist gets hired in a field that is predominantly right wing”. I want two caveats here: first, no field in the Western world has been predominantly right wing for at least a hundred years, and going back before that the terms “right” and “left” are far, far more muddled. For the nineteenth century, for instance, I’m almost screamingly left wing. What I am not is Marxist.

The institutions have not been predominantly right wing because, (if you read books published around that time it’s not hard to gather this, btw,) in the aftermath of WWI and the turmoil of the fall of royal families all over Europe (which had been going on for about a century, to be fair) the youth of Europe latched onto Marxism as a new doctrine to give their world meaning. It’s not even hard to see that. Even solidly prosy middle-class women like Agatha Christie (who was also a storytelling genius, but that often descends on people with no regard for who they are) made their communist characters very smart and socially conscious and you know, even when in the wrong kind of right.

For sure for at least 80 years publishing was explicitly left wing and preparing the “great socialist future” with notable exceptions, like Campbell. I’ve read more publisher bios than I can shake a really big pen at and all of them were explicitly encouraging “fiction that moves us to more progressive policies.” Even in the pulps.

So, even back then the way to get accepted was to be explicitly left and cater to the publisher’s own obsessions (same as it ever was.) But the publishers were still competent.

Two or three years ago, I undertook, for reasons known only to the psychiatrist I don’t have, to read back on the books I read as a kid. The project got interrupted for various reasons, but I intend to go back to it, and perhaps do reviews.
However, here is what shocked me: the premises of the stories were often either scietifically laughable or (by now) done to death. The characters were walking stereotypes. The settings were often barely sketched in.
And yet those books grabbed me from the first chapter. And no, it wasn’t nostalgia, as I didn’t remember a lot of them. What they were was…. competent at the primary job of a pulp science fiction book: have the reader read you and enjoy it, so he’ll buy more.
Oh, the ideas were also extremely poisonous, since I read mostly “between the wars” when the line between socialism and fascism was often nonexistent. (We’re kind of there again. Hello, darkness my old friend.) So paens to socialism alternated with sounding the alarm on the NEED for “racial hygiene” (barfs.)

I can attest, having re-read those books that, being entertaining and drawing you along even as you thought they were ridiculous, they were a far more effective way to sell the poison than the current dry and lecturing tomes on the glories Gramsci’s edit on Marx.

So as far as I can tell, those leftists were very competent. And to be fair, they were probably hired on competence, not their ideas, because that’s how non-Marxists hire. “Can you do the job?”

But that was at least four generations ago as working lifespans go. Maybe more, as people after WWII started work later and died younger than we do.

And that competence has been ditched along the way.

Now, how did that happen?

I don’t know. I once read a book on the transformation of Universities in the sixties, but I can’t remember the title because it was a decade or so ago. This happened, btw, in the sixties, so I wasn’t really aware of it. I couldn’t even read till sixty six and it was the end of the seventies before I started trying to understand the world and events.

I do know that my education wasn’t nearly as good as my dad’s. And my brother’s (about ten years older. It’s complicated) was halfway as good as dad’s. For instance, under the excuse of “modernizing” I never got Latin or Greek and knew ancient history only because I found dad’s school books and read them. Other things, such as math, were stretched out over a much longer time. Geography was elided, economics never taught us the basics and went on a grand crusade for Marxist (or in the case of one teacher mixed) economies. We learned way more “activism” than actual facts. In fact most of the classes were devoted to telling us the past of the west was unfair and evil and such, only you know, a little better disguised than now. Also to make us feel superior to our parents and grandparents that we knew this, while they didn’t. The same poison pill has been served, in increasing dosages to every generation since.
Now, the book I read said this was done to submit to the demands of protesters in US universities, and maybe it was? Craziness in the US tends to propagate throughout the world. Witness the “black lives matter” demonstrations/riots all over the world. But one could adduce other causes, such as the greater prosperity of the post WWII era, combined with a need for more “trained” white collar workers having facilitated concentrating on “the things they’ll need to use.” I know in the US this meant a lot of science graduates knew almost nothing about the liberal arts.

What I do know is that a large portion of the theme of my — and most of my friends’ — adult lives has been “creating competence.” Because we didn’t leave our educational institutions with much of it.
I was recently complimented on my English not along the lines of “Oh, and you are so good at it” but at how astonishing it was for me to use all the levels of the language, know what I was doing and using them for effect. I know there’s a ton of other examples from the past, but this person — by no means a fool — was amazed at someone our generation doing it.

Well, I was lucky in that my first through third year teachers were exceptionally competent and bucked the trend of making learning fun. One of them said “you will memorize the vocab lists, and be tested on them till your eyes bleed. And you will be proficient. And when you leave my hands you will be fluent.”

And yes, that’s part of it, but not all. The fact is in English, and in so many other things, I was aware that while making very good grades, I wasn’t being taught much of anything. So I set about learning. For English this involved finding a bookstore that had forgotten a bunch of books in its attics, and never remarked them after WWII. So I read a lot of abridged works “for foreign learners.” From those, in my second year, I graduated to a (cost the Earth, because of culture-protecting tariffs) a paperback copy of Dandelion Wine, US version. I spent what must have been six months working on that book. This is why every word I wasn’t sure about has notations in pencil on the top. The next book took three months, etc. BUT the point is, “I didn’t get that from school.”

Also, often, in my professional life, I came across the very basics that everyone should know and I wasn’t taught. One of those was: margins. (Not even joking.) Another was punctuation, and I still struggle and periodically have to spend a day doing exercise books just to ‘set it properly’ because early (lack of) learning tells.
To this day I’m not sure how to do proper bookkeeping, something mom knew with a (pre-apprenticeship, that’s something else) 4th grade education.

So what I suspect happens in all the “get woke go broke” instances, or the Iowahawk paradigm is that the people coming in, having been hired by true believers (every generation is more of a true believer) and educated by true believers, have no clue how to do the job.

In my own field I was staggered to find out, for instance that there are NO market studies done for publishing. None. They have no idea what the public wants to buy. This is like “management 101” but they don’t do it. Not for content, not for type of plot and pacing, not for SIZE or price.
And my guess would be because they have no clue how to do it.
They were hired for their beliefs, so what they concentrate on is blazing those beliefs and looking good to their bosses. Which is not a bad personal strategy, but sucks for the business long term. And stems from a lack of competence, not intelligence.

There is a subset of true believers that aren’t either smart or competent and skate through solely on “excessive belief and signaling.” I’d put Obama in that category. I’m still convinced he firmly believes if he ruins the US enough the rest of the world will get richer. Because economics is a foreign language to him and he was taught a bunch of dogma that just ain’t so.

But it is a lot like what happens when “advancing women’s rights” women get hired into a field or take it over. Instead of being passionately interested in the THING be it games, or sf books, or whatever it is they’re messing with this week, they’re passionately interested in “cause.”
No matter how smart or well equipped intellectually they are, they’re going to take that area of business or endeavor down. Because it has ceased being the main job.

They can be intelligent and good at what they’re doing, but what they’re doing is not for the benefit of the house/company/endeavor.

BTW a related side of this is how I understand the left thinking we’re stupid. This was particularly true when I was deep in the political closet. When pitching, or talking books with friends, I could hear the other person going “Come on, put in the talking points that will take it “to the next level.” And they’d say things like “oh, you’re just not that deep a thinker. it’s all right.” What it means is that they can’t understand why we don’t parrot the right points to benefit ourselves, since obviously the THING isn’t going to get done, anyway. So we’re stupid.
…. They might not be wrong. But only on the very short term, and the problem is that they’re not “deep thinkers.”

Anyway, that is why there is a competence gap between right and left. It’s not because they’re not capable, but because they don’t find the “thing” as worth of their time and devotion as we do. Also because the ideology blinds them, they don’t realize there’s anything to FIX in their education. So even if they wanted to they couldn’t fix what they’re doing wrong.

This, btw, is the explanation for “everything is broken” and is a massive threat to civilization, bigger even than rigged elections, bigger ideological craziness, bigger than anything else.
We’ve sold competence for a pot of message.
And we need competent people to save civilization.

Go forth.

Dare to Be Petty- by Anonymous

We all already know that the left is populated largely by useless people with no practical skills. They can’t make anything. They don’t even know where things come from. They don’t know how to keep the lights on or the water flowing through pipes.

They think these things happen by magic, or that those are the responsibility of the peasants to take care of. They’re right to a degree. It’s the little people who take care of those things, and that give the little people a tremendous amount of power they don’t even begin to see. Fight Club had a great scene that illustrated this in a very visceral way.

The point is that the left has taught us something very important this last decade: the power of being petty. Because they are. And they’re not afraid of using it.
And when one side insists on being fair and above board while the other side is petty, the petty side wins.

So, you’re going to say “but we can’t get down to their level!”
Why not? Because you want to lose? And you want to lose to the most detached, cultist bunch of cosplayers since the Aztecs thought they needed to kill all the people to keep the sun going?
Like hell. You’ll be petty and like it. And after that, we can rebuild and make sure the left learns to play fair. But until that day fairplay is death.

They’re going to run it off every site their control. Their HR is going to run off anyone to the right of Lenin. Their marketing managers are going to disadvantage our products. They’re going to do their best to obliterate us. And they dream of executions and prison camps.

So put fair n the box for a while. Be petty. Learn to be petty. Dare to be petty.

Because the truth is, though they’ve managed to control most institutions of power. But where the ability meets the real world? They’ve got nothing. Our side is the one that keeps things working.

Imagine Queen Nancy’s power suddenly goes out and there’s just no one available to fix it for nine or ten hours, or people show up to fix it and everything just goes wrong. Her precious store of ice cream gets melted and her kitchen full of food is now full of trash. How sad. Or her plumbing starts to have a problem, and the parts to fix the problem just aren’t available. Supply shortages, you know. Or every plumber in the area feels unsafe because they’ve seen videos of her violating the covid restrictions, so they’re going to have to take extra safety precautions that will add extra time and cost more. Yes, yes, we know who you are; but with all due respect that doesn’t make a difference to the virus. We have families that we’re worried about, you know?

It doesn’t just have to be Queen Nancy. You surely all have tiny tyrants in your areas. Judges who rule against the constitution, cops who defend them even after the left has called for defunding cops for months, politicians trying to raise your taxes and infringe on your rights.

New York City restaurants issued a blanket declaration that Governor Cuomo will not be served. That’s a good start. Now extend it to every politician that’s expressed support for lockdowns, higher taxes, more regulation, or has been seen violating the restrictions that they’ve demanded you live under. Do it.

Shun them. Deny them services, or charge them three times the normal price- in cash and up front. If you’re tasked with infrastructure work in their strongholds, their precious gated communities, delay the work and do it badly. Make the work cost as much as possible. Be rude to them, and make their lives unpleasant in every possible way. Be petty, and be vicious toward them. Become a nameless, faceless army of inconvenience and never-ending expense.    

They do that to us. And they’d do worse if they could.

Agitate against them and start agreeing with Antifa and BLM that those rich people in their gated communities are the problem, and they deserve to be held accountable. We’ve already seen how their revolutionary talk turns into shrill shrieking when the mob comes for them. Don’t defend them, not even verbally. Turn those gated communities into prisons that they don’t feel safe leaving and can’t get services into without great expense and inconvenience. Bleed them dry, demoralize them, and isolate them.

They will surely use the power of the courts they own to try to suppress you. They will surely try to make examples out of people. Demand a jury, every time. If you get called for a jury, show up and lie like hell about your political beliefs during jury selection. Make sure you get onto the jury. If it’s a civil case against someone of any political stripe making life unpleasant for political activists or politicians, agitate the jury to nullify and award court fees to the defendant. Juries do have that power, and we’ve allowed them to pack the juries for too long. When the judge overturns the jury’s ruling, turn your wrath onto the judge. Start petitions for recall them, shun them, deny them service, and make their lives a living hell.

If you find out a business is selectively screwing over the gilded elite, patronize them. Spread the idea of screwing the left over like a rumor. Invisible, everywhere, and a force of nature. Remind people of how much power they really have. Remind people of the plans the clueless left have for them.

The ones trying to break us can only do it if we let them, and they can’t really do a damned thing to force us to make their lives easy. Everyone can fight them this way, even if only by being rude to those who would be their betters.

Who is John Galt? We all are. We run the world that keeps them in comfort while they try to ruin us and destroy civilization. We can collectively stop the machine of their worlds. The people they’re after are the ones they rely on. Start making them see how little power they really have, and take back your power.

Make it Galt’s Gulch everywhere!