Going over this site’s archives for collecting stuff for a book (I think it will ultimately be three) I found how often I’m sick.  Well, it’s somewhat better now we’ve moved, but still bad relative to most human beings.

I must do something about that.  But not today.

I should know when I can’t write — not avoid it, because I’m lazy or not sure what to write, but can’t — I’m usually coming down with something.

It’s gastric trouble. No, not the Winnie.  I can still taste and smell fine.  And son had it earlier.  About two/three days.  He says he powered through the second day with energy drinks, but it upset his stomach.  So I’m not sure.

I think I’ll sleep a lot and maybe try to do some editing, since I have four fiction and one non-fiction books to edit (no, nothing exciting, the books reverted years ago.)

I’m reminded of Giovanni Guareschi’s books again. Wen Don Camilo was likely to get too excited over local politics, the Lord sent him an illness that made him too sick to do anything stupid.

I’ve noticed a certain congruence….

Even a blast from the past.  And I’m out of guest posts.
I’m going to play with fiction.

And Texans on the route of Laura, sound off!

Y’all be careful out there.   ’cause I hear these guys are riding today… and it’s like only we can see them:

 

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

 

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,

I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.

Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,

And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

 

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn

That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:

But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,

So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

 

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,

Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,

But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come

That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

 

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,

They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;

They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;

So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

 

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.

They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.

But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,

And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

 

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life

(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)

Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,

And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

 

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,

By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;

But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,

And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

 

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew

And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true

That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four

And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

 

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man

There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.

That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,

And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

 

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins

When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,

As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,

The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

 

 

Last year I would feel stupid posting this here.  In fact in 2008, I felt so stupid that I hid it and occluded it, when I tried to give warning.

But 2020 has stripped us of so many protections and so many protections in our constitution — I keep imagining Heinlein’s reaction if I went back in time and told him in 2020 almost all churches in America would be closed and the faithful threatened with fines and jail for worshiping — that I keep thinking of F. Paul Wilson’s phrase in Repairman Jack “The Spear has no branches.”  In his books it meant that the hero was being stripped of all meaningful attachments so he’d be the perfect weapon.

2020 feels like all of us are being dropped head first down a howling wind tunnel that is abrading essential parts of us and our society away…. probably with the intent of making us into serfs.

So — this is the part I’d feel stupid posting — I was sitting here, discussing what comes next with friends, what next great gambit the left will try and someone said that if Trump wins there will be immediate violence.

I’ll be honest. There will be immediate violence anyway.

I expected it when Obama won, which is why I posted the excerpt below.  But when Obama first won, in 2008 they were still serenely confident he was a “sort of god” and we’d all fall in line “naturally”.  (Thanks perhaps to the man’s own astounding hubris.)  if you remember the early flutter of reports and news, they fully expected he’d be so great we’d be happy to have him, as some twits kept insisting “as your king.”

…. But that was then.  Now they’ve been balked of their “natural” victory four years ago, and d*mn it, the peasants have refused to fall into line.  And they’ve been practicing by throwing fits and burning stuff.  (And btw, most of the rioters are pasty white, straight up communist operatives.)

And if they manage to cheat their way in they’re going to view it as a hard-won victory, and think they need to punish and destroy us.

The beatings won’t stop.  Worse, because nothing will turn out the way they expect, the longer it goes on, the more they’ll get violent.

Take for instance de Blasio’s bizarre assumption that New York will be repopulated with waves of immigrants once they throw the borders open.

These people are straight up doing hits of the good stuff.  Boggarting the somma.

They don’t get action and consequence and live in world of symbols that remain constant, no matter what actually happens in the world.

Look, even now — right now — Latin illegals have left Colorado in droves.  I don’t know if it’s the same everywhere, but Colorado, or at least the parts I go into, has gotten MARKEDLY whiter.  Makes perfect sense.  First, because our press did such a good job of portraying the virus as being worse HERE (it wasn’t but never mind.) Second because… well…  Most Latins consider themselves white.  (Yes, they also consider themselves Latin, but it’s a culture, not a race. The idiot news anchor talking about how much she loved not seeing white people and talking about her melinated heart (what the hell is that, really?) read completely white to me.)  When they see people on the streets, abusing white people, and talkigna bout how white people need to die, they’re not going to side with AOC’s idiotic declaration that Latins are black (for one the culture of at least the new immigrants is far more racist than white culture in the US has been for 50 years.)  They’re going to interpret it as their getting caught in the middle, or being in danger, and they’re going to scarper.

Let’s be serious, okay: Why do you think that Colorado is giving free tuition for training in construction trades? And I will be honest, I haven’t heard Spanish in a store in weeks.

Maybe that’s just coincidence.

However, something I CAN guarantee to Mr. De Blasio: Venezuela was once a destination point for Portuguese immigrants, many of them illegal.  Somehow I don’t think this is happening anymore.

In the future these reckless morons aim to build, NO ONE will want to come to NYC for the same reason no one swims from the US TO Cuba.

But the morons, of course, refuse to understand that and that their policies will create only poverty and death.  I mean, one would assume they KNOW they want to be lordlings over peasants, but somehow, they really think they’ll create paradise on Earth.  (Remember Occasional Cortex wants to get “native Americans” to come out and teach us the arcane arts of caring for the Earth. … Like running casinos?  I mean SERIOUSLY these fools see everything as an idiot cliche/symbol with no real world referent. And the cliches never change.  Call it a 4 year old comic-book-reader understanding of the world.)

So, if they fraud their way to victory, the beatings will never stop.  The more the world refuses to follow their script, the more it will be your fault.  Yes, yours, you hoarder and wrecker.

But make no mistake, it will start the day of their “victory” in a massive spasm of combined celebration and trying to get rid of anyone they consider “dangerous.” Which will include a lot of people here, including yours truly.

Be aware of it. Be prepared. And do not go quietly into that good night.

This is what I posted before the election in 2008, trying to send a coded message.

If you can find the short story, read it. It’s a good story, but it will also perhaps give you a little feeling for what I fear.

Below is the excerpt of the beginning:

Years ago on this blog I talked about Technique of The Coup D’Etat by Giovanni Guareschi and I typed  the beginning in here.  I shall copy that. (Assume typos are mine.)

At ten o’clock on Tuesday evening, the village square was swept with wind and rain, but a crowd had been gathered there for three or four hours to listen to the election news coming out of a radio loudspeaker. Suddenly the lights went out and everything was plunged into darkness. Someone went to the control box but came back saying there was nothing to be done. The trouble must be up the line or at the power plant, miles away. People hung around for half an hour or so, and then, as the rain began to come down even harder than before, they scattered to their homes, leaving the village silent and deserted. Peppone shut himself up in the People’s Palace, along with Lungo, Brusco, Straziami, and Gigio, the same leader of the “Red Wing” squad from Molinetto. They sat around uneasily by the light of a candle stump and cursed the power and light monopoly as an enemy of the people, until Smilzo burst in. He had gone to Rocca Verde on his motorcycle to see if anyone had news and now his eyes were popping out of his head and he was waving a sheet of paper.

“The Front has won!” he panted. “Fifty-two seats out of a hundred in the senate and fifty-one in the chamber. The other side is done for. We must get hold of our people and have a celebration. If there’s no light, we can set fire to a couple of haystacks nearby.

 “Hurrah!” shouted Peppone. But Gigio grabbed hold of Smilzo’s jacket.

“Keep quiet and stay where you are!” he said grimly. It’s too early for anyone to be told. Let’s take care of our little list.”

“List? What list?” asked Peppone in astonishment.

“The list of reactionaries who are to be executed first thing. Let’s see now…”

Peppone stammered that he had made no such list, but the other only laughed.

“That doesn’t matter. I’ve a very complete one here all ready. Let’s look at it together, and once we’ve decided we can get to work.”

Gigio pulled a sheet of paper with some twenty names on it out of his pocket and laid it on the table.

“Looks to me as if al the reactionary pigs were here,” he said. “I put down the worst of them, and we can attend to the rest later.”

Peppone scanned the names and scratched his head.

“Well, what do you say?” Gigio asked him.

“Generally speaking, we agree,” said Peppone. “But what’s the hurry? We have plenty of time to do things in the proper style.”

Gigio brought his fist down on the table.

“We haven’t a minute to lose, that’s what I say,” he shouted harshly. “This is the time to put our hands on them, before they suspect us. If we wait until tomorrow, they may get wind of something and disappear.”

At this point Brusco came into the discussion.

“You must be crazy,” he said. “You can’t start out to kill people before you think it over.”

“I’m not crazy and you’re a very poor Communist, that’s what you are! These are all reactionary pigs; no one can dispute that, and if you don’t take advantage of this golden opportunity then you’re a traitor to the party!”

Brusco shook his head.

“Don’t you believe it! It’s jackasses that are traitors to the Party! And you’ll be a jackass if you make mistakes and slaughter innocent people.”

Gigio raised a threatening finger.

“It’s better to eliminate ten innocents than to spare one individual who may be dangerous to the cause. Dead men can do the party no harm. You’re a very poor Communist, as I’ve said before. In fact, you never were a good one. You’re as weak as a snowball in hell, I say. You’re just a bourgeois in disguise!”

Brusco grew pale, and Peppone intervened.

“That’s enough,” he said. “Comrade Gigio has the right idea and nobody can deny it. It’s part of the groundwork of Communist philosophy. Communism gives us the goal at which to aim and democratic discussion must be confined to the quickest and surest ways to attain it.”

Giggio nodded his head in satisfaction, while Peppone continued: “Once it’s been decided that these people are or may be dangerous to the cause and therefore we must eliminate them, the next thing is to work out the best method of elimination. Because if by our carelessness, we were to allow a a single reactionary to escape, then we should indeed be traitors to the Party. Is that clear?”

“Absolutely,” the others said in chorus. “You’re dead right.”

“There are six of us,” Peppone went on, “And twenty names on that list, among them the Filotti, who has a whole regiment in his house and a cache of arms in the cellar. If we were to attack these people one by one, at the first shot the rest would run away. We must call our forces together and divide them up into twenty squads, each one equipped to deal with a particular objective.”

“Very good,” said Gigio.

“Good, my foot!” shouted Peppone. “That’s not the half of it! We need a twenty first squad, equipped even better than the rest to hold off the police. And mobile squads to cover the roads and the river. If a fellow rushes into action in the way you proposed, without proper precautions, running the risk of botching it completely, then he’s not a good communist, he’s just a damn fool.”

It was Gigio’s turn to pale now, and he bit his lip in anger, while Peppone proceeded to give orders. Smilzo was to transmit word to the cell leaders in the outlying settlements and these were to call their men together. A green rocket would give the signal to meet in appointed places, where Falchetto, Brusco and Straziami would form the squads and assign the targets. A red rocket would bid them go into action. Smilzo went off on his motorcycle while Lungo, Brusco, Straziami and Gigio discussed the composition of the squads.

“You must do a faultless job,” Peppone told them. “I shall hold you personally responsible for its success. Meanwhile, I’ll see if the police are suspicious and find some way to put them off.

Don Camillo, later waiting in vain for the lights to go on and the radio to resume its mumble, decided to get ready for bed. Suddenly he heard a knock at the door and when he drew it open cautiously, he found Peppone before him.

“Get out of here in a hurry!” Peppone panted. “Pack a bag and go! Put on an ordinary suit of clothes, take your boat and row down the river.”

Don Camillo stared at him with curiosity.

“Comrade Mayor, have you been drinking?”

“Hurry,” said Peppone. “The people’s Front has won and the squads are getting ready. There’s a list of people to be executed and your name is the first one!”

 

*More applicable than ever now when those few of us somewhat at risk are being prevented from taking our chances with a new type of common cold and paying the the price in complete economic destruction and underhanded seizure of private property — what do you think ruining city real estate values and destroying businesses is? — and while maniacs are blaming invisible monsters of oppression for individual actions and wanting to destroy all of society the name of Marxism. It’s time to stop that sh*t. Only individuals have rights, and among individual rights are “to be able to make choices the bien pensant disapprove of.- SAH.*

The left is very adamant about charity not coming “with a sermon.”  It is most of their excuse for wanting government not churches to preach.

But while I understand the convinced Christian’s need to preach and to save everyone from hell, which if you believe it is an eternal sentence and an awful one is mere human decency, I don’t understand the left’s similar need to ensure that everyone lives “a decent life” by its lights.

They refuse to understand that just as people are entitled to disbelieve and deny eternal salvation (and if you’re a Christian you know they are entitled to that. It’s called free will. Just as they’re entitled to sin. Doesn’t make it right. They’re still entitled to it. You can’t force anyone to be holy) they can refuse to live a middle class life. (Or better. The left keeps imagining that middle class is much further up than it is. Possibly because so many of them these days are spoiled rich kids.)

This came to mind last night, thinking of someone in the comments (sorry, I don’t remember the name) who said that maybe 10% of the homeless were aggressive and dangers to themselves and others.  Others simply were mentally ill or caught in the trap of child support but behaved like decent human beings.

The child support thing is iniquitous, and usually on both sides.  No, seriously. Women on the make will drive a man to ruin to finance her lifestyle in the name of “the children.”  Men on the make still find ways not to pay, and if the woman is decent and doesn’t want to turn her kids’ life into unending strife she ends up living in poverty to provide for the kid. I’ve known this on both sides, partly because it’s impossible for a judge to adjudicate fairly without truly knowing the parties involved. Partly because scammers gonna scam.  (It’s almost like no-fault divorce and marriage as a transitory fancy is a bad idea particularly when there are children involved. Never mind.)

The mental health… I’m fairly sure there are still services available should someone need them and know how to look.  And perhaps without the noise of the violent it would be easier for those people to find help.

But I still wonder if the mental health issues are such. And I wonder about other things like “but what if people just want to live like that?”

I have learned through rather bitter experience that you can’t help everyone and also that what you want for yourself and your life is not what other people want. Some people will do the absolute minimum to keep a roof over head and food on the table, even if the roof is leaky and substandard, and the food is whatever and they never do any house keeping and live in what can only be described as utter squalor.

I found long ago that given the absolute same income as someone else, we tend to live better.  Why? because we work beyond the money we have.  I don’t mean just that we work to get out of that level of poverty, I mean that we will trade time for the money we don’t have.

So, when my husband was the sole provider because my writing wasn’t selling yet, I made a lot of my clothes, refinished furniture and, of course, cooked absolutely everything from scratch.  Other than our cars, which we always bought used and fully paid for and drove into the ground, we easily kept up with our dual income friends.  Why? Well, not child care was part of it, but furniture, clothes and food were the other part. It’s just cheaper to do for yourself.

It was also a massive amount of work. Particularly since I was trying to break into writing, and was getting up every day at five am to write for two hours before the routine with the kids started.  I remember years of being short on sleep and going to bed with a long list of work that still needed to be done and I hadn’t got to in my head.

Was it worth it? Well, it was for me. I don’t like living in squalor.  I wanted nice furniture and a nice, clean house.  And I wanted my kids to have good food.

All of which amounts to: it was for me. It might not be for someone else.

It took me forever to figure this out. Let’s say the dime only dropped in the last ten years.  So, I kind of get the left not “getting” it.

Partly because if you come from a background where everyone worked a lot all the time to secure the best lifestyle they could, it’s almost impossible to visualize someone wanting to live in what we’d consider unacceptable circumstances.  Or perhaps not even “wanting” as fundamentally not being willing to pay the price to get a better situation.

Look, I’m not even a hundred percent sure of that last one.  We tried for decades with someone, and everything you gave that would bring a better life got either broken or ignored or thrown away.  Perhaps there is a Petersonian thing there, of people believing they only deserve to live at a certain level and anything above that making them uncomfortable. (Peterson says in terms of people not taking necessary meds, etc, that having seen our own brokenness and that we’re often untruthful and evil — even when we don’t mean to be — we think we don’t deserve to be well, etc.)

Or perhaps it is simply that doing anything, even using the thing that makes it easier is too much effort.

I’ve said before that I think the vast majority of people don’t feel the need to work above a subsistence level and that those of us who do are the mutants.  I still believe so. In evolutionary terms, if you continued hunting after you had mammoth in your cave, you were just going to deplete the game and end up starving eventually.

That’s not the way it works now, but the human brain is not a thing of the industrial revolution.

I believe a great number of the people who live in “chronic poverty” are in fact at the level at which they wish to be/the level for which they’re willing to work.  The left keeps coming up with increasingly fancier explanations, which are now devolving to “invisible demons” of oppression (seriously, in our society? Besides, if societal disapproval caused you to be poor, then a lot of gay people would be historically poor, instead of statistically at the top.)

It never occurred to me that a lot of people who are “homeless” might fall into the same category.  By which I mean the ones who aren’t crazy, addicted or dangerous to others.  Maybe what they have and what they do is the level they wish to live at.  Or at least it’s comfortable enough they don’t wish to do anything to get out of it.  But it makes sense.  After all, by the numbers, these people already live better than your average medieval peasant.  At which point, honesty, my only problem with their choice is whatever help they get that is non voluntary, i.e. taxation, not private charity.  If they’re living like that and it’s their choice, and they’re wholly financed by private charity? Don’t care. None of my business.  Everyone has the right to go to hell in the way of their choice.

What disturbs me about the left’s inability to recognize that choice is that those choices end up being financed from my purse, and the purse of the others who choose to work.  That they are in fact holding up a gun to the heads of working fathers and mothers and demanding money to keep people who (what was Occasional Cortex’s cutesy phrase, exactly, I can’t remember) “aren’t willing to work” in the level of comfort they are okay with.

And then the fact that those people aren’t living at what the left thinks American middle class level should be, in a decently ecologically approved house, with the car and the organic meals and full health insurance, the left will come back and demand more.  More and more money to pour down the hole of trying to change people’s choice on what they consider an acceptable level of comfort and living.  What they aren’t willing to work to get out of.  What, in fact, they’ll preserve if they get more “help” by doing even less to help themselves.

That’s what I object to. I object to the use of people’s choices to blackmail other people out of theirs.

I object to this holy crusade of the left that turns anyone who has less than you into a de-facto saint who needs to be championed, while you need to be tormented because you worked (or your ancestors did) to get to a level you consider acceptable.

I object to this Christian heresy with no redemption, no hope, no future, and no one being good or holy except those who envy and live at the expense of others.

I don’t think there’s ever been a civilization as rich as ours, but even in rich civilizations of the past, there were people who lived at all levels. And though social motility was smaller or slower or hidden, it was possible.  It could happen. It might take multiple generations and grim determination, but it happened.  Just the same, there were any number of people who were satisfied once they reached the “we’re not starving” level and went no further.

There still are.  In the infinite variety of humanity, what you consider comfortable I consider insupportable.  And it’s not just poverty, either. I’d probably die if forced to live the life of a socialite, forever minding what people thought, and having to have the latest styles.  I don’t want that. I’m not interested.

In the same way I suspect any number of the “poor” would think I was crazy, keeping the work hours I do, and taking time to refinish furniture, or clean, or…  Because they don’t feel the need to it.

And that’s their right. They are entitled to live as they want and to do just the minimum to get there.

And the left is NOT entitled to use holy envy to make everyone who wants better and works for it to feel guilty. Nor are they entitled to rob us to finance the lifestyle of people who don’t want to make any extraordinary effort and feel fine the way they are.

And it’s time we stopped this nonsense.

You choose what you want to sacrifice for what. I will willingly sacrifice time and effort for a clean and decent house.  You won’t because you place more value on time on the sofa watching your favorite program? You do you.  Just don’t ask me for money to get you a better house.

You see what you want and you pay the price.  And the do-gooders can go take a flying leap.  As long as your hand isn’t in my pocket, I don’t care.

 

 

The Right To Go To Hell a Blast From the Past from February 2019

If you’re reading this, chances are you’re human.  (Unless you’re a minotaur, of course. This blog doesn’t discriminate on your percentage of human DNA. Like the owner could throw stones and all.)

Yesterday a friend asked a question, which has apparently been rocking right wing blogs and talk shows: “Is considering humans as inherently good a right or left thing?” I’d managed to miss it completely until a friend brought it up.

At which point, I rolled my eyes so hard they went under the sofa. And let me tell you that with Havey having now claimed me as his person (in his half -daft way.  I don’t know what instructions Greebo left him, but running over me, screaming starting at six am is NOT the way to get me up and writing.) those eyes were COVERED in fuzz.

Because the answer is “Yes, but it’s complicated.”

Sure, the left believes in the essential “innocence” of humans.  What it actually means is that, back there, at the beginning, they believe humans were born perfect and corrupted by society.  (Who has the time machine to go strangle J-J. Rousseau with his swaddling clothes, again?)

And the modern left believes a more elaborate lie, in which we are all born PERFECT and things like madness and crime only come in because of capitalism.  They have this entire Christian-heretical story according to which we lived once in a hunter gatherer paradise, where there was no private property and everyone had equal rights.

Then, the evil of greed and private property entered the world, and corrupted humans, so that men started exploiting women, people wanted to have “things” and everything went bad evil.

They base this, MOSTLY on their misinterpretation of primitive cultures and the remains of our most distant ancestors.  As in “Listen,paperskull, just because people didn’t have a ton of stuff, it doesn’t mean they didn’t cherish what they had.”  In fact, in some of the more primitive-living tribes, private property in the sense of un-needed and chance-come-by property, like charms or statues or whatever are very privately held and dearly loved.

This is why we find trade goods hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles away, in the graves of some of our ancestors.  IF you think that was some communally held property, you have more rocks in your head than the average progressive idiot.

In fact, some of the other great apes will fight over things they consider theirs. And if you’re going to say that’s because they were corrupted, you might want to consider that the only life for that won’t defend what is theirs is probably an ameba. And maybe not even then.  We just don’t know much about them.

Again poverty doesn’t mean “everything held in common.”  Yes,more primitive tribes have systems for sharing property and things you make. They are, arguably, responsible for some of the difficulty these tribes have crawling out of poverty, as they enable a system of crab bucket, where those who can’t or won’t do cannibalize the work and ingenuity of those that do.  In that sense, it is indeed primitive communism. But I wouldn’t brag about it.

At the same time, the left has this vision of humans as they are now as “no one is good and no one is clean.”  No, I don’t know how they reconcile it in their heads. I have a strong suspicion that they don’t reconcile anything in their heads, just receive it all, like open-mouthed guppies and don’t even chew as they swallow.  But let’s be charitable, maybe they think that capitalism — that all powerful idea you can own things and trade them… Wow, mind blown — has corrupted humans so far, that now all humans are tainted and evil.

This has some echo in their idea they can “fix”humans with “progressive” “education” (aka indoctrination) and various jiggerings of the way people live, trade and communicate.

So, they believe that humans are all evil, and everyone commits “crimes” and “evil” particularly those who get ahead/create anything/ are successful.  I.e. “no one gets ahead without breaking the law.”  I don’t know if they ever say that explicitly, but it’s obvious and implicit in all their art, writing and story telling.

But they also believe humans are INFINITELY perfectible by “education” — by which they mean making humans think and behave in a certain way.

This is solidly within the Marxist dream, where, after the dictatorship of the proletariat perfects us, the state will “wither away.”

Do I need to tell you they’re wrong?

The left believes they can write scripts for humans and humans will follow them blindly.  This can lead to a suspicion that leftists not only aren’t humans but have never met a single human.  I think it is more likely though that they are incredibly privileged humans of an intellectual bend. They grew up in stories, more than in the real world, and therefore believe the just-so story of Marxism.

And no amount of failure of their Procrustes bed of socialism/communism will convince them they were wrong.

So, do they believe humans are naturally good?  No, they believe humans were once naturally good, before evil-bad capitalism (think of it as a serpent) taught them to be bad, and now the only thing to do is “teach” (bully, arrest, cancel, beat) humans into perfection.  And hey, if most of them have to die along the way, is that too much to pay to bring paradise to Earth once again?

So, what about conservatives, (and for the purposes of this we’ll include Libertarians. What do they believe?) Do we believe that humans are naturally good?

Define good. Define human for that matter. And while we’re at it, let’s define everything else.  Okay, you don’t have time for that, so …. let’s table it for now, but remember it.

Most conservative/libertarians believe that most humans are as decent as they’re allowed to be.  Note “decent” not “good” which gets us into “whose idea of good.”

I.e. most humans can be trusted to look after their self interest best.

Wait, doesn’t that mean most humans will break the law and be criminals if you let them?

Well, no. The point is that in most cases the route to what humans want — which is some individual combination of status, family and stability — is easier if you don’t break the law.  In a sane society — say the one the founders intended (yeah, I know, now shut up) — breaking the law is the more expensive way to achieve that point.

And most humans, btw, do not want or aspire to unlimited power.  Yes, there are some. But most of us don’t.

Most of us, hell, don’t aspire to unlimited money or fame or whatever, either.

We (and by we I mean me and my friends. I don’t know about you tovarish) believe that humans are fundamentally self-interested, and have limits on all their impulses, from greed for money for greed for power.

This is obvious if you look around.  Go and look up your friends from childhood, for instance, and you’ll find yeah, some of them had a lot more potential, but weren’t willing to do the work. Some could have great families, but couldn’t be arsed, etc etc etc. But in the end, most people reach the level they are willing to pay for with sweat and tears (and occasionally blood.)

If they wanted more, they would work for it.

It is only when a system becomes fundamentally broken, like totalitarian societies, and progressives try to force a way of living — down to the least minute detail — on everyone, that humans become “naturally criminal.”

In fact, I think this idea that everyone is naturally evil-bad is the left’s long sustained scream at the fact that humans refuse to follow their scripts, and the tighter their script gets, the more we deviate.

The right? We believe if you leave people alone and impose only the minimal rules to make sure people with a raging thirst for power aren’t stomping on everyone else, and enforce them consistently, people are more or less decent. They mind their own business, and work and accumulate wealth to the level they wish, and then stop where they’re not willing to work any harder.

Now, we also believe all humans are fundamentally broken in some way, because, well, we’re in many ways jumped up social apes (I’m leaving out what I believe about the soul’s aspirations, because that’s based on stuff that is by nature unprovable) which means we have the impulses of social apes.  And those guys aren’t some kind of primitive and natural saint. All the sins of humanity are pre-figured in the physical form we inhabit, from murder to rape, from cannibalism to violence.  And so, those of us who aren’t extreme Libertarians know that most people are decent, but not everyone is some kind of noble savage or saint.  So, police is a necessary evil, to make the price of going off the rails expensive enough that just killing the neighbor and taking their stuff isn’t the lazy man’s way to riches.

In the same way, because nations are no more saintly than individuals, and because individual cultures tend to have their own agendas (whether the cultures are national or multi-national or tribal)we need a government, not just to regulate the administration of law, and prevent the police from going insane, but also to negotiate with other cultures/tribes/national and supra national entities.

Because government is essentially force, it’s very important to keep it out of the hands of those who believe humans are infinitely perfectible if ONLY government takes over every aspect of life, including how many squares of toilet paper you’re allowed to use for what purpose.

Because there is no faster way to turn everyone essentially evil than to make it impossible for them to subsist without taking things and hurting people.

So, the left believes we’re all meant to be noble savages. And is willing to commit all sorts of evil and violence to make us that again.

The right believes all of us have impulses and desires that are uh…. not noble at all savagery.  But the way to live in a functional society and prosper as a whole is to keep those under control.  Making it too socially expensive to hurt people and take their stuff can help make society on the whole, happy healthy and wise.

Yes, some individuals will fall through the cracks. That can’t be helped. You can’t make everyone happy and wealthy and contented.  Not without giving the savages in government so much power that all nobility, kindness and essential goodness is driven off and we’re all screaming apes, locked in a social hell.

So, yeah, depending on how you define it, (I told you we’d go back to definitions)  you can say either the left or the right believe in the essential goodness of humans.

But as usual, the devil — and the saving grace — are in the details.

 

 

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 MACKEY CHANDLER: APRIL.

ON SALE FOR 99C THIS WEEK!

April is an exceptional young lady and something of a snoop. After a chance encounter with a spy, she finds herself involved with political intrigues that stretch her abilities. There is a terrible danger she, and her friends and family, will lose the only home she has ever known, and be forced to live on the slum ball Earth below. It’s more than an almost fourteen year old should have to deal with. Fortunately she has a lot of smart friends and allies. It’s a good thing because things get very rough and dicey. They challenge the political status quo, and with a small population the only advantage they have in war is a thin technological edge.
The entire “April” series is building towards a merge with the future series that starts with “Family Law”.

FROM PAM UPHOFF:  Warrior At Large (Wine of the Gods Book 52.

Ice is back, and back in trouble! Fired from the Directorate, he’s working three part time jobs, and tripping over problems that a Warrior of the One can’t ignore. Spies from other Worlds and corrupt politicians is just the start

And with no one ordering him around, he’s free to deal with problems his way.

FROM MARY CATELLI:  The Witch-Child and the Scarlet Fleet.

Trapped in a pirate port. . . Caught between pirates who would force him to use wizardry in their aid, and a king who would force him to spy, Alik will need every scrap of wits and wizardry to forge his own path.

WRITING CHALLENGE

*No word for the challenge.

Write the opening two paragraphs of a story OR a two paragraph novel blurb based on THIS picture. SAH*

I’m going to try to do a chapter of Witch’s daughter later, but I need to go deal with the floor varnishing first, and probably lunch.
For those that watched the Prometheus award, I’m sorry my camera crapped out (zoom suddenly decided I didn’t want it, and it took me forever to find THAT setting.)

Crawling around on the floor looking for USB hookups (some are behind the computer) made me lose track of what I was saying.  Hopefully it wasn’t too bad.

Wiggles fingers.  See you later.
Anyone want to listen to a reading of work in progress later on? I can do a zoom meeting, though I don’t know how many people it will allow….

Yes, I DO know who also painted walls: Anyone too poor to pay a painter.

Though right now our biggest problem is even getting estimates for ANYTHING.  Apparently all the Americans who still have jobs are doing home improvement.  Which makes sense, if you have to work from home.

I just waited in a line of 10 to get paint mixed at Home Despot Depot.

Kate Paulk helped talk me out of a dead end in plotting yesterday.

Also oh, yeah, tomorrow I’ll be presenting one of the Prometheus award at NasFic and after will be on a panel. F. Paul Wilson will also be there.

Also, if Overgrownhobbit reads this, can you resend the post.  I can’t remember your real name, so I can’t find it. (sigh.)

I think that’s it.
Sorry for more or less skipping out on you, but I want to be done with home stuff so I can write.

First of all thank you.  I do feel somewhat better. Though honestly, I think part of it is this formless void of a semi-shutdown and social isolation routine.

As I said before, I’m an hermit. Mostly I live under a rock, writing novels. But–

But I used to go out, sometimes on a whim, to say the grocery store or Goodwill or the craft store because I was under the control of a Bright IdeaTM.  I no longer do that. I really can’t wear masks. This is not just because I think — on an informed opinion from reading a lot of things, including the reason they’re not recommended during wild fires in CO, like the season five years ago that destroyed my health for four years — they’re ineffective and counter-productive. It’s because I’m a mostly controlled asthmatic. As in, I can go for months without needing the rescue inhaler.  If I get an upper respiratory virus, or if we’re having a bad fire season, I’ll need it maybe once a day.  OTOH if I wear a mask, the re-breathing of my own exhaled air, plus the high humidity will have me using a rescue inhaler several times a day.  To be clear, that’s say 2 hours of wearing the mask for a doctor’s appointment results in days of needing the rescue inhaler all the time for a week or so.

It has other issues.  My oxygen saturation is marginal at best, one of the reasons we’re considering going low altitude in a few years, so I don’t need to wear oxygen all the time as I age.  But that’s something else.

Anyway, the on a whim “I’m not a prisoner in the house” trips to the store or the post office are not a thing anymore.  I have and use visors.  Weirdly restaurants are fine with this.  But with stores I never know when they’ll call the manager in a panic to stop me. Seems to be on a whim.  To make things worse — maybe that’s just my feeling — it seems to me everyone at the store is radiating fear and anger.  So if I go out — and I have to do it at least once a week — I tend to wait till I’ve run out of almost everything, and then I go at odd hours, and rush through the store, like I’m on a scavenger hunt.

Even walking in the neighborhood — thanks to Paste Eating Polis wanting us to wear masks everywhere outside the house — is fraught. No, most of my neighbors aren’t stupid. Most of them aren’t masked, either.  There was an incident with a lost puppy yesterday and we were all gathering to figure out whose she was with not a mask in sight.  So, the neighborhood in terms of my street is sane.  But outside my street….  while walking with younger son we met a woman walking her dog, with her two adorable kids running alongside.  As I usually do, I prepared to pet the dog.  And then she looked at us — yes, she and the poor children were wearing masks. I’m surprised the dog wasn’t. I mean, a papaya tested positive after all, which tells you everything you need to know about the tests — and scrambled away from us in a panic, to about 10 feet distance, while snarling at us.  One encounter like that is enough to make me hesitate to walk for a week.

And then there was our “fun.”

Look, I’m an incredibly dorky person — yes, I know, you already knew I’m a writer — and even when we were young, cute, and had the money, neither of us ever had much interest in “the glamorous life.”  Okay, part of this is our insistence in living within our means as much as possible and having no credit card debt. But still. We probably could have managed a couple of glamorous trips or at least semi-glamorous ones to the seaside. But out kids were “treated” to vacations in Denver, randomly because I had a search on when Embassy Suites had a sale. And it was Embassy Suites because we could have the kids in a separate room but only pay for one, and also because if we got up late enough (never a problem with kids. Though since we didn’t own a television at the time, they usually got up at around six am to watch cartoons, however getting them away from the cartoons took forever anyway) we could let the kids have an epic breakfast, which meant we skipped lunch and only had to pay for a meal a day.  And during the day? Well, we did such daring stuff like hit the zoo and museums (memberships are good value) or go to Lakeside, the cheapest amusement park in Denver.

THAT was our big, expensive fun.  Oh, we also, sometimes, took free tours of factories, or went for drives.  Oh, and we looked for books in used bookstores (I remember spending two such weekends in pursuit of comic bookstores with bargain bins. We made younger son VERY happy.)

Again, as I said, that was when we had more money and were young and cute.  Now? Well, we used to have dreams of shopping for cheap airfares and going to random cities for weekends of writing (or researching. It’s always good to have locations in your tool box) and meeting fans.  That — sigh — might never be possible again.

BUT we had settled in a very nice pattern.  I hate cleaning.  Actually, no. I get bored cleaning.  That can be solved with Great Courses and Audible.  It’s still a lot of work, particularly as, having lived here 4 years, we’re still organizing, so cleaning comprises a lot of other stuff.

To reward myself for cleaning, whenever I cleaned the house (usually Fridays) we’d take the next day (or more usually half a day) and do fun stuff, like go to a lecture or exhibit, or the botanic gardens or the zoo, and usually out to eat.

This was not only time out of the house, when I could see people and assure my back brain that we were not outcasts on an ice floe and that depression wasn’t called for, but time we weren’t interrupted by cats or calls, and didn’t feel we needed to be doing anything else.  I talked plots, he discussed his plans for music. That sort of thing.

Then there was church.

Anyway when we first locked down I thought “Whatever, I can not do this for two weeks. not the end of the world.”  It’s far more than two weeks.  Because Polis is dumber than most rocks, (or perhaps because he enjoys his stupid and pointless power) even the zoo and the botanic gardens, OUTSIDE, IN THE SUN require face diapers.  Also, you have to book a week or so in advance, and frankly, we’re never that organized (Sometimes my cleaning is on Saturdays, and Dan’s jobs can have emergencies.)  As for church, we’re allowed 10 people no matter how big the church, and again you have to book way in advance.

So I lost my reward system, but I also lost my anchor points.  Sometimes — I did tell you I was dorky, right? — if I was having a bad week, I focused on that date afternoon with Dan and planned what I was going to wear, where we’d go, etc.

All that is gone.

To make things worse it’s been a year of repeated punches in the gut, a couple completely unexpected.  And after a while, it gets to you, and you have no anchor.

Anyway, all this long explanation for why I hit a wall yesterday, and why it was hard to even think of writing.

And yes, it sounds like I’m whining about not being able to do fun things.  I am. Whining is better than growling, which is what I feel like doing.  Dorky though my rhythm of life was, it was mine, and I LIKED it.  Yes, I’d be quiet about it if it were a necessity or if were doing anyone any good, and not simply part of a tactic to stoke fear, destroy the economy, and enable Paste Eating Polis to pose in front of his mirror in his Hugo Boss uniform.  The pointlessness of it all, and telling me I should be willing to do it because my betters say is what causes the growl.

Yes, I need to figure out ways around that sense of utter isolation, ways that my backbrain understands. Turns out, for instance, having Kate Paulk on Skype, even if we only exchange a sentence or two a day helps a lot.  I don’t know why. I’m planning other things. More on that in a moment.

The rest of the state of the writer isn’t all bad.  I’m finally writing again, but it keeps getting interrupted by house remodeling.  We now have two rooms left to floor, and after that a major cleaning and culling of the garage and the storage room needs to happen.

After which I can get storage crap out of my library and be able to access my research books.  And also, maybe, use it as a broadcast room.

You see, our library is in the basement, so we can completely control the lighting.  And once the storage crap is out of it, we can put in an armchair, and I don’t care if you guys see the books I have on the shelves. (Yes, some of them are weird.)

Because of the stupid hits this year has given us, I’m thinking — for short term money — of teaching writing workshops.  Younger son says he can record them and perhaps edit the videos. However, he can’t edit the sound, because of his sensory issues, so we’re trying to find someone to do that (Though it’s kind of academic until we clean the library which will probably take a month or so.)  I will then offer lectures, but also will do “homework” correcting (i.e. reading people’s efforts and critique) probably once a month. I will confess this is half for the money, but half for human contact. Because of that, probably one workshop a month and unless I love them unreasonably, probably only for four or five months. Because I want to be a writer, not a teacher.

I’m also thinking of doing readings and meetings with fans via skype and/or zoom from my office. Probably evenings, maybe Saturdays?

Money-wise, I am finally collating a series of posts from this blog.  In fact, I have and have printed them to edit.  These are about acculturation and immigration, and will probably be called Coming to America.  I want to do on on America itself (“My country ’tis of thee”) but that’s harder to do word searches for, so it will take longer.

These will be published under A2Hoyt, so as not to confuse fans of my fiction.  Yes, I’ll announce them here when they’re done. Yes, there will be a paper edition.

I confess I have no clue what to expect from this, because honestly though a lot of people say they’d like it, it sounds like when people say “publish your books on paper, and I’ll buy them” and then you sell 2.  We will see.  I have roughly 8 years of daily posts, and even after editing out the passing commentary or the complaints about health and other stuff, it’s a lot of wordage that can be mined.  Again, we will see.

The money is not a systemic problem, btw, it’s the fact that our car broke down when we least expected it, our other car was in a stupid accident (Yeah, the car not the driver, as the driver was hemmed in, and had to go over something that damaged the undercarriage.) and stuff like that. Like basement shower will need to be replaced, because it was improperly installed. Etc. Also we’d like to recover from the hit taken for the boys’ education. And cats were stupidly expensive this year, which I wouldn’t mind except it ended in death in both cases.  The recovery part is not STRICTLY necessary, but well….  If we can, I’d like to do it.

Anyway, so that’s where things are.  I’ve had for some time now, also a plan of doing short (10 to 15 minutes) how to write videos for youtube.  Honestly, I don’t even know if anyone would be interested, and am even more doubtful on whether it would translate to book sales (Writers don’t buy your fiction just because you give them free teaching, which is why MGC has changed format.)

Then when I was going over posts to collate, I came across this:  Not Dead But Laughing.

I thought it would be great fun to do these as videos, with cartoons/ funny images.  Basically the narrated version of a GIF post.
The obvious problem is finding material to fisk.  While a lot of you are teachers, it would be bad to use your students’ stuff.  And while many “ridiculous essays and tests” circulate, most of those are fake, or not worth joking about.

I don’t think there’s a solution or a reliable source, but what the heck, I thought I’d throw it out there, because some of you might know of some.  Heck, some of you might know of the papers of a few professors (punch up when you can) that are on line and which are on that level of idiocy (I know of one.)

Anyway, it’s worth asking. I can then do a series of videos to amuse you.  And maybe it will cheer you up too.

Meanwhile, I’m feeling better.  Sorry for scaring you, but sometimes — very occasionally — I’m human and I have trouble even finding my bootstraps, much less pulling myself up.

And now, I’m going to finish flooring the room in progress.  After which I have to be in a zoom meeting for the Baen Corsairs anthology (which has the first/introductions to Robert’s and my Star Student universe.  Hopefully I’ll make it, as there is an appointment in between flooring and that, and if there’s traffic, I might not.)  And then I need to get paint and repaint the just-floored room because (wouldn’t you know it?) I got the touch up paint in the wrong brilliance. GRRR.)

After which, at 5 pm or so, I need to write.

But I am feeling somewhat better, and I’ll continue putting one foot — and one word — in front of another.

 

 

 

There was something grandma said when you said “My heart is broken.”

“Make your guts into a new heart, and go on.”

Humans are …. complex. We’re not precisely one thing or the other.  For instance, even when I wrote eight hours a day, every day, I wrote in the wave of my inspiration. You see, I had trained inspiration to come on cue.  (And because I usually wrote on Saturdays, if we went on vacation, I still got the inspiration on Saturdays, which is why I have to ton of stuff to type in scribbled on multiple hotel note pads, napkins, paper towels and toilet paper.

But when it all breaks: when I’m sick and tired and despairing, I can write from rational thought, and, once or twice out of pure malice and spite (hint, malice and spite don’t make for my best books. BUT they do get them done.)

I’ve been accused many times — accused being the right term — on this blog of being an optimist.

I’m not.  I’m actually a dark, despairing pessimist, which feeds wonderfully into my depressive tendencies.

Because I don’t want to die — or worse, live in utter despair and destroy the lives of those around me with the gloomy cloud of despair — I’ve spent most of my life since I was fourteen or so doing what I call “reality checking.”

“It’s not that bad/can’t get that bad, because look, there’s this.  And this won’t work the way it does in your brain. And–”

When you get all those posts you say have cheered you up, or where people come to yell at me for being an optimist they are the result of a dark night of the soul.  I trolled the depths, and from the depths I brought THIS.

This is why I tend to avoid, like the plague, both horror stories and the sort of despairing thriller where you fight and fight and fight and in the end it’s maybe slightly better, but not much. Or you become what you have fought.  That is the NORMAL pattern my mind tries to make. i had to train myself out of it.

So I’m very very good at seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and determining it’s not an oncoming train.

And guys, I’m having trouble. Real trouble.

I look at “70% of the country” including places like Texas and Utah will be voting by mail.  And I know what happens with fraud by mail. And early fraud, and all the various corruptions of “voting” that are not on the day, after you registered a month earlier, at a verified address (you know, the sort of thing they make you do to get a checking account, say?) and on paper, and then carefully watched.  All of those, btw, are run by the same people now demanding vote by mail, to save them from a (granted particularly severe) variation of the cold virus. Which mostly kills people over 80 who are already in poor health. (To be fair, just about anything kills them.)

And I don’t see how we turn this.

And everything the left is doing, in their spiraling insanity seems to confirm it.  Kamala? Biden? That necrotic convention? The idiot rumors about Trump (possibly personally) stealing mailboxes? All of it adds up to “We’re just making it credible enough that Biden wins. We have the votes taken care of. It’s in the bag. Like the communist countries of old, we don’t even have to run a credible show.”

And I can’t do anything.  I’ve tried.  G-d knows I tried. Years ago — 2012? — when I first talked about how all those “conveniences” in voting increased fraud, I got ON THIS BLOG a barrage of “You just hate me and don’t want me to vote because I have to work.” Or “I love voting by mail. It’s so convenient.”  And of course, the usual idiots said I was against the military voting, apparently failing to see the difference between unavoidable, carefully watched situations, and just mailing out ballots to every person, cat, dog and imaginary character at an address.  I tried to point out because of motor voter a lot of permanent residents THINK they can (and should) vote. Because no one explains you have to be a citizen. Or insist on registering you even if you show as ID, say, a Japanese passport as has happened.

Now no one is saying any of that when I mention fraud by mail and early fraud. But now it’s too late. Most states have same-day registration. The early vote tells the left how many new voters to register, even if their names are Mickey Mouse and Milk Jug.

And because crooked election after crooked election was accepted, so long as the left does a little dance and pretends they have massive support, and the press sings along in the choir, well….  How do you dispute one? Will anyone even dispute one? Even try to? Or will the right be afraid of the mythical “uprising of the people” if they do?

I don’t know if it’s the circumstances of this horrible year, but I feel myself future blind.  I usually have a sense of what’s coming assembled by my (despite myself) rational processes beneath the surface.

I don’t now.

I don’t see past the beginning of November. If the left wins, the country as we know it will be gone within a year.  And if you think that’s impossible contemplate what they’ve done to our cities and states in five months. FIVE MONTHS.

They want to open borders wide and confiscate and redistribute property.  After that, there is no America.  And like with NYC (which I always loved, despite everything) there is no coming back from that. The people themselves will be broken.  Why create, start, work really hard, dream, do anything, when it can all be taken away at a whim?  The East Germans haven’t recovered. Russia… well, Russia is Russia.  But America, put through that won’t be America. Whatever emerges on the other side will be just a country of serfs. In my dark hours I think we’re halfway there.

And don’t tell me we can rebel and fight. Guys, we can’t go to the store without masks.  The left revived their monopoly on information in the shutdown. By trying to get information on the plague, they are glued to the TV night and day, and even though it’s lies and frankly outright nonsense, people are being gaslit into believing them.  Which is why the panic fear of the unmasked person, and the mob that forms at grocery stores to form an asthmatic to mask up. Even though masks — if they do anything — are a net negative, and the virus is nowhere near as lethal as advertised.

We’re back to where we were in the seventies and eighties, where if the right commits any violence (even violent words) they are the aggressors, and evil bad, and must be destroyed. Look at the whole “your words are violence.” Hell, even our silence is violence. Even their violence is our violence. Look at what they did to JFK’s assassination. That’s what they’ll do to any (real) resistance.

Grandma said to make your guts into a new heart and I’ve been trying.  It’s not working markedly well.

I’ve started feeling all those symptoms of stress that I used to have when I knew the publisher was doing his/her best to bury my books, no matter what I did, and that I couldn’t fight back.

It ties in with all the symptoms of stress from my growing up years, where I also could do nothing.

I need to make my guts into a new heart. I need to–  Well, at the very least I need not to worry my family. Getting flooring done and books written would also help.

But I think I went through my guts last time I had to forge a new heart. I have nothing.  And though I see that what they’re destroying is mostly their own fields, and though I know they can’t keep their insane regime forever, I’m afraid they can do it long enough to destroy us.

The loss of wealth, health and ultimately life these past five months, not from Covid-19 but from the stupid attempts to destroy us, disguised as attempts to stop the virus, is incalculable. It might be more than all the wars of the twentieth century, worldwide.

And the loss of American spirit is far, far worse than that.

I want to believe we come back. I want to believe we recover. I want to believe this insane clown posse of grifters and corruptocrats (anyone notice this started JUST as the whole Russiagate was about to be nailed to Obama’s tail? Or that everyone running this crazy psiops on the virus has their pockets filled by China?) will be gone after this last final spasm.

But I’m holding on by my fingernails, while I look at the election approaching and a massive Game Over blinks in my head.

I need you for a reality check. I need you to be the optimists for me.

My guts are worn out. May I borrow yours?