It is highly unlikely I’ll write a full post today. You see I’m still putting the pieces of my office back together.

Yeah, I spent yesterday at it, and I’m still working at it.

Part of it is that I haven’t yet unpacked the boxes from the last house, even though we moved four years ago. I wanted to get to work, so I shoved them in the closet and carried on.

Part of it is that I suspect some of the boxes are from Manitou or even from Cache la Poudre…. (calculates) 26 years ago.

Sometimes I wonder if Americans, a highly mobile and very busy society, move through life accumulating more and more boxes they never open.  I think we unpacked everything when we lived in Manitou.  At least one of the boxes we opened there had been packed by the movers when we moved from Columbia, SC, and contained what had been in the trash can, including one of son’s infant diapers. He was thirteen when we found that. No wonder we hadn’t noticed it was missing….

There’s other stuff.  For the last ten years, things have been weird, mostly health wise, but also because I’ve been dealing with crisis not of my own making (and the ones I make are bad enough.) Also, I’ve been trying new ways of doing things, mostly because I was sick and hoped SOME method would work to be more productive. They didn’t work, and I’m culling them and donating them to someone who maybe can use them.

I’m not going all “get rid of what doesn’t spark joy” because if I got rid of my old contracts IP lawyers would have nothing to work with (for instance.)  BUT I am trying to cut down on the sheer volume of crap that I carry house to house without having any use for it.

It has become somewhat obvious that at some point in the future — should I live that long, of course — we’ll HAVE to move low altitude. When we do, we’ll have enough of our stuff to carry (200 and some boxes of books, and that’s having got rid of almost all fiction and keeping only the research books. Fiction is now electronic.) without paying for movers to take things I’m never even going to look at much less use.

So the unpacking and organizing has become…. really, an archeological dig. A very weird one.

Some of the things that were in my office (as opposed to downstairs in the library) are puzzling in the extreme, like books on the evolution of sexual reproduction (not titillating. Highly detailed, chromosome talk. (Yes, yes, I know. People pay good money. I think I did in fact.) To explain, I’m only supposed to have books for the current two or three projects in my office.

I do know why I have a pile of books on the war of the roses in my office, as opposed to the library, but only because recently I came across THAT out outline. It’s called Bone Deep, and it’s about a woman who rebuilds faces from ancient skulls.  (“she tries this one thing, and you’ll never believe what happens next!”  Dear Lord, to catch up with my backlog in the next couple of years I’d need to do a book a week, sustained.)

But other stuff….  Shrugs.

And the note pads, including a plethora of embassy suites complimentary pads scribbled with beginnings, with ends, with ideas, with what appears to be darn near full novels….  I got nothing.

I’m not looking too closely at those. Because then I’d be a month unpacking and have a million new ideas.  Right now any notebook that has stuff goes in a pile.  Okay three piles. Five feet tall.  At some point, in my copious spare time, I’m going to rip out the filled pages and file them in three boxes: ideas, plots and novels.

But some of them get my attention, and I read parts of it.

WHY in heaven’s name — and WHEN — did I write half of a mil sf with a character named Patience Bach?  And why is it called Patience Abides?  From the pad it’s on, it was LONG before I read Honor Harrington (I was a late comer to it) so it wasn’t an attempt at imitating it, but it’s WEIRD.  Also probably very bad.  I haven’t done more than skim.

I mean, it has pages and pages of RANKS — who WAS I when I wrote this? I don’t even think that way.  (Shoves the maps of Eden, and schematics of the Cathouse under the sofa with her toe) — and ship schematics.

And what in heavens name possessed me to sketch cozy mysteries in which the male protagonist has the help of a very proper lady ghost from the revolutionary war era?

And what, in the holy name of Ned is a long and complicated worldbuilding on a world that seems to be all mud and floods?

I almost feel like doing a day a week with “Discoveries from Sarah’s packed boxes” only you guys would expect me to finish them, even the very bad ones, for the LULZ.

All of these seem to have come and gone, leaving no trace behind and no wish to write them.

It’s very weird. Like looking at notebooks of a stranger who has my handwriting.

As I said, they will gradually be organized and filed and become someone else’s problem long after I’m gone, unless the boys are sensible and get a dumpster to take it all.

Anyway…..  I find it very weird to have to deal with my thirty-something year old self.  She might have been stranger than I am.

And now, back to the unpacking.

 

 

The Mark of COVID by Dr. TANSTAAFL

We wear masks at work.  Surgical masks were originally used to keep us from contaminating a surgical wound.  Nowadays, we wear surgical masks to supposedly keep us from unknowingly passing on COVID while we are not having symptoms.  I wear a mask for a few patients, then get a new one, because it gets moist and contaminated.  Masks do not keep me from getting the virus, it’s too small for the common surgical masks.  N95s possibly could keep me from catching the virus, but there is no study confirming that.  Again, they are used for one patient, then changed out.  I have to take a fit test each year to prove that the N95s fit correctly.  What I don’t do, is wear the same mask all day, leave it in my car, stick it in my purse, touch it over and over, and get whatever is on there on my fingers.  (Don’t get me started on wearing gloves all day.  How do you pee and wash your hands?!?)   People wearing masks around outside are unlikely to have changed them several times a day, and washed them, or wear them properly (cover both mouth and nose, and don’t touch or adjust them once on, and wash hands every time you put it on or take it off, or touch it for any reason).

So why are we pushing masks on everyone?  There are no definitive studies showing that it stops the spread of the virus.  We have differing recommendations from differing “experts”.  I’ve searched the medical literature to find any good studies that show it stops the spread of the virus.  Most studies are quoted from Wuhan, and we know what that information is worth. (Don’t believe China.  China is asshole!)  Some studies suggest that wearing masks in a family if one member is infected, decreases the rate of transmission in the family.  That’s the most definite one I saw.  Says nothing about masking in public, or outside of the house.

There must be another reason for the mask fetish.

The Mark of Cain was placed by God on Cain after Cain killed his brother, to prevent anyone from killing Cain.  It is assumed that the mark was easily visible and gave information about the person it was on.

Masks are being mandated to place the Mark of COVID on all of us.  It is an easily seen mark that says we are compliant with what our betters tell us is good for us.  They have no scientific evidence, but they can force us to wear one to show that we will do what they say.  If we want to go to the grocery store, wear the Mark!  If we want to go to exercise, wear the Mark!   We are to take it on faith that a smarter, more omnipotent person who is employed by our government knows best.

The Mark of COVID is the warning that we have no rights.  We walk around feeling the mark. Others can see that we are adhering to the mark.  We walk outside and are defiant because we are not wearing the mark, or we are tacitly or actively agreeing to the mark rule if we wear a mask. Do we dislike or despise the person next to us who is not wearing a mask, or do we nod in agreement and feel more comfortable with not wearing a mask?

We have the right to make our own decisions.   If a 95 year old grandmother wants to go to her great grand daughter’s wedding, she should have that right. And if her choice results in her illness, it was a known risk which she chose freely, and she will pay the price.  If someone comes to the Emergency Room with chest pain that looks like a heart attack, our role is to give them the best advice we can based on the science we know.  And if they tell us they disagree and want to leave, we do the best sell job we can.  We try to be very persuasive, including telling them death and disability is a possibility.  If they still want to leave, they are free to go and free to face the consequences.    I don’t want to live in a world where its my choice, not theirs.

With no good studies to show that wearing a cloth mask protects others, we are left with a mandate based on faith that someone deemed important feels it might help lower the risk of COVID spread. In medicine our choices are based on risks and benefits. Does the benefit of what we are doing outweigh the risks? We are told the possible benefits of wearing a mask outweigh the negligible risks of covering our faces for a large part of the day in various environmental conditions is worth it. For an unproven benefit, and at least some risk, why should we listen? Can we at least look into the risks and benefits before mass masking?

“When you wear a mask, whether you’re walking on a busy street, whether you’re inside a grocery store or riding transportation, that is a sign to the whole community that we are in this together.”  Rachel Levine, Pennsylvania Health Secretary.  This is the actual reason for the masking orders.  They want the community to all buy into the story.  Having to wear that mask, at least outwardly, says there is no dissent.

The Mark of COVID is psychologically damaging.  Every time we sigh and pull on a mask, it is a reminder that we are not allowed to decide for ourselves or disagree with the “best and the brightest” (GAG!).

How did we get here?  And most importantly, how do we get out of here?

Lately I’ve got interested in stereotypes.  Oh, not racial or cultural. Not gender either. More like the old stereotypes of our field, the stories you think you know where they’re going (the stereotypical — or should I say archetypal) characters and stories are so old you mind starts filling in stuff just from reading a few lines.  Which btw means the author needs to do a lot less work…. and more work, at least if we don’t want to make it paint by the numbers boring.  Though I’ll note in the new era, the paint by numbers pulpish stereotypes sell better than the “so innovative, so literary, so relevant” stuff. (Mostly because those are usually wrong on three counts.)

OTOH I know myself, and things would get interesting/sideways/subverted. Because I’m me.  What they probably wouldn’t get is pulled down into the mud and rolled in with the pigs. Because, yeah, some humans are terrible, but if you live in the real world and pay attention, you’ll find more heroism and glory in anyone’s life than petty self-betrayal and amoral vacuousness.

I haven’t had time.  We’re halfway, in number of rooms (in size of rooms it’s different, though as husband pointed out most of the large rooms remaining ARE very straightforward with no weird angles) in flooring the house.  Three to go. One very small, but….

And I have a million stories ahead to write, anyway, all planned, laid out, some started some almost finished.  But I’ve been grabbing almost randomly old stories (and filk) when I sit down.  (Old stories in paper. Part of the job is shelving stuff in the library, where the new and improved (my old rendering computer almost 10 years old) publishing computer is going, so younger son can use it, and make me paper editions of everything, and run the new, upcoming, wonderful (look, I need to sit down and edit, and — if she signs/agrees to the contracts — republish Kate Paulk, including her new one.  And we have a dozen anthologies in the works too) inkstain publishing (shared worlds, anthologies, and perhaps Kate Paulk, if she so wishes.)  Thing is the thing needs management, and I haven’t even been managing myself well.  Younger son will take it up while he’s looking for work. And hopefully when he finds it and likely moves out of state, there MIGHT be enough money to hire someone for the job — gulp — I hope.

So anyway, I’ve been grabbing old books, the ones whose covers were in primary colors and whose pages sometimes crumble at the touch. Not all SF/F. I have a collection of pulp mysteries as well, mostly picked up when I was depressed and needed comfort.

Look that type of space opera is barely science fiction unless you extend the definition to mean “Man faced with strange situations.” I mean, the science is usually cursory and/or waved at.  Yes, Heinlein did it better by injecting real science.  (I try, okay. A part of the science is handwavium — well, isn’t it always? — but in the part that is essential to my premise I bug all my contacts. Yes, including sons.)

But Heinlein leaned heavily on the pulp stereotypes, the stereotypes of the human mind that go back to — if you could verify it — the campfires of the indo-European culture (whose main strength was apparently multilayered endless sagas. They worked to draw other tribes to the culture apparently. Or at least that’s one of the speculations.  Not so much by the force of arms but by story they conquered. Um….. Nice work if you can get it.

If you don’t believe he leaned on those, go read the opening to Citizen of the Galaxy. Or the first chapter of Starman Jones. Or the scene when Star appears to Oscar for the first time.

I’m not Heinlein. I couldn’t even play Heinlein on TV (though if I don’t wax, the mustache could pass.)

But those old stereotypes have been rolling through my mind like thunder. I’m not sure what the hell to do with them, but they’re there, and maybe something will come of it eventually.

Tell me you don’t get hooked, and sense the surprises hidden in each of these.  (And it’s me. The surprises would probably surprise you.)

There was a laughing devil in his eyes.  He was a disreputable, scarred man of middle years, sliding reluctantly into old age, kicking and screaming the whole way.  Flesh hung loose on his broad frame.  His left eye was missing. What remained of his hair was red and looked like he’d given himself a haircut using metal cutters.

But his remaining eye was the dark blue of space. He walked with the rolling gait of a spaceman, too long in free fall.

There might be another reason for his walk. In the bars of Far Itravine, in the Blind Seer system, he told stories of his fighting pirates in Antares and barely piloting away from a black hole in High Mauritius.  People bought him drinks.

But if you waited around after you left, someone would come and tell you, “Bless your heart, sir. No.  He was a stevedore down in the spaceport locks. The eye and the scars are where an AI loader’s grappling hook hit. His mother was a spaceport whore. I don’t think he ever spaced.”

 

Or,

“Need some company, spaceman?”

I looked her over. You never know, in these far ports.  She looked eighteen, maybe twenty. And she was pretty. Pretty enough to hit close to the uncanny valley.

Instinctively I looked for those seams that join head to neck and neck to body.  Look, none of the comfort women are real humans. Humans are spread too thin over the universe to waste on that kind of thing. Particularly when androids do it better, and you don’t need to worry over their feelings.

To my surprise I found none.  And yet her greeting was straight from historical hollos, and she was wearing something shimmery and so light I could see the shape of her rosy flesh beneath.

I looked at her eyes, improbably spring green, and she smiled back.

That did it. No one smiles that willingly at a guy with my mug. She was either an assassin — since when did I rate assassins, though? — or an alien in human disguise.

Or

Things were rolling along pretty good in Myroclady.  Well, as good they could be, in the middle of the war.

Conscripted laborers had settled down to building the new shiny war ships.  Engineers — male and female — worked overtime at the designs, and laborers slapped them on frames as far as they would go.

And then people started talking of seeing the Invictus.

Yes, that Invictus, the ship blown up with all hands at the beginning of the confrontation with the Alliance. The one that had aboard the best regarded of our commanders, and his son the Young Hope. And the best brains the human race had ever thrown out. At least on the side of free men.

It started with one of the women assembling the shipskin in the molecular vats. She was walking home, late at night, and swore she’d seen the Invictus — “As I remember, sir, from a hollo at school” — materialize in the skies. So close she could see the faces of the lost at the viewports. She said she saw Vir Hopewell — Young Hope — at one of them. “His hair was just like in the holo, but he looked sad.  And he lifted his hand at me. Not quite a wave, you know, but like he knew me.”  And then she burst into tears.

Now, these could be set — with modifications — any time from the ancient agean to the present.  Why set them in space?

Well, obviously, because that’s the frontier we instinctively know we must colonize. It beacons and calls to us, and our dreams are there.

In the nineteenth century, people told stories of Africa that had very little to do with the real Africa, but they sold to the restless.  I think it’s something-like with pulp.

And why some people are so invested in making sure we never dream of that frontier.

They will yell how colonization is bad, even if you colonize emptiness.

Unfortunately all species, at least on Earth (though if it’s not the same in other worlds we don’t need to worry about alien competition) either colonize or die.  A niche species is an endangered species. It endangers itself.

Sure, we can choose to commit sepoku and die in your cradle. Or …. or we can go find out what’s there.

And stories pave the way. Which, I think, is why evolutionary we’re attracted to them. They make us human.

And humans, by definition want to push ever onward, into the infinity which calls to us.

Of all the traps a culture can fall into, the fact that Americans tend to fall into Noblesse Oblige traps says very good things about us. It also doesn’t make the trap any less dangerous.

Noblesse Oblige, aka “nobility obligates” was a way that the excesses of a hierarchical society was kept in check.  While the peasants were obligated to obey the nobleman, the nobleman was obligated to look after them/not put extreme demands on them/behave in certain paternalistic ways. (One of these days I need to do a post on paternalistic versus patriarchal. remind me.)

It is what is notably lacking from ideologically driven totalitarianisms and hierarchies, probably because their basis being atheistic they don’t seem the humans they have power over as being worth anything or commanding any duty from them.  This is why in places like Cuba, Venezuela or China, the officials of the “democratic” government give themselves airs as long-suffering public servants while treating the people under their power worse than any of us would treat a stray animal (let alone a pet.)

In the US — where the citizen is king! — we have evolved a form of noblesse oblige best described as “Them who can, do what they can for those who can’t.”

It is part of our cohesive response to disasters.  The neighbors who can/are less hit will go out of their way to help others.  It is also why that guy who tried to write a book about how the poor stayed poor forever found that moving to a new city with his girlfriend and $5, he had trouble STAYING poor.

The problem is that it’s exploitable.  To a great extent the homeless invading our big cities and camping on our sidewalks are a perversion of this.  Yes, the mayors of those city are lefties, but they’re still actuated by a feeling they should “help the needy” and of course buying into the narrative that capitalism inherently creates a lot of needy, and therefore they have to mitigate it.

I don’t need to tell you how that gets weaponized against the common citizen of these cities, who find themselves confronted with unimaginable inconvenience or even danger around the corner, without warning.

I should probably point out it’s also getting weaponized against the governors and mayors. They might be too stupid to notice it, but mostly instead of thinking “look at the terrible results of capitalism” people are starting to suspect their local government is against them and FOR indigent drug addicted and aggressive grifters. (And they aren’t wrong.)  A lot of the anger boiling over in our society is from being inconvenienced by the “elites” ideas of noblesse oblige.

But the noblesse oblige that affects the common individual in America is the foundation of worse traps.

Most of the idiotic compliance with ridiculous Winnie the Flu rules and restrictions hooked directly into Noblesse Oblige.  For instance, the brilliant idea that you should wear masks to show you care even though we pretty much know they are completely ineffective and quite deleterious for a vast swath of people.

The idea that our kids should be forced to perform “volunteer” labor to graduate school, to “teach them to care for others.” The idea that you can always do a little more/sacrifice a little more for “those worse off” (Who often aren’t.)

When Noblesse Oblige turns into toxic altruism, it can take society apart.

Much of the “Green” mania is part of the noblesse oblige trap.  They’re trying to convince us that if we just do these little things — most of them counterproductive, like, say recycling, which uses more resources and causes more issues than just using stuff — we’ll make it better for everyone.

In a bigger sense, they’re trying to make it so that we commit polite suicide so that “others live better.”

It can result in truly horrible racism, too. A great part of the left’s being convinced, say, that meritocracy is white supremacy comes from the fact that, being white, (and racist) they assume that they’re more competent than any other race, and therefore following “merit” causes white people to rise to the top.

When this spreads into society wide rules and our education, it results in minorities being indoctrinated with helplessness, and white people subconsciously absorbing the racism of low expectations (of others.)

All of this is completely crazy and distorting.

Noblesse Oblige is a great sentiment for your circle of friends and among people you know.  Sure, if you can do. For your friends, for your family, for those you know are in true need.

But if you start extending that to strangers, you can commit some absolutely horrible injustices.

For instance, if you try to be kind to addicted/aggressive homeless, you end up being unkind to those who have to walk or live in the same area. You destroy real estate value.

In the same way, if you ditch meritocracy you’re going to hurt the most capable to favor the less capable, and you’ll also end up hurting society because the less capable also don’t run things in a way that is best.

Noblesse Oblige should have limits. And you should always make sure you’re not hurting others with it.

Yes, if you can DO but don’t do too much. Respect others’ ability and their noblesse oblige.

Don’t fall into the trap.

*Some perspective for 2020- SAH*

Shattered – A Blast From The Past From October 2015

Many years ago, in a library sale, I came across a booklet of … well, science fiction scenarios.  From the context — not being absolutely stupid — I could get that it had been commissioned before the election in 80, and had probably been distributed for free by the Democratic party.  I am afraid to look it up, first because it’s the sort of quest that could take me something like three years (and be lots of fun, but no work would happen) and second because I’d hate to see which ones of my colleagues lent themselves to that rather preposterous effort.  Fortunately I lost the book in one of our many, many moves since then, so I don’t have to know.

Now, when I bought it, I was thirty, just about, but younger than that in craft, as I hadn’t started seriously thinking about world building and scenarios of world building till 22 or so, and I wasn’t yet… fully immersed in American culture.  For instance, how preposterous the scenarios were didn’t hit me at all.  (Yes, I used to be an innocent.  I actually thought anthologies about the coming Ice Age or about how we needed to disarm had no ulterior motives.  Probably self defense.  It allowed me to enjoy some art and literature, while, if I’d been fully conscious of its intent, I’d have thrown it across the room.  More on that later.)

So I read it and re-read it, admiring the extrapolation and trying to figure out how to do this in my own writing.  (Rest easy, I know better now.)

They really were preposterous scenarios. For instance the one where Reagan had gone elected went (Natch) into this scenario of endless war and of American soldiers sent home in sealed caskets which, if the grieving mothers dared open them showed corpses killed by a weapon beyond our comprehension.  (Which makes perfect sense, because you know, the USSR was so much more advan– Oh, wait, no, it was complete and unadulterated BS.)

Some of the scenarios I liked.  At this time I had virtually no political sophistication, and though I’d started reading Reason had no clue what “libertarianism” was.  And yet, instinctively I liked the scenario that I THINK was called “The center cannot hold.”

I think, so help me Bog, I was supposed to recoil from it.  Partly because it also started with Reagan’ s election.  But then DC and all the great cities get nuked, and the US devolves to a regional-centered organization.  First, this scenario was about as likely as feathers on a horse — because there was no invasion from outside following on the destruction of our centers of political organization — and second I think the picture the author was striving for was something out of mad max, or something.  Instead, what I saw was small, decentralized, and less regulation.  I saw thriving small centers of civilization.  I saw more individual freedom.  I ignored the rest.

Again, this scenario (All of them, really) was completely impractical, not to say impossible.  There is no way — no way at all — that kind of destruction would have led to regionally centered anything.  Yeah, I know a lot of dreams on the right and left start that way, but right now, the way we are, it’s more likely that widespread famine and invasion, and the other horsemen of the apocalypse would follow.

So it is funny that these days, looking at this great fractured polity of ours I keep thinking “The Center Cannot Hold” and it evokes both Yeats great mythical poem, and the scenario above, which means I end up dissolving in giggle fits at the unlikelihood of the scenario and missing the … ominous thoughts that the line should provoke.

And there are omens enough in the line.  And for a long time, I’ve been listening to that poem at the back of my mind as I read the news or think over some recent event.

Because if there is something that describes our current days it is exactly “The center cannot hold.”  And yea, anyone who trolls twitter can agree that

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity

And yet, just like the future scenario that was supposed to scare me spitless and make me not vote for Reagan (I didn’t, of course.  I was only an exchange student.  I did, however, work for his campaign) I look at this shattering and I listen to the ominous lines rolling in the back of my mind, and then I start grinning.

I’m not a nihilist.  I don’t smile at the end of the world.

But what is very important to remember is that his is not the end of the world.  It’s the end of a world.  (And if any of you ever read Ray Bradbury’s Almost The End of the World, that was closer to what is happening  in terms of major movements, than any apocalyptic scenarios.  Oh, not in WHAT happened, but in the metaphor of it.) However, behind that dying world, around it, beneath it, over it, unsuspected, unseen by the glitterati and the gatekeepers, another world is being born.

Okay, so our major cities didn’t get hit, thanks be to all divinities, since I think the result would be chaos and destruction.   Also, because I have friends in almost every large US city.

But the center is losing its grip anyway.  Mostly in culture.  But that culture is starting to influence politics, which is why there is this appearance of total chaos and the establishment (both sides) aren’t having it all their own ways.  Granted, the left still gets more compliance than the right.  It’s the nature of the beast and also part of how the culture fractured.

Which bring us to why we do have this impression everything is fracturing, and the “center cannot hold.”

This is a scenario not one of those big brains came up with.  Not a big stain on them, mind, since even after the computer revolution was well under way, even as Amazon was starting to take the pillars out from under the pillars of the publishing push model (the model according to which you could only find in the bookstore shelves, not what you might want to read but the books that the publishers had thought worth it to “push” onto the distributors.), most of the people whose job it was to foretell the future were saying that Amazon was maybe like one large brick and mortar shop, and it would make no difference.

As for ebooks, we got the whole thing about how books are a tactile and scent experience.  (Yes, I know some of you agree, but for the love of teardrops, I can’t see it.) And how ebooks would never displace “Real books” (listen, sonny, the scroll is here to stay and the printing press is a fad.  Shut up and copy.)

Blogs?  Some unwashed people in their pajamas. Not like those newspapers with layers and layers of fact checkers.  You know, the newspapers who were wrong so many times they’re bleeding money faster than they can plug it.  The newspapers no one under fifty really subscribes to anymore.  THOSE newspapers.

And the TV stations… Yes, yes, Dan Rather.  Fake but accurate.  Or something.

And then there’s the universities.  Oh, they’re holding on.  But the competition is coming up fast.  And I think they’re the next industry to truly get overwhelmed by catastrophic change.

Now, before we start dancing around the witch with the farmhouse planted on her snout, let’s be clear: none of these systems are dead yet.  It is a mistake to underestimate the enemy, particularly the wounded enemy.

There are still people — I know some of them — for whom the mainstream media is still the main means of information.  These are smart, thoughtful people, but they believe the weirdest things.  And that same media can do as much damage by ignoring stories as by beating the drum wrongly.  Benghazi, for instance.  It should be a shock and a horror, particularly the way that government officials lied to us and said it was all about a video.  But the media has refused to report on it.

And if you’re looking at that stuff, at the power still left in the mainstream institutions, you might get desperate.  You might think it’s all lost.

Except that the reason you feel that way is… that things are getting better.

Yes, I know that’s paradoxical.  But here’s the thing — cast your mind back to the time before we had internet — there were rumbles that, say, during Clinton’s time, the militias weren’t the big bad problem he painted it as, and there are more holes in the stories of incidents during that administration than there are — to paraphrase Heinlein — bastards in an European royal line.

BUT the point is you couldn’t know.  There wasn’t a web.  There wasn’t reporting first person what was happening.

In those days, the barrage would have held and we STILL WOULD THINK that Benghazi was the result of a bad video on youtube (only there wouldn’t be youtube.)  We would have no idea — as weird as this is — that there was anything wrong with Fast and Furious.  We’d just think that guns were being sold from the US down there.

In fact, you could say the reason their cunning plans keep misfiring is that they still control the media and therefore think they control everything.

Like publishers with the “paper books are coming back” fetish, most of the rest of the gatekeepers everywhere from publishing, to education, to politics are stuck in that place where they control all the means of communication, all the media, all the education and of course all government.  Because politics comes from culture.

They are so focused on the traditional way they don’t see that things have changed.

And so they miss one important thing.  We no longer feel alone.  We’re as disorganized as cats.  We’re as fractured as shattered glass, but we know we’re not alone.  And we know that the facade they have built — probably not as a big conspiracy; probably just because they all want to advance the “progressive” future-that’s-supposed-to-be so badly — is broken.

And that’s enough.  It’s enough for us to start talking about alternate solutions, to start building alternate structures, to network, to create, to keep our jobs even when we speak out.

Look, it only looks like everything is falling apart because the false consensus has been broken.  But at the same time that break is what allows us to build under, to build around, to build over.

One thing we know is that the structures they’ve taken over are no longer in contact with reality at any level.  Yeah, things look scary out there, and I’m not going to lie to you, they are scary, particularly on the international level.

Because the so called consensus was unchecked by dissenting voices, it has spun well away from reality.

But the new tech has given us a means of correcting that.  It might be almost too late.  And unless we have a miracle, there’s going to be the devil to pay for this.

Still, the correction is already in progress.  Their way is passing.  Our way is just starting out.

Funny how believers in dialectical systems didn’t see that coming.

Work.  Create.  Build under, build around, build over.  It’s all going to come apart more before some sort of sense can be made of this mess.  But the sense that’s coming, the ah spirit of the age embodied in its technology is moving away from big organizations and towards the individual.

And the individual?  That we’re fine with.

In the end we win, they lose.

Be not afraid.

Making predictions is hard, particularly about the future, but the fourth of July heartened me greatly.  It appears that in most places we the people looked at prohibitions of celebrating and displays of patriotism, giggle-snorted and headed for the fireworks stand.

We didn’t, because we were busy with flooring (the never ending story, though at this point I think we’re halfway through the house.  I’d prefer to hire someone to do the main staircase (as opposed to the one to the basement, which I’ll do, because why not) and the upper hallway, but that’s neither here nor there. But otherwise we probably would have.  We must have been the only ones in our usually quiet neighborhood who didn’t, though, and the bang bang bang went on continuously from sundown for a solid four hours.

Also, from friends across the nation, it was the same everywhere.

My confidence, which had been shaken by the ease with which normal human beings swallowed the media panic campaign and became covid Karens is somewhat restored.

People take time to realize that reports of doom and destruction aren’t real, and Americans are probably the most decent people on Earth.

Oh, I don’t mean in terms of no crass displays or dressing modestly or whatever.  I mean, when the chips are down, unless your neighborhood is truly appalling, when a disaster strikes, we’re all out there, doing what we can.

When a violent wind storm brought down our tree in downtown Colorado Springs, we’d no more emerged from our (shattered, glass) back door, than there were two neighbors there, chainsaws in hand, going “Hey, need help?”

When we rode out Hurricane Hugo in Charlotte, lo these many years ago, we were no more awake and driving to see just how bad it was, than there were volunteer organizations in large parking lots, distributing water, breakfasts, articles of personal hygiene, you name it.

And anyone remember how when power went out in the East a few years ago, people walked home through the streets with no riots or looting?

Americans are DECENT.  If you haven’t lived elsewhere you’ll be going “But that’s just common humanity.”  Well, it ain’t. Nowhere else have I seen that kind of selfless, immediate response to the troubles of your neighbor.

And despite what you heard about how bad it was in New Orleans over Katrina, let’s say the media was as honest about that as the “we’re all going to die!” from Winnie the flu that you still hear today.  They saw the opportunity to bring down a president they didn’t like.  And they’re using the exact same playbook.

They forget that while most of us couldn’t go to New Orleans and poke our nose into the superdome, we do know our neighborhoods aren’t piled high with dead and dying.  They forget some of us can count and do percentages.  They also apparently forgot they couldn’t keep us locked down forever — blame it on their having no clue what making an actual living entails. This also explains why they view their jobs as a pulpit, not a sales stand — which means once you start circulating and talking to other real people, news start spreading of what a non-even this actually was. And how disproportionate the response.

Worst, flush with their success of keeping people locked indoors — okay, that wasn’t the media but their militant arm of elected (at least via fraud) leftist drones — and terrorizing them with coverage better suited to smallpox than an upper respiratory virus that hit mostly the most vulnerable and end-or life, they are now convinced they can repeat the trick at will.

EVEN AFTER they sanctioned the riots that destroyed entire areas of cities, and told us that it was essential for public health for people to be able to loot, set stores on fire and block highways.

Yep, they really think we’re that stupid.

We’re not. What Americans are is peaceable and adaptable.

We’ve endured decades of the left perpetrating massive fraud, rather than break into civil war, because sometimes it’s better to pretend everything is fine than to rebel.  Rebellion has costs.  As long as their fraud didn’t ALWAYS assure them success, except in certain, always-dirty areas like Chicago, we made jokes about it and went on.

This is because admitting how bad it is means taking action.  And taking action means at best tossing our chances up in the air and hoping they come down right. At worst, it means falling into a banana republic status, where the strongest gets the power.

Sigh.

But the left is very, very stupid. It’s a special kind of stupidity. It’s the indoctrinated stupidity of a cult or a fanatical religion.  They’ve been told they’re the future, and the young will vindicate them.  They’ve been told history has an arrow, paradise lies ahead, and if they just follow Marxist precepts future society will enshrine their memory (not to mention look after their every need as they age.)

This belief is so strong they were talking about all the Trump supporters in nursing homes.  Maybe my experience and THAT OF EVERYONE I KNOW is an aberration, but actually that age group has never quit believing the MSM. So, they believe all the fictions about this administration. They are in fact the most reliable democrat voters, and you can’t talk them out of it, because the “respectable news media” has told them how bad orange man is.

This belief is so strong they’ve forgotten all the reliable lefty organization protesters of the last 20 years have been “five guys with oxygen tanks and wheel chairs standing on a corner.” (Antifa are not that, but Antifa are special. Many of them are paid and actually trained.  The others are…. well, if your parents and/or teachers belonged to the cult and had told you how horrible America is…  You’d be very angry. Also, pretty much useless in normal society. Which makes you angrier.)

Which is to say, they believe that if they just press us a little harder….

They do not understand the American character, which is to be quiet, quiet, quiet and then erupt in sudden, unimaginable violence.

If you’re a praying person, pray they get it. (Says she who just got a newsletter from her church, basically enjoining her to worship the Earth our mother and live communally.  Are they all insane? I knew that mainstream churches had gone insane a while ago, but this is a special form of insanity. I think with worship restricted, all these people are talking to much to themselves and looking at the news WAY too much. I’m not having a crisis of faith. I know what I believe. But I no longer know if I can even with my presence support a church who sends out stuff like that.)

I’d rather we slowly win the cultural war over the next 20 years than are forced to respond violently as they refuse to leave us alone.  Because again, any time the real shooting starts, we’re in for a toss of the dice.

Look, it won’t end up with the left.  Not the left currently represented in the democrat party.  They act as though they believe …  Well, some lefties said that the democrats seem to believe we’re a country like Sweden, only further left, but they’re wrong. The democrats act like they think we’re China or perhaps an African country.  (I wonder if this means the current paymasters of the agitators are Chinese, who understand their own country and their colonies in Africa, but have no clue of the real, deep cultural differences here?)

They can’t read signs like people wearing masks as a beard snood, or under their noses, or dangling from one ear, or not at all.  And they fail to get that the more they keep trying to stampede us the less it works.

And they failed to read the massive civil disobedience written with fire on the 4th of July skies.

They fail to understand that “our flag was still there.”

Despite 40 years at least of heavy indoctrination, no one but the young and gullible (and not ALL of those, no matter what they say in polls) and the severely disturbed and ignorant believe that America is the worst thing ever and must be destroyed.

Most of us, in fact, love our country, our history and our Constitution. Most of us love living here and the opportunities afforded us.  Most of us don’t want to live “in harmony with nature” in 3rd world conditions (Which is actually worse for nature, but never mind.)

We might have issues with this or that historical figure (Woodrow Wilson grrr!) and think events and practices of the past were disgusting, but we’re aware it’s normal of humans to fail. And that even great men (Jefferson) had great faults.

Is the situation good?  Oh, heck no.

But I’d prefer to live in a country in which the people are basically sound, and the elite, media and establishment education are a warm bag of crazy than the other way around.

Because as long as the people are okay, when it all drops in the khaki (as the left keeps pushing for it to) there is a good chance the results will be okay and not, say, a man on a white horse. (Which is the most likely form of dictatorship to come from this.)  Or that form of leftist nationalistic dictatorship that the left keeps telling itself they live under now.  (Thorazine in the drinking water is impractical, but maybe if we target JUST their enclaves?)

There is a chance we come through this okay and STILL America.

Is it guaranteed?  Is anything guaranteed?  Oh, heck no.

And the one thing I can promise you is that it’s only going to get crazier from here on out, including the first two years after the elections, whether they manage to fraud their way in or not.

And no, I don’t mean just violent or bad. I mean it’s going to get crazy.

What we’re watching is if The People’s Temple had controlled all our media, our education, our information and our arts, our mainstream churches even, and were facing the ever crazier oscillations of discomfirmation of their beliefs.

They’ll try to make us drink the koolaid before they do.

Stay frosty.  Stay informed. Stay as well protected as possible. And stay productive.

This type of thing destroys wealth, livelihoods, and lives.  We, the people, we who can build and create and do must stay occupied and engaged.

As I said I am only semi-useful. All I can do is spin words and stories. (Okay and lay floors, but this might be my last go at such type of work. I’m getting too old for this. Spent most of yesterday sleeping.)

I do have an idea for an ebook selling thing…. one that would for now not really compete with Amazon, but COULD step in when that goes insane. (Yes, I know, but some of us can’t afford the luxury of a boycott, given our profession.) If you’re a programmer and pinged me before, ping me again. My email eats/hides things, and finding any message older than a month is very difficult. (Yes, husband CAN do it, but he’s actually very, very busy right now.)

I am sure that others of you are far more productive.  And some of you are sitting on your hands due to the planned assassination of the economy. Well, don’t be.  We’re the ones who build.  Do what you can, where you can. Try the crazy things you can try NOW.  It will help ensure we come out of this okay if we’re okay financially.

Most of all, above all, BE NOT AFRAID.

Every indication is the people are all right.

Build, plan, prepare.  Remember, plan A, plan B, plan C and pray we never need plan D, but have it ready anyway.

And as Robert A. Heinlein’s bastard child, Lazarus Long, said, “Keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.”

Now go work and build. Because we’re Americans. That’s what we do.

 

 

 

 

 

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 MARY CATELLI: Magic And Secrets.

Tales of Wonder and Magic A woman, sent to a far off duchy, finds a mysterious wolf haunting the forest, and learns there are secrets no one even suspects. Playing with props for amateur theatricals has more consequences than any of those doing it dream. . . act with care. A king’s tyranny sends a woman searching desperately for a legend of lions, there being no other hope.

FROM LAURA MONTGOMERY:   Under the Earthline (Martha’s Sons Book 3)

With only a slender hold on their alien world, human settlers from a marooned starship inhabit a single terraformed valley. As technology frays, as the second generation of settlers cannibalizes its past, and as the governor cancels elections again, tension grows between the city and the western farms.

One Dawe son dead, one in exile, and Thaddeus Dawe now slated to serve as a hostage for his younger brother’s crimes, Thaddeus has a task. He must locate the colony’s last terraseeder for the secret enclave another brother works to carve from the northern wilderness. But with the governor’s men harboring no love for Dawes, and First Landing’s bureaucracy and its preeminent practitioner having other plans, Thaddeus is not the only one whose life is at risk.

A tale of adventure, loyalty, and 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: TOP

It is an odd fourth of July.  Colorado has banned fireworks, not an unusual event, except for the fact this Spring, while not the wettest we’ve had, has been wet enough that I mowed some mushrooms in my lawn yesterday.

More disturbing is the fact that this is the first year I haven’t heard “practice illegal” fireworks going off.  Then again son says he heard them a week ago, so it could be my hearing which is increasingly bad.

But here and across the nation, a lot of gatherings, parades and other events have been cancelled.  And of course the crazy idiots have tried to convince everyone celebrating the fourth is “White Supremacy” because, you know, a nation that has actively discriminated AGAINST European immigrants since the 70s at least, a nation who took people that at the time were considered not white like Italians and Irish is the very definition of white supremacy.  One wonders what Oxacan ditch weed they’re smoking, and did they sprinkle it with mescaline first.

But the truth is, actually, that none of the poor critters knows anything about history. All they know is the pablum they were fed in schools, mostly a bunch of victimhood just-so stories designed to make them hate their own country.

However the thing to remember is that there are very few of them.  I know it doesn’t seem like that, but truly, we have maybe a hundred thousand people rioting and destroying property, which in a country of 350 million is very few.

Yes, the media tries to bloat them up and make them seem very important.  Remember the big fuss over OWS and how a lot of the leaders ended up with million dollar book contracts for their very important stories?  In most cities, there were maybe a dozen mentally-ill looking people on the street corner. But the media made it sound like the uprising they hoped it would be.

Having seen the pictures of the idiots who tried to block the highway in Colorado Springs, this is Occupy Wall Street 2.0, only with younger and more female, and more addled-looking participants.  (All of them white, btw.)

This is causing cancellations of celebrations, and causes media and corporate personalities to kiss up because, you know, they believe the media — also known as drinking their own ink — and they’re terrified they’ll get killed by the revolutionaries if they don’t kiss up.  They bought into the Marxist mythos that the revolution WILL come, and that the oppressed will kill the rich and powerful, and blah blah blah. It’s never been true. All the Marxist revolutions soft or violent were/are always acts of theft writ large. That’s all it is. They are actually worse for women, children and the young, not to mention minorities.

But anyway, that’s why the celebrations are being cancelled.

Thing is, do you need celebrations?  I love the fireworks, they’re the high point of my year. But is it needed?

Of course not. We live in the greatest country on Earth, the one founded on freedom of the individual and control of the government by citizens.

An ideal so lofty will have its hickups and we’re living through the end of one.

The end, you say?

Oh, sure.  The taking over of the schools and attempting to turn each generation against America was already in place when I was an exchange student in the 70s and we were told in our books how uniquely oppressive America was, and how freedom was a lie and the American dream was dead and how we were despoiling the environment.

Despite that, despite full control of the media and a unified narrative, their ‘active’ corps is maybe a few hundred thousand (not just the rioters, but their support personnel and those who are in vocal support not out of fear, but because they believe.)  That’s not even one percent.

Sure, the very young believe what they were taught in school. But few are so wealthy and protected they don’t realize it’s a load of bokum somewhere along the line, which is why “the crazy things Academia does” has been a running gag in the culture for a long time.

And things are changing. The narrative has less and less power every year.  2016 was when they got notice that they no longer could really control most of the people.  I’d bet it’s got worse since then.

In their fury to get Orange Man Bad, the NPCs are taking axes to the institutions that gave them ANY power at all:  Sure the lockdown temporarily increased the power of the media and the “expert” bureaucrats.  But only at the risk of destroying a big swath of what credibility they had remaining.  They had ONE bite and chose to expend it in that stupid manner. Now they’re talking about locking us down again, and my guess is they have no clue how gleefully such orders will be disobeyed.

And apparently it’s spelling the death knell to a lot of colleges.  As for lower education, well…. looking at their new rules for ‘how to turn your kid into a neurotic mess while pretending to teach them’ including the ones who want to put the kids in plexiglass bubbles, I doubt existing schools can service more than 1/3 of the enrolled kids. Which is good, because that’s about all the ones that will remain after the first semester.

They are also creating a great anger amid the normal people who just want to be left alone, earn their keep and live their life.

Look, I’m not saying it’s not getting worse. It is. They’re like cornered rats. They know if they lose in November, their criminal syndicate will be exposed and taken apart.

All I can say, though, is that all of their strategies have so far backfired to an astonishing degree. It’s like they’re hitting themselves on the head in an attempt to hurt us.

There is a reason for that.  None of the crazy things they’re doing are the actions of a confident ideology, or even one that thinks it has a future.  They are the equivalent of drinking the koolaid when your ideology goes off the tracks. (And yes, a lot of it has to do with being controlled by foreign interests who JUST completely fail to get America.)

They are now openly declaring their hatred for all of us since we won’t let them have their little VERY red wagon.  This is not the way one wins. Period.

Yes, we have work to do. Yes, they might manage to fraud their way into power (though my guess is that will blow up in their faces.)

Are things great? I wouldn’t say so, but they’re getting better.  Sometimes — she says looking up at a house more full of boxes than when we first moved in, with bits of construction stuff all through them too — you make the biggest mess when you start fixing long-term problems.

The Marxist idiocy has been galloping through our culture since before WWII.  Beating it will not be instant.  Fortunately we’re aided by the fact that they are suffering from fourth generation lack of competence.

But we are fighting back. And it’s much harder to undermine a culture once you expose yourself as an enemy.

This is not the end. This is not even the end of the beginning.

Read the declaration of independence.  Have your own celebration.

And be NOT afraid.

I was going to write a post I was, but life went sideways, as it will in 2020. Only maybe not, as it’s not bad, precisely. It’s just annoying.

You see, I had a sequel to Have Spacesuit dictate itself to me in my sleep. All of it.

So? says you.

So, of course I can’t sell it, so it’s sunk costs. I resisted as much as I could, but it was broken sleep, and I finally woke up enough — kind of — to roll to the computer by the bed (I being displaced form my office, just now, since it needs painting and flooring) and write the first three paragraphs.  After which, I decided to mow the lawn till the urge to just write the whole — unsalable by virtue of being unauthorized fanfic — mess out passed.

The lawn took very long because I had to deal with some issues.

And now we have a get together to go to, kind you don’t postpone.

And when I come back there will be a post for PJM to finish.

So. I’ll post tomorrow.

Meanwhile, beginning below with the caveat that I get details wrong on my own worlds, and I’m sure I got some wrong on this one. Meh.

It’s not for money and it’s three paragraphs. Call it an homage. As I said, I know it’s not something I can sell.  Will I write it? Lord only knows. Probably not because I hate wasted effort. If I do, no one will ever know.

Now, if I could just download it onto electrons?  Well…. it’s already all in my head.

BUT we don’t have the tech.

So how it happened was like this: Mother-thing needed help.

Wait, I’m telling it all wrong.

I had this workshop in the Mojave.  There was a house too, attached to it, but most of the time I ate and slept in the workshop. So, as you can imagine it was pretty well locked.

Mother kept saying someday girls would find me. I didn’t know she meant it literally.

I was very shocked when the door popped open. I mean, I’d made those locks.  So shocked that I jumped, so I had my hands on two of my guns.

Then stopped.  She was tall and red headed and mammalian, and wore this simple, molding jumpsuit thing that made her legs look like they went on forever, particularly atop those platform boot things that all the ads shows women in these days.

Mother says it’s expensive to look that cheap.

 I looked up to her face, where her lips were slightly parted, and her big eyes looked at me in shock.  She had freckles across her nose. She panted a little at me, and said, “Stop it, Kip.  Mother-thing needs our help.”

The picture fell into place like one of those puzzles you look at and know suddenly where every piece goes. I let go the guns and said, “Peewee!”

 

The Stories We Tell – by Dr. TANSTAAFL

When our boys were little, there was always bedtime stories.  We bought tons of books for them, but they picked the stories they wanted every night.  Afterwards, in a ploy to stay up later, they asked questions about the stories, and we discussed them.  How we framed the stories for them taught them what we thought was important, and how we viewed the characters and their motivations.  The Little Engine that Could kept trying when the going got rough and wins in the end.  Love You Forever was about family love and relationships.  Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel was all about work and problem solving.

During their childhoods, there were stories about the family, emphasizing different characteristics.  Snippets of information about our ancestors and how we came to be. A great-grandmother who overcame cultural sexism to become a legislator, a great-uncle who fled the old country for aggravating the rich family in town, grandparents brave and adventurous enough to emigrate around the world for a better life for their children.  The stories continued as we raised the children; almost running out of gas near the Canadian border, getting lost and then unlost on hiking trips, falling out of the raft right in front of the rapids. Some of the stories were active, a gestalt of our reactions to different events.  What do you do when the call is bad in a peewee soccer game, how do you react to a bad grade, how do you solve a travel crisis, how do you treat people who are not doing what you need?  How we chose to look at these events and frame them into the larger picture of who and what we are has a huge effect on our happiness and success in life.

Why do some people shake off bad news and keep smiling?  How does something that happens to all of us, derail some individuals?  Is it all genetics?  Is it all luck?  Is it parenting?  I think part of the difference is in the stories we tell ourselves.  Our internalized stories give us the blueprint for our reaction.  I can’t fold to a misogynist because great-grandmother stood up to them.  Dad never whined when the call went against him, so I can’t either.  I can find a solution because our family is good at thinking outside the box.  If I get lost, I will be found again, and this is what dad always did.

Part of being a physician is sometimes giving good news, sometimes bad news, and hopefully not too often, terrible news. The stories people tell themselves can be a source of inspiration not just for themselves but to those around them. Or the stories can help set people up for failure or pull them to a place nobody wants to go.  One patient was sure that since all the males in his family died young from heart disease, that he would also.  So he kept smoking and refused cholesterol medicine, because what’s the use.  One mother who was the eternal optimist, always thought her child was doing great, despite her handicaps, and raised a child who thought she could do anything, because mom said she could.

What is the story we are telling now?  For the last 3 months, it’s been DOOM, DOOM! Stay home, it’s not safe, millions will die! The world outside your house is not safe. An invisible killer is stalking you. You or your loved ones could die. You have no control over any of this, and your fate is in someone else’s hands, perhaps the person who walked by you without a mask, or the “experts” who can tell you when it will be safe to live.  What are the stories children are hearing now?  You may die and the people you depend on, your parents, have no control over the danger out there in the world.  This is how the world has to be now.

Recognizing and treating psychiatric disorders is part of our training.  Generalized anxiety disorder, PTSD, agoraphobia, depression.  Today’s news seems to have come up with a way to induce these disorders.  This is not something we have ever seen.  The stories being told are an effective way to create psychiatric dysfunction in a large percentage of our population.  Even worse, in the children, the stories are too immediate.  They have no lengthy novel of normalcy to fall back on.  The current short stories are all they remember.  Will we raise a generation of neurotic, agoraphobic, depressed children?

Individually, within our circle of family and friends and within our larger communities, we have a choice. We can echo the stories of DOOM, or tell a different story.  The story should be there have been epidemics before and there will be again.  We are endlessly creative and will figure out a way to treat this illness, or prevent it eventually.  We all are mortal, and how you live is as important, if not more so, than how long you live. We can figure out ways to protect the individuals at risk, and Americans are the most generous people in the world, and can support people who are hurting as needed.

This is not the end times, unless we choose to tell ourselves it is.