Everything is fine. We just decided to rearrange furniture while younger son was here.

 

Merry Christmas. Happy Fourth Night. Keep the lights burning in the darkness.

Sometimes all we need a light to hold onto, a star to follow, a multitude, each holding a tiny candle, until the entire darkness is turned as bright as day.

Let it be so.

Be not afraid.

Mostly because I’m busy and I have a book out.
Wait, I have a book out? Sure. It’s a short-ish novel (not as a short as some, but about half the size of my normal novels, and it’s the story of a poor guy who has to go to hell.

I actually want to say a few things about it: Deep Pink has a music theme, but this is not a series theme. And other books probably won’t involve Heaven or Hell, which I’m a little uncomfortable dealing with in fiction.

Some of the characters will be continuing to the next book and beyond. Beyond the main, ones, I mean. This is just the setup book.

Note the books below use my Amazon associates link. They give me a little extra money, without costing you anything. Consider using them.

That’s about it, for your COPIOUS spare time over the holidays, I give you:

DEEP PINK:

Like all Private Detectives, Seamus Lebanon [Leb] Magis has often been told to go to Hell. He just never thought he’d actually have to go.
But when an old client asks him to investigate why Death Metal bands are dressing in pink – with butterfly mustache clips – and singing about puppies and kittens in a bad imitation of K-pop bands, Leb knows there’s something foul in the realm of music.
When the something grows to include the woman he fell in love with in kindergarten and a missing six-year-old girl, Leb climbs into his battered Suburban and like a knight of old goes forth to do battles with the legions of Hell.
This is when things become insane…. Or perhaps in the interest of truth we should say more insane.

AND NOW A FEW BOOKS FROM SOME OF MY FRIENDS (OBVIOUSLY NOT ALL. IT WOULDN’T FIT):

FROM ANNA FERREIRA: Christmas at Blackheath.

Agnes Rawlins would never dream of showing a melancholy face to her brother’s guests. She may be a spinster, and treated little better than any common housekeeper, but she is responsible for bringing Christmas cheer into the dark and rambling Blackheath Manor, and she does not shirk her duty, even when she has little reason to celebrate.

William Marlowe, Viscount Claridge, has reluctantly accepted an invitation to spend the Christmas season at Blackheath. It’s not his first choice- how anyone could wish to spend time in the gloomy manor house is beyond him- but when he meets the kind and gentle lady of the house, he find that Christmas at Blackheath might not be so bad after all.

FROM SAM SCHALL:  Betrayal from Ashes (Honor and Duty Book 5)

War is never clean. Honor doesn’t always win out. Betrayal becomes the shadow currency that can tip the balance of power.

Colonel Ashlyn Shaw learned those lessons the hard way. Five years ago, she lost her command and her freedom because of the machinations of those willing to betray Fuercon, the homeworld they’d sworn to protect. Supposed allies conspired with enemies. Now Fuercon and its allied systems face a war on multiple fronts.

A war where the enemy doesn’t want a diplomatic solution. One where the enemy claims victory based on the number of civilian deaths.

This is not a war of attrition. It is a war of survival.

It is also a war Ashlyn and her allies have every intention of winning. But to do so, they must first unravel the layers of a conspiracy that goes much deeper than any of them suspect.

Honor and duty. Death before dishonor.

FROM JIM CURTIS:  The Grey Man- Generations.

A new generation carries on the legacy of service in the latest Grey Man novella…

Marine Corporal Jace Cronin, a scout/sniper, survived insurgents in the Philippines, only to be handed an even greater challenge: the Naval Academy. He won’t be headed in alone, though. Esme Carter got her own slot and is ready to go head to head with him over who’s the best. They’ve got their eyes on lieutenant’s bars and pilot slots, and woe betide anyone who gets in the way!

FROM JASON FUESTING:  By Dawn’s Early Light (Echoes of Liberty Book 1).

Eric Friedrich was supervising the last ice harvesting shift for his ship’s shot-up environmental systems when they detected an anomalous ice comet drifting by. Investigating the icy tomb, Eric finds a ship that couldn’t exist–a relic from a nation the Protectorate killed billions to erase from history… And will kill even more to keep secret.

When his world explodes, Eric must make allies in the unlikeliest places, and seize even the slimmest chance of survival while unraveling a conspiracy that shattered planets and set off interstellar war!

FROM PAM UPHOFF:  Moles (Wine of the Gods Book 48).

A short story. #48 in the Wine of the Gods Universe

Ice, a top notch Analyst has just been given a new assignment. To investigate his best friend, and find out if he’s a foreign agent.

Dog, an up and coming young analyst has a new assignment–to investigate his friend and Mentor, and find out if he’s a foreign agent.

Could get interesting . . .

FROM KAL SPRIGGS:  Stolen Valor (Forsaken Valor Book 2)

They stole my life, so I stole one right back.

My name is William Alexander Armstrong. I come from a long, honorable, military family. My grandparents were heroes back home… but not me. Kidnapped by pirates, I’ve had to fight to survive on the streets of an alien world. Only now, I’ve got a way out.

The only trouble is, my way out is to serve in the enemy’s military, hidden under a stolen identity. I’ve got to hide who I am, build alliances, and hope to keep my head down at a military institute where one in three trainees don’t survive.

But hiding isn’t in my blood. I’m an Armstrong, I’m born to fight, born to lead… and in this case, that might be the only thing that saves me. Because something is rotten at the Heart of Drakkus Prime, and stolen identity or not, valor may be the only thing to save the day.

FROM LAURA MONTGOMERY:  Long in the Land (Martha’s Sons Book 2)

 

A very secret war…

With the planet Beredul liberated, the Wiyert and the humans from Earth celebrate their first victory against the fadohl—but at a cost. The fadohl now suspect the existence of an enemy. And they must never know the location of that enemy, since Earth’s defenses consist of two stolen AI ships and a ragged band of Wiyert armed with salvaged weapons.

How can the Earth humans hope to defeat the advanced technology of the galaxy-spanning fadohl?

By never, ever, letting them know there’s a war…

FROM MARGARET BALL:  A Child of Magic (Applied Topology Book 7)

An old enemy, a new threat… When their son Aleksi is kidnapped, Thalia and Lensky are left wondering if the reason is ransom (bad) or revenge (worse). It’ll take all Thalia’s genius for applied topology (aka magic) to retrieve their baby – and meanwhile, the other topologists are turning into cats, getting jailed in the eighteenth century, and otherwise keeping life interesting.

 

FROM PETER GRANT:  Taghri’s Prize

Taghri has left the Sultan’s army to seek his fortune – and he seizes opportunity when it knocks. In the confusion of a pirate raid on a trading caravan, he kills their leader and captures their ship. The vessel is now his prize of war… but some prizes may be more trouble than they’re worth!

Nestled among the gold coins in the captain’s cabin is a stolen Temple sacrificial knife, whose Goddess is now paying close attention – too close! – to its new owner. Among the slaves he’s freed is a princess, formerly being held for ransom, who comes with political and personal intrigues all her own. Even if he survives the attention of both, there’s also a pirate lord out there, hell-bent on avenging the death of his son.

It’s going to take all of Taghri’s skill, experience and cunning to survive winning this prize!

 

FROM ALMA T. C. BOYKIN:  Eerily Familiar: Familiar Tales Book Seven

 

Something hunts the hunters . . .

Something waits in the shadows, watching. Lelia Chan and her Familiar, Tay, hear vague rumors of trouble among the shadow mages. Everyone’s heard rumors before, and keeping her boss happy is more important. Then a painting tries to capture her friend. When her mentor and good friend André and his Familiar Rodney both go missing, Lelia has to take charge.

She’s not ready. No shadow mage ever is. But she’ll find a way or die trying.

Things worse than than death hide in the shadows. And they LIKE meeting over-confident young mages . . .

I always find it hilarious when I’m told I’m not in favor of fighting back, and that I think everything is all right.

This is sort of like when I get accused of being an optimist and a pessimist for the exact same post. Or when my most apolitical books get flagged as political. Or…

Sometimes people are reading hieroglyphs written on the inside of their eyelids.  Kind of like people who decide I want open borders. Or you know, that I run around twitter threatening people (My twitter account might be suspended. I recently clicked a link a friend sent me, with something funny about Portugal, and I tried to answer but the comments never showed and it said something about my account being suspended. Which frankly affects me not at all. I mean, it echoes these posts, is about it.)

But guys, what we’re engaged in is a fight to reclaim the culture.  That precious artifact who followed me here after I blocked him on facebook for instance thinks it is a sign that we’re LOSING the culture war that there was massive outrage about The Last Temptation of Christ in the eighties, but nothing about this Brazilian movie about a gay Christ.
Um…. to level set: I only found out about that movie because I was avoiding work as hard as I could, and found it in a sidebar of a blog I read.  The short version: it’s imported bullshit that won a lot of prizes. The chances of more than a couple thousand people seeing it are nill. And the chances that anyone who would be outraged even knows it exists is even less.

Yeah, sure, the left keeps trying to gin up outrage, because they mistake offensiveness for relevance. And Christians are an easy target because they don’t chop people’s heads.

However, Christians outlasted people trying to chop off their heads. And if you think the Romans didn’t make obscene parodies of Christianity, you haven’t read first century graphite.

I do understand being outraged at the things these people do. I don’t understand deciding everything is lost because of it.

If you think attacks on Christianity are “Marxism” you’re crediting the artists with way too much thinking and AN ideology. Most artists are doing things are doing them to get shock and outrage. In the eighties it was said that the best way to sell a million books was to get fundamentalist sects burning them.

The Last Temptation of Christ benefited from that effect, as did Piss Christ and other bullshit that is not in any way “art.” Because the left loves outraging the Christians.

All the media jumped up on the demonstrations and how outraged people were, which in turn helped sell the blasphemy and abomination.

So, running around with your hair on fire, screaming all is lost because the new outrage isn’t ginning up outrage? You’re either a false flag or a softhead (which doesn’t mean stupid, btw. Some of the smartest people I know are looking for “a simple theory of everything.”)

And what does it accomplish? It gives the left the notoriety they so dearly crave, and makes them feel edgy and important again.

That ain’t no way to fight the culture war.

So, how do you fight the culture war?

1- Be aware of false flags and soft-heads.

Look, we all do this. We all forget people lied to us or about us in the past (okay, not me. I’m a resentful bitch) and want to think “they’re right on this, now.”

We also all have depressive times and despair. The left is MAYBE 25% of the population, but due to the crawl through the institutions, they have loud megaphones. It’s easy to believe you’re surrounded.

One way to identify false flags and soft-heads who repeat them is to consider who they’re trying to appeal to. If they are talking to the left’s idea of a right winger: uneducated, untraveled, xenophobic, racist, anti-semitic, etc, they are probably one of those.

So, people screaming about the inherent evilness of being able to tan? they’re just appealing to who they think the right is. Chances are they’re not of us.  Or they’re soft-heads.

Same way, signs of disrespect to Christians? Not the end times. Except for very short times in history, unbelievers have always made fun of Christians, but this is okay because we also make fun of each other. But the left doesn’t get that. So they think they can spin it to us as signs of the apocalypse.

Another good sign of a false flag or a soft head are people trying to push you do exactly what the left wants you to do: bomb buildings. Shoot up people.

Why do they want us to do that? Because they can no longer control the flow of information. But this would get us demonized everywhere.  Yes, they tried to gin up something like that a number of times, but the story keeps falling apart.

Do you want to give them a story that doesn’t fall apart? Why? So they can make “right wing” (aka to the right of Lenin) a dirty word for a generation and take us all the way to Venezuela? WHY?

TWO of the people calling for violence in the comments — and the ones being the most vocal and explicit? — one was from Turkey and the other one is a …. uh…. known agent provocateur. Perhaps paid.

You guys have been on the internet long enough. SURELY you know that the people presenting themselves as American and outraged aren’t necessarily so.

BTW both of those people comment on instapundit and other places. Our enemies — both ideological and national — are trying their best to make sure we go down hard and the one thing they were always good at was dizinformazia. Remember that. If you can’t tell them by their weird use of English (and they’re getting better) you can tell them by their weird ideas of what Americans are.

These people are everywhere, and multiplying. It will get worse before the election. They’re testing topics to divide us. One hint of a “non-natural” topic was the whole porn thing which came out of nowhere, and was suddenly everywhere in the form of conservatives who should know better yelling we needed government control of speech.

Several tells it was manufactured: a) it came out of nowhere, with no provocation. b) it plays exactly into what the left thinks the right is: prudes (same reason they tried to spin us with stories of how Trump has affairs with porn stars) c) It’s naturally divisive, because which of us can say we APPROVE of porn taken to the extreme, or of porn-addiction? None, right? And the false flags were really good at calling those who opposed government control “porn supporters” (that’s another sign, btw, the massive, ridiculous accusations. Particularly since government has never been any good at stopping that sort of thing.) c) if it had succeeded — doesn’t seem to have — as they expected, they could slide in an anti-porn candidate at the last minute, a paragon of virtue who would pull enough votes away from Trump their margin of fraud would do the rest.

Beware of any of these spins that takes support away from what has been a pretty decent president (better than I expected) while pretending to support him, particularly.  Beware of incitement to purity spirals. (Yes, I know, yes. Some people are… Rockefeller republicans. And when they start insisting we vote for the leftists to save America from Trump, that’s when you know they were false-flags all along. And damn it, I was a soft head for too long where some of them were concerned. Anyone who says the outright commies are better than our flawed president? Yeah, no. But I’m seeing a lot of misrepresentation and dividing of people who aren’t those — yes, myself included — and it’s time to take a long hard look at those promoting it.)

IOW as in Puppet Masters, stay alert. A man with an ideological overcoat just might be an enemy.

2- Don’t look away

Please, please, please, be aware of how outrageous the left is.  No, I don’t mean things like Piss Christ, or stupid movies suggesting that Christ was gay (for the love of Bob, that has been a ridiculous attack since the second century at least) because that just gives these pseudo artists the attention they crave.

Instead be aware of the things they don’t want you to know how outrageous they are:

Yes, sure, the shampeachment.
But also things like Guam tipping over. Things that reveal their utter inability to comprehend and process reality.  And I know you’re going “But that’s a day that ends with y”

Of course it is, and there are reasons for it, including the fact that they hire for ideology ONLY and that they’ve had cover from the press for so long.

But the majority of the public doesn’t know how incredibly, ridiculously incompetent they are.

To the public at large — though less and less as they drop their masks and lose the advantages of a complicit press (now making itself irrelevant) — this is still the party of the “educated” and “smart” people.

Someone was shouting about why we don’t have the money the left does.  Well two reasons: first they hire for the really plum jobs by ideology. Second because magnates make their money then turn left.

This is because leftism is a positional good, and “high class.”  This is what we need to puncture. Show their incompetence, their ignorance, their utter stupidity. It’s not hard. The masks are coming off.

3- Engage.

No, don’t go an buy rings.

Engage in discussions. Dare to be contrary. Yes, both when you see false flags and soft heads, and when you see outright Marxists and socialists, protest. Refute.

Be polite and clear. And talk sense. With examples. You won’t convince the person, but you might convince spectators. And even if not, you give an example of talking back.

TRY not to sound like their stereotype of a right winger. They will try to spin it as you’re clutching a gun and a bible. Don’t play into it. Even if you are religious, nothing is gained by going all religious on them.  Attack them on the sanity and sense fronts, instead, and on their APPALLING lack of knowledge of history.

Yes, this means you probably are going to have to read a lot and study a lot. And filter out the obvious bias. I remember an otherwise excellent mini-series on Washington that kept telling us he only joined the revolutionaries because he was so vain. (Rolls eyes.)

If you an do it, though, learning is its own reward and makes you more resistant to false flags and soft heads. It also gives you insight into how they think and their image of us — from the stuff they add to otherwise factual accounts. That’s priceless. It’s like getting a picture of their heads.

If you’re rural, they’ll try to wind you up as part of that. Don’t fall for it. Instead turn it on its head and defend city living and point out that there are many of us living among them (there are) and arguably the most productive ones.

Be prepared to be reviled and attacked.

Be prepared to have insanity spewed all over you.

The attacks will increase the more effective you are. It’s just the way it is.

Believe it or not, I’m actually extremely conflict averse. I had to learn to overcome that. In another world, I’m quietly writing my books, probably getting all “intellectual” and stuff, which is one of my defects and tendencies. Not making a lot of money — because too intellectual — but happy enough.  That’s not the world we live in. Sorry.

You need to stay aware and you need to fight back. Their overreach and insanity is becoming massive, as they feel their influence waning.

Light them up. Disprove their pet theories. Make them look ridiculous.

Most of the time, honestly, “When did you become psychic” suffices. For instance, yesterday on facebook, a person was insisting all Republicans secretly hated the poor and were greedy.  It’s just a ridiculous idea, that only illusions of being psychic can bolster it.

As part of this, I ENJOIN you to have what I haven’t done so far: have a a set of files, where you keep facts. Label them: Economy, religion, relations between sexes, etc.
Dispassionate facts are the best way to show the ignorance of the other side.

It might be easier if you get together with friends with different expertise. Make sure they are people you trust absolutely. And keep shared folders. I’m in the process of getting this together with some friends. Hint, keep a copy in each of your computers, if you can. The cloud is another name for “other people’s servers.”

4- And this is perhaps the most important, and it’s hard to see:

It’s not just the masks that are coming off. The wheels are too.

Like Obama, the left has the mierdas touch.  Every industry they take over turns to crap. Yes that includes government. No, a big central government is never EFFICIENT. But it can be more efficient than it is right now.

The left has several problems when in charge. One is that they BELIEVE everyone is corrupt. It’s part of their set of beliefs. So they think if they’re corrupt it’s fine. It’s just the done thing. (That’s the reason they believe that a strong government is needed. Apparently people in government aren’t humans and corrupt, but angels. Never mind.)

Second is that the left is mostly ideology over all. Which doesn’t only mean they HIRE for ideology. It means everything they do is for ideology. What to sell? The idea is to pull ideology. How to establish economic policy? Ideology. Purging the office of undesirables Those are never the ones who don’t work, but the ones who oppose you ideologically?  This means ideology becomes the mission, and the real mission, whether selling or creating or governing? It is forgotten and ignored.

So EVERYTHING the left does turns to shit. It’s been accelerating over the last 40 years. And now, the only thing keeping the entire economy from coming apart, while the left plays f*ck-f*ck games is the few of us still doggedly working at the thing we’re supposed to do AND the fact we’ve had some spectacular innovations in medicine, information technology and other stuff.

But even so, the wheels are coming off.

You want to win this culture war, and preserve civilization?

Sure, keep a preparedness supply, be good with weapons and get in as good a shape as you can. That’s just SENSE. No matter how you fight, winning is never assured and things COULD drop in the pot. Better be prepared.

But more importantly, build redundant industries, structures, organizations of our own.

Are you worried about Amazon? Well, running around screaming just bolsters the left’s claim we need to all go back to the paddock of traditional publishing… which they control.

Come up with an alternative, one that can survive now, because it’s just to the side of Amazon, but can change fast and take over if the wheels come off. (And btw, yeah, we’re trying to work on it. But tax regulations requiring you to collect taxes across states and be informed of what’s due in each state, for every 2.99 purchase are hampering efforts.  But you should try. And think through all the ramifications. And be ready.) I have several friends testing out alternate-news ideas. And dear Lord, there must be other areas you can start building against the crash NOW.  Consider, please. It doesn’t take one person with a lot of money and time. It takes millions of us with a little money, a little time, a little expertise, each working his own little niche.  Connecting can come later, or through ad hoc organizations.

But you should be doing something. Consider, learn, work, and start.

Because the hardest part of preserving Western Civilization is going to be replacing the collapsing dinos.

The meteor has already struck. They are already dying. And yes, most of their functions are harmful or not needed. But not all. So for those that are needed? Be prepared to be the little mammal who comes out of his burrow and starts doing what needs to be done.

It’s not glamorous. Heaven knows it’s not easy. But it needs to be done.

Be not afraid.

 

 

*Sorry for being late. Was taking D’Artagnan to the vets for subcutaneous hydration.  And then Dan had to fool with my associate links, so they actually work because the way I did the others didn’t-SAH*

Book Promo

*Note these are books sent to us by readers/frequenters of this blog.  Our bringing them to your attention does not imply that we’ve read them and/or endorse them, unless we specifically say so.  As with all such purchases, we recommend you download a sample and make sure it’s to your taste.  If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. That helps defray my time cost of about 2 hours a day on the blog, time probably better spent on fiction. ;)*

FROM ANNA FERREIRA, FOR CHRISTMAS:  Christmas at Blackheath.

Agnes Rawlins would never dream of showing a melancholy face to her brother’s guests. She may be a spinster, and treated little better than any common housekeeper, but she is responsible for bringing Christmas cheer into the dark and rambling Blackheath Manor, and she does not shirk her duty, even when she has little reason to celebrate.

William Marlowe, Viscount Claridge, has reluctantly accepted an invitation to spend the Christmas season at Blackheath. It’s not his first choice- how anyone could wish to spend time in the gloomy manor house is beyond him- but when he meets the kind and gentle lady of the house, he find that Christmas at Blackheath might not be so bad after all.

I HAVE  A STORY IN THIS BOOK. SO DOES DAVID WEBER, KEVIN J. ANDERSON AND OTHER NAMES YOU’LL KNOW:  Trouble in the Wind (The Phases of Mars Book 3)

Throughout the human experience, historians have wondered, “What if?” What if Sherman had fought for the South in the U.S. Civil War? What if Germany had fought to the end in World War I? What if World War III had actually happened?

Wonder no more, for these questions, along with many others, are answered within the pages of this book. Told by a variety of award-winning authors, like Sarah Hoyt and Kevin J. Anderson, the 2018 Dragon Award Winners for Alternate History, S.M. Stirling, the 2019 Dragon Award Winner for Alternate History, David Weber, a three-time Dragon Award Winner for Best Military Science Fiction, and Brad R. Torgersen, the winner of the 2019 Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction, “Trouble in the Wind,” deals with ground combat that never happened in our world…but easily could have.

The third book in the exciting “Phases of Mars” anthology series, there is something for everyone inside! From fighting Hannibal at the Battle of Cannae, to the early death of Napoleon, to scouting the bush in Angola, “Trouble in the Wind” traces a history of ground warfare…that wasn’t. From warfare in Taylor Anderson’s “The Destroyermen” series…to S.M. Stirling’s “Black Chamber,” this book has it, so come aboard and find out “what if” all of these things had changed history…just a little. You’ll be glad you did!

BY C. V. WALTER:  Hunting Red (Blessed Curse Book 2)

Jason always wanted to be a detective. When he was medically retired after an accident following a high speed chase, he started the Guard Dogs, a motorcycle club that saves and protects missing and abused children. When one of the kids goes missing hours before they’re going to rescue them, the trail leads him on a chase through a world he’d never dreamed existed.

Red’s life has become an urban legend and she’s rather proud of that fact. The stories told in the dark of the night help her on her mission to save the children who have been chosen by the Folk to become Wolves. A curse that was cast before written memory has become a weapon and she’s working against the clock to keep them from using it against humanity. When Jason’s investigation gets in her way, she can either take him out or ask for his help.

FROM C. J. CARELLA:  They Shall Not Pass (The Bicentennial War Book 2).

An Implacable Foe

The Nemeses are here. A mysterious species responsible for wiping out countless civilizations. Can the star-faring nations of the Known Galaxy stop the million-year-old force gathering at their doorstep? Hasty alliances are formed and former enemies stand together as the US Navy, weakened after the Horde invasion, must rebuild in the brief months before it has to fight for the survival of humanity.

Always Faithful

While America prepares for war, the conflict’s outcome may depend on a single person. Colonel Lisbeth Zhang, USWMC, has been captured by a cult of warp-crazed cultist and is held in a fortress planet deep in a lawless part of the galaxy. A joint team of Marine Wraiths and CIA agents led by Heather McClintock launch a covert rescue mission. Zhang’s warp abilities may be the key to defeating the Nemeses – but only if the small team of Marines can defeat impossible odds to bring her back alive.

They Shall Not Pass is the second book of the Bicentennial War, sequel to the best-selling Warp Marine Corps series.

MARTIN SCHELL:  Awakening the Butterfly.

Suppose humanoids from a relatively close part of our galaxy came to earth not as mentors or monsters but simply as trading partners. Earth could not compete with the economy of scale of their production and distribution networks, which would be supplied by raw materials from a wide variety of planets.

Early in the 22nd century, half a century after the arrival of these aliens, our planet has become economically depressed, exporting raw materials and mirroring the dependency of Third World countries during the 20th century.

A multicultural team of earthlings based in New York City has developed a limited form of time travel that is based more on spirituality than science. They summon a man from our era to recover lost information that will help them transform our global culture into a planetary culture that can participate more fully in the interstellar community.

Awakening the Butterfly is a quantum fiction novel that takes its title from a famous poem by the Taoist philosopher Zhuang Zhou (Chuang Tzu). The story develops an old idea that the human soul has components, a recognition that is utilized by a second team of earthlings who specialize in limited teleportation.

Consensus reality is presented as a physical phenomenon as well as a social one. In this future world, computer games are used for work instead of play. The plot explores other aspects of humanity’s future including: romance, ethnicity, education, literacy, baseball, and planetary government.

This book is self-referential, emulating The Saragossa Manuscript but set 300 years later. My aim in offering it is to broaden the scope of imagining the future and inspire the reader by introducing some concepts that you’ve probably never encountered before. Enjoy!

FROM ALENE R. LOWRY:  Einarr Stigandersen and the Jotunhall (The Adventures of Einarr Stigandersen Book 1)

Once upon a time, Stigander Raenson had been heir to a thanedom. Then a curse drove him and his family and crew out of their home. Dispossessed, the crew of the Vidofnir wanders the cold seas in search of treasure, glory, and a way to end the curse.

Einarr, son of Stigander, lives a vagabond’s life on the Vidofnir, never giving much thought to the home he barely remembers. That is, until an unexpected squall and the attack of a demon-headed ship send them to winter at the Hall of his father’s childhood friend.

Now Einarr has just a single season to convince the Jarl that he would be a worthy match for the Lady Runa, the Jarl’s only child. Will he return in one piece, or will the Jarl’s impossible quest be Einarr’s undoing?

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: ripe

And despair is a sin. It is a sin even atheists should be able to understand, if you understand sin as betraying essential parts of what you believe in, what you aim to do.

Jerry Pournelle reminded me of this many times, when my depressive bend took hold of me.

I’m sick and tired of people wanting to abandon ship and/or act like loons because they think all is lost.  I have no idea who’s selling you that bill of goods (or rather, I have a good idea of where it’s coming from, but not why you’re buying it.)

Despair is easy. It absolves you of responsibility. It means what you do today doesn’t matter. And it might lead you to do something profoundly evil. Not just bad, evil. So evil that you taint the rest of us by association. Or can be painted as doing so.

Let me put it this way: while we might not be able to get rid of taxes, I hate taxes as they exist right now, and I think Lois Lerner’s IRS is a corrupt institution deserving being disbanded.  I do not think, however, it is legitimate to bomb buildings that also contain day cares.  And I think — know — that this did more discredit to the cause of reducing taxes than just about anything. FOR DECADES.  There is also good reason to believe the person who committed that act was linked to agents provocateurs. [Oh, and judging from the flaming *sshole on my facebook page: pretending I mean it’s okay to bomb buildings without daycares in it is cute. It’s like you don’t understand allusion or the depth of the English language. It is in fact as though your mind is doing what it can to stop thinking, because thinking might puncture your Marxist illusions.]

I keep hearing that our Republican party is now to the left of the Dems in the sixties, and I want to line up the people who say it and hit them on the head with actual history of the time till they quit it. This despite the fact I like some of them. It is one of those instances of rewriting history in your own head to save the left the trouble.

Until Reagan, wage and price controls were acceptable for REPUBLICANS. So was gun control. Gun control was pretty much accepted throughout much of the land.  This has changed.  Also, I will repeat that most Republicans in politics at least through the seventies were more Mitt Romney than Ted Cruz.

And I’m tired of “We have too many immigrants. We’ve lost the demographic battle.”  Anyone believing that people who can tan are natural constituencies of the Marxists: stop embarrassing us, and join the Democratic party. They LIKE racists over there.

Sure, most newly immigrated groups go left. Partly because it’s natural in their homelands.  But they change.  And heck, these days a lot of countries are changing, too.

Yes, there is work to be done, mostly in encouraging if not REQUIRING (which I’d prefer) acculturation and integration.  But my guess? that is a self-solving problem. Because people are losing patience with the multi-culti hose beasts.

Sure, because of ILLEGAL immigration (and yeah, something is going to happen on that front soon. people are losing patience) and allowing them to vote, the dems seem like they own that demographic. They don’t. And the times they are achanging.

There are gains in other fronts. Universities are panicking because people are on to their game. And the pronouns thing has already become a punch line.

An witness please, what happens when institutions like trad pub go woke.  Yep, they go broke.  Or if you prefer, they roll left and die.

No. We didn’t turn a page and everything is suddenly wonderful. DUH. DO YOU THINK I DON’T KNOW THAT?

But I remember the seventies. Apparently most people don’t.  And the sixties.  For that matter, I’ve read enough of the times before. The only people who think those were “conservative” in the American sense have rosy memories of childhood, or are toking hard. Or, of course, both.  Conformity, collectivism, and the presumption that central government is the means and agent of prosperity is NOT on the right in the US.

The twentieth century — all of it — was to the left of where we are now.

We are winning the culture war. It’s just slow.  Throwing it all away because you’re impatient doesn’t make you a hero. It makes you a child, who will have his lollipop or start destroying things.

That is not the way you win a culture war. It is however an effective way to lose it.

I’ll only add that I’m probably angrier than you are, that fighting my berserker instinct makes me physically ill. And that there’s a special place in hell for those who force a BERSERKER to talk them down.

Now on what I said: you are not alone.

I don’t talk of religious matters here, because as far as I’m concerned they are intensely private to me.  Also because they convince no one.

HOWEVER, when I read this Richard Fernandez article, now a few years old, it resonated with me and without explaining I’ll just say it’s correct.

Night of the Demon

Have faith. In America, in Americans, or in something higher. But have faith. For the times, they are achanging.  And you are not alone.

Yet what should have been unstoppable wasn’t. The big mystery continues to be why an all-conquering meme suddenly found itself thrown back by ideas of almost equal force with no obvious origin. An opinion article in the NYT by Paul Krugman acknowledges the existence and power but not the provenance of this sudden counterforce.  Worse, Krugman warns the left might actually lose to this mysterious power.

Be not afraid.

*My friend Synova and her friend John cooked this up between them. (John is text, Synova whom you might know from her cartoon blog, is art.)
And it’s a very weird day.  As you know we’re dealing with two terminal cats, and Greebo who hopefully isn’t, and the morning has already involved more cleaning after cats than you can probably imagine.  So I thought I’d put it here. Because it’s fun and interesting.  Oh, and they let me. I’m hoping they’ll take my encouragement and do a lot of these in the future, and maybe, eventually, publish books of them. -SAH*

Unthought- A guest post by John Worthington and Synova.

Text © John Worthington
Images © Synova

Linking to this post permitted. Not copying, storing and/or re-posting without express permission.

Yesterday there was a comment by someone here about how he wanted blood on the streets.

Sure. we all want blood on the streets. In a general and metaphorical way. Except some of us have seen blood on the streets. And those of us who have don’t want it.

Now is avoiding blood on the streets consigning ourselves and our children to the type of hell other countries have gone through for three generations?  I don’t know. It might not even be possible for people like me. It’s always a bad sign when I wake up strangling the bed clothes and shaking them, which is the reason I’ve been up for two hours now and it’s not even 8 am.  It’s a sign the anger is starting leak around the edges. And we’re nowhere at the level of oppression going on in Venezuela or even vaguely approaching the crap people put up with for 70 years plus in the USSR.

However people who lived in the USSR and people from Poland, say, might very well tell you it was worth to keep their heads down and quiet until they could be free again. After all if you’re dead you’ll never see freedom again anyway.

Which is fine, but being a live lamb might not be possible for most Americans in this day and age.

This in turn brings me to why we’re angry.

We’re angry because this is a gross violation of our country as constituted, our country as we’re committed to, our country as a country of laws.

Read that paragraph again. And realize that the fashionable habit these days of adopting a pose of the “the republic is gone, gone, gone” is bullshit.  The only people who can think that are people who have never lived in another country as one of them.

I know. I did. And I remember thinking Americans were completely insane. I remember it as through a glass darkly, from the other side of acculturation. But that person and I did share a brain, and I remember my utter bafflement at the American people being mad at taxes — because well, every country levies taxes, right? It’s the price to pay for civilization? — and at American people being furious that the government wanted to take their guns away — what is it with Americans and guns, anyway? The government always takes people’s guns away, to keep them safe! — and at Americans getting all hot under the collar at the idea of a national id card, and…

I also remember coming to the states and being baffled and astonished at people leaving stuff outside, just lying there, and no one stealing it.  And at the way you didn’t bribe the police at a traffic stop. And at the amazing amount of civility in everyday life.

Eventually I realized those were two sides of the same coin.  The respect for the law in the US, specifically the respect for our fundational law of the constitution is woven all the way through.

Which is why places like Chicago of St. Louis, or other places where corruption is naked and in your face are jokes and bywords here. In the rest of the world with the exception of certain anglophone parts of the world, they’re “Saturday Night.”

And it’s why we’re outraged, frothing mad, chomping at the bit.

Look, let’s level set: I’m waiting for the boss over at instapundit to tell me I stepped over the line with my intimation that I want everyone who was/is involved in this attempted coup (against we the people who voted for Trump as president,) to be hanged, cut down while still living and their entrails burned before their eyes.

For those who didn’t get the reference, it was actually the Elizabethan punishment for heresy/treason, since the two were enmeshed in that era, and as such it fits the crime against the most basic beliefs that make us a nation.  So, yeah, as graphic as that was, it was a reference joke. And I was being a nerd.

On the other hand, the reason that joke was made was that a part of me is frothing at the mouth furious and has nowhere to put it.

Because the guy who jacks your car might be showing a lack of respect for the law, but he’s not in elected office, and he most likely hasn’t sworn to defend the constitution. BUT most importantly he’s probably not doing it in the full light of day. His reach is limited.  The assclowns in government right now, however, are screaming from the rooftops that they’re no longer our countrymen and they don’t want to live by the very same constitution they swore to protect.

And we’re not stupid. I’m no dumber than the next person.  The immediate reaction is to view them as enemies, domestic. Which they are.

The anger has been building too. It started during the Obama administration with Fast and Furious, with Benghazi, with Hillary walking free after sharing state secrets with the Russians, with people not fully realizing the enormity of the Iran deal which might meet the definition of treason.

So, Sarah, given you’re as angry as anyone about this, how come you tell us we shouldn’t start the dance.

Because once the dance starts you have no idea how it will go. You might think you do, but you don’t. You might think that you have all the guns, and sure you do, but do you have all the indoctrinated youngsters willing to commit unspeakable crimes for you? Because the left does. And sure, most of those are useless, but not all. Psychopaths always thrive in this type of situation.

So, I’m a coward then?

No. Not for myself. I am a coward for the republic, and for future generations.  And don’t tell me the republic doesn’t exist anymore.  Do you think that it’s EVER existed as intended?  Do you think men suddenly became angels and behaved perfectly according to the law?

If you think that the current abuses — egregious as they are — are the first of their kind against our laws and founding, you either don’t know history, or you really believed the unified mass media all through the 20th century.

Find contemporary writings and read them. More importantly analyze them.

The violations against the Republic, big and small, have been going on since we were founded. And yes, we came back from most of them.

We are now at the very beginning of a very LONG course to come back from the bullsh*t perpetrated upon the nation by Woodrow Wilson and FDR.

Look, just because we’re a constitutional republic, we’re not immune from the trends of thought and technology of the time we live in.  And in the twentieth century the way of the future was a big centralized government with the power to plan everything.

Woodrow Wilson and FDR were “modernizing” the country to “compete” against the behemoths of the day. They thought.

What they did was nearly annihilate the republic.

But the only reason you know that, the only reason you don’t revere their memories is because the times they are achanging and you have access to other means of information.

The fact we’re this angry, the fact that the shampeachment has lost any and all hint of legitimacy to the point they’re now thinking of not sending it to the senate because reasons; the fact that the stand off in Virginia is a powder keg; the fact that we want heads on pikes is paradoxically proof that the Republic still exists and that things are getting better.

Before you become a Boojahideen, consider that fifty years ago, with the information that would be available to the people then, Obama would be considered a national hero, who had brought us summer of recovery. It would be in school books and no one would even doubt it.  Consider the Shampeachment would sound very important and real and we the few who doubted it wouldn’t dare open our mouths for fear of being thought crazy.

The culture war takes time. Frankly, we’ve come so far so fast that I’m shocked. I’m shocked that I’m not alone in my anger.  At the same time I’m even more shocked that people in Europe, who I thought were so far gone as not to have a sign of self determination, are rebelling against their internationalist socialist masters.

Our anger against the current outrageous abuses demands simple, immediate solutions. Heads on pikes. Blood in the streets.

But that’s the way to lose simply. It’s the way to make the whole context: who is more ruthless, determined and has better weapons or can get in foreign mercenaries with better weapons?  Not: who can govern best under the law of the land?

First of all if the dance starts say hello to the Balkans, because it will burn long enough and hot enough to destroy everything you love. It might last way past the time a memory of the Constitution remains.  It will also be seized upon as a reason the Constitutional Republic was a failure.  Just as any aggression initiation on the right will be seized on as a reason for complete repression. (What are you guys? Stupid? Why do you want to do what the left keeps praying for every time there’s a mass shooting? Why do you want to be a “right wing terrorist?”)

No, this doesn’t mean being quiet forever. No it doesn’t mean we’ve already lost.

Impatience is not a civic virtue.  Those who yell about the first revolution don’t seem to realize how LONG that fuse burned. Nor that a great part of the legitimacy of the revolution was that they’d TRIED EVERYTHING ELSE. They’d been reasonable and trying to reign back abuses for DECADES.

Americans are slow to war. We’re a people of law. Also we’re hells own bastards when the war starts, so it’s well that we delay.

Yes, the current abuses are egregious.  Perhaps not the most egregious ones (trust me on this, okay?) but the most nakedly so.

The idiots and their shampeachment and their socialism-gargling candidates are nakedly, in the full light of day, trying to destroy everything we are and everything we believe.

Understand they’re doing that, because they’re desperate. They’re insane with anger. Baffled that what they’ve always done is suddenly not working.

And they’re losing. They’re losing at pretty much everything and showing themselves as incompetent ass clowns in the bargain.

Taking this thing hot now is to give them a dignity they don’t deserve. Do you remember the end of Princess Bride? Let them stay alive and listen to the laughter of derision, and know the Republic lives past them, and that we’re still Americans. Let them know they failed.

Now, should the elections go sideways with truly massive naked fraud; should they try one of their clever idiot tricks to put say Nancy Pelosi in as president, well then… the situation will be different then.

But we’ll have done all we can to preserve the Republic, first.  And then if we lose it, it remains only to keep the idea alive till another generation can pick it up.

Take no counsel of your anger. It is not a wise counselor.

As much of the Republic of Laws as is lost, it was lost before I was even born.  And yet, even flawed and maimed it is the best thing humanity has ever created.

Take no counsel of your fears. They’re lousy counselors.

Yes, there will be reverses, there will be battles lost, but we’ve turned the corner on the culture war. It is as yet a small and tentative corner, and most of our youngsters are still indoctrinated into oikophobia and socialism.  But it is changing.  In something as big as a culture, n a country as complex as the US, it takes time to change.

Speaking out is not glamorous.  And yes, it will cost you many things.

But before we consign the last best thing on Earth to the chancy flames of revolution, don’t you feel we should give the current cultural revolt a chance to succeed?

We can always have heads on pikes tomorrow. But once we’ve set the country on fire, we can’t get it whole again.

 

There is a lot of talk about Toxic Masculinity. No one ever talks about Toxic Femininity.  Though every woman who is a functional human being knows about it, as does anyone who has ever lived or worked in a predominantly female environment.

So, why does no one talk about it? Well, mostly because the left believes that “designated victims” TM are sacred and must never be called on their own bullshit, no matter how smelly. Hence also the bizarre idea of racial “privilege” that tells you holocaust survivors should be attacked for “white privilege” but the Obama girls raised as the creme de la creme, and never facing a day of privation in their lives don’t have any privilege and are victims.

But there’s also other stuff going into it. To an extent — to the extent that historically for biological reasons men dominated public life — the fact that no one talks about the bad side of female modes of being in society is the result of patriarchy.

Men are ridiculously, idiotically, insanely blinkered about women. They don’t really see women as they see other men, but through rosy glasses as much better than men.  The “oh so smart” former president with the depth of a rain puddle in Colorado told us that women are so much better than men and that the world would be better under women.  Which means he’s basically a bog standard male who has never given the matter a thought, and is going on what “everybody knows.” (It occurs to me this man, if he’d been born to an ultra conservative Arab family in one of the ultra conservative Muslim countries would also be telling us that women’s hair emits seductive rays. He’s a suit that speaks. Or an empty chair, if you prefer.)

Of course it is right evolutionarilly that men should feel that way about women. It keeps the species going. It is also bizarre though, and leaves men curiously defenseless now that women view themselves as an aggrieved class and are trying to take over public life and exclude men.

In fact it leaves as the only defense in society that most women — even the feminists who pretend otherwise — unless completely and extensively broken and indoctrinated know what other women are and therefore will not trust any of them.  As they shouldn’t. I can’t imagine a worst hell than what Obama is proposing.

To lay my own biases on the table, in the family it was normal for both my mother and grandmother to talk about men as if they were somewhat daft children in large bodies, and yet endearing.  At the same time, men would laugh at women’s notions of what was important and what was noteworthy.  As a child, I saw both sides.

My feeling about it was this: there are things at which men are superior. There are things at which women are superior. Both will look like idiots to the other when outside their domain.

But in a society in which tasks were strictly divided by sex this was not a big deal. Women and men competed only against others with the same social modality. Note, I did not say this was a better way to organize things. Hell, given contraceptives and medical science it might not be possible now, absent total culture destruction.

That’s not the society we have anyway.  And the disparate abilities of men and women make them naturally regard the other as an idiot. But only women, due to the Marxist social bias of ALL our cultures in the west, are allowed to complain and voice the problems with the other sex’s way of behaving.

Only women are allowed to talk about a toxic way of being and say it should be eliminated from society.

Worse, women are better at seeing the defects in men more clearly than men see the defects in women.

So, the problem is this: right now, men, due to their illusions about women are curiously defenseless against women in public spaces. As a result, and in many ways masculinity itself is being exterminated.

First, before I go into this, let us establish that like every other possible human trait, masculinity and femininity are on a continuum.  There are men who act more like women than women themselves in the social sphere (and btw, through having had to work with them, they are the most toxically feminine of all. And no, I’m not calling them gay. I have gay friends who are intensely masculine, and most gay men are men. In fact the most toxically “feminine” men I know in social style are straight and act masculine. They just don’t present masculine in social style. But once I describe the primary mode of female society, you’ll probably come up with half a dozen of them from your own experience.) And there are women — particularly those not neuro typical — who act more like men in the social sphere.  Which means they couldn’t take a social clue if you hit them with it and put nails in. And they grow to hate and despise the subtle hints and rumor mills of female social groups. (Why, yes, I do have a mirror. Though I’m not so far gone I can’t see normalcy from here.)

So, with that in mind, and the understanding that archetypes only exist as abstractions and that statistics don’t describe any human being who lives in the real world, let’s talk about “the female mode of making society hell.”

We don’t need to talk about the male mode of making society hell. Or perhaps we do, since little boys are no longer allowed to be little boys, and you might never have seen the natural man in his natural state.

When I first entered elementary school we had two one-room schoolhouses side by side, one for girls and one for boys.

I remember looking over the fence at the boy’s play yard and giving silent thanks I wasn’t a boy. Because while I fought when I absolutely had to, all boys did was fighting and pounding on each other and acting like lunatics. Girls don’t do that. Boys don’t do that now either. They can’t physically fight for dominance. And that, in the end creates toxic masculinity.  The raw masculine creature is physically aggressive, tries to establish dominance that way, and tries to get what he wants that way.

If males never learn to control their impulses — say by not being allowed to be physical at all as children, and the curbed appropriately — they grow into toxic males, who will try to bend people to their will with their superior masculine strength.

The beginning of civilization was when the first man instead of pummeling another man into the ground with his club chose to hit him only once, establish dominance, and then make a pact of friendship.  You find something like that in almost every early saga of humanity.

You never find that among women. Women don’t fight for dominance and then become best friends. Because that’s not how female dominance works.

Look, we’re weaker — again on average — smaller, and couldn’t win a fair fight with any man. Which makes us more ruthless, more merciless and not at all fair. Or really physical.

You could say in many ways the female mode of being is civilization. Because it looks that way from the outside. But it’s not. Not if you allow females to compete with males and to take over all the institutions of society from science to politics AND YOU DON’T TEACH THEM TO CURB THEIR INSTINCTS.

So, let’s look at toxic femininity.  In recent life it’s mostly been on stage in, I THINK the first Democrat debate, when Kamala Harris took off after Joe Biden.

Look, I don’t care more for those two than for a bucket of warm spit. BUT if you look at that debate, when she attacked him (and briefly bolstered her repulsive self) you can see Joe Biden’s surprised shock.  Here is a woman he’s been friendly with, a woman he helped, who suddenly comes after him on personal grounds. This is something no male in the same circumstances would ever do. But toxic women give no quarter, seize every opportunity, will take advantage of every weakness, and don’t care if you helped them in the past.

You see, if you go back to what women and men did in the distant past before agriculture, the past that still shapes us because evolution is very slow, you’ll find that men hunted in groups, where the hierarchy must be absolutely clear, because you have to know who is giving orders, in a group that must coordinate their actions and might all die if they don’t.  Also you must be sure that the best/strongest/most agile man is in charge.

Hence males continuous testing “contests” with each other, but also the acceptance of the hierarchy thus established, once it’s established.

While women also have hierarchies (after all, the alpha female raises more kids) it’s more subtle.  Females, you see, gathered. They also watched kids at the same time.  Your goal is to be able to gather the most food, while losing none of your toddlers who wandered off and didn’t get watched.

Women try to have cohesive groups that from the outside appear to be smooth and loving because they are cohesive and do communal work (a lot).

Women’s work is traditionally safe, boring, social, and capable of being interrupted by kids.

This means the best of these groups is one that’s fairly homogeneous and minimizes personality conflicts.

This is usually accomplished by alpha females by enforcing a stultifying conformity and destroying the social credit (and sometimes the mind) of any woman who steps out of line or is just too weird.

In the primitive tribe this was best, because if all the women were more or less the same, they all watched every other woman’s kids, and more kids survived.

Unfortunately, as with men, there is always a contest of wills to see who will be the alpha female who keeps the other ones in line and apparent comity. And the alpha female has to be fairly ruthless at rooting out threats to her authority.

This usually boils down to “having something” on every woman in the group or making it up if she doesn’t. And being ruthless at using anything she has to pull other women back into line. When she loses that game, her reign is over and she becomes just another of the lumpen masses to be kept in line by the new alpha female.

While this form of being social works pretty well in extended families (which is all the earliest human groups were) with the matriarch keeping charge till she can’t hold it together anymore, and the other women — and often the new incoming women were kidnapped or traded from other tribes so had to learn the way of this one — being kept in line by her, it works like heck in the modern world of offices, laboratories and factories. Not to mention universities.

And because our society insists on being blind to the existence, let alone the dangerous side of female aggression, it destroys any possibility of accomplishment or excellence and in general makes the wheels come off whatever endeavor it is where women become ascendant.

Look, what I described above: any exclusively female, dominant female or female directed portion of society is a crab bucket.

Arguably, absent a toxic female lead, this is not bad for a large family group, within its very limited functions.

It sucks for a society, though.

You know when people wail that girls get discouraged from math or whatever?  And feminists attribute that to patriarchy?  They couldn’t be more wrong.  The people who tell women that liking math or science of wanting to be one of those weirdos who are passionately interested in building things is ridiculous or funny or whatever?  Females. Usually same age group females.  If you want to encourage girls to excel in science take them out of schools who group by age. Older women can intellectually encourage Odd females. But the same-age groups can’t. Instinctively the different is just “Wrong” and they want conformity. (And yes, females who love math and science are very often Odd. Not because women aren’t smart enough for those subjects, but because they’re BETTER at language processing and thus tend to prefer doing that.)

The problem with not admitting that women in a group default to the crab bucket, trying above all to keep each other in conformity is that this mode is allowed to go into places it should never go: into offices where women play office politics and rumor games to keep everyone in the same median mediocrity.

The personality games can get — often get — so toxic that what they’re actually supposed to do is forgotten in the “I need to take this challenger down now.”

Look, men had to curb the male mode of dominance to function well in groups. Sure, they established it in many ways, instead of having a good punch up (though from what I understand from books written in earlier parts of the 20th century, those might happen too, out of sight) including the inevitable braggadocio about girls. But most of all they were curbed by teaching men the “gentlemanly virtues.”  You know, don’t take advantage just because you can. Obey legitimate authority. Concentrate on doing your part, rather than using your power to overcome everyone else.  That sort of thing.

Note these virtues are not universal. They’re almost exclusively Western. Other societies dealt with dominance in other ways, including religiously or traditionally determined hierarchies. But for the West, the “gentlemanly virtues” worked.

We’re no longer really teaching them to men. And that’s a problem.

BUT WE NEVER TAUGHT THEM TO WOMEN.

Why?

Well, because women in the public sphere were rare enough that most of them learned them by osmosis from the males around them. And when they didn’t, they were usually ineffective enough, back when there was an actual patriarchy.  Even if men are blind to female aggression, it not being physical, even men can see it when it’s blatant and in your face.  And then they decide this one woman is a monster and all turn against her.

Women are now in public life.  Given the nature of work today, there’s no real reason they shouldn’t be.

But unless you want society to come apart in a sea of crab buckets, each pulling the other down, and for men to be run from society by feral, toxic females, we must start training women to be civilized.  Teach them to be “gentlemen.”  Teach them to be aware of their impulses, where they come from and what the consequences are.  Teach them to work in hierarchical groups without continuously testing for dominance. Teach them to compete without undermining. Teach them not to take advantage just because they can. Teach them to value the mission. Teach them not to be tattle tales and rumor mongers.

Daddy’s little princess is all well and good when all she’s going to do is eventually be the matriarch of her family.

When she might be the leader of a country, or the scientist in charge of a project, though, she must learn to pull in harness and not to try to change directions for her own personal advantage, rather than the stated goal.

And she must never, ever, ever be told that she is naturally perfect, with no flaw or bad impulse, and that society would be perfect if only she ruled it. That’s feeding the monster of toxic masculinity.  Teaching her every man is against her adds paranoia to the mix, which means males must be destroyed FIRST before she beats every other woman into submission with psychological games.

The way we’re raising women is a good way to create monsters who unmake society and end up — if surveys can be trusted (I’m agnostic) — unhappy, resentful and envious.

If you’re raising your daughter for the harem, go ahead. Tell her she’s the most wonderful thing in the world and all little girls are made of sugar and spice with no flaws.

If you’re raising your daughter to have any power in society, teach her to use her natural power wisely and in the service of building civilization.

Or we’ll all pay, and then something will arise that raises all daughters for the harem.

 

 

I confess I’m a violent-scene or horror scene wimp.  I don’t have any issue with the violence or horror happening, and generally can read it (if I am careful not to visualize it) I just don’t need to see it, because if I see it it’s with me forever.

It has been mistaken by some for my being a fragile flower of femininity, but the fact is that most of the time the scene is purely unnecessary.  And I’m a visual person who will dredge up yucky details forever.

In the same way, I’m easily disgusted.  You know those animated gifs people put on face book, with someone vomiting, or some animal pooping? Most of the time when I close an image or ask it be made invisible to me it’s because of something like that. It turns my stomach.  Yes, I know animals poop. I’ve raised kids, and kittens.  And when Havey cat gets an upset tummy my life becomes “Cleaning poo from interesting places.”

I can look at it when I absolutely must (to clean it) but I don’t want to look at it, if I don’t have to.

Needless to say I’m not a fan of what I call “raped by rotting zombies” horror fiction. For some reason, for a while at least, there was a tendency to dwell on the details of the rot, the smell, etc. making the horror not so much horror as nausea. At least for me. And it was everywhere, which pretty much got me to stop reading horror. (Not that I was ever a major fan. And when I write it, it’s a sign of depression.)

But I’d read a novel filled with raping falling-to-pieces smelly zombies and glistening serpents slithering through the eye sockets of meaty skulls than watch what is going on in politics/government in this country, right now.

Look, I’ll begin by saying that I’m sure worse has happened before. Again, if you want an education read contemporary accounts (by supporters even) of the Woodrow Wilson presidency.

It’s just that it largely wasn’t reported or credited. How could it be? To believe such shenanigans were going on at the highest level of the nation’s governance would be horrifying, wouldn’t it? Far worse than that noise from the front door when there isn’t anyone there, or the footsteps in the empty house in the dead of night.

Or at least it should be. More disgusting either.

It’s just that right now it is happening in the full light of shameless day. Or at least the full light of shameless blogging, where someone somewhere will ferret out what is happening, sooner rather than later.

This is kind of like the difference between knowing there is whoring going on somewhere in town, and coming out your front door to find all the wives of the notables doing it with total strangers in the middle of the street and stopping to wish you good morning as you walk by.

And yet… There is a tendency to look away, even now.

There is something to the human brain — I think mine is just over-sensitive in that regard, btw — that recoils from something evil or disgusting and looks away by forgetting it, erasing it, papering it over with a less disturbing narrative.

I don’t know if anyone has ever actually done the experiment of having something outlandish and literally unbelievable happen, and then interview people afterwards, but I’m almost sure all of us have seen this play in real life, particularly when we were little.  Or at least I did. Take, say, a child the adult favors, doing something utterly despicable, like spit in the common soup, or hit the baby.  If you take after that child and try to make him stop, the adults will often have ‘seen’ it reversed.  Though they were looking right at the two of you, they’ll see YOU as having done the terrible thing, because the favored one couldn’t have.

I’m also sure I’m not the only person ever to tell someone something and have them hear it completely backwards, because that’s what they expect.

It’s a form of looking away.  The mind can’t accept, therefore the brain rewrites.

We’ve had endless moments of looking away over years, as the democrats slowly ratcheted up the crazy, shameless and outright bizarre behavior right in plain view.

Calling Bush Hitler should have occasioned more shock, but I was desensitized by the fact they called Reagan Hitler, too. Though seriously: the most milk toast of not really conservatives and they called him Hitler and spent eight years making giant-head papier mache puppets of him with fangs and dripping blood. Because what passes for clever political discourse on the left is apparently kindergarten craft projects.

The fact that we didn’t really stare in horror, in fact the fact that behavior wasn’t particularly shocking tells you how long they’d been ratchetting up the crazy slope, presumably since the drug-soaked sixties demonstrations.  We’d come to accept we were dealing with spoiled children, who — instead of debating the actual issues surrounding national security — screamed “no blood for oil” and made papier mache puppets and THOUGHT THIS WAS CLEVER DISCOURSE.

We had to know that, otherwise everything would have stopped and everyone would have gone down to the corner to stare at the freak show.  No? Think about dropping one of those unhinged demonstrations of the Bush years into the middle of the 40s or 50s.

But the thing was we saw all that, and the crazy people they chose to feature on TV. We talked to friends who assured us that Bush was going to put every gay person in a concentration camp.

And then we watched political debates or even voted, as if none of this had happened.  No one ever said, “Wait, the party of the giant papier mache heads is nominating Obama?  This is not a candidate who has a clue about reality, obviously!”  No, even otherwise rational people talked about how smart the man was, even though both his intelligence and his political acumen joined invisibility to their other qualities. (Not that he was stupid, exactly. Just a middle-brow, indoctrinated into Marxism from the cradle, and not enough of a deep thinker to see the flaws, which is why he kept trying to implement the “recoveries” that Marx told him SHOULD work, and to make the rest of the world richer by making America poorer.)

We looked away.  We looked away and pretended we were dealing with normal, full grown human beings who simply disagreed with us.  Not with petulant children who hate us because we can’t give them the utopia that Marxism promises (but never delivers.)

Benghazi was the one that was hardest for me to look away from. Oh, there had been others, on the way.

Take Fast and Furious.  Fast and Furious is the kind of bizarre, insane plot you concoct if your understanding of the world is stuck circa elementary school and you have a theory into which you try to fit reality, instead of testing your theory against reality.  It went something like this: We said that most guns in gun violence in Mexico came from the US; We were wrong; Force gun dealers to sell guns to Mexican criminals; Guns are taken to Mexico and cause hundreds of deaths; Report those deaths back in the US with proof US guns caused the death; ?????????????????; gun banning in the US.

Seriously. It was that completely and thoroughly insane, and the fact they thought it would work means their sense of the world froze with Saturday morning cartoons.

But that was barely reported. And if you mention it to people who don’t read alternative news sites, they aren’t even aware it happened. Of course, I suspect if they find out, they’ll look away and forget they knew it.

Then there was Benghazi.  You had to know about Benghazi. Americans died. Just before the election in 2012. And the president sent out people to LIE TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ABOUT IT. All indications is that people were left to die, rather than… I don’t know.  Why didn’t we send help? Would that have exposed some of the sewage we’re starting to catch glimpses of in our agencies and our government? Or did Obama imagine that it would jeopardize his cherished Iran deal (which was part of his dream of reversing Reagan. For mommy and daddy who hated Reagan.) WHY he thought the Iranians wouldn’t deal is beyond me. After all, when you’re handing people your lunch without their even having to beat you, they don’t normally refuse.

It became obvious immediately after the election.  And yet, most people looked away.  Sure, Trump won, but during the campaign no one hung “Butcher of Benghazi” or at least “liar of Benghazi” on Hillary’s misbegotten neck.  But they didn’t.  After all, at this point, what difference does it make, right?

We looked away. She was treated as a credible and reasonable candidate.

Then there was the election in 2018 and the unimaginable, naked fraud that gave them the house. In Arizona the polls were left open for weeks, under a provision supposed to be for when the polls had closed for a storm.  They remained open until the right candidate won.  or the left one, in this case.

And it wasn’t the only place. Plus we now know they did a never-end of vote harvesting.  Which btw people are so confused about I saw someone in a blog suggest we should harvest votes ourselves. Guys, what they did was go to nursing homes and hospitals and “vote” for people who can’t/shouldn’t/don’t know. They also “harvested” unvoted ballots from trash.  Those aren’t even LEGAL.

And then they spent years throwing a screaming tantrum that we should abolish the electoral college, because they can’t commit that level of fraud everywhere.  Oh, but they’re trying, they’re trying really hard. Look at them completing the fatal wound that Motor Voter Inflicted on us by now giving licenses to illegal aliens: when motor voter mandates you also register people to vote without asking for proof of… well, anything, including that that’s a real name. (Foreign documents are easy to fake, since most Americans at the DMV can’t read the languages they’re in. I got into movies at the student discount with my Portuguese bus pass for years (yes, I know, but young we were, and very broke and discount movies were our escape when we could find someone to stay with the guys while they slept.) Also every legislature the Democrats capture becomes extremely concerned with the expense of elections and goes vote by fraud mail. Because vote by mail facilitates ALL the other fraud, including getting unvoted ballots from dumpsters.

We know all this. Somewhere in our heads, we know all this. At least those of us who follow politics know all this. But even we… look away.

I hear people talking about how voters gave the dems the house “despite all their misbehavior.”

Really? Really, you’re going with that? No, the dems gave themselves the house and we… looked away.

We look away because admitting that half the nation has completely forsworn any allegiance to the country and the constitution, and are animated only by raw will to power, perhaps with a dash of hating everyone who refuses to just hand it over to them, is admitting that we can no longer deal with them as adults; that there are no longer two functional parties in American politics.  And also that a vast number of our co-citizens are completely insane, dysfunctional children.

How precisely are we supposed to go about our lawful occasions and planning for our future if we admit that?

So we look away.

And by looking away, we break the alarms that should be telling the left when they’ve gone too far.

They do crazy things like declare “sanctuary cities” for illegal immigrants, in contravention of federal law, or have minor judges block presidential orders or directives. Or lie shamelessly about the actions of Obama at the border, attributing them to Trump. … and we look away.

We look away instead of getting in their faces.  We look away.

We look away instead of becoming outraged and not shutting up about the law breakers from Hillary to Comey walking free on crimes that would put anyone else away for life.  We should scream that they should be subjected to the same laws as the rest of us, they’re not aristocrats. Our outrage should make the ground ROCK.

Instead, we look away. We swallow our anger. We go sullen. We look away.

The democrats run an impeachment on two articles: Orange man bad and orange man won the election and we don’t like it. They announce if Trump is not convicted and removed by the Senate they will CONTINUE IMPEACHING HIM.  And such an act of unbridled malice and insanity doesn’t get the majority of people to immediately shout “ARE YOU ACTUALLY INSANE?  DO YOU KNOW WHAT COMES NEXT AFTER YOU DESTROY THE LAW OF THE LAND?”

No, people shrug and look away.  And the Democrats never hear that bell ringing.

Take what’s been happening in Virginia. The governor, someone who SWORE TO UPHOLD THE CONSTITUTION tried to gun grab. But people are already trying to look away. “Oh, there are sanctuary counties” — one of the mos strange tics of the left is not realizing that their clever work arounds will be used against them too — and “Well, the bill didn’t pass.”

They look away already.

The Democrats have fielded the most insane field of candidates ever assembled on a stage. A couple dozen ass clowns, each trying to be more socialist than the next and saying the most bizarre things, from promising free everything, including free health care for illegals, at the expense of those of us who pay taxes, to “Dark psychic force”, to accusing everyone plus imaginary people of being Russian agents, and PEOPLE LOOK AWAY.  They treat these people as though they have more credibility than giant papier-mache puppets and a guy on stilts.  They treat these people as though any of them would make a better president than Vermin Supreme or a random inhabitant of a downtown corner, complete with begging bowl and sob-story written with crayon on cardboard.

That’s looking away. That’s disabling the alarm.

After all it’s so loud, isn’t it? And it will only startle them. Poor dears, they mean well, don’t they.

No one who has rigged things the way they have, and says the things they do means well to anyone who stands in the way of their getting power.

But we look away. It’s too horrible. And the mockery they’re making of our laws and institutions — I didn’t even get to mention the mired-in-corruption FBI and the least said about the other institutions that rolled over and let Obama scratch their belly en-route to corrupting them into spying on his political rival — is certainly far more nauseating than rotting zombie rapists.

But we look away. We look away when we should be sounding the alarm 24/7. We try to be polite when the time for politeness is long past.  You can’t be polite with someone who hates you and wishes to destroy everything that you build your society on.

You have to speak out and loudly, before it comes to blood on the streets. Because if you don’t it will come to blood on the streets.

It will come to blood on the streets when they optimize their fraud machine (they’re already doing it. Look at all the felons who’ve had their voting rights restored in the last couple of years) and slip Hillary in under the wire as the “moderate” choice. Or worse, they actually run Sanders.  Are you ready for the first openly communist president of the US? What will he swear on? Das Kapital? And what will he swear to do? NOT defend the constitution. We do know that.

And it will come to blood on the streets if we actually rise up and vote in unheard of numbers and the fraud can’t catch up to us.  There will be blood. They’ll start it. (Which mind you is preferable to us starting it.)

The only other alternative is to start right now pointing out not just that they’re venal and obsessed with power (was it Lindsey Graham who said “And I hope to G-d you never get it?”), that their party is a sewer of politicians engaged in corruption which their media arm (which passes itself off as main stream media) aids and abets, but also that they are ridiculous. Their ideas ossified in the early twentieth century (along with their hairstyles), their bright suggestions would make us Venezuela within five years, but more importantly — because it hurts them more — they look like a bunch of neurotic plucked chickens throwing fits that would make a kindergartner blush.

Mock them. Point out how ridiculous they are. How dangerous they are. Never let them forget the venal, despicable, stupid and insane things they say.

Sound the alarm. Don’t look away.

No petty tyrant’s self importance can survive an encounter with unabashed humor and ridicule.  And in this case, dear Lord, were we blessed with ridiculous enemies.  Yes, they are dangerous too, but only because we keep looking away.

Don’t look away. Look on, full on and without flinching at the horror the left has become.

Because the alternative is snakes on meaty skulls forever. And the skulls will be yours and mine, and those of everyone we hold dear.