This week something happened that put who we’re dealing with and how bad it’s got.

The full story is here, but here is what happened:

Carson King, 24, raised over $1 million after holding up a sign during ESPN’s “College GameDay” on Sept. 14 in Iowa. The sign asked for Venmo donations for his “Busch Light Supply.” King donated the funds, which were matched by Venmo and Busch Light, to the University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital.

Okay, let’s pause here and admit several things:

We have no idea what this kid’s political affiliation was/is.  Heck, I don’t know if anyone knows, yet.

He was running for no office, asking for no charity, not doing anything that required us to know about his character in any depth.

What we know about him is that he’s a college student who (probably as a joke) asked for beer money and got way more money than anyone could expect.

Which is when he did something I — personally — couldn’t do.  Look, guys, if someone gave me 1 million, I’d pay off some of the kids’ loans (we only paid half their undergrad tuition each, plus living expenses/supplementary expenses) And depending on how much was left after taxes, pay down our mortgage or get us cars younger than 25 years.

I don’t think I’d have the courage/fortitude to donate it all to a children’s hospital.

The other thing I THINK I can say for sure is that despite the culture war we do all still agree that sick kids deserve treatment, right? We do still all agree on that, right?

So, this kid, whoever and whatever he was, was a hero and almost a saint in a way most of us couldn’t do: being a young man, with his life to establish, he didn’t say “I’ll start a business” or “I’ll buy a house” or even “I’ll have the biggest party.”  No. He said, “You know what I wouldn’t have this money normally. Let’s do some good with it.”

So this is the part that made me go “In heaven’s name why?”

Des Moines Register reporter Aaron Calvin reported on two tweets written by King when he was 16 while compiling information for a profile on him, published Tuesday. The tweets were brought to King’s attention, and he apologized before the Register published the profile, including the unsavory comments.

The kid isn’t running for anything, guys. He’s not selling the public anything. He’s just a private citizen going about his private business.  Who would go digging through is twitter feed to find SOME dirt from when he was too young to have a filter?  WHO IN HECK EVEN THINKS of doing that?

I have no idea what the politics of the journalist are, either, that’s not the important thing.  Pay attention to the actions, though.  What this reminded me most of was the Covington kids, who weren’t selling anything; weren’t doing anything and yet the media looked to destroy their characters as thoroughly as possible, in public, with the potential for severe backlash and destroying their abilities to find a job… for no reason.

The left will say it’s because they were at a pro-life demonstration, but the left is full of sh*t.  If that were the thing that would turn most people off, they’d have broadcast that, instead of inventing smirks and “rude to tribal elders” and “racist” bullshit, none of which actually happened.

And you can say what you will of the wisdom of taking teens to pro-life demonstrations.  I went to demonstrations at 16 and I think I did it of my free will, and am still rather proud of them. In fact, I more or less dragged mom. Was I indoctrinated? Only if it was reverse-indoctrinated, since I got the other viewpoint in every class and civic occasion.  Sure. For me, that probably counts.

But anyway, whatever you think of it, teens go to these demonstrations and the left lionizes the ones on their side, so kids don’t deserve that even if dragged to a demonstration. And yet the media gleefully set out to destroy their futures because they didn’t like the politics of the demonstration they were at.

This is what this incident reminded me of, only, so far as I can tell there was NO political motivation.

So, what was it?

Well, the journalist, whatever his politics — and I’d bet leftist, both because of his field and what he got away with for years without anyone doing this kind of dig — is immersed in a very leftist work culture.

I’ve said before that the left makes envy their cardinal virtue.  If you’re envious and you hate, then you’re someone to be listened to.

I’d assumed — I have some naivite still I guess — that this envy was only for material goods.  Apparently not.

What happened was that the journalist saw someone who was admirable, someone who had done something truly good for no personal benefit.  And he thought “AhAH! This person has done something I couldn’t do. I MUST tear him down.”

And then did a deep dive for anything the kid might have said incautiously.

Sure, the journalist was fired — for his own stupid tweets — but what good is that to the big-hearted young man who donated what would be a great way to start out in life to kids with cancer? What does he do now? Every place he applies to, he’s going to come with a big, and I’m sure undeserved — why am I sure? Because he didn’t donate with any conditions as to what kids could be helped — label of “racist”.  No corporate entity will hire him, lest they get submerged in wokerage.

I have no idea what politics the journalist has. But I know what he grew up reading, and I know the ethos of it.  It is “Nobody is clean.”  It is “There are no heroes, everyone is corrupt and evil.”  It is “We shouldn’t look up to anyone, because everyone has flaws.”

And that revolting and vile insanity is at the feet of the political side that has controlled media, entertainment and literature my whole life: the left.

Why do I say it’s insanity? Aren’t humans all flawed?

Of course they are. We are all flawed in ways small and big.  Which does not invalidate that a lot of us are saints and heroes.  In fact, the proportion of saints and heroes is much higher than that of fools and criminals. More importantly, it had withstood a culture that tells us — social apes — that heroism and sanctity are impossible and faintly ridiculous.

I know why the left needs to believe that.  If no individual can be good, then we need iron-clad laws (which, remember, they think are magical and make everyone even criminals magically obey) that make us act properly even in the tiniest and most personal aspects of our lives.  And we need government to be totalitarian, to keep all these horrible individuals in check. (Keep in mind that to them government isn’t composed of humans.)

The left is wrong. Oh, maybe it’s that way in their circles. Among humans, social apes all, the most conformist and that follow what’s expected the most, seem to be the left, with their virtue signaling and group-think and thought-leaders. So maybe over the almost a century they’ve controlled communications in society they’ve made themselves into horrors.

But it’s not the way SOCIETY is.  Observe any kindergarten class.  Sure, you’ll see horrible spoiled brats. But you’ll also see kids who help others and try to be good. Heck, sometimes they’re the same person.

However, this is where the culture war has got us. The left has turned a vast number of people into despicable creatures, incapable of doing anything good, but more importantly, DESIROUS of tearing down everything that anyone else does or achieves.

Which of course also explains why they want to tear down civilization and take us back to before great humans created and fought and worked for centuries so their children wouldn’t die in infancy in the mud.

And why they are fascinated with the end product of their own digestion, in “culture” and “art.”

Oh, and with sex, that appetite we share with dogs.

They truly, absolutely, passionately hate anyone or anything who does things they’ve declared to be impossible: create, build, care for others, lift others up, do the best they can or die trying.  They hate that with a bloody purple passion.

Let’s make them mad.

Go out there create, build, be!  Show that there is more good than bad in this human creature.  You can’t be perfect, and no one is asking you to be perfect. But you can TRY to be good.  And it’s okay, you know, even a minimal amount of good is enough to drive the left into frothing rage.

So hold your middle fingers aloft to them — metaphorically — as you pass and do the things they say are impossible.

Be the best human you can be. Fully.  And enjoy it. The left really hates that.

Dum Vivimus, Vivamus.

Guys, pssst?  Can someone check on the left? Because something is seriously, bizarrely wrong.  I mean, wrong enough that if the left, collectively, tripped into a hospital’s ER, they’d be slapped with a psychiatric hold.  These people — collectively — are not well.

Look, when I was growing up, one of our merry band was schizophrenic.  When he felt his insanity coming on, he’d go and commit himself, because he didn’t want to hurt anyone.  We can only hope (in vain) that the left could have that kind of insight into their mental processes.

Recently, I heard of someone also suffering from mental illness, who removed every electrical wire from his house, bashed his laptop, the radio, the TV and his telephone, sent in his own obituary and generally posed a danger to himself and others because the aliens/CIA/someone was spying on him through all of those.  He might be saner than the left.

No, seriously. I was texting to Bill (Reader) yesterday and I said something like “the left is so crazy it’s starting to scare me.  What kind of rational human being thinks we should reorganize our entire economy because an indoctrinated SWEDISH teen needs to allay her anxiety?”  And then he said, “Or for instance, that Biden is corrupt, therefore impeach Trump.”

And then I realized there were a ton of other things just as insane from that side of the isle, and I had to think, and then…

Okay, we’ll ignore people like Rashida Tlaib going on about how black market vaping cartridges have coffee and alcohol and other things that can’t be digested by the lungs, and Alexandria Occasional Cortex going on about filming the poisonous effluvia of fracking at a place where no fracking was happening and therefore it was just heat waves from drilling machinery.  We’ll ignore this, because stupid is as stupid does, and the concentrated stupidity in the “squad” is denser and harder than the core of some stars. On the other hand, consider, ladies and gentlemen, that the democrats and the press (but I repeat myself) think that creatures of such impressive density, whose stupidity is even now influencing the orbit of distant galaxies, are worthy not just of being in congress (I mean, the Romans, famously put a horse in the Senate. Who are we to complain about mere donkeys?) but are people we should listen to, and give any type of attention to and/or look to for the future of this country.  No, think about it for a moment. It will prepare you for what is to come.

As I sat there, staring at my phone screen, I realized some of the crazy is so crazy that the mind has attempted to erase it. I always said that the Obama administration had the interesting strategy of covering scandal with scandal, but I swear the democrats/progressives/ happy face socialists, (whatever the hell they call themselves this week. They keep changing names like a bad Chinese restaurant that cooks the neighborhood pets) these days cover crazy with crazy, until your mind rebels at the sheer amount of insanity and regurgitates it, like a cat that has swallowed half a bag of marshmallows (I’m looking at you, Havelock.)

The crazy has been so, you’ll pardon the allusion, fast and furious that I forgot one of the incidents first time through, and probably am forgetting some now.  We won’t even go back till the Mueller investigation was revealed as utterly hollow and probably fraudulent from the beginning.  Mostly because in the aftermath the NYT admitted it was trying to distract us with “racism, racism, racism” and such poor scholarship that even other leftists called them on it.

But somehow, somewhere along the line, the dime dropped that these days you can put the American people to sleep with “racist!” or its new hip variant “white supremacist.”

In between there, sometime, there was the bizarre obsession with “children in cages” which they never seemed to comprehend were ALSO from Obama’s tenure. (And we got the picture of Occasional Cortex staring forlornly into a parking lot, and a lot of other nuttery) And also somehow this morphed into “detention of people trying to illegally cross our border is like German death camps.”  Because you know, the problem Nazi Germany had was all those Jews trying to cross the border to come in.  WHAT?  Yes, it’s exactly like it, except where it’s not like it at all, which is all over.

But the left has minds so completely virgin of history that they make virgin olive oil look like promiscuous olive oil, and so from this bizarre a-historical comparison, they jumped not only to attacking ICE facilities and defacing American flags (question for the audience, what flag do they think they would prefer? Do they really think an invader would put them in charge? Don’t answer that. “Think” is a misnomer for what passes for their mental processes at this point. It’s like the random firing of defective, partially wet fireworks) but also to thinking that “free health care for illegal aliens” and “abolish ICE” is a winning point for their 2020 platform.

Look, guys, can thorazine be made into tranq darts? I think we’re going to need them.

But somehow, this fail-safe way to win American hearts and minds failed (save for a few empty heads in the suburbs who kept bleating “but the children” as though it were kind to encourage unscrupulous parents and kidnapping strangers to grab the kids and drag them the length of the Americas getting raped along the way by making “but the children” a get out of jail card to walk dry shod onto American soil.) I know, un-possible. And yet it failed. Possibly because as the fiercely heterosexual Cory Booker says, so many of us are “despicable.”

And so — because, as I read somewhere (might have been the NYT) they’re counting on (I swear I’m not making this up) scandal fatigue (attached to Trump!) to win them the 2020 election, the left decided to go completely, pants on head, writing obscene words on your naked bods with indelible marker, dancing a jig in subzero weather nuts.  We’re not talking the gentle madness of planning a transatlantic bridge made entirely out of soap. No, in retrospect that was the Mueller inquiry.  This… this is something completely … well, crazier.

So, what have  we seen:

Well we saw Beto O’Rourke not only saying that damn the second amendment, full speed ahead, if he won the election he was coming for our guns, but — mark my words about this, please — having T-shirts printed up with this, as though he thought, nay, was SURE this would be the making of his campaign.  No, seriously.

It is as some liberal but still sane guy said recently as if “The left thinks it’s campaigning in a country slightly to the left of Sweden.”

I’d say more than that. I’d say they think they’re campaigning in a country as disarmed as England.  Let me assure them we still have not just our knives, our screwdrivers, our sharpened spoons, but also our guns.  And saying “you’ll let me take them because I say so” doesn’t sit too well with us Americans. I suppose it’s not Beto’s fault that he never met any of us. I’m going to assume he landed, the day before that debate, from some other parallel world where there are no Americans.

Maybe in that world, the Swedes rule America.

Then there was Kavanaugh thing.  You’re going to say “Oh, old news.” Oh, au contraire, mon frere in suffering through this craziness.
No. Kavanaugh was brought up again, and the left wanted to impeach him — yes, impeach him — because some book recently published said he’d wagged his penis in someone’s face when he was eighteen. The book also said, mind you, that the woman denied and said she didn’t remember any such thing.

And when the supposed victim of this crime said “never happened.” they said that just because she couldn’t remember it, it didn’t mean it didn’t happen.

Yes. The left, ladies and gentlemen, small dragons, wingless birds and feathered mammals, the political side that #believeallwomen, even people who suddenly remember things that supposedly happened forty years ago in a house that doesn’t seem to exist, when a designated victim says she doesn’t remember anything of the kind and it never happened says, “Forget the drunken slut. She doesn’t remember but that don’t mean nothing. Wouldn’t remember her own name if it weren’t tattooed on her butt. Listen to us. We must impeach a supreme court justice because we say so and will stomp our little feet and scream till you do what we say.”

Which funnily enough, between Sweden and tantrums brings us to the next item: Turns out the left believes that the best way to treat a child’s anxiety is to rearrange the entire economy of the world.  No, seriously.

I was on a forum where a woman said we shouldn’t discount the opinions of Greta Thunberg just because she’s mentally ill.

Okay, then. I suppose the guy who ripped out all the wiring of his house should be listened to. I mean, perhaps there were in fact aliens spying on him through the wires.  I’m sorry, if you’re merely depressed, your opinion might have some validity.  Distorted, maybe, but there might be something there.

But if you’re a child who suffers from both a cognitive disorder that makes it impossible to identify irony, hyperbole and lying AND from depression, why would anyone in their right mind pay attention to what you have to say?  Worse, note the CHILD in the last sentence. Greta Thunberg is a child who has not, in fact, finished the equivalent of high school.

Now, I know that children can be geniuses. I am the mother of a diagnosed “profoundly gifted” son, and another who is “at least one standard deviation above him.”  I’m here to tell you that both of them can be very knowledgeable about whatever their field of specialty is.  Which at sixteen was…  Do you know how many bizarre arguments I endured over the best way of making ME a body replacement robot, so I wouldn’t have auto-immune attacks? Or the life history of various comic book heroes, with and without retconning?  I would absolutely listen to them, then, on those subjects. Because they were probably the greatest living authorities on them, and also on various convolutions of Asterix the Gaul. Or in the case of one of them, the economic policies of ancient Rome.

You know what they weren’t authorities on? What international policy and economics should be. You know why not? Because they were sixteen.

Even adults can’t grasp how one could change world economics without killing most of the population, to avert global warming if it were a problem (hint, it doesn’t seem to be. Or at least not within foreseeable future. Or at least none of the people who claim to believe in it actually act like it is a problem.)

But, oh, dear Lord, the left, and Europeans — WTF really is the Monaco Royal Family thinking? Have they reached the level of inbreeding where they’re as dumb as Occasional Cortex? — and the press, think that this girl, because she’s sincere and angry is somehow worthy of talking in front of our congress and the UN (as if the UN needed to further beclown itself) on how we must all change things because we Faiiiiiiiiled her.

I realize that throwing tantrums has got her parents to structure their entire lives around her dictates, but what no one has explained is how and why they expect the rest of the world to do so.

Look, any of my kids when they were young and living with us, telling us we needed to change something like our dinner time because we’d faillllllled them and were ruining their childhood would be told “Tough. Also shut up child the adults are talking.”

But the world is supposed to stop for Greta Thunberg, because she’s disabled and really, really indoctrinated? Oh, and has pigtails.  Well, then. Neither of my boys had pigtails. Must be the difference.

And of course, just in case this failed, the left organized a massive, all out tantrum by giving the kids time off to leave school and demonstrate, stomping their feet and demanding we stop everything because they’re scared.

I guess because they don’t have kids, the left exaggerates the power of children tantruming?  because for us parents, that’s called “Wednesday.”  We used to look at our kids, throwing themselves to the grocery store floor, pumping arms and legs and go “Cute.  Okay. We’re leaving. Call us when you have a job.”  This usually stopped the tantrum and got them walking sheepishly beside us.

Metaphorically speaking, that’s the only response Greta, who comes from a country as far left (in fact) as Sweden deserves from the United States. I don’t care how “sincere” she is. If her fears really were of man-made global warming, she’d be lecturing India and China, not us.

So, take her away from her horrible, insane parents.  Give her to human beings to raise. Whipping the parents in the public square till the blood runs freely is probably not practical, and besides they might enjoy it.

But wait, wait, “You must give us socialism because this Swedish kid is upset and besides we have all these other kids who will take a day off school and hold up signs” isn’t the sum total of the left’s madness… Oh, no.

No. Possibly the best part of the last two weeks is the left demanding that we impeach Trump because Joe Biden is corrupt.

Sure, there’s other stuff there, but already the wheels are coming off, between Trump releasing the transcript of the call, and apparently the “whistleblower” not actually having heard the call to Ukraine, so he’s blowing his little whistle on … hearsay? and… Oh, yeah, this guy works for the Clintons, seems like, or at least that’s what I got from the convoluted chain of who is paying whom…

Is your head hurting yet?  Mine is.

Guys, in my misspent youth, I looked after friends who were suffering through bad acid trips and who were more rational than the left has become.

I fully expect sometime next week they’ll start an inquiry in the House on “Why is a mouse when he spins?” and return a resolution of “The higher, the fewer.”

Which would be hilarious, if these people didn’t have the power of the purse, if (through their press branch) they didn’t manipulate the perception of the US abroad, and if we were absolutely sure that we can beat the margin of fraud.

As is, though, it’s like being locked in a small room with someone who has gone completely and utterly insane.

Any minute now, they’re going to swagger over, wave something in our face and say “See, see? I told you the US is evil and Trump is a dictator. I have proof. Proof, I tell you.”
And we won’t know how to break it to them what they’re holding is a fistful of their own excrement.

The Complete American Disassembly Manual – Bill Reader

Today’s article is dedicated to the Democratic party. In an act of generosity, and in very simple terms, I’m going to explain to you how you can have everything you want. Every last thing I disagree with fundamentally. Every single dark socialist desire that you wish to see supplant the fundamental freedoms on which this country is founded. I am, believe me, not particularly happy about doing so, and there are no tricks. You may question my motives, but humor me and I’ll reveal them in time.
Among other things, it may be clearer once you understand the small, regrettable detail of the price.

Now, first, of course, we’ll have to define what it is I think you want. Depending on whether Sarah is able to publish this article in time, this list should cover at least the things I think are most important. It is by no means comprehensive, but allow me to do my poor best at catching, say, the top 10 key ideas.

At present, to a greater or lesser extent—this is from following your primaries and your leading politicians— you would like:
1) Mandatory gun confiscation/ “buybacks”

2) Universal centralized healthcare— including things not universally agreed to be “health care”, such as free sex-changes, free and utterly secret abortions for any female old enough to physically become pregnant, and mandatory contraceptive coverage without exception

3) A centrally planned economy with regards to energy production, the better to expedite “green” technology being implemented

4) Mandatory car confiscation concurrent with massively expanded public transportation initiatives

5) The banning or heavy taxation of “inefficient” foodstuffs, especially beef, in favor of theoretically energy-efficient vegetarian diets and even—I can hardly believe I’m having to write this— insect-based foods

6) Unrestrained censorship of conservatives in media generally

7) The right for government agencies to remove through extrajudicial means a sitting president whom you personally dislike
8) Universal basic guaranteed income

9) Slavery reparations

10) Essential dissolution of the nation’s borders in the form of absolutely uncontrolled immigration.

Now, you may only want some of the things on this list, I admit, and hence consider yourself a moderate. It will not surprise you to know that in my opinion—and I say the following merely so you understand I’m not trying to lull you with false flattery— believing in absolutely anything on this list means you are not only not a moderate, you’ve forgotten, or never learned, key things about the fundamental philosophy of America. We’ll beg to differ from one another for the duration of the article, though, because it’s not really important. We have plenty of time to clash about philosophy later.

It may interest you to know that you can, in fact, have these things. Really. Oh, there is a problem, of course. The problem is that the current laws of the United States, including, yes, the constitution, make it completely illegal for you to simply proceed with several of them.

Mandatory confiscation or a mandatory buyback—which is expensive confiscation, but by right of the fact that it is mandatory is definitionally still confiscation— contravenes the 2nd amendment. If you are guaranteed a right to bear arms, and the government is confiscating your arms, you can try to spin it any way you like, the government has officially infringed what it is explicitly forbidden from infringing.

If a person’s employment in a certain field means they work exclusively for the government, for whatever wages, on whatever terms, with no alternative except not working in that field—then you are advocating a form of slavery, in contravention of the 13th amendment. That applies not only to doctors being forced to work under nationalized healthcare but any people whose work is forcibly reassigned in the midst of setting up a centrally planned green economy.

If you plan on taking coal plants from their owners, remodeling houses whether owners like it or not (as the Green New Deal advocates), confiscating cars, confiscating foodstuff or animals either from consumers or the producers of same—all these things are in contravention of the 4th amendment. You cannot just take people’s things at your own whim with no rationale other than you want them because your cause of the moment demands it.

You can’t use governmental powers to censor conservatives because of the 1st amendment. Obviously. Though I have to say that so far Silicon Valley is doing a good job of sparing you the necessity and the useful idiots over at, say, “The Bulwark” are assisting you.

Also, Republicans do get to be elected. Read the 12th amendment if you don’t believe me. Just because you don’t like the system by which they are elected, just because you don’t like the Republican who gets elected, does not give you carte blanch to remove them by means other than a legitimate election. There’s a process laid out for electing a president and in no part does it read that the president can be removed by extrajudicial tampering by unelected agencies at the behest of his predecessor and his opponent in the presidential campaign. Nor, I imagine, would this process have been a welcome addition.

I grant you that not every single thing you want is explicitly forbidden by the constitution, but, on the other hand, as we can see above, much of it is.

Now, at present, your strategy is to just ignore that this is the case. Strangely, however, no provision was made in the constitution for it to simply expire when it became too old or inconvenient. Generally we conservatives feel that this was extremely intentional, given that the principles were designed to govern humans and the general nature of humans was considered fairly predictable within certain bounds. As I understand it, your side feels this was merely an oversight, and—I have to assume—that the rules were either derived for some other purpose than the stated one of preventing what have historically been the predictable over-reaches of would-be tyrants, or else, more incredibly, that human nature itself has changed.

Whichever you believe, proceeding in accordance with these beliefs would be relatively unwise. I don’t endorse violent changes to government for much the same reason I don’t endorse the FBI’s shenanigans regarding the Trump administration. I will, however, note that armed services personnel swear oaths to the constitution, not to any particular elected official. While I do not doubt that some portion of the armed forces would be in compliance if, as Swalwell suggested, they were directed against their fellow citizens for unconstitutional reasons, I harbor some doubts that all of them would be. “Befehle sind befehle” is not a phrase one wishes to find oneself resorting to, given its legacy, and I suspect some of our service men and women are aware of that fact.
Let’s make no bones about the fact that even if you had 100% military support, however, first, you’d be making orders in direct and unambiguous contravention of US law in a way that really doesn’t require a court to explain. Remember that at its core, the reason we on the Right are generally adamant that violence not be resorted to while there is any reasonable alternative is essentially because of what happens if the principle is universalized. If violence is an acceptable route to power, then we’re not even really pretending to be a Republic, or a Democracy, or a country any longer. We’re an argument with borders. There’s a reciprocal agreement that the government will not do anything requiring violence, (and no other reasonable course of action), to redress. What things actually fall into what category—I would argue because our education in civics is completely remiss— are increasingly arbitrated by the judicial system.
Insofar as the judicial system is mainly used as the arbiter of late, you might find yourself—in fact from listening to you I know you find yourself—wondering if there is anything at all that is such an obvious abuse of power that the courts wouldn’t need to be called in to arbitrate. And following closely on that thought, you’re wondering where that line is mostly so you can walk right up to it. Put another way, what you’re attempting to do is call the bluff of the American people, and argue that there is, in fact, no practical, ultimate check on government authority at all, apart from you being “polite” enough not to just blithely ignore the laws that restrict what laws you can make.

Yet I hope we can at least agree that even if you think that should be an allowable way to run a country, it’s still a dangerous way to run a country. If nothing else, in the abstract, when A) the country in question has a civilian populace better armed than many nation’s militaries, and B) the culture of the country includes a substantial percentage of people who draw the line of when violent resistance is acceptable a little more, pardon the pun, conservatively than you and perhaps even I do, I hope you can at least see why you are, at best, courting civil war by engaging in constitutional brinksmanship.

Why not do it differently?

It may shock and amaze you to know that there are laws even for the changing of laws. Yes! There’s an actual legal framework available to you. Amazingly, the drafters of the constitution imagined that perhaps we would someday want to amend it. They even put in place a method of doing so. In fact, it has actually been done! Several times, in fact.

“All” you have to do is get a 2/3rds majority in the House of representatives and the senate to support your change, or get 2/3rds of state legislatures to call a constitutional convention and agree to it. Then, three quarters of the states need to ratify it. Interestingly, the president isn’t strictly necessary, though sometimes he signs something for the look of the thing anyway.

I hasten to add that the fact that a process was added for changing the constitution further shames those of you who just want to ignore it. See, I suspect that many of you know damn well that we have legitimate rules that you are willfully ignoring. I suspect that many of you are willfully ignoring the rules precisely because you know that you don’t have nearly the support or the mandate necessary to play within them. And instead of doing the self-reflection that ought to be stimulated by the fact that the system seems designed to prevent precisely what you are attempting, instead of wondering why that might be, your response so far has been to simply refuse to play by the legitimate rules. All this in an exceedingly misguided attempt to force your beliefs on the entire American public, as if the rules for changing the constitution were just one more limitation whose reason and origin was a mystery to you. Whether you admit it or not, if that characterization defines you, you are already exactly the tyrant the constitution was designed to restrain. You already think of yourself more as living on the brutal and direct terms of power and force than any civilized articulation of raw nature that’s come after, and you kid yourself if you think there’s any kind of compassion motivating that. To you, I say: the limits you are hitting are not at all arbitrary—au contraire, you personally are the reason they exist. I hope I am not being too cagey on this point.

But let’s say, entirely for the sake of argument, that you hadn’t heard. It’s entirely possible, in this world of state-run education designed more for propaganda than didactic value. I said I was not glad to provide this information, and I meant it. There was a time this wouldn’t have warranted an article. The modern Democratic party shows that those times are behind us.

Of course, you may complain that the bar for constitutional change is a very, very high bar. That is because, as I previously mentioned, the constitution—especially the original amendments— were drafted explicitly to prevent formation of a tyrannical government, by people who were highly motivated insofar as they were rebels against a tyrannical government. You’d be surprised how hard such men can make life. Ask England.

But what if you’re unwilling to play by those rules? Surely the bar is too high?

Ah, well, here we part ways, my friend. But I can tell you now, you’re a fool if you think the height of that bar is adjustable merely by writing down an easier-to-reach number.

Look— Let’s say you really, genuinely, had 51% absolute majority in the country. I don’t think you do, in fact, though nobody can really say one way or another since last I checked non-voters who could legally vote were either at or close to the largest majority in the country. But let’s say you did, purely for the sake of argument. I think that in your minds, 51% of the country abrogating the basic rights of the other 49% is some kind of stable, tenable configuration for a country. You seem to think, intrinsically, that there really wouldn’t be anything you couldn’t do with a solid 51%, and certainly so if you could bump it to maybe 52 or 53%. Majority rules, right? Because laws—in this as in all other things—are some kind of magic in your heads, and you can just ignore the ones you find inconvenient but also, all the ones you pass are going to be immediately followed.

But that’s not how things are written, is it. Why not? Why such a high bar?

Because where your goal is just to win whatever things your cause wants today no matter the long-term consequences, the goal of the drafters of the constitution was a stable society. That meant some kind of nod to how humans work and think. You may have noticed that a stable society does not look like, for example, what I predict the general response would be if you tried to confiscate guns. On some level, precisely because nobody really knows exactly what would happen, except the smart money is that it would be messy and you wouldn’t like the outcome. That’s not exactly what a popular mandate looks like.

No, you want to know ultimately why 2/3rds of both houses need to approve a law? Because 66 people against 33 have a much, much better chance of winning in a straight-up fight than 51 or 52 or 53 against 49, 48, or 47. Such a good chance, in fact, that the fight is unlikely to happen. And the constitution is drafted in such a way that people aren’t supposed to feel tempted to have a violent argument about things that are passed into it and then people have to live by. Because—assuming, again, your goal is stability— laws on what laws may be passed shouldn’t themselves be  passed unless they are really, really popular. Barely tolerated is not enough.

This is why, when you’re talking about fundamental basis of a country’s laws, what you would probably think of as a nearly unreachable clear majority doesn’t come anywhere close to what you really need. And yet, dislike it though you may, that threshold is yet another fact imposed by nature itself and arrayed against you. It exists precisely because of the instability inherent in defining things otherwise—such as in the way you would prefer.

Maybe you don’t care. Maybe you’d still rather pretend the law is other than it is rather than follow it.

Just remember, it can be mighty hard to tell a populace to do as you say, not as you do.

 

What do you do after you lose trust in your institutions? All your institutions? What happens to a civilization when every public institution, everything we are supposed to trust and believe has provably lied to us?

From the media with their increasingly crazy and public lying and insanity, to professional associations (“gun epidemic”), to our schools (really, really, children walking out to protest climate change? Because yes, children know things you didn’t tell them), to our scientific studies that no one can actually reproduced, to our contaminated, cheating elections (really, Arizona? We’ll keep the polls open till the leftist wins?) to the fact that one party in the US is fronting candidates that no one can actually believe and who seem to be living in a parallel universe, to our corrupted statistics for both census and production and cost of living, to the frigging polls, to–

Look, all “elites” lie to the people, and arguably our institutions lied a lot more to us in the past. Or if not more, at least as much.

Now for the first time, though, there are ways to verify and to question what we’re being told, and again, I must ask: What happens when the people lose all trust in their institutions?

Perhaps it’s an effect of catastrophic technological change. Perhaps it’s why it’s not so obvious in the rest of the world?

Or is it obvious in the rest of the world? There seems to be a lot of “unexpectedly” in foreign elections recently.

Or perhaps it’s the result of our elites going off on a kind of determined vision of what the future is that prevents them from seeing the reality that everyone else sees.  But then again this has happened to a lot of elites throughout the ages without people losing all confidence.

Except of course, when people have and Madame la Guillotine worked overtime, and when there were sudden and horrible upheavals.

Look, I’ll be honest, with people losing all respect for all institutions and credentials, we’re running close to the idea of the people who take revenge on the elites after nuclear war in A Canticle for Leibowitz: “Yes, we’re simple, and we shall have a great simplification.”

I don’t see any way out of this that doesn’t involve an upheaval and the throwing away of the baby with the bathwater.  Some things are possible, like the replacing of the corrupt mass media by people on the scene.  And perhaps other things, like replacing corrupt politicians (we hope.)  But how do you replace scientists? how do you investigate scientific knowledge and determine the wheat from the shaft? How do you regain trust in our government agencies?

Throughout the world, when people have bragged of bodies composed entirely of women (Sweden) and awards given on the basis of everything but what the award is actually for, how do you regain trust.

Trust is built slowly, over generations. It can be squandered very quickly.  Once it’s squandered, how do you regain it?

Look, guys, we make lots of fun of people who think the Earth is flat. Rightly so. But there are things you can’t verify for yourself.

If someone tells us that Iran has launched missiles at us, do you believe them? What institution would you believe, if there were a big explosion somewhere and we were told “Oh, that was an Iranian missile.” Or, alternately “That was a meteor.”  Any?

Because I have to tell you — I’m all out of trust, and I don’t think I’m alone in this.

Is this survivable?  Or are we like a marriage where you come home and find your spouse in bed with the paper boy and she tells you “I’m completely faithful. Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”  Where divorce is the only possible recourse.  But how do you divorce your own institutions: schools, universities, professional certification bodies, corporations, agencies, the press itself?

In this year of the great unmasking, where the kings and queens dance naked in the streets, how do we survive this perilous times? Whom can we trust?

Build under, build over, build around.  Tell the truth or at least don’t lie.  Remember to build in truth, because there is no hiding from it.  We live in the times when the secret of every heart shall be revealed.

Build under, build over, build around.  Build solid. Because the only other bridge past this time of troubles is built of blood, of human bones, and of a dark age that might or might not flourish again into the light.

Be not afraid, but be aware.  And don’t be lulled into either complacence or despondence.  We’re surrounded by lies. It’s up to us to find our way through them.

 

The anti-hooman wave- A Blast From The Past from October 2012

 

Good morning oppressed children of story and plot; inglorious workers in the vine of words!  I bring portentous news.  Your brothers and sisters, the rodents, are on your side.

You probably thought the Rodent Liberation Front was merely a flourish of – running dog of literary imperialism and gender traitor – Sarah A. Hoyt’s imagination in Gentleman Takes A Chance.  You were wrong!  We exist.  Struggling and nibbling at the margins of society, we have formed our plan to take over the world one nut at a time.

This being so, it will not surprise you to know that we found it necessary to reclaim for the people the property heretofore known as According To Hoyt or Sarah A. Hoyt’s Blog.  First, because it was being self-evidently written by a nut, second because many of the regulars appeared to be nuts, third because it often strayed into the field of science fiction which is, you might call it, a nut rich environment.

Since our primary goal is the redistribution of nuts to those who grow them, harvest them, own them, steal them, we had to claim this blog as the glorious conquest of the RLF.

Now that the blog is ours we enjoy enjoin you to forget the nonsense about a human wave.  You will never be anything as individuals.  The purpose of the individual is to serve the greater good of the state.

Join the RLF.  Like us, you are oppressed and downtrodden.  Think of all the people who don’t like your books.  Think of the evil corporation Amazon who sells your book in mere electrons, instead of comforting paper.  Think of all the poor publishers, who shall perish without your work and money.

Like us you are fond of nuts.  You are our natural allies.  In the collective, you shall write exactly what we tell you to – think of the joy of not having to think for yourselves – and you shall be free to share your royalties with us.

The nuts, united, shall never be defeated.  Talent to those who don’t have it! Redistribute the benefits of the writing, not the writing work.

Together we shall win!

Squirrel Castro

PS -Ignore the thumpings from the basement.  Sarah A. Hoyt is securely tied fit to be tied enjoying a lovely time at a reeducation camp

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. One book per author per week. Amazon links only.-SAH*

FROM HARDING MCFADDEN:  The Judas Hymn: stories.

 

“As you read these stories, get to the know the characters, and lose yourself in imagination for a while.”-Chester Haas, from his Introduction. Here, collected for the first time, is the short fiction of Harding McFadden, co-writer of The Children’s War. Among the quick excursions are visits to Lovecraft and Doyle country, as well as winks of the eye to origional regions of the post-human world. Take a lunch in a garden with a little girl who can shape reality to her will. Go on a trek to possible salvation with a another young girl and her robotic monkey protector. Travel the twisting tunnels that fill the hollow earth, and see the horrid things that inhabit them. All this and more awaits you in more than twenty tales.

FROM SCOTT ANDERSON: Western Terminus: An Eli Tucker Thriller.

Rookie FBI Special Agent Elias Tucker is the son of Liberian immigrants and he’s living his American Dream. He graduated from Brown and turned his attention to the law. His first assignment with the Bureau is the Phoenix satellite office in Cochise County, Arizona, just a short drive from the Mexican border. His work involves the cross-border drug trade, missing persons, and tracking foreign nationals who have entered the country illegally.

He’s a cultural fish out of water. Adjusting to his new life will take time, but time isn’t something he has.

A string of mysterious disappearances among migrant communities has shocked the locals, but the brass seem unconcerned. What’s happened to them? Where did they go? And how does it relate to the unusually high number of retirements and medical leaves being taken among lifers in DC?

A never-ending wave of Central American caravans. Disappearing politicians. A mystery epidemic. A wonder drug. And a green FBI agent named Elias Tucker who won’t take no for an answer. Can he solve the mystery before time runs out? And will the truth die with him?

FROM BLAKE SMITH:  A Small and Inconvenient Disaster.

 

THIS ONE I READ: I won’t say the kid is JUST like Heyer. That’s saying someone is just like Heinlein. But it’s close enough to Heyer to be very impressive, given the age of the author. Highly recommend.

Everywhere she goes, Maria Mason is plagued by little catastrophes. Getting caught in the rain, running from the friendliness of a muddy dog, tripping over her own feet at the worst possible moment- she has been subject to all manner of accidents, and to fend off the worst of them, she has learned to be silent and still.

Until she accompanies her friend Miss Gordon to London for a season of gaiety and pleasure. Life in Town is full of wonder, and soon Maria has new clothes, new friends, and the attention of the amusing and clever Mr. James Callahan. She begins to wonder if she has outgrown her propensity for falling into disaster, only to find herself embroiled in the worst sort of catastrophe when she is obliged to mediate between her feuding friends. One wrong word, one false step, and she might lose the regard of her friends- or worse, the love of a good man.

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: String.

 

“There was a little boy, who wouldn’t go to sleep.”  Thus began my older son’s favorite book in the entire world.  It’s called Night Cars and I read that book so often that until very recently I could recite it all from memory.  Not so much now.  It’s been too long.  But I probably could get to it prompted here and there.

He was a year and a half when that became his favorite book, and I read it almost every day for a year.  It was the story of a little boy and his dad (the mom was never mentioned, but given it was all set at night, it’s possible the mom was asleep like a sensible woman) who lived in a downtown apartment. The little boy didn’t want to go to sleep, because it was a snowy night and there were all sorts of interesting things outside the window: people! Dogs! Police cars! Fire engines!

My son was not overfond of sleeping. Like most smart kids, he was afraid he’d miss something vital. So he didn’t nap, and getting him to sleep at night was a problem.  Mostly, he fell asleep by collapsing wherever he happened to be (I once cooked dinner entirely by stepping over him, as he slept in front of the stove.)  He’d go from running around to curled up on the floor, and then you had to decide: did you pick him up oh so carefully and take him to bed, risking his waking up, or did you leave him there.  The difference, usually, was whether it was daytime or nighttime.

And nighttime sleeping depended greatly on what was exciting, going on outside our window, which was in the heart of Colorado Springs, and looked across the street at shops.  There were people there all night, and yes, fire engines and police cars and dogs.

In the morning, in the book, dad takes his son across the street, gets a doughnut for the son and a coffee for himself. This was often our morning routine with the addition of my getting a bagel. (Depending on money. I mean, most of the time we had breakfast at home, but there were days we had money, and why not.)

You can see why son loved this book, right? He was young enough, I’m not a100% he didn’t think it was about him. Maybe. He’d probably have asked why it was dad and not mommy, who was the usual designee for staying up late, since dad worked outside the house.

His brother, born while we lived downtown, grew up till he was 8 in a tiny mountain town. His favorite book was William Allingham The Fairies, to the point that it was on my mind when I came up with my first published trilogy. You see, I was in a situation where I couldn’t reach for references, and I remembered that poem.  So, not only did the fairies intrude on poor Shakespeare, but the title of the book, now called Ill Met By Moonlight was Down the Rushy Glen.  The publisher changed it. The other two titles are still Allingham lines.

Note we still had Night Cars, but Marshall showed no interest whatsoever in it.  Was it because we didn’t live downtown?  I don’t know.  Could be because he likes more structured poetry. (He does, btw.)

Admittedly when you’re very young you like reading about what you know and sounds like your life, because, well… where is your imagination going to come from?  You can’t really go anywhere in your mind. You have no idea how other people live.

In fact older son’s first story (soon to be out, revised, in his collection.  I need to UPLOAD that!) was a heartbreaking story about adopting a child. Only he had no idea how one adopted a child, so it was like the humane society (where we’d adopted a cat.)  He was eight. What did he know? (When I explained the story changed. So… it’s actually more poignant.)

For those of us who live mostly in books, a lot of what we know about the world is from books. It expands our thinking, our realm of possibilities. Little by little we know more of the world. Most of us learn early on that sometimes writers are full of sh*t. Sometimes through lack of research, mind, but sometimes because a lot of time has passed and life/place is different. I can’t imagine my parents letting me and my friends go on the unaccompanied camping trips of Enid Blyton’s protags, for instance, but never mind.  More importantly — I think — through reading we learn how other people think, how other people are in the world. It’s an opportunity to slip into that space behind the eyes. NOt naked, of course. Your own space-behind-the-eyes goes with you and colors everything. But it’ the closest you’ll get to really GETTING someone else, short of an afterlife of some sort.

Which is why most of us do it. Maybe. Well, I do it because I’m ADD and without audio books I’d never take walks or clean the house. Not enough interest in those.

Anyway–

What this is all about…

My most recent publisher had a bad habit of calling me when I sent a proposal in and going “But what is the book ABOUT?”

I don’t know. Maybe other writers write like that. I can usually tell you the percipitating incident for the book erupting in my head. It’s usually something like “I was reading a book with cloning, and it was legal, so entire people were created for body parts, and I was thinking “Dear Lord, no. Given the ability to develop the process further, you just do body parts, or whole bodies without brains. Raising a human for this is too difficult and expensi–  Wait, what if it’s illegal and you have to hide it by pretendin–”  By the time I left that diner, the back, blank pages of the book contained the first few chapters of the novel.

What does it mean?  Oh, you could say it means that making things illegal makes them worse. BUT that’s not how the book turned out, and it means a lot of things, none of which have anything to do with the precipitating incident.  And that’s one of the clearer ones.  A lot of my books start because, you see, there’s this voice in my head and it’s not mine, and it’s telling a story.  Or I wake up with a sentence running through my mind.

My vampire book (BTW, right now in a story bundle) you could say is about compounding with evil. You give in to evil, and you give in to evil, and you give in to evil, and what does that make you.  It is echoed throughout the series till the last book, and I swear if the bundle does well the second book (the difficult one) will be out in two or three months. I have maybe a week of work in it.

But when the book came to me, I had no idea what it meant (BTW I can see now why it attacked when it did, because it was just before I came out politically.  You figure it. Use paper and pen if you need to.)  I just know I had to park really far away for art class, and then came back, in the August heat, and sat in the car, and my last situational thought as I turned on the car was “Damn, I’m hot.” And then there was an entire trilogy in my head.  By the time I got home and went to my desk, the first few chapters poured out of me and I typed a few other scenes to Kate Paulk on AIM. It was like, it was all there, and I could zoom in on certain scenes.

What did it mean? I didn’t know. I just knew it was there.

Again, what is this about?

Well, this week for various reasons, but mostly because I’m fighting an attempt by the stupid virus to come back (It is a stupid virus. You shed IQ points as you sit there, and all you want to do is sleep) I didn’t do all my posts as I’m trying to on the Sunday night. So, I was going through potential blasts from the past on… Wednesday? night.  And I came across a bunch of them about Human Wave and how someone (obviously eventually on the other side) wrote posts on it, talking about how we shouldn’t read just for fun, and how we need to write the other and… all the arguments which have become so familiar.  “You must write the other.” (Except of course, you can’t write the other, because it’s appropriation.)

This morning, I woke up and I’m reading a mega-bestseller unfamiliar to me.  This is because I can finally read something that IS NOT a regency romance (more on that later) and more specifically Austen fanfic. Which must mean despite the annoying virus, I’m getting better in the essentials.

Anyway, because this guy is famous and a mega bestseller, he has a prologue on the book explaining how he came to write it.  And I read it in disbelief.  He was tried of characters with problems, so his character is perfectly sane, has no problems at all, doesn’t need/want anything.  Yeah, bub. The character himself says that in the first chapter…

Which proves the character is not particularly introspective, and frankly neither is the writer.  Because the character is angry. It radiates off him. And the reason he’s angry is the reason the writer was angry when he wrote it.  The fact they’re both oblivious to this is actually fascinating.

Anyway, there’s the point — look, I’m uncaffeinated — there are two sides to writing — and to reading — one is the “you do this because you do it. The call of the weird comes up, and bam, you write it.” The other is “You must write this or that to illuminate the blah blah blah.”

I suspect there are two types of writer. Perhaps there are two types of reader too.  I have no problem reading the second type of writer in non fiction, but in fiction there are books I start and go “This is dead” or worse “why are you lecturing me.”  Most of the time, though, I just go “boring” and move on.

Mostly, there are things that appeal to me, and things that don’t. And things that appeal to me at different times — of life, of circumstance, sometimes different times of day — I get stuck in reading ruts.  Normally I live somewhere with sf/f some adventure, some thrillers.  If I’m stressed and real life is way too complex I mainline cozies.  A little above that in spoons and it’s historical mysteries. A little below and it’s regency romance or austen fanfic.  Note I’m not saying these are below in skill. Some are. But some aren’t. I’m saying they’re below in the emotional investment they require of me, because if I’m reading Pride and Prejudice Fanfic, I know how it’s going to end and 9 times out of ten what the details will be. I don’t have to try to figure if a character is good or bad. I read the name, and I know.

It’s easy to figure out with kids (because their life experience and triggers for things are so short/few) why a book appeals and one doesn’t.  Well, unless you know, it’s my younger kid.  It might have been the poetry and the big words, for all I know. He used to memorize poetry. Get drunk on it. Yes, he wants to be an engineer. Life is like that.

So when someone says they designed their book to appeal to x or educate x on y or whatever, there are two choices: Either they’re lying, or they think they really did this.

But whether the book actually does what it was intended to do? That’s chance. And the call of the weird. And how “alive” it is. And when it hits. And how it speaks to the reader.

Sure you can “design” books and take a prescriptive approach and say people SHOULD read your book because it’s good for them.

But fiction doesn’t work like that.  Fiction takes you somewhere.  And it’s all a matter of if the reader and writer want to be there.

So… write it. Put down your clipboard and just write it.  With luck, a lot of people want to follow you there.  And if not, write another one.

Me?  Well, there is this guy and he has a dragon egg in a colony planet.  And there’s this woman who was just arrested in NYC under Mayor Giuliani’s attempt to cut down on the selling of fake amulets by the curse men.  And…. well, you see? I have to go write.

 

 

We were talking on facebook about the possible escape of small pox viruses from the lab in Russia.  (Yes, I know that’s not what they said, but I do speak fluent Russian obfuscation. You had to, in the cold war in Europe.) And soemone said that one of our techno billionaires was talking about a plague taking out 30 million people.  I said they want it, and I think I shocked this very nice lady.

But here’s the thing, it’s not 30 million. I’ve heard my liberal friends — before I came out politically — talk, unguardedly, when they didn’t think it mattered, and it’s more like 1/3 the world population. They think it would be best if a plague or something took out that many humans.

Part of this, sure, is the fact that they’re convinced there’s a massive overpopulation (there isn’t, not by any rational measure) and we should all die to make space for trees or plants or intelligent squid or something.

Part of it, is the unlovable “those people don’t matter.” or if you prefer “lives unworthy of living.

But a great part of it is more complex.

Why would humans hate humans? Why hate their own species so much that they wish it to die in great numbers, living only a very few that they imagine would live a happy and carefree pastoral existence in harmony with nature. (Okay, you have to realize what they know of pastoral existences is less than my cat knows of architecture, and also that they believe wholeheartedly in the myth of the noble savage who lives in harmony with nature.)

And there you have it: because they think it will be best for humanity in general, if most of us die, and live only a few, “to be happy, in harmony with nature.”

The problem with most of the left, and arguably with Marx himself, is that they don’t understand human suffering.

As Peterson is fond of saying, human life is tragic.  We live in an age of miracles. We have more time and better health than we’ve ever had before.  And we live longer. Much longer. But every and each one of us will die. And — I know this just statistically, from watching my cats’ lives — a lot of us will die painfully and ugly. And most of us will feel we die with unfinished business. So…

Human life is brief and tragic. What’s more, we live in a land of wonder. Almost everyone else, throughout the world, lives more limited lives.

People suffer.  And I think this bothers people on the left horribly. They can’t understand it, or reconcile it, partly because their “model” of life doesn’t have the idea of suffering or striving being a good thing.  In Marxism — a very flawed Christian heresy — there is no model of people (individually) striving or improving. All there is is being oppressed or oppressing, and eventually, the oppressing bettering their lot by punishing/despoiling the oppressors.

Because the model is a finite pie, there is no creating, no conquering your disadvantages or those of your surroundings.  If you’re suffering, there’s someone else who is not. And if you make them suffer, then your suffering will go away or lessen.

Because it’s based on a materialistic, finite pie model, the idea is if you take away what others have and “redistribute” it, then you’ll be happy. Or at least the average happiness will go up.

But the world is not finite pie. Not materially and not emotionally.  And if you think it is, you don’t understand that you can improve your own circumstances. Except by bringing others down.

This is the problem with a Marxist mind model. You think suffering is unavoidable, pointless and endless, until the “inevitable” perfect state of communism.  And you think communism will be perfect because somehow everyone will be forced to be happy and given everything they ever desired.

This is what I call a kindergarten idea of paradise, like when I was a little girl and loved this book about an imaginary land, where birds and fish were already cooked and went around with forks in them, and trees grew candy and ice cream.

It takes a grown up to understand that though we all hate suffering, sometimes it takes suffering and problems to make us move past a problem or a big blockage and achieve what we’d otherwise have thought impossible. Without suffering, we’d all walk around doing nothing.  Humans are not made for that. We’re made to create and strive, and fight for what we want. Yeah, sometimes fight against others, but mostly against ourselves and our limitations.  The kindergarten world would just infantilize us all.

And yes, the end is often tragic, but trust me, it can also be good. I’ve seen that too. There is such a thing as a life well lived, a life that justifies even a terrible ending.

Lacking that, the left is obsessed with ending suffering.  And because they don’t know how to do that, they keep trying to control everyone.  You know “Do it for the children!” “Do it for the victims.” “Do it for the planet.”

I read somewhere that in the early twentieth century the heirs to the throne of Spain were hemophiliacs (being descended from Queen Victoria) and to prevent their getting hurt the royal family had every tree in the garden surrounded by pillows, in a vain attempt to keep them safe.

If you think about it, that’s what the left tries to do to the species and the world. There’s safe spaces, and social justice, and open borders, and redistribution, and free this, and free that, and Occasional Cortex’s crazy idea that you can just print as much money as you want to and it won’t affect value, and that way everyone can have “good money” and “a good job.”

But — and I’m sure this baffles the leftist true believers, absolutely sure of their own benevolence — everything they do turns out wrong, and they keep trying to do more, and help more, because if they can just control us all, then it will work, and suffering will end.

And yet, suffering — and more importantly striving — can’t end, because humans were built to strive and try to improve themselves and others. Because that’s what humans do. That’s what humans are. That’s how we got from the caves (and before that the trees) to where we’re now. We’re humans. We create, and grow and try.  Even in the shitholes in the world, people are trying to improve things. Dysfunctionally, yes. Counterproductively, often. But they are trying.

And in their heart of hearts, the left knows that. They know the only way to make suffering stop is to make humans stop.  And thus, their minds keeps telling them that they need to eliminate vast numbers of us — and eventually, they know, all of us — to make suffering stop.

This is their foundational drive. They just want everyone to be happy and taken care of. And they fail to consciously accept that the only way to do that is to kill everyone.  Consciously they think if we just gave ourselves up and gave in to perfect communism, we would stop all this suffering.

Ultimately, they’re at war with being human. And unable to figure out the amazing glory of freedom of choice, of freedom of improvement and creation and the ability to make the world a better place.

No wonder they are miserable, and angry, and hate their own species.

No wonder they think death is the best thing they can do for us. No wonder they hate people like Peterson, who is telling people they can — individually — improve their lives and their happiness.

So what can we do?  Not shut up. Not go away. Not accept their simplistic view of cake or death. Continue to work and improve, and love.

What we can do is continue to strive and thrive, to improve and create.

We don’t need padded trees.  We need the freedom to be human.  We need the glory of being human and the joy and pain of it.

Yes, we suffer, because we are human. But we live fully because we are human, too. And the suffering is worth it.

Be not afraid.

Maybe, just maybe, some of them will  open their eyes, stop screaming it’s dark. and joins us in the glorious and terrifying light of the sun.

 

Unraveling The Narrative a Blast From The Past from March 2015

It was 1993 and Clinton was making us prosperous and balancing the budget, and equality and amity flowed throughout the land. We were glad the “me decade” was well in the past.  Everyone was altruistic and full of care for the poor.  And weren’t we lucky that Reagan had not nefariously caused WWIII.

We know this because if you pick up practically any movie or book from the decade, this will be beaten home with a jack hammer.

I have actually howled with laughter while reading a book published in the late eighties going on about how Reagan was a murderous so and so who intended to kill all the Russians, or the like. You see, I remember the rather soft-handed treatment when the USSR actually imploded (and having seen what came after, I’m not actually convinced we shouldn’t have done as Heinlein wished and tried and hanged all Komissars. Sure some of them were just following orders. Like Nazis, after all. And yes, I am actually aware that was under George HW Bush. But the groundwork was laid under Reagan.)

It was 1998 and we were living in happy and prosperous land with the budget balanced and the worst danger on the horizon was a resurgence of the “right wing militias.” The future was an endless lot of “progressive victories” under “enlightened technocrats.”

It was 2004 and George W. Bush was going to put every gay person in internment camps. On the street corners people were searched for possession of Muslim religion or liberal ideology. Most of the country had got strip mined and toxic piles of toxic stuff lay everywhere.

You lived through the time and it was not like that, you say? Next thing you’re going to say we don’t live in a land where one in five women gets raped while in college, and where men have this magical thing called “privilege” which is a get out of jail free card in every situation (except when arguing with a feminist, when being called on the possession of privilege means it’s off to the dungeon with me.) You’re going to tell me that in this land, women in powerful, well remunerated positions aren’t oppressed night and day simply because they have a vagina and “institutional patriarchy” oppresses them night and day because institutional. Also patriarchal.

You’re going to tell me that women aren’t paid less than men just because they’re women.

You’re going to tell me that and you’ll be absolutely right, of course, because you know what you’ve seen with your lying eyes and it’s nothing like the narrative you can find in every book, in every movie, in every newspaper, in every report, and in the majority of the presidential speeches, too.

It’s like there are two lands, one that the media-industrial complex writes from, and then the land we live in.

And after a while the suspicion sets in, that they can’t be that blind accidentally, that the lies and coordinated purposely and for an end.

You’d be right. And wrong.

The big lie that informs all the little lies the media-industrial corporations tell is uniform, taught in the schools, and pushed at every kid and adult who has even a modicum acquaintance with formal schooling. This is because the ideals of Marxism have slid into our society and become the “overculture” of the elites. Not only through Marx, himself, mind. He fit neatly into a matrix of despising the present and your countrymen in favor of the past and the exotic, which had been propagated by all the custard head romantics heading back to the eighteenth century. But the Marxist lie was absolutely manipulated and shaped by the USSR who infiltrated just enough of the media-industrial complex to create the sense that all the good people were hard left.

After that, it’s not needed to tell people what to say, they can deduce how to shape the narrative from their oikophobia and their “hierarchy of victims.” Once you know whose victimhood trumps whose, you know how to shape the narrative. You also know only the “oppressors” can be villains.

Are the lies told for an end? – oh, sure they are, but the end is not necessarily consciously sought. To an extent the lies are told to make the liar fit in with what they perceive as the “upper crust.” To another extent, the lies are told to bring about what they’ve been told would be utopia, to wit, the rule by enlightened technocrats. But to another, the lies are told because even these people see the bad results of what their supposedly enlightened elites are doing, and want to deflect blame.

To wit, for how long have we heard Reagan closed the madhouses? Untold was the fact that the madhouses he closed were largely empty, since due to a campaign by the enlightened purveyors of enlightenment (and this one REALLY was financed by the USSR) we’d defined our madhouses like the communist madhouses. They used theirs to imprison political dissidents, so in equivalence world, then we must be using ours to imprison political dissidents. And if what the people in the madhouses thought was that they were the son of Mary Magdalene by Napoleon and that G-d himself had ordered them to kill every person named Ned, that was too political. Their madness was brought about by the inherent injustice of the capitalist system, you oaf. How can you not see that? Don’t you know many wonderful people who are poor and many rich people who are asses? Then how can you not agree that capitalism is unjust and makes people insane? (Never mind that people are more or less insane from birth, and that no better system has ever been devised. It’s unfair and therefore everyone who goes mad, goes mad because of Capitalism.) The left had waged a war on the very concept of mental illness, but when the hordes of crazy hit the street and then the madhouses closed, they had to blame someone, and the someone was the person who formally ended a system that had already ended in practicality.

Well, yesterday I came across a similar thing. I was watching Scorpion with my husband. He had saved a huge stack of episodes going back to October.

Now, I didn’t set out to watch it. I was, instead, intending to work in front of the TV, because my husband was there and also yesterday was very cold and the room with the giant computer screen is warm.

However the series captured me, mostly with its depiction of very smart people. They’re Odd, like us, and that was interesting.

Oh, sure, there were burs under the saddle. Like the fact that the main character at 11 supposedly got upset because his software was used to bomb Kabul. Of course he did. Because every smart person is against the war and wants our enemies to thrive, right? I mean self-defense is such an uncouth value.

Never mind. I could get over those little moments. But then we came to an episode where the plot was that a good populist politician had got murdered by (of course) an evil corporation, which did so because he would prevent (!) their stealing water from smaller agro-businesses in… California. California, by gum. The place where small farmers ARE being run out of business, the place being given over to a desert, because Nancy Pelosi and the eco-freak lobby have chosen to let the water flow through to the sea to keep alive the delta smelt, a sort of schrodinger fish that might or might not exist, and if it exists might or might not be endangered.

At this moment, I needed to go out of the room and not Hulk out. Because think about it – how many people know that Nancy Pelosi and her merry band of idiots are the ones responsible for the suffering of small farmers? How many people follow the shenanigans of politicians. And how many will immediately assume that having seen this on television, it must be true, and the evul large corporation must be the ones stealing all the water?

A few more repetitions, and “everyone will know” the desertification of California is all the fault of big agro-business. And then we’ll empower politicians who will, of course, be bought by big agro-business, and make it even less possible to be a small farmer, but never you mind that, because the narrative tells you what to believe.

And the beauty of it, the sheer beauty of this, is that you don’t need to tell all the lies yourself. Just have people hear the same explanation three times and most of them will assume they came up with it on their own through REASONING. And then they’ll tell the lies for you.

This is how those raspers, like that Reagan was going to destroy us all in WWIII ended up in the middle of an otherwise completely apolitical cozy mystery. This is how you find episodes of Muslim harassment and hate crimes against Arabs as being common in America today, even though most of the hate crimes in America are committed… against Jews. Most of them by Arabs, but that’s something else. You will hear every time there is an episode of Sudden Jihad Syndrome that “we fear backlash against Muslims.” And having heard that often enough the man on the street assumes it must be happening, every time, otherwise why fear it? And thus it creeps into books, like other myths, such as Clinton’s balanced budget and devotion to feminist ideals.

All of which brings us to where we are today. And before you slump and say “we know. It’s all up.” – Pfui.
It’s not all up, and we’re starting to make substantial holes in the narrative. The fact that they get all up in arms these days about stuff that doesn’t ACTIVELY SUPPORT the narrative: Interstellar not blaming the destruction of the Earth on humans; American Sniper not condemning the war, means that they are both afraid and desperate. They want to control every single peep coming out of media, of entertainment, of news.

But time has moved on. Back in the eighties or nineties, they mostly had it as they wanted it. You see, the trick to constructing the narrative and fooling the maximum amount of people is that you have to both show only those of your field who are most rational and coordinated, and manage to not show any opposing views that accord with what people’s lying eyes are actually seeing.

Fail at one of those, and you’re going to have holes in your narrative. Thus, when the representatives for your side are a chick who made up a gang-rape story to attract a guy who didn’t care for her; or even moderately successful science fiction writers who scream they’re being oppressed and attack men for using the word “ladies” or, of course, Rose Eveleth, Vagina Vigilante, pissing all over the victory of a guy who landed on a comet – ON A COMET – because she doesn’t like his shirt… Or a vast group of supposedly educated women going on a crusade to make men sit as though they didn’t have male organs.. well, the idea that women are more peaceful or worthy of ruling than men goes out the window. So does the idea that feminism is about equality of opportunities. So, might the idea that women should ever have been let out of the drawing room and fainting couches, if it weren’t that some of us still insist on using the brains we were born with and in public, to boot. (The feminists can thank us later, if all women don’t end up treated as lunatics or children or lunatic children. Or they could thank us later, if they weren’t so busy acting like lunatic children.)

The narrative is leaking like the titanic after striking the iceberg.

Then there is the fact that the repellent Lena Dunham had her narrative of rape-by-college republican exploded by citizen journalism; that Herr (Schickle)Grubber’s lies on behalf of Unaffordable Care were shown by citizen journalism; that Rolling Stone had egg rubbed on its dirty face by citizen journalism. And there is the fact that other books are available, books that don’t have to go through traditional publishing’s “must reinforce the narrative mill.”

Suddenly you realize the narrative is already fracturing. Or to keep our metaphor, starting to list and fill with water.  If it weren’t, if someone in that big den of conformism that is Hollywood weren’t starting to get the sense the narrative is not one size fits all anymore, we WOULDN’T have got Interstellar. Or American Sniper. Not without the narrative.

Someone once told me they shriek louder when they’re losing. Ladies and Gentlemen, small furry folk and dragons, it’s time to do like Ulysses and plug our ears lest their shrieking drive us mad. Interpret their cries simply as meaning one thing: we are upsetting them. We’re disturbing their control. Which is exactly what we want to do.

Lay into them good and hard.*

In the end we win. They lose.

*To the SJWs reading this (oh, come on honey. EVERY SINGLE LINE, and you know it.  I  elevate your heart rate as much as exercise, but you like your ragey rage more.) yes, this is a rape metaphor. Just like a medieval sword is a phallic metaphor and the stuff between your ears is a potato metaphor. Or you could, you know, learn something of real life and history.

Of course that would disturb your belief in the narrative and in the end – heaven forbid – you might start thinking and join our little rebel band… er… I mean group of privilege who are privileged to be kept out of all positions of power by our immense… privilege. Better not risk it. Go back to sleep. It’s a rape metaphor. That’s it. Just like umbrellas. And rolling pins. And fish.  And a thought intruding on your head.

One of the many amazing things about the left is that they have an inborn sense that the most heinous things are okay for them to do.  Not anyone else, mind you. Just them.

A friend calls this “It’s all right when we do it because our hearts are pure.”

Another interesting — and by interesting, kindly read “appalling” — thing is how they make slavery the centerpiece of their “we have America show.”  In their concept of America, slavery is the one unforgivable sin that caused America to be born tainted, and the reason the entire American population needs to be replaced via open borders… by groups that still own slaves (a lot of Africa, and particularly the middle East) and groups that did truly horrible things to enslaved peoples (Aztecs) etc. etc.

Yes, the lack of knowledge of history is wonderful: as in, it causes wonder.  Terrific, even: as in it causes terror.

Look, I realize our schools go out of their way not to teach that slavery has existed since there have been humans on the planet.  Maybe since there have been hominids. (The excuse I was once given by a doctor of education is that this isn’t taught “So as not to make our students of color feel bad.” I don’t know about you, but thinking my race alone out of all the races in the world was enslaved WOULD make me feel bad. Also scared. So I’d probably want the government–  Oh, wait. I think I found the real reason.)

Yes, slavery was and is a horrible thing, but honestly until Western Civilization with its concept of the (literal, from Adam and Eve) brotherhood of humans (note Jewish slavery was also different. What we’d call debt slavery. And had an end) and its industrial revolution, there wasn’t even a lot of revulsion on slavery.  Look, I know whence I speak. I read a lot of poems about the slave taking of moors by Christians and Christians by moors.  Slavery just was.

And it was not — I know this shocks the living hell out of liberals, and to an extent all graduates of American education — RACE based in most cases. It was sometimes “ethnicity” based because of where slaves were most available from at the time.  Which is why Romans were likely to have Celtic slaves.  And yes, they had black citizens.

Also, when faced with the fact that the rest of the world also had slaves — I’ve come to suspect lately that the left  knows very well they’re lying, even the rank and file. Like, you know, they say that no one is going to take our guns, but if you hear a group of them talking and they don’t know you’re nearby, they’ll say they want to take our guns. In the same way when you confront them with the fact slavery is universal, they look upset to be found out, not surprised — they claim American slavery was the worst form and not practiced anywhere else.

Which means they’re crazy (and/or liars). Sure, it was pretty bad, but by and large it was worse to be a slave just about anywhere else. In the Caribbean it was a thing of horror. And in parts of Africa (Dahomey for instance) being a slave COULD mean being sold onto America and Europe OR simply being slaughtered over the tomb of one of their recently deceased kings.  Depending on when they arrived to Dahomey.  Which, you know, was also a fairly normal thing to happen in antiquity all over the world: slaves might be killed to the glory of their masters or the gods. Or worked to death.  Or….

But it goes beyond that. I really would like the left to answer ONE question: is slavery only bad when it’s done by one race to another? Or is slavery: the forcing of others to labor at things that benefit you for no or inadequate compensation, in general bad?  Like, for everyone?

They must think it’s bad for everyone, because they complain about the “wage slavery” of Capitalism.

First let’s dispose of that semantically f*cked up sentence. Capitalism is what communists (or Marxists) call the system of humans trading freely with humans. “Wage slavery” is what they call the fact that “if you don’t work, you don’t eat.”  I.e. the condition of humans on Earth, unless they’re very lucky to be born to very wealthy families.  I mean, look, seriously: there is no entitlement to be able to live without working. And unless you inherited a lot of money or land or other value that people want, you will have to trade your time and skill for the money that will allow you to live and get the things you want.

Is the compensation inadequate? Sure, in many times and places it has been. Arguably the compensation for unskilled work is now inadequate.  Do you know why? Because it obeys the law of supply and demand. The more unskilled workers the left imports (see, for instance the attempt to erase our borders and act like we’re some kind of charity organization, instead of a country) the less unskilled workers will be paid. Particularly since they can be undercut by people who are not trying to build a life here, but who are living 12 to a room and sending back what is to their coutnries a fortune, to build a life there.

You can’t repeal the law of supply and demand, anymore than you can repeal the law of gravity.  Saying it’s horrible and artificially raising wages just causes us to be more of an attractive nuisance to unskilled workers looking to send money back to their native depressed economies, and…

At any rate, absent monkeying by the state or other attempts to “help” the workers, wage slavery isn’t: you cannot be bought and sold. You cannot be forced to work against your will.  You strike a bargain to work for x amount.  Yes, the pay and the market can suck, but it is still not slavery.  Yes, trying to find a skill to learn that will pay, wihtout going into indenture (our current educational system is the result of government monkeying with it.) is difficult.  But you CAN.  It might be hard as hell — life is PAIN highness — but it CAN be done.

You know what IS slavery?

Well, most of the Democrat plans, really, now that they’ve gone full commie.

A planned economy is by definition slavery. You are told where to work.  The government has tables of how much you will make. What you will make.  In the crazier communist (or socialist, but they’re more subtle about it) regimes, you get told which of the “free education” you can consume. You’re selected to study this or that. You’re told if you can study at all. And if you study, you’re told how you can use it. And how much you’ll make.

HOW do you think “free college for all” will work?  Sure, we might have a generation or two of everyone taking whatever they want.  More likely 3 to 4 years.  And then?  Ah, and then…. the planned economy will dictate what you can study and when. Sure, everyone might go to college, but most of them will be taking some form of general studies. College will in fact become what High School has become. Not any kind of preparation for adulthood. Not even a last chance to teach people to read and write, but another four years “the better to indoctrinate you with.”

And in this brave new college, other than the few highly paid “political” professors, who do you think will make a living? (already assistants and adjuncts in college make next to nothing.)

What about doctors? Nurses? What do you think happens in socialized medicine?

Already the left, who are a kind of creature that is incapable of imagining anyone different from themselves, says things like “Why aren’t doctors paid the same as teachers?” Well, because no teacher in America (outside college professors, and even then) undergoes 8 years of under grad and post grad, plus 8 years of various kinds of training afterwards, years during which they are either unpaid or low paid. That’s why. Also because people, in general, are capable of teaching and learning, particularly at the elementary level, but very few people are able to do surgery.  Rare skills are paid more.  Supply and demand.

So, if you are going to make these people, after serious training, work at the same price as school teachers, you’ll be taking YEARS OF THEIR LIVES: the years they spent learning.  And forcing them to work at things they benefit you, at a salary you dictate.

There is a name for that: slavery.

No, I don’t care how “expensive” healthcare is (hint: get government out of it. Allow people to pay their doctors directly, in cash.  Get third party payers out of it period. The prices WILL come down.)  You can’t make it free without some degree of slavery.  And to make it wholly free, you need to enslave everyone providing it.  Which btw. explains the horrors we hear from NHS. And trust me, even those are shiny and great, compared to “socialized medicine” in most of the world.

Because — and this is another insanity the left doesn’t get when they say shit like “Slaves built our wealth” — slaves don’t work well. They’re not efficient. They’re not hard workers. In fact, if they can help it they don’t work at all or they do what we used to call “A zeal strike.” Its other name is “White Mutiny” — per Heinlein, but not in his words, because I read it in Portuguese and don’t remember the exact words — A “white mutiny” is conducted against a commander one lacks faith in. One performs the orders given with the exactitude of a computer; namely, what is ordered, exactly that, and nothing less and nothing more, using none of your own good judgement to temper the orders to fit the precise situation. The ship usually comes crashing down about your ears.

Slaves do that exact same thing. Which is why every slave society has to apply the lash and have spectacular executions, and– and– and–

And it’s why socialized medicine, despite the pretty numbers they like to try to fool us with, is in general a disaster. Socialized education, ditto.  In countries that have it, socialized housing sucks like a hoover too (as do our projects, which is our form of it.)

When Occasional Cortex runs her big ugly mouth on everything that the government should give you, what she’s saying is “We should enslave people to provide this for you.” Either enslave them directly, or enslave them sideways, by taking the majority of what they produce so the government can “give” people things.

The end result is always the same. Things produced by enslaved things suck.  “The ship comes crashing down around your years.” Even if it’s the ship of state.

The end stage of the Marxian economy is “guaranteed employment,” “Guaranteed education,” “guaranteed housing,” “guaranteed food” and “guaranteed clothing.”

And what all those guarantees amount to is the government assuring you that pine needles are fine and nutritious because everyone is starving, and they figure if you kill yourself eating those it’s fewer mouths to feed. It’s not like you, as a slave, have any value to the state. You’re just a debit that they have to provide all the free stuff to.

Because in end-stage Marxian economy, everyone pretends to work, and the government pretends to pay them.

So, when they say that the US is the only “advanced” (please define advanced? You mean “nation moving towards Marxian enslavement economy?” Are you advancing towards the rear, again?) economy without “free” education or medicine?

Hoist up your middle fingers at the slavers, my friends. Tell them Master Lincoln done freed the slaves.  And none of us, of any color, is hankering to go back into chains.

If they love slavery so much, they are invited to go to one of the countries that is walking into it, or has already walked into it. They’re welcome to partake of “socialized education and medicine” in Cuba and Venezuela. Hell, we’ll even splurge for a plane ticket. They don’t need to cross the waters in an inner tube or walk down the length of the Americas.  What the heck, we’re feeling generous: we’ll even promise to stand in the airport waving goodbye and singing cheery songs as they leave. We can come up with a playlist, I’m sure.

What they can’t do is enslave us.  Because their grandiose dreams do not make them our masters. Because their philosophy has never produced anything but mass graves.

Because America is the land of the free. Not the free stuff.  And we aim to stay that way.

You want free stuff? Go live where they give it. And pay the price.

Me and mine? We’ll pay the price for our freedom. Even if it turns out to be blood.