The weird thing about the left side of this country is that they think not only that they can but that they should regulate our speech, our beliefs and our thoughts.

I mean, I know we joke about the fact that they read 1984 and took it for an instruction manual, but it’s actually worse than that: they read 1984 and viewed that place as a desirable world.  They thought it was working, and that it maximized human wealth and happiness.  Or at least they thought someone — like perhaps the people who were in charge — were happy.

I mean look, let’s be absolutely clear: 1984 wouldn’t work, not the way it’s presented in the book. Sure, the book could work the way that it’s presented, but it’s a myopic and narrow view of things.  You know d*mn well that if we were to actually live there, sure, there would be some people who stray over into opposition and are crushed, but you also know that there would be not just pockets of resistance managing just fine, but that vast sectors of the society would be working by free-market rules (known in authoritarian societies as the black market) and vast pockets of resistance and mockery of the dogma among the elites.  In fact, the most likely thing, judging by the dictatorships of the twentieth century, is that the majority of the society would be in non-compliance or outright rebellion, and the part we saw was sort of the Potemkin village of Big Brother, the parts bureaucrats see that make them happy.

In fact, throughout history, it’s pretty much always that way with any kind of ruler who gets into the nitty gritty details of every day living, let alone what’s inside human heads. Because when it comes down to it, humans are really, really, really bad at obeying. Famous for it, really.

So why does the left think they can compel not just our actions — those are semi-possible to be regulated, but results are mixed. Look, almost every human society has forbidden murder and I don’t think a single one has been free from it — but our speech and our thoughts? And not even just “you can’t say this” but “you must say this.”  As in, these days you are supposed to signal your belief in various leftist shibboleths, or you’re thrown off the liberal island.

As someone pointed out who witnessed an argument on facebook that started with someone demanding that someone write more books with women and gay characters ‘Even in supporting roles’ and was shocked when people laughed at her, a lot of the leftist complaints and answers are ritualized.

I.e. if I say “There isn’t enough diversity in science fiction” you’re supposed to agree and tell me that yep, all the main characters are white males, and only white males get prizes, no matter how ridiculous this contention has been for the last, oh, 40? 50? years (And it wasn’t ever ONLY white males, nor — no really — were the women in the closet. The women used pen names — for the same reasons a lot of men did — mostly because writing sf/f wasn’t respectable. Still isn’t some places. Which is why Margaret Atwood keeps insisting she doesn’t write it. (It’s sort of true. She doesn’t write contemporary SF/F. She writes truly bizarre fetish porn with pulp trappings.))  But it doesn’t matter how ridiculous the statement is, that’s what you’re supposed to say if you want to stay in the good graces of the left.

That’s of course before the pronoun mess that Jordan Peterson properly identified as “compelled speech.” And about a dozen other things, some of them completely ridiculous. For instance, does anyone understand why “Asian” is the right word and “Oriental” isn’t?  Or why “Native American” is the right designation for Ameridians, when you know, we know for an absolute fact they came from elsewhere, and did not evolve on this continent?  No? Why is people of color good but colored people bad? what is the semantic difference, precisely?  Why must we call black people “African American” (even if they’re not in fact American, and/or their ancestors haven’t seen Africa for eight generations but white people are white? Even when they’re really not, but really dark tan? Is “black” something to be ashamed of?  No? then why is it bad?

Look, I understand when this bullshit is in the name of an ideological point, no matter how brain-dead, but the above isn’t really. The above is in the name of making people jump when you say frog. There is no other reason, no other point, no other purpose to it, than to prove to themselves that they can make people do exactly as they want, on threat of social ostracism if they don’t.

And then there’s the agenda-points, the point at which they intend to change the language, because that will make it impossible for you to think bad thoughts.

This is how we get the erasure of gendered language.

Look authoress was always an abomination, because who cares what a writer even looks like.  But actor vs. actress?  You bet your toes that is different. They use their bodies as part of their work.  You don’t express emotions the same way.

How about why is fireman a bad thing? Note I’m perfectly happy for there to be a firewoman too.  Sure, firefighter fits both, but why does it need to? For how many years was it fireman?  And policeman?  And don’t say “that’s because there were only men.”  It hasn’t been true in my entire life, but we used to say “police woman.”  And if you think there is no difference in gender performance for both of those, you’re off your rocker. And you shouldn’t talk while the adults are talking. Because police women have both advantages and disadvantages over men. And frankly it takes more effort and bravery for a woman to perform that kind of work. So why do you think it advances her cause to erase her ans subsume her under “police officer” or “fire fighter?”  She puts in more effort than the males. She deserves more recognition. She at least deserves recognition she exists.

But the left is convinced if they reeee enough to make us stop using gendered nouns the very concept of gender will vanish.

Which is is completely and utterly insane. Because reality doesn’t obey language. Language grows to accommodate experience. And you can’t stop it, either.

This is why liberals became leftists became progressives, like a restaurant with a bad rep.  And let’s not start on things like “Janitor”.  For some reason “cleaning person” was bad.  I’m trying to remember what the latest word for it is.  it’s so bizarre you have to think to recognize it.  Or the various terms for deficient either physically or mentally.  No matter how much you change the name the reality remains, and the reality is that these aren’t things generally considered good by society.  So no matter how you change the name, people don’t think of it better, they just start considering the word bad.

So why do they think they can control our language, our speech, our thought?

Well, mostly because for decades we LET them. Because we understand that words don’t change reality but the other way around, we rolled our eyes and behaved in front of them.

We, in fact, erected a societal potemkin facade for the left, because then they would leave us alone.

Like a person married to someone who makes scenes in public over trivial stuff, we learned to avoid the scenes in public. Only to embolden the scene thrower and make him/her think it’s power.

But you cannot compel thought. You just can’t. You can twist it. You can make humans engage in double-think that taints their souls (and the scary thing is that this might be the aim of a lot of people doing this nonsense.) BUT you can’t actually control what other people think.

The only reason the left thinks they can — other than our enabling it for much too long.  and “our” here stands for the adults, because some of us weren’t even born when this started — is because their view of the world, their mental pictures of life, dictated by their ideology, requires them to believe theirs is the way of the future and “scientific” and therefore, once exposed to it everyone will convert.

Of course, the fact they have to run around threatening penalties for wrong think means their paradigm has already been broken.  And they’ve already lost.

But humans being what they are, this means they’re going to get louder and louder and more stompy-foot demanding and intransigent than ever.

Which I suppose means we should all make sure our eyes don’t roll all the way out.

Be not afraid.  This is not going to end well — for the left — and some places are going to get uncomfortable.

But they are not at war with us. They are at war with reality.

Reality always wins.

 

 

Look into my eyes. Come on. Look. From now on, you’ll only do exactly what I think is right, and you’ll forswear anything that annoys me.

No, don’t look away.

What do you mean that didn’t work?

I have it on the best authority of the left that this works perfectly well, or at least works perfectly well when used by a member of the same “class” which these cays means same general “widget class.” (You know, you share superficial characteristics, like the same skin tone, or the same general education, or the same sex, or the same general attraction, or the same… etc. etc.)

This is how you come across women saying things like “If men don’t want me to treat them like crap, they shouldn’t do–”  And the list that follows is something that 99% of men wouldn’t do or think of doing.  Say, feeling up a strange woman in public transport; or call out rude things to women, or even the rather innocuous “expect all women to smile.”

Uh…. okay, so, I presume they think that men can psychically control other men. Because if men can’t, then this makes no sense whatsoever.

Men do this too, btw.  “If women don’t want me to treat them like brainless morons, they should stop acting like bubble heads.”  Or “If women don’t want me to treat them like sluts, they should stop being attracted to–”  Or “If women don’t want me to assume they’re all leftist, they shouldn’t act like–”  Uh… Dude. If I had any control over the crazy-ass slut-walkers do you think they’d still be dressing like sluts and demanding you don’t look at them?

And yet, you get this constantly.  You complain about some form of mistreatment and you get told that you personally deserve this because someone like you did something bad.

Now while it goes somewhat the other way, a lot of this is about classes of people the left has decided they don’t like: white people, men, rich people, poor people, women who aren’t leftists… well, pretty much anyone who doesn’t sing from the leftist hymnal.

Inevitably, if you complain about some crazy cakes leftist behavior towards someone, you get as an answer “well, someone like you did this.”

Um… do they think people who look alike/are in similar circumstances share a brain?  Which brings to mind another question “do they share a brain? Is that why they’re extrapolating”  Don’t answer that.

And then there are the even crazier demands. We’ve all heard them:

-It should be safe for women to walk down the street in any neighborhood after dark without being assaulted.

Uh… okay. But how do you plan to enforce that? How is it even possible?  Even if 99.9% of guys were completely decent and chivalrous (what is the rate of criminals per 1000? Specifically criminals who are dangerous to women?  Is it much higher than 1 per 1000? I don’ even know, because of course this is per neighborhood, not per country or even humanity as a whole.) there would be that one man in one thousand.  Can you be sure that one man in one thousand isn’t in that street you’re proposing to walk down right now?

And of course, that one man in one thousand won’t attack just one woman. No, he’ll attack dozens or perhaps hundreds of them until he’s stopped. (BTW this is the craziest ass response to saying women should learn self defense. I will quote: “No, because then the man will just attack another woman who isn’t defended.”  Uh. No he won’t. Because if you’ve effectively defended yourself, you made sure he either can’t or will have serious trouble attacking anyone. Look here, sister, paraplegics rarely become serial rapists. Note I don’t say never. But you can certainly reduce someone’s criminal career.)

So, how are men — and why are men more capable of this than women? Don’t know. But this demand is usually made of “men” in general — supposed to prevent that one man in a thousand from attacking women?

Don’t know. I can’t get crazy women from demanding that they “should be safe to walk down any street.”  I mean, I completely agree with them that they SHOULD. In a perfect world, we should all be safe all the time. But that doesn’t make it imperative, or furnish any mechanism to make that happen.

Because here’s the thing: you can’t get into people’s heads and make them act the way you want them to. Even if the way you want them to act is like decent human beings, and that’s it.  You don’t want them to sing, dance, be able to speak Greek and Latin, or suddenly, overnight, become endowed with the capacity to always be charming and polite. No, all you want to do is keep them from acting like animals, attacking strangers, hurting and stealing from others.  That’s all you want.

But you can’t do it.  There is no method known to anyone of making everyone on the planet act decently. NONE.  There’s always going to be that one person, male or female, who thinks it is great fun to hurt others and take their stuff.  The more subtle of them even disguise it and get away with it longer.  And you can’t stop it, because you can’t get in their heads and make them quit doing it.

Sure, punishment has some effect. Deterrence — via punishment, or just the possibility of a potential victim defending him/herself — has some effect…  Actually those are the only two things that have some effect.  Note I said “some.”

However there is no real way of making a criminal stop committing crimes other than death.  And I’m absolutely serious about that.

Sure, paraplegics have trouble committing sexual assault, but we’re probably going to find out at least one person who somehow managed it.  We know castration, real or chemical doesn’t work to stop sexual assailants.  We know even what we’d consider cruel and unusual punishment, like lopping off hands don’t stop theft. Sure, they deter it, but they don’t stop it.  And we know even the threat of public hangings never stopped murder. Sure, they might make it less likely (this is incredibly difficult measure, of course) but they didn’t stop them completely.

This is because humans are — get this — individuals.  And some individuals will be twisted.  (And no, you can’t fix it with education, early childhood support or tender loving care. Being twisted is part of the human make up.  You know, the heart is wicked and deceitful and all that? Yeah.) And some will not ever realize they should control their desires to do bad things to others.

It doesn’t matter how few those are. They are going to exist. And if they exist, there’s always the possibility of their victimizing someone.

Even the safest societies have crime, and criminals.

So what can you do about it?

You defend yourself. You teach other people to defend themselves. You make it less likely that the criminal, be he one in two or one in a thousand succeed.

Because you’re not psychic. And you don’t have psychic control over everyone else.  And neither does anyone else. No, not even people who look like whatever specific criminal.

I agree with you: no one should be murdered; no woman should be attacked; no child should ever be abused; heck, no pet should ever be abused.  The world should be a safe and happy place, where everyone wakes up with a smile and goes to bed thinking happy thoughts.

Where we disagree is the idea that I — or anyone — can get in the head of someone determined to act against moral or law and make them refrain.

I can’t do that, and I don’t think you can either.

So stop trying to Svengali, and start making like an adult, who ensures his or her own safety.  And who doesn’t cry “but it shouldn’t be that way.”

Because trust me, if anyone could control the way other people behave, you’d have stopped whining long ago.

A NOTE ON COVERS, PLEASE READ.

I don’t have a terrible lot of room to throw stones. I know that covers are difficult and that it’s almost impossible when you can’t draw or render scenes and are dependent upon what you find.  Or rather, no, it’s not impossible. Between Pixabay and paying stock sites (I think well of dreamstime) most people can manage a not cringe-worthy cover.  If you look above that is obviously a photoshop, and no, I wasn’t that good yet.  But I could now, and probably will at some point make it a not-cringe worthy cover. Look at covers of your genre and please, please, please try something like.  I did a cover series here.

Why this matters: COVERS ARE YOUR BIGGEST MARKETING TOOL.  I’m not the only one who has passed up on a book because the cover didn’t fit the genre. Look, if you don’t take elementary care to have your cover be 1) genre signaling 2) reasonably attractive I don’t trust you to have written a book worth the first ten minutes of reading without throwing it against the wall metaphorically speaking.

You don’t have to pay 1k for covers. In fact, particularly if you’re doing e-only and you go above $500 for covers you should have your head examined. Again, go look at stock sites. Understand the cover is not “a scene from the book” (how would the reader who hasn’t read the book yet know?) but mostly signaling correct genre.  And stock photo sites are FULL of attractive images you can use for maybe as low as $15. Look for a font somewhat like the ones in your genre, and GO.  There’s more it. I did a series on it here. If you’re totally at sea, go read it.

I will NOT include in the promo books with covers so bad that I would not even consider clicking on them to see the contents. Look, we have limited real estate and a cover that’s text only on a blank background for a time-travel story will bring all the other books down (not to mention in that particular case, I’d want to read or skim the book because of the theme)  Seriously, a translucent clock-gear-and-face on a blank background with the title would be better in that case, even if signaling “literary.”  At least it doesn’t signal “I have no clue.”

No, you can’t make money on the book to have enough to pay for a cover. People don’t buy books that signal wrong.

And yeah, I know it’s a strange standard to most of you, but I’m willing to tolerate less than wonderful covers. I’ve been known to make less than wonderful covers for myself or family, and fixed it later. We’re not always perfect.  However in the year of our Lord 2019 there are minimal criteria that don’t scream “I’m phoning it in.” Learn them. Apply them.

LOOK, IF YOU’RE NOT IN THIS TODAY, GO LOOK AT YOUR COVER.  YOU KNOW THE “YOU ONLY HAVE A CHANCE TO MAKE THE FIRST IMPRESSION? CONSIDER IT. REALLY CONSIDER IT.  (AN NO, NOT ALL ARE HORRIBLE, BUT SOME I’M FAIRLY SURE ARE SIGNALING WRONG, LIKE NON-FICTION, OR LITERARY)- SAH

Book Promo

*Note these are books sent to us by readers/frequenters of this blog.  Our bringing them to your attention does not imply that we’ve read them and/or endorse them, unless we specifically say so.  As with all such purchases, we recommend you download a sample and make sure it’s to your taste.  If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months. One book per author per week. Amazon links only.

AS AN ADDITIONAL NOTE, BECAUSE I DIDN’T DO THIS THIS WEEK, WE HAVE A TON OF BOOKS. SO I’M DOING HALF TODAY AND PROBABLY HALF FRIDAY NEXT. I DON’T WANT YOU TO GLAZE OVER OR FEEL A WALLET SPRAIN. – SAH*

 

I AM IN THIS, EDITED BY JAMES YOUNG:  To Slip the Surly Bonds (The Phases of Mars Book 2.

Throughout the human experience, historians have wondered, “What if?” What if Americans had fought on the side of Germany in World War I? What if Germany had invested in naval aviation in World War II? What if Russia had started World War III?

Wonder no more, for these questions, along with many others, are answered within the pages of this book. Told by a variety of award-winning authors, like Sarah Hoyt, the 2018 Dragon Award Winner for Alternate History, Richard Fox, the 2017 Dragon Award Winner for Best Military Science Fiction, and Kacey Ezell, the winner of the 2018 Baen Reader’s Choice Award, “To Slip the Surly Bonds,” deals with aviation warfare that never happened in our world…but easily could have.

The second book in the exciting new “Phases of Mars” anthology series, there is something for everyone inside! From fighting alongside the Red Baron, to flying a P-38 Lightning, to present day air warfare, “To Slip the Surly Bonds” traces a century of aviation warfare…that wasn’t. From learning how the PBY got to the new world in Taylor Anderson’s “The Destroyermen” series…to fighting the French in a very different Vietnam, this book has it, so come aboard and find out “what if” all of these things had changed history…just a little. You’ll be glad you did!

FROM BLAKE SMITH:  A Capital Whip: A Pride and Prejudice Sequel.

 

An invalid for much of her life, Miss Anne de Bourgh has precisely one accomplishment: carriage driving. She is proud of her skill with reins and whip, and justifiably so.

But when another young lady moves into the neighborhood, and challenges Anne’s place as the most accomplished driver in Hunsford, Anne must prove to herself, to her beloved horses, and to her family that she is worthy of the name de Bourgh, and she does not shrink away from a challenge.

FROM MARGARET BALL:  Dragon Scales (Dragon Speech Book 2).

It’s one thing to meet a dragon in the snowbound mountains of the High Pamirs, but quite another to entertain him when he shows up at your Austin home, together with his sulky and all-too-human teenage girlfriend! Linguist Sienna Brown battles a shapeshifting dragon who helps himself to her clothes and demands enormous quantities of pizza, a teenager whose ignorance of American customs doesn’t prevent her from picking up every man she meets, a nosy neighbor and a group of Russian thugs who are tasked with acquiring the dragon for their own country. In addition, her boyfriend is terrified that the dragon’s presence will tempt her to use its magical but brain-injuring native language. And he’s not entirely wrong about that.

FROM PAM UPHOFF:  Kaat (Wine of the Gods Book 45).

A Novella in the Wine of the Gods Universe

Oner Agent Kaat Withione Sideris Kriti successfully infiltrated the enemy’s home world. But circumstances and time, friends and then family . . . where will her conflicted loyalties fall?

LAURA MONTGOMERY:  Simple Service (Martha’s Sons Book 1).

A lost starship. A lost colony.

Two factions. One expendable son.

When the colony’s governor requisitions the colonists’ personal weapons, Peter Dawe’s father sets him a simple task. Get their weapon back.

But the Marss have all the technology, and Peter, a second generation colonist, the youngest of ten, the expendable son, must contend with the guard, palace politics, and his biggest problem of all, Simon, his brother.

Sunday Writing Challenge

And for your writing challenge: We know that when we go to space Earth’s biosphere will go with us.  Sure, we might try to keep them here.  But you know as well as I do that (particularly if there’s ever such a thing as one-man-interplanetary, let alone interstellar, ships, cats, dogs and inevitably mice will travel with us [and chickens with the Portuguese.]

So, have fun, and write me a few paragraphs about that delightful scamp napping above, or his counterparts of paw hoof, claw or tentacle in other ships.

It’s Companion Animals To The Stars. :-P  (And if you feel like giving us a blurb for what the story would be, we won’t complain either.)

When I was a little kid, in the North of Portugal, in 5th and 6th grade, I had the option of taking a crowded bus home or walking a couple of miles through a path, next to a ravine, by the side of the train line.

Being me, of course, if it was at all warm, I took that — not particularly safe — path and I had the habit of singing Take Me Home Mountain Roads at the top of my voice.

Which, you know, was the expression of a feeling that I wasn’t actually at home, that my home was elsewhere, even if the image of a little girl in Portugal singing a song about West Virginia while walking alone by the side of a train line is pretty funny.

September 11 this year, I found myself describing that morning: how beautiful it was (as this fall is getting) crisp, sunny, clear.  I lived in the tiny mountain town of Manitou Springs, in a pink house, at the top of a hill.  The boys’ school was four blocks away, up and down a mountain road.  In Winter walking that road was painful no matter how much you covered up (and driving when it was icy was also dangerous) but in Fall it was a gorgeous walk.  We petted friendly dogs on the way out and talked about everything. Marshall was in Kindergarten and Robert in third grade.

Because kindergarten started twenty minutes after the rest of the school, I took a paperback in my jeans pocket (I was reading my way back through my pulp collection, at the time) to read after Robert went in, while I waited for the kindergarten kids to go in.

I then walked back, thinking of the book I was working on — Any Man So Daring, back then — and the weekly short story — my writers’ group wrote a short story a week, as part of our discipline.

And on that golden, beautiful morning, it occurred to me we were living through the best years of our lives.  We were finally making enough. We loved our house on a hill, with a little terrace on top of the garage (very Mediterranean) where we wrote when the weather was warm.

Dan worked a traveling job, which meant he was at home “on the bench” about half the year and had time to write. We’d both started being reliably published.

We had a writers’ group which had become friends. Which meant that we had a meeting at our house on Saturdays.  It started at 3 pm, and sometimes we kicked everyone out by 10 pm.

Amid those writers’ group friends there was a family with kids the age of ours. After dropping kids at school, I’d start coffee and the mother of the family — then my best friend — would call me, or I would call her.  We’d talk to each other while making beds and starting laundry. It was in a way our “morning meeting.”  We told each other what we’d be writing (she was writing her third book, also) which served for accountability.

So I got home, hung up my keys, and started making coffee.  And before the first drop went into the carafe the phone rang and I thought “Becky is early.”

I grabbed the phone, ready to make a joke. And she screamed/cried in my ear “Turn on the TV, turn on the TV.”

We didn’t have a TV. Or rather we did, but we didn’t have cable. And reception sucked. Lots of snow. So this was a bizarre request. But I went and turned it on.

And I never went home again.

No, listen to me: NONE OF US EVER WENT HOME AGAIN.

In the next week, amid anger and fear (for Dan who was in DC and had to figure out how to make it home) something changed in me. I couldn’t go back there.  Reading the stuff I wrote before that, is like reading an alien. There are perfectly functional short stories I’ll never publish because they give entirely the wrong thought/feeling about the world.

I was so traumatized that for the first time in my life, all my thoughts/daydreams before going in bed the stories I tell myself to go to sleep to, were of being someone else, someone completely different, another person altogether, not me.

I was someone completely different by the end of that year.  And from there, I went somewhere else again.

I was 37. My life inflects at that point. It bends almost to breaking.  To use a Pratchetterian idiom, it’s a different leg of the trousers of time.

Where I am, what I do, who I am: none of that would be true without that day in September.

Tom Kendall to an extent, and a lot of you in the comments, said “Nothing changed. 9/11 just exposed the rifts.”

And you’re not wrong, those who say that.  The left was what it always has been. Or at least what it had been since long before I was born.

Robert A. Heinlein said they were infiltrated by communists back before WWII. They have/had perhaps unnoticed to themselves, or at least to large numbers of their supporter, become oikophobes who hate America and disdain the Constitution and our form of government.

But we could ignore it. We could pretend they were mostly misguided, and they would come to sanity.  And they — because they always suppressed dissent — could tell themselves, as they still try to do, that everyone agreed with them.  The weeks after of flying flags and “bless America” were terrifying to them. These “educated” people who surrounded them couldn’t possibly believe America was that great, right?

You see, the left, steeped in “international socialism” (Which was always Russian nationalism, but American leftists in particular tried to ignore that. Even if after the cold war they went around muttering that the good guys had lost.) equated and equates nationalism with fascism. Perhaps because they don’t allow their mental universe to conceive of a world that is not socialist/collectivist. (And national socialism is indeed fascism. But thank heavens, the rest of us are aware of forms of government that aren’t socialist.)

I was a Libertarian (actually had volunteered with the party a few times. One of my son’s earliest memories is passing out Libertarian flyers at the state fair.) But I was an international libertarian, and I believed — I’d persuaded myself to believe — that every culture in the world would convert — PEACEFULLY — to liberty.
What on Earth was wrong with me?
I don’t know.  I wanted to believe.

Like that golden September morning, I was seeing everything bathed in a beautiful light. Which then crashed, in fire and horror.

But it was more of a crash for the left.  It was the first — perhaps — of a series of shocks, the latest being November 2016, in which they realized the world was not what they thought it was. By having educated people and their friends suddenly come out as people who valued the US they suffered a bad shock (both times). They thought we were all agreed!

As always, with the left, the response to these shocks is to become more adamant, more dictatorial, less tolerant of contrary opinions expressed.

And the rest of us…

How different would life be now, if that golden bubble hadn’t popped? Well, I’d probably never have come out politically. I’d probably be a literary fantasy writer to this day, writing “difficult” historical fantasies for a small, devoted fandom (before 9/11 90% of my fan letters were from college professors.)  There are reasons for that. I’m not going to go into them.  Our financial situation would be far less precarious — I also can’t explain that, because it goes into Dan’s job and our investments at the time — and therefore the kids would have had opportunities they don’t.

It is possible I would by now be teaching in college (again.)

Those are minor things.

As a minor side step on this — perhaps because I’ve been reading a lot of Pride and Prejudice variations (i.e. plot variations) — this morning I was reading about the WTC jumpers.  And I had a horrible and horribly plausible side-flash.  For reasons that, again, I’m not going to go into, it was all too plausible we’d be at the hotel in WTC that day, with the two kids, on a sightseeing trip.  Was it possible we’d have gone to the Windows on the World for breakfast?  Sure it was.

And what do you do in that situation?  I had a flash of us grabbing the kids, and holding together and jumping.  And telling the kids we’d fall into eternity.

So, the side-spur world we’re on, this leg of the pants of time, is not the worst it could be. Not even close.  On a personal level, and perhaps on a collective one, it could be much, much worse.

Where would that world without 9/11 have gone?

Who knows? Maybe like the cold war our cultural cold war would have resolved without a fight, without blood, without the map going all arrowy and red. Maybe. That hope is certainly in line with the old me.

Or maybe, as Tom says, we would have walked, blindfolded, into the place like where Germany is, where we’d be making concessions to the invaders and the enemies within, and not even aware of it.

I was also talking to a friend yesterday who said that he didn’t feel much about 9/11 anymore, because we’d ended that war, and the war we were on now was not that.

Um… Except the cold civil war we are in now was made much harsher, much more obvious, and opened up hot spots then.  And that is still escalating.

Is it better than sleep walking into tyranny. Sure. Of course it is.

But the time we’re in — seemingly suspended — is the time before the map goes all arrowy and red.  We’re in the “causes leading up to.”  And it’s my strong gut feeling that in the next five years those arrows and splotches will come. And that what emerges at the end is something completely different. So different from now we wouldn’t even recognize it.

Nothing we can do about it.  Except feel a certain nostalgia for the blind — but happy — fools in that September morning long ago.

And hold in our hearts the Constitution, the words of the founders, and our love of the US.  Because only those will take us through the mess ahead, and hopefully to greater freedom beyond. Maybe even a revival of our constitutional republic.

And if not, we’ll carry our flag, our Constitution, our beliefs in human liberty in our hearts.  Until they can be true in the world again.

Until we can be home again.

Oh maid most dear, I am not here
I have no place apart —
No dwelling more, in sea or shore
But only in thy heart. [Jean Ingelow]

Sorry this is late.  I woke up yesterday feeling a little icky.  Not sick, but my nose was runny and I diagnosed myself as feeling “lazy.”  I didn’t want to take my morning walk, I barely made myself go outside to water the garden, and frankly I just felt like taking the day off, but I couldn’t let myself do it, so I kept trying.

By noon it was obvious it was more than laziness as my eyes were running enough it looked like I was crying (and I wasn’t sure I wasn’t, but I had no idea WHY.)  Then I started feeling clogged and my ears started hurting.  By 4 pm I went to bed, got up at six with some idea of making dinner, only to wander around the kitchen and do nothing for half an hour, before making a cup of tea and sitting down, having decided making or eating dinner wasn’t happening, and I’d wait till 8 and change to go to bed. Which I did.

I’m… better? this morning to the extent I only feel very tired and like I should go to bed, but not like my thinking has shut down and I can’t keep my eyes open.

I have two energy drinks sitting on my desk. I’m hoping to compensate for wellness with caffeine enough to write, and “only” go to bed at five or six (maybe seven) pm.  I have a short story ridiculously overdue, and I DID promise to finish it today. I hate letting people down.

What the heck is wrong?

Don’t know. At first I thought it was an auto-immune attack, but my eczema is not flaring anywhere badly enough for this.  And also my husband is showing (much milder) symptoms.  Because of the suddenness, I think it’s a virus.  Friends who had something similar happen say it’s very bad for 48 hours and then mildly bad for a week.

I’ll post something tomorrow. Might be just a pretty picture.

And now to shower, mainline some energy drinks and see if I can do a story.  Fortunately the plan is rather hallucinatory, anyway.

Note this was written while wearing a virtual mask. Don’t breathe too close to your monitors.

I’ll be back.

Massacre, War and Colonialism – a Blast From the Past From August 2nd 2017

So I’ve been reading this mystery.  Yes, yes, “It came from KULL” [kindle unlimited lending library] I know, but it’s actually decent.  I mean, it’s not exactly setting my world on fire, but it’s pleasant enough.  Until…

The book is set in the nineteenth century. One of the characters is reading her father’s diary, and her father was a scientist/explorer (who has disappeared.  This is sort of the background to the whole series, not the mystery) and she’s enthralled by his adventures, until…

Until his party is attacked by neighbors, and they fight back, killing a bunch of the natives.  The author then refers to this as a “massacre” and proceeds to act as though this tarnished the main character’s view of her father forever.

Then to make things clearer, this woman’s bone-headed brother in law comes in to say that the savages should be glad we bring them civilization even if we have to kill them.  And in case you know, the reader might be tempted to sympathize with this opinion, blusters about how men and women shouldn’t work together, because they might become — horror of horrors! — friends.  Then he huffs off, shedding straw as he goes.

[Sarah puts thumb and forefinger on either side of the bridge of her nose, closes her eyes and inclines her head.] Where to begin?

Let’s start with the fact that the attitude of the main character is seriously a-historical.  A woman of the time might be horrified by the “barbarous” doings, but would certainly not think it constituted a massacre.  To consider this a massacre takes knowing that in these clashes the white men would ALWAYS win and were disproportionately equipped to do so, and KNEW they’d survive and kill all the others.

Reality check, okay, even in this book that’s given the lie, since her father was almost certianly killed by natives.  But beyond that, the world is strewn with the corpses of scientists/explorers, even those way better armed than hostile natives, but at a disadvantage in the landscape.

Then there’s the brother in law’s opinion that colonialism is good for you.  You know… for most of human history it was.  Now, it wasn’t particularly good for INDIVIDUAL humans.  Being invaded and more often than not reduced to the position of serfs or slaves purely sucks. But when the colonialists bring with them a higher level of production/wealth creation/security… well…  I’d hate for it to happen to me or my kids, but in the long run future generations might be much better off.

Now this isn’t always true, of course.  Colonialism, like other Marxist buggaboos, has no existence in itself.  It is the abstract isolation of a phenomenon that can be good or bad or indifferent, depending on who is colonizing whom.  (It is also not, btw, a characteristic of white men.  All humans colonize. Which is why there are humans on every continent.)  Europe being invaded by the Moors might very well, on the whole, have redounded to the worse.  Some things were gained from the invasion, sure (almonds and the artesian well were among the ones we were forced to memorize in school) but had it not been thrown off, the level of individual happiness and wealth would probably have ended up lower (as it did in Africa) and it can be argued it left behind habits of mind that are at odds with modernity (which they didn’t know would come) as well as regressive treatment of women.  It’s far more complex than that, though, since each invading civilization brings both good and bad, and also changes while it’s occupying the land.

That change, btw, accounts for a lot of the disastrous effects of European colonialism in much of Africa: as Europeans embraced Marxist thought, the leading minds of Africa came to Europe to study it.  What communism, socialism, and its cousins have done to Africa doesn’t bear contemplating.

The author, btw, as though aware she’s being crazy and imposing her crazy on the story, goes on about how her father was “trespassing” and that’s why these young men attacked.

[Does sinal salute again.]  She never actually tells us what moral behavior in those circumstances would be.  Letting themselves be slaughtered when they were attacked, even though they aren’t doing anything wrong (objectively) but merely looking for specimens?

Look, I’ve described this type of encounter between western civ and tribal mind set before.  To an extent our current confrontation with Islam is that, writ large.  There is a tribal mind set that is very old, is probably built into our genes, because we were tribal long before we were anything else, and which goes something like this “strangers in our territory” (however defined, since most tribes lacked the concept of land ownership.)  “We’ll commit atrocities against them, so they leave us alone.  The greater the atrocities, the less trouble they’ll be.”

Unfortunately western civ interprets/ed atrocities as “these savages can’t be tamed/integrated.  Kill them all and let G-d sort them out.”

This is a problem, because in the language of violence (and violence, between human groups is a language, intended to convey a message) what is “said” and what is “understood” are completely different.  And it will escalate violence until the stronger civilization destroys the weaker one.

It’s a tragedy, but it’s unavoidable.  It’s been happening for centuries or millennia — alas, Cartago! — and absent the ability to telepathically communicate with a tribal civilization to make them back off, I do not know what the author thinks could be done to avoid the “massacre” of people who were trying to kill a scientific expedition.

But more importantly, speaking to the mindset behind this, the mindset that thinks colonialism is somehow evil, and can only exist from whites/Europe versus everyone else, and also that SOMEHOW Europeans are so powerful that when they kill EVEN PEOPLE ATTACKING THEM it’s always a massacre:

1- All humans are colonialists.  All humans are territorial.  Before we had anything as complicated as tribes, if our understanding of our nearer evolutionary relatives is right, we had family bands, who had territories.  Clashes occurred at the bands of these territories.  The band that was successful in taking over the territory and aggregating the other band, eventually became a tribe.  The tribe most successful in conquering others, eventually became a nation.  You can beat your chest and cry, but it doesn’t matter  We’re not angels.  We’re uppity apes and this is how we function.  All your scolding won’t change it.

2- Violence will always happen when two very disparate civilizations meet.  Why?  Because even when they talk, even when they learn each other’s language, the concepts will be different.  Take martyrdom.  In Christianity this means entering the Arena singing Hymns and acting happy, because overtime that will convert the spectators.  In Islam it means blowing yourself up killing the infidel.  You can talk martyrdom, but it doesn’t mean the same thing on either side.  Violence is also a language, and when even your violence is misinterpreted, it means you don’t have a language in common.  And violence WILL happen and someone will win.  If you feel that your civilization should never be the one to win, there might be something wrong with you.

3- Someone will win from this violence.  All the scientific/exploration parties that died and disappeared means that sometimes the tribal humans win over those who are contributing to the species knowledge of the world.  Those are sad occurrences, but they count for nothing, except that it encourages other tribal humans to fight and die trying to take down something they CAN’T take down.  It’s an escalation of tragedy, if you will.  In the end, killing the tribal band that first attacks you (instead of what?  Lying down and dying, to expiate ‘privilege’?  In a land where the privilege is obviously with the natives?) is the best thing you can do.  It sends the message “fighting is futile” and will encourage the local tribe to try to protect itself by other means, be they negotiation or trade.

4- In a clash between civilizations, if you decide that your morals require you not to fight/lie down and die, you’ll be the one colonized.

There is no option between human civilizations for ‘we’ll each go to our little territories and stay there’.  That’s not how humans work or ever have.  Population pressure; desire for goods; desire for a certain land; conviction of one’s superior civilization, will keep us fighting and trying to expand (and btw, that last applies to ALL human civilizations.  Yes, Islam believes they’re superior to and more powerful than the west.  They have Allah on their side, after all.)  Your choice is never “let’s all live in harmony.”  Your choice is colonize or be colonized.  Think carefully of where you’d rather live, and which mind sets and conditions you’re willing to encourage.

And stop mouthing pieties about “massacres” when someone fights in self defense.  Western Civilization is not always the winner, and will not always be the winner.

The fatal oikophobia you’ve been taught is the worm gnawing at the heart of the civilization that’s lifted most humans out of poverty.  Examine carefully how you’d like to live before your throw your weight behind the supposed victims.  They’re just another set of aggressors.  And if you wouldn’t like to live under their rules, that’s not the side you should be fighting on.

No humans are angels.  Some are just more accomplished warriors than others.  That doesn’t make them bad.  It all depends on what you’re fighting for.

The Side-Takers by Tom Kendall

I know there’s an entire type of annoying article that just yells at the culture for using the terminology it commonly uses. And I know that in terms of effectiveness it’s about like bowling with a croissant. But damn it, listen to me for a minute.

As we near another September 11th, I got to thinking about something. Why in the Hell do people call my generation Millennials?

I get the theory. The turn of the Millennium was, in theory, the defining event of our generation. But—why? Because it’s a big round number? Neat. And? So, what?  Does the number do tricks or something?

I think part of what happened is that the romantic ideas of what the 2000s would be like, which were sold to the Baby Boomers en masse, gave the number 2000 an emotional imprint way outsized to its actual significance. When the year 2000 actually came, the number of personal robot servants was zero; the number of flying cars was one, technically, and the FAA refused to let it fly; the number of physics-violating food pills was—and will remain—zero; the number of moon colonies was—and I would like to imagine won’t remain, but who knows—zero. You know what 2000 actually brought in practice? A misinformed scare about some badly-written computer code and a party that took a week to clean up from. As I recall, that was all.

If you are a Baby Boomer and you feel I’m just joining in on the perpetual train of blaming your generation for everything, well, speaking as a “Millennial”, I’ve got apologies for some of you, ’cause I know, it sucks to be typecast. Believe me, I get it. And then again, certain others?—what goes around comes around, that’s all I’m going to say. I’m guessing y’all know exactly who you are, yeah?

Anyway, honestly, I don’t think Gen-X bought into the hype nearly as much, though it seemed from my underage perspective like the average Gen-Xer put more stock in the Millenium bug as a trade-off.

But the point is, that’s all there was to 2000. Reheated nostalgia, half-baked fear and an indelible stain on the couch from your co-worker drinking a bottle of cheap champagne with only supermarket caviar and Ritz crackers to line his stomach. Not to say that it’s not cool to see the turn of the Millennium, but in retrospect it seems like a big gimmick. In case you didn’t notice, nothing else happened.

You know what the actual defining cultural event of our generation was? Hint to Mr. Soetoro, it has nothing to do with his election. Frankly I hope Trump buries his legacy so deep that the poem “Ozymandias” is retroactively dedicated in his honor.

As far as I’m concerned, it was September Eleventh, Two-thousand and one. You know why I think it?

Because the days immediately after were the last time we were all Americans, all in this together. In some ways it was a reality check. Not— as the crazy Libertarians and Radical One-World Leftists say—because 9/11 was the day we reaped the fruits of our imperialist ambitions, but because in the aftermath we reaped fruits of Soviet imperial ambition. It took, as I recall, all of between two weeks and a month, for most of the Left in the country to make a decision— and they chose very wrong. Three generations of ongoing psychological warfare, agitprop and behind-the-scenes work to degrade our culture culminated in that moment, when the American Left decided that between standing by their country and standing by utopian idealism, it was utopian idealism all the way.

At first, that was a nearly undetectable fracture line. But the talking heads on television could call Iraq Bush’s personal vendetta, and they could rewrite history then only a few months old about how much international support we actually had going into Iraq until they were blue in the face. They couldn’t shut up the blogs. Republicans already mistrusted the media and were going to the blogs to be around people who seemed sane. It only intensified. Democrats felt the media had to pull too many punches and went to their blogs to be around people who were properly fired up about their causes. And I was still sort of peripheral to politics at the time, but all I can infer is the talking heads got scared, and they got scared fast. I have to assume that because Dan Rather disgraced himself doing something that only a desperate person would do: pushing a bogus document on George Bush that was, oh, how did he put it?: “fake but accurate”. Newborn new-media got one look at that document and laughed ’til they wet themselves. New media went toe to toe with old media and won. Now Conservatives knew what they had only suspected—media integrity was in the toilet.

Having failed with Al The-Internet-Inventor and John “Rice Ass” Kerry, the old media arrayed for one last huzzah, working American guilt over race like an aging mother working her kids’ guilt over not visiting. They got what they thought they wanted—Jimmy Carter, terms two and three.

But in that time the Right also saw Journ-o-List, “Hide the Decline”, and reporting on the Tea Party so disingenuous that you could only conclude the media was either thick as a post or active enemies (or you could embrace the healing power of “and”). We saw all ZIRP all the time in the midst of the largest expansion of debt in our history with bupkis to show for it, Solyndra, and gas prices “necessarily skyrocket”, which put paid to the belief that Democratic ideas worked even a little bit at getting the economy running. Not only that, we saw Operation Fast and Furious, Benghazi, a truly idiotic Iran “deal” penned largely with a figurehead dictator and having nothing to do with the people actually running the country, “more flexibility” for Putin out of Obama (supported wholeheartedly by the same people who would be seeing Russians under their beds at Hillary’s bequest in 2016), and Chinese expansionism completely unchallenged. By the way, we also saw Angela Merkel decide to turn her country into a giant homeless shelter for the third world, with predictable results. If anyone thought globalists had an iota of a clue how the world worked or were ready to defend the country, the idea started died right there. But probably worst of all, we on the right saw Prism—the program through which major US companies partnered with the government to install backdoors in their systems allowing utterly unwarranted and largely undetectable spying—not to mention the IRS intimidation scandal used to illegally neuter the Tea Party, and the Net Neutrality bill which, in a roundabout way, put who got what internet access under governmental jurisdiction.

All this, but especially the last part, conservatives heard loud and clear—and in 2016, they voted in the election heard ’round the world. And then something amazing happened. Incensed that eight years of bungling, mismanagement, decline, insults, mischaracterizations, slander, lies, theft and voter intimidation had somehow failed to win hearts and minds, the Left decided at last it was time to embrace the inner communist they always had wanted to be, and went full potato. In one decade we went from a Left that insisted vehemently that Republicans were only calling them socialists as negative spin, to one with so many declared socialists it looks like the Berkley faculty lounge. Gone are the days of hiding the tax’n’spend policies behind centrist platitudes. The Left has a very cohesive platform, just not a coherent one—billions in taxes, trillions in spending, government healthcare, government transportation, government income, government spying, racially based reparations, open borders and a brand new Llama named Jimmy for every little girl. I made the last one up. It’s too sane and fiscally feasible. Also it assumes there’s such a gender as “girl”, bigot.

All this against a background of silicon valley oligarchs straight out of a James Bond film, constantly collecting everything on everyone to sell to G*d-knows-who while preaching equality out the other sides of their mouths; censoring in the morning and bleating about tolerance in the afternoon; quietly helping Communist China develop the tools they need for oppression and genocide and knowing the old media won’t even ask them to pinkie swear they won’t use them here. Because really, who the Hell would believe them? After Rather lying about Bush; the media lying about Obama’s economy so hard they had to change the methodology for counting jobs statistics to prop it up, then having Candy Crawley prop up his ass on a debate stage (though given the nightmare Romney has turned into maybe I ought to send her a thank-you card); THEN handing Hillary the debate questions in advance; not to mention lying about the climate, lying about Benghazi, lying about the effects of mass immigration on the 1st world; maybe lying about how Trump was really polling; and definitely lying, all these years, about being socialist, unless they’re trying to sell me on the idea they only just heard about this Marx guy in the last three years but they think he has a point—come on, who the Hell would trust the Left? Why the Hell would we?

Somewhere in this maelstrom, either at its early end or its late end, “Millennials” came of age. It hasn’t been a good era for being a squish, let’s put it that way. Being Left or Right, for many of us, was a point of sufficient vehemence that it defined your whole social world. I am just old enough that I barely have friends from the early part of that period. After about, oh, 2008, I largely didn’t have— or want— a liberal friend. Democrats just couldn’t help but see Republicans as utter monsters. And republicans had to stick to one another and start socializing in secret or out of the way as a matter of basic survival, because of the sheer zealotry of the Left and their willingness to abuse their waning cultural power. I can’t say if we’re the most polarized American generation ever—for a start, I doubt good statistics were done on the subject before the modern and post-modern era— but we’re certainly up there, I think.

How’d we get here? You ask. I often hear it asked. But that’s the hard lesson 9/11 had to teach us, I think. We didn’t “get” here. A friend asked me what I thought would have happened if 9/11 hadn’t. Would we just have gone on? Well, maybe we would have. Maybe nothing would ever have brought the Left’s deceptive reporting and dark aspirations into sharper focus. Maybe we’d have just been eaten by the snake whole, and we’d go the way Germany is going now—and watch that country closely, buddy, I betcha it isn’t done going and it’s not going to be pretty when it is. As it was, that wasn’t how it worked out, because through a twist of fate, Leftists got put to the question of whether they were loyal to America or loyal to socialism. The answer was always going to go only one way—you could tell because every time the question was America’s position or someone else’s they always stood up for the latter—but finally, after 15 years, they’ve come around to actually admitting it. Trump didn’t unmask the Left—he just showed up to give them what they’d asked at such length for two terms of Obama. It was 9/11 that unmasked the Left.

“Did you go crazy, or did you report/ on the day they wounded New York”, as Leonard Cohen put it, and Sarah so often quotes.

So don’t tell me my generation was defined by a big round number that had the lasting cultural impact of a marshmallow peep dropped from knee-height onto a pillow. I mentioned the Millennium Bug to a friend my age the other day and they had to think about what that even had been. But you bet your ass they know what 9/11 was. 9/11 was the day we learned who our countrymen actually were. It shaped our foreign policy and changed the face of who got to make our domestic policy. Without 9/11 it’s possible we’d be too far gone even to think of electing Trump. The snake would be up to our necks and we’d hardly know it.

The event was horrific. It’s impossible not to feel at a gut level that I’d turn it back and stop it all from happening if I could. It shocked the American psyche, we still don’t know if reparably. We lost thousands of irreplaceable young men, among the best our nation had, in the war that followed. I’m not glad it happened. I wish there was another way to test us, and maybe in another world there was.

But what happened also happened. Having a catastrophe befall you and learning nothing, taking nothing at all from it, isn’t one tragedy, it’s two. What we got was a chance to glimpse the truth about our slow cultural erosion. That was almost harder for us to face up to. Sometimes I wonder if we’ll see it through, or if we’ll chicken out halfway and even that terrible sacrifice on a clear September morning in 2001 will be in vain. I really hope not, but I guess we’ll see.

So if you want a pithy term for us, something that quickly defines us, the thing that our lives bent on, don’t call us Millennials. The turning of the millennium only mattered from the cozy confines of the 1990s, looking forward unaware of what was coming. Nobody who actually lived through that time can still honestly believe that’s the most important thing that occurred. But don’t call us 9/11ers either, obviously, or nobody in our generation will ever get to fly on a plane again.

No, call us the Side-Takers. We’re Generation Faction, Gen Polar, the Pick-A-Team Kids . We showed up to a cold civil war that far predated us just in time to pick our friends. 9/11 separated the future Tea Partier and MAGAmerican from future Anti-fa terrorists, because it was the moment we truly became aware that there were two very distinct kinds of Americans and the two did not reconcile easily. It shaped our whole lives, and I suspect that long after we’re all dead, we’ll be remembered— not for organic gluten-free soy infused everything, stupid haircuts, excessive beards, phone addiction or the social media epidemic—but for that.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

In closing, lest we lose sight of the day, today:

Stay safe this 9/11. Pray for the souls of the departed.

And Lord of our fathers, be with us yet, lest we forget, lest we forget.

Perhaps it’s being human, but we always seem to take the wrong lessons from wars or big events.

From World War I we took the idea that nationalism was bad and led to war. From World War II we added the bit not only that nationalism was bad — a reinforcement of it — but that it was particularly bad if those nations were based on blood and soil.  Though lately we seem to be going after those that aren’t either.

Yeah, WWII had the side effect of stopping the runaway fascination with eugenics for a time at least.  Then again, maybe it didn’t, because you know, lately the left has been returning to it, again, like a dog to its vomit, wanting to fund abortions in the third world and generally believing race equals culture, and that they should suppress or eliminate anyone they disagree with.

The Cold War…

The Cold War first seduced us with the idea that if only we were reasonable, and conceded a little more, somehow the people who wanted to step on a human face forever and those who stepped on the face could get along.

And the dismount on that one… Dear Lord. As much as I’m grateful that we ended the Cold war without a nuclear conflict, as much as I’m grateful to Ronald Reagan — yes, it was him. No, it wasn’t the Soviets. What they teach the kids these days should get everyone who goes along with this whipped through the streets — for bringing the Soviet Union to its economic knees without letting them take the Earth with them…

Well, it never fully exposed the horrors of communism.  And part of that might be because by that time communists had taken over the media, the entertainment and education in the West, so there was no one to expose the errors of communism.

The other part of it is that the West somehow got the idea that everyone really could get along, that (and this possibly before the end of the cold war) if we just did business with people, they would change their authoritarian ways, and eventually would become just like us.

I don’t think China has become just like us.  And look, I understand the part where yeah, they’re marginally saner than under the Cultural Revolution.  Maybe.  But at the expense of our companies collaborating in enslaving the Chinese people, and then getting ideas about enslaving us.

Look, there is something you can say about markets.  Well, there is a ton of things you can say. One of them is that of course manufacturing will move to where labor is cheaper, and that cheap manufacturing (in China, mostly) has flooded the west with cheap goods, which in turn have made our lives richer.

On the other hand…

China has continued being China. Giving them a ton of business might have made the country somewhat richer, but most of their riches seem to be invested in ghost towns where no one lives, even while most peasants there still live like medieval peasants or worse.

The fundamental values haven’t changed. The fundamental lack of respect for human life hasn’t changed.  And it’s not just that they’re being worse colonists than we ever were in Africa, that’s the most disturbing thing.

It’s stuff like the exhibit with “plasticized” human bodies that made the tour of museums.  We know — we KNOW — those bodies came from China and are probably, mostly political prisoners. But everyone in the west was going on about how neat it was. Even when they were told.

China didn’t change… but we did.

Which is why Google — Motto Don’t Be Evil — is perfectly okay with controlling the peasants in China, and really wants to bring it here.

Worse, China gave the left an escape hatch after the Cold War ended. They could tell themselves that the Soviet Union had been bad, but hey, look, China worked out, and they were still communist. Look how well communism could work.

I can’t possibly be the only person in the world to notice that for the last twenty years the left has had a China-hard-on.  We needed to be more organized, like China. We needed to control our population better, like China. We  Should build big, like China.  The future was China’s.  We lived in the past.

Of course it’s none of that. We don’t need to look very deeply to know that beyond China’s propaganda, China is a mess at every possible — and some should-be impossible — levels.

If their noses are rubbed in it, the left will make the same noises about it that it made about China.  Anything bad about the regime is the underlying culture.

Look, I’m willing to admit that Chinese culture and history is often — though not always — sheer horror marinated in tears.  And Russia … well. It’s a harsh land with a love affair with authoritarianism.

And yet, you know, communism took both lands to heights of horror and waste that the previous regimes could only dream of.  It was horror by the numbers.

It turns out the only thing communism is efficient at is creating poverty and killing people in batch lots.  Heck, it manages to make even Latin America efficient at these things, even though culturally Latin culture and efficiency shouldn’t be found in the same place at the same time.

In the end, you know, the evil is not nationalism. Evil is not even pride in one’s race (only if it comes with eugenics delusions that put every other race down.  I mean, I don’t see much reason to be proud of one’s race — or sex — because it’s like being proud of having great hair or nice hands. It’s a genetic accident and you did nothing for it. But some people have nothing else to be proud of, after all.)  And evil is not to want to have borders and allow people who live in a country to control their own country.  Nor does doing business with evil redeem it. it is more likely to taint you.

Evil is to regard humans as things and want them to fit like cogs in the machinery of a vast totalitarian regime.  An extra layer of evil is to want to perfect those humans, to change them, to make them “perfect” so they can bring about utopia.

What we should have learned from the 20th century is that it really doesn’t matter if you think everyone should be controlled and the people with bad genes eliminated so the future will be wonderful, or if you think everyone should be controlled and the people with bad opinions eliminated so that the future will be wonderful.

What matters is that any government which wants to control every possible facet of human life, and make humans behave in ways that go directly against every characteristic of humanity is evil.  And none of this is made better when the totalitarian dellusions are carried by companies who try to get the government to do all of this.

Perhaps we should consider that when the government through regulation and propaganda insists that women should be given not just preference but every possible incentive to take the role of men, when the government steps in to take the role of families. When the government, through its education branch, teaches our boys they’re evil because they have a penis, or demand that white people disappear or live in subjection, for the crime of not tanning.

And the companies who collaborate with the evil of other lands and try to impose it here are in fact agents of that government, and equally evil.  Oh, and corrupting our governance along with it.

The lesson should always be: It’s wrong to hurt people and to take their stuff.

Yes, there are exceptions to that — self defense coming to mind, or the kind of hurt surgeons inflict on the way to healing — but the evil does remain, and shouldn’t be ignored. Remembering the evil in these things, the price and the taint, might just keep one from crazy utopian schemes.  Which in turn might keep governments from going totalitarian.

Life is not always black and white. But you shouldn’t look at gray and pretend it’s white, either. You should be aware of the grubbiness in it.

Because once you start ignoring the price and thinking that with just a little more push, a little more control over those dumb people — be they your countrymen who disagree with you, or those people who look funny, or the foreigners over there who live in some way they shouldn’t, or … whatever — you can build utopia, that’s the way to hell.

Every time that’s the way to hell.

Don’t hurt people and don’t take their stuff.  And it’s not any more moral if you do it in a big group, and if everyone thinks it’s neato-keen.

Or if “all” you’re doing is mobbing people on twitter and making it impossible for them to earn a living.

All of that is bad, and you’re still evil.

And you should stop.  Because everything has a price. And the bill will come due.

 

 

 

 

Sorry I didn’t post yesterday.  I was finishing up the rock moving and yard reshaping phase of this year’s great gardening project. (Which, other than carrying a few buckets of pebbles to a better location will hold until next March or whenever snow stops blowing.)

As usual, when I’m doing these things, I have time to think.  What I thought about specifically was this article I’ve linked at instapundit, and which I can’t find right now, which was on dishwashers.

I don’t know how many of you have realized how ridiculous dishwashers have gotten.  I mean, I have realized how ridiculous washers have gotten.

For years we got expensive front loaders, and yet our clothes kept smelling, there were stains that would not come out, and these things seemed to last only 5 years, on the outside.  And I knew it wasn’t our problem, as such, because at the same time we started noticing we couldn’t get our clothes clean, the detergent isle of the supermarket sprouted an entire section of odor removing things, febreeze got added to detergents, and, in general, people smelled odd…

Then the washer broke while we were also very, very broke (we were paying mortgage and rent in the run up to buying this.  I saw an ad for, I THINK a $300 washer, and we went to look.  What we found, instead, was a $200, not advertised washer.  As we’re looking at it the saleswoman hurries over and tells us we don’t want it. This washer, she says, uses lots of water.  For those who don’t know I suffer from an unusual form of eczema. While it’s triggered mostly by stress with a side of carbs, it can also, out of the blue, take offense at a slight trace of detergent left on the clothes. I’ve found that the eczema got markedly worse the less water the washer used.  And it required me to run the washer three times, once with soap and two without to avoid major outbreaks.  The idea of using lots and lots of water was great, so I was all excited.  Which shocked the poor saleswoman halfway to death.  I will point out, though, though that this washer washes well enough I can get away with only one extra rinse cycle and if I forget it it’s usually survivable. Also, our clothes don’t smell. Unfortunately, we’ve not found that time of washer any of the times we’ve walked through the appliance isle, so I think that choice has been eliminated.

Certainly the choice of dishwashers that use “lots” (i.e. what they used 20 years ago) of water and electricity was never offered to us.  And since we seemed to have really lousy luck with dishwasher, I found every time we replaced one over the last 20 years, they had less space for dishes (more insulation, to allow for less electricity) to the point that I needed to do 3 or even 4 loads for a family of four. I mean, I cook from scratch, but I really don’t use that much stuff.  And it ran slower than before.  Right now our dishwasher actually washes (a bonus) but it takes four hours to run a cycle.  I rarely do more than one wash a day, though, because it’s just Dan and I, and we … well… the kids used a lot more glasses and little plates, and frankly meals get more complicated for four people.

All the same, there was a time there, for like 10 years, where we were running all this “green” approved stuff, and not only was I running the washer and drier more or less continuously, but to make things more “interesting” I was using MORE water and electricity, in the sense that I was running the appliances a ton more.

This of course is what I also found with the “low flush” toilets.  We had them in our previous house, and we found that we spent an inordinate amount of time flushing the toilet.  Also, since it took four or five flushes to do the job or one, the fact we were actually only using half the water per flush didn’t save any water. We spent instead twice to three times the amount of water the “high flush” toilets had spent.

All this, btw, to appease Paul Ehrlich — the prophet of wrong. As in, if he foresees something it will be wrong — and his ridiculous idea we’d run out of potable water in 1978.  Apparently none of these people have noticed that 1978 has come and gone with no problems.  And as for electricity, if they stop their idiocy about nuclear, it’s not even a consideration. (And no, Chernobyl isn’t a caution about nuclear energy. It’s a caution about stupid communist regimes. They can’t run anything — not even a nuclear plant — without destroying it.)

Anyway, having thought of all these unintended consequences, I had two thoughts. (Hey, sometimes I have more than one.  It’s rare, I grant you.)

The first was, isn’t it weird that all these regulations always trend towards making humans smelly, improperly washed, infective?

Sure perhaps it’s just a side effect.  Or perhaps the political side that hates humans — really, really, really hates humans — just wants to torture us while virtue signaling.

Maybe I am paranoid. But it seems like a great part of their regulations and plans, including the Green Nude Heel are designed above all to “make the peasants suffer.”  I mean, it’s not like any of these people ever actually hold themselves subject to the regulations they create for others. After all, rules are for the little people, right? Which means they want to be the only ones who live in relatively pleasant ways while forcing the “peasants” to live in muck.

Again, maybe I’m paranoid, but you know, humans do like these distinctions. And non-introspective, authoritarian personalities will give rein to their basest instincts.

The second thing I thought is that it’s astonishing that for all their virtue signaling, not a single one of their rules and regulations designed supposedly to save the environment have the desired effect.  More, it’s astonishing that all of their virtue signaling has the opposite effect of what they claim to wish.

Low flush toilets use more water. Slow, inefficient dishwashers force more loads, and therefore use both more water and more electricity.  Low water dishwashers don’t wash really well and therefore have to be run over and over again, using more water and electricity.

But wait, there’s more.  Their wind energy generating big gigantic fans are exterminating birds and bringing some species to the brink of extinction. AND it gives, of course, unpredictable energy, though not as unpredictable as solar, which has throughs leading to brown-outs, and to make things shinier, fries wildlife and destroys the ecology in acres and acres of land.

And then there’s all the other stuff: the recycling of paper that’s worse for the environment than just harvesting fast-growing trees grown for the purpose of making paper.  The alcohol in gasoline that both makes food more expensive and destroys engines, which will need to be replaced at a greater cost in ecological damage.

How is it possible? You’d think that at least once, by accident, they’d get regulations right, right?  You’d think at least once, by accident, even if they made our lives more unpleasant, they’d achieve what they claim to want, right?

So why haven’t they?

I don’t know. I can’t explain it other than “once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times it’s enemy action.”

Which means–

Which means if the Green Nude Heels is ever implemented, not only will we all be ruined and dying in the millions, but it will ALSO somehow screw up the Earth and the environment, possibly fatally.

Environmental alarmism and statism? Not even once.

Those who beat their chests and claim to want to save the Earth hate humanity. And aren’t too fond of the rest of the Earth too.

It’s time we tell them “Oh, you want to limit the damage humans do?  You first, buddy.  You first.”

It Was a Bright Cold Day in April, and the Clocks Were Striking Patriarchy – a blast from the past from April 2016

 

‘As you lie there,’ said O’Brien, ‘you have often wondered you have even asked me — why the Ministry of Love should expend so much time and trouble on you. And when you were free you were puzzled by what was essentially the same question. You could grasp the mechanics of the Society you lived in, but not its underlying motives. Do you remember writing in your diary, “I understand how: I do not understand why“? It was when you thought about “why” that you doubted your own sanity. You have read the book, Hayek’s book, or parts of it, at least. Did it tell you anything that you did not know already?’

‘You have read it?’ said Winston.

‘I wrote it. That is to say, I collaborated in writing it. No book is produced individually, as you know.’

‘Is it true, what it says?’ Something about the idea that O’Brien had written it did not ring true, but Winston had no proof it had existed before the Utopia.

‘It was thought to be true once, yes. The programme it sets forth is nonsense. The individual by himself, no compensation to historically oppressed groups, no debasing of privilege.  Everyone knows the only way to run a society is to keep the forces of oppression and compensation in balance, to right historical wrongs.  The way to sanity is to always be aware of your evil thoughts, your tendency to abuse your privilege.  And everyone has privilege, except the priests of balancing, the enlightened, those who know how to keep society running.

The peons can’t be trusted with such delicate balancing of forces.  Left to themselves,s the lumpen proletariat will embrace greed and money making and the society created will be unequal, and wrong, and chaotic.  Like Somalia.”

“What’s Somalia?” Winston asked.  And for a moment he saw a shadow of confusion cross O’Brien’s eyes.  “It’s not important.  That’s how to answer the idea of individual freedom.  It’s like Somalia.  And Somalia is not Utopia. Utopia is perfect and it’s forever. Make that the starting-point of your thoughts.’

The faint, mad gleam of enthusiasm had come back into O’Brien’s face. He knew in advance what O’Brien would say. That the enlightened ones did not seek power for their own ends, but only for the good of the majority. That it sought power because men in the mass were frail cowardly creatures who could not endure liberty or face the truth, and must be ruled over and systematically deceived by others who were stronger than themselves. That the choice for mankind lay between freedom and happiness, and that, for the great bulk of mankind, happiness was better. That the enlightened ones was the eternal guardian of the weak, a dedicated sect doing evil that good might come, sacrificing its own happiness to that of others. The terrible thing, thought Winston, the terrible thing was that when O’Brien said this he would believe it.

You could see it in his face. O’Brien knew everything. A thousand times better than Winston he knew what the world was really like, in what degradation the mass of human beings lived and by what lies and barbarities the enlightened ones kept them there. He had understood it all, weighed it all, and it made no difference: all was justified by the ultimate purpose. What can you do, thought Winston, against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?

‘You are ruling over us for our own good,’ he said feebly. ‘You believe that human beings are not fit to govern themselves, and therefore –‘

He started and almost cried out. A pang of pain had shot through his body. O’Brien had pushed the lever of the dial up to thirty-five.

‘That was stupid, Winston, stupid!’ he said. ‘You should know better than to say a thing like that.’

He pulled the lever back and continued:

‘Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. Only the enlightened ones can punish humanity as it deserves to be punished.  Humanity is a cancer upon the Earth, the only species capable of rendering others extinct, the only species that will destroy the planet left to its own devices.

But killing everyone would be wrong, because then someone might get the idea they could kill us and we don’t want to die.  And the instinct to reproduce is so strong, that merely outlawing reproduction wouldn’t work.

Setting a barrier between men and women? Convincing women men are the oppressors?  Convincing women that they are simultaneously fragile and powerful, till they’re crazy?  That works.  Convincing people heterosexuality is somehow abnormal, and sex is just for play, and then ultimately that all sex everywhere is about power and wrong?  That works.  The birthrate is falling, Winston, and soon we will have w orld without people.”  Winston stopped, a mad gleam in his eyes.  “A world without people.”

For a moment Winston ignored the dial. He made a violent effort to raise himself into a sitting position, and merely succeeded in wrenching his body painfully.

‘But how can you control all humans?’ he burst out. ‘Don’t you think here and there, a new colony will start and the species will grow anew.”

O’Brien silenced him by a movement of his hand. ‘Oh, yes,” he said.  “Humans are like cockroaches.  But if we get in their minds and make them believe us, then we have them. You can make them believe anything. You will learn by degrees, Winston. There is nothing that we could not make you believe. Invisibility, levitation — anything. That despite biological, obvious differences, and other differences in musculature, in brain formation, despite hormones and how they shape everything about a human before he’s even born, we can make humans believe there are no differences between the sexes.  And alternately we can make them believe all males are natural oppressors and must be punished simply for existing, and all women, no matter how powerful or rich are natural victims and must be appeased.  We can make them believe there are no differences, and at the same time that there are six genders, or ten, or twelve, or a hundred, all of them natural from birth.’

“But that’s mad,” Winston shouted.  “Utterly mad.  You can’t make anyone deny the truth of their own eyes, forever.”

He knew the lever would be pulled.

****

“How many genders does humanity have, Winston?”

“Two!”

The lever was pulled.

“How many?”

“Four.”

The lever was pulled.

“How many?”

“A hundred”

The lever was pulled.

“How many?”

“As many as the enlightened say.”

“That is right, Winston, you are almost well.  And what is PIV.”
“Violation.  Always violation.”

“Can’t a woman consent to sex with a man?”

“There is no true consent, since even in Utopia cis het males are programmed to institute patriarchy.  You must always be vigilant against your own thoughts and your own unconscious privilege, even if you can’t be fully aware of it.  All penetration is violation.  A baby is an invader in a woman’s body.  Utopia is forever and only the enlightened can tell us when we’re wrong. Because the individual is not able to balance the forces of retribution and oppression and greed by himself, or not even within himself. Society is always imbalanced, and there will be oppression till all of humanity is gone, so the enlightened ones must teach us and correct us until that time.”

*********

Winston gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken zeem to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the androgynous, unreadable face. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of zees nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. Zee had won the victory over Zeeself. Zee loved Big Gender Indeterminate Sibling.