Category: Uncategorized

Yesterday one of my sons came to me about an argument (religious) two friends had got into.  He was furious at both of them, because both were “arguing” in the terms and from within their rather deep belief systems, and getting increasingly mad at how “stupid” the other was, when there was no intelligence involved on either side.  Or rather, whatever reasoning there was was coming out in terms that the other side either could not decode or would interpret as fighting words. (My son mostly just wanted to vent so he did that, and then he was fine.)

I have banned a total of about 8 people (if you count ten or so of them as being one very notorious troll) from this blog.  A couple I banned were for religious nonsense, and one was of my religion.  But when you come in quoting the Bible as though it “proves” something about a current political situation, you’re not arguing in terms people can discuss.  You’re shutting down the discussion with something you think is irrefutable, because it goes beyond logic.  This might be very convincing in a group of like believers (not always.  Doesn’t convince me.)  BUT in an open group, where people of all religions and none gather, this is just annoying and the equivalent of shouting insults, or reciting meaningless mantras.  UNDERSTAND this is not saying “oh, the situation reminds me of this” as we’ve all quoted the Bible, Kipling, or even songs or movies in that manner.  I mean giving a quote from the Bible and saying “And this ends the discussion” because if everyone believed in the quote and interpreted it as the quoter it would, only people of course don’t.  So such a tactic just drives other people insane and ends meaningful discussion.

What brings this up is not religion, per se, except in the sense that some political movements seem to have acquired religious overtones.

I have long ago realized that when the left says “check your privilege” they are doing exactly the same as people quoting the Bible in a discussion-ending way.  They are saying something that from within the deep halls of their religious belief is meaningful and discussion-ending.  But to the rest of us, it’s mumbo-jumbo and annoyingashell.

Look, I have a liberal arts degree, and I learned in a country that was at the time (probably still is) nuts for Marx.  I understand what they were taught about institutional racism, privilege and all that.  I just happen to think they’re wrong, because individuals are individuals and should be treated as such, not as broad classes.  I refuse to believe Obama’s daughters have fewer opportunities than my sons because they’re female and a little darker.

So to me when a Marxist screams “check your privilege” what I really hear is “I’m a brain washed idiot.”

This is worse if it comes in the middle of a comment or rant that makes sense otherwise, say something about the culture of recent immigrants can hold their kids back.  I’ll be reading along going “Okay, I see you’re coming from the left, but there’s common groun–” and then we hit the “magic words” and my brain goes into instant “these are my middle fingers.”

Recently we’ve started getting the same from the soi-disant right.  It’s an “European right” that treats races and classes as groups, not as aggregations of individuals with wild variation.  Look, they’re mostly young, and mostly rather stupid.  I’m not saying some of them aren’t individually smart, because some of the ways they’re stupid are ways in which only smart people can be that dumb.  Like believing the melanin content of the skin correlates with IQ, or that culture is hereditary.

Mostly they’re kids who realize that they’ve been lied to all their lives, and think that by turning the lies completely around they’ll find the truth.  The world is never that simple.

The problem though, is that their lingo has acquired the same properties as the left.  It has spread to older people who should know better, and who use it because they can and because they think it’s a thumb in the eye of political correctness.  But what it actually does is argue from “deep cult” and shut down discussion for anyone not already along for the ride.

I was reminded of this, recently, while reading a comment to one of my posts at Instapundit.  I don’t often do it, because lately there’s been a lot of crazy.  But the comments were interesting, and this particular one was very good (and no, I can’t remember about what) and made perfect sense/explained things beyond where my post was.  All except the last line who referred to the Halfrican Queen.

It took me a moment to realize from context it was talking about Valerie Jarret.  But beyond making the comment more opaque and signaling a brain-shutting cultish type of thinking, it did more than that.

It introduced completely irrelevant emotional distractions.  Halfrican, and all the other stupid epithets of that ilk is not an argument.  If it were an argument, you’d have to explain why the fact that Valerie Jarret is half African (is she even?  I thought she was mostly Arab) has anything to do with the fact that she works for the Muslim brotherhood or is a red diaper baby.  I mean, sure, there’s some covalence there, but that’s cultural, and part of her being indoctrinated to believe she was hard-done-by due to her skin color.  But there are many people who fill the same role without the genetic heritage.  Obama’s lily-white mother was a red diaper baby and so are half of the lily white, upper class darlings of science fiction.

The term, besides not sounding nearly as clever as it does inside the cult IS anti-pc, but it is anti-pc in a way that not only brings irrelevant arguments to the discussion but that like “check your privilege” proclaims “I come from so deep within an echo chamber that I consider this a clinching argument.”

I’ve gotten to the point that my middle fingers come up automatically when I hear one of these words.  Cuck, for instance, means “I don’t understand parliamentary procedure or governmental structure in the US and I want to impress it with how angry I am.”  Halfrican means “I have no clue how human intelligence/DNA/culture works, but I want to be superior to someone.”  The rest of the vile lot means a bunch of other things such as “I believe in an international Zionist conspiracy, just like Marxists and Palestinians, because I think those two are beacons of sanity.”  Or “I believe in magic dirt, because if you’re born on the land for x generations you’ll have the right culture/beliefs, even if the schools and society are no longer teaching them.  And I’ll ridicule others for believing in “magic dirt” when people do their best to BECOME part of the nation.”

In fact, all of these terms aren’t cute, aren’t funny.  They’re creepy eructations that mean “I joined a cult.”

They have the added “benefit” of making people who don’t fully agree with you and don’t come from the deep cult shut down on you.  And of making people on the other side FURTHER believe they were justified, are victims and should hold on hammer and tongues to their victimhood instead of actually listening to what they’ve been doing wrong.

In fact, these thought-stopping and substitute for thought words do the very opposite of shattering the PC bubble and making people think.

We have to fight with words, or surely we’ll fight with actions. But fighting with words that stop thought and discussion will only make things worse.

And yes, I know, because I’ve seen this in posts by Stephen Green or other of my friends, some *sshole will come along and say because I don’t like these cutesy words that mean nothing I’m a “closet democrat” or a “communist.”  Being called a communist is one of my new and favorite pastimes, considering I’ve broken more communist heads than anyone not a veteran of the armed forces and that even before I had a political philosophy I knew I was anti-communist.

But before you do that, explain to me how using stupid made up words makes your point that communism is bad, or that the democrats are Marxists.  Make it cogent.  Show your work.

Because all I’m seeing are people coming from deep-cult and thinking that the short cuts around thought that they’ve gotten used to will work on everyone.

And that’s tragically wrong.

 

Okay, first to get a bit of off-topic business out of the way: Sarah sucks at scheduling things, yay and verily, like a Dyson with the animal hair attachment.  And I’m very sorry.  All I can say is between the auto-immune that clogged my breathing and reduced me to a fraction of the oxygen I should have (making me go into respiratory distress when lying flat) and the steroid to combat it, I’ve been even more like a cat with ADHD than normal.

In practical terms this means I totally forgot to schedule A cyber Monday sale.  Fear not, though, starting on the thirtieth there will be something of mine on sale for 99c through the end of the year.  I’m also bringing out author’s editions of the Magical British Empire and of the furniture refinishing mysteries which have now reverted.  The fourth one of those and the sixth musketeer mysteries are in various states of completion, which means I might or might not be able to bring them out by Christmas.  We shall see, but I’m gonna try.

Meanwhile today I must run an errand and send an overdue outline to KJA.  Then resume work on Darkship Revenge this weekend.  I’m sending the book in “sets” to my betas as I finalize portions, hoping to get it done faster that way.

Which bring us to a very short blog post, before I run off.

For years now, I’ve been telling you guys that this country is functionally occupied.  Sometime between the forties and the seventies, a significant portion of our most promising young were proselytized and converted by the then USSR, an enemy that was not markedly skilled at much, except subversion, but who were very skilled at that.

This means, as my friend Bill Reader says, that “we’re doing all right, we just lost the cold war.”

Oh, we won it, economically and militarily, and everywhere else, but they’d taken our culture, and their long march had acquired all the command positions, and therefore they were in control.  And having been, effectively, turned into enemy agents, even after the enemy had disbanded, this meant that they treated us like an occupied land.

This is the only way to make sense of the oikophobia of our cultural “betters” and of their desire to dismantle the culture that gave them birth, as well as their certainty that factually-disproven means of government like communism and socialism (both really the future of the past) are still the coming wave of the future.  It is also the only thing that makes sense of, say, flying the American flag being considered an act of aggression ON AMERICAN TERRITORY while every other flag is not only accepted but encouraged.

We’re doing okay, it’s just that we’re occupied.  And the couple of days have been an “oh, boy, howdy, and how!” as we watch people who pretend to care for the fate of the republic and to be proselytizers for freedom and liberty deliver themselves of painful and cringingly-awful encominiums to Castro, a man who would have been Stalin, had he had more territory than Cuba to rule over; a man who enslaved his own people and who, by hiring his army out, like the Hessian mercenaries of old, but worse, laid fire and waste to Africa and perpetrated (there) racist aggression as was rarely seen under European powers (except maybe by the Belgians who were special all over Congo and of course the soviets who were the masters of the Cubans.)

It’s been breath taking to watch the masks drop, and the would-be officials of our own country act like quislings and traitors.  Their beards all seem to have grown longer overnight, (particularly the women’s) and the noises that comes from their mouths are no longer the sounds of rational human beings, but the eructations of the long-dead masters who possess them.  They are channeling Marx and Lenin, Stalin and Pol Pot, standing atop the pile of corpses of their victims, and speaking with the rotten voice from the grave, lamenting the passing of one of the last of their comrades to resist the encroaching of liberty, and to carry on their carrion-tainted legacy.

Remember them.  Keep in mind that moment when the masks dropped.  They will try to don them again, and look, once more, impartial and over it all, and like gods among men.  Don’t forget though, the death-marked visage they revealed and how their empathy for this repulsive tyrant reveals what they’d do, given a chance.

We’re doing all right, for a country that lost the cold war.  We’re doing very all right.  While they were busy taking over the formal mechanisms of power, the sons of Martha — almost ours to a man — have created alternate structures to the ones they stormed and occupied.

We have means of communication and organization, and the resistance is making a comeback.  Don’t get cocky.  The vichy are still in power in all relevant positions of external power, and — as with publishing — they’ll try to get things under control again.  Look at all the fuss about “fake news” by which they don’t mean the ones who have, so gleefully, been trying to gaslight the nation for decades, but the people doing yeoman work, mostly unpaid, to reveal their deficiencies.  Look at traditional publishing, in increasingly ineffective ways, trying to grasp once more the power they had over the nation’s intellectual life.

There will be tussling back and forth.  Be not afraid, nor despair.  Keep working to build under, build around.  Keep working to take the weight of the corrupt edifice when it falls.  Maybe we’ll get lucky and take enough of the political establishment it never really falls, just totters and firms up again, but you can’t bet on it.  You have to keep working, to remember we’ve been occupied for almost a century, and we’re just now fighting back.

On the good side, the technology for communications, for learning and hopefully soon for manufacturing (to some extent) is going the way of individual freedom, unlike the technology of mass production and mass marketing which gave birth to socialist/communist mental map.

In the end we win, they lose.  But you must keep working.

Now go work.

 

song

Hail and well met, my friends! I return at last with a blessed batch of beautiful books. So go, read! Review! Give constructive feedback and sheckels as appropriate! If you have books for the next promo, please make sure to send them to my email as soon as possible. Happy reading!

Jason Dyck, AKA The Free Range Oyster

Word polisher, code monkey, and proud member of Hoyt’s Horde of Huns

John Van Stry

The Hammer Commission

Mark’s job seems pretty dull to others, but that’s just the window dressing. He’s actually an elite member of a thousand year old secret society that hunts down devils, demons, and other evils: he’s on the front lines of the secret ongoing war between Heaven and Hell that has been raging for millenniums.

For decades now, things have been at a stalemate, but all of that is about to change…

On sale for 99¢. You can find the other books John has on sale this weekend at his website.

Tom Simon

Angel Keep

Where Angels Die Book 1

‘A demon is the spirit of a bad idea. The Taken are just its victims. If they kill you, you lose. If you kill them – you lose. The only way to win is to kill the idea itself. That’s where we come in.’

Enter Revel Enfield: paladin, exorcist, Knight of the Covenant of Justice.

Every enemy is hidden.

Every friend can be turned.

Even the Angels of Life can be killed.

This is his war.

Kal Spriggs

Renegades: Out of Time

The Renegades Book 3

The Renegades are running out of time.

Captain Mike Noguchi has led his band of Renegades out of the heart of a interstellar war, forged them together into a privateer crew, and has learned of an ancient alien facility that may hold clues to a conspiracy which seems bent on his crew’s destruction.

But that facility is on a planet conquered by the Chxor. The Renegades will need to slip across the battle-lines, infiltrate a conquered world, and find their way inside a facility which has kept its secrets for untold generations. Along the way they’ll need to fight genetically engineered monsters, a psychotic military commander, and an entire army of Chxor.

Yet even if they manage that, some secrets may be too much for them to handle. Their enemies have already done terrible things with the knowledge found there… can the Renegades survive secrets from outside of time?

K. M. O’Brien

The Sculpted Ship

Starship engineer Anailu Xindar dreamed of owning her own ship, but she didn’t find the courage to actually go for it until she was forced out of her safe, comfortable job. She goes shopping for a cheap, practical freighter, but she ends up buying a rare, beautiful, but crippled luxury ship. Getting it into space will take more than her technical skills. She’ll have to go way outside her comfort zone to brave the dangers of safaris, formal dinners, a rude professor, and worst of all, a fashion designer. She may even have to make some friends… and enemies.

“The Sculpted Ship” is set on the outskirts of an interstellar empire where FTL travel is commonplace but intelligent robots are rare and expensive. Though the Iris Empire has stood for a thousand years, a talented individual can find plenty of opportunity. But the nobility of this empire guards its privileges jealously.

Alma Boykin

Three Winter Tails

A Cat Among Dragons Story Set

Faith, Hope, Love, and bar-fights.

“Peace on Earth, good will to all” doesn’t apply to Rada Ni Drako and Yori dar Ohrkan. At least, not without close adult supervision, as these three winter-themed stories reveal. Colonel Adamski may lose all his feathers from stress-molt before spring finally arrives.

Mary Catelli

Journeys And Wizardy

Drunken mermaids – a clan cursed to become crows – a magic book that even the Nameless Necromancer fears – and more in this reprint collection of thirteen stories and a poem.

Now in print

So, once more, I think I’m getting a horrible cold, which since the first symptoms mimic the early symptoms I’m afflicting characters with in Darkship Revenge I spent two days thinking was psychosomatic.  Then I took the steroids for the outbreak of auto-immune. And the stuffiness is starting to recede along with the eczema, leading me to believe this entire thing is just another dang auto-immune attack.

I hate taking steroids because they make me gain weight, and seriously, I’d prefer to gain it by eating chocolate cake.

Yeah, the outbreak of eczema/asthma/arthritis was bad around the time a member of the family had surgery, (really bad, it was the reason I couldn’t sleep for several days), abated somewhat, and then inexplicably started up again, full force around the election, and seemed to settle into a permanent pattern of irritation.

This is not unusual . So in my round of doctors’ appointments I went in and asked for “the usual” which is antibiotic, steroid cream and steroid tablets.  But I was hoping to hold off on the steroid tablets.  The Nurse Practicioner agreed with my plan to take the antibiotic first (because one time before, the antibiotic was enough to calm things down and then I could control it with the cream.

Well, not this time.  Maybe it has gone on too long.  Anyway, it seems to be taking care of the breathing too.

We have friends coming over tonight, and the house is a zoo, so I’m going to do be doing some picking up and cleaning, though the dinner is the usual weekend dinner chez Hoyt: a bunch of finger foods, a few bottles of wine, because even when we don’t have guests, when both boys come to eat with us we’ll talk and debate till morning.

So this is a non-post-post.

For reasons known only to my friends, who are like you maniacs but worse, I got not one, not two, but three messages THROUGH THE NIGHT telling me Fidel is dead.

If this matches the other communist regimes, this is a time of hope.  The transition might or might not work.  I know Raul has been in charge for a while, and THIS transition might hold, but the next one might be the one that breaks it.  Communist regimes always devolve into dynasties, and I don’t think there’s a clear success to Raul, and he’s getting old.  I’m almost hopeful that 2016 will do for him.

2016 has been characterized as “the year in which gods bleed” and it seems to be true, from the harvesting of beloved celebrities to the puncturing of the left’s certainty of their infallible chosen successor.  (A certainty so great that, let’s be honest, they convinced even US of it.)

In that spirit, I’m reading When Prophecy Fails to understand the mechanism.

It’s a little tricker with the “progressive” movement, because they’re not one movement, but several, and they don’t have a “set date” for the arrival of utopia.  Not as such.  Which makes disconfirmation more difficult.

But I know a lot of the black leftist voters (okay, not the smarter ones) who voted for Obama expected him to become “our king” and usher in a system of black-rule forever.  That obviously didn’t happen.  (I know because of their comments, on blogs, and overheard the days after election.)

I know a lot of white leftist voters expected Obama to be “sort of a god” and even though they cling (bitterly) to the idea that he was one of our great presidents (despite fricked up economy internally and wars abroad) they show signs that the discomfirmation upset them.

Probably the most pitiable group are the millenials.  My younger son tells me they were told that there would never again be a Republican president in their lifetime.  He’s promised me a post about this and about the reactions he’s seen.  I’ll see if I can get him to read When Prophecy Fails this weekend.  (If he doesn’t have tests next week.) And then I’ll see how that fits.

But to an extent what we’re seeing is what would happen if after a communist revolution, people insisted on going back to the ancien regime.  It’s sort of like watching the restoration in Frnace, I imagined.  What this country has gone through is nothing less than a putsch and they’re astonished that it didn’t take. Even my generation was indoctrinated.  How come it didn’t hold?

If they studied real history they’d realize even when a regime is totalitarian (which we always fell sort of, though Europe comes close) and the information tightly controlled, after a few years or generations the real world breaks in.  Cults have limited ability to keep their followers in, much less a cult forced on a large population.

We know two things for sure: on January 2017 the economy will be found to have suddenly collapsed and it will be Trump’s fault the day he’s sworn in.  (Some of this is already happening.  Apparently NPR predicted a disastrous Black Friday because Trump.)  And Trump will be the Worst President Ever the first day of his presidency.  Or, as we’re seeing, before.

But the thing is, if he does achieve even 1/10th what he has promised and turn some of the collectivist policies around, and unfetter our poor shackled economy even minimally, eventually the cognitive dissonance of disconfirmation will set in.

For some it will be the last disconfirmation, the one that sets them free.  Others will just go crazier.

Interesting times ahead, and thank heavens for the internet that makes the “unified narrative” of the MSM if not unimportant at least not all prevasive.

And now that I can breathe again, I’m going to clean the house and get ready for company.

This is not a post.  There will vignettes, promo post, and likely Dark Fate tomorrow.

Also planned is a shortish MHI comes to Goldport.  AND I’m going to put my indie stuff on sale for cyber Monday.

Now go pet your cats/dogs/walk your kids/sit down with a good book. This is the extended holiday weekend.  Go remember how good your life is, before you strive to make it better.

 

*I want to thank everyone who pitches in with guest posts, so that I can finish this book, particularly younger son and right-hand-wench Kate Paulk.*

Three-Fifths of a Lie – Kate Paulk

We’ve all heard the people who wrote the Constitution of the United States dismissed with a flip comment about how much modern people can trust someone who thought blacks were worth three-fifths of a person. Seeing and hearing comments like that from people who damn well ought to know better, people who should have some grounding in what the Constitution means and the context (you know, historians, lawyers… people who have supposedly studied this stuff) really gets my back up because the truth is so freaking obvious and it’s all there. It’s not like anyone’s tried to cover this up.

Way back in the ancient history (well, not quite) that was the late 1700s, some of the states coming into the fledgling United States of America had legal slavery, both the indentured and chattel variety. Some did not. The people writing the Constitution included representatives from slave states and free states. All of them wanted to make sure their states had reasonable representation in the new government.

And they argued. They argued over everything. I’m sure there were duels almost fought over the placement of every dot on every i. Some of those arguments make no sense to us now, while others still resonate – and one of the biggest sources of contention was in how the states were to be represented in the new government.

A simple representative system wouldn’t work: the states with the biggest cities and highest populations would completely overwhelm the voices of the smaller and/or less populated states. Think New York City telling Alaskans (rural or urban) what was a reasonable amount of heating to use (only then it was more NYC telling the ass end of PA or telling NH what they should be doing). At the same time, allocating each state the same proportion of representation would allow the small, rural, thinly populated states to dictate terms to the big urban states.

They weren’t going to get agreement with either option – and they knew if they couldn’t come to some kind of agreement, there wouldn’t be a United States.

For the legislative branch, obviously, they went with the lower house being the purely population based one, and the upper having equal representation per state.

For the Presidency (and back then, the Vice President’s office as well), what ultimately emerged was something I grew up with in Australia: to win, the President needs to win a majority of votes in a majority of states – it’s not phrased quite that way, but that’s how the Electoral College works out, made a little less obvious by the way each state has its allocation set according to the state population. The basic idea to ensure that anyone elected to the Presidency had a reasonably broad appeal.

Which led to a rather thorny problem and what I’ve been known to euphemistically describe as animated discussion.

To determine how many Electoral College votes each state could cast, a census was going to be used. But in the slave states, there were more slaves than free Americans, and while free men could potentially become voters, that wasn’t going to happen for slaves. This meant that if every person was counted, the slave states would have a disproportionate influence over the nation.

But, if the census only counted free people, the slave states would walk away from the union, something all the delegates at that first Constitutional Convention knew couldn’t be allowed to happen, no matter how distasteful the compromises they’d need would be. If the slave states walked, the free states wouldn’t be strong enough to protect themselves against the British Empire (and neither would the slave states).

What to do? If the delegates had gone with the more enlightened modern perspective certain people on the Intertubes seem to think they should have taken and counted everyone, the slave states would have dominated Congress, the Senate, and the Presidency. It’s likely that slavery wouldn’t have gone away until mechanical cotton harvesting became a thing – and became cheaper than housing and feeding slaves.

If they’d refused to count slaves towards how many electoral districts and how many Electoral College votes the slave states had, the union would have failed.

Instead, they went for the three-fifths compromise: for the purposes of determining how many Electoral College votes and how many electoral districts a state had, slaves would count as three-fifths of a free person.

This wasn’t an anti-black measure. There were free blacks and white slaves. It was an anti-slavery measure that worked to keep the slave states from leaving and to ensure that, per person, free states had a higher representation than slave states.

Claiming that the three-fifths compromise was because the delegates didn’t see slaves as people is at least three-fifths of a lie – and, like the curate’s egg, that makes it wholly deceptive.

When I was little, my favorite day was Saturday.  You see, Saturday afternoon the women in my family turned the entire house out of doors and cleaned as though it were a competition sport.

Being too young to help, I usually was sent off with dad to hike in the woods (in summer) or go look at holiday lights in the city or watch some sports event he wanted to see.

And then we came home, to a house that was sparkling clean, a (usually fairly spare on Saturdays) cooked dinner, and the consciousness that all work was done for a while.

When I got older and started participating in the cleaning, Saturday evening was even better.  You had a sense everything that needed to be done was done, and you could take a break and just be.

I figure Thanksgiving partakes of the same feeling, the feeling of having worked hard and now having enough to see you through the winter ahead.  It’s the feeling of harvest festivals in every culture, as far back as we can go.

I haven’t done everything, this year.  The book still hangs half finished, mostly because of all the moves (!) and yesterday, between four appointments and hunsgiving at Pete’s Kitchen (I promise next year, if we’re all still here, and I’m not ill or something, we’ll plan this a month in advance.  Until then, I’m considering a hunsdinner on the first tuesday starting in January.  Mostly because sometimes I need to see people and not just their pixels.) nothing got written.

Fortunately today it’s just us and our friend Charles, and since we have company on Saturday and I need to do a real house cleaning by then, I’m not even going to really do a deep clean.  (Charles knows our mess.)  I’m just doing cat-vomit-cleaning which is a constant duty, and kitchen cleaning.

Right now, I confess I feel a great deal of lassitude.  Not tiredness, precisely, just a feeling like I wouldn’t like to do much, probably the result of yesterday’s unusual exertions and people contact (which is why I need MORE people contact, of course.)

The family is (I think) still asleep, and I have some corn bread for stuffing in the oven.  Later I’ll spatchock a turkey and set a bunch of side dishes in the crockpots.

Even though the book isn’t done (TRULY should be done this week, although I’m not as fast as I used to be, and probably won’t be till I get new glasses)  this year has been one of several for lack of a better word, accomplishments.

My catalogue of gratefulness is so long, that I have no way of tagging all of it, so here’s a jumble of it, in short: I’m thankful we have a place to move, got fully moved in and that both boys are moved into situations they enjoy.  I’m thankful I have you guys to see me through the worst times, when thing get wobbly.  I’m thankful my mind is functioning again, and I can write again (more than I can say.)  I’m thankful I have three more books under contract after this one is done.  I’m thankful for my wonderful husband (always) and my two wonderful sons (always) and for number three son by adoption and his wife and two kids (Always, always.)  I’m thankful my car is still with us, though hopefully we’ll buy me a “new” one from the delivery money for these books. I’m thankful that Dan has a decent job, which carried us when I couldn’t work at all.  In these days, that’s no minor feat, and no minor thing to be grateful for.  I’m thankful that I have colleagues and friends in my life, who make me feel like I’m not a freak of nature for what I do or what I think.I’m thankful Euclid-cat who is sixteen is looking pretty spry, still, even if getting a little skinny.  I’m grateful derpfish is still with us, because if he had died right after Miranda, it would have sent me down the depressive spiral. I’m thankful that my issues with driving don’t seem to be psychological but physical.  Expensive for two pairs of glasses, to be sure, but not as expensive as extensive psychotherapy.

Most of all, I’m thankful for the stories that come and fill my mind, and make me want to tell them.  And I’m thankful other people like to read them.  To be able to do what you love and get paid for it is the best gift of all.

And I promise in the next year you’ll have a lot more to love.  (Be mindful that Amanda Green challenged me to a book a month, and I don’t mean to fall behind her production.)

Now go have your turkey and meet with your real life friends and family.  See you here tomorrow, for more of our peculiar fun.

I didn’t mean to scare anyone with my plethora of medical appointments.  I needed to get blood drawn to test the adjustment on the thyroid meds.  I also arranged to have a vision test, because I find myself panicking behind the wheel and that either meant that my vision was gone wonky, or my head had.  And while I’d panicked before while driving, when my vision was bad, I’d never gone crazy that way.  Precisely.

Anyway, so I went to get my vision tested.  For three years it was a real problem getting any writing done.  I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t “be there” and I couldn’t think myself into the story.  Also, for the first time in my life, I had trouble thinking of the right word and sometimes had to approach it by spiraling towards the meaning.

Now writing is relatively easy and I’m enjoying it again, but there have been a lot of interruptions.  I thought.  Or maybe my attention is not as intense as I thought.

At any rate, that’s not why I went to get my eyes checked.  I went because of the driving thing.

Turns out my vision is completely messed up, and not only has my astigmatism got doubly worse, but I somehow have double vision horizontally.

So, now I have ordered new glasses, which should make the writing easier, and maybe allow me to drive.

Anyway, that’s what we don’t see.  When what you use to see with is off, unless it’s really obvious (and sometimes then) you end up not realizing what was wrong.

On the other hand, sometimes what we don’t see affects us.

This week, I had two things rubbed in my nose.  One was that some kids in a college (and I’m not sure where, but it was linked at instapundit.  Might even have been by me) I think Loyola, were complaining about an “America” themed party, which makes them feel “divisive and unwelcoming” or something.  Because American citizens, or guests, living in America, should not love America or celebrate the special place we live in because…  I got nothing.

Also driving down the highway, I came across someone with a bumpersticker that said “I made the dhs list” which, you know, reminded me of how people who have great attachment to the constitution are are considered a terrorism risk.

I have before said that the people from the sixties, propagandized by the soviet union into thinking the US was all wrong and responsible for everything bad, are now in charge of most institutions (and the further left they are, the more in charge they are) and raised at least a generation to despise their own country and be afraid to feel any love for it.

This is the sort of thing that happens to occupied nations.  As my friend Bill Reader says, the problem is we lost the war.  Not the cold war, the propaganda war.  The USSR turned at least one of our generations into occupiers, who then destroyed the very heart of patriotism and love for our country.

We didn’t do that to Germany or Japan after defeat.  But for the USSR that was the way to our defeat.

That tantrum the millenials are throwing?  They’re throwing it, because they thought everyone agreed with them that America was terrible and should be destroyed from within. Or maybe it’s because the poor bunnies don’t even understand that everything they want to do would destroy the good things about the system.

They don’t realize that on average they have the freest, most prosperous life of anyone but the very rich in the other nations.  They don’t realize that compared to the rest of the world, this is still the land of opportunity.

They’ve lived here all their lives, in the lap of luxury, so much that they don’t see it.  And so, they’ve allowed themselves to be propagandized and made to feel guilty, and convinced the rest of the world is poor because they’re well off, and that they have to destroy America so the world will be better and wealthier.

Of course that’s not what will happen. When America sneezes, the world catches pneumonia.  Which means if the US falls, the world loses its engine of wealth and innovation.

So these blind children led by the blind are trying to destroy the things they love, in the name of making it all better, which it won’t.

We must apply corrective to the nation as soon as possible.  And I mean right now.  Let’s  go work on it.

 

Probably while I’m at the lab, waiting to get blood drawn, or maybe at Dan’s doctor, while waiting for him to be done (yes, it’s that kind of day, and since we haven’t changed doctors yet, it’s in another city.)

Meanwhile, I made an announcement at MGC, which you might be interested in.

And Be A Dog.

When Teacher is Wrong – David Burkhead

I have a daughter.  She’s bright (in her school’s “high ability” program”.  She’s athletic (swim team for a couple of years now).  And she’s utterly adorable. (Don’t challenge me on that.  Just…don’t.)

Unfortunately, she’s in public school and there’s not a lot I can do about that.  As much as I’d love to homeschool, I’ve got to keep working to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table.  And my wife can’t do it because while I bring home the bigger paycheck, it’s at a very small company and my wife’s job does things like provide health insurance. (And with my various problems–I’d say it’s a shame we’ve got to get old, but when you consider the alternative…–we really need that insurance.)

So, she’s in public school.

A couple of years ago she brought back a school report which had an item “The purpose of government is to provide services that individuals can’t pay for.”

What?

So I ask her about it.  She tells me that the example they gave was street cleaning.  Someone has to clean the streets and that’s the purpose of government. (I’ll have a bit to say on this subject somewhat later.)

Again, what?  Yes, to a certain extent that may be a role of government but the role?  Don’t think so.

Obviously, the school and I disagreed on this subject.  This wasn’t a matter of there being an objectively “right” answer but rather presenting something that’s a matter of philosophy and values as though it did have an objective correct answer.

Now, I could have gone into the school and raised a fuss, insist that they teach my philosophy and values on the rest of the class.  Instead, I took the time, generally when driving my daughter to school in the morning, to discuss the issue with her.  I started with the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That
to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving
their just powers from the consent of the governed

And, so that the purpose of government is to secure our rights and that the basic rights include Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness.

Once she had that, we went on to the Constitution, the three branches of government: Legislature which makes the law, Executive which carries out (executes) the law, and Judicial which tries cases under the law.  We went over the Bill of Rights.

And, so, I made sure that my daughter understood my philosophy of government because that’s my responsibility.

And it’s not just matters of value and philosophy.  The schools, or at least the teachers, have been known to be wrong on matters of fact.  And this is nothing new.  Sometimes it’s outdated information.  For instance, when I was in grade school mountain building was described as being caused as follows:

When it was formed the Earth was much hotter than it is now.  As it cooled it contracted, as cooling things are wont to do.  This caused the crust, the “skin” to wrinkle like a withered apple.  These wrinkles are mountains.

This was at least a decade after plate tectonics had become widely accepted as the cause of such things as mountain building.

Other examples include a fourth grade teacher telling me that all radioactive rocks contain Uranium. (I could see in the book that Uranium was given as an example of something in radioactive rocks, not an exhaustive listing.) And a Sixth grade teacher telling me that the Curies discovered radioactive elements (as in discovering radioactive elements existed rather than the accurate statement that they discovered particular radioactive elements).  And so on.

And sometimes it’s not the teacher.  Sometimes it’s the book.  The encyclopedia I grew up with described stellar evolution thusly:

Stars start as large gas clouds.  They start to contract.  As they contract, they heat. (So far, so good, in an oversimplified way.  But now it goes off the rails) At a certain point they are hot enough to glow as Red Giant stars.  They continue to contract, getting hotter, and proceed through “yellow giant” “white giant” and “blue giant” Eventually contracting to a “blue dwarf”.  Once they reach blue dwarf stage, they gradually start to cool, going back through the spectrum until they reach red dwarf and finally extinguish.

That theory was superseded in the 1920’s.  Yet there it was, presented as Gospel Truth in a respected encyclopedia forty years later and being taught in our schools.

Sometimes the teacher is wrong.  Sometimes the book is wrong.  You, as an individual, have to be ready to question the book, question the teacher, and make sure your children do so as well.

And, now, I’m going to digress a bit on something brought up above simply because I think it’s interesting. I mentioned street cleaning and that I’d have a bit to say on that somewhat later.  Well, it’s somewhat later.

Folk have argued, with some justice, that public good activities such as street cleaning are among the legitimate functions of government.  And, in at least some instances, they make a compelling case.  Michael Z. Williamson in his Libertarian paean Freehold goes into this a bit.  There is a scene involving heavy, road blocking snow.  The libertarian government of Grainne (the eponymous freehold) has no services for things like snow removal.  Thus, it is up to each individual business or property owner to clear the road in front of his own business/property.  And if the guy next door doesn’t do it, well, then it doesn’t get done unless you do it yourself.  The residents of Grainne, almost rabid on the subject of individual liberty, are willing to accept that.  Other folk may not find that an acceptable trade.  One, however, has to be careful with that because Government is Force, including deadly force.  Matters of public sanitation, with the spread of disease and encouragement of vermin, may justify that force.  Other things do not.

Writers like me suffer from a very strange impairment.  We tend to trust what our character tells us.  This is possibly a form of insanity, because my characters tend to be the epitome of “unreliable narrators.”

I’ve been struggling with Darkship Revenge since I lost the second half since the move.  I’ve been doing the equivalent of adding a new layer of paint, then removing it all with solvent, then again and again.

This is an unhappy state of affairs and it usually betokens a huge issue in what I HAVE written.  If the months since this summer hadn’t been fraught with moves and cat illnesses, with kids moving out and their own issues, I would have, long since, figured out what the problem was.

The thing is, I’d finished the book once, d*mn it, so it must be finishable.  Also, my outline (why do I do these, they lead me into trouble) showed exactly where the story was going, so why couldn’t I lay it down?

When Speaker to Lab Animals visited he illuminated the mechanism of a biological attack in the book and I thought “That’s it, now I can go on.”

Instead I continued to add layer, then remove, add then remove.

It wasn’t until I isolated myself in a hotel room (yes, there is a reason for this.  If I’m not isolated and forced to think about what is wrong, I tend to find other things to do, like clean bathrooms, groom cats, and other things I convince myself are very urgent.) and forced myself to lay down wordage, that I realized what the knot at the middle of the plot was.

Bear with me, these are not so much spoilers as teases, and heck, the clue is on the cover.

Yes, sure, I know exactly what Athena is supposed to do.  I know what she does in this book.  I can sort of watch her and see that.  BUT the why loses punch from about half way on.  I mean, up till then she’s doing things for her survival and Kit’s.  There is no thought.  But from that point on and when things get rough, she has no reason to stay on Earth.  She and Kit could leave to go to Eden with their daughter, end of story.

Oh, sure, she would be carrying the deadly plague back, but here’s the thing: from the moment they figure out the plague and what caused it, her actions make perfect sense.  Only not even advanced medical establishments can figure something as tricky as what Speaker came up with that easily.  So there are a few weeks in which she could easily just pack up and leave with Kit.  Actually now I think about it, she wouldn’t even risk Eden, because the trip is six months.

So what makes her stay on Earth through some very unpleasant stuff?  I can’t do it simply as “author says so.”  Particularly because I’m not forcing the character in the least.  I know when I am, and what that feels like, and sometimes we all have to do it, at least for minor things.  But you can’t do it for what will hold the plot together for the last half of the book.  And here’s the thing: I’m not.  Staying is the natural thing for her to do. But WHY?  Until I know why I can’t sell it to the readers.  My idea of why someone would do something might be wrong or at least unbelievable to other people.  I have got that mostly about why Kit puts up with Athena in Darkship thieves.  “Why would a sensible man?” But I can believe that, because young men are stupid when they like a woman.  And men of all ages often like the worst possible woman for them.

However, Athena is not a young man, and reckless though she is, there’s not an ounce in her of “selfless service to the needs of others” which is what she does, mostly, in this middle part.  Sure, she’s grown up a lot, and sure, I can smooth some of it by having her think of what would have become of her if Kit’s family hadn’t taken to her and looked after her.  But there has to be more, because until she can be her normal irresponsible self, find a way to leave her daughter secure and go kick butt, she’s going to be pushed into a very uncomfortable and indeed demanding position, which simply isn’t her style.

I went to bed disturbed by this, and slept very badly.  And then this morning, lying in bed taking stock of my various appendages (sure, you don’t do that.  Don’t come crying to me when you wake up minus an arm and don’t realize it till the evening,)  I realized that the problem is I tend to take Athena at face value.  You do, you know.  And Athena is the LEAST emotionally unselfaware person in the world, except me in certain moods. I mean, it took thinking she’d lost Kit to realize she loved him.

I now know why she stays and why she does what she does.  The good news is that I can probably go back and finesse it, without losing the wordage I did this weekend.  The bad news is that it IS finessing.  I need to work it in in such a way that the reader knows why, but Athena doesn’t know why exactly.  Being exasperated with herself is part of her issues in this one.  Hint, she never wanted to be a mother, and feeling maternal is the last thing she expects.

On the other hand, KIT needs to raise this before the second part of the adventure starts.  He needs to say “We have powerpods to deliver.  Why would  we even DO this.”  It needs to stick.  Because it needs to be there for people like me, who must have a reason.

And beyond the writer nattering… How often do we do that, and lie to ourselves about our own motives?  I will confess I didn’t realize how depressed I was leading up to the election, nor why.  I thought I was in one of my episodic downturns, but not that the cause of it was that some part of my brain had decided we couldn’t survive Hillary.

Can we survive Trump?  Who the heck knows?  But there is a chance.  A chance is needed so that I don’t feel like I’m fighting through the darkness without end.

And the indications — admits — that I’m seeing from friends who are politically connected are surprisingly good.  He’s too statist by half, but all of them are, and also, I’ll be honest, I don’t think either the culture or the technology are at the point we can reach the sort of freedom I would like.  We must get there, and avoiding going further down the socialist rabbit hole is all we can do right now.  And that — knocks on head — seems to be sort of working.

You need to stop the car, before you can turn around and wrestle bozo the state from the seat.

I will also confess the reaction from the left makes me very relieved with the results — and makes me realize why I was so depressed before the election — because it shows  they have interiorized politics as revelation, with the certainty that their way is not only right but inevitable.  It’s going to take a few slaps with the cold fish of reality before they realize it’s neither.  It’s going to take a few slaps for them even to THINK about whether the outcome they’re working towards is worth it.

I’ve long suspected the Marxist science fiction writers yeah, and those who are “soft socialists” and internalize the ideas without examining them, know exactly where their preferred model would lead.  Suddenly, the future went from being desirable to something rusty and full of scarcity and poverty, where all wonder and excitement was killed dead with dogma.

They know.  They just thing it’s inevitable, and as such have decided to justify it and push it.  Perhaps they hope they’ll be the last eaten.  And perhaps it’s guilt at how much they have that drives it.  (Yes, even for those of us who were never rich.  I have a post planned for this week about secondary stream wealth.)  Having been sold the finite pie as a model of economics, they’re convinced the best future for everyone outweighs their own comfort, needs and desires.

Of course, since economics doesn’t work that way, what they’re really doing is driving everyone towards a more impoverished, darker world.  And their subconscious tries to throw up flags, which are lost, because they can’t get through the “conscious dogma” that has been pounded into their brains.

So they convince themselves these rusty futures are somehow desirable, and seem determined to write 1984 as a utopia.

Because we’re human.  And humans are broken right down the middle, with our conscious thoughts going “lalalalalalalalala” in the face of what our gut knows.

Which is why I’ve come to the conclusion Trump’s election is a good thing.  Oh, I wish we’d elected a more strict constitutionalist, or a constitutionalist at all.  But just stopping what the left thinks is inevitable enough to make them pause and think is a goal in itself.

Not that they are, of course.  Right now, they’re blaming it all on “we weren’t heard.”  And “we must message better.”  Which means they need a few more smacks on the nose.

And people like them, and me, who live way too much in our heads, need to think a little less about macro movements of society and go back to doing things as much as we can.  Write and create, and build.  Because those too speak a language of their own.  And in the end, it is that language that carries the day.

Humans can convince themselves of the most stupid things and talk loudly about them.  Like Athena, being convinced she never wanted to be a mother or how much she hates being responsible for anyone.

But if the left truly believed the individual doesn’t matter, or that humanity is a blight upon the world — really believed it, at the gut level — they would all have committed mass suicide.

That they haven’t means their guts, their “below the dogma” actions and thoughts are all right.

Take that with you into Thanksgiving dinner, particularly those of you who have family of a more left political persuasion.  Remember that what they say might not be exactly what they think or are, not at gut level.

Meet them there and build upward.  This too is a political fight to the extent that politics is downstream from culture.

Be thankful for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and convey your happiness and your joy that they too have that.  Then talk of recipes and kids and pets.  They’re not ready yet, but you can reinforce their gut and let their thoughts be quiet a while.

In the end, it is not dogma that wins but works.

Go work.