Category: Uncategorized

*Somehow after the last week, this seemed appropriate. And SOMEHOW I scheduled this for six PM.  ARGH.  Should have checked earlier, sorry.*

Puppet Masters – A Blast From The Past post FEBRUARY 2013

It’s not what we know that kills us… It’s the many things we think we know that just ain’t so – and which might be completely different, in fact.

Take for instance sex – yeah, this early in the day.  Let’s have a show of hands.  How many of you watched Splendor in the Grass?  How many realized it makes no sense whatsoever?

I was probably blessed in watching it now as an adult – a few years ago – and quite conscious of the insidious myths of the twentieth century, including that repressing your sexual drive will make you maaaaaaaaaaaad.  Maaaaaaaaaaad.

I’ll head things off here, and tell you right out that no, I don’t think people can be celibate life long unless they’re endowed with a special grace which is more than I – or most humans – have.  (Grace or the ability to sublimate to other things.)

Being celibate life-long might make you a little odd.  You might develop an obsession with naughty pictures, or something.  BUT mostly it will make you lonely and sad, since it’s not good for man (or woman) to be alone.  We are, by nature, designed to have a mate.

This is however not in the same realm as “you can’t repress any sexual desires at all, no matter the time, the place, your age or your circumstances and if you try to you’ll become psychotic.”

As powerful a drive as sexual desire is, it’s not magical.  Repressing it can’t make a good man into a mass murderer or a rapist.  Repressing it – temporarily, because, duh, you’re a kid and unmarried – won’t send a stable girl into the madhouse.  (If she’s the kind to go to the madhouse, then she will be in worse trouble if she DOES have sex.  I don’t think someone that mentally fragile could cope with the consequences of sex – attachment, fidelity [or lack thereof] and possible pregnancy.)

The idea that it is magical and that if repressed it will make you into a monster is the sort of cheap Freudianism that has infused society since – yep – World War One and which is at the back of much of our entertainment AND our educational policies.

In entertainment it causes people to think that stuff like Splendor on the Grass is “deep” and books with that sort of meaning are “important” (Which is why kids in YA now screw like minxes) – instead of faulty and done to death – and in education it causes people to laugh politely at the suggestion kids should be told it’s best to abstain till they’re in a stable relationship.

It’s so prevalent that the laugh is never explained.  It’s all “Oh, my dear, she believes in abstention” as though this were the ultimate stupidity.  Because everyone knows that kids can’t control their sex drive, and if they did they’d break out in pimples, or something.  Only, of course, while some kids might not be able to abstain (there’s enormous variation in human desire) most can if told it’s not going to make them go maaaaaaad.  Maaaaaad.

In the same vein, everyone knows Europe is more sophisticated than the US.  Why, my dear, their politicians routinely have mistresses.  Publicly.  And no one minds.  But the rubes in the US get very upset if they find their president has a squeeze.  As if that weren’t the right of every rich and important man.

Uh…  You see, it has nothing to do with sophistication.  Unless by sophistication you mean the sort of cultural memory that goes back to Rome and knows, of course, that it is impolite to kiss your spouse in public, but quite all right to kiss your mistress.

The Europeans grant these privileges to their rich and powerful because they believe some animals are more equal than others.  They’ve been used to it. There’s feudalism in their minds.

We, on the other hand, founded on bourgeois virtues, believe that contracts are made to be kept, and if a man is married, he’s married.  He gave his word, and violating his word without remorse and semi-publicly is a severe flaw in someone who’s sworn to serve the country.

Everyone also knows that all cultures are alike – except ours, which is imperialist, colonialist and bad.  This too infuses our teaching about other countries and even an entire class of politicians who think that our foreign policy should be based on self abasement and apology.

To maintain this view of the world, our schools teach what I’d call “cute brown people” anthropology.  Oh, fine, I don’t think they see it that way.  They teach the cookery of the country, and the arts and crafts, and talk about their admirable achievements (usually rather in the patronizing “and they invented a new type of clog” line.  I mean, you can’t expect little brown people to have BIG achievements, and you should praise the little ones, because wow, think about it, new type of clog.)

What they don’t teach is that every “underdog” culture was at some point dominant.  They don’t teach stuff such as that the Zulus were no more native to South Africa than the Afrikaners.  They’d immigrated across Africa in fire and blood, and got to South Africa just about when the Afrikaners did.  Assuming they’re “native” because of their skin color is the rankest racism.

What they don’t teach is that EVERY HUMAN race, culture and subtype is two things: intensely racist (in the sense of tribalist.  The humanoid band allowed us to survive.  We seek the company of those like us) and colonialist (you expand your band’s territory if you can.)

The other thing they don’t teach is that, as an extension of – and defeater – of the tribe, the nation state – EVERY NATION STATE – is out for its own interests.  Long before “capitalism” or “fight for resources” or whatever the Marxists think this is all about (and don’t get me started on THEIR illusions.  I have a book to finish) the great leaders of the French were those who were out for French interests and French domination.  (Read about Napoleon.  There were reasons he was called “the monster” – but the French STILL lionize him.)

It is what we think we know that just ain’t so – and it takes a very sophisticated society indeed to have this sort of mass illusion for so long – that is killing Western society and the US.

And it is time we woke up from the screaming nightmare we’re been in since WWI.  It’s time to realize most of these ideas are not only wrong — they are, on the face of them and stated out loud (as they never are) laugh out loud ridiculous.

Like the idea that it will do lasting psychological harm to abstain from sex while in high school.  Because… because… because… Cheese!  Also lasers!  Or the idea that people who can tan (like me) are automatically endowed with superpowers of goodness, kindness, and sinlessness.  (I prefer the open racism of Patricia Wentworth where a character is clearly a murderer because he’s part Portuguese.  At least it’s open.)   As for the idea of European sophistication, Europe is the only place where I’ve heard OPEN homophobic, racist and sexist remarks in PROFESSIONAL situations, and no one says anything.  (Of course, at least it’s out in the open.)

But out here — and in Europe, even though they’re more blunt about their own prejudices (btw, this is allowable because they “know” the US is far more racist, sexist and homophobic than they are.  It’s one of THEIR accepted lies.)  — we believe most of these things at a level so deep it filters into all our entertainment and culture, and makes itself accepted without ever being thought about.

In many ways, it’s not very different from having an alien controlling our brain – as in Heinlein’s Puppet Masters.

Go and read that book (again, if you already have).  Then take off your overcoat, kill your rider, and start learning what is real and what isn’t.

The sex-soaked, human-despising, self-destroying culture of the past century is dead and stinking.  Let’s crawl out from under the corpse of its entertainment and “news” and “scholarship” before it suffocates us.

“We had to destabilize the area, in order to save it.” – William Lehman

An alleged expert on economics named Thomas Piketty has written a screed on how to combat Daesh… Well, first off, Dr. Piketty is not just an Economist, He seems to be the inheritor of the crown from Keynes on the school of “let’s redistribute the worlds wealth so that everyone has the same outcome” now since Mommy and Daddy where Trotskyites, this is not terribly surprising. In his biography he quickly claims to be “a firm believer in capitalism, private property, and the market”. He keeps using those words, I don’t think they mean what he thinks they mean. I base this belief on the observation that his PHD thesis and all of his later work is completely wrapped around the concept of wealth redistribution and the glories of Socialism. (Which of course gives him firm chops as a believer in the market/snerk\)

Well, with this sort of background, you can guess I am sure, what his solution to Daesh is, and you would be right… As explained by Jim Tankersley’s blog (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/30/why-inequality-is-to-blame-for-the-rise-of-the-islamic-state/?utm_content=bufferad4c4&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer) He believes that Inequality is a major driver of Middle Eastern terrorism, and yes, folks, it’s all our (the west) fault. He goes on to point out that the M.E. political and social system is fragile because of the high concentration of oil wealth in few countries with relatively little population, in fact he claims (possibly not without reason) that it’s the worst in the planet. All in all, he claims that the “have not’s” are in a state of semi-slavery, which causes the Jihadists, along with the casualties of the wars in the region, perpetuated by “the West”. “These are the regimes that are militarily and politically supported by Western powers, all too happy to get some crumbs to fund their [soccer] clubs or sell some weapons. No wonder our lessons in social justice and democracy find little welcome among Middle Eastern youth.” We should combat this by “ensure(ing) that Middle eastern oil money funds “regional development,” including far more education”

So let me get this straight. The way to combat Daesh is to force (since they are unlikely to do it willingly) the five or six relatively stable governments (note I said relative) to do what they have proven over the last century that they will not do on their own. IE distribute the wealth equally with the enemy tribes within their own nation. And this will stop Daesh from being able to recruit. This seems to be the basic bottom line to his whole manifesto, if only we the west could make the governments of Saudi, UAE, Qatar etc. give more of their money to help the people instead of helping the people in power, all would be sweetness, light and unicorn farts.

Well the problems with that theory are legion, but let’s just hit a couple high notes.
First the vast majority of the clowns in high places in Daesh (and I’m speaking anything above cannon fodder) are middle class or upper class. They have degrees from various universities, here and abroad. These are not the poor, the poor don’t as a rule revolt, at least not successfully. But get the middle class and upper class pissed (cough G. Washington, P. Revere, T. Jefferson etc etal) and you have a problem. Based on how they are running the areas they do control, they have made it obvious that they’re no Clara Barton distributing free lollypops to the peoples. They just want to be the guys that get all the money, instead of being second tier, and they want the power.
Second how in God’s earth are you going to make the house of Saud do this? Asking pretty please ain’t likely to help. So you’re going to have to force it. Let’s examine this for a second. To stabilize an area we are going to want to destabilize the regimes that are semi stable??? To save the village we had to destroy it? Now don’t mistake me, I am second to none in my complete disrespect for the douches that make up the ruling family in Saudi. But throwing another nation into chaos is just not likely to help. Throwing all the semi stable nations in the region into chaos (wait, isn’t that what Obama tried with the “Arab Spring”? How the fuck is that working for you sparky?) well, I just don’t see that as a reasonable answer.

Daesh has shown themselves to be an excellent opportunistic virus. Find a place with a power vacuum and they’re THERE! Syria, Iraq (another thank you to Obama, for that, though in fairness, Bush was already working on pulling us out, mainly because the Iraqi government wouldn’t give us a Status of Forces agreement that we could live with. Was Bush bluffing? We don’t know. We do know that Obama pulled us out, and Daesh moved in) and Libya (again a hat tip to Arab Spring, and O) all have very large and effective going concerns as part of the umbrella that is Daesh. Now this putz wants us to destabilize more governments to force them to redistribute the wealth…

Tell you what Sparky, show me a place that Redistribution of wealth has worked for more than fifteen years before everything went to shit, and tell me how much of what I EARN you get to take to give to the people that don’t earn anything, and we can talk. (my answer will probably still be NO, but we can at least talk)

In the bad old days, which I remember because I’m about half a century old, if the media wanted you to believe something, you would believe it.

Well, most of the time.  I was here for the apotheosis of Jimmy Carter’s term, and as hard as he was screaming that all our good days were gone and the American dream was over, people still refused to believe him.  Despite the low pall of depression over most people, it didn’t quite take.  I think part of the problem, of course, is that he wore those ridiculous sweaters and the press wasn’t QUITE absolutely dedicated.  Cracks appeared, like, for instance, we knew about the thing with the bunny.

But most of the time, the media controlled the narrative, and controlled it completely.  If they said the economy was booming, you believed it.  Or most of the time you believed it, even if your local economy sucked.

Though Americans were always pretty mobile, before the internet, how many people in other areas did you really keep up with every day?  Most of the time, for most people, you might keep in touch with family in another state or maybe two, but those were limited areas too, and even if you and your friends were all pretty broke, how did you know the rest of the country wasn’t booming?  Particularly when everyone in the press kept saying it was the best times ever.  Or the worst, or it was all your fault and you had malaise.

If you went against the media narrative, everyone looked at you a little funny, and as though you were going around with your pants on your head or something.  Or worse.  I remember Bradbury said that the economy wasn’t as bad as all that in 91/92, against the constant dinning narrative of “worst times evah” and many people in the field made ugly remarks about his mental health.  (I thought his injunction to turn off the TV and the recession would go away was very apropos.)

I always find it funny when people on the left accuse those on the right of following some news program or narrative, particularly if that person is over 40.  We not only had to disagree, but we had to find our path to disagreeing on our own, in our own way, and hold on to it, even when it seemed everyone disagreed with us, and we must be going crazy.

And the facts were out there and if you checked them again and again and couldn’t compromise, you resigned yourself to being alone and perhaps crazy.  Or at least being considered crazy.

Some people out there are still feeling like they’re going crazy, but not as many.  Do not mistake it.  It was the blogs, the chats, the alternative news sites that made “Summer of Recovery” an obvious myth and a bust.

Oh, sure, the news media still has power, particularly with older people, but even with some people my age. Humans are social animals.  They want to be in the right and know what “everyone knows”, they want to fit in.

Unfortunately our media is something like 90% leftist.  And we’re not talking leftist like your uncle, the union pipe fitter.  We’re talking to the left of Lenin, leftist.  They didn’t need to coordinate narratives about Mitt Romney — a man who is at best lukewarm right, or perhaps European Social Democrat — being to the right of Hitler.  They all really believed that because compared to them, EVERYONE is “extreme right”.  Perhaps it’s the echo chamber effect, or the J-schools, who knows?

What I know is that they’re out of control, and every shooting in a dinky country town is made major by the need to push a left wing narrative.  H*ll, remember the “bombing” of the NAACP in Colorado Springs.  National news.  International.  The story went around the world.  And yet, you know, when it came out, it was a guy bombing his accountant because he thought the accountant was ignoring him, and the accountant had died six months before.

Did anyone else ever hear of that correction?  Or only us in this city?  Do other people think Colorado Springs is some white supremacy town?  Heck, the reason I knew that the bombing made no sense is that there aren’t that many minority populations in town, and those that are here are varieties of Hispanic.  (And a thriving Portuguese community, too.)

However the attack on NAACP made perfect sense to the media, who looks for white privilege under every rock, while “it was just a crazy guy bombing his attorney” had no interest at all.

And that media — crazy as it is — still holds sway.  It just doesn’t have as much power as it once did because we’re here.  And we’re not quiet.  They also fight, who only sling words and puncture holes in the narrative woven by the entertainment-news-industrial complex.

I know a lot of you are deep undercover.  I even understand.  Before I worked only for Baen and Indie I had layers and layers of secrecy and a completely invented identity for blogs.  No, two identities, depending on the blogs.  And I was afraid of making donations, because what if a blogger talked?  And I lived in fear an in-joke from the blogs would escape during a party and people would figure it out.

Because being less than to-the-left-of-Lenin in my field amounted to career suicide, at least if you weren’t a bestseller or a Baen-only author.

I GET the secrecy.  It’s really had to put your political beliefs, your social beliefs, your life philosophy above “baby needs shoes.”

And we are the people that make the world work.  We’re the ones who look after others first.  We keep quiet, we keep our heads down.  We make things work.

But I want you to think about those narratives.  And then I want you to think how they can be pierced by… no, not one voice, but many voices.  What is it the professor calls it?  An army of David’s with our little slingshot of words against the Goliath of the media.

The battle is ours.  Or is starting to be ours.

This is the time we can use you, though.  Think through it very carefully.  If it’s not your life, not your livelihood, not your kids’ food, not your aged parents’ support — if you can sidestep, move aside into a career where that doesn’t matter as much; or if you can do it undercover, with a constructed identity– we need your voice.  An army of Davids needs to be immense, because the reach of the media is.  Shouting down Big Brother needs every voice.

If you can, if there’s any way you can join us, maybe all you’ll do is make someone else feel less alone, less crazy.  Maybe all you’ll do is make someone else realize facts are facts.  Maybe all you’ll do is give the next person courage to speak out.  And they’ll give the next person the courage to speak out.  And they’ll give the next person the courage.

An avalanche starts with a grain of sand, an insignificant, near imperceptible movement.

Which is to say: come out, come out, wherever you are!

AND SHOUT.

Be not afraid.

 

    Interesting Times – Katie Jones

Some days I would really like to kick whomever originated the phrase, “May you live in interesting times.” I would much prefer that I lived in far less interesting times than today. I am looking out at a world that stands on the brink of yet another world war, trying to suss out who all the players are. The economy of the world is fragile at best, and every developed nation is drowning in debt. Europe is in the process of finding out what happens when you commit cultural suicide by inviting in too many immigrants who can’t or won’t assimilate. America is trying to do the same thing. Russia has one of the only strong leaders on the world stage. The west has too long painted itself as the villain in the mind of her young. Today, students learn to hate their cultural identity if they come from a western country. Our leaders make sounds about patriotism, and talk about multiculturism as an ideal in the same breath. The problem is that you can’t have conflicting cultures without conflict. It’s an immutable part of human nature to indulge in tribalism, and separate other people into “them” and “us”.

This mostly worked in America, because we’re large and spread out. Every region has a culture of its own, and it’s mostly friendly rivalries (North vs. South, Cubs vs Cardinals, soda vs pop, etc.). There are even enclaves of various other cultures within the various cities and towns, where immigrants have settled and hold on to parts of their previous country while they assimilate in the larger culture around them. When I hear people say Americans are uncultured, I really have to resist the urge to laugh in their faces. I can drive an hour from my house and get authentic Bosnian, Indian, Mexican, Korean, and Chinese food made by people who came from the countries in question who came here for more opportunities, freedom, or safety from some conflict. You can never travel outside the country and experience little bits of the world here, as well as some things that are uniquely American, and yet belong to subcultures. (Real Cajun cooking is an experience that every human being should have at least once.)

The problem comes in when people are not encouraged to become a part of the fabric of their new country’s culture rather than apart from it. Assimilation has become a dirty word, and some would have us believe that it is wrong to demand that those who wish to settle in a new country learn the dominant language and respect the local customs. France is paying for their experiment with this in the form of “no go zones” where the police don’t enforce the laws, and native French are attacked on the streets on a regular basis. They paid dearly in the form of a terrorist attack that killed over a hundred people in the heart of France. The issue isn’t Islam, really. The issue is taking in more people than can assimilate too quickly, and allowing them to take over an area to the point that local culture is completely overthrown.

This is made worse when the people taken in come from a culture that is vastly different. Every single area of Europe that has allowed a large enclave of Muslims from the Middle East to settle has seen an increase in sexual assaults and violence. England had an entire ring of these people passing around British children for sexual abuse. The culture of sexual independence in the western world apparently leads these immigrants to believe that it’s perfectly okay to force themselves on women. They find nothing wrong with taking children to their beds, so why should we? Keep in mind; this is a question of culture. In the culture they came from, women are little more than chattel. How can they be expected to conform to the local standards on respecting a woman if they aren’t expected to conform to any other part of the culture? This is the dark side of the shiny ideas about multiculturism. It’s also the danger that comes of western countries teaching their young that they are villains. If western society, which has lifted the station of man to heights never before seen, is the villain, than those who come from a society that hasn’t advanced since the Bronze Age must be misunderstood angels. Maybe we just need to concede more of our standards to appease them. Maybe we need to just accept that they’re different from us, even while they brutalize our women and children. Just because that hasn’t worked out for the survival of any culture ever is no reason not to try it again!

The European populace has had enough, it seems. Demonstrations are happening all over Europe. Groups meant to “protect” the native cultures of the various countries are popping up all over. Some of these groups are barely disguised hate groups. Some are people trying to gain protection from the hostile immigrants. They are all tapping into the rage of the people who have to live in these environments, and it’s only a matter of time before violence on a larger scale breaks out. This is a situation that has never worked out well in Europe, and I fear genocide of one type or another will come of it. At the same time all of this insanity is happening there, our president want to bring in 10,000 immigrants (which is a tiny number all told), with the full knowledge that we can’t properly vet these people. Well over half of the refugees are young men. Syrian passports are easily available on the black market, and we don’t have the best of luck recently in encouraging people to assimilate into American culture. (Pressed 1 for English, lately?) Interesting times, indeed.

There are days when a certain quality of the light takes me right back to the village and childhood.  I can’t figure out why today is one of those days,w hen you consider it’s snowing and it rarely snows in the place I grew up in.

However, it is often overcast, sharing that with the British isles.  It’s rarely overcast in Colorado (out of the year we only get something like 20 days without sun, which, yes, is likely to happen only when you have out of state visitors.)

And today there’s that feeling of sunlight filtered through grey that takes me right back to the village in November, with water forming a film of ice on ponds or on your bedside water glass, and a hint of wood smoke in the air, from people firing up their wood stoves.

On days like this it seems to me I’m divided, living two lives at once.  Somewhere, on the other leg of the pants of time, there’s a me that never left Portugal and who grew older in the village, not even noticing how different it is now, because she saw it change gradually.

Of course, beyond that it’s hard to figure it out.  Is she a teacher or a translator?  could be either, depending on whether she let herself take the easy path or the hard.  Did she ever marry?  Does she have kids?

I don’t know.  I know I took the really hard path, or as we call it the path of high improbability, because for those who know me, and who know how much I despise uncertainty and a state of flux, the idea that one day I just said “yes” to the crazy American on the phone asking me to marry him is almost laughable.  The idea I left behind my credentials, my extended family and all my friends to plunge into the unknown and forge a new life in an imperfectly understood land, in a language not my own, is frankly nothing short of ludicrous.

And yet I did it.  I jumped, because I knew in my heart it was the right thing, and that I couldn’t do anything else.

And it was, you know, I don’t regret that other life that never happened.  I don’t regret a career that was mine for the taking, or whoever I might have married, or whatever kids I might have had.

I love my husband very much, and I love the kids we had together, and though my career makes me tear my hair out, it is what I was born to do, possibly including this blog.

It is only on certain days like this, when the light is just right, that I feel like I could reach over and touch that other life and savor the few things I do regret: the continued embrace of my extended family; seeing my kids grow up around my dad; the parties and celebrations I missed through the years; and visiting my grandmother’s grave and leaving flowers.

I wouldn’t trade my life for that of hypothetical me.  But I’m aware she’s the likely one and I’m the improbable one.

And for a moment, on these foggy mornings I salute her across the mist and the cold and say “go in peace.  I kept the better part. In that crucial moment, I acted unlike myself and jumped without looking.  And I reaped an amazing reward.”

Caligula, while Emperor, commemorated a whole lot of “victories” which he decided he had achieved because cheese and also radioactive penguins.  Or rather because he knew the Roman people were a war-like and proud people and needed victories and triumphs.

The most notorious of these were victories overNeptune which consisted of having the mighty Roman legions collect sea shells.  BUT there were also “victories” over the Germans and Britain.

One wonders what exactly was going on through Roman minds at the time.  Perhaps younger Romans were all enthused and the older people were going “what the actual flan?”

BUT we’re not here to discuss reincarnation ;), we’re here to discuss what you’re told, even with the mighty apparatus of state propaganda and a castrati press behind it, and what you see with your lying eyes.

Recently in a private group, someone from abroad asked about American economy and if it really is improving as all the papers abroad report.  The answers surprised even me.

I mean, I know from my limited sphere that even those who are doing well have made sacrifices and — at a guess — have come down about two levels in lifestyle since 2008.  But it was a gradual step, so I didn’t expect most people to have noticed.  And when the trade offs are things like “no vacation” it’s not a serious step down.  I mean, most of the people we know are better off than us, so looking at their lifestyles I see the difference, but I didn’t even know if they did.

Of course my friends in artistic professions and feeding what can be called the discretionary spending part of the economy have noticed.  I have.  Though weirdly the big difference is that income goes even more in bursts.  Judging by self this is because people TRY to be good, but then really need something to read on a really crappy day, and end up reading/buying an entire series they’ve been putting off in three days, flat.  Other than that, our income might have gone up.  As a dear friend keeps telling me, recessions/depressions are good for writers’ income.  People need to be able to escape, even if to their imagination.

What I find fascinating though, is that these people, from varying income levels and all over the country (with a smattering of abroad) saw it, as I did.  The dingying of every day life, the precariousness of economic “security”.  The friends who lose jobs and then find a succession of them, none of which lasts.  The sky-rocketing energy (particularly in a city fed by a coal plant.)  The compromises: we won’t go out this month, we’ll celebrate all birthdays with a dinner in the middle month.  That sort of thing.

Everyone sees it, everyone is uneasy.  This despite the playing with numbers, the endless propaganda shoved down our throats.

And I should have figured it out, too, because even the press has stopped shouting “Summer of recovery.”  And I’ve heard total strangers laugh about the unemployment, GDP or inflation numbers in super market lines.  And it is that sort of horse laugh people only do when they know it’s totally ridiculous and everyone agrees with them.

I’m starting to believe the only people fooled are the administration, the president, and those who work for them.  After all no one tells Caligula that stealing a few seashells is not a victory.  Would you doubt the existence of mighty Neptune, you heathen?  Or the might of the Emperor?

And thus they spin ever further from reality and bring us ridiculousness like the idea that a climate conference is a “strong rebuke” to head choppers.

But it’s not working.  I mean, they’re keeping the lid somewhat on.  Most of the people on the street probably don’t know how disastrous our foreign policy REALLY is, or how it’s done nothing but set up the chess board for world war three.  But even they have that feeling on the back of the neck, the prickling that says something wicked this way comes.

Because here’s the thing: no matter how much you curate the narrative.  No matter how much you proclaim and twist and make it all make sense in this parallel world where “progressive” (they’re actually only progressive for the 1930s.  Since then they’ve all been shown wrong.  “Regressive” would make more sense) theory works, reality doesn’t care.  The gods of the copybook headings aren’t moved by pretty words.  And most of the seriously indoctrinated people in our society only learn to spin words and create “narrative.”  And not in an honest way, like novelists.

Yesterday younger son, who has been on a tear against the Berniacs in his age group, said “I despair for my age group; we’ve been so indoctrinated” and I laughed and told him so was mine.  It usually lasts till your early thirties and then it implodes unless you’re a case of arrested development, still living with mommy and daddy.

And he said “How does it implode?”  And I said “Reality.  The cold fish of reality slaps you across the face, and you realize what works, what doesn’t, and how ruinous these nice-sounding policies are.”

That in the end is it.  The triumph is amusing, and hey, gathering seashells never hurt anyone.

But in the end, the sea is still there and will still rage.  In the end, the real enemies, domestic and foreign, are still there, too, ready to spring.

An administration whose primary function is to dispense Soma is ultimately an enemy within, lulling us until the trap springs shut.  But the thing is at this point they’re the ones taking the soma.  Heck, they’re bogarting the soma.

The rest of us are wide awake.

Which is why in the end we win, they lose.

The question is, do they maintain the shell of narrative long enough so the explosion will be truly spectacular and that the gods of the copybook headings return in fire and blood?  Or do they lose enough grip that it goes down not with a bang but with a whimper.

I know which one I prefer.  Build under, build over, build around, so when their rotten structure collapses we’re ready.

But the choice is not only ours.

Stay awake.

 

Occupied!  A blast from the past August 2014

We’ve talked about this before, but in fact, I don’t think there has ever been a country like ours, where our elites are deliberately taught – in our best schools – to hate and despise everything that we are, everything that makes us unique.  I don’t think there has ever been another country where our elites are taught to be ashamed to call themselves by our national name.

Or rather, there have been countries like that – but they were countries which had lost a war, and where the governing elite were in fact puppets of their erstwhile enemy, sent in to utterly destroy what the country used to be and to make sure that it did not rise again and (maybe) next time win the war.

Did we lose the cold war?  Well, of course not.  Of course we didn’t. The Sov Union fell apart.  Their internal economy was a shambles – communism does that – and they are suffering the fate of the defeated in a material and obvious way.  The name for prostitute in most of Europe (and the Arab countries) is Natasha. Their population is crashing.  Their men are dying of alcoholism and internally they are being taken over by a hostile minority.  Ignore the invasion of Georgia, those are the spasms of the dying bear.  It’s inevitable, in material term,s to be aware that when it comes to the si devant Sov union  the applicable Latin phrase is Vae Victis.

But here’s the thing – long before communism had lost the cold war, it had won the propaganda war.

Part of this was their saber rattling and the craven and sheltered nature of our intellectual classes.  Craven because they know themselves to be weak.  Dueling with your mind might be an exciting sport – it is, I know, I do it – but it avails nothing when confronted by thugs with hobnail boots.  Most of those who labor in the vineyard of words find themselves utterly naked and defenseless in even the most minor physical confrontation.  (Note, I said most, not all.  I would not advise you to pick a fight with most of Baen.  Even myself and Dave Freer who are relatively mild put bite into any fight – he, because he’s a devious bastage and I say that in the most profound affection [if I ever govern anything he’ll be my secretary of dirty tricks.  The man has no bounds.] and I because I’m built like a tank and I berserk.)  So they both turn coward – and justify it in big words – by cleaving to the people they think are going to invade and kick their butts.  Now it’s Islam, but once upon a time it was communism; and they glorify and have a sort of hard on for violent sorts.  Hence, their worship of that despicable, blood tinged psychopath, Che.

And they were really scared of communism.  It also made sense in their minds – communism, I mean – as it can only make sense in the minds of people who live in the sheltered world of academia or the irrational world of art.  And so… they turned.

And they do influence public opinion.

I wonder how much the Sov Union had to put behind the effort.  My dad told me that the Sov Union spent quite a lot on Agit prop in western countries, the United states most of all.

But then there’s the nature of the beast, as it were – most communists in the US were by nature what we’d class as “radical losers”.  They were outcasts, for some reason or another, (the ugly women, the little men – no, seriously, in Europe in the seventies this was as good a predictor as any of who would go commie.) And most of them were not very effective.  There are stories that some guy in NYC got millions from the Sov Union for which he wrote careful receipts, and which he spent in the most bizarre projects imaginable, failing even to enrich himself.  (Whether it’s true or not that they bought influence in the SF magazines wholesale, I’m not equipped to comment.  The rumor does go around and one does wonder how they could afford to play with New Wave and crash their readership.  Never mind.  A lot of others are doing it, so it might be an ideology uber alas thing.  Something to which humans are prone.  I think it was more like most of the media coordination, a matter of people wanting to be “cool” and “with it” – but then there is always journolist.  This might be one of those watchmacallits of history because those who know will take it with them to their unquiet graves.)

So you see, communism doesn’t work, and no one who has ever run a business, or worked for a business that actually depends on selling its products, or in fact done anything productive can believe it does.

But it makes a total conquest of intellectuals, academics, and people who feel the “real” world doesn’t compensate them enough and that they’re way too smart for the common herd.

There was a time back in the eighties and early nineties when the edifice tottered.  There were whispers about how things really were in the USSR and the more moral of the communists distanced themselves.

They’ve gone back now.  Embraced the mantra that it just wasn’t done “right”.

Which of course is the fault – sorry, but it is – of the US when the crash happened.  At the time they were dying for aid.  They must have it, or the collapse would have turned violent.

The price for that help should have been trials.  We should have – in Heinlein’s phrase – Hung the commissars with their own guts. More importantly, we should have exposed it all, and let the effluvium of seventy years of human wretchedness, perfidy, greed and horror wash out over our mass media.

We didn’t.  They were allowed to save face.  They were allowed to recoup – here if not at home.  (Though the reign of Putin means something.)

Few people have read The Black Book of Communism – which should be taught in our schools, in every grade, in grade-appropriate chunks – but our high schools teach Howard Zin’s People’s History which is the Soviet view of America; they flourish Young Hegelians clubs and hipsters decked in Che Guevara.

The “Well educated” are in fact indoctrinated, taught communist propaganda and syllogisms until they’re UNABLE to think.  We now have an administration composed of people like this, who are unable to connect to reality.  They might be our first Marxist administration, but they suffer from third generation blight, not having come to their opinions from their own mind, but having been browbeaten into them.  They are the good kids, trapped in an illusion from which they can’t break out.

But the d*mned ineradicable fact about communism and its cousin “state capitalism” and the hellish hybrid they’re trying out here is that it doesn’t work.  IT NEVER WORKS.  It doesn’t work even when instituted by very bright psychopaths.  It works even less when instituted by people so indoctrinated they can’t SEE reality.

And it will crash here – hard or soft, with a bang or a whimper.  It will crash and it might drag the rest of the world with us into the endless night.

Tell me how would an alien think the Cold War ended?

Is the cold war ended?

When will it end?

Must we fight it here, on our soil, as it turns hot, and hang our own commissars from their own guts?

Vae Victis!

So much to give thanks for in this very difficult year that I can’t fully articulate it.

I’m thankful my issues proved not to need chemo-therapy.

I’m thankful my working on the house during recovery did not cause major problems.

I’m thankful older son has moved out and is pursuing his vocation.

I’m thankful it hurts a lot not to have him around, because if it didn’t, what would that mean for our family?

I’m thankful I have younger son for six months more, at least.  And I’m thankful he’s — against all expectations for someone in his percentile — gregarious and outgoing as well as a good student.

I’m grateful the cats are all still with us, despite their having told us two years ago that Miranda had six months at most.

I’m thankful I’m feeling better and that writing is coming back.  Not as fast as I wish it, but it’s coming back, as is my strength.  (Even if the stupid-tired still clobbers me out of nowhere after some effort.)

I’m thankful that the place we’re renting suits us.

I’m thankful we have houses to consider.

I’m thankful for this blog and the friends and fans I’ve found here. In a way all the regulars have become family.

I’m thankful for Baen who has been very understanding of the illness-and-move caused chaos and who, in this dog-eat-dog world has provided me a family of colleagues who are like brothers and sisters (squabbling sometimes, but brothers and sisters.)

I’m thankful for indie, which as I recover will allow me to publish those things that are just not Baen.  Yes, as the illness subsides and the Great Move of Fifteen is completed once we find a house and move into it, there will be orphan kittens and the rest of the vampire musketeers, as well as Darkship Revenge and the Dragon trilogy.

But most of all I’m thankful I have my husband, without whom none of this would matter.  I’m thankful he decided to marry the weird Portuguese chick who wanted to write sf, and I’m thankful our love has deepened through the last thirty years.

Yeah, it’s been a difficult year, in which strength and will power were demanded that I could hardly summon. But we’ve come through the challenges and, heaven willing, next year will be easy.

May the next year be easier for every one of the regulars on this blog, may you be blessed with love and health and something you enjoy doing, which provides your livelihood.

The times are dire and scary but we have each other and we have many reasons to be thankful for, most of us.  Good measure, pouring over, and given without our doing anything to deserve it.

Today, we go and eat turkey and enjoy our families and/or friends.

Tomorrow we resume the fight. And that too I’m grateful for. While we battle, we’re alive.

In the end, we win, they lose.  Be not afraid.

 

Or How To Deal With Turkeys

Possibly the biggest celebration in this household is the fourth of July.  We used to have massive parties for it, stopped because last house not suited to it, and will resume again if current bid comes through.

Thanksgiving is, for us, an odd holiday.  First of all, neither of us has family near.  Second of all, even if MINE were near, they don’t celebrate, since it’s a very American Holiday.

And then there are complications, because the Hoyts can never do things in an easy or simple way.

Because we moved from North Carolina to Colorado OVER Thanksgiving, and because the move signaled a marked improvement in our lives, we consider it our own, personal Passover.  (Okay, not 40 years in the desert, but we did drive through a pretty dangerous snow storm just before hitting Colorado, where it suddenly cleared up.)

That first year we went out for Thanksgiving to a really nice restaurant because, though we were broke, all cheap restaurants were booked.  So…

Because of all this and because cooking a big meal for four or five people is daft (and also because I’m not fond of turkey) we celebrate thanksgiving by picking up our friend Charles and going out to eat some place nice. (And because Charles reads this: Tomorrow, two thirty.)

So we escape the dreaded Thanksgiving horror of having someone suddenly veer off into politics, and having to sit in silence listening to loony toons.

Just so we’re clearly understood, I’m not suggesting that you be the one who starts politics at the Thanksgiving table. To quote Heinlein “Only a fool or a sadist tells the unvarnished truth at social occasions.”

I’ve lived with that for years, as have a number of you, I’m sure.

I’m asking you to consider not living by it, anymore.  At least not to the extent of remaining silent and letting crazy relative/drunk friend of the family think you agree with everything he says.

If you have to counter, do it politely, tactfully, and more importantly with facts.  Feel free to counter with “yes, but–” And then change the subject immediately afterwards.  Feel free even to say “and now, lets leave contentious subjects aside, shall we?  This holiday is about family and thankfullness and the good things we have.”

And yes, I know it’s easy for me to say because we DON’T have family gatherings, which is sort of a bitter sweet thing.

But I have spoken in my other family, or at least my extended kin-affiliation group, which is the SF/F community.  And yes, I know how that has turned out, from my being declared the world’s worst person, to my being declared various kinds of deep ungood like racist, sexist and homophobic.  The Sad Puppies movement, sparked by Human Wave, and fully supported by me and Kate and Amanda got maligned in national press as a white supremacist slapping down of women, gays and other races in science fiction.  What it takes to believe that is… well, not knowing anything about the people involved, or the ability to dismiss a man’s 20 year bi-racial marriage as “shields.”  That requires gold-plated belief of a reality not our own.

Which is part of why I’m asking you to speak up, however kindly and politely, when crazy uncle Joe starts telling you that of course everyone knows Bernie is the best thing for the nation, and how the GOP are all poopy head white-supremacists for disapproving of the ACA.

Because the problem with our silence and politeness, our hesitation to slap their noses when they bring politics into everything, is that it’s what’s allowed them to construct an entire parallel reality in their heads.

And this, when shocked with resistance where they thought they’d carried the day, is what makes them go unhinged and run to their stooges in the national press to malign as virtual neo-nazis a movement of people trying to shift the overly literary and belly gazing nature of the fiction that gets awards.  You’d think neo-nazis would be doing more neo-nazi things, you know, like goose stepping, controlling the economy, persecuting Jews and invading Poland.  But no.  They think neo-nazis are really interested in changing who gets a plastic rocket. And the worst part?  The worst part is that they believe this narrative.  They’re not just putting it on.  Which is why it’s so easy for them to get access to the national press, who suddenly publish articles about an award which, in the past, was often carried away by someone who got 80 votes.

How can they believe it, you say?  Well, it’s rather easy.  You see, everything in the news-entertainment industrial complex has told them since they were born that the future is some form of socialism.  That history comes with an arrow, and the arrow leads to “progressive” utopia.  (That progressive utopia has changed a bit, since I was a kid, but they probably don’t notice that.  For instance, it used to be about free love, and now it’s about free love if the woman wants it, and the right to call a man a rapist if she changes her mind afterwards.

That’s because as Marxism failed to work in the real world, it turned from seeking the revolution of the workers to the revolution of the “minorities” and minorities are any group they can define out of the whole, from race to culture to sexual preference, to genitalia.)

So these people grew up with a hierarchy of minorities in their head, a hierarchy of grievances-that-must-be-appeased.  In that progressive future they’re sure it’s coming, everyone is equal except for aggrieved minorities who are more equal than everyone else, and therefore get to dictate to others.

Nathaniel Givens wrote an excellent post about this totalitarian tendency here.

The problem where it specifically hits science fiction, is that when you make literature about “the correct messages”  (I don’t have it to my fingertips, but this really is a thing.  There have been any number of articles about the artist’s DUTY to promote the “right” (left) “Messages.”  Because the DUTY of the artists is to hasten the coming of Utopia.  And stuff.) you need other markers to distinguish the “good stuff.”  Or in other words, when you all are saying the same thing, we need to figure out who is saying it better.

Over the last twenty to thirty years, this has led to an elevation of purple prose and/or bizarre faddish “markers” of “quality” which in turn have led to plummeting sales figures and the reduction of what was once a vibrant genre to a sad little few books in bookstores (excluding game and movie tie-ins.)

Sad Puppies was an attempt to reorient the genre to other definitions of good, removing the “must have message about bright CORRECT future” and the “must have precious language that gets in way of sense, or in other ways play with language to the detriment of the emotional involvement in the narrative.”

It had clear nothing to do with sex, orientation, race or culture (beyond SF culture.)  BUT because the sf cultural war is a subset of the larger cultural war, they of course jumped to the position that the only person who could object to their constant pushing of the most current agenda HAD to be against the bright new future where all animals are alike but some are more alike than others. And the reason they jumped to this, is because it never even occurs to them that the dictate that artists promote what was called by a previous generation “the revolution” is not universally approved, accepted and considered holy.

And the reason that it never occurs to them is because everyone they know either agrees with them or stays silent, partly for fear of the attacks Sad Puppies have endured.

So when faced with rebellion in what they thought was conquered territory, they jump to the conclusion that they’re facing the Big Evil and deploy disproportionate force.

It never occurs to them we don’t give a good g*dd*mn about the color, gender and orientation of the protagonist, let alone the writer, provided that the story is interesting and the kind that will bring more readers to the genre.  No, if we don’t agree with the stylings of what wins the plastic rocket, we must all have swastikas in our closet, including those of us who would be prime targets of the people with swastikas.

Because they haven’t had any opposition and therefore see the world as “the good people” — them — and those who oppose the bright new future — the evil ones — regardless of why or how they oppose some part of it (or to break their little shiny wagon, those of us who remind them history doesn’t come with an arrow leading to some leftist utopia.)

And I want you to go out there and challenge people that crazy?  Why?  Do I hate you for some special reason, that I want you to end with a face full of stuffing and not in a good way?

No.  Really.  Look, I hate confrontation because I go from nothing to berserking.  And since killing strangers or even relatives at parties is frowned upon by society, that means I have to control the berserk, which means I end up shaking and crying a lot, which is not — REPEAT NOT — a pleasant experience.  So in public I tend to avoid confrontation as much as possible.

And if it were only science fiction that had gone off the rails because of built-in, never challenged opinions/assumptions, I’d give up on science fiction and go write something else.  Okay, even if all other genres were taken over, I could give up on writing, or go all indie all the time.

But it’s not.  This disconnect from reality and creation of a new one that has nothing to do with what happens in the real world affects the entire — and hilariously self-named — “reality based” community.  And some of them have the levers of power.

For instance, I’m sure some of you have seen, in the last few days, a link to our president saying that the Paris Climate Summit Will be a Powerful Rebuke to the Terrorists.

For anyone with even a modicum of sanity left, looking at that statement it’s like looking at a parallel world.  In what universe do religious fanatics, bent on imposing a seventh century religion tremble in their caves at the thought that the west is getting together to talk about PREVENTING THE WORLD FROM GETTING WARMER?

It’s plastic rockets versus neo nazis all over again, isn’t it?

BUT the thing is if you assume the never-challenged assumptions that our president carries in his head, he’s making perfect sense.  Being logical even.

It goes something like this, with apologies for over-simplification:

They drink their own ink. You have to trace the narrative all the way back to understand that this is “logical” in the parallel world our president inhabits. a) there are no bad people. All crime, or even you know, bad temper, has “root causes” (this is partly because it’s what our entertainment sells us, partly because it makes a better story. But entertainment has never been as prevalent as now. At least not narrative entertainment. And most people internalize entertainment as truth) b) if it’s an individual it’s society’s fault. c) if there are no bad individuals, there are no bad nations. d) when nations/religions/cultural groups turn sour, it’s SOMEONE’s or SOMETHING’s fault. e) It’s always fun to blame the west, but f) the western civilization caused problem of global warming also works and it feels so trendy and cozy. g) So global warming (he SAYS it exists) is responsible for Jihad. h) So, the way to fight Jihad is to stop global warming.

You have to admit it’s a pretty chain. The fact it has NOTHING to do with the world we live in is just a minor, inconvenient … ah… truth. But the fundamentals of that chain of “reasoning” is so deeply embedded in Obama (and most leftists) they can’t think any other way.

And this is why you must talk and you must challenge, even crazy uncle Joe at the thanksgiving dinner.  And if you can you must challenge the rots of the belief.  They might be brought to realize that even if (taking measurements as we have them which might or might not be accurate) the sea levels are a couple inches up a beach at high tide, really this has nothing to do with a movement started in the seventh century.  And then challenge them to PROVE to you it does.  And ask them why it can’t just be that there are bad people and bad causes.  Use examples they despise, of course.  Us included.

Yes, this is easy for me to say.  Or not.  I can’t say I’m not political, but I had far rather have kept it out of my public profile.  That I don’t is because I fear what happens when people totally disconnected from reality have the keys to my nation’s security and economy.

Having a person high on something driving the car and swerving to avoid the pink dragons only he can see is fine.  That is, until a really big invisible pink dragon blocks his vision and he swerves into the path of a semi.

We can no longer stay silent.  We’re staring potential dictatorship and almost certain global war in the face.

It’s worth risking being beaned by a drumstick to stop catastrophe.

We can no longer allow our silence to give them the impression everyone agrees with them, except those evil, mustache twirling villains of their nightmares.  We can no longer allow them to think the things in their head dictate reality.

And I’m very sorry to tell you that at this time, in this place.

 

 

 

Cultures and Lightbulbs – Alma Boykin

 

There’s a joke that asks, “How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?” Answer: “Only one, but the light bulb really has to want to change.” The same is true of cultures, fictional and actual. It is possible to change culture, but it takes time, and if the majority of members of that culture prefer the old ways, things are going to remain static, especially in the deep-rooted, “90 percent of the iceberg” aspects of culture. So what does make a culture change, for good or for ill?

I ask because I’ve been reading Thomas Sowell’s latest book, Wealth, Poverty, and Politics, the one he said he wasn’t going to write (back two books ago. I hope he keeps deciding to stop writing.) It is a very nice synopsis of some of his earlier works about cultural differences and economic outcomes, with a great deal of additional material, all looking at the question of why do some groups seem to do well economically and others don’t do as well, no matter what advantages they might initially have? He looks in the very long term, and includes geography, although there are ways to overcome the disadvantages of geography (see Switzerland for a sterling example). I’ve also been reading a German book about the pre-Indo-European cultures of the Danube River Basin from Hungary downstream. Aside from being a bit too enamored of Marija Gimbutas’s theories about religion and matriarchy at times, it’s a very useful book that fills in some holes in my knowledge of the area. As with Sowell’s volume, one of the ideas in the book is that of cultural change and adoption, looking at the Greek language for pre-Indo-European language traces, as well as using archaeology for clues.*

In the case of the people who migrated into the Peloponnesian Peninsula, the need to find words for new-to-them plants and animals, as well as adopting certain local religious practices, seems to have encouraged cultural shifts and adaptations. If you come from a place without large bodies of water, and find yourself surrounded by a sea and needing to fish for food, you are probably going to start trying to placate whoever is in charge of the ocean and storms. You may absorb the locals’ deity, assuming there are locals, or you may discover a new-to-your-people god or goddess. (How that happens I leave to our anthropologists and theologians).

The Comanche Indians are another example of voluntary culture change. They originated as Great Basin Shoshone, with cultural practices that reflected the relatively impoverished environment of their home region. When they reached the Great Plains and acquired horses, their collective response was something along the lines of, “Dump that junk! Adapt, Improvise, and Overcome! Wheeee!” and they borrowed where useful, improvised where necessary, and adapted supremely well to the High Plains. A few beliefs lingered, or so anthropologists and later observers believe, but in terms of visible behavior, the Comanche became the archetypical plains horse nomads. After 1876, when forcibly confined to reservations in Oklahoma, the Comanche once more said, “Dump the old stuff, we need to adapt in order to survive,” much to the frustration of future generations of ethnographers and Comanches. They kept certain beliefs, tossed the mechanics of certain crafts and skills, and adapted once more. But this change was, to an extent, voluntary as their earlier cultural shift had been. One can argue that being stuck at Ft. Sill was not voluntary, but the decision by the apparent majority of Comanches to not pass on traditions and skills to later generations, even as crafts, and to tell their children to learn from the white men was a deliberate choice. A choice modern Comanche are trying to undo in part by working with museums and archives to back-engineer certain skills and practices.

These cases are voluntary, of cultural groups moving to new environments and opting to change their practices (and beliefs?) to varying degrees to take better advantage of their surroundings. Did some Comanches and others object to major changes? I presume they did, since they are humans, and change is not easy, especially the deep cultural ideas and beliefs that got you through hard times in the past. It’s like some families from certain long-persecuted religious groups insisting on having portable wealth, even though they’ve been in the US for multiple generations without experiencing difficulties. You never know, after all. It’s safer to plan for the worst and buy lots of gold wedding jewelry so the women can bribe people if necessary, or use it to pay off debts to money lenders during starvation-hard times.

But like the joke about the Dalai Lama and the hotdog vendor says, “Change must come from within.” The US occupation forces would have had a very hard time undoing the effects of Japanese militarism if a whole lot of Japanese had not said to themselves, “That didn’t work and it’s not worth the pain of trying to keep that tradition alive.”

What about groups that don’t adapt as quickly, or who apparently do not assimilate? People who moved to the US from other cultures and continents in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries faced rough times until they 1) assimilated to a degree acceptable by the surrounding society or 2) found ways to appear sufficiently assimilated, or 3) made a niche and held out until they were perceived as interesting, “quaint,” and harmless oddities (like Old Order Amish and Mennonites, certain American Indian groups, and others). The Amish, being Protestant Christians involved in agriculture, fit in relatively well when they came to the Colonies because they were surrounded by Protestant Christians who, for the most part, practiced agriculture. Yes, their pacifism and language caused difficulties, especially during WWI, but their basic beliefs continued to fit into the accepted varieties of US culture, at least until the late 20^th century. Later arriving Mennonites fleeing the Russian Revolution and associated wars found ways to adapt as well, with varying degrees of assimilation.

But those changes came from within. Can cultural change be forced by outsiders? Yes, but usually it requires armed force or overwhelming numbers, more rarely through persuasion at least until the rise of cultural-equivalency and the idea that non-Western cultural practices must be better simply by virtue of being non-Western. Although the visiting professor from India I had drew the line at condemning the British for trying to abolish suttee. She was a widow of the Brahmin caste and apparently her in-laws still wanted her dead. So even for her, a little “cultural Imperialism” wasn’t entirely bad.

I tinkered with forced cultural change in the novel Hubris and its eventual sequel Renaissance. The Azdhagi had begun shifting from within, to a less pack-centered and more democratic (herpetocratic? Sauriacratic?) style of government in a meritocratic society when a series of disasters struck. In response, caused some of those changes flipped back to the way they’d been many generations before and flipped hard. Other shifts occurred over the next few generations, including a major change in Azdhagi religion. The religion kept the old forms of group ritual and the use of incense and chanted “hymns,” but the object of worship changed considerably, from a monotheistic belief to ancestor worship with additional deified spirits. Some of the stories’ characters adapted, others didn’t, and a few realized that things had never quite been what they assumed.

History, at least the history I’ve studied, suggests that the most lasting changes within a culture come from inside that culture, unless overwhelming force is applied and there is no way to revert, even after the force is (mostly) removed. This poses some interesting ideas for fiction writers, and greater challenges for policy makers.

*Why Greek and not the modern Danube Basin languages? Too many other groups have moved into the area since the pre-Indo-Europeans were there and far fewer pre-IE words remain in the Slavic and Magyar languages.