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*Note from 2014 — yes, I was doing my best to be non political.  Eh.*

I should be working on my overdue novel or writing my overdue short story. I’m not. The reason I’m not is because I’ve been turning an ethical problem in my mind.

And this is going to lead me to break one of my longstanding rules, which is not discussing religion or politics in public.

Not that what I’m about to discuss is religion – exactly – or politics – exactly. But it touches on both.

The fact is, I’m aware that some of you are going to be very angry at me. I’m aware some of you will be angry enough never to read me again. I’m also aware that I’ll be violating one of Heinlein’s rules – to wit – “Only a fool or a sadist tells the unvarnished truth in social situations.”

Perhaps I’m going menopausal. Or perhaps I simply don’t care anymore. Or perhaps sometimes – SOMETIMES – the truth needs to be told.

I know I will get a very strong reaction to this because I’ve discussed this topic before, years ago, in a women’s writing group. The group consensus was that I was “mean” or perhaps “evil” and there was nothing I could do to change it.

And yet – and yet – I see evil in what is going on. And I think it should be stopped.

So I’ll begin at the beginning. Let’s talk about charity.

I grew up, like any normal kid in a fairly “nice” family learning to share and to give to those who had less than I. This was so emphasized that until I was twenty eight I thought I had killed my cousin Dulce by refusing to share my bread and butter with her. (She died in the last small pox (not confirmed, mind, but likely, given the distribution of the blisters AND the mortality among the unvaccinated) epidemic to sweep through the village. As I had it too, I’m sure some reference was made to the fact we were playing together a week or so before. That my mind attributed this to my refusing to share just goes to show how I was brought up.)

Beyond that, I always had a sense of empathy. Like most of your nerdy writers, as a child I was excluded from enough games and clubs to give me a sympathy for the underdog. So far so good.

And then when I was eleven, I joined a youth group. This was the seventies. We were for social action and justice. Which was our parents’ charity and poor relief dressed up and nice and with a new hairdo.

We spent six months – SIX months holding fund raisers and collecting money. One of the girls in the group had come up with this idea that we should help this family that lived next to her. Six kids in a shotgun apartment, no decent clothes, no toys and most of the time no food on the table.

We worked our behinds off. We were that kind of earnest young people. And I was so proud, so incredibly proud, when we collected the equivalent of about six months’ salary and delivered it to these people. I could imagine what a difference it would make in their lives. I could JUST see it.

I felt very virtuous. This lasted until I told my mom what we’d done. Mom was horrified. Turns out the parents were both alcoholics. Not only wouldn’t the kids get any of the money, but the parents would use it to get stinking drunk, which in turn would result in more aggression towards the kids… you get the point.

Turned out mom was right – bummer – and I’ve never felt that virtuous since.

This is apropos what?

Well, bear with me.

Thirteen years ago when we moved to town – an apartment near downtown – I loved this city. One of the things I loved was how SAFE it was. There were exactly four “homeless” people identifiable as living downtown. I’m sure there were more served by the various shelters, which demanded sobriety or a modicum thereof before you used their services. But downtown, we saw four. And, really, downtown was a safe, friendly place, with a lot of small businesses in place. I could, without driving, buy most things I needed, from groceries to office supplies. The kids could sit out on the front porch, when they were toddlers. It was just nice.

And then it changed.

Because I don’t follow such things it took me time to figure out why – all of a sudden – every corner had people pushing shopping carts. Aggressive people; people mumbling to themselves. It took me time to figure out why the little park in the middle of town was now infested by people sleeping on the grass, threatening (and mugging) passerbies. Why the little businesses were fleeing downtown. Why my friend who worked downtown had issues with people coming into the bookstore and urinating on the carpet.

The city hasn’t grown that much. It might have doubled in size, but I don’t think so.

And the local economy was not worse. On the contrary. We’ve been ranked as one of the more affluent towns in the US. So… how come this problem suddenly?

And then the city forbid panhandling – this is not related, except where it got me to understand the situation a little better – and all of a sudden the newspapers were full of interviews with the people affected…

Do you know, with a few exceptions – families fallen on hard times and the like, though they’re not the kind that haunts parks – the “homeless” population could be divided in two: Young kids – teens to twenties – who’d run away from home. And people who had been living a rootless, boundary-less life since the sixties or seventies.

The funny thing, you know, is that I’d always thought kids who ran away from home did so because they were being abused or there was another huge problem. And some of them did mention that. However, the vast majority of the young indigent said a paraphrase of “I left home because my parents had all these rules. And now, man, if I can’t panhandle, I’ll have to go back.”

The adults, otoh had various expressions of confusion as to why we were doing this to them and how – with no provocation – we were taking away their means of livelihood.

Since that time I’ve been a little skeptical about the type of charity that just gives “services” to the homeless.

My skepticism increased when I realized a) the reason downtown was now full of homeless was a “no questions asked” soup kitchen run by a religious charity right smack downtown. b) Homeless were taking the bus from the largest city nearby. (This is not a conjecture. I overheard them talking and on one signal occasion was approached by one demanding to know where the soup kitchen was because he’d just taken the bus to our town. They’d told him there was this great place…)

Okay – hear me out – I’m neither mean nor stupid, nor have I arrived at this opinion without a lot of thought.

Look, I’m not saying we shouldn’t feed the hungry. Yeah, we should if we can. I assure you that for a long part of my teen years I needed – and received – both food and clothing from the charity of strangers. One of the reasons the Red Cross will always get a check from me is the clothes I wouldn’t otherwise have had after that growth spurt at fourteen.

That’s not the point. The point is that the first rule of charity should always be: First Do No Harm.

I still live downtown. I walk by the park a lot. And you know what? I’m sorry for these people. Really and truly sorry. Most of them not only lack the skills to integrate in society – they lack an understanding of WHY they should.

They get food. They get clothes. They get a place to sleep. WHY should they change anything about how they live? Why shouldn’t they do drugs and have promiscuous sex? Those of them who are mentally unstable not only have no reason to seek treatment or to take their medications – they don’t KNOW they SHOULD.

Oh, I’m sure people who volunteer at the soup kitchen – and other places – tell them they should. But… the thing is, they are human right? Humans work mostly on inertia. If you don’t make it difficult to just drift on, why should they try?

Now and then you hear of people who clean up, who move on and up. But these are the exceptions. Like people who lose 100 lbs, they are the exception and display immense willpower.

Our society is so affluent we can afford to give these people a life that’s downright luxurious compared to the peasants of most societies in history. Food everyday. Enough clothes to cover themselves. Clean places to sleep at night.

And we demand nothing. Absolutely nothing.

I realize part of this is a reaction to Victorian times, when it was assumed that people were poor because they’d done something wrong. I know many people are poor through no fault of their own – or at least no fault of their own that they can easily remedy. Lack of skills, lack of will power, just a lack of ambition, are enough to keep someone born outside the right conditions “down.”

But most of the time, none of those are enough to make the person outright “homeless.” That requires worse. A stroke of bad luck might do it, if bad enough. A mental condition. Or… a drug addiction. Alcohol abuse.

The stroke of bad luck usually leads to people living in their cars or crashing with friends. It leads to people who are TECHNICALLY homeless, but not the visibly so. Not the ones who haunt the park and mug passerbye. These people – the homeless with cause or, to use an old-fashioned term, the deserving poor – are undoubtedly there through no fault of their own. And there are already several organizations that assist them. If they need anything, they need an explanation of how to get there from here – how to apply for help; whom to ask.

And then there are the others – the VAST majority of others – which are the ones who patronize this “no questions” soup kitchen. The ones who don’t know why they should change. The ones we are ENABLING in their dysfunction.

Yes, yes, I can hear the shouts now. I’m mean. I don’t care about poor people. I am made uncomfortable by the presence of the needy.

Except… That these “needy” are shutting down businesses and driving other people into poverty. Except that I do donate money/time/service to various causes helping those less fortunate than I. Except that I think what these “needy” need is help of a different sort. Help seeing the way out. Support on their way up. NOT “no guilt” help that keeps them trapped.

HOW can it possibly be that allowing them to self destruct helps them? Or society? Or the communities blighted by their presence?

Look – we’re back to that family and how GOOD I felt “helping” them. Except that I didn’t.

There was a way to help them – oh, sure there was – or at least a way that would have done no harm. We could have bought groceries for them for six months. This might still have led to more drinking as the parents might have sold the groceries – but it would have been more difficult.

Or – and far preferable – we could have given OF OURSELVES. We could have befriended those kids. Eventually taken them home to our comfortable houses for meals/playtime/interaction. This would have helped far more.

BUT that wasn’t easy. And besides, it wasn’t what it was all about. It was about social action. And justice. It was about collecting money and handing over a check. It was about the charity of strangers. And it was about a bunch of pre-teens feeling good and virtuous.

I think this soup kitchen – which is now undergoing a massive fundraising to expand – is about exactly those things. I’m sorry, but I believe it is about people who volunteer there and people who donate to it feeling good about themselves. D*mn good.

And who am I to grudge people a bit of self-satisfaction?

Well… perhaps I’m an evil bitch, because I feel that self-satisfaction arrived at at the expense of other people’s lives is bad. Perhaps I’m an evil bitch because I care not only about the small businesses being driven from downtown and the families that can no longer work in the park but these people who are being “helped” to remain lost in a moral no-man’s land. With no way out.

I’m not against charity. I’m against charity to faceless strangers. I think most of the time it ends up doing evil.

There are ways to help – but those demand that you actually get close and personal. That you find out what’s holding these people down. That you CARE. For more than feeling virtuous. And that, let’s face it, it’s more than most people have the time or patience for.

Recently, reading St. Dale by Sharyn McCrumb (excellent book, btw) I came across a joke she quotes. A man is struggling in the water. “Help, help, I can’t swim.” Another man is standing by and says, “I can’t swim either. Will $20 help?”

This is what this “no strings” soup kitchen reminds me of. This is what catering to people’s physical needs and not their mental/spiritual ones reminds me of.

The charity of strangers. Well intentioned, perhaps. But mostly about the giver.

And in the end, I think in more than fifty percent of the cases it violates the dictate to “First, do no harm.”

*And more from 2014 this post came with a note later that same day, so I’m copying and pasting it here also, particularly since recently we’ve had people claim that the fact that Africa hasn’t developed “despite” all the aid we give it is a sign of inferiority or… something. This was the article I was thinking of but couldn’t find at the time.*

The Charity of International Strangers

I’m not going to make this into a political blog, [note from 2014 Sarah — Fate mocks our best intentions.] but I found this article ties so much into my previous post it’s hard to avoid.

I have to confess THIS had never occurred to me under “first do no harm.”

http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,363663,00.html

Okay, mostly I’ve been head down and working on Through Fire, so my head is empty and it echoes.  No, I’m not done, but I’m close, which is why I’m skimping on this post, natch.

I’ve already killed one of the main characters, but don’t worry, it’s not fatal.

So, instead of doing a real post, I’m sort of putting down some things that have flitted through my mind the last few days.  (Writing about revolution, you know?)

You know, we tend to get all depressive about the future, which is stupid because if the future belongs to anyone it’s nor Marx, and yes, I realize there’s a good chance it belongs to barbarians who kill the Marxists (who are also barbarians, but pretending not to be.)  But it could also belong to us.  And frankly, us vs. the barbarians?  We’ll win.  They’re not that smart.  If they were we’d be in real trouble.

So I thought I’d list off the top of my head reasons why I think we’re winning:

– The mass media is losing more and more power.  The fact that Lena Dunham is considered a mover and shaker, despite the fact they admit her audience is tiny gives the game away.  It’s like with the pushed books in SF/F, all hype and blather, but there’s no there, there.

– All they got anymore is re-threads of re-threads, of re-threads.  The liberal establishment is not only the establishment, but it’s dying of a fatal lack of creativity.  They remind me of French painters who learned to draw by copying ideal statues and all their work was mannered and followed so many rules you needed to be one of them to appreciate it.

– Make no mistake, culture is where the politics of the next generation is formed, and their culture is dying.  Now most millenials won’t admit to reading non-approved stuff (ask Foxfier why if you don’t get that they know they’re up against the establishment and prefer not to call fire on themselves) but everyone of them does: blogs, indie, a lot of their own fanfic.  And while a lot of what they read and write is blinkered (remember yourself at their ages, guys?) it’s not approved or a uniform voice anymore.  And there’s a refreshing tendency to just want STORY not “story that makes SJW points.”

– A friend before the 2004 election when I was still in the political closet and very nervous said “Chill.  They scream the loudest when they’re losing.  It’s a way you can tell how they’re drowning.  They go on the attack and talk about how your position has no hope.  It’s all projection and despair.”  Well… they decided to mess with GAMERS.  Gamers.  (Shakes head.  Even I am not that foolhardy.)

– Their protests are becoming more obviously sponsored by the dying old guard — ANSWER, Working Families, and other places that have been communist fronts for ages.  Their attempts at generating mass uprisings of the proletariat keep failing.  (Snort giggle.  Marxism is a fantasy ideology, morons.  He had the predictive power of reading fish entrails.  If that.  At least with a fish you could tell what the fish had eaten.  Marx described the past as well as he predicted the future.  You were taken in by the ravings of a psychotic who wouldn’t know reality if it bit him in the butt.)

– The more desperate they get, the more they scream.  The more they scream, the more it becomes obvious they’re raving lunatics.

In the end, we win, they lose.  Keep at it. We are the revolutionaries.  We are the avant garde.  We’re the ones who have the courage to form our own beliefs independent of the establishment pap we’ve been fed.

The only hope for civilization’s renewal or — indeed — continuance is with us. Shoulder to the wheel and push.

Watching the Watchmen – Cedar Sanderson

Before solutions to police corruption can be posited, it must first be defined, categorized, and fully understood. I’m only going to touch on this in the broadest of terms, as this could literally fill a book. I’m sure the commenters will have much to add, as well. Let me begin by pointing out that I know no bad cops. I’ve known a few that were very good indeed, and I would trust a cop, were I in trouble and in need of help. But as a woman, I would also be very very cautious being pulled over late at night on a dark road. That’s where we are, as a population. On the other hand, comparing our nation to, say, one a bit further south, our cops are paragons. So take this for what it is.

Corruption can exist at both an individual level, and at the organizational level. At the individual level, the corruption may range from the seemingly innocuous of accepting free coffee from local businesses, to the level of murder, drug dealing, and utter betrayal of the power entrusted to them. At the organizational level, the corruption may be tacitly legal, or knowingly illegal. With almost 19,000 separate police departments in the US, there is a lot of latitude for good cops, bad cops, and cops stuck in bad places.

Police corruption is so disturbing because they are the organization that has been put in place to keep the laws, and when they operate outside those laws, whether explicitly or implicitly, then the Rule of Law is threatened, and tears form in the fabric of society. “Police corruption, which may take the form of soliciting, taking, or offering bribes; selling favors; accepting gifts; abusing authority; and aiding and abetting criminal behavior, is anathema to the repository of public trust in institutions that are entrusted with protecting citizens from crime and bringing criminals to justice. In a nation that regards democracy and justice as cardinal values, the investigation, prosecution, and punishment of corrupt police officers are crucial for preservation and advancement of social order, as well as efficacy of the criminal justice system itself.” (Onyeozili)

Despite public perception of what is called the thin blue line, the unwillingness of the police to report their own for misconduct, a study done by Rothwell and Baldwin shows that the police are overwhelmingly more likely to have policies in place defining misconduct, punishments for those actions, and internal affairs units than any other civilian or government agencies. Because of this, corruption at the individual level is less than popularly believed, but the converse is that corruption in other agencies, like the IRS specifically, is profoundly disturbing and far more likely to go on without any internal whistle-blowing. However, because of the gravity of the abuse of power, police corruption is likely to lead to more public outcry when it is discovered.

To deter corruption at an individual level, the police department must have those clear policies in place to define what is not acceptable for the officers. While some offenses are obviously unacceptable, as in, they are illegal, there are others that fall into gray areas, like accepting gifts. Further, the police department needs to have punishments that will actually deter wrongdoers, which administrative repercussions might not. Criminal convictions of cops who have erred in the line of duty are few and far between. It’s more likely that sweeping-under-the-rug will occur, with unpaid leave, transfer, or dismissal. Policies at a departmental level vary, are not always enforced, and for publicity reasons, are usually downplayed as much as possible. Or, as was discovered in the Rampart investigation, policies might work against themselves, allowing corrupt officers to evade murder charges through manipulation of something called a Lybarger admonition. “Obviously, then, anything an officer says during the investigation of a shooting can result in nothing more than his dismissal. Although administrative action is a serious deterrent, it is not as serious as the prospect of criminal prosecution for murder. Of course, it may appear that Lybarger admonitions would induce officers to “spill the beans” immediately so as to inoculate themselves against criminal actions. According to the RIRP, however, the actual result is usually an ineffective interview of the officer by an attorney from the police union, consisting of leading questions such as “You feared for your life, right?”

The Rampart scandal also illuminated another serious drawback in policing, through the discovery that by hiring individuals based on qualifications other than their suitability for police work, ignoring their psychological profiles, and with backgrounds glossed over in order to meet quotas. “In any case, the bottom line for the LAPD is that Rampart was caused by the misbehavior of a few individuals who should never have been hired. The implication of this frame is that the problem lies outside the LAPD organization and within the character of certain types of individuals. The policy solution is thus simply to prevent such individuals from entering the organization. This is a classically individual-level analysis.” (Kaplan, Paul J. “Looking Through The Gaps: A Critical Approach To The LAPD’s Rampart Scandal.”) It becomes clear that pre-screening before commission as a police officer is not something that can be omitted, and is an important part of corruption controls.

As a direct result of the Rampart scandal, where police were proven to have been hired for affirmative action appeal rather than their integrity, a study was done and a solution was suggested. If an innovative solution means one that is controversial, this certainly fills the bill: “A scholarly study published in April 2000 in the professional journal Economic Inquiry found that aggressive “affirmative action” hiring raised crime rates in many parts of the U.S. In careful statistical analysis of 1987-1993 U.S. Department of Justice data from hundreds of cities, economist John Lott (then of the Yale School of Law, now a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute) found that quotas requiring more black and minority police officers clearly increase crime rates. When affirmative action rules take over, he reports, the standards on physical strength tests, mental aptitude tests, and other forms of screening are lowered. The result is a reduced quality of officers–both minority and non-minority recruits end up being less impressive.” (Rothwell, Gary R., and J. Norman Baldwin. “Whistle-Blowing And The Code Of Silence In Police Agencies: Policy And Structural Predictors.”)

Perhaps more troubling than individual corruption, even when it involves a gang, as in the Rampart scandal, is corruption at the organizational level. Especially as we see with the implementation of affirmative action raising serious concerns about the quality of officers, the corruption can be above the law, making it much more difficult to cope with until legislation can be raised to counter the effects. Police departments seizing monies, goods, and property without ever bringing criminal charges, for instance. “Over the last two decades, forfeitures have evolved into a booming business for police agencies across the country, from the federal Drug Enforcement Administration to small-town sheriff’s offices. Although there is no single tally of all this activity — the information is buried in the budgets, court records and annual reports of thousands of individual agencies — the available data makes clear that billions of dollars in cash, cars, real estate and other assets are being confiscated nationwide every year via civil forfeitures.

One measure is the growth of a program in which federal law enforcement officials seize property on behalf of local authorities in exchange for a share of the proceeds. In 2000, officials racked up $500 million in forfeitures. By 2012, that amount rose to $4.2 billion, an eightfold increase.

Bing is among a significant number of property owners not charged with any crime who lost their home or have battled for years against forfeiture actions. Other similar cases reviewed by ProPublica include an elderly widow, two sisters who shared a house, a waitress and hospital worker caring for two children, and a mother of three whose family wound up homeless. All stemmed from drug charges brought against a family member.” (Thompson, Isaiah. “Law To Clean Up ‘Nuisances’ Costs Innocent People Their Homes.”) Increasingly, we see concerns raised over the number of civilians who seem to be targeted in order to seize monies, goods, or property. While it may be a ready source of income to some departments, it erodes public trust in the police and structures that were supposed to be in place for the protection of those very things.

Accountability and transparency are said to be the foundations of a healthy police force and many systems have been implemented in recent years to show their willingness to be held accountable. Body cameras and dash cameras on individual officers, real time crime data, and the rapid adoption of COMPSTAT-like programs are all part of this progress. The author of the paper expresses reservations, however, pointing out that just having numbers is not enough without knowing “numbers are always the end product of a series of decisions, many of which are subjective and somewhat arbitrary.” (GILSINAN, JAMES F. “The Numbers Dilemma: The Chimera Of Modern Police Accountability Systems.”) For instance, he points out that until a generation ago, domestic violence was not counted as a crime, while homosexuality was.

In both cases of individual and organizational corruption, the root cause is that the offender has made a decision to satisfy a need without proper deliberation, to weight the long-term costs of the action taken. “Neither as individuals nor as members of organization do we optimize our decision-making, picking the best of all possible alternatives. Instead, we satisfice, picking the alternative that best seems to fit, without expending a great deal of energy to review – in a systematic way – all other possible choices (Gilsinan).” Given this, then, a way of forcing individuals and organizations out of the rut of easy thinking and into a deeper contemplation of the consequences of their action must be considered.

As a parent, I well know that to teach my children proper behavior’s, I had to create a consistent system of rewards and punishments. They could not be applied capriciously, and they must reliably hold true, or if an exception was made, to have a good reason for doing something different. Although slightly more complex when applied at this level, the general principles remain the same. To keep an individual from moonlighting, stealing, or extorting, make it painfully harsh when those actions are taken, and be sure to pay the police at a level where such money-making efforts are not tempting. At the organizational level, legislation needs to be reformed to prevent departments from preying on the innocent for income, and independent commissions should decide the merits of such cases, who cannot benefit from them. In the end, the police must be held accountable for their actions, and there have to be systems in place to enforce that accountability. Otherwise, we have only to look south, just over the border, to see the fear and uncertainty which could all too easily overtake our own daily lives.

Lately this ridiculous blog post has made the rounds, written by some guy who was mugged, but was sure he deserved it because of his privilege.

The blog post was not a surprise to me.

Years ago, an online friend about ten years younger and from a considerably more comfortable background than mine, was ambushed at the grocery store by someone who forced her – at gun point – to go to two or three ATMs in town and withdraw the maximum allowed and give it to him.

If it had been me…

First of all, it wouldn’t have been me, because I come from a more dangerous time and place. Someone tries to kidnap you from a store, and take you, in a car to another place, you fight right there and right then, with everything you have, even if it’s just screaming your heart out. Because there’s a very good chance someone taking you away from the populated place to a deserted one ah… doesn’t have your continued survival at heart. It has been pointed out to me (several times) that I’m a paranoid woman, or at least not a naturally trusting one. We’ll say that on at least a half dozen occasions this has saved my life.

So, if it were me, I would not have gone. I’d have kicked, screamed and applied elbow to stomach. Even if someone had picked me up from the parking lot of the grocery store, I’d figure at least there were cars around. (Hint, never park in a deserted area at night/when the parking lot is not well attended.)

More likely, anyone trying that trick would end up with a knife in an inconvenient place, because I usually carry more than one knife, and if you get close enough to press a pistol against my back where no one can see it, the least I can do is ensure you sing soprano the rest of your life. (And that’s if I can’t reach your gut.)

But let’s suppose that for whatever reason (I was on crutches and had laryngitis) this happened to me. How would I feel afterwards?

Mad. Hopping mad. Furious. I’d make it my personal mission to find the bastage and end his joy in life.

How did my friend feel? Guilty.

She sent out a long rambling message to the intent that really, how bad does someone’s life need to be that they’re willing to rob strangers at gun point?

Head>desk.

Where do people learn this? This unearned guilt in anything good they have, and this bizarre belief that anyone doing anything bad had a horrible life/childhood/background.

They learn it from us. That is, they learn it from writers. Books, TV…

You’ve heard the thing about making sure your villain isn’t just a villain, right? You have to give him/her/it a reason for what they do?

Unfortunately over the years this has morphed into the more sinned against than sinning villain, into the repressed/tortured villain. Into the person who lashes out because, like a tortured dog, they can’t help it.

Humans are not dogs.

Yes, there are people who do horrible things because horrible things were done to them. What percentage of evil doers fall in that category? We don’t know. We don’t know, because if questioned, every evildoer will say that’s why they do evil. Every evil doer will angle for sympathy. “I kicked the puppy because the kitten bit me.” “I stole Bobby’s pencil, because Mike stole mine.” “I robbed the bank because I was beaten as a child.”

The problem with this is that all of us, every one here, I’d bet, knows someone who had a horrible childhood, was beaten, was kept in the cold and rain, or whatever, and has never committed a single crime. All of us know people who had a tough as heck childhood and who are strivers, good friends, honest as the day is long, loyal spouses, gentle with kittens and puppies.

To say that to be yelled at one Sunday when you’re three will cause you to commit murder is to wrong everyone who had a horrible childhood.

It’s possible that it’s true for some people. One of the things we’ve found out is that some people are more resilient than others. Some people break easy. Some people break bad. People are not widgets.

But the other thing we know – we have to know – is that not everyone who is evil is more sinned against than sinned. Not everyone who hurts others has been hurt.

Look, we’re all flawed. Laziness is part of human nature. So is greed. It’s perfectly possible for someone who is lazy and greedy to decide he’d rather rob than work. I’ve heard of it/seen it happen. And so have you. Even back in kindergarten I knew people like this, and so did you.

They rob because they can, and because no one ever stopped them/they don’t think anyone will ever stop them.

This is a reason too. It’s not a sympathetic reason, but it’s a reason. (It’s a little more sympathetic if you realize the people who never set boundaries helped in these person’s lives, while they could still have learned and become normal, nice people, did them a grave injustice.) Having people take a sadistic pleasure in their power over others, or think that others owe them a living is a motivation.

Your villains don’t need to be saints.

The problem is that the narrative of the saintly villain leaves the good people – or people who are convinced everyone else is good – strangely unprotected. Not people like me, mind you. We’re not good. Or not that good. We’re good despite our bad, if that makes sense. But people who are good because they’re good, those people will read the books and imagine that every menace out there is a villain-with-a-heart-of-gold looking for an opportunity to redeem himself. They’ll think that every wolf has the heart of a lamb. And that if they commit heinous crimes it’s society’s fault, or the fault of the person being wronged.

The problem with this is that wolves are wolves. Being a particularly compliant lamb gives nothing, except convincing the wolf his mode of life is right, and he should go on eating tasty mouton. And the next victim might not escape with just property damage.

 

For Me, But Not For Thee- David Pascoe

The teaser trailer for Episode Vee-Eye-Eye is out, and I imagine at least some of the Huns are excited, though I understand herself hold the franchise in some disdain. I, myself, am cautiously optimistic. Abrams has done – qualified – good things (and I’ll get to why I say that in a bit) with Star Trek, and I have hopes he’ll do something similar-but-better with the franchise nearest and dearest to my eight-year-old self’s heart.

/aside
I tried to hold out. I don’t need to see this, and besides, it’s probably crap. I mean, yeah, I was raised on Dad’s story of how he and Mom went to see Ep. 4 opening weekend in LA, and the line was three deep all the way around the block, and Mom held their spot while he went to the box office to find out the expected wait time, and the perky lass inside opened up the window and asked, “how many?” “For Star Wars?” *perky nod* “For the next showing?” *perky smile-and-nod* “Two, please,” and how he then went to find Mom and said, “Don’t say anything, just come with me.”

I watched the trilogy as often as I felt I could get away with it growing up (it hit all the right buttons in a very formative time, like happens) and listened to the Ep. 5 LP when I couldn’t do that. I was ecstatic when the Special (Snowflake) Editions were released in theaters, and went with a mess of friends (all two of ’em), and again when the prequels were released. Though I’d grown since childhood, even if George’s craft hadn’t. Consequently, I’m wary of this new thing. And then I watched it, and grinned. Well, fought a grin. Yes, I might get hurt, again, but … well: hope.
/end aside

And then a college buddy tossed me a <a href=”http://www.kxly.com/news/beale-how-star-wars-ruined-scifi/29980964″>link</a>, and my blood boiled. Not just for the unfair characterization of my generation by one (I’m presuming, which is better than assuming, which makes a posterior of you and Ming and leaves me out of it (and Ming is a jerk, as all know)) but for the sneering assumption that science fiction is some sort of closed club only open to those of correct opinion and award-winning status. The right awards, of course: those for literary quality, not the Franklin award for people-will-give-up-hard-earned-lucre for your work. What really sent the steam escaping from under my collar with a animalistic howl was the blatant superiority of the smug little op-ed cloaked in weary resignation (tying in well with Sarah’s post yesterday).

Elitism. We can’t ever seem to get rid of it. I’m talking specifically about scifi fandom, here, though it applies to humanity in general, since we’re tribal by nature. I blame that whole mess at Babel a while back. Really screwed things up for the rest of us, the jerks. Anyway, this smug superiority that separates

We see this all over the place, really. Check out the people at the top of the political pyramid, our self-proclaimed leaders. The top man claims it’s fine for him to violate law and tradition, and rule by executive <del>fiat</del>privilege, but not for the next person to occupy the office in which he squats. His subordinates, from his number two on down blatantly violate the laws by which the rest of us are expected to abide. And so they target law abiding citizens for a harassment only “legal” because it’s fine when they do it. By this example, they encourage others to participate in similarly thuggish acts, such as <a href=”http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2012/05/29/the_lefts_dangerous_new_line_of_attack_swatting”>targeting</a> <a href=”http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnyegriffiths/2014/11/07/bungie-executive-swatted-in-sammamish-wa-home/”>people</a> with whom they have some imagined beef. Or, y’know, just <a href=”http://monsterhunternation.com/2014/09/02/the-guardians-village-idiot-admits-to-libel/”>libel on an international forum</a> (sure, Al Grauniad’s pet attack-chihuahua isn’t an American citizen, but he <i>is</i> part of the elitist mob of SJWs. so there’s that).

An entire generation – it seems – is trying to get in good with the cool kids and their vitally important failed economic and pseudo-scientific religious dogma, and those of us who simply want to enjoy what we enjoy become the sacrificial scapegoats in their quest for politically correct enlightenment.

Anyway, as I said, it’s rearing its ugly head, <a href=”http://www.kxly.com/news/beale-how-star-wars-ruined-scifi/29980964″>again</a>. From the location, it could be somebody hoping to build cred in preparation for WorldCon next year. A cursory – and therefore possibly incorrect – exercise of google-fu suggests the writer of the op-ed may be a journalist and film critic. Pure speculation, but we’re mad here, and I like to stir the pot. Regardless of the origins, this particular bit of nonsense claims that Star Wars ruined science fiction FOREVAR because it’s not about ideas, but about action.

Never mind the concepts of authoritarianism versus popular government, or the good/evil struggle writ large and small. Let us not speak of love and friendship, of the tug of family ties to an orphan, or the impact of the destruction of a planet at the whim of a tyrannical aristocrat, the questions of free will and destiny that are worked out in the swing of lightsaber and the explosion of spaceships. No, those aren’t important ideas like slavery and sexual identity are important ideas.

I get it. Star Wars isn’t your deal, guy. That’s cool: I’m not an enormous Trek fan, and the recent Battlestar did nothing for me. Just don’t throw up your hands in disgust when people <i>do</i> love a thing you don’t. Don’t belittle them sidelong for enjoying the actions or scope of something limited by its medium, and then claim the Matrix is the most creative scifi film of the last two and a half decades.

Because it’s not about that. Really.

It’s about drawing in new fans. Attracting people (young and old) who would otherwise look upon us Odds with contempt or – at least – bewildered confusion. I loathe most of Episode 1, but darned if my buddy’s kid doesn’t love him some Jar Jar and pod racing, and will grow up a science fiction fan because of it.

But sure, react – or not – with your ennui at where the genre has gone. Be disgusted because the Forever War hasn’t been made into a film, and the attempts at Dune have been flawed. Pine for a never-made Neuromancer that couldn’t be made when cyberpunk was The Thing, and won’t be made now because it’s not. That’s cool that you want to keep scifi pure and about Big Ideas. SFWA agrees with you, at least. The Hugo voters are all about these big ideas that were new when Gilgamesh was written, and when Homer was telling a story about a dude who just wanted to get home after a war.

The more you tighten their grasp, the more fans will slip through your fingers.

And there we’ll be, shining a light of fun stories and big heroes.

UPDATE: Message from Sarah (like a message from Fred but weirder.)  Older son’s weirdest story yet, Candyworld,  should be free today, though possibly not that early morning.  Anyway, keep checking.

Whom The Gods Love is Free for the next five days (I’m going to try to do the thing where I keep something free through the end of the year!)

Consider Hoyt for your Holiday Gifts!

Actually it’s a December sale.  Yesterday I was so out of it that I went and changed the prices without putting in “for a limited time only” — though to be fair, it’s at least until Christmas, but all the same.

Witchfinder is on sale for 3.99!

Musketeer Mystery Series is on sale for 2.99 a piece!





So is Crawling between Heaven And Earth, a collection of 17 (I think) of my earliest published short stories.

So is Ill Met By Moonlight

And All Night Awake:

I forgot to set Any Man So Daring but it will be on a sale in a couple of hours.

The collection of the three books, the Magical Shakespeare Omnibus is up for 5.99

No Will but His is 2.99

Wings will be on a countdown sale starting at 99c on the 10th of December.

*I am alive.  Long story, but I’ve only been awake a little more than an hour.  And last night I was too out of it to write a post.*

Yesterday I was looking at pictures of friends in France. They’re about my age and their kids are the age of mine.

Now, most of my pictures on line (though not all) are of conventions and fan events, because my facebook page is a professional page, not a personal one. (I would start a personal one, but most of my personal life is just my kids, and if they’re looking on FB for pictures, they’re ill. Now this might change as the kids move out/get a life/live in other states, but right now there’s no point.)

So, my pictures are different. But we also have family pictures. We used to do a thing every year where we took pictures of events throughout the year, and the things the kids participated in, then narrated it, put it together, and sent a CD to the grandparents.

We don’t do that anymore – mostly time issues – but we do still take pictures, now on the – increasingly rare – occasions when the four of us do something fun together, like go to a special event at a museum or take an overnight trip somewhere. (The last one I can remember, absent cons) is the Van Gogh exhibit in Denver which we took in last year on Black Friday.)

The thing is, in all these pictures, my kids are smiling, or goofing off, or even giving each other the stink eye.

Our family pictures involve stuff like mini-golfing together and posing around fiberglass animals. Or pretending to be swept out with the monumental dust-pan and broom outside the Denver Art Museum. Or Marshall looking very sophisticated (but not bored) in his leather blazer, looking at pictures.

Yesterday I read this at Ace of Spades, so I was primed to think how much people, consciously, try to make their lives look like “they should”.

And then I looked at pictures from France. I think all of us have watched at least one French movie, right?

Well, pictures from France, even pictures of people my kids’ age all transmit that “the world is a dingy place and we’re all hard eyed realists with incredibly complex sex lives” look of French movies.

Is it true?

Oh, heck no, no more than street cars mentioned by Ace are romantic or beautiful or anything like that. This is just the image sold in the movies. Most people in France, except for the issues brought on by socialism (break up of families, high unemployment, pervasive bureaucracy) live the same small, happy lives as anyone else. You know, someone to love, something to do, something to eat. Lives just comfortable enough they don’t struggle for more.

But how much you enjoy how you live and what you perceive as “the good life” can definitely be influenced by what you see. And that in turn changes what you do and what you see around you, and therefore your mood.

It’s probably not a coincidence that France has one of the highest rates in the world for consumption of anti-depressives.

For some reason – and it has to do with taking a really weird turn at the romantics and then getting stuck with more socialist realism than should be possible outside the Soviet union – they internalized the idea that high art is vaguely boring and definitely pessimistic (here I think it’s a great deal too bad that most of their “art” is protected from competition with foreign art by various stupid laws, and is subsidized with stipends allocated by bureaucrats, for whom, of course, life is both boring and pessimistic, with shades of sadism.)

And so, even though they might have been able to get around the blight of socialism, in time, and even though they live in one of the most beautiful places on Earth, they’ve internalized self-hatred, unhappiness as a sort of chic accoutrement, and the meaninglessness of their own quotidian life. (Which, even without socialism would make their family lives a mess and taking daily pleasure in things difficult.)

So, what does this have to do with anything other than beating the French? (Admittedly always a good pastime, particularly since I’m writing stuff in Liberte seacity.)

Simple: a lot of our high culture is French. It is sometimes French by way of Germany, but it is French. Most of our glitterati love French culture and by that I don’t mean the good stuff like what Mr. Du Toit appreciates (I have some favorite French writers, myself.) No, most of them admire the more recent stuff, not even the French cinema, but the pictures they get from friends who go on vacation there. They admire the air of being unutterably bored and depressed and the way everyone there seems to accept the world is on a handbasket ride to h*ll. It’s so… sophisticated!

In their minds, most of our glitterati are hanging out in cafes, smoking thin little cigarettes and sneering at the world.

I mean, most of them aren’t even looking at France but at American movies that show France, but they think it’s all so unutterably romantic and so much better than our cowboy can-do attitude, and they want to think life means nothing and all is lost so they can be just like the French.

In fact, the insanity in SF/F now reminds me a lot of the French science fiction of the seventies. (It was excusable. It was after all the seventies.) Stranger and stranger sexual identities, tearing down of all taboos, life is a bitch. Humans are evil. And then you die. Check.

Look, yesterday a friend sent me a picture of what can only be called a cave-world in China. The first comment was “Now that it’s discovered, humans will destroy it.” And it was followed by upteen comments agreeing with this.

Now, the caves will almost surely be despoiled, because it’s a communist regime. (duh.) But not because it’s “humanity” and even if it were, why the heck SHOULDN’T they be despoiled? (Other than scientific investigation, natch.) I mean, what is their intrinsic value outside of humanity studying/admiring them? And yep, a dozen of the comments were “Humans should just die off, they ruin everything.” Uh… everything for whom? If there are not humans, who appreciates/gives aesthetic value to anything? If an elephant paints in the forest and no human sees it, did it really happen?

These people clearly did not believe in this – no, seriously – For one, they were all still alive. No one can go to life hating themselves that much and survive. But it was the pose to strike to appear intelligent, in comments, in novels, in drawings, in…

To be hopeful and happy is to be low brow. To show yourself intelligent you need to despair in the approved Socialist-realist way.

The problem with this is that this sort of thing seeps into the culture by forming the younger people. It forms their attitudes and their beliefs. They are too unsophisticated to know the adults don’t really mean it, so they mean it a little more.

After a few generations you’re stuck with people so depressed, they will accept overlords, even barbaric overlords who stone women and gays, if it will save them from their ennui and their depressive view of the world.

And therein lies the rub. The helplessness of modern “realism” is a gateway drug to being sheep in thrall of totalitarians.

You’re so tired of despair and sadness, and yet you know the world is terrible and you want to atone for any happiness you still feel. So you give in to petty tyrants like the people in SFWA who change the rules and tell you you’re bad because you used the word they just forbid. Or whatever. And you abase yourself and feel dirty and miserable.

Until a really big tyrant, like, oh, Mao or Stalin or the despicable Che, come along and free you from your guilt by more than likely killing you, and if not making you wish they had.

It doesn’t have to be like that. On comments, on books, on drawings, refuse to follow the blinkered “chic unhappiness” of the elites. Laugh at their poses of sadness and thoughtfulness. They’re like little kids trying to look serious so we’ll think they’re grown up.

Mock, contradict, ignore, replace.

In the end we win, they lose.

It has to be so, if humanity is to survive.

Refuse the easy rewards of the merchants of despair. Build your life on hard work and can-do.

Things we’ve learned this month: people die. In fact, over the last two months, any number of readers of this blog have found this out.

Okay, we knew that already. I still remember the weird shock that someone close to me COULD die, when I was fourteen and my paternal grandfather died. I mean, it’s not like I didn’t know it happened – the test is simple. Are your great great grandparents alive? If not there’s a good chance you’re mortal. If yes, are their parents alive? If not, see previous. – it just had never happened and some part of the human mind is experiential. We believe what we’ve experienced. And somehow experiencing death in books is not the same, because those people having been part of your life your entire life.

I suppose it’s the same thing when a friend your age dies. At least when you’re middle-aged and the death is not accidental. It leaves you feeling a touch of memento moris and carpe diem. And as we all know when you come down with a touch of Latin it’s all downhill from there.

Okay, fine, seriously, experienced – which surprises me a little as my faith has never been iron-clad – I’m feeling this as though Alan has gone away. It’s just that when your friends move out or leave town, you can call them and eventually see them again – which obviously doesn’t apply when they die.

What I mean is the “feel” of it is that he still exists but elsewhere, but not being able to get in touch with him is going to make things very tough and does, coming up against small things every other day, because so many of our history and references are joint, that even though in the last few years we only saw each other a few times a year, you hit that spot in your mind a lot – like stubbing your toe in the dark.

Anyway, among the things I learned is that when your friends die it’s not like when a beloved pet dies. I wrote Darkship Thieves as a NaNoWrimo the month Petronius the Arbiter died, and I spent a lot of time just writing. Oh, I missed Pete a lot, but somehow it was easier to get over or forget for a few hours.

So, NaNowrimo came to complete halt for two and a half weeks. It’s moving again now, but yesterday was a lost day because I had to clean the house, at least minimally. For some reason, I don’t transition well from house-cleaning to writing. It’s not being exhausted, it’s a mental switch thing. I pop out of writing mode and into “Is there really a mountain of cat toys under that bookcase” mode.

Some things in life are like that. One of the things I realized, back when I still sent stories out on spec (how odd that sounds. I will be doing it again soon, too, with Analog) is that I went through phases. There were phases in which I wrote like a banshee and stuff stayed in the drawer, and phases in which I sent stuff out.

Even the vaunted year of a story a week, nothing got sent out until I missed the occasional week. Not sure why, that was just the way it was.

Now the same seems to apply to the indie publishing. I have a mountain of short stories ready to put up – mine and Robert’s – and while short stories make almost nothing, they do help greatly if I keep one free a week over this season. Only, I’ve not done it. I even have covers. But the minutiae detail seems like … an impossible hurdle.

I’m going to try to get something up for cyber Monday and put some things on sale, though.

And today, since the cleaning is done, I’m going to be working on Through Fire. I dreamed the rest of the book last night, which we know is what I do before I finish it.

You see, for the two years I’ve been slogging through this, I’ve had this scene in my mind, of Zen with someone drifting in the ocean at the end of the novel. I now know who is in the boat with her, and why they’re drifting, and why that scene is the needed end to THIS novel. I can only say “you’ll see.” It used to puzzle me excessively. But now I “get” it and it works with the theme and everything.

Okay. And now I go write.

 

As you all know, I went to an interstellar workshop recently and I was put in the C for Com (communication) work group. Little did I know that this work would come in useful so soon. It appears that through extremelytechydium, this blog has detected communications to the stars* from a race of infiltrators that has been among us for centuries. It explains both the SJWs on Twitter yesterday and the killjoy who thought he could browbeat us with half-baked history and “facts” that never happened.

I am not sure of my translation, of course. You know how difficult it is to understand an alien language, and this one is one of the most difficult. Frankly, if so much of it hadn’t been integrated into Marxism and other leftist twattery** it would be completely opaque.

Dear Masters*** of the Glitter Universe, from your servant Glitterbot, on the third planet from Sol, spiral arm of the Milkyway [they appear to call it something that might be fish-semen, but we’ll use our familiar name] Nebula in the farthest regions [lit. where the nether pointing tentacle cannot reach.]

I must trust this report to the star-waves, in hopes it will explain to you the difficulties I’ve run into in this the fourth 1×100 revolution of this miserable rock around its star  that I’ve witnessed from this planet’s forsaken surface.

As was planned, after I landed, I set about examining the dominant species. One would hesitate to call them sentients, or at least I’ve had plenty of reason to suspect they’d been easily led. Until this– But more on that later.

As per your shining instructions, when I landed, I discovered this species – which calls itself hooman – had one great weakness in that it developed in a saltational manner. By this I mean that one part of it would advance towards a culture that would make it capable of granting greater comfort and stability to its members and then, by invading other cultures, or simply by the other cultures imitating them, the whole world would be pulled up to that level, before the next leap. It had happened several times.

It was obvious that like the Glitter Race and others that we managed to stop just in time, this process would, according to some natural progression of intelligence lead this species to starfaring and, eventually to challenge your magnificence, oh, lords of the shining universe.

I set about exploring its differential development to our purposes, and here I must ask you to admire me, because their flaw was much smaller than the cannibalistic species in Alpha Centauri, or the slaver races of Arcturus. And yet would be enough and serve.

I set about convincing the civilization at the time spearheading the push towards better living and more knowledge that they were evil and that the savage forms of its own species were the best and most noble of them all.

It was not easy since this civilization, then in the process of spreading across the globe, was aggressive and self-assured.

It necessitated the spawning of several copies of myself, designed to look like the local race, and prepared to spread this message to the natives.

Among those humble replicas of myself, I want to recommend, for our holograms of eternal remembrance, the one called Jean Jacques Rosseau, the first one to write movingly on how savages were the most advanced of their race and how every attempt to civilize them was a crime. This idea, propagating itself like poison through their culture has led to every other civilization-weakening misery-increasing belief.

It took a while, of course, but for almost a century now, the technological and innovating arm of their civilization has felt guilty over its advances and spent much time writing novels and scholarly treatises**** and making movies about how much better the most barbarous and cruel of their kind, living in civilizations that had exterminated all large, edible land dwelling animals, instead of domesticating them, were “the best” and “lived in harmony with nature.”

The guilt of those more comfortable ones over living better than their brethren did the rest. I had to extrude another few replicas of myself, going by the names of Marx and Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao, creating a theory of civilization and governance that extolled brutal oppression which by itself greatly reduced these creatures’ population, as well as creating a philosophy which if applied by definition makes the worst rise to the top, stops all technological development, and reinforces the idea that there is something magical in the primitive.

They are a learning species and they did the rest. A replicant here and there was enough. Provided the position, no matter how non-sensical is imbued with “class prestige” the rest of these apes will try to imitate it. Thus the same mechanism that led to their rise from flint-chipping apes to makers of synthetic materials can be used against them.

Fifty years ago, I thought that by now I would be reporting to you that I’d so far convinced them they were despicable and to be detested that they would line up and thank the glittery master race as they mowed the planet with their death-dealing rays.

I’m not quite sure what happened.

I’d made sure, like any advance scout of taking over their communication structure, the means by which they teach their young and the means by which they tell themselves who they are. I swear by the glittery center [lit, vagina] of the universe that I had them fully under my control. Even when they found ways to communicate person-to person and to tell themselves stories with no referent to the structures of power, I thought they’d been well enough indoctrinated to tell only the stories I taught them and complete their self abasement [lit. castration.]

But something happened along the way and these impertinent apes have been throwing off the so-carefully planted suggestions and storylines. They have been doing their own research and discovering things such as that no, most of the primitive races displaced by the slightly more advanced races at the time (the difference was small enough to be barely noticeable) weren’t more competent and certainly were not more respectful of “nature” – a concept I never understood, since star-traveling races like you, oh, glittery masters, create their own environment – and also that the “genocide” story I propagated was mostly due to infection by diseases to which herders and cattle-tamers had become immune while the races I carefully said were superior had preferred to eat animals into extinction rather than tame them. I also carefully hid the fact that the natives of those cultures had in fact not been exterminated so much as melded with the invaders, as has always been the way of this race, and I called any attempt to restore history a vile oppressor-race-aggrandizing narrative, when in fact these creatures are all so genetically similar as to have virtually no races.

I’ve also set their females against their males by claiming that sensible measures to ensure the reproduction of the species were oppression. In the most susceptible ones – in their education establishment – I’ve fostered the idea that oppression and reproduction are one and the same.

Yes, oh, Shiny [lit. Glittery] Masters [lit. Vaginas] of the Stars, I was well on my way to winning your war without a laser being fired.

Just recently, one of their females of their own accord, one Rose Eveleth [For whom I would like to claim the high Galactic Title of Vagina Vigilante] made a scientist who landed on a comet cry over his choice of wear which indeed did nothing but display the beauty (for them. I’ve not gone native) of the females of the species.

So, how is it I’m asking for help immediately?

Lately even the replicants I extrude seem to have lost control of the story line [lit. narrative] and there are indications these low apes are starting to suspect our narrative tends to nothing but making them loathe themselves. They are starting to say things such as that every race, throughout history, has committed crimes and horrors, and that this is normal because natural creatures aren’t perfect. Which as you know bodes well for their considering your emissaries perfect when they land. More, they’ve started to say that they like being hooman, warts and all. There is even a movement afoot to tell stories that laud hoomans as hoomans, and which encourage hoomans to reach for the stars and form their own galactic empire.

I don’t know what to do. My every attempt to shame them into submission – recently by attacking their primitive form of holo-play, by saying that it was not worthy, being a form of entertainment that aimed at enjoyment – meets with resistence and, worse, with derision.

I very much fear something has gone wrong in my control of the culture. My attempts to get them back in line by the pronouncements of their respected elders [lit. Massive Vaginas of the Establishment] is greeted with nothing but gales of laughter as they ignore these pronouncements and continue to escape my control.

I can only beg you that you, Oh, Glittery Masters [Lit – female reproductive organ] come quickly. Though you’ll meet with resistance to your death ray now, it’s likely to be smaller than it will be in fifty years.

In fact, unless you strike right now, I’m very much afraid they will be headed for the stars and will challenge your great and glittering magnificence [lit. Twattery] in your own homeworld.

I realize it might be too late, but while such creatures exist as the wonderful Vagina Vigilante mentioned abroad, ready to hate and debase members of her own species and her own species process in favor of an imaginary better, there is hope the resistance will not be too fierce.

Yours in Glitter

The Humble infiltrator who tries to communicate with plants.*****

 

Footnotes:

 

*No. Of course not really. Stop reading news from the White House. It’s so appallingly unbelievable that it destroys your sense of disbelief.

 

**Totally a word. I did tell you, did I not, of the woman in the village whose family nickname was “the lighted c*nt” (Or perhaps “the lit c*nt” or “the luminous c*nt” – translation is like that.) I suspect it related to some accident centuries back in which some ancestress tried to get over a private infestation with fire. But for the last day I’ve been giggling over translating it as “Glittery Hoo Ha.” So, take this as leftist shiny twattery

*** The words here translated as Masters or Lords, as a conventional sign of respect, show some indication of being in literal translation, the word for the female reproductive organ of this species (whose number of sexes is very hard to determine since, though their bodies seem to come in standard male and female format, they seem to identify by a variety of compound forms. We’re not sure what purpose this serves, and it seems an hindrance to reproduction. Perhaps the extreme rarity of their reproduction fuels their aggressive dislike of any other breed making it to the stars.)

**** It’s amazing what some people believe.

***** Literally “Cabbage head.”

Surely you don’t expect a full post from me today, do you?

Some things I’m very thankful for, despite the fact this has been a rocky year:

– my health seems to be improving, if not yet up to snuff

– my writing is slowly coming back (not rushing is tough.)

– Witchfinder did surprisingly well.

– The family is all healthy, and the boys are both working towards their careers/goals.

– There is indie, as well as Baen.  Baen is as always a haven and family, and indie gives me an additional outlet, as well as hope that we can turn this culture around.  (Keep working, guys.  Keep working.)

– There is still America.  Wounded, sure, and brought low, but still here and still ours.  Rebuilding is easier than inventing, and if the USA didn’t exist we’d have to invent ‘er.

– Good friends,including present company, even if most of you are probably figments of my imagination.  (You’re very nice figments.)

This link here will take you to my e-card to Hoyt’s Huns and Hoydens.  It’s a pleasure knowing you, guys.  G-d bless every argumentative one of you. You’ve got me through some rough patches and (looks at feet) I love you guys!  And for this, too, I’m thankful.