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Yes, there will be a real post and also stuff for the subscribers in a couple of hours.  yesterday turned out… interesting… but for today, if  you’re contemplating a Staycation for Labor Day you should know that there is a Labor Day sale, so you can go somewhere in your mind at a price you can afford.

 

I’ve also got all my Musketeer Mysteries on sale.  The first is 99c, the others are 2.99 and I have all five out again — I need to finish the sixth.

 

 

A Touch of Night is also on sale, as are the books of several frequent fliers at ATH: Kate Paulk, Amanda Green, Cedar Sanderson Alma Boykin, Cyn Bagley, S. J. Chase  and others, including my son Robert A. Hoyt.  For the full sweets counter sale listing, go to: THE GREAT LABOR DAY SALE!

*I have been reading a lot about how we’re ungovernable again, so I thought it might be a good idea to run this again.  I confess I’m not up to thinking logically, though in a few hours there will be some fodder for subscribers in the subscriber area.  Also, I’m afraid I jump-started the Labor day sale.  I did it because being me, I forgot what day it was.  (Yes, this happens a lot.)  All the Musketeer books (except the first which will be 99c tomorrow on countdown sale)  This is a link to The musketeer’s Seamstress. and the Shakespeare trilogy are on sale. This is the link to Ill Met by Moonlight.*

 

I’ve said before that I became an American by reading Heinlein books.  This is true at least to an extent, though I’d be at a loss to explain the process to you.  I mean, if you knew how to do that, book by book, chipping away, so someone starts out wondering what’s wrong with all those Americans who don’t like taxes (don’t they know taxes are civilization?  And have always existed) and ends up thinking getting a Don’t Tread On Me tattoo is a brilliant idea, even while immersed in a socialist, communitarian system, we’d have no problems.  We’d just use “the process.”

Mind, you, it is likely that the er… Heinleinizing (totally a word.  Don’t worry your pretty head) of my opinions came from watching socialism up close and personal.  Heinlein had help.  But all the same, and even so, by the time I came to the States as an exchange student I had been, so to put it, primed to react to the US as “home.”

Even so, things about the US surprised me – things that Americans thought were completely logical.  For instance, the fact that classes are – objectively – a zoo.  No, we’re not talking about a war-zone type school.  Stow High School had good teachers, by and large, enthusiastic about teaching and their subjects.

I’m just talking about classroom behavior.  People just TALKED.  In Portugal, once the teacher entered, absolute silence reigned, unless he asked a question.  More conducive to learning?  Sure.  Maybe.  But in the US it just didn’t happen.  There wasn’t that built in respect for the “master” who got up front and spoke, and therefore all must fall silent.

There were other things – a distinct lack of respect based solely on someone’s age and position (respect for real accomplishments was granted, of course.) – a wicked sense of humor that showed up in signs on hallways and doors of classes, the fact that people could talk back or joke with teachers.

But possibly the most surprising thing in the US was … how people interacted.  You could have ornaments and decorated trees in your front yard and no one stole them.  This made my jaw drop, particularly since my host family’s house didn’t even have a nominal fence.  (This  might be gone in certain areas.  At least someone stole both a cement giraffe and – months later – a cheap composite fountain from our front yard.)

And when something went wrong, say a massive snowfall, people grabbed shovels and went to the street, to shovel not just their driveway, but as much of the sidewalk as they could, and to make their area as functional as possible, before official rescue/help arrived.

This would be unheard of most other places in the world.

This image/these ideas gelled for me as I read P.J. O’Rourke’s comment about a restaurant somewhere – the Soviet Union – “An American would grab a bottle of windex and solve most of the problem.”  Or something like that.

Every time I go back to Portugal, now, I find myself thinking about that type of thing or wanting to do that type of thing about ten times a day.  Most of the time I don’t, because there’s a crab bucket thing over there, you know, the crabs pull the others down, i.e. if I – say – grabbed a bottle of cleaner to save a sanitation problem, I’d get asked “Who do you think you are?”   And my parents live there.  (If they didn’t, and didn’t have to live with the consequences of my actions, I’d probably do it anyway.)

Yeah, Americans talk back, and make classrooms noisy, and can sometimes be counterproductive.  On the other hand, Americans, faced with a gadawful mess don’t look around and wait for “the proper person” to fix it.  They roll up their sleeves and each of them goes “Well, I’ll do this.”

It’s hard to explain how different that makes us.  To most Americans it seems logical behavior (it is) and I only get the difference because I remember being brand new here and how ALIEN it was.  And I remember living in Portugal without the constant “oh, for heavens’ sake, just do it” moments I have when I go back now.  (I should possibly point out that most Europeans find most middle aged American women bossy, interfering and a bit terrifying.)

Yes, I know some of you are going to tell me that spirit is now lost.

It’s not.  It is, of course, in certain areas – but certain areas always had issues – and for certain people.  And it is more muted than it used to be.

Part of the thing with Europe is the worship of the “experts.”  “We’ll take it to the expert” or “We’ll have the expert do it.”  There is now some do it yourself (and my mom was always one of nature’s do-it-yourselvers.  I think given time to acculture, and if she’d come here early enough mom would have made a great American) but it’s nothing like in the US and it would never have started without the US.

They’ve – by which I mean the cultural establishment – tried to bring the same here.  I’ve railed here before about how cozies were – in effect – blacklisted by the publishing establishment because “amateurs can’t be better than the professionals.”  And how my books couldn’t have funny policemen because “Policemen are professionals and must be respected.”  And I’ve talked about how shocked I was when a bunch of high school kids came to beat me on my blog because I’d criticized their teacher (I actually hadn’t.  I’d criticized the curriculum which is is not teacher set, but they lacked the semantic ability to distinguish these) and how dare I?  She’s a TEACHER.  I’m supposed to respect her.  (She also was considerably less educated than I, much younger and I have reason to believe she sent the kids over to harass me – the harassment stopped when I threatened to scan in some of her (outrageous) grading handiwork and post it. – which leaves me in doubt of her moral character.)

While these things annoy me and shock me, as does anyone preventing my questioning him by saying “I’m the expert” – it is still new here.

The people on top are trying to do it, but I wonder how much of it will stick.

No, listen.  We’re still… Us.  Still likely to roll up our sleeves and do it.

Look at blogs.  Sure, there are blogs abroad.  I hear Portugal is one of the most connected countries in the world.  But are there newsblogs?  Big enough to rival, say instapundit?  Drudge? (There might be something like DU or the others – because, well, they’re funded and organized by organizations.  But, you know, I have problems enough without tampering with my blood pressure.)

Oh, please.  News have to be reported by experts.  It’s not the individual’s job.  And besides, why undertake that mass of work if no one will pay you?

There are tons of interesting recipe blogs, etc, but I have yet to find something with the scope that Americans cheerfully undertake.

The same could be said for ebooks and indie publishing.  They have access to the same facilities we do (though more regulations in the way) but do you see a flood of books in foreign languages appearing?  Some, sure (there are displaced and unaware Americans everywhere, in the sense that being American is to an extent a place in the heart) there are some.  But nothing like you’d expect.

This is to an extent why  – to quote Bill Whittle – the future comes from America.  We are willing to go ahead and try it, and see how it plays.

The spirit is still there.  Diminished, perhaps, but still much stronger than in the rest of the world.

And this is why I say we also don’t know what the result of what the people on the top – publishing, politics, news, etc – are doing to us.  We know how it works in other countries, but I don’t think they realize how different we are.

When people’s lives are made impossible, they find ways to live.  This was true, even in Portugal in the seventies, with a  flourishing black market and most regulations ignored.  How much more true will it be here, at the first signs of true pinching?

And then there’s the fact that in the rest of the world, if things get unbearable, you can always go to America.  But we don’t have an America to go to.  Which will only make us more determined to “ignore the order, buck the directive, roll up our sleeves and do for ourselves.”

This is why statists of any stripe so often throw their hands up and call us ungovernable.  Not that this gives them the idea they shouldn’t try.  No.  Instead, they try to devise more cunning ways of governing us.  You have them to give credit for dreaming the impossible dream.  It’s the one proof we have that the sons of beetles are Americans.

So…  after sixty years of creeping statism, they’ve now “captured the flag” – they have actually got all of the important systems sewn up: news, entertainment, education, government.

They think – can you blame them? – that they won.

I won’t say they can’t hurt us.  They can.  The mechanisms they’ve seized hold of are important and they are – natch – misusing them.

I’m not saying that this will be easy.  It won’t.  Our economy is likely to be an incredible shambles, and I’ve said before I think we’ll lose at least one city.

But, listen, the problem with these sons of… Babel is that they might be American, but they’re not American ENOUGH.  If they were, they’d understand “ungovernable” and this willingness for each of us to go it alone (often for common benefit, but on own recognizance, nonetheless) is not a bug.  It’s a feature.  And that it’s baked in the cake of a people who came here to escape the top-down spirit of other places.  Some of the black sheep (or as one friend of mine calls it, the plaid sheep) attitude is genetic, hereditary, inborn.  And enough of us have it.

Push harder and we escape harder, through crevices they don’t even know are there.  Forbid us from making a living, and we’ll find a way to go around you.  Make it impossible to defend ourselves, and I shudder to think what some of my friends and neighbors will come up with.  Make the economy impossible, and we’ll create another one you can’t reach.  Make regulations too binding and we’ll either ignore them or – more likely – creatively subvert them.

They captured the flag, and they think they captured the nation.  It’s the type of mistake that the bureaucratic mind makes.

Poor rats.  Try not to laugh at them too hard, as you go about the business of undermining them.

We have them surrounded.

I just had news that Rocky, my remote-auxiliary-backup dog died this morning.

I have always wanted a dog since we’ve been married but between frequent moves, the fact we tend to buy houses I rebuild from the wall in, and my getting sick far too often, oh, and the 4 to 6 cons a year we used to do, that’s simply not been possible.

Through years of living without a dog, I became somewhat fearful of them. (The dogs who jumped the fence at me often when we lived in Manitou didn’t help.  Though one of them was a sheepdog who just wanted to bask in younger son’s presence.)

So when I visited Amanda while teaching a workshop, I was shocked to find that Rocky and I were like…. we’d always known each other.  The best part of my arrival in Texas was Rocky doing his train impression.  No matter where I was or whether he was in the back yard when I arrived, as soon as the door opened, he’d come charging through the house like a freight train to do the dance of doggy join and get petted.  And when I stayed there, he slept on my feet when I wrote. He was in fact “my” dog, even if we only saw each other once a year.  (He was also Amanda’s and her family’s, yes, but he treated me like one of them.)

I’m not going to TX this year because of both Amanda’s and my schedule and I told her just two days ago that I could write much better with a dog on my feet.

It’s not going to happen.  Rocky went to the rainbow bridge unexpectedly this morning.

He was a good and loyal dog, and I hope to see him again when the time comes.

I will write a post but right now I need to have a good cry.

Pull down those walls.  I’m sure the roof will remain standing.  Do let’s continue the nostalgia for baby boomers challenging their parents, when baby boomers are now grandparents: June Whitfield interview: ‘Middle class is still a dirty word in TV’.

Fortunately those middle class values are just things that kill joys came up with to prevent the perfect non-patriarchal society from happening.   It’s not like It’s not just boys who need male role models.

And it’s not like teaching the kids to despise their own homeland will have a bad effect, so, let’s double down on that, because there are kind and sensitive “others” and their perfect cultures which will be better than our flawed land, the one that gave most people the most prosperous and freest lifestyle in history.

After all they should be fighting for the ideals of believers in far-away religions, ideals that are so much more likely to bring about paradise than our capitalist, middle class society.

And above all never mind if the evidence is on your side, don’t call a reporter a left wing liberal.  (Dirty and smelly is a personal opinion and I wasn’t there.)

Because they have no sense of humor, whatsoever.  You have a sense that there’s something good and decent and worth saving before you have a sense of humor, I guess.

Fortunately we have a sense of humor.  And a good idea of what works too. We’re not demanding paradise on Earth or happy forever more.  We’re just working towards a world where most people can live okay lives.  Because we know humans are fallible, we exempt no race or creed from decent human behavior.

It’s Wednesday morning in the last week of August 2014.  We have things to learn and a society to rebuild.  The wall-pullers have been at it a long time, and what can’t go on forever, won’t.

Learn, work, hold yourself responsible, and teach your children well.

Up and at ’em.

 

UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers and thank you to Glenn Reynolds for the link.

Have you ever been followed on the street by a crazy person shouting things at you? In a big city with crowded sidewalks?

It happened to my son – fortunately – when he was thirteen. He didn’t look thirteen, but he also didn’t look old enough to drive. Say fifteen or so. This was the fortunate part. Our family went for a walk downtown. A normal looking man (until you looked at his eyes) middle aged, in a suit, took a look at Robert and started following us shouting “You ran over my little girl, you bastard. How dare you walk around free? Are you going to run over more people?” etc, etc, ad nauseum.

It was obvious he was yelling at Robert, because if we shifted formation, he would change to be within about two feet of Robert and looking at him.

It was also obvious to anyone watching he was crazy. At least I hope so, since my kid didn’t even look old enough to drive.

BUT our entire family was cringing and Robert looked like he wanted to hide. ALL eight blocks back to where we’d parked. Then he stood there and shook his fist at us while we took off.

That wasn’t precisely a new experience for me. It says something about the texture of life in the Portugal I grew up in (that caveat is needed, as I know nothing or next to about Portugal now) that a romantic song promised to protect the girl “when a madman follows you on the street shouting things.” This happened fairly routinely when I was going to college and taking a train to downtown Porto and then a bus to my campus. Madmen would follow calling me a whore, (because someone in a black skirt suit and a black medieval cloak is self evidently selling her wares?) or saying I stole something, or sometimes just shouting the equivalent of “millennium hand in shrimp.”

It’s so common that passersby would grin at my embarrassed face. BUT there’s the point. No matter how common, no matter how unjustified, you always feel like SOMEHOW you did SOMETHING to bring this episode on.

I was reminded of this yesterday – yes, on Facebook. You know… — when I posted a somewhat tasteless, but not overly so meme on the Titanic. I might not have posted it, not being interested in either of the topics, but my son made it and it was cutish. It was the titanic, sinking and it said “The Ice Bucket Challenge/On expert mode.” Okay, I have nothing against the ice-bucket challenge, but it’s been all over and the Titanic sank because of striking ice, so, you know, it was kind of sort of chuckle worthy. And it took you unawares while drinking tea (me) spray worthy, because of the juxtaposition of ideas.

My first comment was from someone who has written a book about the Titanic “Just.not.funny.” Well, okay. I know what it’s like to be close to your subject. I’ve been known to put a cutting remark when an Oxfordian posts something about not having enough evidence of Shakespeare’s life. But that’s usually on serious memes. I think I pass on raining on someone’s parade in politics or history at least once a day.

Why? Because it’s a facebook meme. People are having fun. Do you really want to stand at the edge of the crowd screaming “Not funny.”

But fine, he was close to it, knew the details of the tragedy, etc, so I put in “Well, maybe you’re too close to it, but it’s been used as a joke in Ghost Busters, so this is not even the real titanic, it’s the “meme Titanic”” – and also the drawing showed the ship, not the people.

What I expected was the he’d absent himself from the rest of the thread.

Oh, boy, was I wrong. Next, he posted pictures of the remains in the Titanic, and what looked like someone’s leg bone. We tried to explain to him that, er, no, we weren’t making fun of the death of people, it was just the weird idea of a ship deciding to take the challenge.

AND THEN he decided that he would make “funny memes” of Nazi cold water immersion torture and post them, because, you know, no one told him not to.

Now you guys have known me long enough, so when I said, “No one told you not to dance in traffic, either, does that mean you feel compelled to” you know exactly how far I’d been pushed. I don’t think I’ve lost my cool to that point here, except with overt trolls.

BUT he kept coming back, and defending his outrage, and saying we were making fun of the horrible death of hundreds (which I hope it’s understood in the meme was not part of it) and on and on, until he called Kate Paulk (!) two swear words. And then I blocked him and banned him.

I went to bed still confused about this. You see, it’s the first time I blocked anyone on Facebook.

And he’s been my friend for a while, and what’s more, he wrote a book I enjoyed on the Titanic. So I thought “he can’t be that crazy. What did I do wrong? It can’t be just the meme. Consider that there are titanic tea infusers for sale, and titanic inflatable lawn toys, and…” I mean, the Titanic, 102 years after its sinking is, yes, a horrible disaster. (We went through the Titanic exhibit at the museum, and while not as powerful as the one on Pompeii (no, trust me) it was heart-rending) but from the disaster enough gallows humor has emerged to make it a meme for “sinking ship” – not the real Titanic but sort of a cultural cartoon. Or even a meme for “engineering failure.” I mean, if you’re talking about someone designing a spaceship with obvious flaws, saying “remember the titanic” doesn’t mean “remember everyone who died. It means “remember the massive engineering failure.”

But anyway I went to bed torturing myself over his rather public implosion – a friend said it sounds like a manic episode – and wondering if I should have defused it earlier.

And this morning I realized that half of my flist seems to have blocked him BEFORE that incident, so I feel a little better.

But at the same time the incident and its aftermath, like the incident with people following us on the street showed me the power of crazy and how the left has deployed it in elections.

Look, if you’re A LITTLE crazy, people wonder what is wrong with you. Say the person on my thread had kept insisting that it wasn’t funny, in a mournful tone. I’d have gone “Dude, what’s wrong with you?”

But once he started posting Nazi memes, I was going “Dude, what have I done wrong?”

Now compare it to the things Romney was accused of in the election: not paying taxes for 10 years; causing someone’s wife to get cancer…

He was probably ready for “when have you stopped beating your wife?” but he wasn’t prepared for “When did you stop eating babies?” Craziness on that level leaves you bereft and open-jawed and wondering what YOU could have done wrong to bring it on.

In the same way tea partiers were prepared (probably) to be accused of wanting to starve the poor – but who is prepared to be accused of being racist, when half of your gatherings have more people of color than white ones? (The one in town had a whole tribe who took a bus from a reservation, in full regalia.) Or a white supremacist? Or Nazis?

And it goes on and on at all levels. It’s like the left reaches into the bucket of crazy and flings the crazier non-sequiturs they can find at people’s heads. This is for instance why I have been accused of being fascist (because I want to take over the world and leave you ruthlessly alone!) or a white (!) Supremacist. It’s a bucket of crazy, and how do you defend yourself from that, and what have you done to bring it on?

And when our side tries similar crazy things (not even as crazy) – say the birth question or whether Mr. Obama might just perhaps be hiding a gay side (notthatthereisanythingwrongwiththat, but it would be a blatant lie to pretend otherwise) — our own side starts mumbling “Don’t say that. That’s just wrong.”

The other side, otoh, the party of people whose representative is afraid Guam will tip over, has no qualms.  But we do.

 

Look, take it from someone who’s been followed by crazies on the street. Sometimes turning around and saying in the most dramatic tone you can conjure “It was you Mr. Wiggins. It was you who stole the turtle. Millenium hand in shrimp. I’ll have three brown ones.” In fact, I’ve found it’s the only thing that DOES work. It gets this weird look to come to their eyes, and then they slink off.

But that is not something our candidates can do, of course. However, WE can. And we need to stop slamming down on people who do.

Beyond that, our candidates – and ourselves – need to be prepared for those questions and ready to laugh and point and make duck noises, instead of cringing and looking embarrassed at their insanity. “When did I stop eating babies? What kind of crazy asks that question? Or do you mean eggs? I had eggs just this morning. Do you, Mr. Wiggins, also devour the unborn?”

Because the low information voters see the cringe, and being liv’s think “No smoke without fire.”

Toss the crazy ball right at them. Use GIFs if needed. Stop feeling guilty because they’re crazy. Their problem is not your problem. And you shouldn’t feel sorry for them. They are, at this point, doing it deliberately.

Laugh, point, and be ready to make fun, just like medieval people did when confronted with madmen.

Sometimes, it’s the only sane answer.

 

 

The Autism Question — Cedar Sanderson

The recent discovery of what may cause autism was first brought to my attention by Peter Grant’s blog. I’ve since seen it several times since then, posted by gleeful optimists, but my first reaction wasn’t sheer joy. You see, I have a little sister who is autistic. However, as Peter points out, many creative type folks – including many people I know, and perhaps even myself, also show signs of autism.

 

The problem is, what was once a nebulous diagnosis limited to those who were almost completely withdrawn from the world is now applied to anyone who displays social awkwardness. I’m not going to get into the subtle workings of the brain, in any depth, as I’m not the person to talk to about thingies in the brainies (although perhaps one of those worthies will drop by in comments).

 

I’ll start with the International Handbook of Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorders. “Autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs) are characterized by impaired social interactions and communication, as well as restricted and repetitive behaviors and interests. Impairment in each of these dimensions can vary in severity, and symptomatologies among individuals with ASDs are often quite diverse. Over the past 20 years, there has been a marked increase in the diagnosis of individuals with ASDs. In 1966, Lotter undertook the first epidemiological study of autism, estimating the prevalence of autism disorder to be 4.5/10,000. Two decades later, the estimate rose to 10.1/10,000. Currently, the community prevalence of ASDs is estimated to be at least 36.4/10,000, with some estimates as high as 67/10,000. It has been suggested that this increase in the number of cases of ASDs is due, at least in part, to more inclusionary definitions of disorders within the autism spectrum. While more in-depth discussion of this increase in ASD prevalence can be found elsewhere, there is at least some suggestion that changes in prevalence may be due to changes in, and broadening of, the diagnostic conceptualization of ASD. “

 

However, while at one end of the diagnostic criteria lies my sister, who is a lovely person, mentally about four, physically around thirty, on the other is me. You all know me, some have met me in person. I’ve never been tested for autism, I refused to even consider it when it was suggested not too long ago. I’m a functional adult, and I don’t need that label hung on me. Because the ‘high functioning’ end of autism, which was recently (and still, I think) called Aspergers, is more a psychological diagnosis than a physical one.

 

While doing research for this essay, I came across an article that was published in the New York Times, entitled “I had Asperger Syndrome. Briefly.” which succinctly lays out my concerns with the over-diagnosis of people with autism. “I exhibited a “qualified impairment in social interaction,” specifically “failure to develop peer relationships appropriate to developmental level” (I had few friends) and a “lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment, interests, or achievements with other people” (I spent a lot of time by myself in my room reading novels and listening to music, and when I did hang out with other kids I often tried to speak like an E. M. Forster narrator, annoying them). I exhibited an “encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity or focus” (I memorized poems and spent a lot of time playing the guitar and writing terrible poems and novels).” Nugent goes on to explain that as he got older, and developed, his mother, who had diagnosed him and applied the label to him, realized that he was not on the autism spectrum.

 

While the Federal Education code lays out a much stricter criteria for diagnosis, we have already seen that parents and doctors adhere to no such standards. Which brings me back to the article and study published in the Daily Mail.

 

If, and it is a very big if, they have truly discovered the cause of autism and Aspergers, what do they propose to do with that? While perhaps such treatment could reveal my sister, as we glimpse her now through a veil, an engaging person with an impish sense of humor, a temper, and a distinct personality. Then the veil falls again and she is out of reach. I would go far for a treatment that would lift the veil forever. But what if it doesn’t work? And how will we know? Will they decide to use people like my sister, deeming them not contributors to society, as guinea pigs. Yes, I know that would be unethical and illegal with today’s laws… If a fetus capable of drawing breath for their first cry can be deemed a non-person, what protects my sister?

And that same treatment, the neural pruning, if applied to an adult, what would happen? Would we creatives lose our social awkwardness, that need to flee a crowd because it’s all just too much, the shying away from direct contact that overwhelms us? Or would we also lose our weirdness, that which makes us Odd and able to create? No-one knows. We simply don’t know what the brain does, internally, well enough to plunge into declaration of a ‘cure” much less implementing it.

 

I’m never one to seize on a ‘new discovery’ and this one has me taking a step back and hesi – no, I’ll admit, the first words out of my mouth on reading it were unladylike. I immediately saw where it could go, and folks, it ain’t pretty.

 

I’ll finish up with this: the history of eugenics and mental retardation. “ In this country, attempts to eradicate the population of individuals with mental retardation can be traced back to the emergence of eugenics in the latter half of the 19th century. Francis Galton’s theory of eugenics was aimed at improving the “inborn qualities of a race.” One of the objectives of proponents of this “science” was to colonize and sterilize all undesirable subgroups in the United States. Half of the states adopted laws that forbade marriage for individuals who had mental or emotional impairments. In the 20th century, sterilization was used as a means of controlled breeding. In 1911, the American Breeders Association was established to study the reduction of the mentally retarded population. By 1926, sterilization laws had been passed in 23 states that made sterilization mandatory for “mentally deficient” individuals when recommended by the courts (Rubin & Rosseler, 1994). These laws ultimately resulted in the involuntary sterilization of over 60,000 individuals with mental retardation and mental illness by the year 1960 (Reilly, 1991).” Later in that same article, “There are no national or even regional statistics reported in any publication on the incidence of elective abortion that follows a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome. The only information available is from those individual diagnostic or treatment facilities that maintain such records and permit disclosure. Although current statistics were not available, between 1984 and 1987, 88% of the women at Washington University Medical Center who were informed that they were carrying a fetus with Down syndrome elected to abort the fetus (H. Beaver, personal communication, February 24, 1993). Similarly, P. DaVee of Indianapolis University Hospital reported that of the 1,125 clients tested in 1993, 29 (2.6%) indicated abnormal fetuses (personal communication, December 13, 1993). Although statistics were not available, she reported that most of the abnormalities were Down syndrome. DaVee concurred that, based upon her experience, nearly all of the fetuses carrying Down syndrome were aborted. These findings appear to indicate that genetic testing as a logical extension of eugenics is indeed being used as a means to screen for and then prevent the birth of persons with Down syndrome.” (Ethical and legal issues regarding selective abortion of fetuses with Down syndrome By: Glover NM, Glover SJ, Mental Retardation, 00476765, Aug, 1996, Vol. 34, Issue 4)

 

I had a personal brush with this. While pregnant with my son, I had an ultrasound. That evening, we got a rather concerned-sounding voice mail from the doctor, telling us that the fetus had a marker for Down’s, and we needed to come in for an appointment to discuss options. My immediate reaction was again explosive, unladylike, unprintable, and boiled down to “he’s 27 weeks old. There is only one option, and that is we will love him.” For those wondering, short legs run in the family on his paternal side, and he inherited short femurs… but nothing else. He’s a bright, energetic, engaging young man now, at nine years of age.

 

Before we start looking at cures, we must look at the consequences. What happens without those neurons? If you treat very early in life, then the person will never miss them. But we might also miss out on what would have been. Do we risk the people we already have, to see a cure for those who are coming now? How much of the autism spectrum is real, and how much a convenient excuse for people with an agenda? And when will pregnant mothers start making decisions about their children based on some genetic test which might or might not be a reality?

 

I can’t begin to answer all the questions. Nor can the scientists who did the original study. Perhaps in time, we can be more certain. But not yet, and I wouldn’t be willing to risk my precious sister to it.

The other day here, someone brought up “Imagine” under if everything we think we know is wrong, then…

Imagine is one of the songs which gets me talking to the supermarket loudspeakers, and not in a good way. If I’m alone in a section I might go so far as to give the speakers the double middle finger. (The others are mostly Phil Collins.)

The problem with Imagine is not that it’s lousy, kitchy, superficial art (it is) or that I tend to like songs that have a bubbly meaning on top and more layered meanings underneath (“I’m not crazy, I’m just a little unwell. I know, right now you can’t tell, but stick around and soon enough you’ll see another part of me.”) I also like plenty of songs that are objectively tempests of sound and percussion signifying nothing.

No. What really gets me going about Imagine is that its pretty, shiny bobbles of concepts are infantile, wrong AND pernicious. And also that it is largely the same concepts I was raised with (not by my parents, but my brother, his friends, the schools, the popular entertainment, etc.)

Take for instance that “Imagine there’s no religion…. Nothing to live or die for, a brotherhood of man.”

Oy.

Where to start?

 

Imagine there is no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky

Imagine all the people
Living for today

He is of course, fluffy and confused, and then the next verse is about nations and we have:

Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too
That sort of refers to nations, but bringing religion in, gets us the idea people kill for religion.

Most people start on the Evangelical Christians get boiled out of shape by that verse – which was probably Lennon’s intent – but let’s, do, examine why eliminating religion is such a good thing “Nothing to kill or die for”. Uh…. Really?

Yeah, okay, we had “Wars of religion” that lasted for centuries. But to be fair, most of the wars of religion only got that way because the cause was co-opted by various princes, kings and countries. And I’m not even going to go into the Crusades as war of retaliation, or the West learning that the only way to stop a religion that promotes itself by cutting off heads is to have a religion that cuts off heads, which made the reformation a kettle of fun as the state seized control of the whole thing as a means to enrich itself.

Let’s go instead into the post-religious world. Whether they dressed it in religious shibboleths or not, WWI was not religious. WWII was not religious. The cold war’s “little” flareups, the millions of people who died in the camps, etc, none of it was in the name of G-d, but in the name of the state.

So for someone in the seventies (?) to be crooning about the brotherhood of man that would ensue once no one had religion is not just appallingly shallow, bordering on stupid, it’s also a crazy denial of facts that were already in evidence.

Turns out, humans being tribal, what ensues if you remove religion is not a brotherhood of man, but tribalism for other reasons. And once the higher objectives of religion and the idea that we’re all created by the same G-d and therefore brothers and sisters are removed, what ensues is not a great family, but – as in those countries for whom atheism was a state religion –humans as utilitarian work machines, humans as fertilizer, and humans as food (during the engineered famines. Look up Holodomor. It dare you.)

So, you say, no nations.

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too

Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

 

We’ll leave aside the fact that it can or cannot be achieved. It’s not something that has been achieved in… ever. Yes, I know some fluffy libertarians think that the nomadic tribes that roamed around without established location were “equalitarian” and had no kings and no concept of nation. This only ignores the evidence of all grave goods and the experience of anyone who’s lived in a large family.

Never mind. Let’s establish that there were no Nation States. Is this by any chance a sign there was peace? Well, no. See again under “humans are tribal.” The graves we discover from that time do not speak of peace. No matter what you heard about the nomadic past of the US, the Amerindians weren’t children of nature, living in peace. In fact, anyone who has raised kids knows better. Humans not only are tribal. Humans have a will to power, a will to either be admired or admire, to either control or be controlled. Humans seek it. We’re Odds and goats and a little different, but still. You can’t even say that in their vision humans would have to be sheep, because sheep fight intruders, too.

That impulse can be controlled but not eliminated.

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

Do I have to dissect this piece of crap? It’s not even wishful thinking, it’s irrational babbling. You’d think a grown man, no matter how many interesting substances he was snorting, injecting and smoking, would have realized possessions are not the only thing people strive for. For a lot of people, power over others seems to be the driving motive.

But let’s leave that aside. HOW do you enforce the “no possessions?” Humans like things, and humans will take and hold things they like – pretty baubles, interesting stones. Humans will make things too and those they are even more attached to. “You didn’t build that” is the cry of someone who has never built anything and is jealous. Oh, yeah, jealousy. Another thing that precludes “universal peace.”

To have your state with no possessions you need to have someone making sure no one else has possessions, and that person, of course, will have possessions, because human (and we’ve seen this pattern over and over in human history.)

But beyond that, who is going to enforce “no possessions” if there are no nations.

Don’t answer. I know the nightmare answer to this. I once read a document from the Weather Underground on how they’d organize the US after taking over. It was all “soviets.” You’d belong to a soviet for each of your characteristics. Take me, for instance, I’d be in a soviet as wife, one as mother, one as Latin, one as woman, one as writer, one as…

These soviets would have representation, but not the individuals, who were supposed to help the soviet come to positions through “struggle sessions.” Those of you who have read about the Cultural Revolution are shuddering right now, and if you haven’t, do. I suggest the first hand accounts of people who escaped it.

So, none of these concepts or their children-concepts (“No patriarchy” and “PIV is rape” and a million other insane ideas that proceed from believing that religion – something that has been with man since we didn’t quite have language – is just a plot of “priests” and can easily be discarded; that nations and nation states can be abolished without just as pernicious entities appearing in their stead; that possessions are things you can just say you’re done with, and also that these three things are the only cause of violence) are so stupid that a blind child can see their asinine idiocy.

BUT and here’s the important thing, they were embraced and promulgated by the intelligentsia: those controlling your entertainment, your communications, your education. (We won’t point out their semblance to soviet propaganda probably caused that.)

It is assumed in most things that these three principles and everything that comes from them is “right” and that we deviate from them at the risk of “sin” (Not sin, sin, since we’re not supposed to believe in religion, but a secular sin that leads everyone to point and call us stupid.)

These ideas amount to a wholesale discarding of western civilization and of everything that’s been believed and written about how to integrate human nature with civilization without destroying either.

And we are up to three generations raised since these became not just fringe (they have been there since there’s been humans writing, and yep, mostly they’ve been fringe) but the core and center of our education in civics.

We’re now up to the grandchildren of Imagine, people so far gone that the precepts of their grandfathers are these nonsense assumptions; assumptions not only unproven, but proven wrong and impossible at least in this world we live in.

John C. Wright wrote a brilliant (natch) essay on the uglification of art. He approaches it from a … ah… theocentric perspective. (One of the reasons I admire John is that he doesn’t shy away from explaining how his belief works, even when this belief is obviously based on religion. He won’t be shamed by Imagine.) I’m a little different. While I am, as I’ve said, a woman of belief, the way I was raised requires I explain my beliefs and ground them without resort to my faith.

So, here’s my explanation for the uglyfication of all artistic pursuit. These are the children of Imagine. I’m not going to say that the SONG is to blame, understand (I must explain this for the wandering SJWs who read this) but rather the philosophy behind the song, a kitchy, irrational faith prevalent in progressive circles.

The belief in that nonsense and in the nonsense that derives from it makes people’s lives NATURALLY meaningless and horrible.

Look, if you’re going around believing you must eradicate possessions and religion and nations ALL the time, when these things are patently impossible, you’re going to be miserable. If you attribute every setback you suffer to “the patriarchy” or “the oligarchy” or whatever you’re blaming it on these days; if you attribute your dissatisfaction and hunger to the fact other people have more – that is the recipe for ending up in a private hell of envy and resentment.

And this explains the tone, the purges, the sheer anger you encounter in progressive cycles. They can’t enjoy their lives or build anything until oh, possessions are eliminated, and there’s “a brotherhood of man” and every step taken towards that seems to have the opposite result.

Take, for instance “I’ll try everything once.” Or “I will not obey my husband” both precepts promulgated by this sort of hatred for the past of Western civilization. If you live by them, you’re going to end up broken and miserable. (Translation for the SJWs who read this blog: No, dears, I don’t mean that you should always obey your husband. He’s human too. (Well, yours. Mine is a living god. Yes, I AM joking.) I mean that sometimes there are reasons to take his opinion over those of your best friend, your hairdresser or the cashier at the grocery store. More reason probably. After all, you married him. But the women liberated across to your “prescription” refuse to take the opinion or advice of any man, because patriarchy. Which is why they end up miserable.)

Most of the SJWs I know are miserable. At best they hold on to the trappings of “normalcy” by pretending REALLY hard. But they feel either guilty or failures or ineffective, because they’re not living up to their ideals.

Hence their stories, where everyone is miserable, and all of life is pointless, and their works of “art” where every shred of beauty must be eliminated.

They think they’re holding up a mirror to the world and showing that everyone is really, really broken and those evil people who pretend to be happy are really the worst (this is why “hypocrite” is the worst insult in the SJW vocabulary.)

They don’t realize in the end they are just holding the mirror to their own lives, and that those of us who are, in fact, happy and fulfilled, and who are in fact in the majority, just ignore them more and more, until their screams of rage occur only in their own little echo chamber.

Now, is that work complete? Not yet. They still have the education, and other bully pulpits and they’re still twisting the young into non-functionality.

Which is why we have a lot of work to do. Three generations of stupid pap are enough.

Teach your children well. Read, write. Enjoy. Rebuild the foundations of society that they’ve been chipping at for generations.

Living well and living on are the best revenge.

 

 

The prequel to this — Witchfinder — is now up on Amazon.

This novel will get posted here a chapter every Friday or Saturday, or occasionally Sunday.  If you contribute $6 you shall be subscribed for the earc and first clean version in electronic format.  I think it will probably take another three months to finish.  Less, if I can have a weekend to run through and get ahead of the game.  It hasn’t happened yet.

NOTICE: For those unsure about copyright law and because there was a particularly weird case, just because I’m making the pre-first draft of my novel available to blog readers, it doesn’t mean that this isn’t copyrighted to me.  Rogue Magic as all the contents of this blog is © Sarah A. Hoyt 2013.  Do not copy, alter, distribute or resell without permission.  Exceptions made for ATTRIBUTED quotes as critique or linking to this blog. Credit for the cover image is © Ateliersommerland | Dreamstime.com

The Enchanted Cottage

 

It is my firm belief that men are very daft. Women too, mind you, but not in the same way. The peculiar way in which men are daft is this consistent belief that not only should every woman everywhere be protected, but that every woman everywhere wants to be.

Even Jonathan subscribed to this credo. I knew – I have ears – that Jonathan was a rogue, what people considered in general a bad lot, and what my uncle had once stigmatized as a loose fish, something I’d never fully understood, since I could see no resemblances between my dapper brother and a fish. Nor could I figure out what a loose one would be.

Yet, even when he was very drunk, he would say things like “that is not fit for your ears,” and “I will not sully your mind with these events.”

Oh, a sister develops her ways of knowing. I’d worked around and found some things that Jonathan surely would not have wanted me to know. I can’t say they shocked me overmuch. His letters from and to his friends, the parts I could understand, seemed to be a lot of tomfoolery, with drinking till you were blind and then… and then consorting with the sort of women that didn’t seem to be much fun. But there it was. He thought that would shock me, doubtless.

The disappointing thing was finding out that such a grand personage as the king of fairyland who, by all accounts, didn’t have the same sort of interest in women that other men did – though I wasn’t sure of that, since, after all, that was also something my ears shouldn’t be sullied with – also though I needed to be kept safe.

No. worse than that. He thought I wanted to be kept safe.

He sort of pushed at me as he vanished, and I felt myself pushed through an envelope of sorts, and then—

I was in a fairytale cottage. Not the ominous looking one, where you’re sure the grandmother has been eaten by a wolf. Nor the one made of candy, because anyone would know that was a trap. Not even a realistic cottage like the ones in the home village next to what papa had called our principal seat.

No.

I was standing in the garden of a cottage so unreal, so perfect, so beautiful that it could not have existed anywhere but in fairyland. For one, the garden was all wrong – trust a man not to know when things bloomed or what needed sun or shade. This garden was a riot of colors, with everything blooming at the same time, a sweet buzz of bees in the air – I bet none of these bees stung, either – and a path of shiny, polished pebbles leading to the white-stone cottage with the arched doorway, the window boxes full of flowers and the chimney set on at an adorably crooked angle.

I started up the path, and of course, a beautiful baby bunny loped across it, pausing only to look at me with eyes that were too big and too innocent.

At the door, I pushed it open.

It was exactly as I expected. There was an entrance area, with a fireplace which was burning brightly even though it put out no warmth and no warmth was needed.

Around the fire place were two chairs and a lot of books. And yep, the books were just exactly the sort I read, about pirates and grand adventures.

Past that was a kitchen, with everything scrubbed and bright and the table set for tea, with scones and jam and a pot that – I touched it – was just the right temperature under a cheerful red cozy.

And then a blue bird perched on the flower box outside the open window and started to sing.

I believe I could have endured it, otherwise. Doubtless behind the kitchen there was the perfect bedroom with a comfortable bed, and I was in fact very tired.

But the bird was too much.

If I’d believed that this was one of those traps set by fairyland, I could have endured it, too, and tried to defeat it from inside.

The problem is that I thought it wasn’t a trap at all.

When I was very little, nurse had a sort of fence she carried along and would set around me, so I could play outside and still be safe in its confines.

This was a fence like that, a safe box where the king of fairyland thought he’d keep me away from anything unpleasant and dangerous.

I don’t like unpleasant or dangerous things. Would you?

But I was also not blind to my own failings. I might be a wretch as mama says, or ungrateful, as papa used to say, or the most trying creature alive, as Jonathan has been known to say – though with a twinkle – and normal moral lectures might bounce off me like a cat off water. But I do realize when I’ve brought about a great deal of ruin and trouble. And that was now.

I had, in fact, got lost in this world, caused Mr. Merritt to come after me. I might have got him killed, since we were in fairyland, where he had, I gathered, rather old business. And by now, Jonathan might have come after me too. Other people wouldn’t, but he might.

And I had a strange feeling I was also responsible for whatever was happening to the king of fairy.

Which meant I couldn’t just be here and safe and let them fight this battle alone. For one what if they lost? Would I go on living forever in this cozy place with the obviously false bluebirds? I thought not.

It took me a second to figure out what to do. In every fairytale, the heroine is cautioned not to leave the safe spot and not to go into the woods.

The king hadn’t warned me of this, probably because he hadn’t had time.

But as I opened the kitchen door, I saw, past a strip of garden with more flowers, butterflies and blue birds, a fence. And past the fence – woods. Dark, ominous, unruly wood.

“I thank you for my share of the favor,” I told the warm air of the cottage and the singing bird. “But I’ll have none of it. We Blythes might be many things but cowards we aren’t.”

I ran down the path to the fence climbed on it and leapt off it into the dark woods.

The world tore like a piece of paper.

*First a note from Sarah — Okay, because there was confusion before — I did not read these books and they’re not personal recommendations.  They’re books my readers send in to promote.

I’ll turn this over to the Oyster, but before I do, this week I have something on countdown sale.  I think Crawling Between Heaven and Earth is on sale for 99c for another 24h give or take after which it will creep slowly back up to 7.99.

This book contains my first published shorts and is a good snapshot of who I was at that time.

Btw, it’s number one in fantasy anthologies (It’s not, it’s a collection, but what does Amazon know.)  Thank you. – SAH*

 

Good morning, Huns and Hoydens! Another fabulous weekend is upon us, and to get you started we’ve a small selection of books for your enjoyment. Do remember, please, to go leave reviews for the books once you’ve read them, whether to praise them or offer constructive critiques. One more note, since there seems to have been some confusion recently: these books have not been reviewed, curated, or endorsed by Our Beloved Hostess or myself. The Beautiful but Evil Space Princess is simply providing a platform for the writers among the commentariat (and occasional lurkers) to advertise free of charge, and I simply put it all together. No warranty, guarantee, deputy, Model T, contract, compact, hijack, fel pact, gentleman’s agreement, endorsement vehement, negotiated easement, pachyderms indecent (in case of bereavement), handfast, hold fast, bypass, repast, top caste, bombast, or martial satisfaction on the bloody field of honor is, has been, or ever will be provided. *catches breath* [Ed.: But he doesn’t know the territory!] So, if you have words for sales or rent, future entries can (and should!) be sent to my email. Happy reading!

Jason Dyck, AKA The Free Range Oyster

Book Hawker, Minion Wrangler, and Fancier of Patter Songs

Alma Boykin

Marie’s Tale

A Colplatschki Novella

What price rank and riches? Duchess Marie von Starland knows full well. Now she tells her story, of Aquila Starland, Elizabeth von Sarmas, and of the traitor who was once a beloved baby brother.

Includes a bonus Elizabeth story: When the chance to explore a Lander city arises, Elizabeth must decide between her two greatest loves.

John Van Stry

Champion for Hire

Portals of Infinity: Book One

William is just your typical engineer fresh out of college with a stressful job, a boring life, and not a lot of prospects of anything better in the future.

Until one weekend while hiking in the woods he stumbles across a portal to another time, or perhaps another place. The more he investigates this new world the more he realizes that it may just be able to offer him a lot more than the one he’s been living in.

However, there are forces at work beyond anything that Will has ever come across before and the local Goddess seems to have taken a liking to him. Will may soon find himself getting an offer he cannot afford to refuse.

Michael Kingswood

The Pericles Conspiracy

William is just your typical engineer fresh out of college with a stressful job, a boring life, and not a lot of prospects of anything better in the future.

On sale at Amazon this weekend

Josephine Ishikawa’s last shift as Captain of the starliner Pericles changed the course of history, but no one knows about it. The powers that be took charge as soon as she got back to Earth, with only a select few permitted to learn about the beings she encountered during the run from Gliese, or the eggs they entrusted to her care.

Satisfied that the government would make good on her commitment to return the eggs home, Jo returned to her job of getting Pericles through a major maintenance overhaul and then back out to the stars. But when she learns that the authorities reneged and have begun experimenting on the eggs instead, she faces a difficult choice: keep the life and career she loves or embark on a quest to rescue the eggs and keep the promise she made to their dying parents, out in the depths of space. That quest could cost her more than she ever imagined as it plunges her into a shadow war against a planetary government that will stop at nothing to keep its secrets.

Also available from these fine booksellers:

• Barnes & Noble
• Kobo
• Smashwords
• iTunes
• Google Play

 

*Two Quick Updates before your Whacky Post Of The Day TM:  First Crawling Between Heaven And Earth, my first collection, of stories that were, you know, the first I got published (almost my juvenalia!) is up for 99c for two days, and then slowly going up to its normal price.  I know many of you got it when it was free at baen books.  It now has a shifter short story and such, but anyway, if you’d echo the link in whatever social media you use, much appreciated.

Second: Baen books, who as we all know is an evil publishing house, decided to up its psychological warfare on me personally by interviewing my husband (and other Baen Spouses) on what it’s like to be married to a highly splodey writer.  I understand Dan had a lot of fun with it, and also that Madames Correia and Weber were in this also.  So.  Baen Spouse Podcast here.*

I confess I’m not much of a joiner, and that I view joining an organization as a liability. You join, say an organization for Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers and soon enough, early enough, you find you’re a member of an organization that wants to ban the word “Lady” and would love to run all men out of the craft.

And then you pause and wonder “What have I got myself into?”

Yesterday, in the diner on facebook (if those of you are getting the idea that if you want to fight you should go there, don’t. I try to keep it as politics and friction – but I repeat myself – free as I can) a semi argument developed on whether or not the Black Panther and the KKK were similar in nature.

I stomped on it, because I didn’t want to get ugly in the diner, that’s what I have a blog for.

The fact that the black panthers at least used to be a charitable organization, with literacy programs and pancake breakfasts and that this makes it intrinsically different from the KKK who were, after all, just the night riders who lynched people and stuff.

GROAN.

I come not to defend the KKK. No, seriously, I come not to defend the KKK who would object to me on at least two genetic points and one of choice and whom I object to in principle. And this post is about something far more important/different from these two rather icky organizations.

The black panthers MIGHT have started as a charitable/uplift organization. Or at least their members believed that, early on. But it has gone a long way down the rabbit hole of a pretend black supremacy theory that in fact keeps Americans of African descent stuck in a loop of resentment and self-sabotage. Oh, and also they bar people’s access to polls and parade around a lot armed for purposes of intimidation. Whatever they started out as, they’re a race-based association that tries to intimidate all those not eligible to join and to control those who are eligible.

And the KKK might have started as a revenge organization (did it? It’s a part of history I don’t know very well, right after the civil war) but it d*mn skippy was also a charitable organization.

It is a little known fact that the state of CO somewhere in the late nineteenth early twentieth century was more or less controlled by the KKK. At my son’s college graduation a letter was read from the first president of the university. You see, he’d received a letter from the governor who was in the pocket of the KKK, telling him to kick out all Jews and Catholics or be left without state funding. So, he answered not only no but h*ll no, and the school barely survived. The letter they read was his speech at the graduation of the following class. (And I’m so glad they did that instead of having a guest speaker.) It was a moving letter and the incident was an example of the KKK flexing wrong-muscles.

However, the elementary school my sons’ attended was built by the KKK. The corner stone is still there in a rather hippy-dippy and mixed community, something for which I applaud them: not erasing the past because it’s gross.

What this means is not that KKK was a “mixed” organization or that we should feel any sympathy towards it (I don’t) but that they too clearly did some laudable and charitable things – which still does not excuse them from being evil bastages and icky and stomach-turning.

Does the fact they had pancake breakfasts and literacy drives and such excuse the Black Panthers for the evil they do and the amazingly ignorant stuff they spout on history and racial theory? Don’t know. Don’t care. Supposing my kids were dark enough to join or white enough to join the KKK, my answer would be the same to both, “Don’t do it. Yeah, they might, maybe, do some good stuff, perhaps, but organizations based solely on race tend to go wrong to justify their own existence.” They start out as “us against them” and sooner or later you need “incidents” by the them – real or (these days) largely imagined – to justify the being “against” and next thing you know your whole cause of existence is not to uplift your race, ethnicity or cultural group but to “stick it to” whoever is perceived as the enemy.

Exempt from this – to an extent – are certain cultural associations, like, say the Scottish Heritage association or the Italian History league. To an extent. It’s important to realize that if the last two meetings have been about “How city council is discriminating against us because they don’t like kilts” you might be going down a dangerous path. (Or the city council might be *sses, of course. Still, it’s best to step back and see it with fresh eyes.)

Look, the characteristic of humans is that we are tribal critters. We not only like to tribe up, we like to define us against them. Nothing makes you feel so cozy in your in group as knowing other people are out. (Whether the other people want in or not.) And once we tribe up, argument and fighting are a step away.

You can see it in any group of kids released to the wild of a playground for a considerable period of time. Once, long ago, it was “No gurls allowed” and maybe “No darkies allowed” (Or whities.) but at least in most middle class areas, kids wouldn’t do that openly now. They know the adults would descend on them then. So, instead, they have “No trailer park kids allowed” or “No boys allowed” or “no people who live on that hill as opposed to this hill allowed.”

And if you let the groups (particularly if there’s two) go on long enough, sooner or later there will be fights.

I’m not saying this is a bad thing. I remember glorious afternoons of chasing each other with bamboo sticks while playing at Robin Hood (and his men) vs the Sheriff (and his men) or The musketeers vs. the Guards of Richelieu, or even world war too (when the bamboo sticks became guns) even though we were all girls. Because it was ritualized and rather like a massive LARPG very few nose bleeds, bruises and skinned knees ensued, and at any rate, Dona Albertina of blessed memory (“Honestly. I’ve never taught a class of such rambunctious girls before. I’ve taught boys who were tamer.”) stood ready with bandages and hydrogen peroxide.

I’m saying it’s a human thing. And you don’t leave it behind just because you grew up. Humans like to join up with others that are like them and keep others at bay.

Which is why it is very very important to make sure the charter of whatever you’re joining is not evil. No, seriously, it starts there. You want to start an organization to take care of the under-privileged children of left handed yodeling laplanders? That’s great. WHO CAN JOIN? Because if it’s just a benevolent organization, then anyone should be able to join.

On the other hand, organizations based on ethnicity that go to the bad – and we might include the Mafia, which regardless of purpose, sort of started in its earliest origins as mutual protection (before the US) and yep, through the depression did a lot of good, supporting whole families. But to be a member of the organization you had to be Italian.

Look, no humans band up then sit in their clubhouse twirling their moustaches and saying “now we’re going to be evil.” But human organizations often become evil. Partly this is because the people willing to do the donkey work of running a voluntary organization are often – not to say always – the type of mind that seeks power over others. If the charter of the organization allows them to achieve that power by dividing (as it were) the world in two and playing us against them, they will, and they will drive the association down an ever more paranoid path. At the end of which there’s always evil and attack on the “the other.”

On the other hand, if the charter of an organization is to achieve something, it’s harder to subvert. Not impossible, mind.

Take the charter of SFWA which was to negotiate with publishers and look after the interests of SFWA writers. The problem is that it couldn’t (I don’t know if from the beginning, I know it tried at least in the beginning. I know by the time I joined, it couldn’t) do anything in a business model that as an oligopsony and where anyone who fought any of the controlling publishers was blacklisted. This made it an organization with a requirement of membership and no chart, so it went in search of stuff to do. Hence, where we got to. (And no, it’s not as bad as the KKK. It’s just annoying and might hurt us professionally by making our field sound like a collection of whackballs.)

OTOH look at feminism, which isn’t even a formal organization so much as a “club” that you join by saying you are one, and a few loudmouth “leaders” who purport to speak for everyone with a vagina. Holy mother of whack! How did we get from equal pay for equal work to “I want to kill 90% of men and studfarm the rest”? Well, because when you assume that all women are equally oppressed and all women are interchangeable you’re already on the path to insanity. From there to “look for a mission” is one small step.

And the mission groups find in these circumstances is always between insane and “ew” because it starts by EXCLUDING.

So, if you’re thinking of starting a group (and who isn’t, after all) make sure the membership is open to all who might have an interest in the cause and are aligned with you. (A non-Marxist group shouldn’t have to accept Marxists, for instance.) And then make sure your mission makes sense and is something that can be accomplished and that you have a provision to disband when it is. Making sure your mission is not outright evil, like, say, killing all left handed Laplanders, might be a good idea too. Because if you start evil, you’ll only get more evil.

And if you’re considering an organization to join, look for the same things.

Me? I’m not much of a joiner. I’m odd. And odds don’t band well, even with other odds. So I’ll stay on the outside and blow raspberries and fondly wish a plague on both their houses.

And now all you left hand Laplanders shut up. I have books to write about your iniquities.*

*No, not really.