Sorry, I should have posted an update, because you’re probably all worried about Circe.

I do actually have news on Circe, but they’re good. (Does this mean I’m going to stop worrying? Do you know me? Of course, not, but I’ll worry less frantically.)

But mostly the day was completely crazy, with three can’t avoid appointments, one for Circe.

I’m still halfway in awe that we got to all of them. And two of them were very good news. (Dan maybe, might, perhaps need further surgery. We don’t know yet, and probably won’t for a couple of months.)

We took Circe for an appointment with another vet, mostly because our vet is booked weeks away, but also we wanted a second opinion/second eyes on the kitten. And this is our son’s vet (Now you know, our son is secretly a lion shifter) and he’s highly impressed with her.

Anyway, so this vet thinks Circe is perfectly healthy, just recovering from some infection. She thinks possibly herpes, which she says is rampant in kittens. (Who knew? My kitten gave me herpes?)

Anyway, she is acting better, though right now she’s exhausted from going to the vet, of course.

So, apparently I sleep like an anime character with my hand near my face, palm up. I found this out because last night Circe came and curled up in it, and tucked her little wedge-shaped head under my chin. And that’s how we slept last night. She left as I woke up, but it must have been only a box visit, because she came back and was bumping my chin and wanting to play.

Anyway, she’s eating more, and apparently drinking more, so she no longer looks as much like a bag of bones.

And in compensation for keeping you in suspense this late, I’ll tell you the funniest cat story EVER. So, as far as Indy is concerned, we brought home six of his little siblings, and then we took one or two out periodically in a carrier, and they NEVER CAME BACK.

So he was alarmed when we took Circe out in a carrier, and tried to follow us out the door.

Then when we came back, he was very happy, but also puzzled. So Dan said, “They didn’t want her, so we brought her back.”

And because I never thought he’d understand, I said, “Yeah. They wanted an older male. So we’re taking you. Get in.”

He looked up at me, looked really sad, and this cat who never voluntarily goes in a carrier, started to get in.

I was so shocked he understood what I said!

Of course I pulled him out, cuddled him and told him we’re never giving him away. And he’s fine, playing with mini-me and the Siam-Muse.

And that’s it for now. Real post tomorrow.

There are some paradigms you find again and again in comments on right-side blogs that make me wonder if everyone has lost their mind. I know they haven’t, of course. The thing is the paradigms sketched either rhyme roughly with a misapprehension of the current situation or the parallel being drawn, or are…. well, things that happen in movies. And being soaked in story we think they are plausible because they happen in movies.

One is the “we’re just like the Roman Empire, and we’re decadent and we’ll be all gone in fifty years” (or ten. Or one.) That one is fun because it’s part old USSR propaganda that worked, it’s part not knowing much about Rome, it’s part knowing our political system is partly based on the Roman, and it’s part well, not knowing much about us, either, but knowing all the things lefties have been putting in movies and “news” and “science” for the last several decades.

There are others, like the hard times makes strong men thing that fall apart if you poke it. (Hard times make both meek and cruel men. And sometimes yes in the same person.) People think it’s true, because we all know people who were raised with everything, and became useless nincompoops who wasted all their wealth. But that’s not true universally. It’s selection bias and cautionary tales. There are families who have been very wealthy and had easy childhoods for over ten generations. And they’re still “hard men.” (Sometimes the hardest, as in evil and cruel.)

I’m very glad people at least on this blog — I don’t read much of other blogs comments, tbf — have stopped with the bizarre “The EB cards stop working, and they’ll fan out to the suburbs.” There is a subset that assumes all welfare cases are black. (Yes, there is a large number. They were targeted early. But seriously, they expanded welfare so much since the Obama years it affects every race and demographic, but probably more the new migrants who these days are deluged with both “aid” and pap about how everyone discriminates against them. So that one can have a weird racist undertone, but most of all, honestly, it just doesn’t hold up, and we have case studies. We have when disaster hits, the welfare class doesn’t fan out to pretty much anything. Yes, it loots. But it loots its own neighborhood. It burns its own neighborhood. And then it sits around waiting for the cameras to grift. Because, like rolling left before dying allowing executives to find a better job after killing a company, the burn and destroy your own place then act pitiful has always worked in the past.

But now we’re into “When society goes bad” or “If transport stops working” the locusts of the city will fan out. And that seems superficially true, because of course it’s what happens in movies, right? And in the news? We’ve all seen “refugees” fanning out in the surrounding areas. Though, be fair, normally not as raiders, but as beggars.

It’s also for most people treating “city people” as a group of widgets. They’re all the same, and we’ve argued with them on line, and if they become pinched, all that anger is going to fan out and–

Okay, lesson one: Twitter — or blog comments — is not real life. The loudest people online are the least dangerous in real life. (Some of us admit it. Also are ready to compensate for it.)

Now, to the rest of it: I’m an urban person. Not how I was born or raised, and my predilection for living in cities is still considered bizarre by most of my family. However, there might be a deep-genetic confluence of characteristics, since the Romans were urban a long time ago. Who knows. Or I’m weird. I loved the big city the first day I went there for high school and until I was done with college, I mostly “lived” there, coming home to eat and sleep. Once I was married, we first lived in a little suburb-like area, but we found out we were driving to the next big city all the time, and just moved there. And since then we’ve lived in cities. Usually large cities, in older, Victorian neighborhoods that you could walk to coffee shops and bookstores and with a little effort to a grocery store. We don’t live in a large city or in such an area right now, and it feels kind of odd, I’ll be honest.

But most of our amusements are urban: museums, botanic gardens, zoos, lectures, that sort of thing. And most of our eating out and shopping is where poor, urban folk shop. Or at least “poor but not the poorest”: dive diners, thrift shops, used furniture stores.

So, we are urban people, and we rub elbows with all sorts of classes and strata in the city. It’s not one class, one type of people, one set of behaviors. 

First of all, I suspect cities are blue because fraud is easier there. Not only is it not uniformly left, I would be very shocked if it’s more than 50% left. And it’s only that because it tends to have a lot of young people and “trendy” people, and leftism is a positional good.

Yes, I know the cities all SOUND super lefty. The conversations you hear; the murals; the way they dress, etc. etc. etc.

I enjoin you to stop and think: positional good. That means people signal how left they are, because that’s the point. It signifies (or used to signify, and people take long to adapt) that you’re educated and smart. Also lefties tend to assume everyone else is left, so they talk really loud, while the rest of us tend to confine our talk and lower our voices in public. One of the more encouraging signs of the times is that young rightists also talk loudly and defiantly in many circumstances.

So let’s break this out by groups of people who live in the city:

First, yeah, you have a welfare class. Those usually don’t even vote. They are so indoctrinated by the establishment that they consider anyone running for office as at best not caring for them, and at worst the enemy. You don’t rouse yourself to vote in those circumstances. This is why “vote harvesting” where, let’s face it, the “harvesters” often — if not always — mark the ballot for the harvested, is a powerful hack to fraudulently win elections.

Then there is a working class. These are more and more absent from the cities, either because they can’t afford to live there, or because the areas they can afford to live in are dangerous or just plain bad. So, most working class live in remote suburbs, at least if the city is large enough.

There is usually an “immigrant” class, often illegal. This shouldn’t be a consideration in voting, but we all know what the idiot left has done with vote by mail and motor voter, so yeah, it is. However those votes are fraudulent by nature, or most of them are.

And then… well, there were professionals. Used to be, before the lockdowns initiated a great diaspora, that for certain types of well-paid jobs you had to live in a big city. I’d estimate that the majority of these professionals are actually on the right and keeping their lips zipped, because corporate is loud and left.

And there are any number of young people, professionals, students, and just people who gravitate to the city, because it’s where you have a chance to meet marriageable people you’re not related to.

The young tend to be either left or signal that way, because it’s …. social positioning, and also because a lot of young people were so poorly taught they think “socialism” is better. These by and large vote, hence the 50% easy. However, some number of them are being shocked out of the “duh socialism” position. How many? We don’t know, because of course social positioning.

Some portion of those young (meaning under forty in this case) people are the leftists you argue with on line. Who are maybe the “shock troops of the left” only…. not.

I saw most of these people on display when the DNC had their annual convention in Denver in 08. Before the convention, there was the whole bragging about how the Denver police had never seen anything like them, and they were going to f*ck up those cow-town cops.

And then… well, Denver has mounted cops. One of the most illuminating encounters was the mounted Denver police surrounding a group of would be trouble makers, and riding in tighter and tighter circles. The poor would be trouble makers had panic attacks, and couldn’t breathe, and….

Re: the dangerousness of the urban class is so exaggerated that they had to bus antifa from city to city to get up any kind of riot capacity.

So suppose we stop transporting food to the cities? Bah. Yeah, the heavy welfare neighborhoods will burn and there will be rioting. Because it’s always worked before.

And the rest? Well, most of the working people, at whatever level are still Americans — even those who are on the left. I know, I know, but they’re still Americans. They’re going to roll up sleeves and find ways around the problem.

There are plenty of animals to hunt in a city, if there’s a dire issue, raccoons, squirrels, geese, even most places deer. And once you’re past the immediate emergency … networks develop. They did this even in Portugal. When bakers were unreliable, local women started baking bread, and you had to knock a certain way to buy bread in the morning. When food distribution was iffy, there was the person on the corner who could buy meat from their friend the farmer in the country, and if you knocked a certain way…

Black and grey markets develop, and people find ways to transport and acquire food. No one sets out to walk and rob food. This hasn’t happened ANYWHERE at any of the crisis in civilization. When aqueducts vanished in Rome population fell — slowly — it didn’t just walk the countryside, like locusts.

Will there be more crime? There already is. Will there be bands of raiders? There already are. Both of these are mostly illegal and used to disarmed people, and it will be curbed by the fact that sooner or later they hit the non-disarmed ones. But yeah, it’s going to be a problem given our “elites” organized invasion and crime incentivization. Will it go all the way to roving hordes? Oh, please. This is NOT a movie. Yes, it will suck being one of the people hit by this, and yes, it could happen to any of us, but it won’t be “this will happen to all of us, or to everyone we know.

There will be no hordes of zombies headed out to the countryside. That’s movie logic, not real.

If the cities implode, which they might not, what you’re going to see is alternative means of food acquisition and distribution. Already, you’d be shocked how many city people, often against regulations are keeping chickens (or quail in apartment balconies.)

And don’t write the cities off. You hate them for the way they vote. But the thing is our system is so vitiated no one knows how anyone REALLY votes. All we know is the result of fraud.

And remember that what you see online are not the real people. Most of the people on line gloating about how the city will starve the country side are poor shut ins who will have panic attacks and reach for the asthma inhaler at the first sign of resistance.

Be not afraid, and remember you don’t live in a movie.

We’ll survive this, both urban and rural. And we’ll come out of it more ungovernable than ever.

So, over the last four days, one of the newest kittens, tiny Circe has been on hunger strike.

As you probably imagine, this means I didn’t do much in the way of sleeping or concentrating.

Last night she finally ate a half can of kitten food, and today she’s had some dry kibble, and I’ll give her more gooshy tonight again. It’s good to have her eating, because when they’re this young they lose weight very fast. So she’s all sharp tones and skin.

Hopefully she now recovers quickly. She’s very cuddly and knows everyone. She knows her own name, and the name of all the other cats — she looks at them when we mention them — and who Dan is, and who i am. So…. anyway.

I realized that losing another tiny orange girl this horrible year would just about finish me too from the depression POV. And yes, I realize it’s very weird to have cats as emotional support animals. Sorry.

This is tiny Circe, taking a nap.

Oh, we think it was a reaction to the vaccines that made her go on hunger strike.

It’s kind of funny that during her not feeling great, Indy never left her side, and was all protective when Muse tried to play with Circe.

But he’s made up with Muse now, so that’s okay.

I finally slept well last night, so today I did all the things I’ve been putting off, like cleaning the truly awful box room, so you can’t smell it in other rooms. And clean and organize my office.

I’ll probably do an early night tonight, then work on the serialized stories — somehow over the weekend of being sick and worried about Circe I lost a couple of chapters of Witch’s Daughter — and two short stories.

And put out the outdoor lights, stripped down version this year because I’m not putting up anything that interferes with painting the front probably right after Christmas. (Yes, I got the safe ladder, okay?)

I really need to write and make writing THE priority this year, so I’m trying to finish the work on the house and unpack my library before January.

This year has not just been bad because of all the deaths, but also because of the ridiculous mess remaining in the house. I need my house organized because it affects my mind.

Anyway, I guess that is the state of the writer. Real post tomorrow.

Book promo

If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH

ON SALE RIGHT NOW: (A new section for this time period when a lot of people have a lot of things for sale)

(Oh, and if you have things on sale, why haven’t you sent them in to be promoted? Allergy to money? Chafing at the thought of lucre? Hives at the idea of wealth?)

YES THEY ARE ABOVE IN THE PERMA PINNED POST, BUT SOME PEOPLE ARE INSUFFERABLE IN THEIR SELF PROMOTION, WHAT CAN I SAY? (AND SORRY I TOOK A WHILE TO CHANGE IT. YESTERDAY WASN’T…. GOOD.)

Also I wish to remind everyone that you can order now on sale, and have a bunch of books delivered to your loved one’s kindle on Christmas morning and look like a big spender!

FROM SARAH A. HOYT:

Gentleman Takes A Chance -99C

Family! Can’t live with them and can’t eat them.
Tom Ormson, owner — with his girlfriend — of The George, a diner in downtown Goldport, Colorado is well on his way to becoming a responsible and respectable adult, despite his rough start and the fact that he turns into a dragon.
But then the unpredictable Colorado weather, the ancient leader of a dragon triad and an even more ancient shifter-enforcer combine to destroy his home, put his diner at risk and attempt to kill him.
All this, of course, has to happen while Tom’s friend, Rafiel, is trying to solve a series of murders-by-shark at the city aquarium, and Tom’s newly-reconciled father is attempting to move to Denver.
Fasten your seat belts, a wild ride is about to begin.

Originally published by Baen Books.

Noah’s Boy – 99C

Tom Ormson and Kyrie Smith are suffering the growing pains of young romance and young business people. Tom worries obsessively about the new fryer in the diner exploding. As though he didn’t have enough on his mind, though, life decides it’s time for a sabre-tooth with vengeance on her mind to come to town, and for the Great Sky Dragon to try to arrange a marriage for Tom. Meanwhile, out at the old amusement park, the one with the really good wooden roller-coaster, a series of bizarre murders is taking place. And, as if that were not enough, Conan Lung, dragon shifter, ex-triad member and waiter extraordinaire starts his country singing career with an original song “If I Could Fly to You.” When Kyrie is kidnapped, it’s all Tom can do to make sure he protects her while not eating anyone. With new afterword by author. Originally published by Baen books.

Bowl of Red – 99Chttps://amzn.to/475FinM

At the top of a tall mountain, there lives a dragon. And the dragon is the master of all animals.
Okay, let’s rewind that. Tom Ormson is a dragon shifter, the scion of a line that was created to rule both Chinese and Norse dragons. But he doesn’t want the job. He co-owns a diner with his wife, Kyrie, who is about to deliver their first child.
In fact, they just got married, when the entire shifter-world, which centers on their diner goes insane.
You see, it is a time of Ragnarok, which means all of the shifter clans are in turmoil, with changing leadership. And the lion clan, to which Kyrie belongs has just lost its leader. Poor Rafiel, too, is tormented by very strange dreams and premonitions. Also, the Queen of the Norse dragons has woken, and wants a word with the Great Sky Dragon.
Hold on to your hats. A wild ride is about to begin, with Tom, Kyrie and their friends at the center of it.
When it ends, the world will never be the same again.

Lights Out and Cry -99C

It is New Year’s Day in Goldport Colorado, the most shifter-infested town in the known universe.
At the George — the diner where shifters gather — Kyrie is about to give birth, Tom is getting psychic messages from the Great Sky Dragon and Rafiel is looking for information on why the mayor exploded.
Fasten your seat belts. This is going to be a fast ride into adventure and shape-shifting, after which things will never be the same.

Death of a Musketeer -99c

When D’Artagnan, Athos, Porthos and Aramis discover the corpse of a beautiful woman who looks like the Queen of France, they vow to see that justice is done. They do not know that their investigation will widen from murder to intrigue to conspiracy, bring them the renewed enmity of Cardinal Richelieu and shake their fate in humanity. Through duels and doubts, they pursue the truth, even when their search brings them to the sphere of King Louis XIII himself and makes them confront secrets best forgotten.

THE REST OF THE BOOKS!

FROM JERRY BOYD: Kid Stuff (Bob and Nikki Book 41)

While checking into the fleet’s poor reception at Oak, Bob finds out the reason. The Emperor was busy with other things, and he needs Bob’s help to get them sorted out. Bob and the Gene ride to the rescue, only to find a whole new bunch of folks they need to understand.

FROM MARK TINDELL: A 10-Foot Christmas Tree

Eva had just escaped from an oppressive relationship with a guy who hated holidays, especially Christmas. She, on the other hand, loved the holiday so much that the deprivation had been painful. Now that she was free, she was determined to have the best Christmas ever. Her new roommate, Betts, liked Christmas and everything that came with it, so she was the perfect partner for Eva’s crazy plans. Betts was even willing to join in the interminable search for the perfect Christmas tree, although the variety was dizzying. Betts ex-boyfriend, Lee, was dragged into the search as well, supposedly only as driver. He and scrawny assistant muscle Roddy tried to stick to the toting and stay out of the adventure, but that never works, does it?

FROM MAX COSSAK: Zarah’s Fire

Human traffickers have kidnapped ten-year-old Zarah to an alien desert. Frightened for her safety and disgusted by her captors’ plans for terrorist attacks on a nearby city, Zarah escapes in the dead of night and begins a dangerous trek across the wilderness. On her flight she encounters predators and helpers; smugglers and saints; threats and kindness. Meanwhile friends of her murdered father go all out to find her and save her.

FROM I. M. LERNER: The Secret Under the Staircase (Under the Staircase – An Economic Adventure Series for Kids)

“So, you’re the ones…”
A mysterious package appears just as Maya and Nate start helping in their grandparents’ store. Inside is just one book: a faded copy of Free to Choose. In a race against time, they must decipher a series of cryptic messages to discover the secret under the staircase. But can a bunch of kids really solve the centuries-old riddle? Can they save their beloved town before it’s too late?Under the Staircase™ Books
A mystery and adventure series that teaches treasured values: personal responsibility, individual liberty, and economic freedom.Psst! Parents & Teachers: The first book in the series introduces a variety of Milton Friedman’s concepts—the Power of the Market, the Tyranny of Controls, What’s Wrong with Our Schools?, and other topics—using examples from kids’ day-to-day lives in school, with friends, and in familiar situations.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Detritus

Nick Bryant was a junkie. Lived on the streets, and everything. And then, he saved a baby girl from drowning, and fell into the role of protector. As he, the baby, and her older brother get to know one another, he decides that maybe, there’s more left to him than the drugs, and decides to try to live again. And maybe build a family.

FROM CELIA HAYES AND JEANNE HAYDEN: The Luna City Compendium #1: The Chronicles of Luna City, The Second Chronicle of Luna City, and Luna City 3.1

The first three volumes of the Luna City Chronicles , with expanded maps of the area, and of the town itself:

The Chronicles of Luna City

Welcome to Luna City, Karnes County, Texas … Population 2,453, not counting a fugitive former celebrity chef…
Where the high school football team is called the Mighty Fighting Moths … and their yearly Homecoming game is under some strange and irregular curse.
Which was once meant to be a stop on the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railroad, but which was derailed by True Love …
Where half the townsfolk has the surname of Gonzalez or Gonzales, they’re all related and descended from the holder of the original Spanish land grant… but no one has ever been able to figure out whether his name ended in an ‘s’ or a ‘z’, due to illegible handwriting on the original paperwork …
Where the last two members of a Sixties hippy nudist commune still still keep the faith with peace, love, and organic vegetables at the Age of Aquarius Campground and Goat Farm …
And a historic marker on Town Square marks the spot where a local bootlegger was nearly hung in 1926 for (among a long list of offenses against the laws of God and Man) impersonating a nun.
Luna City, where eccentricity is just a part of every-day life. Drop in for a visit – you might never want to leave.

Welcome to Luna City, Texas – a small town, rather like the one which almost everyone wishes they lived in, full of mild eccentricity, friendly neighbors and now and again the focus for things like a curse on the high school football team homecoming game, a stolen hoard of 19th century gold coins, where a movie crew is doing locations shooting for a major motion picture, and the little cafe on town square is being run by a runaway celebrity chef … and then there is the Age of Aquarius Campground and Goat Farm, run by a pair of 60’s drop-outs…

The Second Chronicle of Luna City

Welcome to Luna City, Texas – a small town, rather like the one which almost everyone wishes they lived in, full of mild eccentricity, friendly neighbors and now and again the focus for things like a curse on the high school football team homecoming game, a stolen hoard of 19th century gold coins, where a movie crew is doing locations shooting for a major motion picture, and the little cafe on town square is being run by a runaway celebrity chef … and then there is the Age of Aquarius Campground and Goat Farm, run by a pair of 60’s drop-outs…

Luna City 3.1

Welcome to Luna City, Karnes County, Texas … Population 2,454. This does not count the strangers come to town, searching for the fabulous Mills treasure-hoard, the seldom-seen Agua Dulce ghost-horsemen, and the mysterious lights spotted floating over the highway on one dark and moonless night.
Ex-celebrity chef, Richard Astor-Hall (formerly Rich Hall, the Bad Boy Chef) has his hands full managing the Luna Café and Coffee … plus some outside catering jobs … and a fund-raising charity event in which he might be drafted into playing a much bigger part than he agreed on at the start. A touch of mystery, a bit of possible romance … in this third serving of small-town Texas life in Luna City, where eccentricity is just a part of every-day life. Drop in for a visit – you might never want to leave.

FROM ALMA T. C. BOYKIN: Familiar Tales

Smiley Lorraine: Wolverine. Rosie Jones: 100-lb. Skunk. Morgana Lorraine: Witch with Editorial Problems.

Welcome to a world where Familiars choose magic workers, and a few others, as their partners. A world of adventure, tax-deductions, bad publisher tricks, and odd veterinary clinics, where wolverines wear glasses and iguanas sing along with the radio—badly—while casting spells and keeping their chosen humans out of mischief.

Or try to.

(Five short-stories.)

FROM SABRINA CHASE: The Long Way Home (Sequoyah Book 1)

Run to Danger

Moire Cameron ran to protect her secrets — ran to the heart of an interstellar alien war. Her fellow mercenaries care only about her fighting skills, not where — or when — she got them. You’d think that would be good enough…

But a false name and fake ID can’t conceal her dangerous lack of contemporary knowledge, and they won’t help fulfill her last order, given by a dying man eighty years ago. To do that she must find a reason to live again. A cause worth fighting for, comrades to trust, and a ship to sail the stars.

A tale of adventure, survival, and loyalty in the tradition of Firefly and Louis McMaster Bujold.

Book I of the Sequoyah trilogy.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Secret of Pad 34

Who would put a ceiling on humanity’s expansion into space?

That’s what Gus Grissom wants to know. While fishing offshore from Cape Canaveral, he glimpses a mysterious undersea city of unearthly geometries, marked with a strange three-armed cross symbol.

His efforts to research it bring him veiled threats from strangers at his door. Trouble blights an exemplary career. However, Gus refuses to be cowed into silence, and pursues every lead he can find.

HP Lovecraft wrote that we live on a placid island of ignorance and were not meant to travel far. This is the Space Race in a world where the Soviet Union is not our only adversary.

FROM PAM UPHOFF: Aslanov (Chronicles of the Fall Book 1)

The Three Hundred Families control the Three Part Alliance. To the Elite, their Family is their first priority.

Twenty years before the Fall . . .

Lord Dzon Konstantin Aslanov returns Home after a five year long assignment to another World to find his Family as poor a fit as ever. He is about to find out the cost of disobedience.

If only they’d tell Konstantin why he needed to marry so soon, to the right woman. And not like his idiot brother eloping with . . . the daughter of Kon’s new boss at the Bureau of Intelligence. And why should Kon marry this particular woman when her aunt was so much more interesting . . .

As Kon investigates government contract fraud, he begins to suspect his Family is involved . . .

And the consequences . . . deadly

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: cry

Nice is…. nice. I mean, you’re not going to hear much argument from me on that.

I am in fact one of those people who can be rendered speechless by unprompted rudeness. Prompted? Sure, I expect to get back as good as I give. Or even when I know people have some reason to think I did something to them, I expect rudeness.

But when people are rude to me on first meeting (or first coming to comments), it’s a complete puzzle. Because, really?

Niceness, encoded in certain manners and certain ways to approach strangers are a way to avoid unecessary conflict. Heaven knows there is enough necessary — urgent — conflict around, that going looking for more because you feel like you’re having a hairy day is utterly stupid. Not that I don’t have my own hairy days. Happens, being human. But I try very hard not to. Doesn’t mean I try not to be mean. It means I often try to be mean — or stern — politely.

I’m also — possibly — the rudest person alive when it comes to friends. If you’re my friend and I’m comfortable with you, I’ll talk over you, because something just occurred to me, and I’m afraid of forgetting. Or I’ll grab a brush and fix your hair. Or I’ll take your kid off your arms, since you can’t make her stop crying, and tell you to take a minute. Without asking or waiting turns because I’m comfortable with you.

And if you’re in a circle, talking to me, and I answer your idea/explanation with “Bullshit.” and don’t look angry? That’s because you’re a friend. You made it inside the safe circle, and I trust you to understand I’m shooting down the argument (and yes, I always explain) not YOU.

But that’s different. In fact, though I’m not my husband, who being a New Englander was trained this way, if I suddenly become exquisitely polite, it’s time to batten the hatches and look for cover, because I understand the first flash of a nuclear explosion does the most damage (at least out of immediate range.)

So I see nothing wrong with being nice to — as Jane Austen would put it — common and indifferent acquaintances.

I’m not sure how I feel about nice invading the legislature, and us no longer having punch outs and someone chasing someone else with a cane among the legislators, though, because important business shouldn’t be transacted by the rule of nice but by the rule of “this is vitally important. The fate of my beloved country hangs on it. I will lame a b*tch if they persist in trying to destroy us.”

By now, the open-borders crazies should have been chased around the senate and house floors with canes (or rapiers) and ditto for the Hamas supporting savages. Because it’s important business, and passions should be aroused.

Which brings me to … Fighting the culture war with our foot in a bucket.

A lot of the persistent trolls who never get approved try to bend me to their will to appeal to “nice” and “fair.” It doesn’t make any sense, because, well you see what they say just an (unapproved) comment before. But they are very used to this working on the right. ”I just want fairness” or “I just want politeness” tend to work with the right.

Why they work is complicated.

The left assumes it’s because we’re “upper class” and trained to behave like that. Some are, but frankly, they’re rare. Most of our rank and file is and has been, at least since Reagan, at most “scrappy self-made people.” Because the left has long ago conquered the country club and the heights of polite — and impolite, like Hollywood — society culturally. Yeah, there are country club republicans… look, most of the remaining were chased away by “Trump so rude!” And they were never the majority. It’s just that we voted for their guys — H. W., W., McCain, Romney — but they didn’t vote for ours. They punched above their weight. Trump’s win was a big, rude surprise. Eh.

Anyway….

The real reason the right enshrined “nice” as a virtue and “don’t make waves” as a sacrament at all levels is because you will get destroyed in the press if you break that.

What I mean is when they had complete control of the mass media and the narrative, to do or say anything that caused the left to deploy its entire machine to destroy you was very bad.

Take Sarah Palin and her nerve at EXISTING and being a self-made woman governor. They destroyed that woman’s life. Or Joe the Plumber asking unwanted questions of “Almost a god” while being working class and male. They had to destroy him. There was no choice. From their POV, at least, if they allow something that strongly contradicts the narrative to exist and be known about they already lost. The narrative needs to be all pervasive and unassailable.

No women or minorities can be Republican, for instance. Or non-Marxist. And if they are, they must be destroyed utterly.

And heaven help you if you hit more than one characteristic of groups they consider “theirs” and turn against their pap. You will be hammered to a pulp.

You see, they need groups to behave predictably, so they can “own” certain groups without ever having to explain how their philosophy helps the group. So, if you stick out of the choir, you’ll be destroyed with all they have. If you look around that explains a lot.

Of course, no matter how “nice” if you win an election against the left they’ll hound you with all they have. And sometimes they utterly break you. (Holds a minute of silence for what remained of W.’s spine when he left the White House. Such as it was. Really, sir, palling around with the Clintons? You make us doubt your self-identification — after leaving office! Nice! — as a “Christian Socialist” because what part of Christian is Epstein Island Clinton?)

Anyway, moving right along: This has been the problem from the beginning — oh, before WWII — and why so many false narratives got baked into the national (and world) psyche. Because everyone who deviated from Marxism in public would be destroyed.

It’s the reason the royal family of England has trended gradually farther left, to stay safe. And the same for our big corporations, our ivy league colleges, our professional associations, our “experts”, our scholars…

Because to deviate, even slightly, from whatever the left is proclaiming top-down this week — and which serves their current narrative — is to get hit with everything they can throw at you, including the kitchen sink. (Does not hold a minute of silence for J. K. Rowling, who seems to have a spine. Does wonder when she’ll wake up on the other “nice” stuff she swallowed.)

Suddenly things are discovered in your past of which you yourself are completely unaware but which everyone else knows about and look, there’s documents. (Which prove strangely slippery on examination.) Or they discover a mean tweet you sent in 1968, even though you had to time-travel for the purpose.

This would work beautifully in the past. Everything and everyone repeated the line with the coordinated precision of a ballet ensemble. The person on the street who semi-cared would assume that, of course, there was no smoke without fire. And the person who didn’t care just got the idea you were “toxic” and avoided, or laughed at comedy that demonized you while completely unaware of there being nothing behind the accusations.

They could do this in a week or so, without much flexing. I think BTW is why the US defamation and slander rules are so stupid. If you’re a “public person” you can’t pretty much sue anyone for slander. And “public person” not only extends to me (Waggles hand. Really? A small blog and some fiction books puts me at the same level as say Clinton? I think it should be at least “National household name) but to anyone, like the Covington kids. If being slandered on national TV makes you a public person and you can’t sue for slander, the whole thing is rigged. Yes, they got around it. But the fact there was even a question tells you how rigged it is. And how irrational.

The problem is that while they sort of still can do it, kind of, sideways, it’s not sticking. Worse, there’s a grassroots narrative network — and they don’t get grassroots at all — that just spreads and connects and which they can’t put down.

Take the rumor that Michelle Obama is a man. It’s a completely insane rumor, on a par with Hillary Clinton having an affair with a space alien. As you guys know, I’m a conaisseur of silly crazy. I love theories that the dinosaurs left the Earth and are circling it in a spaceship, waiting to return. I love ancient civilization, particularly the ones that were completely run according to our idea of astrology, regardless of how the skies have changed in the interim. And the first time I stumbled on Big Mike I lost three days following videos and articles with the sick fascination of watching a train wreck.

These things are my guilty pleasures. Literally. When the email was going around about “I know what you do on your computer and what you were watching” meaning porn — oh, if you get one of those, they’re not real. It’s fishing. For the love of all that’s holy, don’t give them money — and I got a couple, I giggled and told my husband “Yeah, but everyone already knows I watch and ready goofy conspiracy theories and grin and laugh like a loon.”

So, imagine my surprise when I found my very proper, serious friends make allusions to Big Mike in the middle of a serious discussion. I don’t think my friends believe it, but that they even heard of the gross scurrilous nonsense was a shock. And periodically it pops up in the middle of an unrelated discussion with non internet or politics addicted people.

Which comes back to “Oh. I see. It’s all over, like the left’s slanders used to spread.” What percentage of people believe it? Very few I’d guess, at least amid the people who actually follow politics and care. Is it believed amid the people who don’t care and just catch it in the wind? Probably more so, yes. Because the “Why would they say it if there wasn’t something in it” will be stronger there.

But the salient thing is that they can’t put it down. If they deny it, it will only feed it. “I have stopped beating my wife, who is totally not a guy.” Yeah. And if they don’t deny it, over time it will become an “everyone knows”.

The same with Bidens and the Clintons and their corruption machines, which actually happen to be true, but again, even if they weren’t, it would be known everywhere. And things like the Podesta brothers, and the pedo networks of Epstein. (In retrospect, dowgies, it was a mistake to off Epstein. You’re just not used to not being able to put down rumors, so I tell you this, out of the kindness of my heart. Giggle. You’ll learn.)

Or the important things. Took a while, but the truth about Covid 19 propagated so that not only did their protocols which they intended to make eternal break, but they haven’t been able to make new protocols stick. (Which is why I think next spring they try nuclear war. And the way their authority has degraded, I’m not sure that will work either.)

No wonder the left is now pro censorship, and like late stage Soviets trying to stop “disinformation.” And even then it doesn’t work.

The point is none of that is nice. Whenever we turn and bite the left, we’re by definition “mean” and “crazy” and “evil” and “racist” and “Anti-diversity” and anything else they can throw at us. But not NICE.

And every time this happens, a chorus of teddy bears on our side starts singing the song of “you won’t convince them if you’re not nice. You got to be nice.”

Partly because they have Stockholm syndrome. I mean, for decades if you stepped out of line you got DESTROYED. So the only way to fight the left was little by little, incrementally and sometimes just on one issue, while compromising on all the big, visible ones. (Older rightists are very prone to this.)

And part of it is … Well, you see, before the media lost most of its power, the left appeared to be “nice” and a lot of people who are naturally nice (seems to be something you’re born with. Shrug.) really would like to get back there. Except it’s an illusion.

The left was never nice. For a while I passed well enough to sit at the back of their councils and listen to them — and I just realized people like me, who then come out must seem to them like werewolves of legend. But truly, it’s not hard. Their philosophy is everywhere in public, and making the right mouth noises is easy. It just kills your soul if you have to do it for life and don’t have an outlet. A reason many of you in the lefty fields have secret handles here and other places — and trust me, they were never nice. They always wanted to cut your heart out and eat it, simply because you opposed their will to power. But the press helped smooth out any hint of that came showed.

Cancelling and destroying people on the flimsiest excuses has gone on for my full adult life in the US — which is now close on to 40 years — and I suspect before, because it was done in Portugal before, just slightly more openly. (Or maybe I saw more of it, because I was more able to pass as left there. At least in my daylight persona. And those embedded in the left also know exactly what this means.) Also because I can read fluent “secret cancel” in the bios of older authors and politicians and public figures.

But it was done secretly. So secretly that the victims were assumed to REALLY have done something heinous, or gone mad, or in some cases died. (Really, DO read Lloyd Biggle Jr.s The Still Small Voice of Trumpets. I don’t know if he did it consciously, but he captured the whole thing beautifully.)

Now it’s out in the open, which makes everything seem worse and scarier. But trust me, as someone who saw it before, it’s not actually worse. It’s better because we now know and can see the inanity of it and even fight back. (See J. K. Rowling. Or Musk.) We can see how petty and stupid the left is too.

So wanting to smooth the whole thing with “nice” and go back to “the good old days” is nothing more and nothing less than collaborating with the enemy and wanting us to lose.

I just know most of the people doing it don’t mean it that way. But I do wish they’d come to grips with the fact there are situations when you can’t be nice.

When the sword is at your chest you don’t say “Pardon me, sir, I think you misunderstood my remark.”

When they are getting ready to hang you, you don’t say “But sirs, we agreed we wouldn’t use hemp for this purpose.”

And when they set out to destroy you for the crime of existing, you don’t try to argue rationally with them.

You fight back. And you’d best prepare ahead so that you can fight back in a way that the spectators will at least be doubtful of your guilt and evil, and so that you might make them laugh at the left, and escape the worst of it. The left, btw, hates being laughed at. Probably because they know how ridiculous the entire edifice of their power and might is. And a lot of them are only “left” because they hope to be eaten last. If they can be poked fun at, are they really safe?

Or you ignore them. If you can’t — or don’t feel like — make them them ridiculous, just ignore them. This depends on your situation. I know a lot of you can’t just ignore and MUST fight back. Some of us who have indie options to continue earning a living, and can have pen names and personas no one knows about, are freer to just ignore. Ignore. Ignore and ignore some more. Don’t give them head space.

This if possible makes them even madder than making fun of them. Because after all they are the Great and Powerful Oz. How dare you pretend they don’t exist?

In fact, fighting them back seriously “on the issues” is the worst thing you can do, second only to apologizing and placating. There are no issues and no convictions in the leftist platform. They just use those as dressing, and will change them on a dime, and all unify behind the new ones. (This is facilitated by the fact that at least half their following is Memorex and the rest are scared. Even the true believers.)

If you absolutely must, sure. Fight them on the issues. And smearing their faces in their serious and horrible infractions is sometimes needed. Like their support of the rapist-murderers of Hamas. It’s better than apologizing and being cowed.

But don’t try to fight “nicely.” Come up with the worst things you can to show how corrupt and utterly vile they are. They are. If you think they aren’t, you’re still buying the “nice” facade. They were without supervision or moderation so long they’ve become horrendous, without even noticing. (Humans need boundaries to stay in the permissible. Particularly if they lack internal morality which a lot of power-hungry people do.)

And if all else fails, tell the truth. Paraphrasing Kit Marlowe, who should know “To tell the truth, just once, would be worth it, even if one had to die for it.”

They’ve managed to conquer the high ground, while being a sort of alien mixture of lizards and paramecium, and to become a positional good (all “good” people are leftist. All rich and educated ones too.) despite their horrendous, murderous philosophy, their hypocrisy, their often abysmal personalities and personal lives.

And at the same time they bound us with “be nice or you’ll get hit and killed.”

It’s like some dark fantasy spell, right there.

And it’s time to recognize their bonds can’t hold anymore, and unless you absolutely must (or are embedded in their machine, waiting your opportunity. And I think what with the events of the last three years there are a lot of those newly redpilled, suddenly. Sleep tight, lefties) you can now start fighting back without the “nice.”

If “nice” is embedded in your head — it is — and you feel like you’re breaking all commandments by speaking out — you will. I did, when I took the first timid steps out of the closet — remember it’s just a learned reaction. You’re not breaking a single commandment, much less all of them.

The Marquis de Queensbury rules were not designed for those who find themselves attacked in a blind alley. We’ve been taking a beat down for almost a century by trying to be “ladies and gentlemen.” and holding on to “the proper way of doing things.”

This made perfect sense when the stick of a uniform loudspeaker was ready to destroy us, in the press, in entertainment, in art.

Oh, you can still be destroyed. For values of destroyed. But the more of us that are speaking the truth without bothering with nice, the safer we are. And the safer, frankly, everyone is. Because untrammeled power kills. And the left aims to have it.

So, have plan b and plan c and plan d and plan e and plan aardvark ready, always.

And still stay quiet and lay low if you absolutely must, or if you’re waiting for the right full moon to rip out their throats. (And a lot are.)

But don’t stay quiet because you’re being nice. Or because you think nice is a virtue. Or because you think if you’re nice, the left will be too.

That’s how to lose the war without firing a shot. What people on the outside see is that one side if bold and loud, and so confident. And the other never disputes it, so they really must be guilty of everything.

Screw nice. Be bold. Be outspoken. Be who you are, and damn the torpedos.

In a fight for your life, or the life of the nation and your progeny, you should be willing to take out your cane and chase those destroying the nation around the legislature floor. Metaphorically speaking.

Be not afraid.

And be not nice.

Aim instead for being good, in all senses of the word. Nice and good are not the same thing. In fact, they’re not in the same neighborhood.

They’re panicking. They’re panicking badly. “Stomp, stomp, we want censorship” is not the motto of a winning movement.

It’s time to stampede them.

We tend to think the left is breaking systems because they think it helps that goal. That is not completely wrong, but it’s more that they can’t help breaking systems for the same reason they think broken systems help their goal.

First I want to point out that I don’t think that leftists are either stupid or insane. (Yes, there are some number of mentally ill attracted not by the philosophy so much as the social perception that the philosophy is winning — it’s not but there’s a lot of false confidence and built in noise from their historical dominance of communications — attracts people, the insane, the wounded, the people who were bullied, who think it offers them protection. This has always happened with the left. In the places the left prevailed it didn’t go well for them. But that’s something else.)

The defect in perception/thinking it’s more of an acquired thing, partly induced by our education establishment, partly by the left’s full hold on all the mass-industrial-communication mechanisms, and partly because the mental mechanisms of Marxism have invaded everything, even the right. Heck, after years of being aware of them, I still sometimes trip on them.

Part of this was done through fiction, which bypasses our critical ability and embeds itself in our brains as “lived experience”. And a lot of those assumptions are plain wrong and bad.

But also, I’ve noticed that the extreme left of today, not the loot and burn lot, but the convinced intellectuals, are the good boys and girls of yore. In the past they’d have burn with zeal to to be missionaries. They still do. It’s just the post-Christian west only offers the broken faith of Marxism. But they still want to be “good” and “admirable” and their version of this is… Marxist insanity. At the same time, and possibly because over the last fifty years a lot of people were raised in group environments by strangers, there’s also poor socialization to take into account.

What I’m talking about is the fact that the left seems blind to any motivation or relationship that is not a matter of power.

Growing up in an even semi-functional family will teach you that systems of people work, without a power directing them from above. Sure, not perfectly — that’s the other thing families teach you. “If only everyone”never works, not even if mom screams and threatens people with the chancla. But it works, because each person gets something out of what they do for others, and even what they do for the whole.

But if your only experience is of a professional day care, all you experience is someone forcing others to obey, and nothing happening outside of that. Power.

And unfortunately that will slot into Marxism because Marx was an autistic bastard, and all the relationships he saw in society were translatable to power and group power at that. Because the only relationship is power, someone is always oppressing or being oppressed, hoarding the finite resources, or taking them back by force. Seriously, there was something very wrong in that man’s head. And unfortunately the broken meme has propagated.

The left truly doesn’t understand interconnected systems, or the fact that even minor things affect everything else. All they understand is power relationships.

Take environment. The left supposedly cares passionately about the environment. (How after fifty years of eminent apocalypse that never happens they can still believe I don’t know. But then I was never a good girl, piously believing my “betters.” As my parents would attest, I was “rather break than bend” which means I probably can’t grok them, even if I try.) And they do. But they also want us to eat the bugs. Which not only doesn’t solve the problems caused by traditional livestock, but uses more resources and destroys more.

But, ah, you see, in relation to the environment the masses of people have “power” therefore they’re oppressors. Making the oppressors suffer resolves the power imbalance, or at least helps it. Voila.

Same reason they’re not worried about China’s energy use and production by the dirtiest possible means going up, only ours. Because the US has “power” and China “doesn’t” so we’re the oppressors. Duh.

In the same way they are remarkably dense about the fact that importing millions of foreigners who don’t/can’t contribute anything to the country won’t help us OR THEM. Because you know, the US has the power and used to “steal” “resources” so bringing all these people here gives them power and gives back the resources we “took”.

They don’t understand complex relationships of intertwined groups or individuals and their interest.

This inevitably leads to their breaking everything, because the ONLY thing they understand is power relationships and think that inverting “power” fixes problems. Only what they see as power is often a relationship of service willingly taken — married people in mutual service, say, or kids helping their parents, or even volunteers genuinely serving those they help — and when they break that it breaks fundamental human connections.

And when they see the workplace/ commerce in terms of power, they make everyone concentrate on social games, and not the widgets being made or sold. Which explains the implosion of all the woke companies.

This also explains why now, that this problem is advanced, since it’s been on mental loop so long that competing ways of seeing the world have receded, their creativity seems to be stuck in “Scream at bad people and show oppression/revenge fantasies.”

In a way it’s horrifying, because they’ve lost 3/4 of what it is to be human. Things done, not because you’re oppressed or want to oppress, but because you you want to and it feeds your creativity or your social need, or it does something for someone you love.

Love is also out of it. it’s all power relationships. Hence why so many people can’t be in a relationship. because it must be power, and they must somehow be oppressed. Or those around them, in relationships, must be.

And I don’t know if it can be fixed, because a lot of it is fundamental, hinging on very early childhood training, and then reinforced in the thinking years, by every bit of education poured into people.

Only the very strong can escape this unscathed. Or the very non conformist.

Now, I firmly believe convinced Marxists are a very small minority. 25% at most. They show as more both through media domination and pudding heads non-thinkers who go along on the appearance of victory. But even with those they’re not even 50% or the fraud they push wouldn’t need to be the magnitude it is. A dab would do them.

But the problem is that a bit of this is in every one of our minds too. Yes, even mine, though mine is mostly — because I love history — bits of historical misinformation that I think about suddenly and go “Wait, that can’t be true, because this was also going on.” Though sometimes I still find breaks in the basic brain too. Like in the idea of writing something just because I want to, and it needs out of my head. Because doing something should be “useful.”

And that breakage in our own minds both amplifies the damage the left does and makes it harder to recover. For instance a lot of right entertainment as it sprouts up is… well, woke turned on its head.

Not all. We are the outsiders, the oddballs, the weirdos. So our stuff will often be quirky fun.

Unless … Well, even talented people get mad and think “People need to know.”

Part of the reason I have the blog is to process these things without their taking over my fiction. Because we can’t let it do that.

Look, of course your fiction will have your idea of how the world is organized. That’s because it’s yours. When we recreate even what we think is the real world in fiction, what we’re actually doing is not recreating the world, but recreating the world inside our heads. And that comes with your beliefs and assumptions. That’s fine.

But a good story is more than shouting the opposite of what the woke shout at us. Well done, it is subtle, and simply embedded in the story, not being screamed at the level of a morality play. And EVEN WHEN I AGREE WITH THE WRITERS when I accidentally download one of those books, they are fully as tedious as the leftist ones.

And it means you’ve internalized the power is the only thing that matters, bs. So you grab a little power and use it to equalize things by screaming the opposite of what is screamed by the establishment.

But that’s not what convinces anyone. Worse, that’s not even good. it’s forgetting the “thing” for social games.

I’m divided on “hire someone for their political beliefs” simply because I believe that the left has conquered all the institutions that way while we were unavailingly trying to respect competence.

What I will say is that there should be competence first. Faced with two candidates, equally able and qualified, knowing one is leftist and one is… standing with us more or less, go with the second. Because leftists have a hidden cost. As they multiply in your enterprise, they’ll use that to “equalize power” by hiring only their kind and using your concern to equalize power everywhere by “speaking truth to power” (Which because they’re the establishment is actually mostly speaking power to truth.) And your company is suddenly no longer producing widgets, but very concerned with hiring people with “oppressed” characteristics, to “equalize” the power. And this usually means you’re already doomed.

Still you need competence first. because hiring for any other reason at all always ends up in a war on things and people that work. Incompetence drives competence out. And if for competence you must hire a leftist (yeah, very rare, because, well, their brain is eaten with “power” worms) then you must watch them like a hawk, to not let your endeavor be corrupted out of existence. It’s just the price of it.

But everything else? This is not a power game. Society, economics, countries and yeah ecosystems have complex relationships between groups and individuals, most of which cannot be defined in terms of power. They’re rather “commensal” where the other benefits from what he/she/they do/es. Most relationships in nature are of that kind, (weirdly even predator/prey) and so are most relationships in human societies.

An inability to see that means you should be disqualified from opining on how people should live. But more importantly, it makes you a poor, broken creature destroying everything within reach, even without meaning to.

And when those in power are afflicted with this blindness, as they are in our society, reproduce the conditions of a family with a clinical narcissist parent. Because those in power are always trying to balance “power” where no power is involved, and create strife and hatred among those under them, while trying to “fix” things, which due to their blindness just make everything worse like throwing gasoline on the fire to put it out.

This means the moral character of people in charge doesn’t even matter. They’re all going to function as the worst possible humans. Of course, the broken system will also attract power vampires, which yes, are the worst possible humans.

No, I don’t know how to fix it, but understanding the mechanism that’s breaking everything in their heads might help both with not falling in the same trap and perhaps into reaching the younger people sliding into this mode of thought.

Because we need to rebuild and build a society where people can be whole.

I Enjoin You to Pause by Holly Frost

Okay, you all know how, when it gets to be winter (yes, I know, you and you don’t have winter, so pay double attention, it’ll be your own rear you save twice), you drive down the icy road, and you stop at a red light. The light turns green, and you pause, and you wait, just to see if the guy with the red who is half a block away can actually stop or if he’s going to come skidding and spinning through the intersection. You know how that is? And the guy behind you is some southern import (the only one in town, like as not) and is laying on his horn because your light is green and he doesn’t know any better? You know how you ignore that guy, and you pause, and you wait, and you see if it’s going to be safe?

You have got to pause. When the (political, cultural, whatever) light turns green, and the ignorant behind you is trying to push you by blaring his horn (media, internet), you have got to pause.

Make sure that eighteen wheeler coming down the cross street, or smart car, or whatever the heck it is (riot? protest? freight train?) is actually going to be able to stop. Let the juggernaut of inevitable disaster pass you by.

My driver’s ed instructor always said “The laws of physics trump the rules of the road.” It doesn’t matter how in the right you are if you get squashed.

So we’re sitting here at current events, looking at a green light, and the media is behind us laying on their horns. Don’t pull out until you’re sure. Don’t let yourself be rushed into something.

Take a deep breath. Look both ways. Look again.

This next year, as we approach the elections, with wars and rumors of wars, plagues and rumors of plagues, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, and whatever else comes our way, I enjoin you, pause. Wait until you know that you aren’t going to get squished when you move forward.