According To Hoyt

This could frankly be titled “From the dumpster fire’s heart I stab at you.”

We are in a strange place and no mistake. I mean, it’s been said for a long time that we’re in that awkward space when it’s too late to vote them out, but too early to start shooting.

It used to be amusing. Not laughing right now.

Added to that no sane person wants to start shooting, because we know if it ever starts it will make the French Terror look like a teddy bear picnic. And that the left isn’t sane and in their all-consuming lust for power they don’t realize the rest of us aren’t merely holding the worst back, but we are the worst that we’re holding back. And good men tested to the limits of their self-control can break: When tired, when sick, when despairing, when their children cry with hunger. We’re not even talking famine conditions. I don’t think that will happen here (I could be wrong.) It’s “Dad I want dinner” and either there is no money or no supplies for dinner. This is what should keep our supposed betters awake at night, but it doesn’t. Because their cult requires them to believe that the huddled masses long most of all for communism and redistribution.

They also believe that if they break every fire alarm, they’re safe from the fire. So they muzzle us, and they’ve rigged the elections so we can’t punish them. This means they can do what they want, right?

I tell you guys, all the proponents of never swatting or even saying no to your kids created these monsters. They think as long as there’s no immediate retribution — and they never experienced that as kids — there will never be consequences.

Sri Lanka? What’s that? They I bet you have shut their ears to it, and to all the other unpleasant and borderline rebellions against their rule and the rule of their favorites abroad going on all over the world right now.

Because if you don’t hear the alarm, the fire won’t hurt you, right?

So, not laughing. Really not laughing.

More spending the nights awake, wondering what the heck we can do about it, since we can’t vote the bastards out. The impossible — yes, you heard me, impossible — results of 20 and 22 have proven that conclusively.

And… well…. even if it feels like the whole country is high-Colorado timber after three years of drought, nothing will happen till there’s a spark. And then it will be too late to control the fire. Suburbs will burn just as readily as the littered wooded spaces, and the slopes covered in scrub oak.

But I can do nothing — not me personally — I can neither change the course of history nor stop the spark. Nor clean up the timber.

So I wake up screaming. And worry for everyone I love. And pray for a miracle.

But we’re human. We need to do something. Else we lose our minds, and not in a good way. Which adds both to the timber and the probability that what’s left after the fire is not the nation we know and love.

I find some comfort in USAianism. Yes, I know, I created it accidentally, from a joke in DST to suddenly having it hit me in the face in A Few Good Men.

And yes, I know I have a religion already (Thoroughly muddled with another religion through early instruction, which simply makes me as neurotic as a shaved cat.)

But USAianism is more a creed than a religion and plays well with all forms of Judeo Catholicism. (Though, no, I’m not talking to my church about that. They have some ideas that I find disturbing about temporal order, anyway.) All it requires me to believe is that the very existence of the USA is a miracle — look, anyone who knows history knows this — and its continuation despite all the times we’ve “fallen from grace” is almost as miraculous. And since it’s a miracle, I believe Himself intended it. Which frankly, given his preference for giving humans free will to choose makes perfect sense. We might not be absolutely free, but our system, however imperfectly observed gives or for a long time gave the individual more choice than any other. (Regardless of how often individuals choose “wrong.”)

So I comfort myself with rituals and observances. Along side the Christmas tree this weekend we’re putting up a tree of liberty: artificial oak tree. Will have felt around the base and patriotic ornaments.

And I am making cookie cutters in the shape of Hessians. We’ll bite their heads off on Christmas eve. (Think how much fun that would be for kids. And you could tell them the story.) And I’m fasting the last two weeks of advent, because our forefathers starved at Valley Forge. (I refuse to turn off the heat, though, even if they froze at Valley Forge too.) And I will read about the revolutionary war every day.

Yes, you are looking at me like I lost my mind. I didn’t. In fact, it’s sort of a ritual of hope. Embedding the history in ritual and the reasoning for our existence in a creedal matrix means it has a better chance of surviving down the centuries. Which means, even if we go down it won’t be forever. And that’s hope, though cold comfort. (Things my books taught me.)

But that’s “Personal angst management.” It doesn’t have much effect in the world, since right now we don’t have littles to teach the ritual and through it the ideas to.

So what can we do?

Well, I’ve told you before that the winter ahead is going to be hard. And probably the first of several hard winters. Because our government is outright making war on the people. Right now, mostly a war of attrition.

Years ago, during either Obama’s second term, or the covidiocy, or both (I don’t feel like looking) I came up with “Not one red cent for the blue.”

I mean, I used to patronize businesses and artists that I felt deserved to survive regardless of their political color.

But at some point I realized that they NEVER do that for us. They demonize us and tell lies about us. I don’t know how many people have been scared away from my fiction by “racist, sexist, homophobic” but I bet you more than a few, reason being I used to believe those slurs, well before I was published. So, in my twenties.

Most of my books are thoroughly apolitical and non-objectionable for anyone. And no, none of them are racist, sexist and homophobic, unless your reasoning is specious and a bit crazy, honestly. Because I’m not. And it’s really hard to write what you aren’t.

The ones that could be considered political — Dark Ships — mostly concern themselves with the future politics of regimes that don’t exist. And while, yes, my beliefs DO come through, and you can choose to port principles from them to our time, that is not what I was doing. Because I don’t write science fiction to reflect the present. I write science fiction because I like speculating about the future.

And yet, I’m thoroughly blacklisted at every respectable (and some non-respectable) publishing houses, and there are people who would not pick up my books for fear of contagion with forbidden opinions.

Because the left is REALLY GOOD at that. I knew that when I caught them saying that Heinlein — HEINLEIN — was racist, sexist and homophobic. The only justification I could find is that he treated women as being much more worthy than men. But no, that’s not what they meant. They never read him, because they were told what he was. And the left — and innocents — recoiled without reading.

So, I know they cost me business. They cost all of us business. And those of you who are employed have names you use here that no one knows at the work place, or you’d be fired.

The left has no problems with any of this, because they define themselves as “good people” and therefore if you disagree with them, you’re evil. And they have no problems — of course –punishing and destroying the evil.

I used to be much more nuanced than that. I used to think they had any number of useful idiots, and people who SIMPLY didn’t know better. And because of that, I held off and held back, and read their books — even if I had to skip past all the preaching — and bought their stuff.

But right now? Right now, I’m all out of charity. Unless they speak out against the present mess? (And then they become magically “right wing” according to their side) I HAVE NO CHARITY.

So, here we are. Facing hard hard times, and all out of patience.

And I’m going to give you an “Aim small, miss small” way of fighting back. It’s not much, but for many people it might be the difference between survival and not. Because things are about to be close to the bone.

It’s basically the only way I’ve ever taken revenge on anyone. You see, I’m …. lazy. Which weirdly, in my case is a saving grace.

When someone does something directly against me (openly or not) I could plot revenge. But dude. So much work. And I have books to write.

So what I do against those that hurt me? I ignore them. But I remember. Which means, later on? Down the line? When they need a hand up that I could easily give? I ignore them. My answer is something like “oh, noes. How turrible” and then I go my merry way, ignoring them.

I’m going to propose the same, but with a bit added, because we need to survive this winter, and the years ahead.

So…

Not one red cent for the blue; all support to the red.

Look, we can’t afford NOT doing some business with the blue model. I have to do business with Amazon, for the same reason I have to do business with the atmosphere and gravity. What’s my other option?

Same applies to some food and supplies, and to services like paypal, which I still can’t cancel, become some editors still pay me that way on royalties for stories sold years ago.

This is not going to be a clean break or super-perfect.

So….

What it means is that if there is a choice? I’ll buy from our side. If there is a choice of an artist to promote, a writer to pimp, a restaurant to patronize, a handyman to hire? I’ll buy from our side, I’ll push our side, I’ll patronize our side.

Now I’m not asking you to consume crap, just to buy/support our side. The left does that, and it’s led by degrees to all the stuff they sell/do being crap. Because quality stopped mattering.

But will I preferentially read an indie SF series from our side, ignoring the occasional typo, to the highly hyped, carefully set up story pushed by the majors and written by some red-diaper blue violet? Oh, you bet your sweet *ss I will. If the story is still good, supporting our own makes me feel better.

But Sarah, you’ll say I don’t often know the politics of my handyman, my mechanic, my restaurant owner.

No. And it’s not going to be perfect. But a little discrete investigation won’t kill you, either. You unfortunately these days can suss up anyone’s politics with a five minute talk or a five minute internet search.

Again, I’m not calling for perfection. Yeah, all of us have that friend we love who is wobbly at best. Or that vegetarian hippie restaurant we adore (Not since Charlotte 30 years ago, but yeah.)

What I’m saying is, when you can, offer support to our people. When possible, buy from our own. When you can make it work, shun those who hate us and want us to eat bugs.

It’s not much. But it might make a difference between some of us surviving and not.

Through the dark night ahead.

Be not afraid. Go light your lantern.

Before we start this here session, let me point out I decided to vote for Trump in 2016 the night before election day. I did it after earnest talks by both Jerry Pournelle and L. Neil Smith and partly because those two agreeing was such a jaw-dropping shock, I couldn’t fight it too well. (Tips hat to two friends now in the eternal SF convention hall.)

But still the only reason I chose Trump in that election is because he was judged less likely to have me shot in the back of the head. (Note not completely unlikely, but less likely.)

The way he governed, despite being hampered by credentialed people convinced that they knew better, was a welcome surprise. He did great things for the economy, and he got the Abraham accounts signed. Yeah, covidiocy. And that gives me some pause. But considering the other side did it harder, crazier, the only thing I can suspect is that Trump was in cahoots with him, and if he was, then the way they’re still attacking him is even crazier than I thought.

Anyway, in 2020 I voted for him with no regrets. And I still don’t have any regrets. (Anyone who swallowed the whole “called for insurrection” has been swallowing soma by the fistful. Frankly, he’d have been justified in. He didn’t. The left, conscious of their fraud and terrified of the citizenry (note the barriers and under-guard inauguration) have made a mountain out of a molehill).)

However… Well, I won’t say I don’t like Trump. I like Trump the President. I hated Apprentice. And the man is still way too much of a believer in government (or was while in the white house) for my tastes. However, for a President, not bad.

Which doesn’t mean I’m a fan, or involved in some cult of personality. Right now, I prefer Trump to DeSantis because, seemingly unlike the rest of my colleagues I see the underhanded (via surrogates) DeSantis provocation. I know Trump brought it to the public. But that’s his style. He fights in public. As another hothead, I empathize. And DeSantis. Well, only one thing against him. He’s a career politician. And I’ve had enough of those for a lifetime. Yeah, if he’s nominated, I’ll vote for him. For all the good voting does at this point. And why I think arguing Trump versus DeSantis is BS.

However, I think it’s really important for the right not to turn on Trump. The man gave up on a private career and lost money to be President. And we’re going to turn on him? Why will anyone else put him or herself out for us? The left lionizes even their failures. So, you know, sure, we’ll attract good people with that differential.

ALL THAT SAID, I DON’T KNOW TRUMP PERSONALY. THE ONLY PERSON ON WHOM I HAVE ALMOST A CULT OF PERSONALITY CRUSH IS ROBERT A. HEINLEIN. AND EVEN HE I HAVE SEVERE DISAGREEMENTS WITH. SO, CAN YOU STOP MAKING ME DEFEND TRUMP.

Does Sinal Salute, with thumb and forefinger on either side of her nose, head inclined.

So help me, peeps! You keep doing this to me, and I’m so many levels of not happy. But here I go again.

In Trump’s Defense:

I got really tired of everyone posting how Trump wanted to discard the Constitution, after he posted this on Truth Social:

There are many ways to look at what he’s saying, but the one that made absolute sense to me was this: EVERYONE who had half a brain knew there was a serious problem with the 2020 election. EVERYONE, including the courts who said no one had standing to question it, no crime had been committed till it was certified and after it was certified, well, there was nothing we could do.

The fact is that there was an enormous issue with the voting but the entire establishment rolled over by the rules and said “We can’t do anything”. And a living dead zombie was sworn in despite the clear will of the people against it. Which …. whatever. I do realize we’ve had fraud even massive fraud before. But — that I can figure out — it was never to swear in someone who is a puppet, compromised by foreign governments and determined to destroy America by doing everything he can to dismantle us. This has been done to states before: Colorado for instance, and most recently Nevada. But it’s never been done to the entire country. We’ve never had someone throw the borders open to invasion ignoring the most important constitutional duty he should be fulfilling. Or destroy our oil industry in order to destroy the economy. Or give weapons to those who declare themselves at war with us. Or– The list goes on. Including most recently trying to nullify the 1st amendment by various means.

So — yeah, there was fraud, massive. The Constitution is being ignored. And there is no Constitutional remedy for this.

It’s not that the Founders didn’t anticipate this. It’s that the remedy for it is found in the Declaration of Independence. And frankly it’s a remedy all of us with a half a wit are praying we don’t have to employ.

Is Trump calling for that remedy? No. Because he’s sane enough he also doesn’t want it. What is he calling for? New Elections. Keep in mind this is quixotic and borderline stupid, because unless we had elections by “occupied country rules” — ie. the rules of countries WE occupied and forced elections on — meaning, one day voting, paper ballots, public ballot counting, purple fingers, the results will be MORE fraud. And they’ve managed to perfect it, as we saw in 2022.

But is that what people are saying. No. People are saying “Hey, to have elections again, would LITERALLY kill the constitution.” Yeah, b*tch. That’s a real danger. Looks over at the bleeding corpse of the Constitution, while the Junta stabs it repeatedly.

What this country has suffered is what’s known as a “color revolution.” The revolutionaries come in not with tanks and guns, but under the cover of legalism. Using our own mechanisms to hamstring us. If you ignore the fact of the MASSIVE fraud, everything was done by the book.

Because the American people totally voted by the people who wanted to bring in the Green New Deal. Of course, those were the American people who did same day registration many to addresses that don’t exist, or voted without ID, because in America you can do everything without ID from opening bank accounts to cashing checks to receiving welfare, or boarding planes. They were Americans who voted only on the races important for Democrats, in votes it took days after the elections to find. And the most Americanny Americans again were those that live as bits and bites in the heart of voting machines that are hackable, unverifiable, and connected to the internet. Oh, and created by a company used to rig other elections around the world. THOSE are the bestest Americans.

And given that, of course, everything was done by the book. Because by the book is far more important than the fact that de-facto enemies of our form of government are trying to destroy us more or less openly, because what are we going to do? By the rules?

So yeah, what Trump said was stupid, but not because he called to discard the constitution. He didn’t. But because he called for new elections, when the elections are now thoroughly rigged.

However what did all my colleagues on the right do? “Trump wants to discard the Constitution.”

And I have sympathy, kind of, with the friend who was like “why can’t he be clearer.” But the fact is, as used to be the rule on the blogs long ago: There is no way you can say things in a way that won’t be misunderstood. Particularly when everyone wants to misunderstand you. Remember when they outright elided things he said to get that he’d called Nazis “good people”? Yeah, good times, that.

Now is he the most punctilious speaker? No. New Yorker, and having been — or passed as — left most of his life, he never had to police his words. It’s the habit of a lifetime. Besides, honestly, this is the guy who thinks Biggly is a word. He’s not a word person.

Yes, he could have a word person vet his stuff. We do remember that even now he’s surrounded by people willing to sell him for gotchas, right? And FYI everyone in his position will be. Remember the left selling people on Ford being clumsy? yeah.

Now would I volunteer to vet his word stuff? Hell yes. I’d take the job in a minute to be his “word interface with the world” — other than typos — and by saying that I don’t mean I WANT that job. It would destroy my life and my family’s life, and put an end to my writing career, which is the thing I wanted since I was six. BUT right now, it might be the best thing I can do for this country. And I love this country. But let’s be honest, no one is going to pick the weird girl blogger for that, and I’d probably talk back too much for his taste (or anyone’s taste.) So, whatevs. Do I trust anyone else? Well, some of you. But…. again, no one is going to tap us for this.

And if I vetted his word stuff, would he still say “appalling” things? Well, dudes, the left managed to get it out in the world that I’m homophobic and sexist. That means there is no way to speak that the left, and their right wing dupes won’t distort.

So… I have no solution, other than, stop jumping to the positions the left wants you to take. Another reason not to turn on Trump is that the left WANTS you to. And when have they wanted anything that was good for the right? Are you people simple?

And speaking of simple: remember when Trump let the country get paralyzed by covidiocy because he respected local rule? Some person to call for the erasing of the Constitution. That’s TOTES believable. Do I need a sarcasm tag? Stop jumping on this stuff like a cat on a shaken string. ARE YOU SIMPLE? Are you using only your cerebellum?

Now, one of my friends, who is one of the most brilliant people I know, saw this in a much simpler light “He’s not saying to ignore the constitution. He’s saying what happened and the blatant fraud allowed the Junta to ignore the constitution.”

He’s not wrong.

Another friend went at somewhat more length:

“

The thing people are, apparently deliberately, missing with regard to ‘termination … even those found in the Constitution’?

It is correct to say that the current mess is a failure mode that the constitution does not fully anticipate.

Strictly speaking, it is a failure mode where the constitution conflicts with the constitution.

The handwringing over Trump proposing a set of remedies that /includes/ remedies that conflict with the constitution is nonsensical when these same people were silent about other things actually done that were in violation of the constitution.

The January Sixth hearings, and attempts to impeach Trump, were about allegations that would have obviously had a defensibly constitutional reading had they actually occurred.

Every time a congress man alleged an insurrection, they offer evidence that Trump would have been potentially justified in a use of force, if he had not refrained from using force.

Trump had the executive power, under the constitution, and was charged to see laws duly enforced.

Election laws were flagrantly and blatantly not enforced, as part of a coordinated campaign of lawlessness (Covid lockdown), that happened to be coordinated with the most concentrated domestic terror campaign in forty years.

Trump was peacefully complaining, and asking for remedy, in courts and in congress.

The legislature is assigned the legislative power, with caveats.  The judiciary is assign the judicial power, with caveats.  The executive power is not so limited by clauses, in my recollection of reading it.

The limit of the executive power under the constitution is that it must be necessary under the responsibilities, and only be something that the executive can remedy.

It was under this theory that Lincoln’s actions can at all be legitimate, under the theory that the state of insurrection, and of laws not being duely enforced, and not suitable to remedy by the courts, so authorized and required him to act.

The presidency is explicitly given powers to act in an actual insurrection.

The Republican establishment has mainly been silent on this point.  They can go to hell.

The current congress, serving federal officials, has on the record thereby blatantly made statemetns that conflcit with the constitution.

Folks for whom someone not formally in office making statements is a deal breaker, who were silent about congress, can have a sit down and think.

Despite what the constitution says, leaving the Presidency and congress vacant while the courts hear the arguments, and decide on the evidence and merits of the arguments, might have been reasonable.

Despite what the constitution says, redoing the election, might have been reasonable.

Forcing the situation forward merely established a state of affairs where elections are no longer binding. Quite a lot of people talking about this social media post can take their opinions, and choke on them.”

You know, he’s not wrong. But none of us wants that ultimate, exposed solution. NONE OF US WANTS war if there’s any other option at all.

Thing is, we’re running out of options, and jumping like catnip addled cats whenever the left waves the string, is not going to save us. No, another election, unless under great and careful measures, wouldn’t do much either.

Trump is wish casting. As right now we all are. Because we’re trying to avoid the solution of the Declaration of Independence.

It will take a miracle. Pray for a miracle.

Meanwhile, what did Trump mean?

Well, the man himself clarified it:

And I’m now done with defending Trump. DON’T MAKE DO THAT AGAIN. Do you know how many showers I have to take now?

I’ll be in my room praying for America. Even though, heaven help me, I don’t have great faith, I’m going to pray for a miracle.

But the first miracle I want is for people ostensibly on my side to stop being easily led. Please. I’m begging you. I realize we’re all social apes, but for once, please channel your inner goat.

We need a miracle.

Because the alternative to the miracle is unspeakably hard and the butcher’s bill is world-breaking.

Let the miracle start with you.

Hey remember that time when the USSR policed typewriters so you couldn’t produce Samizdat fast enough?

Copiers and fax machines? Forget about it. That was the break through tech they couldn’t control anymore, and as people started sharing impressions, news and ideas — at the same time that Ronald Reagan of Blessed Memory was putting the economic screws on them by refusing to shut down our defense industry — the USSR’s empire of lies (probably more lies than anything true, ever) melted away like spun sugar in hot tea.

But the cartoon characters who think themselves the “ruling class” of the US (while being merely the inconveniences we’ll tolerate until they become intolerable) think they can shove us back to their ideal age of media and narrative control by putting up a law that only lets “licensed” journalists report the news.

For the next move, they’re going to make it so that only licensed “authors” can write fiction.

At which point you’re sitting there and wondering “Are they for real now?”

Yeah, so am I.

The problem is not that they think we’re Chinese peasants. The problem is that they think we’re imaginary Chinese peasants. You know, the ones that the PRC portrays as jumping to every order and complying without a peep.

Even the Chinese don’t do that; it’s just we don’t hear of their rebellions. And compared to Americans they have almost no resources and certainly not technological resources for rapid information dissemination.

For the Russians, typewriters, copiers, and faxes were the killing blow. We have computers and printers. And before you say anything, even Venezuela has electricity, even if intermittent.

They can go ahead and make their laws. And they will inconvenience us majorly. And, to be fair piss us off.

What they can’t do is put the toothpaste back in the tube.

Oh, they’re going to try. And it’s going to be a terrible inconvenience.

But in the end — in the end — yeah, we can lose, but not to them. Because they can’t win. And we’ll never lose completely while we’re still fighting.

To your typewriters, go!

I’ve reached the stage of life where memory of certain past events is fluid and uncertain. By past events I mean things that happened before I got married.

This is startling, because until very recently I could name all 34 or so of my form classmates in eighth grade, and it came as a great shock to realize I no longer could even remember most of their faces. Of the dross of the past I remember maybe 10, who distinguished themselves in some way, good or bad. Virginia — a very unusual name in Portugal — who was a red head, with waist-long hair, and so shy she never talked in class, and mostly laughed at our most outrageous antics. The two Jewish kids and the Protestant kid, because the four of us were excused from Religious Education and had the equivalent of home room together. I have a vague idea we once tried to write a book together, but I don’t remember. (Uh? Well, I was excused because I got in huge arguments, until dad signed the papers to excuse me. I’m sure that shocks you about young Sarah.)

But while I remember standing, holding up half of a banner in front of machine-gun pointing soldiers, because it was a stark way of realizing my own mortality and then realizing on the heels of that there are things worth dying for, I am no longer sure of the details. For instance, while I remember taking the train in, I have no idea how we got home. But I was startled when mom told me — when I mentioned it in a phone call the other day — that staid middle aged men fought for the honor to drive us home. I…. what? You’d think I’d remember, right? And you’d think mom who is as paranoid as I am would not accept rides from strangers.

But further back, early teen years? It’s all a haze. There are people I remember unpleasantly and I think I know why, but I’m also aware some incidents have bled together, and that some things I remember other people doing, I might very well have done, and vice versa. Why? Well, because our memory is organic.

People who have done research have found every time you retell a memory you layer something on it. In many ways all our lives are the Iliad. Each teller who tells it adds something, even if all the tellers are you.

The bizarre thing, though, is going through our family pictures from our thirties, and having pictures of people we cannot identify now. At some point, we knew these people enough to have them at our house, and to have taken a picture, but we could not, now, under torture, tell you their names.

I will admit that most of those are probably people we saw once or twice. Friends of friends who came to our massive fourth of July parties (often getting close to 100 attendees) or people we liked but only saw a few times. Or simply people we don’t remember looking like that. This is entirely possible, because when looking through the pictures, I was startled at how young our friends and we looked. I never remember us looking like that in our thirties.

So, what does this tend to other than “I’m old. I don’t remember things.” (I will point out I remember most important things, and that my memory of day to day is great. It’s more things that happened twenty years ago, that — while mostly remembered — have lost their details. The only real “I’m old” things is the fact I will now call my husband’s name, and every cat name, including dead cats, before I call the son I’m trying to talk to.)

It means that… oh, brother, our collective memory is worse than that. And a lot of it was shaped by well…. the fairly uniform narrative that has been the mass news-entertainment complex for the last going on 100 years, which was largely informed by the fact that story creators like just so stories and had become convinced that Marx’s self-contained, illogical pocket universe was the truth.

And some of the stuff we believe in the back of our minds was shaped by things that happened before we were born, or things people were told before we were born. Or one-line in our history books in high school. Or–

Today someone used “the evil party and the stupid party” and it was one of those that kicked me.

If you guys are going to go with that, you’ll have to explain to me how the evil party isn’t stupid. And if you’re going to say “they always win”, no, they don’t. On guns we’ve been pushing them back step by step for several decades. Homeschooling, they committed a major own-goal with the lockdowns, and I suspect the extent to which people are either homeschooling or homeschooling after school is much larger than what we’ve heard. What they’re doing to the economy is not really intentional. Sure, they think America needs to be humbled, etc. But they also have no idea how shithole the shithole countries are, and at some level they’re convinced if they say block all our routes to fossil fuels, we’ll automagically develop that sustainable energy they dream about.

In fact, guys, the level of their stupidity is that they’re trying to follow a plan dreamed up by Occasional Cortex, who thinks we should ask “Native Americans for ideas on how to live in harmony with the environment.” That’s a three year old raised on Disney level of understanding history. AND MOST OF THEM BELIEVE THIS TOO.

So am I saying they’re both the stupid party? Largely.

Look, there are several things at work here. The people in power now were raised shortly after FDR turned the country into a centralized, top-down polity. More, this was praised in every classroom. And the rest of the world was also falling into this. It was “rule by experts” and “scientific rule” and “Don’t you little people worry none, the world-brains have got this.” To the extent there were victories scored (Against other countries that embraced this model even harder.) it reinforced their perception this was the way we should be.

As people age — and have you looked at the left side of the isle recently? Not that the right is much better. I count as a youngster compared to both sets — it’s harder and harder to change the world model in their heads. It might be easier for me, because at heart, and carefully controlled I’m a revolutionary, always waiting to storm the castle, just because castles p*ss me off. Yes, my spirit animal is Samuel Vimes. And yes, the only reason I don’t do terrible stuff is that I watch myself all the time. But this means out of an excess of paranoia, I scrutinize every model I’m given, and never swallow any of them fully. My main thought is always “Yes, but then again, no.” Or the other way around, of course. The only models I more or less believe are those I arrive at with mule-like stubbornness, and can go “No, because this this this this.” (Hence my belief that fraud is massive and also that we’re now in the funny position — population wise — of expecting imaginary women to give birth. It doesn’t work, trust me, I have several of them in my head, and when they give birth the kids remain in my head, and don’t become real. Sad really.)

Anyway, politicians in general are sociable people of the consensus. That’s how they get elected.

So the model of the world in their heads — left and right — is largely upgefucked. It would be even if they weren’t: Screwed around with by the media and their changing narrative

AND

Screwed around with by the fact that they are in DC and therefore live in a bubble, where no one tells them the truth.

This is worsened by the fact the left has been stomping on dissenting voices for… well, my whole life. Though they used to cancel us quietly, and are only now becoming in your face. And by the fact that social media has deliberately skewed things so the country appears to be mostly far left.

Look, politicians know that they rule by the consent of the governed. This was true as far as the Middle Ages (and probably before, but if I go investigate, I’ll never pop up again.) when divine right of kings or not, there were guilds, councils, etc. for every polity, faction and profession. And oooh, boy, would they get antsy if ignored.

It takes late stage stupidity for them to try to do what our “ruling class” (pfui) thinks they’re doing: completely rigging the system so the same people win forever, no matter how pissed the people are at them. (Again, if you think fraud doesn’t matter, you haven’t taken in the full panorama of opportunities for fraud, from same day registration, to vote by mail, to rigged machines. Or you perhaps think it’s a mystery these always favor democrats. Or maybe you think democrats are angels. And if you think both sides do it, you’ve fallen into the trap of “the USA AND THE USSR ARE THE SAME LEVEL OF EVIL” (Which at one time caused me to go over a table at one of our best friends, and would probably have strangled him, if my husband hadn’t caught me in time.) Sure, “truth is in the middle.” and you know what else “The Brooklyn Bridge is a great buy, and I can sell it to you today.”)

Why is that stupid? Because it always ends in tears. Always. Throughout history, even in the middle ages, when a king dissolved the people’s “advisory” groups and tried to rule on his own, out of his “superior” wisdom, it meant they were in for a hard as h*ll landing.

It might be blood and revolution. Or it might be a lot of little outbreaks, and bleeding out, and eventually chasing the king with troops, until he was dead or fled, and then you got yourself a king with a little bit more of a clue.

Now some of these took a few centuries. And some…. didn’t. And history like communications goes faster now.

So, why are they doing it?

Well, part of it because the national and world memory is shot. Like an aged person, what they remember is not necessarily what happened. In fact, it’s often the opposite. And the picture they have of the country in their minds is already so corrupted by fraud, both of reporting and of voting, that they genuinely believe the future belongs to the left.

Both sides believe this. Partly because the left has stomped on anyone who stepped out of line forever.

Worse, they both believe the blue model is only failing because it’s not authoritarian enough. Look at China. They’ve been told China is doing great — AND THEY BELIEVE IT — and they’re a lot more authoritarian.

This while the authoritarian, top-down, center-out model is failing on every front and all over the world.

People, I’m getting old and some incidents from my younger years are fuzzy. For instance, I have no idea who actually locked the new biology teacher in the closet, much less who had the idea and instigated it. It was probably not me, but would I put my hands in the fire about it? Oh, heck, no. I mean, me at 14 was sufficiently different from me now that I don’t know how the young twerp thought enough to figure out what she was likely to have done.

BUT our country is worse than that. Because it’s as though people had been telling it bullshit stories, and intentionally corrupting our national/historical/world memory and understanding.

It won’t work, because what they’re trying to overlay has no contact with reality. But it makes it very hard to understand, sometimes, that the model they’re pushing on us of what just happened, and why is not only wrong, but upside down, sideways wrong. And wearing a clown nose.

Our saving grace is that reality keeps rearing its hard head. “No, you can’t live on unicorn farts.” “Yep, if you suppress oil production, fuel costs will go through the roof.” “No, you can’t lock down the entire country and still somehow be prosperous.” etc etc etc.

And therefore, those of us who have been fed on pap keep seeing the truth behind the lies.

Can we change things enough to avoid the hard landing that shutting down dissenting voices always brings?

I don’t know. Shake the magic eight ball again.

Situation cloudy and with a chance of waking up screaming in the middle of the night.

The only thing I know is that they can’t win. Stupid and evil combined is not survivable.

It remains to find out if we can find our way through the labyrinth enough that we also don’t lose.

That I can’t tell you. But I’ll keep on trying to find threads of reason, of fact, of history and following those.

Lo, there might be some light ahead. If we’re all very lucky, it’s not an oncoming train..

*We interrupt this promo post for some amazing news. Just as I was about to give up and had already decided I would go to the doctor to see why the cough wasn’t stopping after a week, it stopped. I mean, there’s still a little insignificant dry cough, but I …. slept. This being so, and my being so tired last night that I was maybe minutes away from the sort of hallucination that starts a world-religion, I slept for a little over twelve hours, and have been taking care of the “must do” that went undone for over a week. So, sorry this is late, but I’m actually awake for the first time in over three weeks. We now return to your scheduled book promo and vignettes. -SAH*

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. – SAH

FROM KAREN MYERS: Mistress of Animals: A Lost Wizard’s Tale.

Book 2 of The Chained Adept.

AN ERRANT CHILD WITH DISASTROUS POWERS AND NO ONE TO STAND IN HER WAY.

Penrys, the wizard with a chain and an unknown past, is drafted to find out what has happened to an entire clan of the nomadic Zannib. Nothing but their empty tents remain, abandoned on the autumn steppe with their herds.

This wasn’t a detour she’d planned on making, but there’s little choice. Winter is coming, and hundreds are missing.

The locals don’t trust her, but that’s nothing new. The question is, can she trust herself, when she discovers what her life might have been? Assuming, of course, that the price of so many dead was worth paying for it.

FROM LIANE ZANE: The Harlequin & The Drangùe: Book One in the Elioud Legacy.

Olivia Markham lives a complicated life. By day, she is a star CIA officer working a cover as a graduate student in Vienna. By night, she is a self-appointed, kick-ass superhero wearing a harlequin’s hood and wielding a wicked bō.

Life is about to get more complicated.

The sexual predator that Olivia tracks one July evening to Vienna’s Stadtpark calls himself Asmodeus, a demon’s name. Olivia doesn’t care what he calls himself. She’s just there to save an innocent young woman. What Olivia doesn’t know is that Asmodeus has followers he calls bogomili after an ancient sect of believers. She suddenly finds herself fighting to save her own life against these vicious, soulless creatures whose mission is to release souls from the bonds of a corrupt world.

Across the Stadtpark another hears Olivia’s battle with the bogomili. He is a drangùe, a powerful warrior with supernatural abilities who is duty bound to save innocents from Asmodeus. This drangùe will stop at nothing to defeat his age-old enemy—even if it means risking everything to bring Olivia into his world. A world in which the drangùe has his own cover identity. He has good reason to distrust this beautiful young woman who hides secrets that could get him killed or worse…. But the drangùe must keep Olivia close in order to stay one step ahead of Asmodeus. The only problem is that the closer he keeps her, the more the drangùe wants to keep Olivia in his life. And that is not part of his long-term battle plans.

FROM TOM VEAL: Shadowloves: A Tale of Desire

For a man pushing into his thirties without a love life, Shadowloves, the lushest of singles resorts, offers the promise of finding once again The One and Only from whom he parted years ago. But once he has found her, will she ever let him go?

FROM LAURA MONTGOMERY: Like a Continental Soldier.

The starship Valerie Hall failed to reach the terraformed world of its original destination. Instead, it found a habitable substitute where the settlers split into two factions. First Landing devolved into a rude replica of medieval despotism. Seccon might promise more.

Or so hope Gilead Tan and his companions.

Gilead spent three centuries in cold sleep, held there by a First Landing custom that decreed only one sleeper could be awakened every fifty years. Once awake, Gilead freed two dozen of his fellows—all soldiers like himself—and led them into the wilderness.

Close to two hundred civilians still lie trapped in the decaying cryo-cells of First Landing. Their captive slumber haunts him.

But despite its vaunted freedom, Seccon has one rule. No one goes back to First Landing.

FROM CHRISTOPHER WOERNER: 202211 Take Thanks

This booklet is an edited collection of the pamphlets published throughout the month of November. It covers the ever-worsening times we live in nowadays because our rulers demand it. As always, it covers current events with some observations of leftism and tyranny, with a bit of pop culture here-and-there.

We need a resistance movement more than ever. That’s basically what I’ve been aiming for in all the books so-far and it’s not going to stop until I do and so does everyone else

EDITED* AND INTRODUCED BY D. JASON FLEMING, WRITTEN BY LEIGH BRACKET: No Good From A Corpse (Annotated): The classic hard-boiled pulp detective novel

Private eye Edmond Clive had seen a lot in his time, but when he took on a poison pen case, hired by a rich bitch from a highly dysfunctional family to find out who was sending letters darkly hinting about her husband’s past, he hardly expected to get dragged kicking and shooting into a maelstrom of murder and treachery.

•       This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction giving historical context to the novel and Brackett’s career.

EDITED* AND INTRODUCED BY D. JASON FLEMING, WRITTEN BY MAX BRAND: Wild Freedom (annotated): The classic pulp western adventure

Tommy Parks followed his father over the mountain ridge with a blind faith and love. But his father hadn’t counted on the last winter storm. Now twelve-year old Tommy was alone, in the frontier wilderness, with only his wits and the remains of his father’s supplies to survive against nature, grizzly bears, and the most dangerous creature of all — man!

    This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction and afterword giving genre and historical context to the novel.

*D, Jason Fleming would like to disclaim any attempt to edit giants of the field. Let it be know by editing I meant only removal of artifacts of scanning the stories in, or perhaps catching some errors introduced by the original editors (which does happen, occasionally, in pulp.)

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: SURPRISE.

It’s weird, and it will have tons of mistakes, since it insists it’s science fiction and I don’t have time to track things, but well, it will be done in a couple of hours.

Just wanted you to know I’m okay and I haven’t run off to parts unknown.

Humans are a tragic race. By which I mean our lives are deeply significant and almost all end in or suffer a major unhappy event.

Jordan Peterson said not to be jealous of anyone, because in the end everyone suffers. Something like that. I’d never thought about it, but lately it’s much on my mind, particularly as my friends and relatives age. There is always,even in the most blessed of old ages, significant loss of self-ownership, of pride, of ability. And then there are those who die young.

But the true tragedy of humans is something else, and if anyone really wants to pinpoint what was “the apple in the garden” this makes a far better candidate than sex, a pasttime we share with all animals and truth be told most of life on Earth.

The true tragedy of humans is that we can think the infinite and imagine the forever, while stuck in definitely mortality-bounded bodies with puny lifespans.

Even when I was eight, I liked history, but history was two thousand years and more ago. Fifty years ago? A hundred years ago? That is merely slightly older news and somewhat yellowed newspapers, the significance of which we haven’t yet fully seen.

And yet, against that compare a mortal life span which is at most a hundred and some years.

Better writers than myself have compared us to flickers in the night or actors who “strut and fret our brief time upon the stage.”

But our minds, our inner selves, want the infinite. We want to see the past and the future.

For this the traditional paliative is knowing we are part of something greater. In the simplest sense: we came from our parents, and we pass on to our children and grandchildren. Or perhaps: we are part of this great organization, this great purpose, be it a nationality, a church, a work.

This is how the monks of old found purpose and peace in their service. And how kings started Cathedrals their grandchildren would follow and build on.

So, what do we make of it, we people of the twenty first century, many of whom never married, and even more of whom never had children, or whose children never had children. We in a culture that changes so fast, we can’t guess what great work will help the future, and which hinder it? Or even if some great invention will change things so much that our lives and works make no sense to anyone?

Me? I am religious, though not conventionally so (no, trust me, it might be impossible for me to be conventionally anything) and have made my peace with the idea my self is just the present expression of something greater that might or might not go on forever, but if it does will be in such a form I don’t fully comprehend it. And I have a mission. Well, several, but one of them I can try for though I’m utterly inadequate to it: I want humanity to go to the stars, as I think that will allow us to grow more. (I could be totally wrong, but at any rate my pushing and shoving will hurt no one, and it’s largely ineffectual.)

But at this threshold, where I can sense life narrowing to the end (not yet. Hopefully not for a long time, though you know, we can all be recalled, like defective products, at any time) I am vaguely alarmed at the vast multitudes older than I who are already in that narrowing path, and who have nothing to send into the future.

A lot of them try to breach that distance with art or self expression, and if it works for them, I’m all for it. Me? I have no delusions. My scribblings at best will outlast me for half a day. And that’s if they’re not gone and forgotten before I am.

A lot more of them, alas, are trying to create their legacy by making others slaves to their delusions. Witness our geriatric left, or the ossified members of WEF, trying to make all humans slaves to their visions that they think are utopian, but which are in fact the worst of dystopias.

Worse, a lot of them seem to have a sense this work is already in vain, and so to their mad designs is added a not inconsiderable amount of hatred and loathing for all those who will survive them, and for the species itself. They aim at nothing less than the extinction of all humans, as though they were gods who could replace us with something better. They do truly aim to reign in hell, even after death, leaving the Earth scoured of humans or maybe of all life.

So what do we do? We need that connection, to our past and to our future. It is part of how we’re built. And the future is such a long time. And none of us can be sure we will have our blood there, a lot of us know we won’t, and the howling infinity of nothing comes upon us in the dark hours of the night, when we stare at the ceiling and ask if we matter, if we ever mattered.

First, dispose of the idea that leaving descendants is the best thing. Those of us who are on 23andme can tell you that a great grandmother has about as much in common with her great grandkids as a second cousin.

Yes, it’s instinctive and we all want children. I, myself, want biological granchildren and would love to see them grow. But in the end? Bah. We came from that vast ocean of human genetics. We’re unique to ourselves but made of common parts. And maybe somewhere in the future there will be someone who has almost the same deck of cards (unlikely, but the future is a long time.) That’s all any of us can know.

Second, raising children is not that, of course. It’s both a shout of hope into the future, saying “You have no defeated me. I live!” and something not entirely rational. (It is also the most exhilarating task I, at least, have ever put my mind and hands to. And the most humbling, because children have free will and will never be what you mold them to be. For better or worse, their totality will elude you. And your mark on them will not be what you expect.)

Third, your works of art might or might not significant. Yes, Master Shakespeare, or for that matter Robert A. Heinlein, left behind work that far outstrips any descendants they might have had (and they had none, RAH immediately, and Shakespeare having only one granddaughter who died childless.) It is something to hope for, to be sure, but like children, both something you can’t count on, and something that might turn out very differently from what you expect. (Seriously. What would poor RAH think if he’d been vouchsafed the knowledge he’d been the major formative influence on a little girl in Portugal? Or that she’d come to disagree with him on as much as she agreed, while still respecting his influence and ideas?)

Fourth… It doesn’t matter. None of it matters.

There is a perversion and an evil in trying to control the future after you’re gone. I think it’s that whole “trying to be like gods.”

There is a perversion and an evil too in falling in despair and wailing “But then why do I matter?” It also looks fairly ridiculous. Or at least it does when I do it. And trust me, flailing your arms and legs about doesn’t help. It only looks cute on two year olds. I know this from experience.

We have to accept that though we can dream of forever and infinite, our minds are really almost as limited as our bodies. The futures we foresee are rarely correct, because our minds are bounded by what we were taught as children, and can only reach as far as our limited perceptions. You don’t know how the words you said today affect someone who affects someone, who affects someone. Now multiply that by the entire population of the world. We can’t know and we can’t see.

The idea we’ll vanish utterly and never matter is as much a delusion as the idea that we can control what the future looks like and encompass forever.

Neither is possible.

Every contact lives a trace. By living, you affect all those around you. Heck, there are children stillborn or miscarried who affected the destiny of the world in measurable ways, and not just those of royal blood. Their almost-existence changed those around them.

And this doesn’t mean you should be in the corner, shivering with fear of doing wrong.

Live your life as best and as joyfully as you can. If it’s all going to, in the personal front, end in tears, so to put it, make it as joyous and as …. large as you can, so the tears are cathartic and not just despair.

Forgive yourself for what you can’t.

And be sure that things you’ve said and done will resonate long after you’re gone. No, they might not be the things you expect to have an effect. Heaven knows, even what my own kids took from what I tried to impart often makes me tilt my head sideways and go “uh, what?” but it will be pieces of you, going forth into the future.

We live in a uniquely dangerous moment, in which rootless and seemingly futureless people, armed with a cult like certainty in the omnipotence of their delusions, try to shape the future in their own, limited image, corrupted by an anti-human philosophy.

All we have to counter it is joy, love, charity. Living life as fully as we can. Loving as fully as we can.

And yeah, as you’ve been expecting, in the end we win they lose. Because in the long run, joy and love trump a sterile “planned future” any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Be not afraid. Go and do the best you can, and trust the future to take the best of you, and shine it forever into eternity, like pieces of a beautiful stained glass window that become part of an infinite mural and shine to inspire ages yet unborn.

Go.

When I was young I called myself a feminist. Remember the culture I was born into, though it changed when I was in my teens — in law, but the underlying culture remains of course — did make women second class citizens. A woman needed permission from father or husband to work outside the home, for instance. Women didn’t have the vote. And women were assume to be dumber than men, a myth I enjoyed exploding. And, and, and–

So I called myself a feminist because I wanted women to have the same rights as men. That was all.

I did not have a mythos in my head as to why females were superior and males evil, nor as to why women had had an “inferior” position throughout history.

Part of this is that I didn’t necessarily see women’s position as inferior, except for the injustice of laws against them. Sure, in the world outside women were at danger of being attacked if they were out after sundown (and it would be considered her own d*mn fault for violating the unspoken curfew) and there were only male clubs, and most women worked at home (and I mean beyond being stay at home moms and wives.

But, look, it’s complicated. In many ways it was an archaic society, partly national culture, partly just the area and class. There were male spheres and female spheres. And in each of their spheres, each sex held themselves as superior.

I was indicted early into the sphere of women, because as a girl child, I often ended up sitting under tables or int he corners of the kitchen while women cooked or sewed. (I was usually hiding and reading. I didn’t say I was good at the female thing, just that I was in the general area.) Also of the adults in my life, the one who walked on water was female: my paternal grandmother. And you know exactly what I mean by walking on water. In every child’s life, if things are even vaguely healthy, there is an adult who is assumed to “be able to do anything.”

I followed grandmother around a lot, and a lot of her talk was about how annoying and incapable of doing things men were… In the female sphere. While being given all possible respect and leeway in their sphere.

I think the best way to explain this, is that a lot of men in the village (though not all. Some were artisans or small time farmers) had jobs, and worked for a salary. But at the end of the month they came home and handed the money to their wives. From that they received an allowance.

All money decisions from there on were the woman’s. Not just what to buy for the house and children, but what to invest, how to invest, what clothes to buy for the husband, and whether to get them ready made or make them.

If a couple floundered financially, barring abuse, it was the woman’s doing.

In the same way, she was responsible for making sure the kids were learning, or if not were apprenticed at something outside formal education. She kept the lines of communication not only between family members (which in that time and place might be all over the world) but also between households in the village. She jockeyed for prestige, position, and precedent for her husband and entire household. Where a family stood and whether it rose or fell was the woman’s doing. Unless she was a “poor thing” “almost a man” (I’m afraid if I’d stayed there and the village endured, I’d have fallen there.) in which case she ignored all of that, and the family got the dirty end of the stick.

Men? You went and got your man to help if you needed to: deal with bureaucracy; buy or sell in a large scale; hire someone skilled or degreed, make a complex investiment you weren’t sure how to structure. Oh, men also kept track of politics, and had opinions on economics and macro issues. Women just knew if the price of bread rose and fell and had opinions about that.

So, it never occurred to me back then that men and women were one superior and one inferior. Just different specialties, and fairly idiotic at the other one’s job. Though mind you, things were in flux when I came in, so I was expected to get a degree and function in the world of men. (And yes, there were women doing that by the time I was born.) So I was tolerated to hide and read, and while taught some housekeeping, it was assumed I’d have servants for that (university degrees used to be valuable) and that my function would be closer to a male’s.

As such, I was very interested in the laws, and wanted equality under the law, and called myself a feminist.

Until I came to the US and realized it meant something completely different, and weird. Look… I’m not saying everything feminist was or is like this, just that …. most of what that said struck me as nonsensical. If this were a novel, it would be really bad world building.

So, some of the things I’ve been told by earnest and exquisitely educated women who apparently never bothered to analyze received wisdom.

“There were always the same number of women fighters at all levels as men, it’s just that men have suppressed knowledge of them.”

<Holds aching head. Yes, there were always “Maidens who went to war.” You can’t throw a stone in folklore without tripping over one of those. I’ve often wondered if it’s a reflection of reality or just a wish fulfillment, because frankly men like stories of women fighters.

BUT we know some women were “fighters” for a definition of fighters. There were a lot of soldiers found not to be male when they died. Now, most of those we know for sure are in the modern era, when guns make the whole thing easier. But we know from bios and other stuff that there were women in the ranks at every major battle we know of.

These were usually not commanders or famous fighters, but women who for some reason or another found it expedient to run away, pretend to be male, and engage in the dirty and dangerous business of war.

Their stories are usually exactly what you would expect, too: big and ugly, widowed, without visible means of support. In societies where a woman either depended on others to survive (look, there’s physical and biological reasons for this) or became whores, becoming a “man” could be very attractive.

They were not usually commanders (though Queens did command armies, but that’s different and of course, not common or average) and they weren’t anything so complex as “knights” which had rules and groups and–

I mean, there might have been a half-mad woman roaming the back country in found Armour and calling herself a “knight” — but if so, she’d be passing as a male.

Oh, and women who stayed behind in their cities often found themselves forced to defend the garrison with the old men and the kids. And some of them became heroes. But that was “hazard of war” not a career.

Yes, women have always fought, in the sense that war — particularly primitive war — doesn’t respect sexes. And you either fight or die.

But think about it. Think about women throughout the ages fulfilling exactly the same role as men in war, but “Men kept it secret.”

How would men even do that?

“Well, men wrote the histories.”

Not strictly through. We do know that several women were erudite and wrote, also throughout history. They could have preserved the lore of women fighters.

But let’s say that every woman writer was also suppressed. (Leave the now for a while.)

How do all the men — all the men int he world — keep a secret? No, seriously. Think on it five minutes. This means keeping secrets from their moms, their sisters, their daughters, their WIVES.

Every intelligence service in the world knows men leak like sieves to women in their lives.

But let’s suppose men had decided to forever keep women down. HOW would they keep this secret conspiracy forever?

And in fact, we know of maidens (and queens) who went to war. Which means no one is policing this.

It’s bad worldbuilding, get over it.

“Men can decide to impregnate whoever they want at any time.”

Uh. What? Wait a fricken minute. My husband had that super power and let us go through six years of infertility? That male conspiracy must be bigger than I thought.

“If men made sure other men wouldn’t attack women, women would be safe anywhere at any time.”

Hold, time out. Any decent man I know would risk his life to defend a woman (or anyone) being attacked. What more are they supposed to do?

Do they think men have superpowers and can each connect to each other’s brains and turn switches on and off? (No, there isn’t locker room support for rape and attacks. EXCEPT in the sickest pockets of culture. And that’s different. Sick culture is sick culture, and that affects men and women both. Most men are just as disgusted as sexual or other assault as most women.)

They believe this about the past too. “Humanity used to live in a peaceful matriarchy” (I never understood how this connected to women being amazing fighters. Bad worldbuilding. Keep on trucking.) “And then men overthrew it, and instituted patriarchy and capitalism.”

I swear this is like the myth of onthogeny recapitulates phylogeny, except inverted and for society. In all of our lives there was a time the mother was central. And in that world, all was peaceful at least according to us, because we were small and dumb and had no clue what went on beyond the nursery walls. But eventually we entered the larger world where there are — ick — men and things became more complicated.

For the species as a whole, it doesn’t hold. Maria Gimbutas just straight up made up things, and anyway, except for small places with weird customs (and those not matriarchies, but matrilineal descent or inheritance places, which is not the same) the more primitive the society, the more women have fewer rights, because women are weaker than men. And in a society that prizes brute force to survive, that matters.

Also matrilineal descent tribes — the ZULUS — aren’t peaceful.

Again, think about how this would work: Men took over, using their psychic powers, I assume, and thereafter women could never restore the great and peaceful matriarchy.

Look, at this point I’m thinking if men can do all this they’re obviously superior beings, and we should all shut up and have more sons.

“Ah, but women would be exactly the same as men, as strong, etc, if we fed them and educated both the same.”

Let’s ignore the fact that we’ve been doing exactly that in the west for fifty years and got a whole lot of soyboys for it, but no amazing doughty fighting women.

Forget that we know the role of testosterone in bone and muscle formation.

How does the worldbuilding work again? Go back as far as you can go, even in pre-history. Women are smaller and more gracile, and therefore physically weaker then men.

Women are also, as far as we can tell far into societies without writing, the ones who gather and prepare food.

… They were intentionally starving themselves?

When they could instead have gone hunting, because they were just as big and strong as the guys?

…. Boy, that male mind control must be powerful. It even got the women to cooperate, even before there were PROPER women, back to homo erectus and such.

If this were a book and I were writing, I’d have to make men a superior alien race, gifted with a collective mind, and powerful mind control to make any of this work. (In fact, some of the crazier of my colleagues have done that.)

And again, in the face of that powerful and omnipotent a race, all you can do is surrender and hope they treat you kindly.

Or you know, you can admit that men and women are different and complementary, and that men fighters who were the great majority of the combatants in any war depended on women to feed them and defend the homeland while they went to war.

And that men scholars often worked together with women scholars.

And that every couple one has competences the other lacks (sometimes not necessarily stereotypical masculine-feminine.)

Men have greater strength. Women have greater pain resistance. Men have greater force. Women have greater patience.

Together we achieve more and we secure the future.

Why engage in bad worldbuilding to explain this away?

House Repair Triage a guest post by Heroditus Huxley

We are in, no lie, a full-on economic meltdown.  Times are hard for everybody. 

Here’s a hint: they’re always hard for some.  My household is single income.  I budget hard, and carefully, to get the stuff done that needs to be done. 

And sometimes, stuff has to wait. 

So.  You’ve taken the plunge and become a homeowner.  You smile, and you look at your house.  Your house.  You’re in love with it.  And you move in.

And then…the flaws start appearing.  Repairs that the previous owners should have done (or, as was the case with our house, were gypped on). 

Your money’s really, really tight. 

What do you do?

You do what I did.  You prioritize.  It’s called triage. 

I grew up watching MASH.  I vividly remember the rapid-fire assessment of soldiers coming in, wounded in horrible ways, and one of the surgeons prioritizing who went in first (because it was a now-or-never chance to save him), who could wait, who wasn’t going to be looked at until last, sometimes because they weren’t that badly hurt, but sometimes because the person doing triage didn’t think they could survive even through the surgery.

You can do the same assessment and use the same kind of bloody-minded reasoning in ordering repairs and maintenance of your own home. 

For example: we moved into this house fully aware that at some point, we’d be replacing the roof, given that there was a bleedin’ hole in the roof over the garage, that dripped into a bucket on the steps down into the garage every time it rained.  And one of the turbine vents was…bent.  And wouldn’t turn.  And dripped rain down through the living room.  We might have been able to put it off longer if we’d found somebody willing to repair a few spots, but everybody wanted to quote for replacement. 

We…couldn’t afford that at the time, so we started socking money back as fast as we could. And placed buckets.

The immediate, as in, must do now, was the drains.  We bought the house, moved in, started living here…and the drains started backing up.  A lot.  Horribly.  And immediately. 

We called a septic tank pumping service, and they cleaned out the system, then said if that didn’t fix the problem, then it wasn’t the tank. 

It wasn’t the tank. 

We called a plumber.  And the plumber went under the house.  And then came back out, giggling.  “[Your drain system] is the worst DIY mess I have ever seen.  The toilets are the only things done right, and one of those is leaking from a cracked pipe.”

Okay.  That…was item number one on the triage list.  It was…spendy, but we gritted our teeth and did it.  Because every drain was backing up.   

Turned out, there was double the length of pipe in the drains that there should have been…at half the diameter they should have been.  As in, the plumbers took two days, and took out two linear feet of pipe for every foot they put back. 

We did that first because…honestly?  The house, with the drainage plumbing we bought it with, was not livable.  The washing machine drain overflowing with every load?  The sinks making the tubs and toilets back up?  The tub making the sinks vomit?  Yeah, that wasn’t livable.  At all.  The roof drips?  Those kinda were. 

Also in the “not-livable” category was the well pump going out (necessitating the replacement of the pump itself and almost 200’ of pipe) a few years later.  Immediate repair required, and done.  With much gritting of teeth. 

And then…after four years of saving, and living with it…we finally got the roof replaced.  There was more that needed done than there would have been if we’d done it immediately (almost all of the decking needed taken off and replaced because it was crumbling—which it wasn’t when we bought the place, even if having the rafters too widely spaced had the decking warped to the point it was visibly wavy).  But we did the main part of the roof, and re-covered the porch roof. 

We couldn’t afford to do the carport at the same time.  Because it needed a complete tear-down and rebuild, and tuition was coming up due within three months. 

We took another year to save for the carport (and got a significant boost in the form of a gift).  It’s rebuilt. 

Only…

…the patio roof has fallen off. 

The one part of the house that never gave us a hint that it was going to give us trouble.  And…it just…fell off.  At the end of August. 

Guess what’s next on the triage list. 

And yes, it’s a list.  We’ll need to replace the heat pump within the next ten years or so; the cook stove sooner than that.  I’d like plumbing done to do both on propane rather than electricity.  But it’s going to have to wait—and wait longer, since I’m going to be rebuilding our emergency reserve from paying for the tear-down of the patio roof, and then next year’s tuition. I’m balancing what needs to be done against what we can afford to do. 

The key question is this: what can you live around?  What must be fixed now because leaving it undone makes the house unlivable? 

Can you live with stairs that moan when there’s weight on them?  (Before you say yes, check the structure!  And there are almost always temporary fixes that will cost less than full replacement: braces, mending a broken joist AND bracing it, and such.)  How about the drains that won’t?  The roof that leaks?  What can you not live with?  What can you afford?  What can you patch until you can replace?

Priorities.  Priorities are everything. 

Choose wisely. 

As you guys know I might have a few opinions. Couple hundred. And while I’m often in doubt and often in error, there as some things that get under my skin in a way you can’t even begin to imagine.

Lately, everywhere, I’ve been listening about how the problems in America are because we’re trying to maintain our place at the top of the unipolar world.

Honestly, I hadn’t heard unipolar at all in news media or opinion pieces since my brother’s cohort was lamenting that “the good guys lost” the cold war. Now all of a sudden, it’s everywhere, from right to left, from top to bottom, as though released from above with the good old “journolist” hose. All of a sudden supply problems happen because “America’s decay” (I swear this is mandatory once per article) makes the “unipolar world” no longer possible. Russia’s militaristic bullshit, and the Junta pseudo-sending-Ukraine money (but really just embezzling it) is because America is willing to risk nuclear war to “maintain the unipolar world” and China’s troubles are because America can’t stand to have rivals and wants to maintain the “unipolar world.”

So was word sent from above to pound the drums of “unipolar”? I don’t know. It’s possible. Brandon’s Junta is such a hot mess that having a college kiddie decide that this weird desire for a “unipolar world” is the worst thing EVAH and we need more diversity in power int he world, or something.

I know it suits the cursed race of the Brandonites that we should think America is in decline, and that we were only prosperous and free because of our “militaristic attitudes”. It suits them because then we won’t notice what is going on with them and what they’re doing more or less in the open to destroy us.

It’s like they’re holding our heads underwater and telling us it’s the floods.

Unfortunately for them the strategy of “if you hold America down, the rest of the world will rise” is working about as well as all their other strategies. (Seen this weekend from a military desk pilot “The truth is that diversity is strength. It’s a scientific fact.” That’s about as scientific as the the idea that the sun circles the Earth or that the Earth “has a fever”.

In fact what we’re seeing is the unipolar (there are you happy I used the word?) Atlas, holding up the world and modern civilization being forced by bean counters to step away for a coffee break. And the rest of the world losing its mind, structure and wealth as a consequence.

Let’s be perfectly clear, not only is the world unipolar but it has been unipolar for a far longer time than any of these lackabrains can figure out. There was never a bipolar world during the cold war. There was a unipolar world pretending to be a bipolar one. Thanks to our own commie simps and pudding heads, we actively propped up the Soviet Union by feeding it, and not slapping it down as it so richly deserved. They had nothing. They were driving long pipes around on trucks to pretend they had missiles, and our commie simps, pudding heads and the CIA (BIRM) bought everything they were selling, and cowered with fear, and tried to convince us to get rid of our own arsenal and kneel in submission to the brutal commies so the world could live.

They’re still trying to do it. That’s what this unipolar and “decaying America” bullshit (with cream of bullshit on top) is all about.

The commies are gone. Fascists rule China, but that’s coming untangled too. And the socialists in Europe are freezing in the dark, but our fraking commie simps, pudding heads, and the federal bureaucracy are trying to kneel to them and give them power they couldn’t use if they had it.

They’re acting as if Reagan hadn’t taken a sharp pin to the balloon of gaseous bullshit they’d been spinning for years and revealed that there was no great USSR behind the curtain of nonsense. Worse, they’re acting as if Russia — all that remains of the USSR — hadn’t shat itself in public over the last year, and weren’t busily wiping its excrement-covered hands to the global walls in front of everyone. They talk about China being ascendant, as though we hadn’t known what happened the last time the original Mao — not the Winnie the Xi facsimile — was doing this “we Stronk” bullshit. Well, maybe they don’t know that millions starved in China and that the country was destroyed as though by an enemy (Which arguably it was. The voices in Mao’s head were no one’s friend.) They are the type of airy fairy bullshitters that were telling us back in the seventies that China would conquer the world, and which made me study Mao’s execrable “poetry” (ransom notes have more style) in school. (The only good thing about Mao’s poetry is that it was better than Samora Machel’s, which they also made us study. Note this is praising with loud damns.)

Now, is America in the greatest of shapes? No. But we’re not doing badly for a country whose institutions of learning, government, and to a great extent economy have been captured by a cabal of their enemies.

Yes, we’re buckling under the Brandonites decision not to let us drill for gas, or buy from relatively friendly countries. And the amount of cash that the bloated communist carcasses of the Junta are swallowing as they swell to blimp-like proportions is putting what was until relatively recently trivial expenses — like meat for the table — into the realm of near-unreachable for a lot of us. (I went grocery shopping between this morning’s post and this.) Black Friday was black indeed, with a lot of people window shopping but few buying, and I’m trying to boost the business of a lot of friends who are hurting a lot worse than we are.

We are relatively okay, even if losing ground, of course. Who isn’t? But writing, particularly escapist writing, is a counter-recessionary industry. People buy more of it as things get worse. Yes, we end up having to do things like putting all our stuff on Amazon if the readers can only borrow from KU not buy. (I’m working on a work around via my newsletter and book funnel. But I have to know how much I’m producing regularly before then. Because, see, my newsletter is with substack, which means I can have subscription levels, and allow the subscribers to get a book funnel link to download what I produce that year — but I need to know how much that will be (roughly) so I know what to charge. This past year wasn’t great, but I’m picking up. Anyway, I should know by January.) But we won’t starve. (And the only ones who object to escapism are those who want everyone in jail.) However, we have family and friends who will need our help — already need our help — and our ability isn’t infinite.

So America is going to have a rough, rough winter.

And yet, with all that, we’re probably the only semi-functional economy in the world. And we’ve been for a long time. As bad an infestation of commie simps, pudding heads, academics and deep staters (BI DEFINITELY RM) as we have, the other countries have it worse. As much as our elites don’t recognize reality, every other country (except maybe some very tiny ones) is markedly worse.

Unipolar? Well, no shit Sherlock. When Russia can’t invade its own backyard, and China is attempting (in vain) to occupy itself and Western Europe is freezing and starving itself to appease a frigging autistic Swedish teen.

Here’s the thing the Brandonites and their ilk don’t get: the US isn’t the “sole power” of the “Unipolar” world because it wants to be. It doesn’t get in fights because it wants to — although the left’s tendency to use the armed forces for world building (and by left in this case I include a lot of the soft-left that flies under the GOP) and general attempts at charity doesn’t help — but because as the sole functional (for values of functional) country we have everyone’s hand against us. And if we didn’t prop up these ‘Threats’ and ‘enemies’ — if we actually and for real went in, broke their shit and told them not to make us do it again — we’d sacrifice fewer of our boys and be more clearly the sole power. (Which frankly would only be sane.)

I mean, what do they want instead? A world of fighting slave states, stateless bandits, and demi-savage shitholes, with everyone’s hand against everyone else?

Don’t answer that. These shitweasels (apologies to shitweasels everywhere) think that if everyone is fighting everyone else, they get to rule. Yes, I know Machiaveli said “divide and conquer” but Machievali assumed the conquerors had half a functional brain to use. They weren’t fantasy addicts high on hopium like all our reality-deniers and insanity-peddlers.

A unipolar world? We should be so lucky.

If America can get rid of these rabid ducks nibbling our entrails and drop kick them into the hell they belong to, so we can come back from our coffee break of the soul, we’ll teach them the meaning of unipolar.

You think Atlas shrugging is bad?

Wait till Atlas drop kicks your whining asses to the college campuses that will no longer exist.

You ain’t seen nothing yet. And because I’m sane (ish) still, I hope you never will.