According To Hoyt

I’m starting to get really worried.

Probably a decade ago, someone who dropped by said I was pounding the lectern and yelling “you’ve been lied to” about pretty much everything.

At the time this startled me, because the things I was questioning were rather limited and specific. Stuff like: Marxism doesn’t work; true Communism won’t work with humans; the publishing business is not a meritocracy, and neither are most of the arts. Etc.

Not things, I thought, that were a big mystery or things that anyone would dispute much, not once they looked at the facts which were either readily available or easy to infer from other easily available facts.

I assumed the person was maybe a little invested in — say — Marxism working and I’d accidentally gored his ox.

But I’m starting to get really worried.

Because I’ve been at this ten years now, and poking here and poking there, and trying to get at the sources of things.

There are things I know, in my own person or through close friends that make everything yet again more worrisome. And there are people I trust who know things and those are worrisome too.

Why worrisome? Because none of it accords with commonly accepted, public, consensus reality. And some of the “I’m sure, but can’t prove to anyone” facts are massive. Like I have reason to believe the world population is much smaller and possibly half what it’s claimed. Even here I suspect we’re inflated by 1/3 if not more. And it’s already dropping. Proof? That would be nice. The best I can tell you is that I have no reason to believe it’s accurate and a lot more reasons to disbelieve, among them that — as BGE has also noticed — that a falling and aging population is the only thing that can explain what the markets have done the last 10 years or so.

But there’s more than that. Something smells about the war in Ukraine. No, not in the sense that “the Ukranians are evil-bad.” I have no reason to believe they’re any better or worse than the little kleptocracy in that part of the world.

It is rather the war that makes no coherent sense. Particularly our role in the whole mess: like, for instance the fact Joe Biden first gave the all clear to a “small incursion” then withdrew it, then once Russia went in — something that went unpunished with Crimea under his boss — it was the worst thing ever, and we needed to do everything possible up to and including provoke Russia to a nuclear war… All the while Russia — specifically Putin — was our mediator in our (and by our, I of course, mean FJB’s) effort to hand more pallets of cash to the Iranians.

It’s almost like there’s footsie being played beneath the painted curtain that serves as backdrop to our “news.”

Also, we know the war went badly for Russia, but weren’t they supposed to have lost decisively by now. No, I don’t think they’re winning. No, I don’t think they’re stronk and powerful country. They’re just another dime a dozen kleptocracy.

But the point is, nothing about that scenario makes any wit of sense. Not as sold to use, not as Russian apologists online push

. Just… no sense whatsoever.

In fact let’s look at the last two and a half years. Oh, no. I insist.

Speaking of things that make no sense…. Lockdowns for a respiratory business made no sense. We still don’t know if the videos from China were real or amateur theater productions.

Then the vaccine. There are signs it’s bad, very bad. Probably like all mrna vaccines before it. How bad it’s impossible to tell due to massive obfuscation and governmental malfeasance. Does it sterilize people? We don’t know. Cause heart attacks? The numbers are compelling, but we don’t know. Cause strokes? There are indications, but we don’t know.

We do know that every other vaccine of that kind, vaccines that have had a lot more time for development and testing, have had so many adverse effects that they were shut down. Now, that didn’t mean half or even 1/10th of those who took them died/were injured. I have the articles around here somewhere (sigh) but can’t find them. It was if I remember correctly more like 1% of the people taking them suffered some kind of adverse effect.

Which, you know, if SARS-Cov-19 were a calamity on the scale of the Black Plague would be a completely reasonable price to pay. Instead of losing 1/3 the population of the world, we’d all line up gladly to take the vaccine, and voila, it would be like 1% of the population or so.

But it was clear, from the time of the Diamond Princess that we were facing nothing like that scale of calamity. In fact, Wuflu might be no worse than a bad flu year (Before you throw things, if we tallied bad flu years like the Wuflu, it’s about comparable. Normally we don’t attribute deaths of pneumonia to the flu even if it was there before. The recording is loosy goosy on both ends: how we tally flu and how we tallyed the Wuflu.)

And even assuming that knowledge takes a while to propagate through the bureaucracy, by the time the vaccine came out, it was obviously not needed, except PERHAPS for very old and very at risk people.

But that’s not how it was treated. Instead the government brought its thing out in the face of the world, and stomped around demanding everyone within its reach take it.

Now you can say “They knew it would kill people. Population reduction.” I could buy that. For one, we know what enormous racists the left are, and this idea that they were giving the vaccines to minorities first makes complete sense then.

Except they made every government employee they could take it. And every medical person, and a lot of people who would be essential to them, after the population reduction.

Closing the schools for the year? Two years? The mask insanity?

None of it makes any sense for a grand master plan. No, hear me out. Not a bit of it. It makes no sense to combat the virus (As I figured out in Setp 2020 traveling across the country, if the measures implemented made any sense, they were so inconsistently applied that some countries would have 90% dead, while others would have 1%. And yet mortality was pretty consistent across the country. And don’t get me started on the fact that Europeans only needed to distance 3′. I mean, did someone look at that and say “Well, Americans don’t get that close unless they’re married to each other or related, or trying to get something going on. So, they won’t feel it unless we double it.”

I mean there is some sense behind the idea that they did all this, and ran completely insane JUST to steal the election. How else to let Biden campaign from his basement and make it sound plausible that he’d won? How else to take the economy down? (And it didn’t fall as fast as they’d planned.)

But why involve the rest of the world? Or are they so utterly blinkered they didn’t realize the rest of the world would get involved, and can less afford it?

And why the vaccines?

I mean, I can see this as an attempt to suppress rebellion the world over, but it makes no coherent sense. Not as a grand master plan; not as much of anything.

The problem, of course, is one of information. Not only do we not have the information we need to evaluate the truth of things, but it’s entirely possible that no one does. So TPTB are making flailing and uncoordinated, makes no sense in the world responses and set pieces for our edification, only sometimes they too believe part of their set pieces.

And what happens is mass insanity. And what people believe is something else again.

The thing is, I came into a world, and grew up in one, in which there was a reality consensus, and accepted sources of information, and if you were even mildly informed, you knew where to look to know if things were true or not.

Except of course, that I took part in some “world-importance events” (mostly on the periphery) where I knew that all available sources either lied or were completely, insanely wrong in their interpretation, so that what they reported had no resemblance whatsoever to the truth. Not even a little bit.

But I could sweep that under the rug and think that in most events, the sources were mostly correct. Or at least in events without a clear political nature. Or in events in the US.

For a while I convinced myself.

Then came the internet and the ability to get first hand viewpoints, which, like mine, in no way accord with the “consensus.”

And the more I poke into history the more that consensus — FRD saved the nation from the Great Depression! — crumble at the touch.

It’s like…. there was this grand play, going back at least to the beginning of the 20th century and likely before, and it made perfect sense and was in all the books, and everyone agreed.

But the more thought put on it, the more sources found of people at or close to those events, the more the whole thing — realistic, logical, well thought out, with psychological and economic reasons and antecedents — melts like spun sugar in water.

Which makes it very hard to figure out one’s actions, or to anticipate what might happen next. The whole history of civilization is turned into a postmodern play, full of wind and fury but making no coherent sense.

I’m starting to get the uneasy feeling that no one has ever made sense of history, and even what we think are well established events were misunderstandings, or didn’t happen the way we think, or happened for a whole different reason.

And on the tail of that, there is the sense that…

I know that I exist. I know what happened to me.

But lying here, all alone in the dark, I wonder who else exists and doesn’t, and what really happened to each of them.

What is truth? Well, truth is that which doesn’t go away when you stop thinking about it.

And I have a feeling we’re about to find out the incontrovertible truth.

Hold on to your seats, fasten your seat belts.

I have a feeling this one is going to sting.

I’m in the part of the country that is starting to feel like fall. There’s a briskness in the air, morning and evening. Early morning the air smells like a crisp freshly-cut apple.

It’s the type of fall I always loved. And I always loved Fall best of all the seasons. Where I grew up, it’s a season of heavy fogs, though which the turning leaves show like jewels. The mind naturally tuns to warmth and softness. Soft warm clothes, and sweetned teas in a comfy chair. And favorite books, of the kind that make you feel warm.

Because of course, there is the dark side of the Fall. We know what’s ahead. And that Winter is a hard season for most of our species’ history. A season of scarcity, disease, cold and death. At the end of it the survivors would be changed.

But there were always those who didn’t survive.

We know this instinctively. Which is why we crave comfort and soft and warm things as we sense what’s ahead.

This year… this year feels like something bad coming for us, something hard and cold, something that glints in the darkness of the colder days, something that’s been kept away by our prosperity and ease.

Scarcity of course, but … things we’re not sure of.

Look, win or lose, this will be a hard winter. And we’ve seen how in other lands, even successful elections are subverted and overturned, because the mechanisms of the state are corrupted and infested.

These things never turn easily or cleanly. Like the ridiculous infection I’ve been battling, you get better you get worse, it comes back a little better everyday till it’s finally gone…

It’s going to be difficult and it’s going to be hard. This winter might be the first of many hard ones. And perhaps not the worst.

There is an unfunny joke going about:

Q – Are you ready for the Fall?

A – Of civilization, or Season?

A2 – Yes.

It is unfunny but it gets a bitter chuckle, as it captures the mood of the time.

But let’s keep things in perspective: It’s going to get bad. In some places, and for some people very bad. If you’re secure-ish help those who aren’t. And work, it both keeps the black dog at bay and it will provide security for you and those you can help.

But as bad as it’s going to be, it’s not the Fall of civilization. Just one of those unlovely periods one must go through on the way to an improved future. A major mistake that turned into a cul de sac is on its way out: this idea of rule by experts, from the center out and the top down. It’s maybe not completely discredited in the world, but in America it’s getting there. And the next few years will completely destroy it.

And then … And then we’ll start again, and create the conditions to meet the future.

Look, civilization isn’t dying. It’s just changing profoundly.

Change can feel like death. It is in a way a death of things that were good before.

Just like Fall is the death of the beautiful, easy days of summer. Truth is, they were always going to die. Forever Summer is as lethal as forever winter. And our summer of prosperity came with the seeds of its own destruction.

Gather warmth and softness around you, real and metaphoric, for the winter. And let’s work to make sure there is a spring.

Be not afraid.

They’re demanding her weight in cheese crackers, and let me tell you that’s a lot of cheese crackers.

Okay, that’s a blatant lie. I mean, look at that face. Could he kidnap anything, except perhaps with an excess of cuteness?

Actually the writer has come down with something, or perhaps re-come-down with something. Seems to be stomach flu with a side of exhaustion.

This wouldn’t be a big deal for posting the promo post, which requires no original writing, BUT it’s a problem for getting a novel — Bowl of Red — ready to upload. And it must be uploaded by midnight, or bad, bad, bad things happen.

So I have my trustworthy team — Amy B. deserving particular notice as thorough and lightening fast — going through, and I’m entering corrections as fast as I can.

Of course, part of why it’s so late is that I was doing structural tweaks while coming down with this and took forever.

So, wish me well. And yes, I promise to crash and rest tomorrow. Also, possibly to put up promo post.

So this is not an I’m well post, but definitely an I’m alive post.

Debate: Does the left side of the isle behave like clinical narcissists? And if so is it because they are or because the dictates of their philosophy make them act that way?

While doing so, I beg you with tears in my eyes not to set fire to the koi pond — again — and not to feed the dragon marshmallows dipped in peanut butter. We all remember what happened last time you little maniacs did that, don’t we?

So. Behave. No. Behave the other way.

I’ll be back.

No, I didn’t lose my remaining pixie sticks. I’m speaking metaphorically.

Over the last few days I’ve been listening to a lot of people, some older, some younger than me getting trapped in the “coulda shoulda woulda” and berating themselves and wishing they were on some other path in life.

It’s not like I don’t have the same regrets. Oh, boy, howdy, do I ever.

It is the curse of humanity to forever wonder about paths not taken. The curse particularly affects smart people for some reason.

I spent my first twenty years after school locked in a full depression tantrum over the fact I hadn’t been allowed to take engineering. And being too stupid to realize in America I could have gone back and done that, even if it would have cost us, or I’d have had to hustle for the scholarships. But I didn’t know much of how things worked here, yet, at least for about 10 years, so I didn’t realize that university is not something you do by permission and at the prescribed time. And after ten years we had kids and were dead broke.

I’m mildly annoyed — I no longer waste much time on rage-depression tantrums. I don’t have that much time — that I wasn’t prescient enough to realize indie would come, and to start writing for the drawer 30 years ago.

Then again, without the feedback (from fans mostly, not editorial houses!) would I be the writer I am now? who knows?

And if I’d become an engineer, would we even have kids? Dan spent most of the 90s working in hero-mode. I don’t think the two of us doing that would have led to kids, or even to continued marriage.

And that’s the flaw of coulda shoulda woulda. We assume the path not taken would be utterly flawless and cause no issues whatsoever. But that’s not how humanity works. And when it comes to careers these days, it’s definitely not how here and now works.

But the mind will turn on it. You’ll wonder “What will people think of how little I’ve accomplished.” And your mind will turn on “How could I have been so stupid.”

The fact is…. you weren’t. We change and grow through experience. Any decision made more than yesterday, you weren’t the same person, or if you were, you didn’t have the same information.

And beating yourself up, while an interesting hobby (People pay GOOD money to watch) is not productive. And doesn’t lead to making good decisions in the future. At best it leads to paralysis. At worst it leads to self-destruction.

Years ago, when I profoundly depressed, I came up with a mind trick. You know all those stories in which you send your mind knowing everything it knows now into your past body, to “fix” what you did wrong then?

Groundhog day is a limited, and a bit weird form of that, but I assure you there have been a ton of (mostly written) short stories on that theme.

Well, pretend you came back from the future to fix whatever went wrong. You were sent to today, because today is an inflection point and today you can do better. Now.

You’re allowed to be upset at the mess everything is, but that was another you, so long ago you don’t even remember it very well (We’re assuming you lived another ten or twenty years or more before you came back.)

And it doesn’t matter. If you prefer to think you were sent from a parallel world where things had gone seriously wrong, and are in this world to fix this timeline, that’s fine too. Then you can shrug that the other you was an idiot.

The important thing is that you’re here now, because this is an important inflection point in your life. A place where you can change courses and make everything better.

Start today.

What can you do? It might just be changing your attitude to be more open to possibility. It can be being in a better mood because you’re not beating yourself up.

Or it can be cleaning your room. Doing the dishes. Looking for work. Eating better from now on.

Start today. Establish new habits.

You’re a time traveler and this is your challenge. Make it better today. Your future in this timeline might not be wide open, but it is open enough.

Go fix what’s broken from here on.

This is not a religious post. It is a creedal one.

Guys, gals, mantis shrimpies, we’re headed into pretty hard times. We’re already living in a clown timeline, or if you prefer we’re living in a clown car that is inside a dumpster fire.

It’s situation normal, really. We’re doing pretty well for a country that’s been invaded and conquered by a death cult.

And no, I’m not even hanging out at the black dog cafe. Not this morning. I sent the second of the series Barbarella script out late last night, and I’m editing Bor, so I can write a novel that is downloading into my head at speed. I might have to write all six before it’s done. In the middle there, the USAian anthology will get compiled. I’m too busy to be depressed.

I’m also too busy to fully reality check, much less make sense of the news that make no sense what-sofluffy- ever and which are maybe hiding nuggets of truth or maybe not. Pravda is always hard to read. Half the time you have to make a judgement call on whether there’s something behind it or not. And you really can’t tell. And these days the “trustworthiness” of the news have nothing to do with it.

After all trustworthy means part of the establishment, by and large, and the establishment has lied to us by every means available and some they invented for the last two years. We had a spokesthing from Pfizer yelling at me in the comments (I don’t object to that. I object to her stealing a friend’s first name for her handle) because of what I posted at insty about a CEO of her company having said the wuflu is just like the flu. She wanted to know how I very dared post that. The CEO never said that. And how could I post without verifying.

I spammed her, because frankly yelling at me on my blog is over the top. Yes, I did realize the guy was saying that the Wuflu was like the regular flu season NOW but frankly, I preferred to make it sound like he was apologizing for past deception. Because not only was the Wuflu “just a bad flu” hitting only the most vulnerable, but his company conspired with others and the establishment to make it worse. Granting him the pretend-grace of admitting it a-posteriori is merciful of me, and much better than what he deserves, which is one of those creative Tudor executions.

And no, I certainly wasn’t going to do a deep dive of “trusted sources” to find out what he’d said precisely. The word-parsing of con men doesn’t interest me.

And the establishment is con men all the way down. Oh, pardon me, one must not be sexist. Con women. And con gender neutral critters too.

I don’t know where the over-under for “conspiracy theory is revealed to be true” but I think it’s probably under two days at this point.

The “blue” — which is to say centralized, statist, center out and top down “rule by experts” — model is dying ugly all over. And it’s a bit of a problem.

How is it a problem you’ll ask, if it never worked?

It’s a problem because in the US full implementation of the blue model was FDR, which means most of the people who are older but still active in politics were raised when it seemed to be shiny and new, and when enough of the original American culture remained to give them the bizarre idea not just that the model worked but that the corporatist fifties were a sort of halcyon age.

I think this is like the golden age of science fiction being twelve. The halcyon age is always when you were under five.

Even I have misty-eyed memories of Portugal when I was under six, and we were all poor as Job due to government malfeasance. And indoor bathrooms were a rarity. And baths were accomplished in a hip bath of Napoleonic vintage, with water heated on the wood stove. (Ah, but the festas, the orange tree, the kittens, the meadow full of daisies. Stop laughing.)

The problem with this is that the blue model is failing EVERYWHERE but we have a bunch of people with power and influence that think it would work, if only it were more traditional and enforced THEIR values.

To be fair, if I had to choose national socialism or international socialism I’d come down on the side of national all the time (to the idiots who just said AHAH, take a powder. I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. It’s not original but it’s truth nonetheless, and that applies to BOTH forms of socialism. This choice is under “Do you prefer to be drawn and quartered or slow roasted alive?”) because at least the nationalists by definition don’t hate their country.

Which doesn’t mean they don’t impoverish it and slowly destroy it, only that that’s not their aim. Also they’re slower.

Anyway, as the model fails and burns — and I think this winter not to mention the next, a lot of it will burn just for heating — nations revert to their basics. In Europe that mostly means nationalism. God, Country, Family, more or less in that order.

And there are any number of people who want to bring the same here. The problem being of course that Americans are Americans. (And have always been. I think American is one of those things embedded in the matrix of the universe. Before we existed as a nation, it was probably pronounced “Those ornery SOBs”)

We probably have the largest percentage of religious people remaining in the world, but any attempts to impose a universal religion on us are going to meet with knives. And probably guns. And ooh, boy, would it then get hot.

All of y’all who say America needs to turn to G-d aren’t precisely wrong, but half the time the form your comments take offends half the other commenters who are sincere believers and most of them offend me, because honestly, so much heresy it’s almost funny. (The heresy train has no stops.)

What I mean is Europe can turn to their state church, which is what they mean when they say G-d and enforce attendance while killing faith, but despite all the vapors of some of my favorite authors (including the one, yes, RAH) a theocracy was always unlikely in the US, because there is nothing a sincere believer resents more than having another’s sincere belief imposed on him/her/it/kumquat.

Marxism almost managed it — and arguably it’s the STATE religion, just not the people’s — by pretending not to be a religion, but it’s now headed down. (Which is the good part. It’s a death cult.)

Family… ooh, boy. Y’all are aware it doesn’t mean the same here as it means in Europe, right? And I’m not just talking of our charming habit of serial monogamy, which yes, perhaps could be less flamboyant. (Except that we live very long lives, and have the ability to change a lot in that time, which in turn means our partnerships change. I don’t approve, but that doesn’t mean I don’t UNDERSTAND. Also I don’t approve for myself. I’m not in the business of judging my friends and neighbors.)

In Europe “family” really means tribe. As it does in most of the world. And while we have those, they tend to be… self-chosen. Witness the vastness of this duct tape family and its ever-increasing glory.

Country I’ll give you means the same as in Europe. Kind of. Sideways and upside down because it’s what we do to concepts.

Country for an American means not “our old and respected boundaries full of people who look like us, because frankly the paint is still drying in some states, and well… my mom nailed it when she said she couldn’t figure out what the American “look” was. (This because any European can usually, with some fails, identify another’s origin on sight.) I told her “A look of justified and self-assured arrogance” and she made the sound she makes when she doesn’t like my response.

So– As the wheels come off old blue, there’s going to be a tendency from the bien pensant, who are forever sorry they weren’t born in Europe to turn on a dime to the new shiny European model.

… Which means it’s going to need us. It’s going to need us to point at the constitution and the bill of rights. It’s going to need us to dunk their heads in the nearest toilet bowl and flush hard. (What? I didn’t say we should hold them under until bubbles stopped coming up. If they’re going to behave like middle schoolers, a swirly will give them a world of good. Yes, we could also lock them in lockers, but there aren’t enough lockers.)

They need to be made fun of, and stopped as relentlessly as we’ve laughed and ignored the commands of the Marx Commands.

Because they are the same, just another form of plague.

The fun part — I swear this is not the black dog, just realism — is that whether we manage to vote our way out of this, or not, we’re in for another massive round of destruction by the Marx fanatics.

If we win the election, they’re going to hurt us in revenge. If they manage to fraud their way in, they’ll hurt us because they’ll think they’re untouchable.

Either way, it’s going to hurt like a mother. And they’ll find out. Eventually.

But through it all remember, a nation can come out stronger and more faithful to its principles after a terrible time than they were before.

Hold on to your scrap of flag. Remember the words:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government …

We’ll come through this. We’ll endure. We’ll survive.

We’re part of something bigger than us. We’re free, no matter how they try to enslave us. We’ll remain free. And we’re going to the stars.

And if I die before we’re through the time of troubles? This is possible. I’m turning sixty this year, and heaven knows how long we’ll wade through stupid.

But as long as I’m here, I’ll keep the light on.

It’s all right. I was part of something greater. I was part of something magnificent.

Tell the boys I died standing pat.

While he works, in the office next to mine, my husband listens to podcasts. This is slightly surreal because it reminds me of Portuguese men doing their work to the continuous murmur of soccer reporting coming from a portable radio near them.

Yesterday he came to me, alarmed. He was listening to Mike Rowe, who had a guest on, who did the numbers beyond the official unemployment rate, the numbers as they used to be done, without the begs and the buts.

Apparently the real unemployment rate, in terms of people simply not working (And not looking for work) among young men — young, able bodied men, 18 to 55 — is eighty percent. [CORRECTION: Cranberry makes a good point that it’s 80% of men not working. I.e. that for every man looking for work, another 4 aren’t. However, it might be worse than they think, because the original rang right to me, and I have acquaintance in the younger age groups. Though honestly, I admit I was including “not working at anything beyond the minimum to barely survive with help” to this count, subconsciously. As well as in “interminable academic training that never ends or provides a job”]

I will bet you the number of women not pre and not menopausal not having children is the same. Yesterday too I saw two recent videocasts of people with their heads on fire about the population crash. Oh, my dear and fluffy Lord. They’re many many moons after the fair. And all of them believe too that the population is as large as the lying statistics say. I would think the population crash is well underway.

Yes, what allows them to do so is — relative — abundance and technological advances. Without enough money/food that these young men (apparently as many as 50% of them receive some form of disability) can live without working, waste away their lives on puerile entertainment, is that we as a society are incredibly wealthy.

The reason these young women can go without children is that same wealth, plus safe and effective contraception and abortion.

But that’s not new, either of those conditions. They both were present in the early twentieth century. Stop looking at me like that. I should know. I grew up in late-19th, early 20th century conditions.

Yes, even in a country with “illegal” abortion, everyone knew who performed them. And they were safe enough that women could have multiple of them and survive. Everyone knew that too. (They were really safe, because if a women died and it could be traced to the provider, the full force of law would fall on them.)

And in a very poor country — again, I remind you that stealing clothes from the line was a thing, because people couldn’t afford underwear. The big thefts were clothes and chickens — there was still enough that a lot of middle class families had the man who never married, never moved out, and just puttered around the house being some form of disabled.

Now, it wasn’t eighty percent. But I’m not sure it couldn’t have been. It would have made the entire society a little poorer, but as poor as we were we were already at the point of abundance I doubt it would be impossible. Since the eighteenth century or so, humans have been living in amazing (historically speaking) abundance.

So, why is it so bad now? Why not before.

Because metaphorically speaking, the world is cracked like an egg. Pieces that should go together have been violently separated, and no, I’m not talking in dirty metaphors, but I could be.

Men and women need each other. And people need something to live for.

Without women, with women gone crazy, with the link between effort and reward broken, unable to trust the women they do find, men have no reason to do anything.

Without family and men and a reliable structure to their lives, being told they’re exploited and downtrodden and that success is what men used to have and do, women have no reason to invest the considerable time and effort — not to mention blood, sweat and tears — into producing the new generation.

It goes deeper than that. Every day in every way our mass-industrial culture tells young men they are not only not needed but terrible. They are historical oppressors. They are also dumb and any woman is smarter, stronger, more agile than any man.

This absurd message comes through every possible means, from commercials to action movies to school lessons. If you have a little boy in school right now, he’s being blamed for everything that’s wrong in the world. And he’s internalizing it.

If you have a girl in school right now, she’s being told success is to be a company executive. Strength consists in insulting men and hitting them.

The shock is not that young men are giving up on life, or that young women are pursuing their happiness everywhere but in marriage and motherhood.

The big surprise is that some couples are still finding each other. That some babies are still born. That some young men are still working, some of them doing immense amounts of skilled work, thanklessly, in a world gone mad. That some women are marrying and having children, and not intending to destroy their partners in the courts.

Yes, I see you. Well done. You’re towering giants of purpose and motivation and doing the right thing, and I see you, and G-d bless you for it.

But the people who’ve climbed the pyramid of success, many of them by horribly crooked means — no, I’m still not convinced it’s even possible to vote our way out of this. The fraud is larger than you imagine and baked in already in most places — are insane. They got to the top by believing all sorts of things that just ain’t so, like humans are a plague on the Earth; men are evil; women are perfect; babies are unneeded.

And what they are and what they’re doing is impoverishing society at a fast clip. I think in my lifetime — and I have somewhere, G-d willing — between ten and thirty years left, that’s it, we’re going to be poorer than we were in Portugal when I was little. I fully expect hunger in the rest of the world this winter, famine in the third world. Here we’ll be uncomfortable and pinched, and I’m already seeing people worried about Christmas. But it’s coming for us. Certainly if we can’t beat the tsunami of fraud. As I told one of you recently, the longer the crazy goes on the more things are broken, perhaps irretrievably.

We can’t do anything about that. But we can do something about the people. The men who don’t know how to man. The women who don’t know how to human. The people who are living now as though if they don’t do anything the present will be forever the same.

They look at the trouble — working is trouble, and toil and stress and so is motherhood — and they don’t see the reward.

What they see is an unending train of effort and abuse and nothing to show for it.

Society used to reward men who worked and were good fathers with respect. The same for women who had children and were good mothers. We don’t do that anymore. We treat them like chumps.

And let’s be honest, both paths are a trail of toils and tears. I’m not denying that, to any of you reading this. Yes, if you embark on a job, and decide to do the best you can, you will work a lot and sometimes feel the reward too little. You will wear yourself in it, like a horse in harness, and the reward for work is more work.

If you have children, you will have to deny yourself many times, you will have to protect and teach, and guide them in a world gone mad. And they grow up to be themselves, not what you dream for them. And you’ll always love them, no matter what. A part of your heart will live in them no matter who they are and what they do. And there too, the reward for effort and tears is more effort and tears.

But then there’s that other thing. The thing that is almost impossible to explain because you won’t understand until you’ve been through it. I know that sounds stupid, and I was highly suspicious myself when I heard it, when I was young.

You transform. You grow. You change. The reward for work is more work, and it is a real reward, because as each level of work comes, you’re more ready to face it, and you start meeting it halfway, joyously. You can because you have done. You do because you can. And you grow. You become someone who has this, who can do this, who can face the storm with a calm mind and a song in your heart.

I won’t claim I’m the most neurotic person ever born. There are probably more neurotic ones. Maybe.

But as much of a worry wart as I’m now, I’m nothing to the shivering quivering mess of fears I was when I embarked on this journey. Heck, it was nothing to the timid, conflict avoidant mess I was even ten years ago. Or five.

You grow into the work by doing the work. When I had children I was terrified. I had no idea how I would change and come to face the task with joy, enjoy it even (in the middle of tearing my hair out, and running to catch up) and emerge on the other side as… no, not someone else, but a better me, a stronger me. A me with a purpose.

In the same way when I came out of the political closet and undertook to tell the truth the best I’m able, I didn’t understand how it would change me. But it did. I went from someone who ran posts by her friends — what in retrospect are very innocuous, almost appeasing posts — to have the courage to put them up, to someone who knows it needs to be said, doesn’t ask permission, and shrugs off attacks.

It would never have happened without doing the work, first, when I was unprepared and saw no reward.

Society used to enshrine the right actions in praise and myth. We used to have rites of passage. Not because people changed in the rite, but because the right made the change visible.

We have none of that. We — as a society — revile and jeer those who try.

But humans aren’t built to stand still. We’re not made for comfort and enjoyment. Not uniform comfort and enjoyment.

Man — by which in less stupid times we understood women too without needing to be told — is made to strive.

Without trying things we’re not (quite) ready to do, without making ourselves uncomfortable doing what seems impossible from where we are, we don’t stand still, we decay.

In the times that are coming the men who are captains of their sofa, pilots of their playstation will have nothing with which to meet the challenge. Not even the ability to become reivers, because they’ve never put in even enough work for effective violence and they certainly aren’t in the shape for it (Fifty percent on disability.)

And the women who have chosen careers — or the perception of careers — over children, will see those careers fail, and be tossed into the world with no idea what to do. Most women by training and inclination are communicators, facilitators, human resources people. Even when they’re in other positions. In a world of concrete needs, those abilities are less than useful. Most of them come from the broken families my generation created.They’ll have no tribe, no people, no children, no future.

Humans are creatures of story. Our lifetime is very short compared to what our mind can encompass. Even in the good times, humans need to know how their short life fits in the greater story. “My work will take humans to the stars.” “My children will live on other worlds.” “This church/enterprise/city/state will live after me.”

Those cords have been cut by people who, let’s face it, hate all of humanity. The generations after mine (and mine already to a great extent) are cast adrift in a sea of loneliness, with nothing but their own brains to justify their existence.

No wonder they quit. It’s amazing more don’t commit suicide.

And for those who will say “How come you say that men should have jobs and women should have children? Isn’t that awfully sexist?”

This is the measure of our brokenness and the irreparable harm done to the structure of humanity. Yes, it’s sexist. But nature is sexist. Yes, I realize the work of men is lesser. They don’t get to make and shape the next generation. But that’s because it’s how nature made them. (And no, men can’t get pregnant. Not biological men. And there’s no science that can give you this.) But they can have children, biological and not. They can work, and support and protect and teach their children. In fact, women can’t do it without them, and I don’t mean (just) in the biological sense.

Shakespeare was right, and bawdy. Women grow by men. But men grow by women too. And both grow by creating the future, be it the structures that support children, or the children themselves.

Because you can’t choose to stop. Stopping is to die, to lose strengths, to lose ability and to lose your mind, in the end.

…. so, years ago, when I was working my way through coming out of the political closet, I had a series of dreams where it felt like I was being given orders. I hate woo woo stuff, so it only reaches me when I’m asleep or terribly sick. (Maybe there is a reason in the grand scheme of things for the auto-immune, eh?)

One dream I remember is when I was standing at the edge of a great conflagration, and over and over again, the words were given to me “Snatch brands from the fire.” Then I realized that the things burning were children. Well, teens, and I started pulling them out with my bare hands.

It seemed silly. It is silly. And yet, it makes perfect sense.

Our children are being lost. And by children, I mean extending to the thirties.

Look, the kids, despite everything that’s been done to them, try to figure out their way. I’ve met a lot these last ten years. Young men and women trying to figure out how to get married, how to start a family, how to find someone, how to find work they can do that they can do well, that can grow them.

I’ve also seen our generation kick them in the face, and call them slackers and shiftless, and slobs and selfish.

Yeah, some of them are that. But mostly they’re lost. They haven’t been shown anything worth living for, and they don’t have tried strength to do anything. They don’t even know how to start. And they don’t believe in the rewards, because, let’s face it, the last two generations, mine and the one before, never fully embraced the work and the rewards, never fully admitted there was a good to not being young and crazy anymore.

It’s time — barely time. The hour is late and the storm is howling down towards us — to reach out a hand to the kids. All the kids. Dear Lord, anyone forty and younger who is lost. If you see a glimmer of an attempt at something, extend a hand. Give them tasks they can do. Give them other tasks. Build pathways to sanity and productivity they can see. Give them a hand up and a story, not a kick in the face and insults.

Write and tell stories for them, stories in which they see themselves as part of humanity’s story. Reach out. Reach out with money if that’s what it takes and you can do it. Reach out with story if that’s your — mine — specialty.

Kindle a light in the stormy seas, so they know where to land.

START BUILDING A PATH TO THE FUTURE. OR THE FUTURE WON’T EXIST.

We need a thousand Mike Rowes and we need them right now. And we need the female equivalent too, saying “Go ahead, have that baby.” Saying “I’ll watch your baby and be honorary grandmother to him while you work, because you can’t make it without two jobs.” Saying “Don’t abort that baby. I have a good twenty years left in me. I’ve done that before.”

Because humans are not a liability, they’re an asset. They’re the ultimate asset. Without them, nothing works. There is nothing.

The world is cracked in pieces, and the storm is howling through the cracks. The young are out there, drowning in a sea of lies and confusion that breed apathy and death.

Kindle a light for them. Extend a hand to pull them from the raging waters.

Be not afraid. The task is immense and terrifying, but you grow in the doing it.

Go and do.

*It’s interesting. I’ve gone on becoming more and more myself, to the point the person who wrote this post feels like a stranger. I guess this makes a good “How it Begun.” – SAH*

Whole a blast from the past from November 2013

So I thought I’d give a report, only it’s not a report on the current state of my writing so much as on the current state of my psyche – and no, it’s not whining.  In fact, it’s surprisingly not whining.

It’s almost exactly a year since I decided to throw caution and social manner to the winds and be myself as hard as I could on this blog, as well as everywhere else.

I’m not even absolutely sure how to characterize this “coming out” since I find being called “conservative” almost puzzling when my ideal state is almost a complete overturn of the current crony capitalism and also has bloody nothing to do with “conservative” in Europe which implies a belief in classes, etc.  But I knew that when I decided to start talking about what I believe the “establishment” would characterize me as “conservative” and also, therefore, as “a bad person.”

Look, first, I’m going to point out that having to hide your opinions, political or otherwise, is likely the normal state of the human race.  I’m not whining (or not much) except in comparison perhaps with an ideal state, where every man shall sit beneath his vine and his olive tree and no man shall make him afraid – something that has yet to happen in human life.

One of the unspoken conditions of getting a job is to pretend to be the sort of person that your employer would like to employ.  This can mean something innocuous, like you’re the sort of person who is clean and polite and show up on time, but because humans are humans you pick people like you (or like what you want to be like) to associate with, so you’re likely to pick people on less tangible characteristics.  It is not a slander to say that religious people might prefer someone of their religion.  Throughout history, immigrant communities have preferred to hire someone of their own ethnicity.  And people who’ve gone to the “correct” colleges and hold the “correct” opinions are likely to hire the same.  Which is what we’re faced with in the writing community.

It only seems strange because it’s so uniform, and there used to be almost no refuge.  That is a side effect of both the concentration of publishing into a very few houses and of the “long march” that the extreme left has engaged in in this country.  (Very long – if we’re to believe Heinlein, and I do, then they were in a fair way to taking over one of the major parties in the thirties.)

To me, too, hiding my opinions was perfectly normal.  Look, guys, if I hadn’t learned the fine art of double think, there’s a good chance I wouldn’t have survived my high school years, let alone emerged from college with a degree in the liberal arts.  I just pretended, when answering the questions that they were set in a separate universe, where Marxism works.

So when I started trying to break into writing, I didn’t consciously think of hiding my opinions, but I also didn’t go out of my way to rub anyone’s nose in them.  And then, after I’d broken in and talked to some editors – including the surreal conversation with the one who thought libertarians wanted to ban the internal combustion engine (and also were close kin to Satan) – I started not only purposely hiding my politics but laying in a trail of confusion and razzle dazzle both in my works and out of it.

Mind you, my opinions are “diverse” enough.  As most of you know I have no issues with gay marriage, but I do have an issue with forcing churches to perform it.  I can see euthanasia being legalized as a personal decision (none of my business, even if I’d try to talk a friend out of it) but hate the idea of the creep (people who are allowed to euthanize while depressed/mentally ill) and also of the state (or even the establishment) convincing people to do this “for the good of others.”  I won’t say I don’t have an issue with abortion – in terms of “war on women” the health issues that attend it, the SOCIETAL issues that attend it, and the almost universal pressure to sanctify it are pretty icky.  I’ve talked about it on this blog, and I don’t intend to go there again.  I think the whole “you’re a human if mommy says so” corrodes our civil liberties.  I also think it’s almost impossible to stop before ten weeks, and the whole idea of a regulatory apparatus to stop it completely makes me queasy. In my more annoyed moments I wonder if the regulatory apparatus to stop the murder of ADULTS is worth is.

Beyond that, it’s a gut thing.  I was raised “pro choice” – no other option since I grew up in Europe and all the bien pensant were “pro choice” – but I haven’t called myself that since the first time I got pregnant.  Personal. Internal.  Intense.  Let it go.

However, the way the establishment works, it doesn’t matter how many things you agree with them on, if you don’t agree with them on something, then you are Satan.  It is, I think, the result of being a small, insular society, no different from a tiny village in an isolated region.  They are afraid of the stranger and those who are different.

So I learned to play on the opinions I shared with them and not mention the ones I didn’t.  The fact that they tend to assume “all smart people agree with me” helped me greatly.  As did the fact they believe “conservatives” froze sometime between the nineteenth century and the fifties.  The fact I think women have minds, the fact I believe melanin has nothing to do with capacity to perform intellectual tasks.  If I touted those, I was immediately assumed to be “one of the good people.”

Not enough, mind.  I was never willing to parrot the whole party line enough to become one of the precious darlings.  That’s fine.  But it was enough to keep publishing in a broad spectrum of houses.  And I didn’t go so far, I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror.

I thought…

I confess I didn’t realize how much pressure I’d been under.  I used a nom de blog to comment on political blogs (and cause mischief.)  I was in the background of several discussions as the Dan Rather thing unraveled for instance.  But in the daylight world, I pretended never to read anything outside Main Stream media.

Then Toni Weisskopf, who had been talking to me ABOUT Puppet Masters asked if I wanted to write the afterword to the re-edition of the book.

There’s no way I could pass that up, even if it meant outing myself.  In fact, at the time I remember thinking “Should I?”  then I thought “Come on, how many of them will read Heinlein?”

As it turns out surprisingly few.  In fact, each step in this “coming out” was attended with a few more whispers, but nothing overt, until a year ago when I finally started seeing doors overtly shut in my face. Which is fine.  I knew what I was doing.

It still comes as a LONG journey.  Four years ago, I practically spit coffee on my monitor when I saw my name mentioned on Instapundit (turned out to be about one of my books.)  The last year I’ve now and then helped out when Glenn is on vacation…  And yet it was only when I decided not to stay away from politics on this blog that people got upset.  And frankly the posts they get REALLY upset about are the anti-Marxist ones.  (All the while assuring me they are NOT Marxist and that Marxism is dead.  Guys, historians are going to have a field day with our time.  If enough civilization survives that there are historians.)

Have doors shut off?  Well, yes.  Though nothing overtly enough that I could tell you “this is because I came out.”  — I think in the modern day, discrimination, whether from the left or right, is more subtle than that, which is why people feel the need to fake overt discriminatory episodes.  They know it’s there, and they can’t prove it, and they go unhinged – and frankly, with the advent of indie at the same time, the couple of doors that shut off were a blessing in disguise – it meant I had SOME time to go indie in, in addition to my work for Baen.

So – a year in, what has my final throwing open of the ideological closet doors meant?

Externally, not much.  Indie gave me the ability to do what a friend had advised and I couldn’t do YEARS ago: a) never work for people I don’t respect.  B) don’t write something just because you can sell it and you need the money.

Even if I hadn’t come out politically, my external demeanor would be the same, because… indie.

Internally…

Internally… it’s a whole other matter.  I didn’t realize, honestly, I didn’t, how much effort it took just to hold up the false front.  Imagine that you have to go through an entire day holding up one of those Greek theater masks in front of your face with your right hand.  Everything you do is with your left, and you can’t shift your arm, you don’t have flexibility to rest that hand, you don’t—

Like that.  But over years and years.  The brain space devoted to playing chess with potential would-be guessers of my real opinion, and more importantly, the brain space required to not say something I couldn’t live with while not openly dissenting, were driving me batty, and I didn’t even know it.

Mind you, I wasn’t even any good at dissembling. I’ve since found that everything I think shows on my face (which explains so much.)

BUT just keeping this side of open opposition was taking so much nervous energy that it’s a miracle I could write at all.

A year later?  A year after being able to admit to my own thoughts in public?  How does it feel?

Well, it feels very strange – you have to remember I grew up in an environment where most of my beliefs are beyond heretical.  It’s the habit of a life time. – Sometimes I put up posts, and this will be one of them (note I’m putting it up the day before Thanksgiving with blog traffic in the tank.  I’m brave, but not crazy.) – and wait for the blow to fall and cringe at the screaming that will surely start.

But it also feels… well… the way to describe it is that I have more room to be myself in.  It’s like I grew up in a little box and now for the first time I can stretch out.

I feel – whole.  That would be the best way to describe it.  Just whole.

So – is that worth it?  I mean, I don’t go out of my way to yell my politics at the hairdressers, in the grocery store, on the street (okay, I do shout at certain bumper stickers, but I always did!  And it’s in the privacy of my own car) or in social occasions.  BUT when I’m having a discussion with someone, I can let my reason go where it will and not be afraid it will endanger my livelihood.

And when I’m writing, I don’t have to think “How does this belief sound if I were a NYC liberal?”  I can let the writing flow, and be what it needs to be.

That alone – that alone is worth it. A thousand times yes.  It’s not a luxury most human beings have been able to have throughout history.

The great artists of the past, and the great writers too, were all hemmed in on politics and had to step carefully.

But we’ve come to a point I couldn’t keep quiet any longer.  We might be playing for all the civilizational chips.  And it feels very good not to be on the sidelines.  And mostly – from a personal point of view – it feels good to be whole and to be myself as hard as I can.

Wrecking what’s there is not necessarily bad. It just depends on what you’re wrecking or how.

I remember when I was fifteen or so, going by a house that was being demolished and being a bit sad, because the room exposed was a nursery, with a beautiful forest scene painted on it, with all sorts of cute animals. It was something that was sad to destroy, but I realized that the structure of the house was probably no longer really habitable. I mean, Portugal is littered with these: beautiful little urban palaces, which CAN work, if you have an army of servants but really don’t anymore. And which don’t have a bathroom, or what we’d consider a kitchen.

I still want to take them all, and fix them all.

This morning, in the Huns group, we got in a discussion that made me a wee bit uncomfortable, because it was “this has to go.” And “this has to be destroyed.”

It made me think of the left who thinks if they wrecking ball everything, then paradise happens. And that’s not the way it is. That’s not the way any of that works.

However…. However… part of what we were talking about were the deeply dysfunctional beliefs that have crept in over the last 100 years. Like “Smart women don’t raise their own kids” and “smart women don’t have kids” and…..

How do you wrecking ball assumptions?

Well, not by destroying the people or the institutions (though a lot of institutions need to be changed, yes.)

We destroy these assumptions and the institutions they are built on, by creating new and functional ones.

Leave the indiscriminate wrecking ball to them. Go and live our contrary assumptions.

Go and build.

Let them be the destroyers. Destroying never wins, particularly when it’s based on fantasy, not reality.

Go and build.

In the end we win, they lose.

You’re not going to ask why, are you?

I’ve been waking in the night not with the horrors, but with a dull, tired resignation, half wanting the worst to happen, so that we can move on… which will only matter if I survive.

This has been going on for two weeks, after a dream so bad, so dreary that I will not describe it for fear that will seal it into truth. I’ve told it to three of you. But I don’t know if I conveyed the sheer sense of resigned dread in it. The sense of something horrible after which life will never be the same.

This winter approaches rapidly and with a clarifying sense. I pray it will be just tight enough to wake people up, but not so tight we become…. something else. And I pray for my family in Europe. I think things will be harder there. Not as bad as in poorer countries, though. And I’m forever grateful that Portugal — though not warm in the North — is a Mediterranean climate, and not as cold as say Germany.

And I wait. And I feel dread, as though something dark and cold is moving in the world, something that doesn’t like humans or — truth be told — life at all. It has invaded people’s minds, the minds of a self proclaimed elite who’d rather destroy all of humanity than allow us to be free of their plans.

Northern Europeans are in the face of a cold winter and possible hunger trying to turn off their remaining sources of energy and stop farmers producing.

Our idiotic governing Junta is studying plans to dim the sun’s light. Because computer models show them the Earth has a fever. This despite the fact that warmth has never hurt humans, and cold always does. Despite the fact that their computer models haven’t proven right, ever, and are in fact as reliable as those that showed the Wu-flu decimating humanity. (I speak advisedly.)

And our idiotic titular “president”, the FICUS (Fraud In Chief of the US) has tried to bait four nations now into nuking us. He’s now reduced to baiting 2nd line nuclear powers, to wit Pakistan. Bets are open on who will be next. Israel I suspect, knowing the minds of these idiots, but India is a contender, and hey, England has a chance.

Why?

I don’t know. Because ruling over a decimated land appeals more than having his carefully constructed public image destroyed in public? Because what they’ve done is so heinous that humanity will rightly recoil from them, if they find out? Because enough consciousness of their sins and failings remains that they’d rather kill everyone than admit it?

Or of course because they hate us. They hate us for being us, for being individuals, for refusing to be manipulated like widgets.

It is a bright and clear day where I live. But it might well be one of those spectacular Colorado sunsets I miss just a little, where it looked like the world had been dipped in blood, and you heard thunder rumble just over the horizon.

The waiting is unnerving. And I don’t know if anything I do, if anything any of us does has any lasting meaning.

But I believe it does. I believe it will find echoes if not now, not far off.

I also don’t believe we will be nuked. Or if we are, it won’t be where the idiots think. I saw them bandy a map from the eighties, showing all the now closed/vacated silos in the heartland, as though trying to bait the enemy into nuking flyover. But I know how foreign minds work, and even they know we’ve decommissioned most silos. They also know — from knowing their own countries — the way to utterly cripple us: Hit the five or six biggest cities. Our centers of government.

It would lead very neatly to that dream I had. That vivid, grey, evil nightmare.

… it is not what I want. But it might not be mine to prevent. Just as the slow grinding of scarcity and anger and some precipitating incident that would lead to the same moment is not mine to prevent.

So… So I’ll do what I can do. And I’ll enjoin you to do the same.

Go forth, and seed doubt and discord. Oh, no. Not among our own, not doubt in America, and who we are.

Look, we live surrounded by people who not only believe things that aren’t so, but believe impossible things that lead them to commit horrible acts.

No, I’m not saying to confront them. I’m saying to be smart. Assume the superior sneer, the sarcasm. Strike when safe, and do it with a light hand.

That’s how they’ve been taking apart Western civilization. With stupid, but assured, and superior-sounding sarcasm. “Oh, Washington and the cherry tree? Don’t tell me you believe that.” Sarcastic voice “I cannot tell a lie” Snort.

Would it surprise you to know the only thing they have against that story is that it cannot be proven? No? Well, it did me, but it shouldn’t have.

So you know, when they say that the Earth will boil in twenty years… assume the superior smile, roll eyes. “That late? I thought it was supposed to be like 20 years ago. And we weren’t supposed to have any snow by now.” Shrug of shoulder, grin. “And wouldn’t that make my life easier in Winter.”

“Inequality of income is bad? Only if the poor can’t eat. Other than that, honestly why would you care?” Giggle. “Envy, right? Yeah. I wish I had my own jetplane too. But what the heck.”

“Overpopulation? Yeah. You’re right. We’re totally running out of space in the land. Quick, go tell all the small cities offering people money for someone to move there.” (No, really, look it up.)

And go forth and teach too.

We live in a time of profound ignorance. In some ways times are always of profound ignorance, but now the apparatus that should be devoted to education teaches only lies and made up nonsense, while resolutely keeping people from learning anything that might help.

Teach. Teach in small ways if you can.

One of you got nicknamed Anime at Fencon because she couldn’t convey her name’s spelling at registration. I now want her to do the eyes. (Grin.)

This reminded me that years ago in a Media… d*mn it, can’t remember the name of the store. It has closed now… the cashier wore a name tag saying Genesis.

Being a geek, I enthused, “Oooh, what a lovely and unusual name. Like the book in the Bible.”

“It’s a book in the Bible? I thought it was a band.”

So I explained. That the band was named for the book of beginnings. Quickly, and with a smile.

Do that. Don’t act horrified, don’t browbeat.

Slavery? Well, it is horrible we had it, given our creed, but the whole world had it, till the industrial revolution. We weren’t the last to abolish it in the west. It persists in Africa and the middle East. (Don’t argue, just inform. Shrug if they argue and say “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion. Not his own facts.”)

Colonization? Every species colonizes. Otherwise our ancestors would still be fish.

Indigenous people were noble savages? There are no noble savages. All humans are imperfect.

Say it. When it’s safe, when you’ll not be physically attacked or fired or– Just say it. Interject some truth in the fog of lies.

Truth and reality are coming back to the world.

I pray it not be in fire and blood. But I wake up with the dull certainty I don’t get what I want.

And what I — and you — can do might not be much. But we’d better do what we can to minimize the hurt and the loss.

Be not afraid. Fear solves nothing and makes everything worse.

This too shall pass. And the light at the end of the tunnel is not a train. Don’t be ridiculous. Where would we get fuel for a train.

If we’re lucky, it won’t be all consuming fire either.

Go work towards a better outcome. Maybe it counts for nothing. Or maybe we get lucky. In either case nothing is lost and something might be helped.

Go.