According To Hoyt

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 CHRISTOPHER DIGRAZIA: The Director’s Cut (A Theda Bara Mystery Book 1)

When makeup artist Toby Swanson joined the Fox Film Corporation in 1914, he hoped to sneak a kiss from the studio’s newest star, the seductive vamp Theda Bara. But when a scene goes horribly wrong, Bara’s film is cancelled and her dreams of stardom crushed. Unless. . .she can prove that what looks like an accident is really murder.

So together, Theda and Toby dive into showbiz New York, from dancing with a young Rudy Valentino to sharing the vaudeville stage with Sophie Tucker and learning lockpicking secrets from Harry Houdini, all leading up to a mysterious church crypt with a deadly secret.

FROM M.C.A. HOGARTH: Haley’s Cozy System Armageddon: A LitRPG Short Story.

A Girl, a Grandma, and a Lot of Cookies
When the apocalypse hit, Haley was ready to embark on her life-long dream of becoming a wizard! But the system has other plans for her…

Enjoy a feel-good slice-of-life short… come away smiling!

This story is good for all ages and comes with a recipe so that when you get to the end of it, you can make the cookies and re-read it while eating the cookies the characters are eating. Because that’s the kind of story it is.

FROM ROBERT A. HOYT: Almost Curable.

Almost Curable’s fourteen short stories take you on a journey to equal few others. There are fantasies, like a long-dormant guardian waking to save a lost boy; or a luckless medieval princess finding her destiny; or even an angel helping a tech nerd fight off the devil, and then there are nightmares, from a steampunk adventure in which the characters have to face a literal dragon, and where dark elf ancestry can brand you for life. Or a land of living sugar slowly losing its fight with evil.
There are cautionary tales, like the one of the fully automated bio grocery store, or the one about AI watching your children.
And then then there are stories we don’t know what to do with — and doubt you will either — such as the one about the zombie dinosaur who is too cute to put down.
Enjoy a journey of adventure and wonder through these amazing stories.

FROM BLAKE SMITH: A Kingdom of Glass: A Novel of The Garia Cycle

Zara hasn’t seen her family in eleven years, but she doesn’t mind. They sent her to live in a neighboring kingdom when she was small, and she’s adopted her foster parents in their place. She lives the life of an aristocratic Garian girl- riding her horse, shooting her bow, exploring the castle with her friends- and she has nothing to wish for.

Until she’s summoned home, to a prospective marriage she doesn’t want, family she doesn’t remember, and a poisonous royal court that threatens everything she’s ever known. The East Morlans are nothing like Garia, and Zara struggles to find her place among the scheming Morlander aristocrats. Along the way, she makes new friends, meets enemies, and falls in love. But secrets abound in the glittering palace, and Zara must discover who she can trust as she fights for her life and freedom in a fragile, beautiful, kingdom of glass.

FROM ALMA T. C. BOYKIN: Overly Familiar: Familiar Tales Book Twenty-One

Anyone can defeat an infernal fiend. Raising a teenage daughter? Now that’s hard!

Lelia and André Lestrang juggle jobs, a daughter as stubborn as her mother and as determined as her father, and the usual magical (and Familiar) messes. An attack on St. Margaret of Scotland Episcopal Church draws the family into a mystery: who would squander so much magic to ruin old books about healing? And does a giant owl have anything to do with it? Toss in an emergency deployment, the usual autumn rush at the Goth Shop, and high school social drama, and Lelia has her hands full.

Then it gets interesting.

FROM WILLIAM STROOK: World War 1990: The Weser

World War 1990: The Weser
Two weeks into the Third World War, the Battle of Bremen is over, and NATO has lost.
The American 2nd Armored Division is shattered.
The Belgian army is all but destroyed.
The British Army of the Rhine retreats south.
Danish forces fall back toward Jutland.
The Dutch army retreats to the frontier.
Soviet armies advance toward the Rhine.
NATO assembles an ad-hoc corps of American, British and French forces to counterattack in a last-ditch attempt to stop the Warsaw Pact.

FROM TOM VEAL: The Miracle Wrought by Silas Gantry

What if everyone believed in miracles?

Silas Gantry bears two crosses as he sets out on a clerical career: his inauspicious surname and his unfashionable theological ideas. Able to find a pulpit only at a dilapidated urban mission, he struggles to put his ministry onto a solid footing. And then his prayers are credited with eradicating a worldwide plague. Does he deserve the credit? He doesn’t pretend to know, but his life changes dramatically. He gains fame, fortune and a beautiful wife with a knack for publicity.

Silas’s undeniable miracle changes the world, too, but not in any way that he anticipated. Can he survive the Unveiling of the supernatural, or will he fall prey to temptations that he never imagined?

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: Fix

Ladies and gentlemen, dragons and platypuses: We now have the raw data for those who donated. (Something around 1k came in via mail, and thank you Dawn for the slippers. They will be much enjoyed this Winter. They’re amazing.)

Around 1k people donated, with over 500 being over $10 and therefore eligible for a public thank you.

If you don’t want to be mentioned at all and haven’t let me know send me an email today to book pimping at outlook dot com.

HOWEVER because I know in 500 names (THANK YOU. I didn’t realize it was so many. One of the weird things about this kind of appeal is that it leaves blubbering and crying and feeling TRULY humbled.) it would be easy to slip up and put in a name that destroys someone’s life and career, in the post (TOMORROW. I’m delaying because of this) I will be doing first name and last initial. That way, unless your name is TRULY weird you’ll be safe.

DOES ANYONE OBJECT TO THIS? Speak now or forever hold your peas. (And that means you can’t whirl them.)

Also, the email for thankings is getting established today to mail the certificates. I hesitate between mailing them with a name printed on them (a couple minutes of work per, so a long time, but I can indenture son for now. He’s not gainfully employed till later in the month) and mailing the PDF and letting you fill in whatever name you want, since if you decide to display them, you might want your real name, your blog name, or something completely other.

Thoughts on this?

Meanwhile, yes, the certificates (and all your ideas, as many as I remember) will be made onto T-shirts, but we’re not sure exactly how to do this, except maybe through something like Zazzle. I haven’t been impressed with Zazzle? Is there something else?

Also there is mumble mumble talk of a challenge coin with the According to Hoyt shield. And maybe a patch. Yes, you know exactly who I’m talking to. Let me corner him at Fencon and we’ll hammer it out.

Please be patient with the Hoyt Team. I’ve never had one, so I’m just assembling it, and we’re finding out the edges of “working together.” I’d meant to JUST indenture younger son, but he apparently has life plans and moving out plans and job plans, and continuing education/improving himself plans.

Who knew? It’s like he’s my son or something.

Promo post this afternoon. Please answer if you have any objections to my proposals here. Suggestions for sites that minimize the work of physical merchandise much appreciated.

Yes, those of you who subscribed for years will get rewards too, but not public thankings, as that is even more fraught than the others.

ALSO going forward I want to do a subscription level on my substack, that means you’ll get one newly or re-released (DST is ALMOST ready, pending my doing battle with the ISBN entity) ebook in the format of your choice via book funnel before it goes up on Amazon. I just haven’t figured out what level that subscription should be. (And if we do that, you’ll get one a month, though it might be only 30k words. This will also force me to work more. Live is like that.)

Another thing in the works, is some of you have read in anthologies about my “mom squad” which is a team of moms who are…. well, super heroes. There will be stories of them on this blog in the future and I’m broadly tuckerizing fans and friends and some of my own team. (I’m evil like that.)

Not sure when that will start, yet, as this week is crazy: I have to finish a short story, finish a book and the next Barbarella script, for the series called Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? is due tomorrow at end of business. But it’s on the schedule, kind of.

Okay. I’ll stop babbling at you and let you answer because I’m late for church and the car horn it is a abeeping.

Promo post after.

I’m having a slight problem with all the shock/scare/ horror when people discover how bad leftists are: like G-d to the old Jewish guy praying, I want to answer back “I know, I know…”

Because none of this is any kind news to me, partly because of the place of my birth, my education, and my chosen profession.

From the moment I’ve been aware of politics, I’ve been aware that everything — literally everything — around me — every structure of power, every field I might be interested in, definitely every educational level was taken over by Marxists who didn’t allow dissent.

This was masked for most people by the fact that Marxists still referred to themselves as the underdog, and to whatever institution they had already infiltrated and corrupted as “the man” or the enemy, as though they had to keep quiet about their politics.

That and the fact that when keeping people of a different opinion out, Marxists don’t refer to it as “unacceptable political opinion” but as “being stupid.” Which, when you consider most of history and most of other academic disciplines have been Marxist for nigh on 100 years, might be how many people within the power structure read those who dissent. It’s kind of like wandering into a medieval monastery without knowing Latin and refusing to learn the doctrine. “It’s just stupid.”

Because most intellectual disciplines can no longer even question the fundamentals.

… People are noticing now because the masks are off.

Now, one of the interpretations of this is “they dropped the mask because they knew they won.”

Um… no. “Because they thought they won” might apply, to the extent as they started dropping the mask during the Obama years. When, since they made him into a sort of divine figure, they might reasonably have thought they’d won. Forever, because as cults go, they always think they win forever.

But since their absolute worst mask dropping came after Trump’s surprise-win, I think the mask dropping is the product of shock and more than a little bit of panic.

And now everyone can see it. And now they’ve panicked more, to the extent they’re trying to outlaw production of food, or anything that allows human to live. They’re panicked enough their hatred for all humanity is showing and they’re trying to kill as many of us as we can.

Now, I don’t know what sort of breakage in a human mind can lead humans to hate their own species. But I know hatred when I see it.

And so–

I’m telling you: once you’ve seen and fully accepted what they are. Once you realize the depths they’ll go to to destroy all humans, you cannot fool yourself any longer.

From this, you should understand what we must do: Our goal must be to show people how the masks have fallen and what it means.

At this point those who are still in denial are those who refuse to believe in the depths of evil. Which is why you might sound as a mad person while explaining it.

So, use questions. Like how can they outlaw most fertilizers? Don’t they know what happened in Sri Lanka? And “How do you expect to replace oil, if they won’t let us have hydro electric and nuclear?” and…. You know what to do.

Now go do it. Playing stupid should be easy. They love “explaining” things. Just keep asking questions till they run out of excuses.

Go.

I have a character in my head who’s been trained in interplanetary diplomacy. (Oh, shush. Keep it down to a dull roar, will ya? It is getting written, but I think that series starting with No Man’s Land (eh) and ending six books later with Earthman’s Son will be written behind the scenes and not published till they’re all ready. For various reasons. So you shall most certainly abide in extreme patience, okay?)

Um… So, my characters are (probably) not separate thing from me, but rather I read and work through a lot of stuff (hobbies: thinking about stuff) and a lot of it comes out through my fictional characters, which is why sometimes they APPEAR to know things I don’t know.

In this case it isn’t even that I didn’t know it, just that I hadn’t thought about it.

This character — Skip. Look, his father named him Scipio. Not his fault — has a tendency to run at the mouth at me, when I’m not writing him (so annoying. He knows I can’t kill him, but he has no idea how much I can torture him) and a lot of it is from stuff he learned in diplomat school, and a lot of it has come through from my thinking on culture… oh, these last 10 years or so, when I started getting a feeling that something was wrong in the kingdom of Denmark. Or any other culture. Yes, yes, I’ll get to it. Chill, won’t ya?

Anyway, his uh universe (the Schrodinger worlds, you’ve been hearing about) is a weird hodge podge, and it’s hard, even, to date when the story takes place. By Earth time, it’s probably at the same time as Darkship Thieves (different timeline/future history) but then again it isn’t.

The whole conceit is that oh, 20? 40? years on, we come up with a way of instantaneous travel from orbit to orbit (Meh, Heinlein probably did it better in Starman Jones, but never mind) only we are using computers to calculate the translation and… well. about 50% of the ships just vanish, never to be heard from again. Turns out when doing it, you need to take time into account and the AIs dismiss it as irrelevant. So the ships acquire the nickname of Schrodingers because no one knows if those in them just vanished or are somewhere.

But they are…. somewhen. I think the oldest found so far in my head is 15k years in the past and the civilization grew from there. But there is a suspicion about the very advanced “alien” civilization they found, which would put it at… 100k years in the past. Mind you, there are some ships that went to the future too. And weirder stuff.

Which is why there are two competing mostly “good guy” human empires (Skip is not actually from Earth, it’s just what they call him) and …. a lot a lot of bad ones. And a great need for diplomats, first contacts and such. And whole disciplines devoted to studying culture and history of cultures and the psychology of cultures.

Okay, bear with me. I seem to do a lot of the complex processing through fiction, okay?

Anyway, Skip is dealing with a culture that is not only deep-rebarbarized, though retaining some things they process and call “magic” (which is will be interesting as half of this book will sound like medieval fantasy of a bizarre kind) but the colony, at least 10k years old, is also composed of modified humans from a particular mind set looking for complete equality. (They didn’t get it. What they good is unruly and interesting and a little crazy.)

The culture is in itself fascinating, will be hard to integrate due to physical mods, but those are recessive so that integrating into the greater universe means they disappear as a people. (They are cross fertile with normal humans.) However the culture is barbaric. The one thing he hits really hard is the survival needed infanticide, which… well.

So what he has been gracing me with is: The worst thing you can do to a newly discovered re-barbarized culture is to integrate it. The second worst thing you can do is to keep it as a zoo exhibit.

Which is a very long lead-in to this: I think we are partly and part of collective entities known as cultures.

Kind of like, we used to think the bacteria in our gut were parasites, but they seem to influence a lot of stuff about us, from what we eat, how we sleep, and our metabolism, and perhaps somewhat what we think.

In the same way, I think we might be part-culture.

Cultures aren’t just “the habit of doing this and that this way.” Okay, they are that too, and most of them underwent natural selection for each component of it. So, you know desert cultures have rules that maximize the chance of their members surviving in the desert. And forest cultures ditto, and our culture hasn’t adapted at all to this new thing called tech, but it’s getting there, and–

But it’s not just “A group of people got together and decided” which we’ve run with and tried to treat it as, including the social engineering. Wounded cultures; cultures forced into too alien a shape die. And it’s interesting the way they die.

What struck me first that the things we call “decadence” were actually a common set of reactions that also infected “conquered cultures.” It’s a case of “Uh, wait, that’s not “they were decadent, then conquered” it’s “they were conquered and there are these symptoms.” (Yes, in some cases there’s other ways. We’ll get there. I said abide in patience.)

In short: The women become whores, the men become effeminate, infanticide increases, crime in general increases, birthrate plunges.

And what it occurred to me is “All of these behaviors, if you think in terms of primitive warfare, are what will allow elements of the defeated culture to survive.” Women who become concubines to the conquerors will pass some of the dying culture’s “DNA” to the new culture, in the form of lore and bits of language. Men who appear non-threatening will be allowed to integrated in the conquering culture and not be killed outright. And …. all the rest. Survival, not of individuals (gay men didn’t reproduce in the past) but of parts of the defeated culture.

“But that also happens with prosperity.” Um…. kind of. Sort of. Usually not so much when the prosperity is increasing exponentially, but in the generations born to prosperity.

I don’t have enough insight into Rome (or then again, at a smaller level the renaissance) but I do into our culture.

I suspect when humans get prosperous and … cosmopolite (for lack of a better term) enough, they start tinkering with the cultural. Not just here, but always. (Look at the great apostasy of the renaissance with reformation, counter reformation, double reverse reformation, and what’s that dance again. Not that it was bad, the church had grown sclerotic, but it was a lot of change very fast.) And of course, the West became infected by communism/Marxism/Socialism/stupidity on stilts trying to create paradise on Earth, right after WWI, and the rules were imposed from within, but pretty obviously in every “conquered” sector, upending everything.

I think that’s the trigger. Everything changes, very, very fast. To our primitive brains that triggers “We’ve been invaded” (Not wrong, even if the invasion is from inside.) “Deploy the modes of behavior that will allow parts of the culture to survive, even if we don’t.

I think that’s what we’re caught in.

Look, we’re individuals, and we have the power of thought and the power of decision, but unless you on purpose, with malice aforethought acculturated yourself, you don’t even have any idea how much of what you do/how you react is cultural. In fact, culture is a set of behaviors that make it possible to do a lot without going through thought for day to day life in this workaday world.

Think of it as software running on the individual. Except this software is an AI and can, in certain circumstances, that you and your entire genetic legacy (particularly if you’re male) need to be sacrificed so the AI survives.

What we’re dealing with in the west is not decadence or malaise. It’s a culture, rooted in our most primitive brain, that thinks death is imminent, and is taking evasive maneuvers so parts of it survived within the conqueror.

The fact that there is no conqueror, and that the Marxist insanity can’t survive if it becomes dominant doesn’t mean anything, because these aren’t rational processes.

We need to make them rational and reasoned and convince our back brains we’re not conquered, there’s just a cancerous culture in our midst. And like cancer, if it continues growing, it will kill us: and itself.

It’s important to change the idea we can socially engineer at will. And it’s important to repair what’s been broken.

If humanity is to survive.

Good Late Morning/Early Afternoon, depending on your location, ladies, gentlemen and platipi, and welcome to the portion of according to Hoyt in which we commit heresy.

Oh, not heresy against religion or moral. Those poor nags have gotten hit so much over the last century at this point you are not even hitting a dead horse, more the memory of the expectation of a dead horse. Those of us who still believe and hold out our little light

are largely people of no account and even less power. So getting us riled up is stupid, and at any rate we don’t really care, because we hold the powers that be in deep and conspicuous disdain. There is literally nothing they can do to hurt us. I mean, they can imprison us or kill us, but since those of us who are believers think this just a prologue to a very long eternity, and those who aren’t believers think there are things more important than their own life, it really is no way to defeat us.

We, on the other hand, have some kind of fresh and juicy power. Because, as an old communist told me, in the seventies, while a flea can’t derail a train, it can give the conductor a case of the itch until he derails the train.

Marxists who, in the seventies, were already in power in most fields, still held on to the staunch believe that they were now and would always be the underdog. Which is only because that is part of their religion, a non-disputable one.

They are the underdog, the underdog is holy, the underdog always wins, so it is foretold, and yet he is a victim and will therefore remain the under dog.

It goes on until any over, under, or in fact in any way existent canine has to roll his eyes.

But in fact, the Marxists, particularly the 4th generation of Marxists since they more or less took over a bunch of fields in the west, not only are not the underdog. They are the power that be. And as powers that be go, they are remarkably dogmatic (sorry, puppy) and non-flexible.

In fact, even the Catholic Church when it was a de-facto theocracy spanning almost all of the west had both more doctrinal flexibility and far more sense of humor.

I could make a joke about how the devil shall not be mocked, but heck, the jokes make themselves.

The truth is I had a very bad night (no, nothing mental/emotional. More digestive. I need to get out of the habit I’ve fallen into of eating a real meal every two days whether I need it or not.) And am in that kind of mood, and feel the need to give an itch to the conductor. Particularly since the conductor is the Junta, who is mainlining cocaine diluted in vodka, snorting quaaludess and mainlining meth, while fapping more furiously than Hunter Biden surrounded by ten year olds. Frankly, if we don’t derail this train, the crash is going to be bad. And while these cartoon characters don’t realize when the crash comes it hits them first, I’d rather derail than crash in a way that will hurt most of us.

And that’s before the Junta train, the hate America train, the bought and paid for China train, the anti-capitalist train, the “we hate humans train” the —

Frankly this exchange is just overcrowded.

Part of the problem of course is that society really is like a train: it’s huge, it’s moving on tracks, the people at the front have some control, though not nearly as much as they think they do. But the rest of us, in the carriages, might as well be fleas. One of us will get upfront and give a fatal itch to the conductor, but which and how?

Well, of course, if you’re in a position to do it, we highly encourage a White Mutiny (No, it has bloody nothing to do with race) which was called in my time a “Zeal strike.”

This means basically working to the rule book, no more, no less. And the more exactly the rule book can hurt whatever insanity the PTB want done, the harder you should lean into it.

Most of us, alas, are not even in a position to do that. So what can we do?

We know, we can tell, to stretch a metaphor, from the groaning and grinding of the train wheels that this will end in tears, and not happy fun kind of tears at all, but the kind of tears where the whole d*mn machine might very well come apart, leaving us to rebuild in suboptimal conditions. (I wouldn’t bet against Americans on a rebuild under duress, but it’s still going to suck big hairy dromedary gonads.) But the Junta has welded on headphones playing satanic metal at full volume. Still, some things, sometimes get through.

You know, the most shaken I’ve seen the idiots in charge (snort, giggle) is when memes escape them or when we take their memes, turn them upside down and hurt them.

For instance, they disguised the fact that our taking “my body, my choice and applying it to vaccinations hurt them badly, and said they’re replacing it with “say abortion.” This is because their “Say vagina” meme went so well. As though anyone on the right is AFRAID of saying vagina or abortion. I say those all the time. For instance “The left says vagina when they actually mean vulva, because they’re as ignorant of anatomy as they are of everything else.” Or “Except in the most rare and difficult of circumstances, abortion is a murder of convenience, and our laws shouldn’t be based on edge cases. It might be impossible to stop with laws, but we should definitely do all we can to make it socially unacceptable.” Next?

Also the “Let’s go Brandon” thing hurt them, badly, particularly the speed with what it took off. It might for the first time they caught a glimpse that a) we’re onto them. b) there are a lot more of us than they thought.

Of course, the Kenosha Kid also shook them. Not in shooting their horror-movie-prop antifidiots, but in the fact that he became a folk hero overnight, and they couldn’t convince us he’s racissss sexisss and plain evil.

Of course, if you should find yourself in a position to make one of those go viral, we absolutely should. And why are there no songs about Ashli Babbit? Or at least no good ones, since they’ve not gone viral? The subject is costume made for a protest folk ballad, of the kind that gets in the head and won’t get out.

Meanwhile? Well, you can make them itch. We need ideas released out into the public, in the most effective way possible.

We have — at ATH to be honest, but also on the right in general — some of the smartest, most creative people in the world, who have largely gone unrecognized because they disagree with the Marxists. (This shows the Marxists’ lack of imagination, btw. On a good day, we disagree with everyone, including ourselves.)

Remember those “in this house we believe” — they seem to have vanished from yards in the ritzy areas of towns. I wonder why.

But at any rate, it’s time to make sure we tell them what WE believe and make their heads explode all over the wall.

Yes, I know, but it’s better to clean up a wall than a world.

So…. Did I say the heresy train has no brakes?

So, here, I’ll start with a few and you guys can pitch in in the comments:

There is no way to know the population worldwide, but there is no overpopulation, because we still have enough for people to eat.

When there isn’t enough for people to eat, it’s not lack of food it’s an excess of government and, oh, yeah, Marxism.

A nation that has no borders isn’t a nation. It’s a rape shack with a welcome mat.

The world is dangerous. Let’s look after our own.

Internationalism is another word for “ponzi scheme to impoverish countries that produce the most and skim a huge amount for the Marxist elite.”

Everything the left/Marxists have accused religious people of, they’ve committed, ten times worse.

People aren’t widgets, and when you try to position people for a world revolution, what you get is world chaos. And a Romanian Christmas Gift.

The history of the world is littered with Supreme leaders who had no idea what was actually happening till a bullet blew their mind.

Government like gangs should be small, controlled, local, and under the eye of the populace.

Trusting government officials to enforce fairness is like trusting the Mob to manage your bank account.

Large corporations who do the bidding of governments end up crying that “if only Stalin knew.”

There is no arrow of history. History is forever surprising, because science is never established.

Science is not determined by quorum. If 99% of scientists believe one thing, it’s perfectly possible that only 1% of them are correct.

Women should have equal rights under the law. Women who actually want to be equal to men in reality should have their heads examined, since throughout history men have died to protect women.

Diversity Equity and Inclusion was first mentioned in Shakespeare, in the famous quote “Now die, die, die.” And it is rather on the nose for what the left wants the west to do.

Equity is another word for punishing people who have done no harm for looking somewhat like people the history books say did commit harm, once, long ago.

Inclusion is another term for “We will include Marxists of many interesting shades of tan.”

Diversity is the funniest word possible for a monolithic-thought establishment.

Those are just the ideas my mind can come up with, but I’m sure you can come up with many more, and find the time and place to hit the Marxians where it hurts. (They hurt everywhere, to be fair. That’s why they’re so mad. They hate everyone, starting with themselves.)

“Educate Yourself” doesn’t mean I’ll come out of education believing as you do. Education can lead to a diversity of opinions. Indoctrination, on the other hand, always leads to one monolithic belief. And I refuse to indoctrinate myself.

Trust no one in power, because right now the world’s power structures are this:

at least if you assume that the waters are full of ecoli.

While we wait for the precipitating incident in this plot, over which we have no control, it’s time to amuse ourselves at their expense.

You never know, some of the not-fully convinced might yet become red pilled.

And they should definitely look under their seats, in case there’s a red pill there!

Now, go forth and be heretical.

(For those who didn’t ask: No, I don’t game. I just find the memes hilarious.)

So I actually meant to do this post, when we had the big “but why aren’t women exactly like men, only better” kerfuffle here (well, the latest one.)

There is a trap to feminism. Or really any ism. But Feminism was the one that set this off.

You see, I considered myself a feminist way back when, when women didn’t have the same rights under the law in Portugal. This made a certain amount of sense, since having the same rights under the law is kind of important. In another way, it was also totally unrealistic and naive, because you know if a society really is “racist, sexist” or whatever other “ist” changing the laws is really just the beginning of this. The rest of the work must be done under “winning hearts and minds” which, btw does not mean yelling at people, punching guys for opening the door for me, or you know, looking for ‘systemic sexism’ under the rug.

That’s something else completely different, and I’m not going to weigh in on whether Portugal is still sexist or not. My kids think it is, for a variety of little things that shock them beyond belief, but I simply don’t know the culture now well enough to know if it is sexist.

Back when I was growing up, it was. Amazingly so, to the point that teachers could make jokes in front of the class about how unlikely it was for a woman to be better than the men at whatever, from writing to algebra.

Note that it didn’t break me. Mostly I gritted my teeth and set off to show them. And mostly succeeded.

This is not to say there wasn’t sexism, or that society should be set up so that only those of a rebellious disposition can make it. That would be silly. It is, however, to say that well… some countries and probably some places in other countries (including here) really are sexist. But that if you’re equal under the law, you really can’t fight the remaining sexism with more laws. You must do it with much more difficult cultural work, and making yourself a cross between a lunatic and a big hairy screamer is not going to do it.

But that brings us to what’s wrong with all the “isms”. Well, a short, short list.

1- They usually seek governmental solutions to cultural problems.

2- They don’t understand that once the law is fixed, it’s time to put the movement away.”

3 – They are a wee bit crazy about the goals.

What do I mean by number 3? Well, you see, it’s really easy to get misled about what “x discriminated against minority can do if unleashed” if the minority is really discriminated against.

Say you’re a writer whose politics are to the right of Lenin and there is no indie. And suppose I start an ist movement “the Rightist Writer” movement, to demand equality for writers to the right of Lenin, and demand we be given parity in number of publications.

Looking at the writers to the write of Lenin who got published under the long dark night of leftism, whether it be past ones like Robert A. Heinlein (Who yes, started as a socialist, but he got better) or Jerry Pournelle, or current ones like John Ringo and Larry Correia, you could be forgiven for looking at their work and thinking: Wow, Writers on the Right are the awesomest. If we stop being discriminated against, they will sweep the field and produce masterpieces and all of them be multi-millionaires.”

Fortunately we have indie, and can go to the person who reads and downloads a ton of science fiction on the rightish side of the sphere: me.

So what’s the average of books returned after reading five pages? Why, the same as for writers of any other political stripe. Because writers to the right of Lenin are in fact just human beings. Thinking they’re all awesome is a part of a syndrome caused by discrimination against them. You see, only the best made it to publication, while on the left the system was way more open, so all sorts of people from pretty horrible to amazing made it in. A demand equal numbers of writers on the right be published would just mean that most of them would not be awesome and/or bestsellers.

Which then would convinced our “activists” that either the houses were purposely plotting against us by selecting less than stellar books, or of course the entire system was so corrupt that most of our delicate snowflake authors weren’t putting out their best work. Then I could write treatises about systemic racism, get lots of TV appearances, and clench my fist for the cameras looking grave and sorrowful and– what?

That sounds silly? well, of course. But it is what we’ve seen with feminism, with “anti-racism”, with every minority promoting association in the history of the US.

Because of exactly that process. When society discriminates against a category of people, particularly if it is in a highly visible field like art, writing, or law, education, those who make it through are the most driven, the most knowledgeable, the most capable people. They are so capable in fact, that they make it despite all attempts to stop them.

So the activists and all those who want to eliminate injustice look at those who make it and think “This is what all of x is like” and “this is why we must eliminate barriers.”

BUT once the barriers are eliminated, it turns out that most people are just…. people. And those who make it into the field/profession/whatever formerly closed off perform as average people. Or frankly below, if, as in the case of women in STEM there’s an entire educational industry pushing them into where they wouldn’t naturally go.

The activists then look at this and can’t admit “Well, we cleared the problem, so now it’s up to them.” So they come up with “Systemic ism” which is discrimination so sneaky no one sees it, but must be there because the “uplifted victim” is not performing like the rare individuals of the past did.

And then clown world sets in like the University of Colorado at one point saying that now that 75% of the graduates in chemistry are women, they are almost equal. Seriously?

The truth is that once you’re equal under the law it’s time to step back and let women, people of color, gay people, whatever just be themselves, and succeed or fail on their own merits.

Sure, there might still be prejudice against them in the culture, but again, the way to fix the culture is not to keep screaming about it, but to let it work itself out, now it can.

At some point screaming only sets things up for a massive backlash.

For me, for any future granddaughters: let women be women and succeed or fail on their own merit. The more you cast them in the victim mold and look for governmental solutions for their “plight” the more you set up a future that looks like the past, where women aren’t allowed to do much of anything without a male’s permission.

Because after a while people go “Wait, we perverted all our laws to give you an advantage, and you’re still yelling at me.”

And then things get ugly fast.

We’re heading into an ugly enough time, soon enough. No reason to stack the deck against us.

Let people be people. Let them climb down from that cross and stop being ritual victims.

Until you do, you are in fact an enemy of the only equality that counts: equality of opportunity.

The other day I was ambushed by an otherwise HIGHLY entertaining musical of Pride and Prejudice that had, as one of the four sisters of Elizabeth Bennet a young black lady. I was upset at it because it made the whole production bizarre. “Was Mrs. Bennett unfaithful? Is Mr. Bennett blind?”

A friend who does small production amateur theater told me “Look, it’s probably a small production, they go with what they have.”

Turned out she was right. It was a tiny theater company with a limited number of actors, explaining why Colonel Fitzwilliam is Asian and Mary Bennett is black. Fine. As I said, the musical, which was free on one of the ridiculous number of free-because-you-use-this-other-service streaming services we have, is highly amusing and entertaining.

But my friend also said that given she’s been turned down for theater roles for being too tall, too short, too white, she didn’t mind color blind casting.

Okay. Fine. I also wouldn’t mind color blind casting. But that’s not what we have. What we have is a situation in which black actors can get hired for all sorts of roles, including having a black actress (no, I’m not going to use masculine default. Acting involves the body.) playing Anne Boleyn, but a precious snow flake can be upset at someone playing Aida (btw a Mediterranean role, and historically played by a white singer, in darker make up.)

A situation in which bog-standard Regency Romances had to be twisted and become a parody alternate-reality (in which in England before this period there was apartheid, as though England in the middle ages to the regency were the South Africa of the past. The most disquieting thing here, is that I think this is what the producer thinks.) to explain why half the nobility is of African origin, and most couples are bi-racial, and yet people get all bent out of shape if Ghost in the Machine casts a white Actress.

Look, it might be just a theater thing, sure. Arguably having a white person play Aida is (though we Mediterraneans are white, or consider ourselves so, some of us just of Latin culture. It’s sad to see my family retroactively thinking they’re as a race. Sigh.)

In a profession where girls can be boys playing girls playing boys, casting is a little loose.

But if it’s loose it must be loose across the board.

And we must not invent new histories to justify it. And historical figures should be played the race they were. I would no more approve of a white person playing Shaka Zulu than I approve of a black woman playing Anne Boleyn.

Mostly because you know there are a number of people who never read. Ever. And who assume whatever they were shown on TV really was the past. And next thing you know, we have scholarship like the libelous and poisonous 1619 project.

Want to have color-blind-casting. All well and good, but a) it has to be the same across the board. We just play silly buggers with every possible role: Henry VIII is a svelte 16 year old female. Anne Boleyn is a black woman in a wig, Cleopatra is a freckled redhead. Julius Caesar an Asian female.

No? Then it’s not color blind casting. It’s an attempt to corrupt and confuse history and people’s minds. It’s spinach and it can got to h*ll. (I like spinach, but I don’t eat it because of its being “good for you.)

Note small theater companies are exempted from this. After all, they have trouble enough filling roles. But big production companies? If you’re going to play fair, play fair. Heaven knows you have enough money.

No white washing. No black washing. No black face, and certainly no yellow/white/purple with polka dots face. Do as close a casting as you can.

No more excuses. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

Dear media, your racist slip is showing.

There is at this moment a road, once as familiar to me as my own hand, which I shall never walk again. There are faces I’ll never see again, voices I’ll never hear again in person. There are people alive and theoretically accessible to me in the world right now, that I will never see in person again, no matter how much I want to. And one of those might very well be the first person I remember being aware of loving.

Some of that is normal and natural, a consequence not only of our being ephemeral creatures, but of our being ephemeral creatures who move about a lot. I knew when moving to the US there would come a time grandma would go without my seeing her again. That almost for sure the last time I saw her would be without being aware it was the last. That it was entirely possible — and it happened — that at some point that most familiar of paths would be closed to me: into the little iron gate, through the tenants’ patio and the washing tank area, past the wood gate grandad made, and the grove of the orange tree, over the little bridge besides the workshop and into the big patio with calla lilies at the end, up the patio and into the open kitchen door.

It doesn’t really matter that I’d give a limb or years of life to take that path again and have tea with grandma just once more. And I knew that it wouldn’t last forever since that dream when I was eight, when I followed the path and went into the kitchen, and called, and grandma was gone and would never be coming back. It was a dream then, but I was smart enough to realize it would be true one day.

We can rail about the human condition — I do, most humans do — but it is what it is.

The problem is right now we’re experiencing that sort of splitting and closing off for no good reason. At the whim of people who are bent on destruction of everything that’s civilized, everything that’s human, and if given their head, probably everything that lives.

At the beginning of the fauxdemic — though later she became convinced, being elderly and having a TV in every room of the house — mom said “It seems we’re going backward for a time.”

We aren’t so much going backward as being shoved backward. Every place in the world is in ferment and revolt (you’re not alone. The media just isn’t reporting it) because the self-proclaimed elites, having seized power are carrying on a program of isolating, starving and killing those they have power over.

I’m not exaggerating, and there is no sane reason for this. It’s an insensate fury composed of anger at not getting the utopia they thought they were promised and not being worshiped as the godlings they think they are.

Generations were brought up being told that utopia was possible in this earth, and that they were the brightest, best educated, etc. ever to walk the Earth. Then they have to face they’re not. In the past most people realized they were not in elementary school, or when pitched against something really difficult. But these last few generations of the “elite” (these are almost all rich kids. The others hit their nose on reality sooner or later) have had everything catering to them, and their self -esteem burnished willingly by those hoping to profit from their largess or afraid of their litigious parents. And the media, which the left controlled, went on, calling them brilliant, wonderful, beautiful (remember when they tried to convince us Michelle Obama is beautiful, or Occasional Cortex is brilliant) and with the monopoly on the media, everyone went along. They were never told no. Ever.

As a result, they’re spoiled kids — even those who are in their ninth decade — and like all spoiled kids, they are unsatisfied, unhappy, purposeless and frustrated. They keep trying to distinguish themselves, thinking they’ll love their lives more, if only they can have privileges not allowed to everyone else. And not like flying first class while the serfs fly coach, no. They want to fly while the serfs aren’t even allowed to drive. They want to eat juicy steaks while the serfs have to eat bugs.

That was what the whole covidiocy (singularly ineffective at controlling ANY virus, but great to establish status) and the climate scam are about. None of it makes any sense otherwise. Eating bugs is not good for the environment (it’s not good for humans, either) because they eat more pound per pound than cows. Solar and wind energy are not only worse for the environment, they can’t subsist without oil (Seriously, how do you transport the panels, etc?)) And the batteries are way more toxic and polluting than even mid 20th century oil motors (which are not what we use. We’ve come a long way, baby.)

However, if you have to live in the dark, use candles, can’t drive, and have to shower in cold water, the “elite” will know they’re special. And maybe then they’ll be happy?

Spoiler, they won’t be happy. Right now there is still a branch that keeps thinking of more and more stuff to humiliate us, partly because we’re not obeying. Think of the rich, spoiled kid when kids on the playground ignore her, and you have their measure.

But the others are starting to realize not only don’t we obey them, but if we did it wouldn’t make them happy. Humiliating us won’t fix what’s broken in them. Eating steak in front of starving people won’t make them feel better.

So they’ve moved into “We just want you to die.” Almost everything now is designed to kill off vast amounts of humans. Their excuse of course is “population explosion” but most people know there’s no such thing.

They’re trying to do to us what PETA does to animals it claims to protect: kill them, because that’s the only protection. And because who wants those animals around, anyway.

They hate everything that loves man, even cats and dogs. And every domestic animal grown for man or in partnership with man.

They’re declaring off limits any source of energy that works, including hydroelectric and nuclear, because that enables people to live with a modicum of hygiene and dignity.

And part of what they’re doing is isolating us physically. Yes, I probably could go to Europe one last time. It’s still being debated, over here. Except I’m not ready to conform to nonsensical airplane mask rules (I have asthma. It’s very non-bueno.) And because I’m aware of the fragility of the whole edifice, I’m afraid of being stranded there. It’s part of the reason we’re driving everywhere.

The fragility of the whole edifice is because we’ve started ignoring/fighting back against the rich, spoiled toddlers who think they’re in charge. It’s more fraught than you can imagine. And could come down any minute. Will almost certainly come down, worldwide, once the scarcity of Fall and Winter hits, and that’s before they try to fraud elections here.

They can’t win. But as we plunge into whatever this is, as we go backwards for a time, I feel like people are still not aware of the intensity with which these elitists hate us. Us, the west. Us, all of humanity. Us, all of mammals. Us, every living thing.

They are unhappy and can’t figure out why, and so they turn their hatred outwards, and it must be the fault of everyone and everything that failed to be perfect and love them unconditionally. That is, everything.

Most of them aren’t even fully aware that is what they want, but they reveal it, suddenly, in looks of malice and glee when they are told of mass deaths, or losses of agriculture.

We need to be aware of it, because they must not be allowed to spread their poison or make it sound like they “care so much.”

Point out the inconsistencies in their practices. Rip the masks all the way off.

In whatever is to come (and yes, I’m still praying it passes us) we need to see clearly.

No more lies now.

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*

NOTE: THE FUN WITH WORDPRESS TODAY IS NOT LETTING ME SELECT TEXT, SO IF SOME THINGS LOOK STRANGE THAT’S PROBABLY WHY. ALSO WHY THIS IS TAKING FOREVER.

FROM M.C.A.HOGARTH: Zafiil Volume 2: Firedancer’s Hand

The epic saga of the Faulfenza’s third messiah continues in the second volume of Zafiil, FireDancer’s Hand.

Journey with Zafiil to the borders of the Alliance in her search for enlightenment, dive into her recent history as a student at the Hearth and her difficult history with Daqan, the Voice of the God, and then return to Qufiil for the gripping finale of her story.

Are the Faulfenza prepared for the FireBorn, and the Others? And is Zafiil ready, at last, to face the role that will see her remembered forever in history?

Zafiil: FireDancer’s Hand brings the epic saga of the Faulfenza’s first contact with the Pelted Alliance to a stunning close.

FROM PAM UPHOFF: Fall of Empire

Igor’s back!

And his Cyborg Buddy Murphy is in trouble.

As the destabilized Three Part Alliance totters, Igor, AKA Axel Vinogradov has to decide whether to shore up the edifice, or complete the collapse. In the meantime there’s a couple of cross dimensional raids, a kidnapped class of teenagers, marooned women on a cross dimensional Tropical Paradise .

FROM CLAYTON BARNETT: Empress’ Crusade.

Faustina Hartmann has led her army from Huntsville to Vicksburg, across the desolated Old South, to secure a rail line to allow her hometown, Knoxville, access to the uranium ore they so badly need.At the end of a thin, 400-mile supply line, she suddenly finds herself set upon by adversaries to the north and south, potentially cutting off and destroying her men.Taking swift action, Faustina rallies her four legions and leads them into battle. A battle fought not only on the ground but also in the Void, where her demi-human modifications and her alliances with thinking machines can be brought to bear.Long marches, bloody battles, but also clever diplomacy and even a hint of romance await Faustina as she continues her crusade to create her personal empire in the old US Deep South

FROM MOE LANE: Tinsel Rain: A Tom Vargas Mystery

323% funded on Kickstarter!

Tinsel Rain returns us to the post-apocalyptic world of Cin City, glittering tinsel crown of the Kingdom of New California. When an old not-quite-friend of Shamus Tom Vargas is found dead, Tom gets pulled into a case of murder, magic, and mystery! Sinister archmages! Bodies in alleys! An actual high-speed car ride! And as many bad jokes as the author could cram in! Truly, you deserve to read this book!

FROM GENE ALEXANDER: Metrics

They were trying to free the human genome – they built a spam filter that destroyed the world.

Lech Sen and his band of genetic computationalists are trying to open source the human genome, but somehow team gets side-tracked by 3,000-year-old Sumerian Urn data, recently unearthed but kept private by a power-hungry tech oligarch. Lech is mystified to find that the decrypted data contains much more than he bargained for, and decrypting it manages to transform Lech’s Wisdom-Of-Crowds spam filter into a villainous artificial intelligence, SpamKiller. To keep the data from SpamKiller, Lech encodes the data into his team’s JUNK DNA, unwittingly and unwillingly transforming them into long-lived super-athletes. After the near total destruction of humanity, Lech and the JUNK crew must band together again to overthrow SpamKiller. In turn, SpamKiller and his oligarch henchman create a set of death games, the Metrics, to force-evolve replacements for the missing scientists, all the while maintaining a deadly obsession with fighting spam.

Destroy humanity, or stamp out spam? Why not both?

FROM S. T. GAFFNEY: China Harbor: Out of Time

Sheila Reilly, once a prominent research physicist aboard the Wells Explorer, now an American refugee living in China Harbor after the Millennium War destroyed America, has barely survived the last 5 years. Sheila’s very life may now depend on the secrets she keeps. Even from Yam, the man she loves and who has helped her eke out an existence for the last 2 years.

Discovery of the wreckage of the Wells Explorer sets in motion a chain of events wherein Sheila must come to terms with her past and is given an opportunity by the enigmatic ancient Lin Yi to change history, but perhaps at the price of losing everyone she now loves. Suddenly everyone in China Harbor is looking for her, from General Chen, the conflicted head of the often brutal People’s Guard and the villainous Colonel Kwan, who will stop at nothing to get the power he wants, to one mysterious stranger out of Sheila’s past, who started it all so very long ago. As Sheila races against time to save the past, no one in China Harbor who has touched her life is safe, from an innocent produce vendor to Yam’s young daughter who longs for Sheila to take the place of her dead mother.

Approx: 180,000 words (This would be the equivalent of 450 pages in a trade paperback. Average novel is 100,000 words.)

FROM DALE COZORT: Through The Texas Gate

Snapshot42: Through the Texas Gate is an alternate history novel. In early November 1942, with World War II hanging in the balance, an invisible wall cuts Europe, along with parts of the Middle East and North Africa, off from the rest of the world. With the Allies running out of vital raw materials from the rest of the world, they look for ways through the wall. They find two gates to other realities. One leads to a still-independent Republic of Texas that still uses black powder weapons and is barely holding off fierce nomad raiders, while another leads to a strange land without people but overrun by still-living dinosaurs.
Jim Bridger and Colonel Tillman need to buy oil and food to keep the allies in the war, but first they have to survive fierce new enemies in these new-found realities.

BY GEORGE O. SMITH, WITH INTRODUCTION BY D. JASON FLEMING: Pattern for Conquest (Annotated): The classic space opera.

The Loard-Vogh were conquering the galaxy. They could not be stopped. When they got to Earth, they would conquer, even though it was known across the galaxy as The Planet of Terror.

The Loard-Vogh would win.

Humanity must lose.

But mankind has a secret weapon, one so sinister that no power in the galaxy can stand against it…

    This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new Introduction by D. Jason Fleming giving historical and genre context to the novel.

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: silly

A category mistake or category error is applying reasoning that’s valid for a type of thing to another thing for which it is not valid. That’s how you get errors that aren’t even wrong, they’re about something else completely different.

Often the trolls who come by don’t seem to realize that, and are arguing things that make no sense for what we were discussing, like that long ago French kept man who thought that the big question is “But who is going to be in charge of what news get published?” While we, basically, just wanted the government to stop using its power to stomp on people speaking the truth.

I mean, he had other — severe — mental issues, but that one was the biggest category error of all. For him it was necessary to have someone in charge of what gets said and published, while we, nurtured on the first amendment, want everything to be said, and let the individual decide what’s believable. Which btw was why the other side of science fiction saying we wanted to silence them was jaw dropping — besides the fact that none of us had the power to silence anyone, even if we wanted to. Saying something sucks is our opinion, not silencing anyone — because we very much want them to be heard. The more they write the more the crazy is visible. We, personally, meanwhile, just want the same privilege.

Then there was the troll we dealt with recently whose main purpose seem to be to demoralize us, but he had no clue where American morale lies, so what he kept saying: our president (Eh. “President”.) sucks, the withdrawal from Afghanistan was a disaster, and our political class is ruining the economy is all true. But that doesn’t touch what America is, only what is being done to it. (One can’t expect Russians to understand that.) So he was applying a category error, by thinking this blog would be the same as its equivalent in his homeland, and he could make us feel bad by saying what would make him feel bad about his country.

Or take the person who left me a comment (not approved, no.) saying he would contribute to my fundraiser if I promised to donate it all to my “beloved Ukranians.” (Yes, probably Reziac, [Reziac says it’s not him, and I believe him. Sorry to assume it was him without its being him, but the word choice was very similar. Anyway, it doesn’t matter much tot he point.] and I wonder what the heck is going on. Like so many people over the last few years, all I can say is “he used to be sane.) Apparently saying that Putin is a remnant KGB horror, bent on recreating the USSR and that he will continue to take over the former Russian sphere, if allowed to do so is the equivalent of “loving” the Ukraine, which we all agree, yes, is corrupt (All former communist countries are. It’s what it leaves behind.) This is not only a category error, but a philosophy error that consists of “If you don’t love a, you must love b” instead of “I don’t think we should fight on Ukraine’s side (or anyone’s side), we have problems of our own. I’m not comfortable with our massive financing of their defense (mostly because most of it isn’t even going to them, and what is going is not particularly coherent or well supervised. I mean, it’s probably better for them to have weapons than the Taliban, for whom we left weapons, but I’m still not comfortable beyond a bare minimum.) But Putin absolutely needs to be smacked on the nose, and he is a crazy person trying to recreate Russia’s past glory. (Heck, the EU is in the right on this, and this might be the only time you hear me say this about the EU. But I guess they feel the wolf nearer, and like Russia are sclerotic countries with low birthrate and high geriatric populations, for whom he is a much bigger threat.)

This is what RES often refers to as “Talking pussy while we’re talking bear.” (He meant the animal. Get your minds out of the gutter. Okay, fine, at least get them out of the ditch below the gutter.)

This morning, while I was trying to figure out what’s making my tomato plants not fruit (would you believe fungus? I finally figured it out.) I realized all of Marxism is a category error. This is not strange, since Marx came from a completely different society, and even there he was an odd duck who didn’t understand people, and privileged enough to not “get” human native intelligence and cunning.

I mean, even then it was a category error, even back then. While the class structure and the old/old families and fortunes of Europe seem powerful and forever immutable, they are not. That is just the surface they present, because if your entire system is based on “betters and lessers” with this being determined from birth, then you must pretend it is immutable.

But the fact is that the hemophilia that destroyed the royal families of Europe in the last two centuries came from a humble tailor in one of the German principalities. And the very blue blooded Princess Diana was distantly descended from a Shepherd (back in Shakespeare’s day. He became wealthy and married up, and then his children married up and then…. In three generations they were nobility, without this person ever having the kind of attainments that Shakespeare did, for that matter.)

It’s more common than anyone thinks about, even in the most hidebound society, even without involving things like extraordinary genius, or power, or a stroke of great luck, or even marital infidelity. (Though that too. It was said that the faces of Roman patricians often reflected those of famous gladiators of the past generation. I don’t know how true.)

This is because applying “classes” even to a hereditary “nobility and wealth” society is roughly the equivalent of applying something that works in categorizing wool skeins to live sheep. At best you get a temporary and static picture of something that is not even vaguely static.

Yeah, sure, humans inherit temperament as well as physical characteristics from their ancestors. But how that works out is not as clear as “tabby cats have a certain temperament.” We seem to toss out very deep throwbacks, so that a shiftless family with horrible work habits will throw out someone who is driven and with extreme abilities. (Let’s remember, though obviously ADHD as heck from his work history, Leonardo DaVinci was the son of the village bicycle and an accountant of no particular distinction, both of whom had numerous other children who left not a dimple in history.) And vice versa, for whatever reason, families of high achievement will every so often throw out someone who just can’t or don’t wanna.

I sniff at “shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations” because it is a gross over-simplification, it’s rarely THREE generations, and it is rarely the WHOLE family. Just a branch of it.

But the “essential tenor” of the ancestry does tend to assert itself, at least in a free market society. (Immigrants from highly regimented societies are different, and might be unleashed by living in a free market. Maybe. There’s a lot that goes into that, including nutrition.)

Supposing the lack of success of a family came from anti-success habits: laziness, lack of planning, etc. you can get the one member who “does good” and marries above (usually a female, but not always.) And you often see the children evenly divided, half staying at the level to which the member elevated her/himself and the other half falling. Or they hold on for a couple of generations, but in the third half of them revert.

And the same way, you can see someone who “falls” for no reason that’s discernible or because of say an alcohol habit, or an injury, but one or two of his grand kids rise.

Understand I’m not talking of eugenics, or of genes as immutable destiny. If I were, I might very well support Marxism or another form of socialism, to compassionately give to those who through no fault of their own, were born unable.

The left is forever going on about our concentrating “smart genes” in some families, but in the whole history of humanity this has never in fact happened. (The fact they use “ivy league degree” as a stamp for “smart” is another category error.) Because as I said, humans seem to have a very scramble-able (totally a word) set of genes, or at least the genes for character traits are given greater leeway than in other animals.

I’m talking about how human genetics are unfathomable and scramble in bizarre ways, that without even considering the side effects of upbringing and the times people live in, the effects of new industries, and other changes in the environment which humans continuously inflict on themselves.

Every change in technology destroys and creates fortunes, and elevates and plunges families through “classes” (in the Marxist sense of ranks based on income. Though in the sense of born to it, too, because rich people tend to marry up in “social class.”) And human technology (way of doing things) is always changing, even in what seems to us now stagnant or has been miss-characterized as stagnant, such as the middle ages.

So what Marx was trying to do: “Equalize the classes” is meaningless. It’s the equivalent of your coming to the kitchen, finding dishes piled on the sink and deciding you’re going to go into farming chickens.

Because there are no “classes” not even in class-based societies. There’s only humans, and we’re smart and fractious apes, forever going up and down and all around, world without end.

Are injustices perpetrated? Sure. We’re humans, not gods or machines (and machines can make category errors. Oooh, boy, can they. Depending on what they were fed.) But there are also injustices fixed. And more importantly, most people are free to at least “pursue happiness” — i.e. try to improve their lot — and the more free the society, the less artificial classification going on, the better chance to catch that happiness.

So, the entire adored theory of the academics is a massive category error. It might apply to machines, or to trees, or something. I don’t think it even applies to most animals. And it most certainly doesn’t apply to humans.

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COMPLETELY UNRELATED NOTE: We haven’t started fulfilling the pledges from the fundraiser, including the thank yous, because it’s still coming into the mailbox at a rate. We are told it’s coming in, but we haven’t gone to collect, so we don’t know if it’s the new-fun-mail delays, or people mailed late. (And the answer to that is still Thank You. People mail when they can.) There are also still donations coming into paypal, late but marked as part of the fundraiser (and again, the answer is Thank You. I took down the fundraiser so I didn’t bother people with it, not because I wouldn’t accept donations past it.)

At this rate, I will do the thank you post and start emailing and mailing things out the first week of August. Sorry for the delay. Best laid plans, etc.