According To Hoyt

In many ways this year has sucked. The search for a house took too long, and we seem to have hired a shady realtor (now fired, thank G-d) which means we’re keeping the house off the market for a couple of months, and putting it up again early spring-ish. As a good-bye he somehow got our email and phone numbers out there, so we have scammers and flippers bothering us (dealing with that.)

Because of trips back and forth, the new house remains in boxes, and it’s hard to clean/organize. And I haven’t written in months, just through lack of time.

Worse, I lost so many friends this year (only two to COVID) that I keep forgetting one, when I try to list them. Yes, it’s my age too, okay? But it still hurts.

Seeing my country under occupation by enemies mostly internal (but controlled by eternal) has also not been a barrel of laughs.

Also Thanksgiving is now a complicated holiday. Thanksgiving is when we moved to Colorado. It was this family’s personal Passover, because life in Colorado was much better than before, in every possible way. Now we had to move away, so it’s a slightly sad Holiday.

HOWEVER to think of it this way would ignore the mountain of good things that happened.

First and foremost, when I hit the wall financially, I asked for help and was overwhelmed. You guys came through (which allows us to wait a couple of months, circumvent scuzzy realtor, and not sell the house at bargain basement prices, after all the work and money we put into it) and helped us financially. But more importantly you showed me far more people read me and give a hang about what I do and if I’m in trouble than I ever knew.

This is literally mind-changing and it’s bearing fruit in how I structure my life and time in the future.

Other things? Sure. I have the best husband in the world, and we survived our time apart (but not happily)

The boys are both well and pursuing their lives, though yet at different levels.

We found a house we love. Needs some improvements, but what doesn’t? And once the house in Colorado sells we should be able to do those fairly easily and make it even more optimal as a writer’s home. And once we stop traveling back and forth to deal with other house, I will be productive.

The neighborhood is great, there is a wonderful park to walk in, and it’s an easy drive from stuff I enjoy.

Best of all, the auto-immune is almost wholly gone: I actually don’t have an eczema patch anywhere in my body for the first time in 28 years, at least.

And despite everything, and this long Valley Forge of ours, our flag is still there. People are starting to resist and fight back. And once Americans do that, nothing stops us. I am very thankful the lot of you mugs let me join the Freedom Gang, the most amazing nation the word has ever known.

Oh, and where we are allows us to range over most of the country on an at most 2 day drive, which means cons, and far-flung huns dinners have become possible. Also vacations where we “travel in elephants” (The Heinlein short story.) Why yes, I DO want to see the world’s largest ball of twine. It’s a very American thing. And fun.

Oh, yes, and I have ideas for books, and other things I have wanted to do forever.

For all this, but mostly for my family, my friends and this community, I am thankful.

I have been blessed beyond anything I deserve or could have imagined.

For that I thank the Author, and every one of you.

Back when I wrote Witchfinder, some people got all upset that “A libertarian could write a book where the rightful sovereign has a link to the land.”

In other words, Wednesday in fantasy upset some people.

But in fact, there is absolutely no contradiction.

Look, the idea of a sovereign who is linked to the land, who listens to the cries of the common people, and wishes to avenge the ravages perpetrated on the land itself goes so deep into humanity’s subconscious, that we might be mostly made of it.

It underlies a lot of our legends and stories and arguably (don’t hit me. This doesn’t mean it’s not true) our religions.

It probably has origins very early in the human or proto-human band, which was really barely extended family and where the ravages of leadership that didn’t give a hang about anyone else were obvious, while good leadership was equally obvious.

I grew up enthralled by Robin Hood, where the (bad) governor took money from poor people to give to the rich (or government officials) and Robin Hood gave it back. And they waited for Good King Richard to come back and set it all straight.

Of course, reality is not the same as fantasy. Once kingdoms got large, with the unification of vast portions of Europe under one king, wise rule went down proportionately, and well, things went to h*ll in a kingly basket. Heck, I think Portugal is too large for a single king, let alone the rest of European powers. And in America, it’s insanity. The level of power and control the Federales are trying to exert is already insane. They have the illusion they can have it, because of technology, but it keeps going sour on them and they’re going a bit insane, particularly as we turn away from mass-industry and mass communication.

Which brings us to: the king and the land are one.

And the sovereign of the United States, the true king for whose return we wait, is We The People.

When people run around with their heads on fire, afraid of “populist” movements, what they actually fear are the pseudo-populist movements: the French revolution, FDR’s idiocy, the communist revolutions, the nazis. None of those were actually populist. They were the wet dreams of intellectuals, who broke things to a point where common people went feral because they were terrified. But that wasn’t the movement. But no common person ever dreamed up that type of thing completely divorced from reality. (Tell me what common person tries to make weeks, months, or HOURS metric. For that you need to be “educated” beyond reality.)

In America, We The People are the king, and we’re kept from our throne by massive fraud and arrant deception.

Fortunately America has a tendency to defy the odds. They think they can keep us out forever. I think they’re dreaming.

The king is coming home. And the land awaits him. The usurpers won’t like us when we’re angry.

Government Failures Cause Kyles- A Guest Post by Francis Turner

The great and the “good” in the US and around the world have been complaining about white supremacy getting a pass thanks to the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse on charges of homicide and so on. As anyone who paid even the slightest attention to the events of August 2020 or the recent trial would know, there is no evidence whatsoever that Rittenhouse was a white supremacist or anything other than an young man with a praiseworthy sense of duty and responsibility.

I’m going to totally ignore all of that (people like Larry Correia have that task firmly in hand) and concentrate on something else, the one place where almost everyone, from the great and good on down to people like me agree: namely that it would have been preferable for Kyle Rittenhouse not to have been patrolling the streets of Kenosha in the first place.

The MSM and the “Liberal” left think he shouldn’t have been there because in their view no one should have objected to the “fiery but mostly peaceful protests”. The rest of us think that is ridiculous but we agree that Rittenhouse and his fellow informal militia members should not have needed to patrol to limit property damage from such “mostly peaceful” protests.

[Aside: it is notable that (almost?) all of the informal militia patrolers seem to have been male. I’m sure that was due to their sexism and nothing to do with the idea of chivalry that strong men protect weaker women… ]

Short of a very small number of willfully ignorant and deluded sorts (e.g. Ayanna Pressley) no one believe that Rittenhouse would have opened fire if the protests had been limited to marches in the street shouting slogans. The one thing that I think even lefties mostly admit, if quietly to themselves, is that Kenosha wasn’t a protest it was a riot. Some of them may consider the riot and property damage to be a legitimate form of protest for something but they do agree that the events in Kenosha the night before and then the night Kyle was on patrol were riots.

So what were the causes of the environment where Kyle felt he should step up and protect property from arsonists, rioters and looters? The quick answer is that the primary causes were “Government” and particularly government policies espoused by progressives/liberals (a.k.a. filthy commies :) ).

Let me explain

The Government Created Kyle – First Strike

Now in normal societies, when there is a riot it is the responsibility of the government to quell it. In Kenosha the government decided not to. We can and should blame the mayor of the town, the governor of Wisconsin – Tony Evers – and so on for that failing. In particular we can blame the governor because it seems he deliberately decided not to send in the National Guard, even though such was offered by President Trump and requested by some local politicians. You may not be surprised to learn that Evers is a Democrat and uttered various nauseating remarks concerning the shooting of George Floyd, Jacob Blake and probably others that I can’t be bothered to go find.

In short the relevant authorities pretty much encouraged the rioting and took no action at all to try and limit the damage the rioters would cause.

That is the first way the government created Kyle. If the relevant local government had acted in any kind of way to prevent the riots or provided sufficient personnel to counter the rioters, Kyle would not have felt the need to patrol the streets of Kenosha to protect property from rioters, arsonists and looters. Instead the governor and others made statements that demoralized the police and encouraged the protestors.

If lefties don’t want people like Kyle to patrol the streets of their local towns with weapons to protect themselves and fire extinguishers to put out the fires of arsonists (and in the case of Kyle put out a fire that could otherwise have caused a very large number of casualties) then they should protect the local businesses so that they don’t feel compelled to request protection from militia volunteers.

The Government Created Kyle – Second Strike

But that’s just the first and most obvious failure of (lefty) government. The next most obvious is that governments all across the US have permitted the goons associated with BLM and antifa to riot and burn things. If the authorities in Portland, OR or Seattle, WA or Minneapolis, MN or any number of other places had been willing to use the standard tools of riot control to actually stop the riots and protests there instead of hunkering down and letting their police and themselves be attacked then probably the protests in Kenosha would have been more muted. If nothing else at least some of the protestors would not have been able to be present because they would have been in jail.

But even ignoring those hypothetical jailbirds, I think it is clear that, as anyone who has had the pleasure of housetraining pets, children and the like knows, if you consistently stop them/punish them when they are first bad, they tend not to repeat the experience. See also, for example, the success of the “broken window” policing policy in New York and elsewhere in the 1990s.

In 2020 Democrat Party state and local government and law enforcement officials all over the USA decided that they should “defund the police” and not react to lawless protests in the name of BLM. Entirely unsurprisingly they got more riots and the the riots and protests were more violent. In places where politicians (generally Republicans) did the opposite the protests were much more limited.

That is the second way the government created Kyle. If governments across had acted to stop riots earlier in the year it is highly likely that any Kenosha protests would have been a lot less damaging and thus there would have been no need to for him to patrol.

The Government Created Kyle – Third Strike

Now let’s step back and discuss the individuals Rittenhouse shot. All three had criminal records, but I think it is fair to say that the first one was the worst. Rosenbaum was a registered sex offender who had served time for pedophile offences. According to a reddit post those sex offences were way more than what was admitted to in court

That ignores the more recent Wisconsin accusations of assault, battery and domestic violence as well as the process crimes relating to his evading the court mandated monitoring and the like.

If there were any sanity to the US Justice system, if he wasn’t still in prison for his 2002 offences he should have been slammed back in there permanently as soon as he assaulted his girlfriend in 2016.

[Aside: in an ideal world he’d simply have been executed in 2003. A lot of suffering would have been averted if he had]

The other two rioters shot by Rittenhouse were slightly less despicable but both they, and Freeland the “jump-kick man” who attacked Rittenhouse and escaped without being injured when Rittenhouse shot at him, had long criminal records. If the two survivors died today the world would likely be a better place. Neither Huber – the second person Rittenhouse killed – nor the two of them show(ed) any sign of becoming anything other than violent criminals. Much the same, by the way, also applies to Jacob Blake whose shooting while resisting arrest was the cause of the riots. Indeed he and Huber seem to share the charming habit of domestic abuse and both quite likely believe(d) they can continue to rape or beat women who become their girlfriends.

A proper criminal justice system would ensure that people like this would either be jailed for their repeat offences and/or be clear that a subsequent repeat offence (such as trying to burn down a gas station) would result in their incarceration for a considerable period of time. It is my belief (see housetraining) that consistently applied rules will not just dissuade the person in question but also others who get to observe their fate

That is the third way the government created Kyle, by not properly punishing repeat criminals who therefore felt free to continue their lives of crime and to take part in a riot.

The Government Created Kyle – Fourth Strike

The fourth way the government created Kyle was in the social services and educational systems that failed in the cases of Blake and all of the people Kyle shot at.

Rosenbaum was apparently abused himself as a child. I’m not entirely clear if this was after he was put in the foster care system or before (or both) but his experience in that system does not appear to have been a positive one. That doesn’t excuse his own abuse of minors but it may be a partial explanation.

Now you can argue that the government does its best and so on, but the fact is that government has more or less put non-governmental competitors for fostering/adoption and so on out of business. In a few cases where abuse was a standard occurrence that may have been a good thing (though child abuse in government care/foster schemes is also rampant – see all those UK “grooming” scandals) but in many others it wasn’t. About 50 years ago it was relatively easy to adopt a child in the US, in the last thirty or so it has become so hard that infertile couples are forced to adopt from foreign countries. It seems quite likely to me that Rosenbaum would have been adopted by some family in the 1960s or 1970s and it is certainly far from impossible that such a hypothetical adoption would have resulted in Rosenbaum growing up to be a useful contributor to society instead of a perennially homeless abuser of children and women.

The others may not have had that level of dysfunction in their personal families but they all had the “benefit” of government provided education. For some reason that education failed to teach them anything about the difference between protests and riots, the ability to critically evaluate reports to find out if they might be biased, or indeed much regarding civic, ethics and morality. Somehow, and one assumes this was due to his (apparently separated) parents and their acquaintances, Kyle Rittenhouse turned into an honorable, civic-minded young man. The others did not.

This is the fifth reason why Government is to blame. The Government has put much of the competition for education and childcare out of business through a combination of regulations and taxes. And has, in place of them, provided an inferior product that doesn’t serve the inmates assigned to it or society at large.

So lovers of government, if you don’t want anymore Rittenhouses patrolling the streets maybe you get the government to do its job right and not fail. 

I wish I could say I didn’t post for some high flung ladida reason. But the fact is I didn’t post because I took benadryl last night. So looking for a post to do a blast from the past put me in an ADD spin.

And then there’s family stuff and — ARGH.

Post tomorrow. This is just to let you know I’m okay. I’m finishing entering changes in the fairy tales.

It’s likely we’ll be out of town/busy all next week, but after that we should be fine, actually.

*Wait. What do you mean I haven’t put the promo post up yet? WHAT HAVE I BEEN DOING? Oh. Yeah. Unpacking. Laundry. Cleaning bathrooms. The fun never ends. Right. Now putting up promo post. -SAH*

Book Promo

If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. I ALSO WISH TO REMIND OUR READERS THAT IF THEY WANT TO TIP THE BLOGGER WITHOUT SPENDING EXTRA MONEY, CLICKING TO AMAZON THROUGH ONE OF THE BOOK LINKS ON THE RIGHT, WILL GIVE US SOME AMOUNT OF MONEY FOR PURCHASES MADE IN THE NEXT 24HOURS, OR UNTIL YOU CLICK ANOTHER ASSOCIATE’S LINK. PLEASE CONSIDER CLICKING THROUGH ONE OF THOSE LINKS BEFORE SEARCHING FOR THAT SHED, BIG SCREEN TV, GAMING COMPUTER OR CONSERVATORY YOU WISH TO BUY. That helps defray my time cost of about 2 hours a day on the blog, time probably better spent on fiction. ;)*

FROM LAURA MONTGOMERY: Transport and Deliver (Martha’s Sons Book 5).

When flight on a boat jeopardizes all a family has worked for, can an errant son risk his life to save their future?
The Luwenthals—second generation settlers on the lost planet Not What We Were Looking For—confront the destruction of their past life, and are forced to flee. As the boat containing the family’s prized linotype crosses a river lit by the flames of the printshop they had to abandon, fifteen-year-old Tobias Luwenthal must face his father’s ire over what he sees as his son’s betrayal.  Disaster strikes, but will Tobias seize the chance to redeem himself at the cost of his own life?  Will his father learn from his son as Tobias has learned from him?
If you’ve enjoyed the Martha’s Sons series, start reading now for a glimpse into what happens next in this dystopian lost world!

FROM RAY DOWNING: Christmas in Idaho – Christmas Book with Audio CD – Unique Gift – by Emmy Award Winner Artist Ray Downing Hardcover – January 1, 2020

🎄 Timeless Classic – Enjoy the sights, sounds and magic of Christmas in this inspirational Christian allegory.

🎄 Emmy Winning Artist – Ray Downing writes and illustrates this remembrance of Christmas and the promise it holds for all who believe.

🎄 Beautiful Design – A treasured keepsake, bound in faux green leather with gilded page edges and gold ribbon.

🎄 Color Illustrations – Over 40 full color illustrations and Victorian motifs.

🎄 Audio CD – A beautiful reading of the story, backed with Christmas carols and classical music.

🎄 Message – This story is a poignant allegory that explores the role that time plays in our perception of the physical world and in the Christian promise of immortality.

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

In a dangerous hidden world of supernatural warriors, she may be the key to winning everything.

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

Life is about to get more complicated.

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

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

EDITED BY CEDAR SANDERSON: Can’t Go Home Again.

Men and women who lay their life on the line never escape unscathed, and when the time comes to return home, they find a wall between them, and loved ones. These tales follow those who gather the hope to begin healing, and tearing down the walls that have sprung up between them, and their loved ones. No one ever said it would be easy…

FROM BEN MASON: Pulp Noir: A John Noir Superhero Story.

All he wanted was a drink. He picked the wrong bar. They picked the wrong victim.

John Noir walked into a bar to buy a drink when he sees the leader of a neo-nazi gang abusing his girlfriend and makes a point of stopping it.

John’s problem is that they don’t like a black man stepping into their business.

Their problem? John’s got a special deck of cards and he knows how to use them. But John isn’t the only one with powers and before the fighting is done, he’s going to have to face down a sinister opponent fiercer than any gang.

FROM DALE COZORT: Snapshot II: The Necklace of Time

For eighty million years, the Tourists have taken Snapshots of Earth, creating living replicas of continents. Life in the Snapshots quickly diverges from the real world, creating a universe where humans and animals from Earth’s history fly between Snapshots, exploring, fighting, and sometimes meeting their alternate history selves. In 2014, the Tourists create a Snapshot of North America in a snow-globe shaped artificial universe, linked like pearls on a necklace to other copied times and places. In that timeline, Simon Royale—a.k.a. Simon-2014— is a legendary best-selling author. When he was only seven-years-old, his sister mysteriously vanished. Simon-14’s writing—and the power in it—is born from his obsession with discovering what happened to her. But now, cut off from the life he’d known, he may never find out.US-53 isn’t really the past. Thanks to the Tourists, it’s a mutant off-shoot, the 1950s grown up and sneaky, with sharp elbows. In this version of the timeline, Simon Royale—a.k.a. Simon-53—is just an aspiring author with a trunk full of unpublished novels. Then the two worlds connect. For an ambitious publishing company, it looks like a golden opportunity for Simon-53 to leverage Simon-2014’s fame.Can the clashing versions of Simon Royale coexist in the unnaturally linked timelines? Simon-2014’s legal battle over the right to his own work and identity are the least of his worries. In the 1953 timeline, his sister is still alive. What made her disappear in one reality but survive in the other? Is something dangerous hidden in his memories or his first novel? As Simon inches closer to the truth, one thing is clear: it’s a secret someone is willing to kill to keep.

FROM THOMAS SEWELL: Terrorist Interrogator: A Sam Harper Military Thriller

What really happened to Sam’s parents?
After the events in Covert Commando, Sam Harper and his CIA ex-GF Michelle are ordered to join a newly formed task force. As part of the deal, Sam receives access to the CIA’s codeword-only file on his parent’s death in a terrorist bombing.

What they learn drives them underground and on the run in a thrilling battle against old enemies and newly discovered traitors.
Read more of Sam Harper’s adventures while on the government’s dime.

FROM MICHAEL A. HOOTEN: A Bard Without a Star.

Gwydion ap Don is a talented harpist, and a known rogue. His uncle Math sees something more: a young man with the magical talent to succeed him as Lord Gwynedd. But to learn magic, Gwydion will also have to learn self-control, duty, honor, and the martial arts. He’s not sure which will be the hardest.

And when his training in magic begins in earnest, how he sees the whole world will change, as well as how he sees himself. He will have to battle bandits, cattle raiders, and armies in his efforts to learn how to be a leader. But mostly he will have to learn how to control himself, which is the one battle he is not sure he can win.

This volume contains the first three eBooks in the Bard Without a Star series: Wizard’s Heir, The Two Tanists, and The Bardic Academy.

FROM DAVID L. BURKHEAD: The Beasts of Trevanta.

Wounded in body and spirit after the fall of her kingdom and loss of her lover, the knight Kaila has one last duty to perform before dying: seeing two orphaned children home to their clan in Bringanzo’s Desert.

But all is not lost. When the shaman of Three Mountains Clan takes Kaila on a smoke quest she learns Kreg is still alive, fighting his way across the lands to her. She will raise an army to free him, though hell shall bar the way.

And once they’re united, not even the beast men who overran Trevanta, shall keep them from taking back their land.

FROM M. C. A. HOGARTH: Dragons’ Fealty (Lisinthir’s Heirs Book 1

A SPRING HOMECOMING

When he attended their wedding in summer, Lisinthir Lauvet Imthereli, Third of the Chatcaavan Empire, promised his cousins they would see him in spring for the birth of his heirs on Eldritch soil, and to attend the birth of theirs. He returns to a world and a people reviving from their long winter: a new navy; the rescue of their suffering acreage; and the burgeoning of a tenant culture revolving around the new communications and travel networks.

But a prince and a culture aren’t the only things making their return. When a mistake made in the summer season comes back to haunt them, Lisinthir will discover himself torn between warring allegiances… and someone else will have to pay the price. Will their enemies succeed in blighting the promise of the season?

Book 1 of 2 of Lisinthir’s Heirs

FROM KATHY BORICH: Appetite for Murder: A Mystery Lover’s Cookbook

Off to England for supper with Sherlock Holmes, morning tea with Miss Marple, or a pub crawl with Chief Inspector Morse. Guaranteed to whet your Appetite for Murder, this tantalizing slant on cooking and crime is cooked up especially for mystery lovers. Relive your favorite classic crime fiction and then whip up the food that helped solve the crime.

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: Comparison

Actually that’s not quite true. I’m actually really busy because I am still getting the fairy tales ready to go, proofing DST, finishing Bowl of Red and I HAVE to unpack, because living in the middle of boxes is becoming untenable. (Or antennaeble. There’s so much dust, I’m going to mutate and grow antennae.)

So, I have a weird challenge for you: Come up with weird anthology theme/title.

Now, I’ll give some examples below, and some of them are obviously for the lulz, but we do have the VERY tiny publisher which will be firing up any week now. (More or less at same time as Boxes from Sarah’s garage, since it’s mine and younger son’s labor on this.) And it will MOSTLY do anthologies.

So if something fires up my neurons, I’ll add it to anthologies to get together. And if it’s yours, I’ll try to invite you if write.

So….

The Penguin Conspiracy

When Time Ran Backward

The Funniest Apocalypses

The Invasion from Weird

…….

Tag, you’re it. (And I know I’m not super creative right now. Deal while I dust.)

For years now I’ve been a voice calling out in the wilderness, and honestly I thought I had no reach whatsoever and most of you thought I was insane.

What I’ve called, at times not very coherently because it took time to see the picture, and because I’m a depressive and subject to the same fears as the rest of you.

But on this day when America overcame a show trial against the right that underlies all rights (the right to self-defense IS the right to be free) I am not going to say I told you so, because this doesn’t hang on the verdict of A jury which these days is almost a toss of a coin. (Though let it stand that this jury did the right thing in the face of terror and credible threats. It ain’t nothing.)

It hangs rather on the tides of history. What I’ll call for lack of a better term the “blue model” (though the commie model also works or the government always knows best peasants model, or the technocrat (one word two lies) model or rule by experts or– They’re a continuum also a dazzle of obfuscation.) is dying. It’s dying as it’s lived: UGLY, mean and destructive.

Yes, the commies (for lack of a better term) have a plan. They always have plans. And the cult believes them. It is, btw, how they get sellouts: cowards are terrified of the “inevitable win” of communism. You however are not required to collaborate with their belief. Their plans are not more credible than the USSR’s endless “5 year” plans. And you don’t have to buy into them like the CIA did into those.

They’re a spent force. They’re done. It’s been clear they were done since election night 2016, if not earlier. Though it’s becoming more obvious as time goes on.

Doesn’t mean the war is over. As Bill Whittle (bless his name) puts it, most casualties happen after we know the war is won or lost. So be careful out there, and keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.

Right now, they’re the Germans after knowing they’ve lost accelerating the final solution. They’re fatally wounded but not toothless.

HOWEVER let it be known in the end we win, they lose. We know it. They know it.

Don’t get sloppy, but fight with all you’ve got, from where you are, with everything you can. Because in the end individual freedom wins.

And I’m glad to see other people also crying into the wilderness. Feels less lonely.

I don’t know this first blog or his associations. I’ll note he’s wrong about “email caste”. There are sit-at-the-computer jobs, and the distinction I’d make is “does this job produce anything or simply try to herd people and respond to regulations?” because there are gradations.

For instance, when herded into humanities, I took languages, where there was a reality to learn, and also it was useful to an extent. And husband does real — vital, even — things with numbers and hard math. The fact it’s virtual doesn’t make it less vital to you and me and our future. And to an extent, even I produce things that either sell or don’t. My family either gets the money/help/goods from it or I’ve wasted my time. (This is much clearer now in indie, because no one else influences it.)

There is no “email caste” and most employees at “mind” jobs are not lefties. They might stay quiet because otherwise they’ll find themselves fired. But with the vaccine nonsense, that too is changing.

He’s fairly accurate on the rest.

The Decisive Battle – Malcom Kyeyune – Power & Politics (wordpress.com)

And next is the incomparable Bill Whittle (I’m a subscriber to his channel, but somehow end up only listening to the free stuff, because I lost my password and life is crazy) who TRUST me is not known for sunshine and rainbows forecasting. If he’s seeing this, you should be too.

Spit out the black pill. You KNOW PRECISELY where it’s been. Rinse your mouth.

Then come back and help us hoist the flag.

There’s hard fighting still to do, but we can do it. There are going to be times of horror and seeming hopelessness, but remember despair is a sin.

Be not afraid.

Like the secondary hero of a popular fantasy novel of recent decades, I have a slight flaw in my character. (This of course depends on your interpretation of slight and flaw.)

It’s not the only one, but it is marked, persistent and it annoys me when I can’t satisfy it. It’s stronger even than chocolate-seeking-behaviors.

I like to know the truth.

What a time for me to live in.

I can generally find the truth in small day to day things, or at least I have a very strong sense for when I’m not being told that truth. And btw, nothing will get me to cut ties faster with a person, institution or service than knowing they’re p*ssing down my back and telling me it’s raining.

Small white lies, I’ll tolerate, till they….. accumulate, because I’ve come to the sad conclusion a lot of these are told because the person is embarrassed/has a bad memory/etc. Unless they roll into a massive bolus.

But still, I try to know the truth. And partly, I like to know the truth about the world we live in, including what is going on with my fellow humans. Partly, to be honest, so I can be prepared or at least not worsen problems.

The problem is that the Mass-industrial-information-and-entertainment complex has never been about truth. EVER. They were about propping up a mass narrative, and my entire life it has been a narrative about the perfections of communism or socialism, or other leftist bullshit. Everything they reported or didn’t report was decided by “does it help the cause.” And the reporting was slanted to fit the narrative. Of course, by the seventies the narrative was “what every educated person knows.” So, it was bullshit, but bullshit fit into a theory that they told everyone was the truth. So a lot of the people adding bullshit might not have realized what they were doing.

The problem with lies is that they fall apart if poked too had or overextended. No, not actually joking. When we’re building worlds or writing novels, there’s a good bit of fandancing over the parts we don’t want you to see. And that’s btw, in a medium where you willingly colaborate with us to believe the lie It’s much, much harder when you don’t. But even in the best fantasy series, you start seeing cracks around book 15, if not before. Because lies when overextended become obvious.

The current lie the left has been running is now showing signs of both: Overextension and excessive accretion, and it’s breaking apart everywhere. And worse, because it took them generations to build it, the people inside it don’t realize it’s a lie or that others can see it’s a lie. So they don’t understand people’s reactions at all.

Worse, because the seed of the lie was started by an outright psychopath who thought other people were widgets, it means that the system regards people as widgets who are interchangeable with similar widgets. They’re not prepared for individual response to fast-changing situations. which is what we’re having, thanks to tech.

So they’re flopping and floundering and spinning tales fast, tales that seem to make them infalible, perfect and in control.

I confess I was mildly dismayed I just got a missing from one of you about how “China now owns the whole world and has, because it bought our politicians” Doom, gloom, the end is coming soon.

Mind you, the end is coming soon, because the system is splintering. But the system is the system of lefty lies and delusion. It won’t hold.

And China is now and has always been a master at this kind of lie, and projecting this kind of lie on the outside. ALL totalitarian regimes are. But in China it’s cultural. They have issues telling reality from appearance to an extent and they PRIZE appearance over reality. Which combined with communism means that the party itself, and its heads in particular, know NOTHING of what’s going on in their own country, let alone the rest of the world.

Increasingly, I think our idiots are the same, too. They prefer the narrative to the truth, and keep telling themselves bigger and bigger lies.

STOP BELIEVING THEM. Yes, it all sounds coherent, etc. Take it from someonw who routinely has to interrogate reality to not go severely depressive: if it’s coherent, it’s not the truth. Real life is messy and fractured.

Now, back to reality, okay: the problem right now is that you can only find the truth by trusting your lying eyes and the limits of your connections. You really cannot trust anything that comes out of the MSM which for five years has been making up sh*t wholesale. The only thing you can trust from them is ‘admissions against interest’ and even those “trust but verify.”

For instance, as of right now, our job market makes no sense whatsoever. NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT.

And the left says it’s because “people are quitting for better jobs”. And the right says that people are now on the dole and don’t want jobs.

AND NONE OF THAT MAKES SENSE. Because the jobs opening up aren’t amazeballs, by and large. In fact, friends with tech degrees are having some trouble getting jobs, as opposed to in the early Trump years when people were finally finding jobs in specialties they’d tried to get into for years. And what dole? Precisely? Sure, there were some payments early in the covidiocy, but right now most people are back to flying solo.

And yet, most restaurants and stores are screaming for help and offering the world.

Well, part of it is the masks. I bet any chain that dropped the idiotic “our associates must mask” woud find itself swamped with employees. For a lot of people the asthma and other issues associated with constant (and useless and idiotic) mask wearing just aren’t worth it. I know enough people in that position to think this is a major factor. Heck, if I had to get a job right now that would be a major factor in my decision.

Note, I never see this reported. I bet it accounts for a lot of things, though, including why enrollment is down in in person classes, etc.

You don’t see it reported because, for whatever reason (I could hazard guesses, and they have nothing to do with their being masterminds. The primary being that they want to find a way to “dismount” from the Covid lie, but can’t figure out how) the establishment and the propagandists are wedded to masks. So are all corporations, air travel, etc. And then they can’t figure out why people are not flocking to them, either to work or consume.

But there’s more than masks at work. I confess I’ve only met a few people doing this, but my acquaintance is no longer LARGELY in that range.

There are many people suddenly working from home. Not just tech workers, but anyone whose job is done at a computer. Some (rolls eyes) mag at the beginning of all this estimated the number at 2% of the economy. I’d like some of what they’re smoking, because it’s potent stuff. I’d estimate it at about 20% and might be higher, judging by the dislocations it’s causing downstream.

Look, guys, we were looking for a place to live not in trendy TX or fashionable FL. Partly because we left it too late, and plain couldn’t afford it. Partly because when states explode that fast things happen and …. well, I saw it in Colorado, okay? Also the left in those states goes bonkers. It’s not a coincidence I’ve been reading about hospitals and schools going crazy in both states. (Even if successfully combated.)

So we were looking in states of no significance, and often in cities of less than 10k people….

And they were SWAMPED. Houses that had been up for YEARS and which had major issues were being snapped up by out of towners set on telecommuting.

I mean, I do understand the run on real estate in TX, FL, and to an extent in CO (beautiful area, and people can always roam around in nature. Unfortunately that was never my thing) and such. They can have all the perks of the Eastern cities, but more …. freedom, either political or of the region.

BUT middle of nowhere, in a depressed area where there haven’t been new jobs in forever? We eventually had to offer 10k more to get a house that needed help (It will get it, over time.) And prices were going up every week.

Now, because of the bias of normalcy — i.e. people don’t notice things have changed. Like that they are working from home and no longer need to live in x place — this is just the vanguard of those realizing “I could live cheaper elsewhere.” The vanguard. That’s way MORE than 2%. It’s probably more than 20%.

Thing is, you know, people moving cheaper, whether to a suburb or another town and state, can probably live on one salary. And most women’s unemployment is in service: retail, restaurants, etc.

Oh, yeah, and most school systems are requiring masks, and frankly my kids wouldn’t have been sent to school if they needed that. So, mom can stay home and educate the tykes, or supervise their education. (This is not sexist. It’s usually the woman who wants to/is willing/can afford to stay home. NOT ALWAYS though, and I know some families where the husband has quit to stay home with the kids.)

This is corroborated by a few squeals (not being widely reported) of school systems that lost massive amounts of their pupils. One of them 30%.

This is not something the left wants you to know, because the trends are not …. favorable to their narrative. They’ve been pushing for years to have humans seen PRIMARILY as economic units and producers. Hence, everyone MUST have a job. And those who look after kids must be paid.

So you don’t hear much about it. And neither do they. So they have no clue how things are working and why the numbers look so weird. (The next step is to fudge all numbers even more, because the left also thinks perception is reality. If they lie hard enough the truth will go away.)

The truth is that there are new ways of living in America being forged. We’re going more dispersed (My guess is the games being played with the cities are going to bite the left in the ass, too, as all that lovely real estate will become worthless sooner than later.) We’re going more family/friends/our group oriented. The relentless push to get women in the work force is reversing, as women say “bugger that for a game of soldiers.” The relentless push to have strangers raise your kids is reversing too.

But there are other things. There is a …. certain easing of consumerism. Look, I’m not actually joking. Part of it is that everyone is on the move, so we’re dumping the not-needed. Part of it is that the population is smaller in the younger brackets. People over 40 mostly already have all the needed, and are willing to let the not needed go. More dispersed populations are less susceptible to “fashion trends” and home workers care less about new clothing and accoutrements. In the same way, cars are being driven less (someone interpreted this as Americans traveling less. Naw. Judging by crowded during the weekday gas stations and stores on the highway, Americans are driving more long distance. BUT they’re not commuting every day.)

Overall what this means is that once the big moves are done (we do need things for new place, for instance, and yeah, it’s impossible to find a lot of those not made in China. Little stupid stuff, like organizers for cupboards) China gets LESS from us, because American life is turning more to “I don’t need that much.” (Some idiot attributed it to Marie Kondo, which was a joke three years ago. It’s not that. It’s the flexibility, and yeah, adapting to living with less.)

Their strikes against us, like spiking the oil prices are effective, mind, but not as effective as they SHOULD be. I shudder to think of current oil prices if everyone were still commuting.

It’s going to get bad, mind, but not nearly as bad as they think it will. Not for us.

For them? Reality will keep evading their script. More so as time goes. Which means they’ll declare everything is working perectly at the top of their lungs over and over.

And the depressives on the right will colaborate with them. Given the set of idiots the left has, this falls under attributing magical powers to the enemy.

In the end, and probably not very far off (I’d be shocked if they’re not already hurting) it’s going to bite China too. In their drive for “world domination” they forgot they need consumers. They didn’t grow ANY internal consumers. They rely on America to buy a never end of stuff. America is turning away from the never-end of crap. To an extent that was a product of mass: Mass communication (“The must have toy!”), mass crowding “I can’t wear outdated clothes to the office”) and well, mass (Younger people need more stuff.)

For now all that is receding. (Though I expect we’ll see the births rebound real soon, and not just because child deductions no longer require even SSN#. Which tells you a lot. I mean real births, with real people. Because people working from home, well…. The marriages that doesn’t break become stronger. And if you’re raising your kids, you’re not charging yourself for one more.)

And China will get bit by “Why aren’t Americans buying stuff.”

In fact they are already being bit, hence the militaristic threats and flailing about. All much scarier if their science weren’t mostly risible, and their military might composed of “little Emperors” who cry for mommy during skirmishes with India.

Couldn’t happen to better a’holes. And China is a’hole. Maybe the Chinese people can know freedom this century. Would be novel. And good.

As for us? America will be all right. Yes, they’ve captured our structures. But the good news is that our structures are now so thoroughly borked they have to get fixed or replaced. Not long now. Till then there will be insults and horrors, like the retreat from Afghanistan.

But what can’t go on, won’t go on.

And at the basic fundamental level America is changing from being the country the progressives and their narrative could control: only mass industrialization and mass communication allow the totalitarian regimes to at least pretend control enough for mass atrocities.

We’re no longer that country. And we’re not that country more and more every day.

We’re taking our ball and going home. And we’re not the ones hurt by that.

Take a deep breath. And don’t believe anything you read in the “Mass” communication. (Much less hear. And these days I’d be leary of “see”.)

Don’t buy the enemy propaganda.

Yes, they’re keep us in the dark and feeding us sh*t. But you’re not really a mushroom. You have eyes and the ability to think.

Just like there self-obviously are not “covid dead” piled on every street corner, it’s obvious that socialism isn’t winning much of anything. And their attempts to throw more money at it, only make the whole thing crazier.

Be not afraid. Don’t believe the enemy is magic. They gaslight themselves more than they gaslight us.

It’s going to get bad. Very bad. But not as bad as their propaganda would make you feel.

Be not afraid. You’re not defeated till you decide you are.

Fight in any way you can where you are right now.

In the end we win they lose. Because reality will not be denied, no matter how pretty the lies.

Go work

Every year has a theme. The theme of this year is Murphy. In things great and small, if it can go wrong, it does.

In our house endeavor it manifested in several ways, but one of the more annoying was having to hire two people for every job, and having the first one either not do the work, do the work wrong, cost us money by forcing us to redo the work and other work (the most notable being cabinet painter who splattered the floors all over.) We might be in the middle of one of these, btw.

On the upside, the second person we hired almost always was competent, fast and honest, even if often very expensive.

And the second time I did a job — on average — the stain didn’t assume strange hues and the varnish didn’t curdle. Which gives me great hope.

We’ve now redone and sold five houses in the last 37 years. We’ve never had this much trouble, not even the first time.

It also manifests day to day, like right after I landed and was starting to work again I got sick, and it’s taking me forever to come up from it. I blame some fans/friends I hang out with online. I mean, all they had was a nasty cold, but I don’t know how I caught it.

Seriously, Dave Freer and I used to pass colds to each other when we talked every morning. Given that we were on opposite sides of the world, after the fourth time it happened it led us to question the nature of space/viruses and reality. Because that stuff shouldn’t happen.

So, if you’re sick, please breathe away from the monitor, just in case :)

Anyway today’s murphiness manifested in the form of poo on my bedspread from the fluffy and unhygienic cat. (This is a great name for a rock band: Unhygienic cat.) Oh and some cat (I suspect Valeria who is the spiteful one. You need a brain for spite) having turned my lap desk upside down and peed on the under side. Anyone need a pair of mittens and a matching fur hat?

I think part of what’s working on them is how confusing and messy the house is. Which means I need to unpack faster. But I have books to finish.

All of which will undoubtedly feed murphy some more….

This ramble brought to you by “I bathed my cat and washed my bedspread, and all I’ve got left is an empty brain.”

Oh, yeah “And I’m really starting to worry for national events and that the butcher’s bill will start being collected any minute now.” …. and I still own houses in two states.

So forgive me this very weird post.

At least this year is almost over. If we’re lucky, the theme of the next one won’t be “Things go wrong and can’t be fixed.”

And yet, despite it all, for what we’re about to receive let us be truly thankful.

And FIDO (F*ck it, Drive on.) Which is the only way to deal with Murphy, temporary or permanent.

I was reading the news — I know, what a bad habit — when I read about Belarus, a Russian surrogate pushing/encouraging armed Middle Eastern “refugees” into Poland, when it hit me: They’re using people as weapons.

Forget everything you heard about creating a replacement population, though these idiots might believe that notion.

Forget about “refugees” too, the left’s insane term for economic migrants from shithole countries, propelled into more prosperous ones by dreams of easy money, mostly from corrupt welfare systems. Oh, sometimes propelled by religious visions — Muslims, Communists, and others — or by nationalistic fever and dreams of reconquista (of what was never theirs, nor even their ancestors) or of recovering the lands “stolen” from Dar Al Islam. (You might think the later is less likely than the reconquista, racialist fervor of La Raza commies, but I once found myself talking to the son of a Jordanian banker who — having found out I came from Portugal — went into a spit-flecked rage about how Portugal was stolen from Islam, and would be recovered.)

Forget about thinking of these people as people. They are of course. Mostly horribly deluded people and, at least in the US traipsing into a situation that is going to go bad for them, very rapidly as tensions worsen.

But for a moment pretend you’re one of the self styled technocrats (yes, it requires that you buy into that ridiculous appellation for people who can open their own email — maybe — one time in three.)

To begin with the one thing you must understand is that these are not very bright people. Cunning, yes. Indoctrinated yes. But their actual intelligence is middling. They occupy the positions they do mostly thanks to the left’s take over of all means of communication in the 20th century and by the fact that people hiring for an ideology are, of necessity, blind to competence. And when that ideology — central state control of everything — has already proven itself about as healthful and prosperity-inducing as gonorrhea with a side of syphilis, the people mouthing that ideology, particularly in its Marxist variant, are not competent people. Or sane people. Or in fact, anyone you’d want to leave in charge of your cat, let alone of your country. (And if you doubt my diagnosis, get a load of the governor of Oregon in her Christmas mask. What actual human being over the age of 2 would think of that bizarre, mind-boggling getup, much less someone in an official position? Think of it, let alone wear it? ships in your coiffure are understated and sensible by comparison. But that ridiculous creature probably thinks it’s homey and gives her the common touch. Which is true, if the touch is common in padded cells throughout the Earth.)

So imagine that you’re a not particularly bright person, maybe of an interesting color, maybe a woman, but almost for sure of the right class and having attended the “correct” institutions, who made the required Marxist noises and suddenly, out of nowhere, saw yourself whisked into the corridors of highest power: your election fixed, (or your spouse’s election), your career smoothed, praises heaped upon you, your every action a cause for the press to fawn and prostrate themselves before the glow of your imagined brilliance.

Come on, you’ve seen the essays of Michelle Obama or “Doctor” Jill Biden, or the unscripted utterances of Obama, or even Hillary Clinton, and let’s not even mention smaller luminaries like Beto O’Rourke, Pete Buttigieg or the cackling fool who doesn’t know how to solve our oil issues. You’ve watched the curiously affect-free expressions of the Junta’s spokeswoman who keeps circling back to inanity. You know that the VP they frauded in has one talent, and it has nothing to do with her ability to think (And frankly, I think worse of Willie Brown’s intelligence for having foisted her on American politics. And I never thought him that bright before.)

So, you’re mediocre to “can’t find my *ss with two hands, a seeing eye dog and a multimillion dollar *ss finding system.” BUT you suddenly find yourself occupying a position of prominence. And everyone — or at least the media, which you understand represents everyone — fawns on you and tells you how smart you are.

Little by little or all at once, in the dim, slogan filled darkness that passes for your mind, you decide “By gum. I know I don’t understand all that much. But they think I’m brilliant. THAT must MEAN that everyone else is even dumber.”

Boom. You’ve become a self-styled technocrat. Propaganda-crat would make more sense. You’re a being who will buy the most ridiculous idiocies spouted by “experts” because frankly you never got this scientific method thing, and you and reasoning are rarely in the same zip code. You might be able to refrain from drowning when it rains, but probably only because you have people to guide you indoors.

So you buy all the theories of all the “experts” looking only for grants. Anthropogenic global warming is not only proven, in your mind, but is going to kill us all in a decade or so (because you never really understood geologic time.) The experts agree, so it must be true. But at the same time, you are — of course — exempt from anything to mitigate it. However, those evil and stupid people who are dumber than you but won’t obey you unquestioningly? They must suffer to appease the climate gods.

And don’t get me started on where they think money comes from (printing presses is the short form answer) or their bizarre and irrational hangups about nuclear power (“bad thing. Professor said it was bad. Bad bad bad. Banish with holy bird slicers.”)

BUT the overriding idea in their dinosaurian shibboleth crammed walnut sized brains is that they, the anointed, by virtue of having memorized the pronouncements of the “experts” are now “technocrats and high priests of tech and science, who get to command the fate of nations and the lives of lesser humans.

Which is why, like Mongol hordes, impelling populations ahead of them, or the Moorish warriors ditto, or the various tribal variations on this they’re using entire populations as weapons. (They probably think its the first time anyone thought of it, too.)

These pseudo refugees are weapons that, thrown at the population they want to vanquish, not only cause physical injury (Yeah, I know, but I remind you these ardent believers in Covidiocy exempt border crashers from vaccines, and also that middle Eastern “refugees” in Europe tend to blow up when shaken. Or looked at wrong.) but also economic injury, as well as a corruption of every institution designed to serve and/or protect the people. (However misguided that institution. I don’t approve of state “charity”.)

Yes, sure, the idiot left in the US think these are forever their vote farm too. Yes, they are that stupid, and if their plan succeeded would be the first to find themselves killed. It won’t, mostly because we’re out of money. I predict a grande Salida that will make Obama’s look like child’s play. No, seriously. If this winter is half as hard as I expect, there will be a sauve qui peut the other direction on the border, because when it comes to starving people would rather do it at home. (I actually would expect it to already be movement the other direction, probably in increasing numbers. But there’s no point trying to find out. They won’t tell us. But the smart newcomers — and not all of them are stupid — should already be sniffing the air and beating feet.)

And in Europe the “middle eastern” refugees have become weapons of international aggression.

Two things worry me in all this, and neither is that the pseudo technocrats will be in power forever on the back of these populations.

No the two things that worry me are: when do the countries thus attacked just start blowing the human horde up? (In Poland I’d expect it very soon. Their history would demand it. At a guess, the only thing holding them back is fear of international demonization. And I’m not even sure they’re right.)

And do they then go marching fully into blood and soil ideology, as a way of dealing with what they had to do?

It would seem to make psychological sense to me. These technocrats are after all fascists without the saving grace of naitonalism, which at least requires one to consider one’s own countrymen human. They just consider every human widgets. (And they do it at every level, which is why they also run corporations as though their employees weren’t real people. Probably why they hate small businesses who insist on treating people as people.) Real national socialists might very well look sane by comparison to most of the world. (They aren’t. But they might get a substantial foothold before that’s revealed. And all we need is another century combating a DIFFERENT facet of Marxism.)

Can civilization respond to this in the only way that will stop it when governments are luring them and paying them to invade — I will remind you that “compassion” is luring women and small children to be raped and left to die in the desert South of the border; and that children are being stolen from their parents to give cover to criminals because we’re being “kind” — and save its soul? Or at least not go back to the beginning of the 20th century?

If we — not Europe. It won’t happen in Europe — try to restore the careful net of containment and international cooperation that was working under Trump, will it even work? Given all the broken promises and treaties? Will anyone trust us?

In other words, is it possible to treat people as people, while others are treating them as weapons? Is it possible to stop this nonsense without the use of force against the weapon?

I don’t know. I’m not sure I want to find out. But I suspect we will.

And to the idiots, soft heads and custard brains encouraging this sort of invasion because they think SOMEHOW they’re doing a good thing: Stop it. Stop it right now. Your protegees and hopefuls are being lured to a situation that is going to turn bad very quickly. And the results will be the opposite of what you think.

As to the idiot communists forming caravans to invade the US: there is nothing as idiotic as a Latin idiot with race supremacy and Marx shoved up his rear end and coming out his mouth. You are in above your head. You won’t enjoy this. We are not the Americans Hollywood showed you. Go back while you can.

Because every time this is used, the numbers need to be much larger (relatively), to prevent the population-as-a-weapon from becoming minced meat, when the receiving country has had about enough.

You have been warned.

As for the “technocrats”… I have no idea how long we’ll tolerate this, but there’s no happy ending there.

These are people who have a wildly inflated notion of their own intelligence, and virtually no understanding of humanity. On a scale of zero to fiddling while Rome burns, they’re at running around setting fire to Rome and demanding applause.

In the end, they lose.

Let’s make sure civilization wins.