Did any of you have “Trudeau goes full Castro” on his 2022 bingo card? Because I didn’t. And our idiots are preparing to throw the national guard at our own truckers.

Younger son is working on the boxes NOW (TBF he had to recover from work on house) and I told him that this is supposing there’s a way to ship next month.

This accelerated a bunch of things. Let’s say I spent the morning looking for office furniture. But I’ve never bought furniture. And I’ll be several times d*mned if I’m going to spend thousands of dollars on ONE bookcase. NO. And several hundred for fake wood? Also no. The current furnishings can limp on till I can build new.

Whether there will be wood, is another question, but I’m open to looking for scrap and throw-outs.

And yes, I DO realize I’m being unreasonable.

Meanwhile the news came down that Trudeauscu is getting ready to shoot drivers and gas them and kill their pets.

My heart is breaking for the pets. And anyone who says they shouldn’t be there, is going to get chased around the blog and hit. It was a for-real peaceful protest, and these are good people. They don’t understand evil. I do, but even I am upset.

So, what do you do when you live in interesting times? Besides keeping your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark?

Sometimes all you can do is hold on. Just hold on.

Find something that brings joy every day. Can be something very small. (Right now, don’t have it. Other than Dan and cats. But I mean an event or thing you do.)

You know, in the seventies, sometimes very stupid Brazilian soap operas kept me this side of the sod. “I want to see what happens next, and I know I’ll enjoy it.” Or columbo. Find something. Lunch with a friend. Books you wand to read (mine? Soon, I promise.) Something you want to do. JUST hold on.

Eventually, things will get better, and there will be stuff for you to do. Things you must do. For now, hold on. (If all else fails, do as Jerry said, and make things very clean. There might be a time you don’t have time for maintenance.)

The water is about to get rough. Find a life vest and hang on.

You will be needed.

I have in the last week come to the conclusion there are a vast number of aliens among us. And no, I don’t mean alien conspiracies, lizard aliens or space aliens, though the way this year is going, I might have to apologize to the people I laugh at for believing in those.

I mean that a vast number of young people, ostensibly and obviously human, born of human parents, have lived in conditions so different from the rest of humanity throughout history (and most places) and been taught so little of the real world that they’re effectively aliens.

Which is why stuff like the anti-work movement exists.

I’ve always assumed these were a few deranged people who smoked the bad pot, or something.

I mean, how can you be anti-work. To exist in the world requires work. Biologists call what an organism does to survive “How it earns its living.” And well, it’s obvious if you know anything about economies, or work, or you know, how food gets to the table, that “I don’t want to work, I just want to do my art” is not … viable. Not over a large amount of people.

If you’re not making a living, someone else is making it for you, and while at some point that’s viable — I made almost nothing for years, but I contributed in other ways, and my husband wanted me to do those things and the writing, and we collectively deemed it worth it. But he was working for my benefit, and it did limit our options — if it’s a private arrangement, it’s not a viable SOCIAL arrangement.

Yeah, sure, primitive societies might not have work as we view it, but Lord, do they have work. It might be short bursts, but it’s usually dangerous and often maiming. And it leaves you exposed in — to us — unimaginable ways.

Since the seventies, the left has been talking about the “inevitable” future where the robots did all the work. This is bullshit, which they would understand if they understood reality (which they don’t.)

Even in the world of magical robots, robots will need to get fixed/adapted to new situations/ improved. And if you just said “Robots can do that” you fail. Because that is when you hit “Facebook bot” level of understanding of what robots can and can’t do.

Can we greatly improve things, so people’s work is less … onerous? Sure. But to the point of no work? Um…. no. Partly also because….

Okay, so I have a friend who is an end-of-life nurse (Actually, weirdly, I have three of those. Uh.) I was told that when people have nothing left they want to do/need to do, they die. The age doesn’t matter. To an extent health matters only marginally. There are people alive who should long since have died, but they have things to do, so they stay.

Reviewing the history of my family, this would seem to be true.

And before you say “But I’m really driven to do my art” or whatever…. dude, dude, dude. Art you don’t get paid for/that no one wants/has no meaning in your daily life will not keep your interest. Trust me. I speak “I struggled for years to produce because I saw no result to what I did.”

So the land where we all “just do what we want” is called “civilizational collapse.”

But that’s okay, because robots don’t actually work that way.

However I didn’t realize how widespread the crazy was until…..

Okay, so a few weeks ago, friends were talking about the Little House In The Prairie” books, which I read as a kid but didn’t remember AT ALL.

I binged them through the final days of house closing, even though it meant giving money to Harper Collins. In the process I found copyright is held by a child of a literary agent, and realized there were no direct descendants (though there are collateral ones) of the family. So I did a research dive for my satisfaction.

Holy mother of crazy idiots, Batman.

So, I kept stumbling into sites that said Pa was a “Terrible provider” because sometimes they were near starving. And, oh, yeah, they were evil because they tried to steal lands from “Native Americans” and her treatment of race was wrong, and and and…..

But what stuck out to me is these people had no clue how hard life was, back then. Or in many places in the world now. That you could do “everything right” and still almost starve. Or that, you know, agriculturalists have been pushing out hunter gatherers since the dawn of agriculture, because hunting and gathering is a really inefficient use of land, and more people can make a living in agriculture, and that’s how things work out.

That’s when I realized, in horror, that these people are aliens among us. They not only don’t know: they don’t know what they don’t know.

And some of them have power and come up with fantasies like “the great reset” and think that will work on real people.

Aliens. They’re utter and complete aliens.

And they’re destroying humanity.

You Short Sighted Goat Fornicating Pre-K DropoYou Short Sighted Goat Fornicating Pre-K Dropouts – Bob -The Frighteningly Sane*-Fool

Dear Officials of the Canadian Government,

I am an American.  Additionally, I am no friend of Canada, or of Canadians.

Justin Trudeau, a senior official holding positions you are apparently endorsing, has said that a certain internal security issue is a result of American interference, and that as a result, all options will be on the table.

I would suggest that you reflect very carefully on how much risk you are willing to take in support of such policy.

Additionally, to the officials confident that they want to support Trudeau, fully and unconditionally; Are you out of your God D*mned minds?

Yes, sanity is maybe defined for a culture, and American culture and Canadian culture are very far from identical.  Beyond that, I am not considered sane even within American culture.

It may still be quite defensible to wonder how in Hell this apparent plan of yours could possibly ever be a good sane idea.

Four relevant Bob facts: 

1.  I really do not like vaccine mandates.  2.  I was in favor of this trucker protest when I heard of it.  3.  I have donated no money or other physical resources to it.  It is almost certain that Canadians have heard me speak approvingly of it, but the Canadians were mostly not my intended audience for the comments.  4. I am perhaps an expert on the difficulty of persuading Americans that there should be war with Canada; Canadian behavior just isn’t usually the sort of thing that makes Americans want to wage war. 

As best as I can estimate, the truck protestor victory condition is taking their trucks, and returning to work, without being compelled to vaccinate.  From this flows all of the conclusion that the Canadian government position in not tenable, and will collapse at some point.

I think you Canadians are barbarians, and don’t get too excited over how wrongly you behave with regard to one another. 

Why is it of any interest to me?  My calculation is that the vax would cripple me, and that my former employer did not set aside the funds for any sort of compensation for crippling me.  If I am completely denied anything interesting to do with my time, I can devote the rest of my life to making the people responsible miserable.  The truckers are doing what I would like to do in their place, but more intelligently, and more kindly.  I am not doing that yet, because I still have opportunities that are more interesting than trying to make the likes of you miserable.  I am still looking at what bureaucracies here may inflict on me.  If your policies collapse, the similar policies here may collapse.

The first argument that you are screwed takes the additional assumption that you have wrongly estimated policy impact on the logistics of Canada.  Do you actually know how many truckers you need?  How many are available, will vax, and will not fax?  Fraction that are owner-operators, and could not be easily replaced assuming availability of competent vaccinated drivers?

It seems plausible that you are stupid enough to have over looked this angle, in part because there are so many idiots here in the US being similarly stupid.  America’s freight and passenger logistics are over a combination of rail (optimized for freight), semi-trucks, buses, and airplanes.  The electric vehicle proposals in the US are probably evidence of the same level of incompetent disregard for the objective physical reality.  First, we don’t have nuke plants, so EVs are basically fossil fueled, and possibly quite a bit less efficient than heat engine combustion once you do all of the energy bookkeeping.  Second, we don’t seem to have EV semi-tractors, and California has apparently banned the conventional semi-tractors.  Thirdly, we don’t have anywhere near the charging stations that would be necessary for interstate freight and passengers to be carried by EVs.  Fourth, there was a proposal floated to have EV airplanes, and it seems our government is very enthusiastic in saying that it will be so.  One serious problem with these EV proposals, is that they would have the consequence of limiting travel within the United States.  The current apparent political consensus is a product of the level of travel, so limited travel could be expected to produce a different balance of power, and different consensus.

The second argument is that your spokesmen have seriously ruined the best chance that you had for a outcome that you would find desirable. 

The nice for you path was letting the truckers get bored and feel like they were not accomplishing everything.  If you could split off a hypothetical minority inexorably opposed to vaxxing, you might be able to get the rest to go back to work, take the vax, and not remain there supporting their fellows.

This has been mishandled pretty much from day one.

There were a bunch of loud idiots on your side mouthing off, because they had decided on violence, /before/ they actually confirmed that they had the shooters available and willing to carry out the violence.  So, your status quo policy is continuing down that route, in lieu of resigning and retiring from politics.  But, you didn’t have the shooters prepped before hand, so whatever premise you plan on using, you are planning to implement with very few people. 

Furthermore, the Truckers are Canadians.  Like the American population, the Canadian population seems to have produced good infantry.  Infantry and the population that they are recruited from are rarely entirely different from each other.  They don’t have /all/ of the psychological advantages that good infantry would have, but they have some, and you’ve made it clear enough that you intend to kill them, that they won’t necessarily be shocked into paralysis when the violence starts.  At the very least, they have greater commitment to facing the threat together.  This means that you need a lot of shooters, not a few.  Trying to use a few shooters instead, makes it very likely that the violence will be much uglier than the plans call for. 

Canadians will not be super happy about that.  Perhaps your shooters will be the unhappiest.  Long term, in supporting this going forward, you are risking personal consequences.  Everyone and their dog will know that you were involved, that it was an avoidable mistake, and your fault will be very easy to see.

There are American idiots encouraging you to do very stupid things in order to ‘remedy’ this matter.  Tires are a little bit useful in moving a semi-truck, without it getting wrecked in the process.

That would be forcing unwanted carnal knowledge of syphilitic camels, and metaphorically result in community spread of smallpox.

Getting rid of the truckers, but disabling the tractors in place is not a winning move for you.  Setting the trucks on fire, would not be a winning move for you.  Yes, you do have the weapons systems to destroy the trucks, and kill a lot of truckers; this is not a winning move for you.  Your shooters have a very difficult problem in trying to capture the trucks intact enough to be removed, instead of setting them on fire and leaving the streets blocked with wreckage.  Wrecking a strategic bridge, and setting your own capital on fire, is not a winning move in anyone’s playbook. 

Getting the trucks out of the city alone may not be a victory condition.  You may need to get them moving again.  Okay, sure, Ottawa is close to the US that you could maybe still eat even if you managed to wreck the entire Canadian economy.  Would not be good for having a political future.  Getting them back into service needs truckers.  Note: Automation is not the answer.  Automation is hard, and does not appear ready to operate semi tractors.  An accelerating tractor is a little bit stable for automation to operate, like a pendulum.  A decelerating tractor, accelerating to a lower speed, is unstable like an inverted pendulum.  This might be a quite difficult problem for automation. 

Note: You have been trying to hire tow trucks.  Basic problem 1: A tow truck company knows that if trucking firm A hires them to steal tractors, firms B, C, and D will have nothing to do with them, and then the tow truck company goes out of business.  Basic problem 2: there may not actually be enough tow trucks.  Companies buy tow trucks to handle an expected break down rate by their customers.  These aren’t break downs, and are vastly greater than the expected rate.  You might wear out every tow truck in the country just trying to get the semi tractors out of town.

One of your possible options is trying to have the police serve as shooters.  One of the challenges there is that you can’t really promise them that you will protect and reward them for doing what you want.  A cop who wants to be forced to retire, and possibly be criminally prosecuted can just go have a bad shoot against a junkie.  You would have needed to not only have supported them when they had Good Shoots, but also in abuses of police power, in order to have police view being involved in this as anything but a career ender.  Yes, you’ve asked for volunteers and loans, but I suspect that there are a great deal of unpaid parking tickets to investigate.

Another is the military.  One problem, again, they know exactly how much trouble you are asking them to get into on your behalf.  Two, shooting up a capital and setting it on fire is kinda how militaries take over the governments of countries.  Asking your military to do so on the strength of your being the government, especially on pain of imprisonment for refusing, can result in no longer being the government.  You are currently in power, and will be pissed off at them refusing.  The population of your country will probably be the population of your country for some time, will likely be pissed off if they don’t refuse, and will long have some ability to see that people are confined to prison.  You may feel that you have a monopoly on prosecutions, but political power is fleeting, and even if the cops or the military thought you could and would deliver on protecting them from prison, they would doubt that you could protect them forever.

Police and military seem to be the highest possibilities for which you may find only enough shooters willing to follow orders to get you into a lot of trouble.  This is getting eaten by the sow that you are copulating with, in the illusion that kissing makes it romantic.

One risk that you should not be worrying about is what happens in the US if the US government does stupid things at your request.  American stupidity is an American concern.  You can’t have the information to judge which things are dangerous, and which are not.

Your remaining risk that you really should be careful about judging; Is the American ‘intervention into Canadian internal security’ worth a war with the US?  This is probably extremely low probability.  Still, would it be likely to end well? 

Okay, America has not done an exceptional job of preparing for such a war, but it isn’t clear that Canada has the best strategic position either.  Normally, I would suspect that a sane American government might be reasonably positioned to force peace negotiations to occur.  However, the current Canadian policy makes me wonder if there is any way to force Canadian officials to negotiate sanely.  We’ve been negligent in prepping long range artillery tubes and shell stockpiles enough to work over a lot of Canadian cities, but would it matter to you if we had?  This doesn’t really matter, because after Afghanistan there is little reason to trust American power projection, or the sanity of American foreign policy implementation.

The real danger of a war between our nations is that we both see internal security risks, and our central governments may no longer be absolutely able to bind our respective peoples to peace.  Again, infantry and the population infantry is recruited from can be similar.  Our unofficial irregular forces could war against Canada, and Canadian unofficial irregular forces could war against America, and it could prove quite messy.  From my perspective, if my folks kill off the Canadian government, and Canadians kill off the US jerks, that would be about the nicest possible outcome.  Wars are never that convenient for anyone.  Better that folks don’t get that agitated.

Your fundamental plan seems to be “these people we were leaning on aren’t doing what we want.  We just have to lean on them harder, they will do what we want.”  Sounds to me like seeking conjugal relations with a goat, in expectation of a happy marriage. 

Why isn’t quitting the better option?

*Insertion by Sarah. You were warned.

I always know when the left is desperate for us to do something stupid: I start getting a lot of first time commenters saying things like we should kill so and so, and it’s time to hang them all, and–

No, I don’t approve those.

In retrospect, btw, I should have known something was up with January 6th because I got a ton of first time commenters telling me to go, and offering to pay for it. I wanted to, but besides being broke, I didn’t see a point to it. (To be fair, that and his eagerness in clamping down the virus bs (yes, okay, so “germophobe” but it doesn’t explain it really. I mean, sorry, but if I could see through it, he should have been able to, make me very suspicious of Trump. Not that it matters. If he runs again, it’s his to lose. I just…. Well, if I weren’t sure no one can be that manipulative and/or clever I’d be very afraid.) Because if we weren’t officially disputing the election, what was the point? Well, a trap and setup was the point, of course. (Whether Trump was talked into it is something else.)

And no, it’s absolutely no use saying we should already have started stacking bodies. Not only did the founding fathers take a looong time to do something about it, you guys have to pay attention at what is going on, and the fact this really is world wide and that other countries take their cues from America, so if the left gets a small, isolated but sufficiently horrible act they can use to kill us, every country in the world will be purged of non-communists.

And the reason they’re desperate for it is that’s the only way they can win. THE ONLY way.

Because Trump, whatever else he did (and militating on the side of he wasn’t on Their side, he pulled the masks down. He forced the left into such a desperate gambit that it ripped the remaining shreds of “they care” and “they mean well” off their image. And reveled them, bumbling, stupid, and criminally malicious for all the world to see.

Which is why unless we allow them to demonize us, they’ve already lost. No, take a deep breath. They’ve already lost.

If you’re my age or just a younger kid raised in the best institutions you might think that the left can do “big stuff”: Dams and roads, and all that stuff.

Um…. that was sort of a fluke in the US and had to do with a confluence of the time period, and experience hard won in WWII.

Actually everything that’s built by leftists — who are always totalitarian, either soft or hard — is…. crap. It falls apart, it doesn’t hold, it never performs as advertised.

And every large government that engages at any level in planning or interfering in the economy is leftist, by American terms.

They are attracted to, and have taken all the positions of concentrated power, including at big corporations.

The problem is that such positions are hellishly difficult due to problems of information. It might be possible to fulfill them well, but it’s nebulous, because the information we have on people who supposedly did is probably inaccurate. But if it can be done well, it’s not by men of system and theory, which is what the left is. It would have to be by people who understand people and leave a lot of leeway for improvisation and give a lot of incentive to innovation.

The left doesn’t get that. And the more beachheads they took the more things stopped working or went truly weird.

“But Sarah, government doing things and directing economy and society has been the norm for 100 years, why should it fall now?”

Because the ONLY thing that kept them in power was the full control of news, entertainment and education. That’s been escaping for some time, and the 2020 gambit which was supposed to bring it all under their control is backfiring spectacularly, and allowing people to realize it never worked very well at all. It was just hidden/disguised/propagandized.

So, the US hasn’t gone hot even to the extent of Canada. And you guys argle bargling we should have done it six years ago, aren’t seeing the whole picture. If you’d done that, you’d have created a threat and menace that would have swept all the left’s failures from the public eye, and allowed them to get, if not full control of the media, full control of the message for long enough to destroy everyone who opposed them and make talking against them a crime.

Instead, they’ve been showing their ass more and more every day.

Yes, it sucks, and we’ll suffer for it, but it had to be done. The masks needed to be ripped. Carter had tarred them with incompetence by being a bumbling idiot, but the malice needed to be shown, on full display. And boy, is it being.

Does this mean we shouldn’t do anything?

You guys are missing we are doing things. One of the things we’re doing is moving. Look, Colorado is now begging people not to leave (we might have sold the house JUST in time. And not, I still haven’t processed it. This week has been weird.) Begging businesses to come back. The places they took are collapsing. As for “but conservatives run away” — well, we vote with our feet, or this country wouldn’t exist, and the west would never have been colonized. If you think it makes no difference, you are wrong. It makes a huge difference. Because Americans can see the difference between areas and states, no matter how much the media obscures it.

The other things going on? Oh, dear. I know more people in the belly of the beast, being very, very punctilious about obeying. No, really, super punctilious. Yes, it causes issues, they’re just so GOSH DARN RESPONSIBLE.

And there’s the thousands going home instead of submitting to vax mandates.

We’re distributed, leaderless, chaotic. That is a terrible set up for anything more direct. But as some commie or other said “An ant can’t stop a train, but it can give an itch to the conductor till the train crashes.” And there’s millions of ants, partly because it’s impossible to live in the fake reality of leftism, anymore. Which keeps getting more and more impossible, as they try to “fix” our disobedience.

Is it going to be easy? Uh. No. And again and again PREP. Prep to the limits of your ability. Because things are going to get very ugly, very fast.

And it might come to a la lanterne. It might come to a Romanian Christmas Gift (which is much preferable) but until that time comes, all you can do is prepare. For that time to come, things need to be in such a state that it’s inevitable, and everyone knows it. (We might get a living diorama in Canada. Hopefully not, but you people in America’s Glorious War Bonnet, do keep safe, and prepared, okay?)

Before that? Well, the left always tells you what it wants. Note that every time they can they start looking for “White supremacist insurrectionists” (Or people they can tar as such.) Because even a semi-credible example they can demonize will allow them to clamp down for another 5 years or a decade. Most of them are very old. Also they expect China to conquer the world — or Russia, depending on their age — so if they can keep us under their boot till then, they win. (Yes, they’re idiots. Neither of those zombie-countries can conquer much more than their own backyards. And if they did, our own idiots would be against the wall in the time it takes a New Yorker to flee to Texas.)

So they want us to do something inadvisable. Well, they want us to already have done it. They’re in fact getting QUITE testy that we haven’t. They’re trying to turn the truck protest into this event, only obviously the truckers weren’t violent. And everyone knows it.

But Sarah you say “A la lanterne” and you point to guillotines. Well, listen, I get angry enough for anything, but those remarks — do you think I was on the side of the revolutionaries in FRANCE? Seriously — are more of a note of caution to our oppressors: “If you go on, this is inevitable.”

Which it is. Predicting a result doesn’t mean wanting it. (Unless you’re a facebook bot.) It just means you can think and have read an awful lot of history.

“Should” we have burned it all down 6 years ago? Sure. If the republic were me, the commenters of this blog, and maybe an equivalent number of the other side, and if our media reach were equal. And our penetration of bureaucracy.

Would it have been easier? Dear Lord. If you think that, you don’t know how long that kind of war can last (200 years isn’t rare) nor what destruction it leaves.

It is easier to call for it, because it keeps you from the hard slog of resistance and reclaiming the culture that is actually helping. (“Let’s go Brandon” didn’t viral itself.)

It sounds like less glorious work than roaming the hills with a Kalashnikov, but don’t fool yourself. It’s the work that actually will save civilization.

Will time come for kinetic? If they insist on being complete idiots? Probably. But when it comes everyone will know it. And it will be chaotic, multi-headed, terrible. And hopefully brief, or nothing will survive it.

Do I hope we still get by without it in most places? Yes, yes I am. I LIKE civilization.

But they are stupid, and insist on making it impossible for people to live. And all their clever plans backfire. So it might be unavoidable.

(And no we don’t need to kill them all to destroy the ideology. You people forget how fast people can turn their coats. Not every German who believe in the Nazis was killed. They just changed overnight. People do, if scared enough. Even now, a lot of true believers are getting red pilled. I know several who got so in the last two years.)

Be not afraid, and be not stupid. They’re desperate for an excuse. Do not give them one.

Protests are important, but make them truly peaceful. VISIBLY SO. Let the Canadian truckers be your model. And BE AWARE you might be killed for your entirely peaceful, constitutionally sound protests. (Our particular bastards didn’t invent that one. I knew the risks every time I protested in my teens.) If it were easy, it wouldn’t have sweet liberty as a reward.

Remember “Our lives, our fortune, our sacred honor.” It’s a price that was once paid. And very likely will be again.

Because anything worth earning is worth the price.

And to secure the blessings of liberty onto future generations, we’ll have to pledge our payment.

Be not afraid. And prepare, prepare, prepare.

Think it possible, you may be mistaken

by Francis turner

In 1650 Oliver Cromwell wrote a letter to the Scottish Parliament which includes the famous phrase

I beseech you in the bowels of Christ think it possible you may be mistaken.

The entire letter is fairly short, and if a bit cryptic to the modern reader – particularly the modern secular reader – seems remarkably relevant to the current covidiocy and in particular to the current standoff in Ottawa.

For example in the letter Cromwell complains that the Scottish parliament have completely ignored what Cromwell has said and instead have claimed he said other things. Also they have spread their incorrect claims about Cromwell to lots of people including into his army.

You take upon you to judge us in the things of our God, though you know us not,-though in the things we have said unto you, in that which is entitled the Army’s Declaration, we have spoken our hearts as in the sight of the Lord who hath tried us. And by your hard and subtle words you have begotten prejudice in those who do too much, in matters of conscience,-wherein every soul is to answer for itself to God,-depend upon you. So that some have already followed you, to the breathing-out of their souls: ‘and’ others continue still in the way wherein they are led by you,-we fear, to their own ruin.

And no marvel if you deal thus with us, when indeed you can find in your hearts to conceal from your own people the Papers we have sent you; who might thereby see and understand the bowels of our affections to them, especially to such among them as fear the Lord. Send as many of your Papers as you please amongst ours; they have a free passage. I fear them not. What is of God in them, would it might be embraced and received!-Oneof them lately sent, directed To the Under-officers and Soldiers in the English Army, hath begotten from them this enclosed Answer; which they desired me to send to you: not a crafty politic one, but a plain simple spiritual one;-what kind of one it is God knoweth, and God also will in due time make manifest.

This seems not entirely dissimilar to the actions of the “Despicable Ken Doll” a.k.a. the Canadian Prime Minister. PM Truck Frudeau has said he will not be inimidated, will not negotiate or concede and instead has claimed that the truckers are a REEE *ist *phobic etc. fringe movement while presenting absolutely no evidence that they are. This is transparently false and the only people who can’t see it are those who can check for polyps when they open their eyes.

Refering to the protests as a fringe is obviously laughable when opinion polls show that about the same proportion of Canadians agree with the protest as voted for the Turdeau’s party in the last general election. The REEE claims are also REEEEsible. If one goes to alternate media sites and youtube channels one sees that the protesters are a cross section of working Canadians of all races, both genders etc. and that the only thing they want, for now, is to stop the mandates and vaccine passports.

That’s not the only similarity. In the letter Cromwell then states fairly directly that if the Scottish Parliament doesn’t accede to his wishes and decides to fight, his army will defeat them.

[In that he was completely correct as a month or so later he killed or took prisoner about half the Scottish forces at the battle of Dunbar and in typical Cromewellian fashion showed no mercy to the prisoners who were marched with limited food or medical attention to Durham in Northern England and then the survivors of that march (about half the original prisoners) were eventually sold off to the New World as indentured labourers (a.k.a. slaves – and not a single one of the African persuasion). After that it took him a year to comprehensively defeat the Scots and a few foolish English Royalist allies, culminating in the Battle of Worcester, which Charles II survived by notoriously hiding in a large oak tree]

At this point the truckers are likely to show more mercy that Cromwell would, but then, unlike Cromwell they haven’t yet experienced several years of fighting as Cromwell had, let alone suffered a few months of hunger and disease (plus to be fair, they aren’t religious nutters like Cromwell either)

There is no doubt in my mind that at this point Justine and his deep state friends have the best offer they are going to get. Indeed it is notable that as the days go by demands are growing for more things like the resignation of Turdoh and the relaxation of a ton of other wuflu restrictions that were not present in the initial demands. Yet they don’t seem to grasp this and instead have doubled down on the insults. They’ve lied, they’ve prevaricated and claimed that they are the sole source of truth and ignored all the voices suggesting that they are wrong. As Cromwell puts it:

Your own guilt is too much for you to bear: bring not therefore upon yourselves the blood of innocent men,-deceived with pretences of King and Covenant; from whose eyes you hid a better knowledge! I am persuaded that divers of you, who lead the People, have laboured to build yourselves in these things; wherein you have censured others, and established yourselves “upon the Word of God.” Is it therefore infallibly agreeable to the Word of God, all that you say?

And then comes the famous line:

I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.

All the Canadian leadership have to do is do what the Scottish parliament would not and implement what the protesters want them to do. If they do that they get to keep their jobs, their pensions and their lives. But doing so requires a certain humility and willingness to admit error. It’s ironic really that they are choosing to fight this battle because the scientific evidence suggests that the wuflu is no longer any kind of threat to global health. Hence other, more science-literate authorities are removing mandates and rules – Israel, the UK, Sweden, Denmark …

The Scots wouldn’t do that in 1650 and it looks like the Duplicitous Ken-doll and his buddies won’t either in 2022. Because to do so would mean a loss of face, and now that the protests have spread to other nations, if one political leader submits all the others face greater pressure to. So they resist. Like the Scottish parliament. And they will reap the consequences like the Scots did too.

Probably, also like the Scottish parliament, they will go on purges to remove from their ranks of minions anyone who suggests that maybe they ought to reconsider. In the Scots case that was a significant number of their experienced military leaders (and probably individual soldiers, though no one mentions them). In the current scenario it’s going to be the competent police chiefs and officers, who are the precisely the ones that will be needed to perform the removal of the protesting vehicles.

This is a problem for the authorities. As this screencap which has been circulating recently points out:

There have been a lot of similar points made on the non-corporate controlled parts of the web and even (amazingly) in the BBC’s coverage.

The stand-off has created a tough choice for local towing companies.

Their heavy tow trucks, commonly known as “wreckers”, can ostensibly help clear the roads, but trucker Doug Rowland says many may be reluctant to get involved for both political and practical reasons.

“A lot of towing companies consider themselves truck drivers as well,” he explained.

According to him, even large to mid-sized towing companies might own five wreckers at most, often at hefty price tags ranging from $300,000 (£221,000) to $1m, so smaller companies are likely to avoid a hostile situation that could damage their expensive equipment.

Further logistical difficulties arise from the sheer number of vehicles involved in these protests. They can weigh 20-30 tonnes depending on the load.

Each truck requires its own wrecker and hooking up a wrecker to a truck takes about an hour, assuming the driver is present and co-operating.

“If the trucker is not co-operative, it probably takes an extra 15 minutes or half hour because you don’t have access to the cab, the inside of the truck,” said Mr Rowland.

And that doesn’t get to the deliberate sabotage options. 20+ tons of metal on deflated tires with the valve stems cut and then (not before as a certain Harvard prof recommended) with the tires slashed is not going to move easily even once you have disconnected the air brakes. Especially if someone has also removed, say, critical bits of the engine or axles. It will take hours for experienced workers to move such a truck. It will take days for inexperienced ones to do so. And there’s far more than one truck at each protest.

Thus when newspapers like the NY Slimes and bluecheck experts on Twitter insist that the True D’oh and his minions quash the protests they demonstrate their lack of familiarity with large vehicles, physics, scheduling, logisitics and so on

The way this is going to be resolved is for Justin Castro to admit he was wrong and to stop madating vaccines, masks and other covidiocies. He can do it now while the Canadian (and Nothern US) economy is reasonably healthy or he can do it later when there has been a ton of economic disruption. Or someone else can do it after he ceases to be Prime Minister. The fact is that this is clearly not a few fringe nutters, it is a significant fraction of the population.

Moreover (unlike Antifa and BLM) these protesters are actually critical to the nation. If you put BLM and antifa in jail all you do is deprive a few cafes of the barristas and lecturers of their students neither of which affects anything critical. If you put 10% of your truck drivers in jail when you already have a critical shortage of truck drivers you are going to screw things up. You can’t win this war, all you can do is lose less horribly.

Fundamentally Justin, it all boils down to this:

I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.

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. That helps defray my time cost of about 2 hours a day on the blog, time probably better spent on fiction. ;)*

FROM D. LAWDOG AND CEDAR SANDERSON: The Ratel Saga.

All they wanted was to dig a pit trap and get a pet. The local African wildlife didn’t agree to either part of this plan…

A riotously funny activity book, field guide to (some)African fauna, and a story of growing up.
We strongly recommend that you do NOT try any of these things at home. However, you should definitely read where you can laugh out loud, as you should color outside the lines.

From the team that brought you Taskforce Chiweenie: The Poultry Liberation Front, The Ratel Saga is a (mostly) true story illustrated by a certified natural history illustrator who wants you to know this is moderately child friendly, even if the events depicted were a little hard on the adults involved .

Parental Supervision Advised

FROM L. A. GREGORY: Tidecall: A Novel of the Bitterlands

Otter survives by his wits and shapeshifting magic. So after enduring a bitter winter on the shores of an unfamiliar sea, he hunts for the source of the blight plaguing his homeland. But when something ancient and deadly stirs within the dark waters, he fears his power can’t match the threat.

Calling on the creatures he’s befriended for help, the determined young shifter descends into the dangers of the abyss. When he inadvertently rouses a horror from the ancient past, it tears into his allies with murderous intent.

Can Otter’s skill and compassion unravel the mystery, before the last acts of a long-dead people poison everything he loves?

FROM KAREN MYERS: King of the May – A Virginian in Elfland (The Hounds of Annwn Book 3)

MORE VALUABLE AS A WEAPON THAN A KINGMAKER, HE MUST MAKE HIS OWN CHOICES TO SECURE THE FUTURE.

George Talbot Traherne, the human huntsman for the Wild Hunt, had hoped to settle into a quiet life with his new family, but it was not to be. Gwyn ap Nudd, Prince of Annwn, has plans to secure his domain in the new world from the overbearing interference of his father Lludd, the King of Britain.

The security of George’s family is bound to that of his overlord, and he vows to help. But when he and his companions stand against Lludd and his allies at court, disaster overturns all their plans and even threatens the Hounds of Annwn themselves.

George and his patron, the antlered god Cernunnos, must survive a subtle attack that undermines them both. Other gods and gods-to-be have taken an interest, but the fae are divided in their allegiances and fear the threat of deadly new powers in their unchanging lives.

George and his companions must save themselves if they are to persuade their potential allies to help. But how can they do so, attacked on so many fronts at once? Will he put his family into greater jeopardy by trying to defend them?

FROM MARGARET BALL: A Child of Magic (Applied Topology Book 7)

An old enemy, a new threat… When their son Aleksi is kidnapped, Thalia and Lensky are left wondering if the reason is ransom (bad) or revenge (worse). It’ll take all Thalia’s genius for applied topology (aka magic) to retrieve their baby – and meanwhile, the other topologists are turning into cats, getting jailed in the eighteenth century, and otherwise keeping life interesting.

FROM CELIA HAYES AND JEANNE HAYDEN: Luna City X (The Chronicles of Luna City Book 10)

Welcome to Luna City, Karnes County, Texas … Population 2,457, give or take! Fugitive former celebrity chef Richard Astor-Hall has decided to make some serious changes to his life … and propose to his girlfriend, Kate Heisel. But the path of true love does not run smooth. Meanwhile, Jess and Joe Vaughn face impending childbirth, and Xavier Gunnison-Penn, the world’s most unsuccessful professional treasure-hunter marries his true love and sets off a family row, on the way to search for another treasure. Another chapter in the doings of those residents of Luna City, in this tenth visit to the most perfect small town in Texas.

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?

FROM ANNA FERREIRA: A Capital Whip

An invalid for much of her life, Miss Anne de Bourgh has precisely one accomplishment: carriage driving. She is proud of her skill with reins and whip, and justifiably so.

But when another young lady moves into the neighborhood, and challenges Anne’s place as the most accomplished driver in Hunsford, Anne must prove to herself, to her beloved horses, and to her family that she is worthy of the name de Bourgh, and she does not shrink away from a challenge.

FROM ALMA T. C. BOYKIN: The Lone Hunter: Familiar Generations Book One

All Hunters have a Hunting partner, save for one . . . the Lone Hunter, the Hunter in Shadow.

Jude Tainuit Hunts alone. Exiled from the Clan, he watches over Dover County. A twisted beast and rumors of a new, powerful magic worker force Jude to emerge from the shadows.

A Hunter Hunts, even though it cost him his life.

A Familiar Generations short story.

FROM BLAKE SMITH: Lyddie Hartington: Galaxy Sleuth.

Facing poverty after a childhood among the wealthy and powerful, Lyddie Hartington decamps to Ceres, a newly colonized planet on the edges of the galaxy. Armed only with a change of clothes, a letter of introduction to the directors of the Andromeda Company, and a blaster, she is determined to make her fortune.

But Ceres is nothing like Orion-14, and before she knows it, Lyddie is witness to a murder- a murder that goes to the heart of the Andromeda Company and puts her life in danger. With the help of her new friend, an entirely too handsome captain of the Galaxy Watch, she must discover the murderer and solve the mystery of her family’s downfall.

If she can survive long enough to do it.

FROM STEPHANIE OSBORN: The Bounty Game

In Agent Omega’s worldview, certain things simply were not possible.

And the claim of this tall, imposing alien woman calling herself Myclestra, that she came from another universe, was impossible. Worse yet, Myclestra claimed to be a bounty hunter tracking an evil shape-shifting perpetrator who wielded real, powerful, world-shattering…magic. Not simple cantrips, but wizardry that could destroy a world…or a galaxy.

But as terrible as her perp was, it was the gigantic sword slung over Myclestra’s back that was the true threat to everything Echo and Omega strove to protect. A five-foot-long blade, forged from the heart of a neutron star, crowned with a hilt of fabulous gems and precious metals. A sword literally haunted by a spirit that could be the end of Galactic civilization in the entire Milky Way…and more.

FROM PAM UPHOFF: Murder at Kozlov House (Fall of the Alliance Book 4)

A Murder Mystery in the Fall of the Alliance series.

A Garden Party at Kozlov House, the Host murdered! Detective Inspector Smirnov is back to find the killer. Was it the angry Wife? A Political Rival? The son? The professor? Or . . . something more sinister?

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.

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.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: Worm

But I’m catching up on a lot of postponed scruff and ruff.

Post tomorrow. ;)

For years now I’ve opposed the term TWANLOC (Those Who Are No Longer Our Countrymen.) I understood why it was used, but America is a nation of belief, and beliefs change, see one Saul of Tarsus.

It took a discussion with a group of friends, where one held out that even our elites have imbibed the essentially egalitarian ideals of America, while the other one said no they haven’t for me to see it clearly.

I have some experience with these elites. I have a disturbing number of still friends and even more former “friends” who graduated from ivy leagues and come from what my mom would call “the best families.”

Families have cultures, the same as nations do. And most of these families were so far up the eugenics movement that if a German maniac hadn’t started killing people in batch lots, they and their ilk on this side of the Atlantic might have.

In face, coffs, there were sterilization programs, and worse.

And before that there were a lot of those families who thought Europe was so much better, because the “best” people got to rule.

In fact, most of our families that had power throughout the twentieth century were or became of the opinions above.

And then the kids were sent to schools where they were taught America hating. Yeah, in some cases they are also taught to hate themselves as white Americans, but you know that’s not better, right? because then they try to redeem themselves the only way possible, by becoming and ally. I.e. a Marxist that tells minorities how to be proper minorities. And this again feeds the sense of “I’m the best one.”

So, in what sense are they our countrymen? In what sense did they ever learn or internalized the founding principles?

Today Trudeau accused America of fomenting the Canadian trucker rebellion. Of course this is not true. What is fomenting it is Justine’s (int.) crazy drive for power over things she doesn’t understand.

I suspect though that our so called elites agree with him. Because Americans are JUST the worst with their belief in the individual and refusing to do what they tell us, from their all-knowing goodness.

The fact that none of these people have even the amount of practical knowledge to pour piss out of a boot with the instructions written on the heel or to organize a bonk in a brothel is just the icing on the cake. They are the apex and consummation of Duning Kruger, and have been told all their lives how smart and educated they are, while being too stupid to realize they know nothing about the real world.

There are many ways this can end. But I have to tell you, if it ends peacefully, we’ll have proven that America is indeed a miracle nation. In the rest of the world, I doubt it will be peaceful.

Yes, there are very few of them compared to us. No, this doesn’t make anything easier.

Yes, it would be better if they realized they’ve lost, and there is actually no Victory condition for them, and just left to the socialist paradise of their choice.

But see where the piss-pouring is an impossible dilemma to them. (And our own idiots running around black pilled don’t help. Because it gives the idiots the impression they’re winning.)

I would very much like to avoid a butcher’s bill in America. The rest of the world is going to get very bad. Here…. If it must come, make it swift and short.

But that is a prayer, rather than a certainty, much less a hope.

Let not “You shouldn’t allow your children to be taught to hate you to gratify the self-esteem of never do wells” be the cautionary tale for the generations. Though, yeah, it needs to be learned.

And let this cup pass from us if it’s possible.

But meanwhile, keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark and brace.

This is gonna hurt. But it’s been on the way since before even the oldest here were born.

Be not afraid and work as well as you can to minimize or avoid the butcher’s bill and to keep those you’re responsible for safe.

Go work.

Most of the rest of the world, but particularly Europe, seem to have a bizarre funhouse vision of America.

Part of it I’ll admit is our fault, or at least “our fault” in the sense that every place in the world has idiots and crazy people, but some we’re the only country on Earth who make those people celebrities and stars. And also that no other country’s movie industry specializes in showing the worst possible about their own country, including making up stuff.

However, it leads to completely surreal experiences. Let’s say there is no resemblance between our country and what people abroad believe we are, except perhaps that we occupy a certain landmass and speak English (and even those. They routinely underestimate both.)

I have on various occasions had my brother try to “broaden the American’s experiences” by saying things like, he knows we only have one kind of cheese (from a country where maybe six kinds are available at any time) or offering to send me a book on history (which I’d read a year before from the History bookclub — so this was pre-Amazon.)

I’ve had the distinct, er…. pleasure…. of being in a store that had bars in every window, in a place where even nice areas have window bars and metal drop shutters on residential homes, and being told by the lady that America sounded nice, but she didn’t want to live with the danger of that much crime. … at the time I lived in downtown Colorado Springs which — at the time — was safe as houses. I routinely left my car unlocked and — often, being scatty — my purse on the floor. (It’s more dangerous now.)

Sometimes, more rarely now, I find myself in late night discussions with various people abroad who…. well, some of them think we have shootouts on the street as a matter of course, others think the average American is starving. The most common ones think that we have a race war going on (which is very alarming, since they think we’re divided 50/50) and almost all of them think that we die on the street corners for lack of health insurance.

This last group falls under “your governments are herding you by telling you lies about freedom.” Which is why it’s so pervasive. Our media lies, their media amplifies it because it’s useful.

Yesterday a blog tried to link to my blog — for no very clear reason — and I always follow the link before approving.

I will confess that this one annoyed me by being wordy, confusing and white letters over a busy background.

The gist seemed to be “America is falling apart because of its fatal flaws” only all the flaws they mentioned are ten times as bad in Europe, particularly France where — for reasons — I suspect this blog originates.

It did the double reverse leap of reasoning about our sexual morals too.

It accused us of being too bound by tradition/what will the neighbors say and blamed, of course, the puritans — I don’t know about you, but I don’t seem to have any guys with tall hats in the neighborhood — and it claimed we’re peculiarly infantile because we always give in to our basest urges and have an “ubiquitous availability of any kind of sex and drugs.” To which we always give in.

And therefore systems that are based on the individual are bad evil wrong, and true morality is collective and also reee.

The fact that they seem to be for more traditional morality than the SJWs doesn’t mean they’re not precisely the same thing, since “collective morality” and a society focused on “the good of society” and not the individual always ends the same way. I’ll grant you certain traditions get there faster, but enforced, collective morality only works in religious orders and isn’t perfect there, where everyone enters volitionaly.

I’ve come across this opinion before and I remain utterly unimpressed. Look, I am an extremely boring woman, married and monogamous and edging towards “grandma aged.” The only drug I do consistently is caffeine. I drink like 4 times a year, which is why my drinks cabinet keeps overflowing since unless I use a liquor in cooking, I rarely use it up. I like alcohol, or at least the taste of it, but I don’t like it enough to drink alone, and husband doesn’t drink and sons drink very rarely.

I doubt there’s anything about my life, or even my attire and general attitudes that would set this kind of twerp off. But I don’t care. My disagreement isn’t with their moral beliefs (those are so different in my friend group that it doesn’t bear speaking, anyway) but with their idea that the community should be able to make decisions about what I get to do when and impose them on me.

I remain convinced that so long as I’m not doing it on the street and scaring the horses, they can put it in their pipes and smoke it. (Well, I’m not going to.)

I also remain convinced when a society becomes convinced that “morality” “justice” and other virtues are collective ones, they’ve already chosen the slide to hell and are merely, busilly, rubbing goose grease on it.

However, it wasn’t till this morning that the idea that we all run around having sex with everything and doing ALL the drugs really percolated. And I’m caught somewhere between laughter and crying.

Uh…. I know this won’t convince anyone, because you’ve seen ALL the movies — ALL THE MOVIES — but seriously, little strange foreign dudes and dudettes….. you’re out of your barking minds.

Hunter Biden or Jack Dorsey or Bill Clinton for that matter aren’t representatives of Americans. No. Seriously.

You can’t at the same time accuse us of being ultra-repressed and having sex with the horses on the street. (Though in a country of 300 million yes, we probably have a few of those, but then so do you. You just don’t put them on TV.)

You also can’t accuse us of working too much — like the evil capitalists we are — and then turn around and think we’re shooting up, snorting and screwing our way through life. Yes, I know the movies show that, but that’s the magic of camera cuts. We are, indeed — thank you for noticing — amazing, but even we can’t lead two totally all-absorbing lives at the same time.

Well, you can, but you risk making even less sense than normal. You also risk our falling on the floor laughing so hard you can feel it across the Atlantic.

To level set, I am a member of the science fiction community, where a collection of odd people gather. I have friends who are in polyandric and polygamous relationships. I have friends of various attractions and inclinations. …. I don’t have any friends who just have sex constantly and on command. For one, because it would get in the way of writing, or studying the craft, or researching.

I don’t know what substances my friends indulge in, mostly because it’s none of my business. But I know most of them — not being Hunter Biden and therefore working for a living — don’t go through life in a drugged-out haze.

The only Americans that fit your description are Hunter Biden and his ilk, and a bunch of homeless, shooting up and fornicating (and killing each other) on sidewalks. And if you think that’s an effect of our society, you haven’t looked at your own streets. It’s the result of the law against public vagrancy not being enforced. No more and no less.

Every society has mentally ill and addled people We just make them celebrities, or turn our cities into dumps for them.

However, as for the “ubiquitous” drugs and sex making us infantile, all I have to say is buy a mirror. In my trips to Europe I see just as many if not more thirty-something year old enfants terribles. And France has always — seemingly — or at least for the last 200 years had issues with the idea that refusing sex is somehow awkward. And yes, I do get that from your media and magazines. Oh, not accurate? Desole. Perhaps you should take a hint.

As for the US falling apart, you only wish. Probably because you’re jealous of all the sex and drugs we AREN’T in fact having. Sure, we have issues, but nothing like yours.

And as for your diagnosis that our problems are rooted in excess individualism, and your decision to jump up the ass of collectivism once more, in search of some kind of grand morality, let me just say once and for all: Next time you’re on your own. Neither my sons or the grandchildren I hope to have, or my ducttape-adopted children and their children should shed a drop of blood or a single tear over your inability to learn.

Look in a mirror, get over yourselves, and realize everything you think about us is a lie. The clues are there, in that you attribute to us wildly contradictory qualities.

Consider that you might be getting lied to, and ask why.

And then dig yourselves out, because Americans are tired of helping you out, and then becoming your punching bag.

It’s time you moved out of our basement and got a life, and stopped obsessing about how much sex we’re having.

And that’s very much my moral, individual opinion.

No, I’m not actually complaining. Most of the time natural means someone like me would have died in infancy if not before. And I don’t dislike wearing clothes, not having to kill my own meat and not being limited to eating what I can grow. (Particularly in Colorado, where I couldn’t grow much of anything, partly because I’m not the best gardener, partly because the soil was like cement.)

But it is important, sometimes, when reading/talking/writing about the past to realize that we live profoundly unnatural lives. Which need unnatural solutions or experiments sometimes. Or just reality check.

For instance, in reading historical books, I’m getting sick and tired of everyone in their twenties who is an orphan having parents who were killed “in a carriage accident.”

No, actually seriously. This is the go-to for all the young writers, who have absolutely no clue how many ways to die there still are, all over the world, much less in the past with no anti-biotics.

Seriously, I keep hearing people telling me that no, the life expectancy was about the same, if you survived childhood. Leaving aside the fact we don’t really have good enough records to claim that (other than for the very upper classes, where we do, but those were a different ball of wax, okay? and even they died younger and uglier than we do) it’s poppycock.

In pre-antibiotic world, you could die of a blister that infected. You could die of accidentally stabbing yourself with a needle. (One of the reasons my dad was obsessive about disinfecting my childhood cuts and scrapes.) You could die of a trifling cold. You could die of medical treatment (Okay, in that, you’re like moderns) and you definitely could die of child birth, hunting accidents, and just “an illness” that was never identified and that could be any of a dozen viruses we no longer even think about.

Sure, childhood — and old age — were particularly dangerous, but trust me, you arrived at sixty looking what we now think of as 80, because all the illnesses took a toll. (It’s still so in most of the world.)

But we live profoundly unnatural lives.

I remember being little and looking at people in their sixties, after the kids left home. They basically sat around waiting for death, with occasional outbreaks of grandkids visiting. It wasn’t like that for my parents, 20 years later. It’s not that way for us.

But that’s not normal or natural.

Which is why as older people we find ourselves fighting old age tooth and nail. That’s also not natural. But we must — so as not to be a burden on our kids, but also because some of us have things to do — create, produce and work, at much older ages than our ancestors did.

So we must take unnatural solutions to our unnatural problems: whether that’s specialized diets, or medicine, or simply strict regimes of exercise and health-monitoring.

And then people say “But that’s not natural. Our ancestors didn’t do any of that.”

No. Our ancestors died young. Often ridiculously young. And often lost years to illness.

Is that the natural way? Sure.

But I don’t really care. I don’t want to live forever (the idea is appalling.) But I have places to go, things to do, and things to work on.

If nature comes for me, it best be armed, because I’m not going without a fight.