I was discussing the Worldcon follies with husband and he said “it’s always the Gulag, with these people.”

I was struck by the wisdom of these words, because… yeah, it’s always the gulag.

I remember P.J. O’Rourke describing the older cousins of our present progressives — the ones smart enough to read the communist manifesto and know that if they agreed with every point, yep, they were communists — as being like the children of strict religious ministers, fanatic and afraid to put a foot wrong.

He might have been right for that generation.  The current generation (and this includes the older people who have lost their minds and are acting like teens) remind me of nothing so much as the “perfect little girl” at religious education.

I just heard the rest of you groan.  At least those of you who were ever in religious education.

You know exactly the girl I mean.  She’s always more pious than you, and always ready to denounce you for telling Jesus jokes in the back of the classroom.  (What?  Like you didn’t.)   She always tells the teacher more in sorrow than in anger.  And she really doesn’t want you punished, she just doesn’t want you to detract from her piety and earnest desire to learn.  And oh, yeah, she always has a smile like that picture of Hillary as a little girl: the perfect sweet smile that doesn’t reach her eyes.

And she’s always so protective of the other kids who want to “earnestly learn” and so ready to tamp down any form of unapproved behavior.

Of course Jesus jokes were very far off approved behavior.  (“Lord, why don’t you turn the stones into bread?”  “No need I brought ham sandwiches.”  Okay, I was 10, okay?) But they really weren’t disrupting anyone else, and also the teacher was so boring it saved us from the indecorous behavior of falling asleep at our desks.  But, more importantly, the group of us telling rather innocuous jokes (trust me) might have been more sincerely religious than the perfect girl.  Part of the reason that we made the jokes is that we’d gotten the point of the lesson and we were bored senseless.  The perfect girl never listened to the lesson ONCE.  Instead, she sat there practicing her pious expression for the world.

We met a more secular version of her in high school, where she always had the perfect makeup, the perfect hair, ran little errands for teacher and in my case, considering the times I went to high school in, was often “impeccably leftist.”

She was, of course, always ready to denounce and isolate you.  In the US that ran to “you can’t sit at the cool kids table.”

I’ve long ago said the “new blood” in established science fiction fandom (not that new, not that young, they’re maybe ten years younger than I)are liberal arts graduates who found it tough to get anything published much less noticed in “literary fiction” and thus moved to the larger pond of science fiction, all the while lecturing us about our pulpy short comings.

They arrived among us like missionaries from England, landing in Papua New Guinea (Hi Joe) in the nineteenth century and demanding all the natives wear pants, as that would greatly improve them.

They ignore everything that went on before, including the many women who were published in science fiction before 2000.  They’re storming the ramparts, and SF was all princesses and bug eyed aliens before them.  (Has anyone seen my eyes?  I think they rolled out on the carpet.)

(I have a mild fever, so I’m trying not to get in facebook arguments, but I honest to Bob heard someone say that if there were no discrimination against women, J. K. Rowling wouldn’t have used her initials.  Yeah, sure.  Shame about J R R Tolkien.  Seriously, guys, if she did choose to hide her gender, and didn’t merely think her initials sounded better, it might have been because she was writing a boy character and was afraid that editors would complain of her “betraying her voice” as I’ve had happen to me.)

And once they’re published, these bunnies decide they’re the cool kids.  They’re civilizing the savages, after all, and making science fiction “respectable” and “Socially relevant.”

Of course, then, the cool kids must be “safe” in the conventions they neither started nor popularized, undisputed in their piety and their “suave” geekiness.  And the rest of us?  To the Gulag with us.

Over and over again we get messages we’re not welcome and they don’t want us.  They tell us to go start our own awards, then rage at the Dragons.

I’m fairly sure that if we take them at their word and stop showing up for religious ed—  worldcon and other traditional literary conventions where we’re not welcome, they’ll find out that the thing is mighty thin of company.

It’s okay.  They’ll attract more people like them, who are there for the virtue signal.

Fortunately these days, our gulag is not so gulagy.  Sure, you can ban us from your spaces, but it’s starting to sound about as “bad” as being declared persona non grata by the old soviet union.  Well, dang.

You guys go on and enjoy the lines for boots and cabbage.  We’ll be over here having fun with fully stocked supermarkets… Metaphorically speaking.

It’s always the gulag.  But no matter how technologically illiterate the “cool kids” are, the rest of us can get together, establish relationships on line, and even, you know, attend conventions (like Liberty con) where they don’t try to exclude us.

Fear not.  Eventually the cool kids will want to “distance” from us and will call themselves something like “relevant science fiction” or (can we persuade them) Woke SF or something.  And the rest of us will continue writing and reading stories that are fun, and frankly not much caring about thought crimes.

The fun part of the left’s “perfect girl” obsessions is that they care so much about appearances they often discard the gift and hold on tight to the wrapping.

They never seem to catch on it means nothing.

 

 

Sunday 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: linen

Hi, my name is Havelock Vetinari, though I’m usually called Havey — I think they mean heavy — and sometimes Captain Floof McFuzzy Pants.

As you can see from my picture, above, I’m QUITE the most handsome of the Hoyt cats, far cuter than Greebo who is all black except for some little white patches, and whom mommy calls her little bulldog.  I’m certainly not a bulldog, though daddy sometimes calls me his puppy, since I come when he calls me.

I’m not sure why I shouldn’t come when called, for you see, I love pets more than anything else.  It’s why I let the Hoyts bring me home from a golf course when I was really little.  They petted me, you see.

Mom says my head is full of fluff.  This is not right.  It’s fully of me.  And I can see very well when mom is avoiding the computer because she has a headache. So I’m going to let her sit in the chair and read her kindle-thingy, while I fill in.

I don’t know what I can fill in with, but I can try.

Let’s get acquainted.  I like being petted and playing with things — though mom and dad both yell at me for playing with their robe belts — and I like eating.  I really like eating.  A lot.  Before the Hoyts there wasn’t much to eat, so I’m very happy to have a lot of food now.

I also like my friend Euclid-cat, but he’s getting very old and forgetful, now that he’s almost 18.

What do you like?  Do you have cats of your own?  Are any of them made of floof?

So, anyway, that’s it.  Mom has a headache, so I did this post.  I’ll let her know it’s taken care of, and then she can rest a bit and see if the headache goes away.

 

I will admit right now that I’m a very bad libertarian.  I AM a libertarian and think that in any dispute we should come down on the side of individual liberty.

You can get me to swoon by saying “taxation is theft” in just the right voice (ask my husband.  He knows.) I’ve mumbled about financing services with lotteries.

But I do think there is a place for both the army and the police in our society.  Seriously, now.  To believe there isn’t, or that we can do without is the equivalent of believing Marxism will make men into angels.  We’re not that deluded, are we?

Both Dan and I have/had relatives in law enforcement, and both of us have heard discussions and followed law enforcement enough to be uncomfortable defenders of the police force at times.

For instance, I was once kicked out of jury by the defense lawyer for pointing out that no, rounding up the “usual suspects” is not unfair.  Most shootings for robbery are a case of known wolves, and few people jump straight from being angelic school boys to full frontal armed assault.  (Or any kind of assault, really.)

(I also once got taken out of a jury for pointing out — quoting PTerry — that all babies look like Sir Winston Churchill.  On second thought I should give lessons on how to get out of Jury Duty, except I wasn’t even trying, just being me.)

We need police, unfortunately, for the same reason we need the army.  There are bad actors out there, and no matter how peaceable, peaceful and inoffensive you are, someone/some country is going to try to hurt you.  And yeah, sure, I GET my more militant libertarian friends saying everyone should defend him/herself.  In theory that’s great and a super idea, but guys, some people shouldn’t have a gun.  And I’m not talking about the mentally ill, I’m talking about people too blind to know what they’re shooting at or similar impairments.  And then there are the too young, too old and too stupid.  And people who don’t understand they have to protect themselves.  And, and and….

It’s all fine and dandy to say “Too bad, strike them off” but that’s not realistic.  Realistically if each person has to hire a protection service, you end up with dueling gangs.

But the police is an uncomfortable solution, because it has the power of government behind them, and while it works for the people it doesn’t always remember that.

This week brought both the news of someone killed during a swatting, and of a young officer killed on the outskirts of Denver.

There is this thing they do in Colorado where they have massive processions and funerals for officers fallen in the line of duty.  It is as it should be.  It’s important to understand the debt of honor owed to those who fell doing a difficult and often thankless job.

When a Colorado Springs Police officer on his first week (I think) of work got shot in the face for what he thought was a routine traffic stop (the guy in the car was escaping from the scene of a murder and thought he was caught) the funeral disabled North Nevada for hours, and since it was near our house at the time, I took the kids out to watch the hundreds of police cars from everywhere in Colorado.

Because it’s right and meet to honor those who fell doing a difficult and thankless job.  (Even if traffic is treated as a cash cow by city officers.  Never mind.  The kid was doing what he should be doing to keep the streets safe, since the guy he stopped WAS driving erratically.)

But it’s a knife’s edge.  When you have sheep dogs, some will lose their minds and bite the sheep.

The Denver police department apparently ran a burglary ring in the seventies.  The new craze for militarizing the police and for the police treating every house-call like they’re entering Fallujah is a problem.  Yes, I know, in the swatting, the man made suspicious gestures.  You know what?  Someone breaks my door down, I’m not going to stop and ask if they’re the police.  And as someone who HAS been threatened with swatting (who on our side hasn’t been?  When we were renting between houses, our insurance agent refused us rental insurance because I’m a conservative blogger, so vandalism, arson and swatting are all risks.  (Frankly this surprised me.  I never thought it was a serious risk.  Wonder what statistics she was looking at)) I get terrified at the idea of the door being broken down and the stupid cats running out and being lost/run over/eaten.  I could see me getting up to check on a cat, or to tell them to not let the cat out, and being shot.

And sure, the police should do a lot more checks, particularly when the SWATTING call is over the top.

OTOH as the shooting while responding to a complaint of a domestic dispute proves, sometime the risk is real, and police officers do have to protect themselves.

There is a knife edge.  Go too much on one side and you’re risking your life.  Go too much on the other and you’re killing innocents, and being used as weapons by bad actors.

Again, I want to make it clear most police officers are decent, hard working people.  Do you get the occasional thuggish brute?  Sure.  You get them in every profession where you give people power.  You screen, you try to eliminate them in training, but you know, humans being humans one or two will slip through.  Eliminating them is like eliminating the very rare man who is disposed to rape.  Can’t be done.

The problem is this: the last administration simultaneously armed the police to the teeth and instigated the population against the police.

This is a familiar playbook.  Almost all revolutions from the left started when law enforcement over-reacted.  I have a private theory (somewhat proven by sound recordings released a few years ago) that Kent State was the work of agent provocateurs trying to use that playbook.

It didn’t work, but if the left abandoned things that don’t work they’d have discarded Marxism decades ago.

So we got the whole myth that police (many of them people of color) are stone cold racists, shooting minorities for no reason.

And the police became defensive.  As you would, if some of your colleagues around the country were shot merely for being in your profession.

In Colorado, a couple of years ago, a couple of police officers got killed by stepping into traffic on the highway, while responding to an accident.

So now we’re told we have to move two lanes over, which frankly makes it more likely to get more accidents and causes untold resentment.  When you cut a four lane highway down to one (one for the accident, then two for police officer protection) there’s a whole lot of shoving and slowing and confusion going on.  Add to that that all this is done in the GLARE of lights so bright they’re probably responsible for the accidents to officers, because at night they blind the drivers for minutes.

It also causes resentment.

Which brings us to today.  We went to Colorado Springs yesterday to deal with a lot of accumulated business.  We still do our personal banking, most of our health stuff, and such in the Springs, because we’ve patronized some establishments for 20 years and don’t feel like finding new ones.  Also, younger son lives in the springs, and we decided to have a leisurely dinner with him, and then stay over night.

We knew there was a funeral for the officer, closing I-25 at 8:30.  It was on signs all over the highway.

So we got up really (REALLY) early (as in, husband is napping now) and headed North to get ahead of the procession.  We made a mistake.  We were so early, and doing such good time, we got off the highway to grab a diner meal.  We were done at eight and tried to get back on the highway…  and the entrances were all closed.

Every single access to I-25 was blocked WELL ahead of the announced 8:30 time.  (They were actually not supposed to start till 8:45, but were supposed to close at 8:30.)

There are a ton of people who work in Denver.  Some tried to argue.  The police all had that look of “tough.  You’ll suffer for what you did.”

I get it.  Look I GET IT.  They’re hurt.  Law enforcement is one of those professions where the only people who GET you are those in the same job, and you think of them as brothers.  And when one of you is killed, you want to punish “all them bastages” which translates as “everyone else.”

But it’s like the “pull over two lanes to ensure safety.”

All you’re really doing is making a whole lot of people resentful, because they won’t get to work on time and will spend a ton of time on the road.  (The alternate routes were chockablock and we finally got home an hour ago.  In our case it was stupid and blame it on “we needed coffee and some kind of food and made a poor decision.”  If we’d continued on we’d have saved three hours.  BUT a lot of the people caught in the mess with us have no other choice.)

It loses sympathy for the police.  It disgraces what should be a respectful and solemn occasion.  And it avenges itself on people predisposed to be on the side of law enforcement.

All of these are bad.

It’s no big deal in our case.  We were on vacation, this was a jaunt, and the only inconvenience (I know.  GRAVE inconvenience) was making this blog late and delaying husband’s nap.  BUT for many people it ruined their day, set their teeth on edge, and made them predisposed to believe the police don’t care.

This us versus them mentality will lead to trouble.

I get it.  I really do.  I understand both sides.  It’s a side effect of the job itself.  Except for the intentional provocateurs trying to set sheep against sheep dogs, it’s a delicate balance and sometimes it fails.

But because of the intentional provocateurs, both sides are predisposed to misunderstand and pre-judge each other.  And this will end very badly.

I want to honor men who fell doing their duty.  And I want their comrades to understand that the rest of us have lives that have to go own around the ceremony, that the rest of us not only didn’t shoot an officer, but WOULDN’T shoot an officer, and are per-disposed to believe most police officers are the good guys with no more rotten apples than any other profession.  Punishing everyone just because they’re not on the force is… daft.

If you’re going to publish you’ll close a major highway at rush hour, at 8:30, don’t close it at 8:00.  There is no point stopping people’s commute.  They’ll get up half an hour early to accommodate the procession, but only *ssholes would resent that.

However if you say one hour, then close half an hour earlier, you’re being the prepotent *sshole and messing with people because you CAN and because they’re not of you.

THAT will only play into the hands of the idiots who hate all policemen, and those who want to use the police as the trigger point to bring about their “socialist utopia.”

If you need the place closed from 8, then say so.

Be mindful of the people you serve.  Just like most police officers are decent, so are most people who aren’t police officers.

Presumption of hatred on both sides will only lead to hatred.

And standing at each other’s throats will only please those who wish to bring civilization down.

 

HRC: The End (or is it?) – by Amanda S. Green

This is the final post on HRC’s book, What Happened. I almost wrote “HRC’s novel”. Why? Because in a lot of ways this has been the best fiction writing I’ve seen in some time. I swear she isn’t recounting the same election season I remember. But it is over, or it will be as soon as I finish this post. What isn’t over is HRC’s belief that she is still relevant and has a role to play in the U.S. political landscape.

I’ll admit up front that I skimmed much of the last 80 pages of the book. Why? Because it is not much more than a rehash of the same sort of things she spent the previous 380 pages or so talking about. Even I have my limits and I finally reached it with this book. In answer to a question one of you asked in the comments a week or so ago, I continued reading and blogging about the book for two reasons. The first was it became like a car wreck. You know as you approach and see the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles that you should look away, but you can’t. You just have to see what happened.

The second reason is a little better. I read the book and blogged about it because the best way to recognize the next HRC to come down the pike is to do our best to understand this one. I’ve come away with a couple of conclusions along this line. The first is that HRC hasn’t admitted, to herself or anyone else, that her political career is truly over. The second is that even if she doesn’t run for office again, she plans to try to pull strings from behind the curtain. The third is that she truly does see herself as some legend in the making, a woman leading a movement and she isn’t about to give that up without a fight.

Campaigns are full of minor annoyances and major frustrations, but at the end of the day, it’s inspiring to watch our democracy whir into action. When all the arguments are made and rallies are finished and TV ads have aired, it comes down to regular people lining up and having their say. I’ve always loved that quip from Winston Churchill about how democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others. I still believe that, even when our system feels totally nuts. (Electoral College, I’m looking at you.) (pg 378)

That sounds good, doesn’t it? In fact, I’m sure most of us could agree with Churchill’s sentiments. However, when looking at the quote in context, you can see why HRC didn’t give more than one very small part of it. Had she done so, her cut at the Electoral College would quickly fall apart.

The quote comes from a parliamentary debate on November 11, 1947. You can read more of it here, but this is what I found interesting when looking at HRC and her complaints – er, observations about the 2016 election:

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time; but there is the broad feeling in our country that the people should rule, continuously rule, and that public opinion, expressed by all constitutional means, should shape, guide, and control the actions of Ministers who are their servants and not their masters.

“[P]ublic opinion, expressed by all constitutional means, should shape, guide and control the actions of Ministers who are their servants and not their masters.” It is clear Churchill understood something HRC continues to deny: elected officials are to be servants of their constituents and not the masters thereof. He also recognized that there are constitutional considerations that come into play – ie, the Electoral College – again, something HRC wants to turn away from. It is clear from everything HRC says in the book that she feels only certain peoples should have a say in how our country is run and that only certain segments of the public should have their opinions considered. That is, in my mind, very far from what Churchill talked about that day in 1947.

For weeks, I had been carrying around heavy binders full of memos relating to the transition and the first decisions I would have to make as President-Elect. There were Cabinet Secretaries to pick, a White House staff to hire, and a legislative agenda to begin working on with Congress. I loved diving into the details of governing, but in the homestretch of the campaign, it was hard to focus on anything past Election Day. (pp 379-380)

Hmm, maybe that was part of the problem, Hils. You got ahead of yourself. You were so focused on what would happen AFTER you were elected that you forgot the first hurdle you had to clear – getting elected. She complained earlier in the book that people couldn’t relate to her and she didn’t understand why. Maybe she ought to take a harder look at herself. Her attitude of assuming she already had won the White House meant she didn’t need to connect to us lowly voters. She didn’t need us. The election was in the bag.

Except, as she and the DNC soon discovered, it wasn’t.

In the chapter entitled “Why” (and you can probably guess what she referred to there – Why did she lose the election? Why didn’t we love her?), she had this to say:

I go back over my own shortcomings and the mistakes we made. I take responsibility for all of them. You can blame the data, blame the message, blame anything you want – but I was the candidate. It was my campaign. Those were my decisions. (pg 391)

Wow, is she actually going to take responsibility? Don’t hold your breath. There’s more.

I also think about the strong headwinds we faced, including the rise of tribal politics in American and across the globe, the restlessness of a country looking for change, excessive coverage of my emails, the unprecedented late intervention by the director of the FBI, the sophisticated misinformation campaign directed from the Kremlin, and the avalanche of fake news. Those aren’t excuses – they’re things that happened, whether we like it or not. (pg 391)

Oookay. Can you imagine how the Left would scream if Trump, or any conservative for that matter, talked about “tribal politics”? Note how she continues to fail to recognize why America wanted change. It’s just bad because it wasn’t the change she was offering. Nor does she discuss the role her own people, and folks from the DNC, played in the Russian connection. And all that “fake news”. Remember, just a couple of chapters earlier, she was excoriating the rest of us because we had lost faith in the foundations of our country, foundations that should be educating us about politics and those running for office. One of those foundations was the media – the same media she now appears to blame for “fake news”.

And we get a laundry list over the next 20 pages or so of why she didn’t win. First there were the 40,000 voters from Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania who voted for Trump instead of her. If they’d just voted for her, she would have won. There is the “false” claim by Joe Biden that she didn’t have an economic message. HRC claims Biden’s statements were false because she talked about the economy. According to her, she talked about it a lot. But she doesn’t get that talking about the economy isn’t the same as having an economic message. Once again, she didn’t connect with the voters, especially in the Rust Belt, because she didn’t tell them not only what she wanted to do to help them and their employers but how she planned to do it. Remember, she admitted earlier she’d made a mistake in that area by talking about shutting down the coal mines and focusing on new energy and renewable energy sources.

She blames those who voted against her instead of “voting for” Trump. She also doesn’t understand it because she had such high approval numbers when she left State. Poor Hillary, we didn’t love her the way she thought we should.

After all, the polls all said she should have won. “So, no, all the polls weren’t wrong. It’s possible that my lead throughout the race was slightly overstated – but not significantly. It’s reasonable to conclude, therefore, that something important and ultimately decisive happened at the very end.” (pg 401)

So, who else does she blame? Comey, of course. After all, he dared speak out about her emails. (pg 405) Russia is next. (pg 406) Economic anxiety and bigotry also make her hit list. (pg 410) She makes no attempt to hide her disdain for those voters who supported Trump. She also manages to throw Bernie Sanders under the bus and Jill Stein quickly follows him.

That said, a small but still significant number of left-wing voters may well have thrown the election to Trump. Jull Stein, the Green Party candidate, called me and my policies “much scarier than Donald Trump” and praised his pro-Russia stance. (pg 411)

If that’s not enough, she claims Trump exploited “racial and cultural anxiety”. (pg 412) I’m not saying that all Trump voters are racists or xenophobes. There are plenty of good-hearted people who are uncomfortable about perceived anti police rhetoric, undocumented immigrants, and fast-changing norms around gender and sexual orientation. But you had to be deaf to miss the coded language and racially charged resentments powering Trump’s campaign. (pg 413) In other words, you are as bad as Trump because you didn’t vote for her.

But it doesn’t stop there. She claims there was voter suppression, citing a claim by an “unnamed” Trump staffer on the issue. (And can you hear the cries of foul if conservatives made such accusations about her campaign and cited unnamed sources?) Oh, and she blames the Supreme Court for “gutting the Voting Rights Act in 2013”. (pp 418-419). Notice how carefully she avoids mentioning the armed “concerned citizens” who did their own forms of voter suppression in 2008 and 2012, those times for the Dems.

There’s more but you get the drift. She finishes up talking about how “love and kindness” had been a fundamental part of her campaign. (pg 441) I guess I didn’t pay close enough attention because I missed that part. What about you? Oh, and she doesn’t carry around any bitterness after the election. She just couldn’t live that way.

So why the hell is she still going on and on about how bad Trump is?

What’s the final verdict on the book? Part of me is glad I read it. I am most definitely glad, after reading it, that she isn’t our president. It won’t surprise me at all to see her trying to make a powerplay of some sort at the next election, whether it be another attempt to win office or to determine who should be the Democrats’ “anointed one”. But the book is done. There are no more blog posts and my liver survived.

Barely.

(You can find the other installments in this series at the following links: What Happened or How I Suffered for this Blog and had to Share, Grit and Gratitude, HRC Gets Caught Trying, A New Deal, A Square Deal or How She Wanted to be the Next Roosevelt, It’s All His Fault, Turning Mourning into a Movement, HRC: Idealism and Realism, HRC: Making History , HRC: Those Damn Emails and HRC: The Russians Did It – Amanda S. Green.)

[I know this is hard to watch, imagine what it must be like to read the book.  If you want to help finance Amanda’s liquor bill, use this address  Send the woman a drink-SAH]

When I was little, I liked tinkering with mechanisms.  Depending on the age, this sometimes meant I took a perfectly good wind-up toy and did things that made it act weirdly.  Take the crawling baby doll I opened up and then had some inconvenient pieces left over, and when she crawled again, she’d crawl three steps and lift her leg.  Three steps and lift her leg.  I was young enough I had no clue why the adults thought this was hilarious, btw.

One thing you learn pretty quickly with mechanisms, at least if you are a little kid taking apart something someone else put together, is to be wary of left over gears.  They were doing something before, and it’s highly unlikely that you tinkered with it in such a way that it made it more efficient and special.

Of course, part of the problem in Marxism is its own devoted belief in its own infallibility and scientific qualities.

When the whole point of a political philosophy is the idea that you’re going to reform society in such a way that will make men like unto angels (since all our bad impulses are the result of capitalism and “greed” and “exploitation” once it’s removed we’ll all be perfect.  This was used in the 70s as the basis for maintaining that putting people in mental hospitals in the US was the same as putting people in mental hospitals for political opinions in the USSR, since capitalism caused mental illness.) and install utopia, it’s hard to realize some of the stuff you’re tinkering with is there for a reason.

Perhaps this explains the left’s continued illusion that breaking the feedback mechanism solves the problem.

It’s a curious delusion, because the rest of us learn to love and use the feedback in our fields of endeavor.

I was only ever a jackleg repairman, but I learned not to remove the parts of the mechanism that would alert me something was wrong well before the whole thing, say, over pressurized and blew up.

And in writing feedback is just as important.  I didn’t actually make much progress in my attempts at professional writing until we got a writers’ group.  This is because I had no clue what I was doing.  Rejection letters were sometimes encouraging “definitely send us your next one” but “this doesn’t fit our needs” wasn’t exactly helpful in pinpointing the problems.

BTW in the case of writers’ group, learn to exclude/ignore the consistently and always negative ones, too.  (If you’re diplomatic, without seeming to be ignoring them.)  A feedback system always stuck on “horrible’ is as bad as one stuck on “wonderful.”  You have to assume it’s either the other person’s taste or personal animosity.  There is  reason “the blind leading the blind” is a bad thing.

Feedback is what calls you back to where other people are, when you’re so lost in your interpretation of the world that you don’t see the flaws in it.

It’s what causes you to consider whether your writing is actually understandable to other people; whether your ideas are really working out that wonderfully; whether those extra gears caused the doll not to pause, leg up.

As I said, the left is notorious for trying to get rid of that.  Tests when you apply for a job are now supposedly “racist” leading to the rampant credentialism.  This allows the left-controlled education system to “certify” people as educated and never have to admit they are failing vast swaths of the population.  Instead they use “endemic racism” to explain that.  (In fact, they use this kind of thing to explain everything, without looking at what the education establishment might be doing wrong.)

Gone is the feedback mechanism that tells us that schools are failing and failing harder for minorities.  Instead the left can posture and preen about their wonderful role in the schools.  Of course, the schools are still failing, and now they insist on Bachelors for everyone, in an attempt to teach people things they used to learn by fourth grade.  The control mechanism is broken.  Piling on more “education” will only bankrupt the country and do nothing.

Then take the push-model of book sales.  Long before there was an Amazon, chain bookstores had cozy deals with publishers that sent most indie bookstores (now beloved in effigy by the left) out of business.

And then the left dominated publishing establishment had a brilliant idea.  For decades they’d been trying to forecast failure and success, and failings.  Books they pushed out the wazzoo (A river in Sundon’tshine) died on the vine when bookstores refused to stock them because the owners had read them.  The books they had designated as to be ignored caught someone’s fancy, and suddenly were all over.

This was inefficient.  It caused way too much printing that never got distributed, and much last minute rushed reprinting. (Even leaving aside how often people chose to read the WRONG things, something that started to matter more and more in the last two decades.)

So they came up with the push model.  It was, from a certain perspective brilliant.

That perspective is the one where the real world doesn’t really exist, so you don’t need to hear from it.

Because the managers of the big corporate bookstores ALSO didn’t read, they took instruction beautifully.  So the publishers could say “you’ll take 100 of x and 2 of y” and they DID.

For a little while it worked beautifully, in the sense that there were no surprise bestsellers, (and publishing houses hated those.  I know someone who unexpectedly sold out her print run in a week.  The publishing house took the book out of print.  No, seriously.) and the books that got seen and talked about were picked by the publisher. (BTW this wasn’t even always or primarily political.  Sure, that existed too sometimes, but mostly it was the crazy fads that publishing convinced itself of.  For instance, sometime in the mid two thousands they convinced themselves no one wanted historical mysteries — they weren’t selling, true, probably because they were on NO shelves — but everyone wanted “chick-lit mysteries” that had covers with lots of shoes and dresses and whose plots were “Sex in the City with murder.”  I remember trying to find something to read, giving up and going to the used bookstore (then a hundred miles away in Denver) for my mystery fix.)

Of course, they sold less.  In fact, as time went on and people got out of the habit of going to the bookstore, because there was never anything they could find to read.  I mean, I remember being chased from Science Fiction to Mystery to finally history, to at last the sort of “utility” book you find in the discount bins you know “a chart of history” type of thing just to find something to buy on our bookstore night.

Then we gave up.

Eventually the broken feedback mechanism gave us the demise of Borders — and B & N is not feeling so good itself — and a yawning, desperate chasm in customers’ need for books that meant the way was wide open for Indie and Amazon.  Even the early badly proofed indie books were like a breath of fresh air because for the first time I could read outside the trends being pushed.

But when you’re a peddler of Utopia, you can’t admit you’re wrong or that your methods are crazy.  After all, your cult of Marx (a college-professor friend recently shocked his students by pointing out Marx is a 19th century western idea — born of the mechanical age and the idea you can make everything just so — and that imposing this interpretation on non-Western systems is colonialist) promises eventual paradise and world domination.  You can’t be wrong. It would mean your whole life has been in vain, and everything you’ve been taught is a lie.

The system might have moved the downtrodden from those “exploited” by the industrial revolution, to “minorities” “third world people” and people with interesting colorations — mostly because the “exploited” workers kept rising up in the world and spitting in the eye of Marx, the ungrateful bastages — but it’s totally still true and the way of the future.  Even if it requires conceptualizing a future where no one works and everything is free, since they’ve now tossed the “workers” out of their ideal society.  (Again, ungrateful bastages who don’t know how “good” the intellectuals are for them.)  But it is totally the future!

So all those people who say that it’s still spinach and to hell with it?  They’re just trying to destroy the train of happiness leading to the station of utopia.

Which means they must be silenced.  If they’re just silenced, then the system will work fine, and everyone will be happy and joyful.

So the latest attack is on free speech.  Because free speech can be hurty and say things the left doesn’t want to hear.  Bad bad free speech must be stopped.

They already have laws against “hate speech” or “harassment, which according to a comment here is “saying something I don’t like more than once.”” in most of the world.

The US is holding fast in our unreasonable devotion to the first amendment which irks the left as much as our devotion to the second.  Don’t we understand that bad speech hurts people?  And leads to bad think?

In any institution they control, from companies code of conduct to deplatforming people on twitter, to Google strangling hits to dissenting blogs, etc, they are already silencing that nasty, evil feedback.

Because if only they don’t hear the whistles of rising steam, the engine will never explode.

Cotton stuffed in their ears, they keep feeding more coal to the engine of public opinion and stopping up the steam vents.

The end of this is what happened to Ceausescu and his repulsive wife: “Beloved leader of the morning, pile of cooling, bullet riddled meat in the afternoon.”

But they don’t see it.  They’re convinced if they just stop the feedback, the machine will work fine.

And they’re going to take all of us into the explosion.  Mind you, in the end we win, they lose, but it’s going to get very rough there for a while.

Unfortunately when dealing with true believers, there’s nothing you can do but let them utterly prove their system wrong, before sane people can build again.

 

 

 

 

Every year, around this time of year, the newspaper my dad took, the now defunct Primeiro de Janeiro, printed a supplement called “O calendario dos….”  And now I’m at a loss as to the “the” what.  I vaguely remember something like does Matutinhos, but the google search only brings up matosinhos which is a town by the sea, and at any rate, I have no clue what Matutinhos means except it might have some connection to Matitudinal, ie. of the morning or awake.  (Yep, that’s right, I was woke before it was trendy, only we had real grammar.)

Actually it meant the “Calendar of the children” basically.  Every year, shortly after new years, dad and I would take a couple of days, cut out thin cardboard, paste the pages on it, then assemble it, so I had a wall calendar.

The calendar itself was of those things that are the most wholesome and educational, filled with rhymes that taught you stuff about months that came in like a lion and went out like a lamb, good months to plant this and that, and how many days and what holidays the day had.

I’m fairly sure in most households, even households with children, the thing just went into the trash (or to the outhouse) unread.  But for us it was a precious thing, which allowed me hours spent with dad, his telling me stories about each month and things that had happened in that month. (You know, of the “twenty years ago, it snowed in May” variety, only it didn’t snow in Portugal — in our area — between the day I was born and the day I turned 19.  Yep, I’m that hot.  (rolls eyes.))

As such things do, it persisted, so that I think I still had one of those hanging in my room when I got married.

I’m sure dad didn’t give it that much importance.  I’m sure he didn’t give that much importance to our Saturdays when we went to feed the anthills, (I figured out years later, he took me out of the house so mom could clean in peace.)  Or to the day before Christmas when he’d take me to Porto to see the men put up the lights and we stayed over to see the lights lit at night.

It’s different from the adult point of view.  For a year, after I picked the kids up, we stopped at a bakery to have tea before I took them home.  We did this because I’d just sold, and the time they were at school was a mad sprint to write books on time, which means that I usually had forgotten to have lunch.  To this day they remember those teas, and think that’s what adults should do when they pick the kids from school.

You can’t control the things that stay, or even the ones that will have a great influence over your kids (or kids you mentor.)

There were books I received at just the right time to get me interested in this or that.  There is the fact that brother took engineering and had a classmate reading science fiction (and who owned a large library.)  Those books, and more importantly the fact that my brother told me on no account to read the books he’d borrowed (well, it was the seventies.  Some were…. weird.) meant that I fell to science fiction in my early teens and never looked back.  I’d almost certainly be writing anyway, but I might only have written historical novels or heaven knows what without that chain of fortuitous circumstances.  (Weirdly, while I was in Portugal, my brother had me sign a book for this friend.  Sigh.  I wish he’d told me, as I think the friend would like Darkship Thieves.  Instead he got Gentleman Takes a Chance.  Ah, well.)

You can’t control everything your kids see or do.  I later met a family like that.  Their 14 yo homeschooled boy had no idea MURDER existed.  He didn’t know people could kill other people.  It was thought too upsetting for him.  I kept wondering (still do) what would happen to that kid when he entered college which his parents definitely aimed for.  Or even found something NOT a children’s Bible and read the panoply of bad human behavior.

Sure, we’re not the left, so we shouldn’t wallow in mud and claim everyone is a bad person, because only we are good (and should therefore control others) but there are limits how much you can raise children in a sheltered little world.  In the end, they’ll experience human foibles, failings and, yes, sins.  If they don’t know these exist, they’re going to make the perfect the enemy of the good, because they believe it can be perfect.

At the same time there are all the career parents wishing to give their kid quality time while farming him/her out to perfect strangers most of the day.  In daycare they can’t establish the same priorities.  Most daycares are run on the principle of the squeaky wheel. Which means, you know, that we’re prepping future snowflakes, ready to scream and get attention at ANYTHING.

We couldn’t do the quality time thing.  We were with them a lot, or at least I was, though in the first ten years of their lives Dan worked really long hours.  But I was with them all the time, so we settled for quantity time.  Most of it was them coming to us from the room next to the office only when there was a problem.  If I finished a book and decided to play with them for a day, it scared them a little.

But there was enough time for the little wild graces, like taking them to Walmart for back to school shopping, finding cap pistols, buying one for each of us, and then spending the rest of the day in wild shoot outs up and down stairs.  Going to restaurants, getting little swords in our drinks, and having sword duels across the table.  Taking them to zoos and museums, because WE needed a day off, and ending up having deep conversations about animals or art trends.

These things just happened, but I understand that the kids feel they were the best thing ever, now they’re grownup.

I realize many parents have to work, both of them, outside the house.  But take as much QUANTITY time as you can.  Even if all you’re doing is sitting on the same sofa, each reading something (some of my best times with my dad, now I think about it.)  Include them in your shopping trips, your coffee shop trips.  They’re a lot less obtrusive than you think, particularly if they are being included in adult activities.  It makes them feel special.

I’m not a parenting expert.  All I did is raise two of them.

But it’s the wild unexpected graces that stay.  It’s the days you dropped by the coffee shop and got them a hot chocolate while you had coffee, and you talked of nothing much.  They’ll remember that forever.  And then, when they’re adults and have pocket money, sometimes they’ll take you to the zoo, or introduce you to the restaurant they just found, or even take you to the coffee shop.  And you enjoy it, even though you talk of nothing much.

I don’t know of course, I’m still not sure I’ll amount to anything, or that I’ve done or written anything worth being remembered, but I think even should I become a well known writer and influential, there’s a good chance my real influence in the future will come through those bakery visits after elementary school pick up, and the rambling talks we had over tea.

And if I do amount to something, eventually, how much was it those hours spent with dad, cutting out the stupid little calendars?

Love grows.  The influence you have on the future might not be what you expect.  Make time to love and be loved, and to experience the small wild mercies.  (And yes, dad is AFAIK fine, but I do miss him.)

Don’t fret that every minute with your kids or someone’s kids you love isn’t highly educational.  Don’t worry that you didn’t send the kids the Most Educational Toy Ever.  Just make time.  Just time.  And let love grow.

I have no clue where Mary’s word for the week is.  I know she said she sent it, and Mary is an honorable woman.  But my email appears to have done a disappearing act on it, so we’ll make do without.

Fifty words, the word is: root.

Speaking of roots I’m not swearing this will happen, but I’m going to try to find as many of the Argonauta collection books as I can and go back to my sf/f roots in order, to figure out, now as an adult and a professional, what about these books enthralled me and drew me in.  I think that’s important, going back to the root of your passion now and then.  Like anniversaries, renewal of vows and occasion weekends a way refresh a marriage, so getting back in touch with why you first loved something helps clear away the clouds that have gathered in the meantime.

I’ll probably blog about it, too, once a week or so, both what I liked and the things that are now outdated (not just scientifically) or that just strike me as funny now.  (Reading one of my favorite Agatha Christie’s — the moving finger — was struck with all the references to genetic hygiene. Granted in this case it referred to avoiding incest, but it’s a reminder the vocabulary was in everyone’s lips and not a Germany-peculiar disease.)

For those who wish to play at home, the list is here, and the text under the cover lists the actual title.  I’ll note I can’t find number one.  There is one of that name on Amazon and someone “scanned” the text in but not with text recognition, rather as an image, which means I can’t read it. Periodically I might post “wanted” posts here too.

Other things that will happen both here and at MGC will be changes in looks and format.  I promise nothing bad, so just sit tight.  (Not that I expect no bitching.  From this crowd?  I always expect bitching.)

I have a kitchen to clean and three chapters to finish, so go back to your regular insanity.

When I was little, our unsophisticated New Year’s toasts “Health” or for reasons unknown to me “Chinchin” were raised to another level by visiting relatives.  I assume they were from Venezuela, because we did them in Spanish forever more.

And you’ll forgive me because I can’t write in Spanish, and it’s be so long I might not remember the right words, but I think it was “Salud, Dinero y amor.”

Health, wealth and love.

I used to think older people were strange and stodgy because when you asked them what they wanted in the new year, they said “health.”  Even as a very sickly child, I didn’t understand the point of that.  Okay, a part of it is that I didn’t understand why anyone would ask for health.  It either came or it didn’t and in my case it seemed a hopeless business.  But more importantly, ill-health didn’t affect anything.  Sure, I had horrible nights (which I only started having recently, like within the last six months) of lying in the dark, struggling for breath afraid of dying while everyone slept.  (Why is it that breathing always gets easier with the light of day?  Seems weird.  At least now I have a kindle to distract me.) Sure I had weeks of being confined to bed, away from my playmates, and unable to do anything but make lego cities and tell myself stories (Portuguese treatment of illness hadn’t yet adapted to the existence of antibiotics, so the main thing was isolation.)  But those long and often boring days (why I learned to read Disney comics in self defense) were not interrupting anything.

Now I get what older people meant.  I’m old enough to be counting down the years I have (G-d willing, going by family history, probably 30) and fretting I won’t get to do everything I want to do, because the years just fly by and I spend so much time being sick.  And you know, I have books to write.

Wealth…  Well, I wouldn’t block my door to it. My definition of wealth at this point would be “can do what I want and end the month with money in the bank.”  Until both boys are off the payroll that seems an unattainable dream, but I’m going to do what I can, if I’m granted that health thing.

Now if I were to win the lottery tomorrow, I wouldn’t scream and tell it to go away.  But it would take getting used to.  We found out when we made about double what we do now for a couple of years that wealth has its own price.  You have to evaluate your time in relation to other things you need to do: like husband the wealth.  So you end up spending a lot more money, in trade for that time.

Wealth, if it were dropped on my lap should be lottery-sized.  Though you know, from a prudential point of view, that would allow me to get a house cleaner and an assistant, both of which I desperately need.  And stop older son neuroting (He’s a nervibore) about his student loans.

Love…  What else is there?  My kid-self wondered with some shock at all these OLD (like forties) people wishing for love.  I mean they were married.  And besides, ew…..

Sure, romantic love adds a lot to life, and I wish everyone I love a happy marriage.  The load is lighter when you pull in tandem.

But love is so much more than romantic love.  It is your circle of friends.  It’s the kids you’re watching grow up (yours or not).  It is the stuff you do.  It is the things you enjoy.

In my case, it is of course, my husband.  I feel stupid mentioning him because it’s like saying “oh, yeah, I also have legs.”  He is a part of me.  One of our kids (ah) has accused us of fighting like two cats in a sack over the stupidest things, and we do, but they’re not REALLY fights, just arguing and raised voices.  The relationship, where it counts, does seem to get better every year.  He is, simply, a part of me.  My sons: they worry me because I care so much about their futures, but they’ve also turned out much better/more interesting/stronger than I expected.  It’s the idiot cats.  This year we had a scare with Greebo, and I know the time is coming to say goodbye to Euclid, who is not approaching eighteen, and we’re not sure at the rate each of them takes a piece of our heart to the rainbow bridge if there will be any more.  But we’ll enjoy them while we can.

It is my country, my state.  It’s a little diner on Colfax avenue.  It is friends — too many to mention and most far away alas — I talk to regularly or whom I visit (the near ones.)  It is books I revisit every year (I think I’ll start the year with Heinlein audios).

It is other stupid things, like crochet on the sofa while watching a movie while the snow falls outside.  It is special exhibits at the Natural History Museum.  Walks in city park at twilight in summer when the lights come on.  It’s the botanic gardens in spring.  It’s the zoo on rainy fall days when we’re the only ones there and can talk.

It’s writing a novel when everything comes together and I suddenly see the end.  It’s researching a novel and finding JUST the right thing.

All of this is love.  Different kinds of love, but love.

There is a house clearing method in which you’re only supposed to keep “that which brings joy.”  No, I’ve never tried it, because I need tons of things that bring no joy whatsoever, like litter box scoops and tax documents.

But love, at various levels is “that which brings joy.”  I’ve been hypothyroidal enough that nothing brought joy.  It was all “same old, same old.”  Like living in a bell jar or seeing the world through a dim film.

I don’t wish that to anyone.

So in the end, I do also wish for love.  I wish for “that which brings joy” and time with the people I love, too.  And I wish for the wisdom to put work away, now and then, and enjoy life and love.

And for you too, I wish to health, wealth and love.  All of which should leave you free and capable of doing what you feel you are called to do.

We have work to do in the new year.  A lot of it.  Let us have those three basics, so we can do it.

That’s all I ask.

 

I suspect there have always been unwritten laws in society.  Do this, don’t do that, that’s not the way to greet someone. In every society really.

But I think we’re living in a time of unique lack of codification.  Which isn’t of course.  There are rules, but they change suddenly and no one tells you.

No, I’m serious.  As great (eh.  Good at least) apes, we have and develop social scripts, and signals.  This is normal.

But the great flowering of the crazy of the romantics — back to the natural man, leaving under an oak which furnishes all our necessities and such rot — exploding into the sixties with theories like “no frustration raising” in which it was believed if you didn’t discipline a child at all, they’d have no frustrations or repressions, and would therefore be a perfect angel has turned, as it moderated in expression (mostly because no-frustration children are destructive savages no one wants around) into “there are rules but we won’t tell you what they are.

Yes, this is very bad for neuro atypical people out there.  Honestly, I think our plague of autistic spectrum disorders is mostly because our society is faux-unstructured.  I suspect only about half the people can actually intuit the rules from things never said.  The other half stumble around desperately looking for the rules, or give up on socializing in disgust.

But beyond that, it’s bad because it removes the definition of what it is to be “good” in a society.

If you read older books, there were very well defined ideas of goodness.  Attending church, being cleanly, having a good, respectful marriage, working hard, practicing charity.  It wasn’t exactly easy, but it was a clear and defined path.

The problem is most people want to be good.  They want to fit whatever the society admires.  But our society particularly since the sixties, but really since sometime in the nineteenth century (only with increasing vigor) has waged a war on hypocrisy, which means acting good when “you’re not really good” and as proof of not being really good anything that falls short of perfection is adjudicated: say a man who is married and faithful but looks at pictures of naked women.

From this, it turned into an ongoing, frontal assault on traditional definitions of good and the bourgeois virtues that built western civilization.  If the people being thrifty and hard workers were “hypocrites” it followed you should live lives of slovenly laziness.  If monogamy couldn’t be adhered to perfectly, it meant you should screw everything that moved, or even waved in the wind.

But the “Goodness” of this inversion of values can’t be maintained.  For one, because it often leads to self-destruction, or the destruction of social groups.  So most people preach this nonsense, while living lives of bourgeois conventionality.

This just results in confusing the roughly fifty percent who have to KNOW the rules.

And it often causes young people to go astray for years, before they realize you really can’t live anti-civilization values while in civilization.

It might also destroy those people more adept at abstract thinking, and less adept at social thinking, because they discover the one thing that will get them viewed as “good”: the constant mouthing of leftist platitudes.  Or the screaming of them, to atone for their sin of being born to solid middle class.

The increasingly unhinged rants of leftist intellectuals are the equivalent of the Cathedrals of Europe only far less useful or aesthetically pleasing: they’re a way to claim goodness, even if you can’t live it in your daily life; to buy your way to heaven despite the common sins of humanity.

But while the cathedrals were expensive, and overblown, and consumed the substance of a not-as-wealthy-as we are society, they were beautiful and more importantly, they didn’t gnaw at the basic values that built society.  They didn’t make it impossible for people to live productive lives, or to create the most objective good of all: a way for more people to live wealthy and dignified lives.

They did provide a refuge for the weary and aesthetic refreshment for the hopeless.

The lefty rants are vast cathedrals built of intellectual poo.  They stink up the air, and collapse in on themselves, leaving nothing but excrement in their wake.

It is time to rebuild.   It is time to reorient.  Given that all humans are flawed, and that society is built of flawed human beings, the only thing we can do is support the systems and the modes of living that have made the west wealthier than any other region and any other time.

People not living in abject poverty or being considered objects is an objective good.

Eschew the idiots calling hypocrite.  Do the best you can, and continue doing it, while the monkeys screech and fling poo.

Build under, build over, build around.

Be not afraid.

In the end we win, they lose.