According To Hoyt

I have to confess that for a while now I’ve been reading the lefty laments on the election with every measure of enjoyment.

Listening to them rage, howl, and throw themselves on the floor screaming that those d*mn disobedient peasants voted for Trump for “the price of eggs! They voted for eggs!” is comedy gold when you look at it from the POV of the lefty planners and strategists really being spider creatures from Alpha Centauri who landed yesterday and are trying to understand humanity.

On the other hand, a young friend also laughing at them unearthed something that took that enjoyment and strangled it, and shoved it down my throat to become absolute and utter unreasoning anger. This post is the result of that.

What my friend first posted in a private group was this:

Guys guys
I just learned the most hilarious term
“Treatler”
It’s about people willing to overlook Travesty and Injustice and Racism because they like their “treats”
…like they literally made up a term for “liking nice things makes you Hitler”

She — younger than I so less prone to yell at the sky, I guess, thought this was hilarious, and went diving for more of the insanity. And found it.

(Vague recollection of nice things being “treats”–unimportant, antisocial–was this unhinged Twitter discussion years ago about … I think it was year-round bananas being listed as “treats” people would have to do without to combat climate change)

From UrbanDictionary:
Coined by left-wing twitter, “Treatler” is used to describe people whose extent of political ambition is about their selfish want of fulfilling their consumerist desires, even at the cost of lives.
Guy 1: Who do you plan on voting for in the coming election?

Guy 2: I think i’ll vote for Mr.Smith. I know he said those things about how he wishes to genocide minorities, but he said he will make gas 15 cents cheaper by the end of his term.

Guy 1: You’re such a fucking Treatler.

And this is where I went insane. In fact, this is where I went Librarian Poo!

Look, ignore the stuff about the candidate saying he wishes to genocide minorities. Anyone who has been through a couple of election cycles knows the left says that about anyone who opposes them, regardless of if the person, him/herself is a minority. In fact, of course, it is the left once its regime is firmly established that always sets about exterminating and running down minorities. (No? Ask what it’s like to be gay in Cuba, what it was like to be black or Jewish in the USSR, what it’s still like to be gay in Venezuela, or for that matter what it was like to live in a black neighborhood in the US during the hot enthusiasm for St. Floyd of Fentanyl.) What are they really saying?

They’re saying that someone wanting to be able to afford necessities like gas, or wanting to buy a little extra — bananas! BANANAS! for the love of holy frig! — with the money THEY EARN AND WORK FOR is wanting “treats.”

As though the vast majority of working people were some kind of toddler under the care of a benevolent kindergarten teachers, waiting for “treats” for good behavior.

What the actual tri-plated, reinforced, damned gal of these would be aristos! TREATS?

Eggs, aren’t treats. Affordable gas isn’t a treat. Bananas aren’t treats. They’re the basic building blocks of a decent life and decent nutrition made possible for the working man and woman by free trade, innovations in transportation and drilling, and manufacturing. They’re the earned fruits of civilization built by our forefathers and foremothers with insane work, the sweat of their brow and ingenuous innovation.

They’re not the aristos to give or withhold. They are not — or should not be — under the control of any unelected bureaucrat and they should not be restricted or affected by any precious regulation, no matter if the people who came up with it thought that doing it would bring about utopia.

“Climate change” is not an excuse to restrict people’s access to have they have earned should be able to buy in any sane system. The people’s PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS, which, yes, includes full bellies and a sweet treat now and then, shall not be impaired. Other things that aren’t a sufficient excuse for government to restrict people’s liberty to buy what they can afford include but are not limited to: inequality, redistribution, racism, and “its would be nice.”

In fact, it is the Lords of Despair, the purveyors of Utopian pap who are the toddlers, screaming and rolling on the floor, demanding that others do what the toddlers say or they’ll hold their breaths till they turn blue, or scream for endless hours on Bluesky and the like, and sneer at us with a mighty sneer.

And no matter the reasons they say they want to deny the population these “treats” — TREATS, could they have come up with a more infantile name? What a window to their infantile worldview and the infantilization they wish on the rest of us? — the true reason is because they want to be the only ones who have these things, and therefore be special. They want to be the favorite students of kindergarten teacher government, and get all the gold stars and be able to preen and act special.

This is because they know at their heart they are the least useful and creative people imaginable. They demand privileges and a pedestal because they know anyone on the street is better than the yawning chasm that passes for the soul they sold to the gods of envy.

Well, since they’ve never studied history and have a sketchy grasp on linguistics, let me point out Utopia means “No place.” And in fact, every place they have attempted to install this “utopia” of their has turned to hell on Earth.

It’s time and more than enough to shove the utopian aristos aside (From how high, and with what strength you shove them is a decision I will stay out of) and allow people to enjoy the blessings of liberty.

People are voting for their own self-interest. Of such things is civilization created. Because no one knows what each person wants or needs than that person. No philosopher, no king, certainly no bureaucrat can guess or decide such things for the individual. In fact, the very system of voting is based on the thought that each individual knows his own interests best and should be allowed to have a say in governance to preserve them.

Yes, it is licit, what’s more, it is highly moral to vote for a candidate because you think he/she will make eggs and gas cheaper, jobs more abundant, bananas easier to buy. The ultimate goal of any human civilization is long-lived, healthy seniors and lots of fat and happy babies. Only those allow us to build and improve, and reach ever forward so the species shall not be extinct.

Anything that stands in the way of that is an evil not to be countenanced.

So, go ahead, you shit-headed aristos. Go ahead, call me a treatler.

In return I will call you what you are: You are an unserious utopian, a too-early-weaned toddler rolling on the floor of kindergarten, demanding the other kids give back those gold stars, because onlyyyy you deserve them!

Or if you prefer, you are a cankerous worm fallen from the rotten ass of Karl Marx, and if given your way you will turn all of the Earth as dismal, sterile and dead as that thing you call a soul.

It’s time you were told the only place you get to rule is no place. It’s time your rolling around screaming were stopped and you got a good spanking.

If you’re very lucky, the spanking won’t be administered with a tire iron.

Hey, guys, in a major case of brain slippage (I’ve caught a friend’s cold. Yes, I know. I should be in a bubble till I’m fully over whatever this is) I forgot to tell you I put Christmas In The Stars on Sale for 99c, and it’s been on sale all day.

If you guys already have it (probably, since it came out last year) it’s fine, but hey, it’s Christmas. You might even want to give it to someone. I think you can even set it for delivery on Christmas day. Or Christmas eve. So…

Christmas in the Stars: On Sale for 99c.

This is a collection of four Christmas short stories.
It starts with a star-explorer stranded in unknown coordinates listening very hard for sleigh bells. Then there are two deserters of a doomed planetary war, in a forsaken planet, trying to do the right thing to secure peace and good will, even if one of them happens to be dead. And did you know there was a small, sweet robot at the nativity? Also, sometimes, all you need for a Merry Christmas is a cat.
This is a short collection, but it’s heartwarming and cozy, and the sort of thing to read on a snowy afternoon, by your fireplace, with a cup of eggnog nearby.

These are some of dumbest things I’ve heard all year, in no particular order.

Yes, most of them are since the election. But they’re so dumb, they have to be dumber than even claiming Trump had somehow arranged to be shot, with centimeters of accuracy and perfect timing that require not a twitch.

The ever-insightful Gay Patriot, whose site used to be one of my daily reads unearthed this gem.

How dumb is it? Let me count the ways:
First – why do they think Trump is going to do anything to stop gay marriages? The man has appointed a married gay man with kids as treasury secretary, has used Rich Grennel as a surrogate during campaign, and hosts gay weddings at Maralago.

Second – if Trump really were a cardboard cuttout of a social conservative, fifiandfoming all over the place, and were going to forbid gay marriage, why on EARTH would you get married in a rush? He’s going to forbid new gay marriages but totally respect previous ones? In what world.

Third – If Trump were really going to put all gays in camps, why would you want to have your union registered, thereby telling the state you’re definitely gay? Is this an attempt to go to the head of the line on being shipped to camps? Oh, guys, I heard they don’t even have pedicurists. And the hair stylists are awful. Barbaric, really.

Fourth – Having kids? You really want to do that if going towards a regime (in your mind) where you’ll be forbidden to live as you wish? Also, please, guys. I know you didn’t pay attention to this in your health classes, but even the best surrogates lack time machines in their wombs. In two months you’ll be lucky to have an embryo implanted. You certainly won’t have a baby.

Second up: Liberal Women Are Undergoing Sterilization and Blaming Trump: ‘Election Tied My Hands’.

Yes, yes, they are getting their tubes tied because they could be raped and get pregnant tomorrow and reeeeeeeeeeeeeee they wouldn’t be able to have an abortion, and how horribad!

Let’s count the ways in which this is stupid….

First – Abortion is not forbidden utterly anywhere in the US, and even the most restrictive states have exceptions for health of mother, rape and incest. (Whether they should have them for the last two is a complicated moral question we are NOT going to debate here.)

Two – Even if you don’t find out you got pregnant before the date at which it’s forbidden in your state, you do realize there are still planes trains and automobiles, right? If you’re rich enough to have an elective tube tying for the heck of it, you certainly aren’t too poor for a bus ticket to another state and a week at the days inn. NOT that it will be needed, but even in this awful land or your dystopic imagination, pre-emptive sterilization is a bit far.

Third – Do we need a third? — rape is still a relatively rare occurrence, though becoming less saw with the third world diverse cultural enrichment pouring over the border (Not race. Culture. No. Westerners didn’t introduce rape to the third world. They might have introduced the concept of rape, because before the idea of women having a right to say no was just not a thing.) Your greatest danger of an unwanted pregnancy is having unprotected sex. And there’s an amazingly good preventive for that. Not having unprotected sex. And accepting that in the case of pregnancy (no method is 100%) it’s just one of those risks you’re taking. Abstinence is neither impossible, nor life blighting as a lot of people know.

Fourth – you do in fact have a choice, and ooh, boy did you choose dumb with both feet and a pair of hooves. Sterilization is an extreme response to a threat that does not exist and you’re going to regret this.

And then, and then there’s THIS: Watch CNN’s Scott Jennings’ Facial Expression When a Lib Said This About Hunter Biden’s Pardon.

What did the lib say? You’ll never guess so I’ll show you.

How do you count the wrong? Apparently Leigh McGowan is a “political influencer” and she should influence herself right down to a medical professional and get prozac or something, because it won’t cure her stupidity but might make her less eager to flap lips and share it with the world.

She thinks Trump could put Hunter Biden in front of firing squads.

First- Yes, treason has a death penalty. BUT–

Second – We’re not at open war with China, so it’s hard to say in selling us out the Bidens were giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

Third – there are still modes of selling that fall under the espionage laws. Does Ms. McGowan know that the Bidens committed this infraction? Would she like to share with the world? Did she bring enough for the whole class? (I don’t know. I figure amphetamines.)

Fourth – I’ve already given this more thought than this idiot did and I’m late with the post and feeling under the weather again, so I’d prefer — greatly — not to do research on this. However, I don’t think people would be executed by firing squad for federal crimes.

Last I heard the statutes talked of hanging, I THINK. But as much as we’d all enjoy the show, (no? If they’d committed acts of espionage at that level?) I believe right now it’s lethal injection. Because it’s not cruel and unusual or something like that.

Anyway, dear Leigh McGowan:

Anyway, that’s it for this crop of stupid. But don’t despair. At the rate the left is losing its sh*t they’ll say even crazier things before the end of the year.

Meanwhile, ya’ll be careful.

I might have been a little tired when I read this last night. I might have mentioned? Maybe? That part of this post-viral thingy is that I get very tired suddenly, and sometimes my awareness doesn’t catch up with me in time. I think it hit about three pages into this story, so …

It’s not an audio book, it’s a reading. Which is no excuse for forgetting how to pronounce a character’s name, forgetting the story title at least once and… well, if I didn’t forget my own name it’s a close thing.

On the other hand it’s the one story I ever plagiarized (though considering I took it from a pencil-drawn comic book that remains in my bedside table to this day, maybe we should call it an homage. Besides I bought the author off with Chinese food.)

I’m doing this, because I am doing a Winter Blog Fundraising. I’m doing a Winter Blog Fundraiser, hopefully the first and last, because the summer one was odd. More people donated than ever, but the amounts were lower. So… at the time people suggested I do a winter one. I meant to forget it, but we need to have a bunch of stuff done on the house and that’s… well… Which would be okay, but it comes on top of very expensive water main repairs. So– Here we are and I’m doing a Winter Blog Fundraiser. There’s a Give Send Go for the Winter Fundraiser and well, if you need anything else including a snail mail address, please go here.

But I hate to do it without giving anything in return. So I’m doing something for free every two days.

Yes, I do know I already do the blog for free, but you know? Something extra.

And so, yesterday I read Calling The Mom Squad, based on younger son’s comic. He was four when he wrote it. I would scan it and put it here, but he says no. So…

To download or listen to the reading, go here. I hope you enjoy it.

It is said that the past is another country, they do things differently there.

The same can be said of the future. And both the past and the future are ultimately unknowable to us. Even the past we lived in changes in memory as we go along, and we often forget what doesn’t accord with the way we live now. Nothing crucial mind, it’s just… remember when there were little pumps for toothpaste? You pressed a button at the top, and it dispensed toothpaste? It was available for maybe five years, and sometimes now I wonder if I dreamed it, or if it was a regional thing.

But the future is more so, because we will never live in it. Not past a certain point. I mean, look, maybe I’ll be wildly lucky and live to 100. That means anything past the 2060s, or maybe the 2050s — EVEN IF I LIVE THAT LONG — will be, for me, an undiscovered country. I can dream it and think of it, but I’ll never see it.

I don’t even know if there will be anything of me — biological descendants, writing — that will survive that long.

This doesn’t matter. The future will exist, if not for us, for someone, and it is part of being human to try to make that future as good — for our conception of good — as we can make it.

The obsession with the end of the world, the destruction of all things, the absolute certainty that there will be no future, or that the future should not be, since no part of us will be in it (An increasingly common situation for people my generation and younger) is deranged and increases the chances of a bad future for everyone.

It is part and parcel of the falling apart of Western civilization, which in turn seems to be a form of survivor’s guilt inexplicable to or by any civilization before us (Though some of them did similar). It’s part that and part “Rich child guilt.” It’s like the west found itself so triumphant, so rich that it had to self efface so as not to make the rest of humanity look bad.

So instead of taking the triumph and pushing it further, we sat down and started meditating on our end and telling tales of how it would all inevitably go wrong and horrible.

We’re not the first people to do this, and what hits as “rich” and “triumphant” is much lower than you’d think it is. And for those who are going to tell me it was from losing religion, I’ll point out the ancient Israelites, a theocracy, did in fact do exactly the same thing and start meditating on the end and why they deserved it. It is where we get our entire notion of eschatology.

I think it comes from humans being descended from scavenger apes. For scavengers, by definition, if times are too good and they’re finding many kills to scavenge, the ecosystem is overloaded and there will follow a time of famine.

So every time we push through and avert the end; every time our children (or someone’s children) live better than we did, it activates the fear it’s all going to collapse and the perverse human need to see dire predictions come true.

I don’t have a prescription to avoid it. I too am human. I too am beset with fears. Most of my fears for the future center on my kids, as I suspect it’s normal. But even if there’s no one related to me past the next generation, I still care about humanity and I still fear for them.

The problem with fear is that it can be self-fulfilling. I’m still convinced a lot of the destruction and attempted destruction we see is because of the dystopian fiction and the dingy futures of seventies and eighties science fiction. Note Elon Musk is, like me, a child of Heinlein and the belief in a better future. More importantly, the fear, despair and certainty of a worse future is bad for you now, in the present. It constricts the soul, it damages the vision, it impairs the ability to work and create.

So I wish I had a magic wand and could make it go away in each and every one of you.

I can’t. I can’t even do that for myself.

All I can share with you is what I do when the dark closes in, and the way to the future is obscured, and I no longer believe there is A future: Work. Work as if the future were there, and you could make it the future you want.

You and I will never see the future. Not the long future, where things are better (if we’re very lucky.) We’ll probably never see humanity go to the stars, though if we’re lucky we might see the beginning.

But we can hold on to work even when hope fails us, and work for it, as hard and as steadily as we know how.

I find if you work through the tears and the terror, where the path is invisible beneath your feet, sometimes, through it all, you catch a glimpse of what might come after.

And it makes it all worthwhile.

Real or metaphorical, go plant a tree today that you’ll never live to see the fruit of.

Let the vision and hope of that future reach backward to nourish you.

Go.

Book Promo

If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH

FROM CEDAR SANDERSON: Giant Counting Robots

The robots are coming! The robots are coming! Whatever we do, we’ve got to be cunning!
Count along as they thunder into your town! Then translate into binary to communicate with them. This book is intended to be fun to read aloud, engage with, and grow along with a young reader until they’re ready for code-breaking!
From simple numerical concepts to the more complex, this is a read-aloud, learning, teaching book.
Most of all, though?
IT’S GOT ROBOTS!
So many robots of all shapes and sizes!
Count all the robots, they’re full of surprises!

This picture book will appeal to ages 3 to 10 as it can be read aloud, used to teach numbers and counting, and later, binary coding! Fun, educational, but most of all… The robots are coming! We can’t stop them at all!

FROM HOLLY LEROY: Hostile Earth

Terra Vonn is fighting to survive in a destroyed world, surrounded by unspeakable horror . . . and things are about to get much worse. After witnessing the vicious murder of her mother, Terra has a singular focus—exacting revenge on the killers. But before she can complete her plans, savagery intervenes and she is cast alone into a brutal post-apocalyptic world. As she trails the men south through a land filled with cannibalistic criminals, slave traders, and lunatics, the hunter becomes the hunted. Terra quickly learns that she is neither as tough nor as brave as she thinks she is. Worse, she may be the only one who stands between what little remains of civilization and destruction.

FROM P. L. KENNY: A Deadly Dish: A Rafe Merritt Thriller

“She’s some dish.”
“Make sure you don’t take a bite of that dish, Lake.” Rafe lowered himself into the sedan’s backseat. “Remember she’s suspected of murdering a dozen men that we know of. I’d hate to have to tell your mother you were lucky thirteen.”

Police Commissioner Rafe Merritt has his hands full when a dangerous beauty comes to town. With the bodies piling up and a target on his back, can the young commissioner put an end to the murder spree before he becomes the next victim of the “Deadly Dish”?

A mystery thriller short story in the pulp tradition of The Shadow, The Whisperer, and Bulldog Drummond.

FROM L. DOUGLAS GARRETT AND NICKY ROBINSON: Remember the Dead: A Collection (Remember The Trade Book 1)

What was The Project? How did it start? What happened to forge the man known as David Cox? Six short stories and a new novella, alongside the original Remember When tell the tales that begin the Remember The Trade series.

His job was to be a bad guy for a good cause. David Cox was a mercenary soldier and agent, selected and trained for the dirty jobs of clandestine operations. But David was only supposed to be a cover identity. And once he’d learned how powerful it was to be ruthless, how could he resist bringing that home?The Remember The Dead collection contains the eponymous new novella of a pivotal mission in 1980, the formative year of David Cox’s career. The short stories and vignettes of other missions and characters help paint the picture of his early years.

WITH A STORY FROM CHARLI COX (AND ONE FROM MARK WANDREY): Express Elevator to Hell (Universes at War Book 1)

Attack! Attack! Attack!

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and for the people on a starship waiting to make a planetary assault, that trip will be as fast as possible so they can—hopefully—make it through the enemy’s defenses. Some liken such a trip as being on an express elevator to hell.

But a planetary assault is a dangerous thing, and it can have consequences for the assaulters as well as those being assaulted. Are you ready to join the attack?

Fifteen of today’s leading scifi authors take you on a variety of science fiction assaults that will have you on the edge of your seats as you go in with the first wave. Are you ready to jump on board the express elevator to hell?

You better be, because it’s going down!

FROM MARY CATELLI: Dragonfire and Time

An angry dragon demands justice of the king.

Mae, a royal wizard, is assigned the task: the dragon had metted out her own justice, burning a thief with dragonfire, but she had seen him since, whole and sound, and this she will not tolerate, so Mae must put an end to it.

Mae goes to discover the truth of this before the dragon leaves its lair to extract her own justice. And in her search of the spring festivities, learns more secrets than the dragon had even guessed of.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Holidays and Holy Days (Modern Gods)

Hera was hard at work in her counseling office when her clients started cancelling for Thanksgiving travel. She…hadn’t realized that a) that was coming up, or b) what it actually about…until she did a little research and decided to celebrate. In the process, she learns about Christmas coming, and decides that it’s high time somebody threw Christ a birthday party.

Of course, nothing goes as planned, but when does it ever?

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: DOMINEERING

*I’m going to rattle the tin cup. I’m doing my winter fundraiser. And while I mean to give free ice-cream every day, I haven’t recovered from Thanksgiving (I know… But hey.) Anyway, there’s a Give Send Go for the Winter Fundraiser and well, if you need anything else including the why and all, please go here. Tomorrow I hope to do a Christmas short story and another reading. We’ll see. I spent most of today sleeping. And now the memes!- SAH*

Seeing America by Foxfier

Follow the admirable advice of Mr. H. G. Wells, who said, ‘It is not much good thinking of a thing unless you think it out.’

About a century ago, GK Chesterton came to visit America.

As it happens, being a fellow who wrote for papers, he wrote about it. I often suggest the preface-essay, What Is America?, describing it as his love-letter to our lovely country. Quotes are from this Gutenberg online copy.

It is a little depressing to see that many people– Americans themselves– don’t manage to reach his level of understanding of what America is.

First, he guided folks into his setup:

Let me begin my American impressions with two impressions I had before I went to America. One was an incident and the other an idea; and when taken together they illustrate the attitude I mean. The first principle is that nobody should be ashamed of thinking a thing funny because it is foreign; the second is that he should be ashamed of thinking it wrong because it is funny. The reaction of his senses and superficial habits of mind against something new, and to him abnormal, is a perfectly healthy reaction. But the mind which imagines that mere unfamiliarity can possibly prove anything about inferiority is a very inadequate mind. It is inadequate even in criticising things that may really be inferior to the things involved here.

This shouldn’t be a shock to anybody, Chesterton is rather well known as the patron saint of paradox, using laughter to ease the pain of stretching one’s mind.

In this case, he takes aim at the fascinating world of… filling out a form.

Be still, my racing heart. How thrilling and insightful can you get, with entry paperwork?

Well….

The officials I interviewed were very American, especially in being very polite; for whatever may have been the mood or meaning of Martin Chuzzlewit, I have always found Americans by far the politest people in the world. They put in my hands a form to be filled up, to all appearance like other forms I had filled up in other passport offices. But in reality it was very different from any form I had ever filled up in my life. At least it was a little like a freer form of the game called ‘Confessions’ which my friends and I invented in our youth; an examination paper containing questions like, ‘If you saw a rhinoceros in the front garden, what would you do?’ One of my friends, I remember, wrote, ‘Take the pledge.’ But that is another story, and might bring Mr. Pussyfoot Johnson on the scene before his time.

One of the questions on the paper was, ‘Are you an anarchist?’ To which a detached philosopher would naturally feel inclined to answer, ‘What the devil has that to do with you? Are you an atheist?’ along with some playful efforts to cross-examine the official about what constitutes an ἁρχη [Greek: archê]. Then there was the question, ‘Are you in favour of subverting the government of the United States by force?’ Against this I should write, ‘I prefer to answer that question at the end of my tour and not the beginning.’ The inquisitor, in his more than morbid curiosity, had then written down, ‘Are you a polygamist?’ The answer to this is, ‘No such luck’ or ‘Not such a fool,’ according to our experience of the other sex. But perhaps a better answer would be that given to W. T. Stead when he circulated the rhetorical question, ‘Shall I slay my brother Boer?’—the answer that ran, ‘Never interfere in family matters.’ But among many things that amused me almost to the point of treating the form thus disrespectfully, the most amusing was the thought of the ruthless outlaw who should feel compelled to treat it respectfully. I like to think of the foreign desperado, seeking to slip into America with official papers under official protection, and sitting down to write with a beautiful gravity, ‘I am an anarchist. I hate you all and wish to destroy you.’ Or, ‘I intend to subvert by force the government of the United States as soon as possible, sticking the long sheath-knife in my left trouser-pocket into Mr. Harding at the earliest opportunity.’ Or again, ‘Yes, I am a polygamist all right, and my forty-seven wives are accompanying me on the voyage disguised as secretaries.’ There seems to be a certain simplicity of mind about these answers; and it is reassuring to know that anarchists and polygamists are so pure and good that the police have only to ask them questions and they are certain to tell no lies.

And that leads to something I wish more folks would embrace:
Now that is a model of the sort of foreign practice, founded on foreign problems, at which a man’s first impulse is naturally to laugh. Nor have I any intention of apologising for my laughter. A man is perfectly entitled to laugh at a thing because he happens to find it incomprehensible. What he has no right to do is to laugh at it as incomprehensible, and then criticise it as if he comprehended it. The very fact of its unfamiliarity and mystery ought to set him thinking about the deeper causes that make people so different from himself, and that without merely assuming that they must be inferior to himself.

America is weird.

We are not a nation of land.

We are a nation of an idea— a creed, which we spelled out rather nicely.

To, again, quote:

America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature.

And he is right, there, and in continuing:

It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just. It certainly does condemn anarchism, and it does also by inference condemn atheism, since it clearly names the Creator as the ultimate authority from whom these equal rights are derived. Nobody expects a modern political system to proceed logically in the application of such dogmas, and in the matter of God and Government it is naturally God whose claim is taken more lightly. The point is that there is a creed, if not about divine, at least about human things.

Claims of America being a “blood and soil” nation “like any other” have been popping up, with a range of scrambles to create evidence for this idea– it runs into issues when it hits America’s history, from before we were founded.

We are an idea. We have a nation, and it has land; but a thing does not become American by being done here. One becomes American by being an American— following our creed.

To point at Chesterton’s meditation on this, explaining it to his countrymen:

Take that innocent question, ‘Are you an anarchist?’ which is intrinsically quite as impudent as ‘Are you an optimist?’ or ‘Are you a philanthropist?’ I am not discussing here whether these things are right, but whether most of us are in a position to know them rightly. Now it is quite true that most Englishmen do not find it necessary to go about all day asking each other whether they are anarchists. It is quite true that the phrase occurs on no British forms that I have seen. But this is not only because most of the Englishmen are not anarchists. It is even more because even the anarchists are Englishmen. For instance, it would be easy to make fun of the American formula by noting that the cap would fit all sorts of bald academic heads. It might well be maintained that Herbert Spencer was an anarchist. It is practically certain that Auberon Herbert was an anarchist. But Herbert Spencer was an extraordinarily typical Englishman of the Nonconformist middle class. And Auberon Herbert was an extraordinarily typical English aristocrat of the old and genuine aristocracy. Every one knew in his heart that the squire would not throw a bomb at the Queen, and the Nonconformist would not throw a bomb at anybody. Every one knew that there was something subconscious in a man like Auberon Herbert, which would have come out only in throwing bombs at the enemies of England; as it did come out in his son and namesake, the generous and unforgotten, who fell flinging bombs from the sky far beyond the German line. Every one knows that normally, in the last resort, the English gentleman is patriotic. Every one knows that the English Nonconformist is national even when he denies that he is patriotic. Nothing is more notable indeed than the fact that nobody is more stamped with the mark of his own nation than the man who says that there ought to be no nations. Somebody called Cobden the International Man; but no man could be more English than Cobden. Everybody recognises Tolstoy as the iconoclast of all patriotism; but nobody could be more Russian than Tolstoy. In the old countries where there are these national types, the types may be allowed to hold any theories. Even if they hold certain theories, they are unlikely to do certain things. So the conscientious objector, in the English sense, may be and is one of the peculiar by-products of England. But the conscientious objector will probably have a conscientious objection to throwing bombs.

And, Chesterton being English, and not entirely insane, must follow with this:

Now I am very far from intending to imply that these American tests are good tests, or that there is no danger of tyranny becoming the temptation of America. I shall have something to say later on about that temptation or tendency. Nor do I say that they apply consistently this conception of a nation with the soul of a church, protected by religious and not racial selection. If they did apply that principle consistently, they would have to exclude pessimists and rich cynics who deny the democratic ideal; an excellent thing but a rather improbable one. What I say is that when we realise that this principle exists at all, we see the whole position in a totally different perspective. We say that the Americans are doing something heroic, or doing something insane, or doing it in an unworkable or unworthy fashion, instead of simply wondering what the devil they are doing.

I wish to heaven more folks would bother to actually think, rather than assume they already know and go from there.

As noted in the post below this (yeah, it is a blog funding post. Life is like that just now.) this has in many ways been a brutal year. Mostly in “things fail around the house” and “health” ways.

But as we come to the close of the year, there have also been very good things, and at least two extraordinary miracles, full measure, poured over. And this is the day to remember those.

I’m not going to demand you believe in extraordinary providence, but miracles exist, even if it’s in “This was highly improbable, and it is good.”

So–

Trump did not get shot. By an inch or fractions thereof, Trump didn’t get shot.

Note that I’m not saying this because Trump or his life are that important, but because I’m convinced, from all the factors I can sense and think of, that we’d by now be knee deep in ACWII electric boogaloo. And no one wants that.

And Trump won the election. Again, I don’t know what or how much Trump can do, but I’m absolutely sure he’s better than the Junta that seized power by fraud being able to keep it, world without end. We have a chance. It’s just a chance, but it IS a chance. And we’re American. Give us a chance and we’ll take the universe.

Not coincidentally, despite the triple infection, since the election my blood pressure is once again low normal after years of doctors trying to talk me into treatment because “arrrr she’s gonna blow.

While on that, my glasses no longer require prisms. I have no idea what this means, but it seems good after years of my eyes crossing both directions (up down, and side to side.)

Other things to be grateful for: Younger son is married, and they got to have the ceremony in front of my parents, who are both still alive.

We lost Valeria, but Havey is still with us, and we certainly didn’t expect to have either of the older cats last year at this time.

And… I’ve finished the very long book. I don’t have any idea if it’s good. And it’s certainly very weird. BUT after almost 50 years, it’s out of my head, and getting edited.

And we have enough food for tomorrow, and friends (and one of the kids/spouse) coming to dinner.

I’m very thankful, even while looking forward to greater blessings.

We’ve been blessed and our work has proven fruitful. Let’s go forward, and work just as hard, and meet here next year, with even great blessings.

Go enjoy your thanksgiving.