It gives me no pleasure to see Colorado’s devolution from a laissez faire, individualistic state into totalitarian insanity.

Although Colorado is not my birth state, it is the first place that I felt at home, and it was where I lived for over 30 years. In fact, were it not for the fact my body disagrees with altitude I’d probably still be there, despite shenanigans and political insanity, hoping to do at least a little to resurrect the state I loved.

The problem with Colorado’s idea of a pet tax wasn’t that it was stupid and insane, but that it wasn’t even a surprise to me to read about it.

NOTE though that even in Colorado the opposition was so vocal, and the person proposing it was so shocked at the math, which apparently her mind was wholly innocent of, that it was withdrawn.

It wasn’t a surprise, because once they install vote-by-mail and effectively take away your right to vote with the massive fraud thus enabled, they’re going to do bad things to you.

Like the truism of “Why would you want to take our guns away, if you don’t want to do bad things to us” it is the same with voting, and the reason I say our biggest problem nation wide is fraud. If the fraud weren’t such that the Democrats are sure we’re now a one-party country forever, they wouldn’t be leaving the border wide open. They wouldn’t be trying to ban gas stoves, either, or make oil prohibitive.

They’re not 100% sure, yet, I think, which is why the walking corpse pays lip service to closing the border, even though his “bipartisan bill would jam the border wide-open. I can’t tell if that’s because there’s some loophole in their machine-and-invented-ballots fraud machine, or because they’re terrified of Trump, with an almost superstitious fear, and are afraid he’ll somehow magic their fraud away.

Of course, what they should be afraid of — though, unfortunately I don’t think we’re at that point yet, and by the time we get there might be decades — is that when they try the usual elections shenanigans, irate disenfranchised voters will pull their stooges from the polling place, beat them black and blue, and then continue the count in full sight of cameras and the people. The shenanigans will stop when that happens, but I don’t think we’re there yet.

And unfortunately, if they (almost for sure) fraud themselves in in 2024, secure in their ability to deny us the right to kick them out, they’ll do the full insanity. There will be policed internet, requiring true-ID to get on. There will be full bankrupting of Musk. I doubt Trump will survive (if anyone wonders why he’s running: It’s his only chance at keeping his life. If they’d left him alone, he wouldn’t have run again. At that, I’m not sure he realizes even now the full extent and danger of fraud) and something like the Canadian MAID will be instituted to start killing people in batch lots: all those who might be a cost to socialized medicine, and well, all the “mentally ill” which is ultimately people like us, who won’t be happy in a socialist “utopia.”

Because when they take away your right to kick them out or punish them, they don’t do it to give you chocolate and love you tenderly.

The tells when they’re about to take another bite of your civil liberties, or do something very bad to you is that they’re always solving a problem that doesn’t exist.

Take the jammed open borders. They’re “helping climate refugees” which don’t exist. (If they did, all the seaside resorts of the world would be fully under water.) Or they’re letting in people to work in our understaffed economy (which isn’t, not at the level of people they’re letting in. Unlike in the early 20th century, there are no assembly lines standing ready to absorb endless numbers of illiterate workers.) Or we’re rescuing children from dire poverty (Though coming over takes money, and most of the children are recycled through groups of illegals, because “families” get in faster. Any number of them are also kidnapped.)

There is no problem that the open borders solve. In fact, someone who should know told me that these are not the groups of immigrants we got in the past: families looking for work and a chance at a better life. These people, as our own Bill Reader found out a while back, are mostly communists, recruited through various communist front organizations, and a large number of them are single white males. And they were recruited to come here, be housed in luxury and be given the best in money and food. Mostly because they are prey to the same DEI delusions as our college grads. They think their country is poor because the US stole their “natural resources.” This is how Marxists explain away the differences between nations. Colonialists still away the native “natural resources” and after that the country is forever poor. Note that governance, property rights, the industry of the people or in general the ability to make something of what you have is not taken in account. Nor do they ever explain how the US — who never had colonies. I think we can sigh away Porto Rico because it’s not a colony so much as an ingrown nail — in a land with far fewer natural resources than, say, Brazil, got to be a “colonist” country getting rich. This is mostly because the only way Marxists process the real world is through the distorting lens of their all-encompassing beliefs, so they never notice the things that don’t fit, nor ask themselves why they don’t.

But these people pouring in aren’t particularly educated and have more excuse for not knowing the truth than our college graduates who at least are supposed to be doing math. And their entire government and society has always used the US as an excuse for their poverty. So they view coming over and being treated as our Lords and Masters as … reparations? Of course they don’t ask themselves why they would be treated as our lords and masters. For most of their cultures, particularly for males, that’s a given, and they’re just happy we finally recognized it.

So, yeah, things are going to get very bad.

BUT the point is there was no problem to be solved. It’s more that they serve the purpose of the ruling class, those who have claimed the levers of power in a color revolution and think themselves immune from our wrath. Or at least the purpose the “rulers” think they have.

Now, they do serve some purposes: it’s a group of aggrieved communists, who will vote for them forever, so they can get what they’re “due.” They will also swell the census, allowing cities like NYC that Americans are abandoning in droves, to continue being centers of power. However, I think they’re also hoping to use them as an army. Even though the Israeli/Palestinian war should be giving them a hint they’re wrong, I think they’re counting on Gramsci’s illusion that all people in the third world and everyone who tans are natural communists and communitarian, and naturally “unite” against the white people.

They’re going to be shocked at the deep conflicts between the various imports, the inherent racism of most of them (and races we don’t see, like all the South of the Border countries as different races. Because that’s how THEY see it. And don’t get me started on the many races of Africans. Or the fact that to the Chinese, everyone, including the Caucasians are inferior races, but yeah, the darker the more the Chinese think they’re inferior.) or the fact that there will be tribal wars among their vast imaginary army.

I also think they have illusions of demographic replacement and revitalization of cities. In fact, Wilhelm the Red of NY kept saying they could replace everyone who left with a new batch of vital immigrants, who would replace those who ran away. I don’t think they get the difference between tax payers and subsidized residents, but that’s commies for you.

However, note, the border is open to solve problems that don’t exist, but in fact as a way to get the left things it thinks it wants.

In the same way that pet bill would be solving a problem that doesn’t exist. Not only are there not vast batches of unwanted dogs and cats in Colorado, but in fact the shelters import animals from the towns that border on Mexico. Particularly dogs are almost non-existent as strays and unwanted animals anymore, but even cats were getting difficult to find by the time I moved.

So, why this whole designated guardian and taxing and “encouraging responsible pet ownership?” Well, mostly so that they could come and check and see how many animals you had, or the state of your animals. It was, besides giving them money to house their new “guest” illegals, to give them entry into any house at any time, because someone denounced you as having animals you’re not paying on, or whatever.

In other words, it was all to further the totalitarian state.

If fraud wins once more — and again, though I’ll vote (I have a secret hope they’ll have to fraud 400 million votes for the corpse and the ho), I expect the fraud to win. It’s the overwhelming likelihood. Even if I still hope a miracle will occur — remember that.

When they start solving a problem that doesn’t exist, don’t be fooled and don’t exculpate it. Don’t say as people who don’t follow politics closely said of the pet bill “I guess they have a problem with dog fighting rings?” In fact, don’t guess anything. Assume that they’re just trying to do something incredibly ridiculous to take more power.

Sometimes their motivations are 90% insane, and you have to know their insanity to understand what they’re trying to do. See illegal immigration. But usually you can figure it out.

And when they announce their new hot bill, it’s time to start denouncing what they really want to do.

Some of them — the ones with more brain than a paramecium — know the ultimate danger, and the point at which all their control slips is when they make people angry enough.

And if you get angry enough, early enough, there is a chance you can make them run away and retreat. Even Canada backed off “killing the mentally ill.” I expect some will still go on, behind the scenes, but it won’t be an assembly line, as it would otherwise be within a year or two.

For a little while ahead, that might be our only protection. That and the fact they know we still have guns, and in fact their gun grabs have all been disappointing duds, even in the most controlled states.

Stay alert, stay informed. Raise the alarm every time they try to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.

In the end we win they lose, but it won’t be easy, it won’t be simple, and for a while we’ll have to eat the bread the devil kneaded.

It is our duty and our very great privilege to fight the forces of darkness in our time.

Be not afraid.

There was a second view of improving humanity, and making humanity ready for Utopia, in the last century.

The first one was eugenics, by race or health or whatever characteristic that particular government chose. And those were usually a mix. Sure, Germans picked for “pure Aryans” but that was because they believed pure Aryans were more intelligent, healthier, more altruistic etc. etc. etc. In the same way, the soviets would kill people who didn’t work right with others, weren’t all for the revolution, committed the crime of wanting to feed their families or being left alone to work or criticizing the assholes in power, because at the end of that eugenics road was the Homo Sovieticus, who would not need government to live in Utopia.

But there was another way around and through this, a less obviously evil way to create a human fit for utopia, and that was Social Engineering.

It was used in all the “socialist” countries — and let’s remember my 11th grade book, which called socialism a system on the way to full communism — to create a society in which it was unacceptable not to be a socialist.

“Social engineering” shaped opinions, shaped lives, shaped what you were allowed to say, and think and believe. And yes, it was used in the US too.

Now, granted, in the more obviously communist places, like the USSR or the DDR, they would put you in mental hospitals, if you didn’t believe the word from above, or you insisted in believing that humans should have some freedom of movement, belief and trading. The justification for it — watch our current sh*theads try to pull this one — is that if you weren’t fully onboard with communism, you were obviously crazy.

The full end of this was reeducation camps, brain washing (which never seemed to work that well, though initially they expected it to) and all the rest of it.

Here, and in Europe (in Europe is still like that) the methods were “softer”. It was the fact that all the channels of communication and the official “public truth” was so pervasive and cohesive. This was particularly deceptive in the west, because the media wasn’t controlled by the government. It was, however, controlled by the left, in its march through the institutions.

Journalists, professors, even artists, were hired and given prominence according to their political beliefs. I.e. the lefter the better. And once in place, these people hired for politics, took their orders from the hierarchy and propagated the “political truth.” This was hilariously obvious to someone from outside, and might still be obvious to you, even though it’s not working anymore.

Take the push during Trump’s presidency, to make not opening the borders the worst thing evah! All of a sudden, there were shows about poor children whose parents were deported, etc. etc. etc. It was everywhere, including in seemingly independent fiction (books, movies, tv series.) Currently, the word has obviously come down that every couple has to be bi-racial, that no main character anywhere can be obviously and clearly white (they have to at least be very tan.) I know this, because my husband watches a never end of romantic comedies and sit coms. Or at least, he has them on in the background while doing other stuff in the evening, in the family room, so I get to see them too.

This had hit in England before, and it’s the main reason I stopped watching British mysteries (though some great wokeness in motives and resolutions didn’t help.) Now, before any idiot decides that’s because I object to interracial marriages — snort, giggle — no. It’s just that it’s pervasive, obvious and completely divorced from reality. In the UK and HERE. (I asked in the UK. And people from there in the comments laughed at the idea.)

I’m sorry, but most people still marry people of the same race, and no, white people aren’t so grossly outnumbered in the US that none of them can date or marry someone white.

I mean, about 20% interracial couples feels about right. I’d even take about 50%. I mean, it’s exaggerated, just like having a gay person in every cast in the early two thousands was exaggerated in relation to population, but it wasn’t exactly implausible for each group. Could happen is the necessary for suspension of disbelief, not “must happen.”

Unfortunately 100% is thoroughly unbelievable and insane, and I can’t suspend disbelief. Also, you might not know this, but I hate being propagandized/preached to.

I had that problem even when it was the only way to consume TV and literature, because all of it was controlled. It contributed to my not watching much TV.

This cohesiveness of thought and message reached full flower of “cohesiveness” and forcefulness in the twentieth century, because the industry and technology enabled it.

The industrial revolution had reached a peak. It was cheaper to do things in bulk and from a centralized location. This didn’t apply simply to shoes and clothes and furniture, but books and newspapers, and tv programming. 

So we got the industrial-news-information-entertainment complex, and from the center of that complex, it was easy to push the “correct” opinions and the “correct ideas.” Because these were known by all the “well educated” and the “well informed’ everyone who disapproved or disagreed was stigmatized as either stupid, or uneducated or crazy.

Now, in the West, “crazy” was mostly characterized as a harmless cook kook (d*mn you otto-corrupt), someone whose opinions shouldn’t be listened to who should not be considered.

And “they” are the same utopians who tried to create the “perfect” society through eugenics. And the “perfect” society is the same centralized, top down, communitarian, herd bullshit the eugenicists tried to create.

And it’s as dead as the harsher forms of creating the perfect humans.

It was killed by easier means of communication, by decentralized production, by blogs, social media, being able to talk to people across the country with the push of a button at no cost, etc. etc. etc.

Is it completely dead? No. The very old and very busy people still depend largely on the old media. You can tell, because they think Brandon is competent, the greatest crisis is white nationalism, and the economy is doing fine. Oh, and January 6th was an attempted insurrection and upteen policemen were killed by the insurgents. They also have no idea there’s a surge at the border, etc. etc.

Here’s the thing: Most of the people who took over our government under a color revolution in 2020, and the bureaucracy they’re plugged into are still using the mass media for information and entertainment.

Why shouldn’t they? They never disagreed with anything it proclaimed, and never had a need to find alternate information because “something isn’t right.” They were selected for adherence to the message and willingness to have their thoughts and words reshaped by Marxist International Inc.

But the rest of the people aren’t obeying. They’re not falling in line with the message, not responding to the pull on the heart strings, not believing whatever Marxist International Inc is proclaiming this week.

This has caused great panic in the corridors of power, because they can’t understand why not. They can’t understand how we can take the push and ignore it. At first they tried doubling and tripling down, because the problem must be they weren’t OBVIOUS enough.

This of course just made people nope them harder. Then they went crazy.

Their minds were confused because the Covidiocy worked, so they thought obviously it still worked. They didn’t and still don’t realize that it only worked because it was such a bizarre and horrible thing to do, so inhumane, so divorced from the most basic decency and costing the lives of thousands of people, probably millions worldwide — the collapse of the economy; the ventilators being used and set by doctors who had never had occasion to use them and had no idea, with recommendations much higher; abroad and in NYC using it to kill vast numbers of very old patients; the isolation that caused suicides; the vaccine injuries, and on and on and on — that people couldn’t believe anyone could do that on purpose. 

The big lie for a while coasted on the fact that no one believed they could do something that outrageous.

They still don’t understand why it didn’t work to keep us locked up and reshape our lives forever. (Remember “the new normal”?)

And they don’t know why any of their — stomp, stomp, stomp — attempts at panicking us since haven’t worked.

This means they’re going to go more insane. I don’t know how, because insanity can’t be guessed. I don’t know what they’re going to try to do to us the rest of the year.

I know it will be bad. I know it will be strange. And I know we need to refuse to go insane along with them.

I also know that as we refuse to be reshaped and have our thoughts and ideas controlled, they’re clamoring for censorship.

You must be aware of this. There’s something very weird going on with Zuckerberg. Note that after he apologized for corrupting the mind of the young with Facebook — snort giggle. Seriously. What children are on facebook? — his stock shot up. It was so obviously a payoff, since Meta is dead in the water and Facebook is getting abandoned in droves that you know, you know, it’s because he’s serving the purposes of the government.

What purposes? Well, they figure they can censor social media “for the children” and we’ll go along with it. So you must be aware that, yes, while social media can be a problem, the way to control it is for parents to control it. This “for the children” is their attempt to get the law on their side to censor social media — the thing WEF called for.

Because they can’t control the adults, but they can use the children to blind us.

The mark of how important this is, is that they’re doing their best to destroy Musk. Because he took Twitter away from them. And even though it’s still controlled and has legacy bs in its code, it’s too free for them and word of things they don’t want known gets out. See, European farmer protests, for instance.

We cannot let them stampede us into censorship, because that will prolong their hold on people’s minds. Oh, not forever. Even in China they don’t have the full control they had before the internet. But decades. And we can’t let them have decades to finish destroying the world.

Because socialism and its attempt to reshape man into the perfect creature for communism kills. Fast or slow, hard or soft, it always kills.

First the mind, then the body will follow.

Giver your minds over to them, and they’ll make you live in 15 minute concentration camps, waiting for the government’s ration of bugs, and watching controlled entertainment.

Until the lights go off and the great population reduction is achieved.

Because the only communist utopia that works is the peace of the mass grave.

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 ALMA BOYKIN: Harrier and Murder: Familiar Generations Book Five.

A murder lurks in Devon County—a murder of crows.

As winter slowly fades into spring, Jude Tainuit struggles to save money and to meet his new obligations to the Sheriff’s Department. An accident in the night brings an unwelcome reminder—Aunt Martha O’Neil is not young. Even less welcome, perhaps, is a falconer who takes offense at Jude’s Familiar, and who may not be quite what he seems.

When Aunt Martha returns, so does trouble. A second worker of twisted magic lurks in deeper shadow, perhaps. Combine growing danger with his hesitant courtship of Lucy Hoffman, and Jude may run out of strength, options, and time before March goes out with a murder—a murder of magic and malice.

https://amzn.to/3vXTZfQWITH ESSAYS BY LES JOHNSON AND ARLAN ANDREWS, AND SHORT STORIES BY MANY OTHER AUTHORS: Tomorrow’s Hope: A Journey of Exploration and Hope

Tomorrow’s Hope: A journey of exploration and hope builds on the themes reminiscent of classic Science Fiction written by the greats of the 1960’s. Inspired by the works of Ben Bova, Isaac Asimov, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Heinlein, Robert Silverberg, and more, we dive into worlds that could be just around the corner.

With Essays by Arlan Andrews, Les Johnson, and stories by Bart Kemper, Benjamin Tyler Smith, Charli Cox, Gustavo Bondoni, Jetse de Vries,
Michael Anthony Dioguardi, Sarina Dorie, Malorie Cooper, and William Joseph Roberts, you are sure to enjoy this collection.

https://amzn.to/3w0YS82FROM LAURA MONTGOMERY: Long in the Land: A Science Fiction Lost Colony Adventure (Martha’s Sons Book 2.)

He’s a man on the run. But on this harsh alien world, freedom doesn’t mean he’s safe.

Peter Dawe can’t face his mother’s relentless grief. With her anguish deepening his guilt and the colony’s governor out for revenge, he’s desperate to escape a deadly situation ready to explode. So he jumps at the chance to journey north away from danger, chasing the rare sight of a long-lost aircraft.

Buoyed by the glimpse of a machine he’s never seen before, Peter discovers the pilot desperately needs aid for his newborn son. But with sinister agents searching for them both, the remote planet may not be big enough to preserve the young fugitive from his enemy’s vengeance.

Can Peter find them refuge before they all fall to their doom?

Long in the Land is the thrilling second book in the Martha’s Sons science fiction series. If you like captivating world-building, edge-of-your-seat tension, and memorable characters, then you’ll love Laura Montgomery’s high-stakes tale.Buy Long in the Land to make a stark choice today!

https://amzn.to/3HOUcVvFROM HOLLY CHISM: Highway to Tartarus (Modern Gods Book 2)

Insanity seems to run rampant in the immortal population, and Hades seems to be the one the Fates tap to contain them all; however, this time, Hades, and Kyra, the former goddess of War from Atlantis, have to find and catch the one who’s gone dangerously insane: Deshayna, Kyra’s identical twin, and the former goddess of Death.

Along for the ride are a pregnant Persephone, Hel from the Norse pantheon (and Hades’ and Persephone’s lover), Tyr and Thor, and Kyra’s adopted daughter Rowan.

The seven of them follow rumors, leads, and death-god connections around the world in an RV that’s bigger on the inside than on the outside, while trying to maintain a bare semblance of normalcy despite the chaos of never knowing when or where their Fates-assigned mission will end…or if it will end them.

https://amzn.to/42su5x5FROM KAREN MYERS: On a Crooked Track: A Lost Wizard’s Tale (The Chained Adept Book 4)

Book 4 of The Chained Adept

SETTING A TRAP TO CATCH THE MAKERS OF CHAINED WIZARDS.

A clue has sent Penrys back to Ellech, the country where she first appeared four short years ago with her mind wiped, her body stripped, and her neck chained. It’s time to enlist the help of the Collegium of Wizards which sheltered her then.

Things don’t work out that way, and she finds herself retracing a dead scholar’s crooked track and setting herself up as a target to confirm her growing suspicions. But what happens to bait when the prey shows its teeth?

In this conclusion to the series, tracking old crimes brings new dangers, and a chance for redemption.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: A Gift of Koi

Ancient and wise, the grandfather Koi knows at first sight that this human bears a hidden wound. But how can a mere fish, even one as old as himself, be of any aid to a human?

Astronaut Tyler Lanham had come to Grissom City, first and oldest lunar settlement, in search of the medical expertise he couldn’t find on the far side of the Moon. When he sees the scar on the ancient koi’s side, he knows he’s found a kindred spirit.

But an enemy is stalking these lovely gardens. A danger that will change both man and fish.

A short story of the Grissom timeline.

https://amzn.to/3UnIettFROM LINDSAY PETERSEN: Avatars of the New Age (The Reluctant Chrononaut Adventures Book 4)

New widow Kate Cameron ends her period of mourning and contemplation at the foot of Mt. Ararat but she still has no destination. Her journey through the Caucasus, is beautiful and refreshing – until the saboteur’s bomb goes off and the train derails.
It’s 1905, Tsarist Russia is struggling to decide what it will be in the twentieth century, and Kate finds herself right in the middle of the argument. She feels safest joining an odd set of fellow travelers; a swami and a strongman escorting a traveler from Tibet who bears a long-hidden holy Christian relic which he will present to the Tsar in St. Petersburg. In the Russian capital they will represent the diverse peoples of the Russian Empire, avatars of the new age of technology and freedom.
Their luxurious travel on the Tsar’s personal hypersteam train is beset by news of revolution and breakdown, from distant military disaster to nearby mutiny and massacres. Meanwhile their group is pursued by a violent subversive and his mysterious master — who bound across Russia in the chicken-legged cottage of an evicted witch. With every verst the companions’ leisurely and luxurious trip becomes fantastic and frightening.
Will the train also be derailed? Will the holy relic bring the peace Russia desperately needs? Can anything? As her world spins off its axis there’s no telling whom Kate should trust, where she might find safety, what ‘facts’ and ‘truths’ can be relied on.
Notwithstanding the uncertainty, the show must go on. Russian nobility, the wealthy and the common people all gather in the capital for the grand spectacle meant to reassure all that everything is all right. Under the Tsar’s loving hand technology and brotherly affection will prevail and Russia will take her rightful place in the modern world at last. Surely these difficult struggles will bring all Russians together, living their faith in the future of Mother Russia — or will this exhibition be the ideal setting for the subversives’ most spectacular and deadly plot?

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: WICKED.

At some point someone on our side was maintaining that it’s silly to claim Nazis were leftist, because their approach to governance was more traditional and not at all like the Communists.

Me? I say it’s stupid to call something derived from Marxism, and that called itself socialism “right wing” — in the American sense — though the terms right and left are both inadequate for the battles taking place now. I also say that there is nothing more “traditional” than the end result of communism, which ends in a kakistocracy akin to capricious and not very smart tribal leaders, but with power over a much vaster land than most tribes. Which in turn causes a lot more deaths.

Leaving that aside, the “national socialists” — though the Nazis were a special and extreme case — did take a more traditional approach to improving humans.

Okay, first, let’s establish that most people who didn’t leave inside Marx’s head — that is all of humanity — understood and understands that utopia is impossible with humans as they are and have always been.

It is built into both philosophies derived from Marxism, the national socialists and the international socialists (but really secretly Russian Nationalists) the idea that humans must be improved.

The traditional form of this, appealing more to the national socialists, I guess because they tend to idolize farmers and pastoral idyll — as opposed to the international socialists who idolize factory workers. Note neither real farmers nor real factory workers are listened to by the so called “leaders”, these are just a philosophical ideal — is the approach taken by farmers from time immemorial, to improve the stock in farms.

The eugenics movement that was all the rage across Europe in the early 20th century, before the smoke from the death camps showed what a very bad idea it was, and which keeps rearing its ugly head was a manifestation of this. And it never really went away.

Early on it was brutal and clear. “Defectives” would be sterilized or killed, to put them out of general society’s misery. This would be done incrementally, till at the end of it, there would be, standing tall, an ideal humanity, which could be trusted to live in utopia, and– Bah. go read science fiction from before World War I. They don’t even try to disguise it.

The fact that they had the current lefties (who actually have a lot of happy fun eugenics ideas still, just buried) misunderstanding of culture for race, and looked at the end result of cultures as meaning some races are “defective” just made this all the more bizarre.

I don’t think I’m giving away any secrets when I say that Margaret Sanger formed planned parenthood to discourage the “inferior races” from reproducing. At the time, of course, this included not just black people, but everyone who could tan, and probably a lot of the Irish. And that part has now a definite “off” whiff in America. You see, it included the Jews too. And the GIs returned from WWII knowing exactly where that led.

But–

But it’s not the end of the eugenics project.

A lot of it in the mutated national socialism, like, say, in Portugal, the softer, gentler — spits — “will not feed you in batch lots to the ovens, but will make you very poor” version, which was also tried here by FDR (for the record, having read mom’s school books, not only did Salazar crib FDRs programs, he probably plagiarized FDR’s speeches. Bah.) still goes on.

Part of it is to discourage breeding. This crosses with the crazy insane bits of the sixties and seventies — from the left, psychology — which thought a society without sexual frustration would be utopia. Because it was repression that made you angry and mean, or whatever.

Okay, so, there is (still) a strong cultural push to screw a lot, but not reproduce. Both because this is supposed to keep the welfare classes (and if you’ve never found yourself in trouble, you don’t know how hard Welfare is to refuse — we did — or to come out of — some friends did) from reproducing (it’s not working, but that’s for other reasons) and because of our new idea of what makes ideal people. Ideal people, you see, are WANTED babies, and then coddled, watched, guided within an inch of their lives.

The number of times I’ve had someone explain to me that yeah, abortion to the day of birth is needed because not everyone is wanted, and therefore they’ll be born to a life of misery and be unhappy and probably criminals their entire life.

I’m here to tell you that I haven’t — yet — taken one of these “helpful” beings heart out through their mouths. Yet. But there’s always tomorrow.

You see, neither Dan nor I were wanted. Oh, he was. Until it was discovered — fortunately at the time this was impossible to do pre-birth — he was a boy. I just wasn’t. Mom had determined the way to wealth was to have only one child and lavish all resources on him. Don’t blame her too hard. After all the UN was making posters pushing that idea about that time.

And yet, shockingly, surprisingly, we’re both here, and even more shockingly, we’re both productive, happy, and the only type of criminal I am is “thought criminal” which should not exist in the US.

Further, anyone who looks at craigslist or other place where people list animals for re-adoption knows that no matter how wanted you are at birth, circumstances change. The number of breed dogs and cats being given up because the owners found out the having isn’t as much fun as the wanting. Or because an adopter died, got sick, or has to move to a place that won’t accept pets.

For children, let me assure you both the inconvenience and the changing circumstances, over 18 to 20 or 22 years (which seems to be as long as it takes — minimally — to launch them these days) are much, much higher.

So being wanted at birth is not something that determines trajectory in life. This is however something that is almost impossible to penetrate in the modern mind, and some of you are probably cringing that I dare question it.

Then there are various issues we test for, and which you’re encouraged to abort for. Look, I am not even judging those who decide to. I do understand the fears all too well, okay?

Every time I got pregnant, I compounded with fate for what defects I’d prefer. I know that sounds lunatic, but there it is. ”Blind? I can take blind.” Or “missing limb. We’ll figure it out.” Anything, anything but mentally defective, because I wasn’t sure I could bridge that or live with it.

So, of course, what we were told is that older son would be mentally defective and probably never be able to live independently — he says he’s mentally defective, because of the circumstances of the pregnancy. As for living independently, he tends to forget to eat vegetables if his wife doesn’t make him, but other than that he seems okay — and were encouraged to abort. That we didn’t was more that I couldn’t live with that EITHER, particularly after six years of infertility and having gone through a very difficult pregnancy and being profoundly aware that he was likely to be our one and only. (We got lucky.)

However I remember the fear, the struggle, and the convincing arguments the other way. I come not to judge, nor to condemn, only to say that it is a slippery slope.

Slippery? Well — where do you stop? Yes, a profoundly mentally deficient child will need life long care, and I know how difficult that is, and how much a parent will worry about their own mortality and leaving behind a kid who can’t survive on his own. Of such things are murder-suicides made.

But then, what is an handicap too profound to survive? What justifies abortion or, probably, in forthcoming developments, simply culling certain genes out? And how much is genetic, and how much is environment? I think we’re in the very infancy of genetics and much of what we think we know ain’t so. And culling for genetic defects would be stupid. Even if we knew more. Yes, I can explain.

First of all, though, I’d like to point out we don’t know what’s survivable, what’s a full life, what’s happiness — for others. You know that “Everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about?” Well “Everyone has a value you know nothing about.” Sometimes the value — I often think mine — is to be a negative example, granted.

However, I think I went to college with a Thalidomide baby. I’m not sure, because I don’t even know if it was distributed in Portugal. However, he had the characteristic lack of limbs, hands emerging from shoulders and either feet from trunk or severely shortened legs. I don’t know for sure, because I wasn’t part of his group.

His group? Oh, yeah. He had to write tests with his feet, and his mom came in on test days, to deal with that. However, the rest of the time, he was surrounded by a coterie of girls at all times, and he was one of the top Language students in my year. (Though I think his emphasis was Latin languages, so we had very few — and all amphitheater — classes together.) He was one of the student leaders, running for various student-political-leadership offices. (Not a communist either, so genuinely not stupid.)

I have no idea what happened to him after college, but I’d not be surprised if he were married with half a dozen perfectly normal kids, and working somewhere in the back room of an embassy. (Though frankly, because his mom looked upper class, he’s more likely to have one or two perfectly normal kids.)

The girl in my class who was educable mentally retarded was married to a boy with the same issue by her parents (and his parents) when they were in their late teens. I’m not sure what the reasoning was, but it’s not an unusual arrangement in traditional societies, even though you would cringe from it because, well, eugenics ideas.

They were given a place to live, and she cleans houses, while he does simple repairs and day laborer type stuff. Unlike what would happen here (likely) they were not sterilized, and no one realized (literally) that they didn’t know what caused babies until they’d had either four or five. At which point she asked and someone explained. At any rate, even though I’d have assumed that her issues were genetic (her people were welfare cases and not overbright. I don’t know about his) their kids are fine and at least two — I stopped keeping track after that. Or mom did, so I got no reports — graduated from college.

So it’s probably a good thing they weren’t sterilized, but it’s probably a good thing anyway.

You see, the eugenics project is based on a completely demented premise no one ever bothered to test: the idea that a very healthy body will create a very healthy mind, and a temperament such as that of the angels, knowing good from evil and choosing good every time.

It takes no more than a drunkard’s walk through history to know this is poppycock.

Yes, sure, a non-idiot ruler is preferable to an idiot one. But assuming at least vaguely educable and grounded, non-geniuses are less likely to run away with an insane idea and be unable to back track when it’s proven insane.

Victoria did all right as a queen, within her system, and having read a lot about her, I don’t think anyone would consider her better than average.

But not everyone is a ruler. And not everyone is going to work in a profession of high abstraction.

The number of people capable of high abstraction I think — note think, we don’t really study this or the effect of culture on this — is always a small percentage. And, mark me well, they are not inherently superior.

The number of people who score above 132 IQ in the Stanford-Binet tests is 2% of the population, give or take. And higher than that becomes increasingly rare. And above 165 is meaningless, because there aren’t enough at that level to establish deviations, since IQ is a statistical measurement.

It is also a measurement of being able to perform a certain number of tasks that correlate well with doing well in academic circumstances.

Because of the way the rewards were stacked in the last century, we — in the West, but really worldwide, as long as there’s some kind of technological civilization, however weak — have a strong prejudice for high IQ as being superior and the mark of the better human, and the one capable of implementing the best policies, to bring about “utopia”.

This is sometimes taken to the point that regions and people who test consistently badly are spoken of, on the right, as being inferior and should be discouraged from reproducing. And on the left as “needing help” to reap the benefits of society.

First, besides the point that a group-IQ tells you nothing about an individual in that group, because the true avis rara, those with IQ above 132 can appear in any APPEARANCE group (because appearance is very bad at following IQ, and we’re all mixed.) Second, counterproductive, because IQ is not a measure of worth, or even of fitting well/doing well in society.

In the comments blow-up here sometime ago, someone threw a hissy fit that perhaps the reason people with higher IQs who are in Mensa don’t do well in life as a hole, because they are “the type of people who join Mensa” not just high IQ.

That is a big silly, because the reasons to join Mensa are as varied as members. Yes, if go to certain chapters, you’ll think the purpose of the organization is to get together and talk about how smart one is, which would seem to encourage people of little accomplishment beyond IQ.

But– But that’s not the only reason people join. I belonged for years — till we moved, and for various reasons we dropped it — to a chapter that devoted itself whole heartedly to beer and bad puns. Because we were in what was then still fairly insular South and were most of us outsiders. Which meant, we had trouble making friends with locals. We didn’t speak the social language. And therefore the group was just a social group.

I’ve also known a lot of people along the years who join but never attend, because it’s useful for their resume/impressive for their bosses. In their defense, I got two jobs by putting in the line that I’d edited the Mensa newsletter. A boss who belonged, and one who knew what it was, were willing to take a chance on the girl with the accent and the foreign degree on the strength of that. So it’s a reason to take it.

Also, within Mensa, there’s a lot of variation of IQs. So even given “they’re all the type of people who join Mensa” if IQ had anything to do with success in life in general, you’d think the higher the IQ the higher the success. Note I always refer to my kids being “diagnosed” with high IQ. To the extent that people were successful in life in general, it seemed to be the ones who’d come in with the bare minimum to qualify. After that, results got worse.

The very successful ones (eh. We count. LOL) were also in professions of high abstraction.

Here’s the thing, there is a reason for the stereotype of the mathematical, or engineering, or physics genius who has to be told when a shirt is too small a size, or that they shouldn’t wear a wool pullover in high summer. High abstraction intelligence doesn’t correlate well with …. life. Because life isn’t abstract. It’s immediate, it’s small, it’s petty, it’s irritating. I can’t be the only person who sometimes wishes she could fast forward from waking up to being fully dressed and working. Or who lets dishes accumulate because they’re not interesting enough. Or who forgets to do the needful to lubricate social links, from answering emails from friends, to sending thank you notes, to– if you’re my friend and I seem to ignore you for months on end, I probably think of you daily, but am pursuing something that is taking all my mental resources and I forget to call or write. It’s truly nothing to do with you.

Or of course, I’m down in the depths of depression again.

Now, I’m not using myself as an example, though I’ve confessed above I test okay. But I’ve also looked around. I have eyes to see with. And I can see the obvious when it’s written in letters twenty feet high and made of fire.

Most of the highly successful people, in just about any field that doesn’t require high abstraction — including managing the people who work with high abstraction — are people who fall just short of that top 2%. In fact, most of the students identified as “gifted” by their teachers are not those in the top 2% let alone above, who are usually identified as “there’s something wrong with him/her” or “He/she is oppositional-defiant” are in the top 10% or so of intelligence. Smart enough that they look “really smart” to normal human beings, but still can read all the social signals, etc. And ping as “normal, just better.”

I always laugh when I read something about how China (It’s usually China) is going to increase IQs of every child born to 148 — it’s always 148 — because that would be the end of their regime, and probably not because the geniuses would question everything, though they might, but because the kids wouldn’t be able to do anything else but high abstraction successfully.

And on top of that, geniuses aren’t more compliant, more altruistic, and definitely not more agreeable or objective than the average human being. Again, mostly they just can make all the human mistakes, only faster and harder.

However, because of the bias in the culture, we do have eugenics ideas that cause real trouble in the real world. From trying to prevent the reproduction of those who aren’t geniuses, to welfare that amounts to hamstringing people we think can’t survive because of “low IQ”. And thereby the creation of a dependent class (a lot of them government workers, because the left thinks we need make work jobs for the unfit. The others just welfare) of one sort or the other. Oh, and the favoring of these people for promotion, etc, because the poor dears supposedly can’t make it on their own.

Which in turn is breaking every single field. Because every field needs competence of some sort. And choosing for any reason other than competence IN THAT FIELD AND JOB ultimately ends up in choosing people who can’t do it. (Looks at Harvard and clears throat. And do, please, realize that your medschool works exactly like Harvard. Sweet dreams.)

The point I’m trying to make is that despite our strong bias for abstract intelligence as being “superior” and despite our trying to encourage “superior” people in the understanding this makes the world better or reduces the burden on society (the only reasons for it to be a burden on society boil down to socialism) it’s not necessarily so.

By reducing the number of average or lower IQ people, even, who are allowed to find their place naturally, without “help” from rules, regulations and various forms of welfare, we are in fact destroying society.

Part of this is that humans can’t really be bred like sheep. We are more complex than sheep (or even cats.) Highly desirable characteristics come paired with highly undesirable ones. Or are negated in expression (something we’ll get into on the next post on this, probably Monday) because of nurture. Because they’re culturally discouraged. Or because there’s some defect that runs with it.

It’s a joke that extreme ADD is a diagnosis of high IQ. It’s not always true, but it often runs together. Is that due to poor training? Quite possibly, but training is highly individual and probably can’t be completely got around.

More importantly, I’ve noted among my fellow creatives (I hate the word, but it’s the best term) that innovative creation is often paired with neuroticism and the resultant type of history you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. Oh, also with auto-immune issues way above statistical likelihood.

What does this mean? Search me. It’s entirely possible that creativity in humans is like a pearl in an oyster. It looks very pretty, but it’s formed through pain and irritation.

I think if we tried to breed out, say, ADD, we’d find ourselves breeding out something we’re desperately in need of. (Or think we are.)

Also, because sometimes a desirable characteristic shows up as a throw back in an otherwise unexceptional or even completely moronic family. Leonardo DaVinci had a lot of siblings by each of his parents (separately so far as we know) and neither is known to history. And speaking of the illegitimate son of Ser Pero DaVinci, let’s agree the man had major issues which impaired his functioning and make it a miracle he accomplished as much as he did.

Human generations are too long for a sane breeding program anyway, or to realize that by doing it on the slow “convince them not to have kids” program we not only eliminated mentally slow people, but also creatives. Or people who are really good at plumbing. Or–

None of which stops the soft form of eugenics from going on. Which often turns into reverse eugenics, since welfare does pay per baby. And then keeps that baby ignorant, feral, and trapped in the soft mitts of the eugenicists, making everything worse for everyone.

Let’s not forget too that this form of soft eugenics can suddenly go weird and hard. Particularly now that the international left has adopted a lot of the ideas of the national left.

You have only to look at Canada to see a program of soft eugenics “with the best intentions” go feral. You start by offering and more or less pushing (hard pushing, trust me) abortions for defective babies (which includes, of course, unwanted ones, because “everyone knows” they’ll be criminals) and euthanasia for the hopelessly ill who are “just suffering uselessly.” Next thing you know you’re offering euthanasia for people who are depressed. And people who are just not that smart. And, soon enough, with a little advance of the forecasting ability of genetics for unborn babies, for kids who are just not that athletic, or will be prone to colds, or aren’t that smart, or by the by “just won’t be very pretty.” You know it, and I know it.

And then all of a sudden the smell of the death camps is upon us, and you’ll be shocked Pikachu about “how could we have got here? We had the best intentions.”

But a society built for humans needs to hold the individual human being, always flawed, always imperfect, as the center and measure of itself. It has, by definition, to accept non perfect humans, not to kill them or otherwise destroy them in the name of perfection which everyone assumes would be a) achievable. b) better for everyone.

Otherwise, it’s the unmaking of all that the West has achieved, and a return to famine and barbarism. Oh, slowly, by the scenic route, and perhaps with a drastically changed humanity that can never climb back up.

But an unmaking, anyway.

As much as in our intellectual pride we value the abstract “intelligence” of the “experts” the last three years should be a sound warning not to give them leeway, and to prize instead the battles no one sees, and the triumphs, too: the not particularly intellectual woman who is good at cooking and cleaning and keeping a nice home. Or who is good at looking after people. Or the not highly abstract-thinking-man who is an excellent brick layer or plumber, or anything else.

We don’t know what humanity will need in the future. The future is notable for not being here and not being known.

Let’s keep the vast variety of humans. We might need them later.

[Next up, probably Monday, Killing Me Softly on rebuilding humans from the inside out. (With understanding that as already shown in this post, both methods blend and socialists of both stripes end up adopting both, just sometimes one before the other.)]

The Peasants are Revolting by BGE

Those of us that get our news from the mainstream media may not know that working class people, mostly farmers and truckers, throughout Europe have been protesting the removal of fuel and other subsidies.  It started with protests in Germany where trucks and tractors blocked the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and has spread to (at least) France, Portugal, and Belgium.  It’s hard for me to have too much sympathy for subsidy hogs, but the reasoning, such as it is, among European governments for removing the subsidies is idiotic.  They didn’t determine (e.g.,) that the subsidies hurt poor farmers in Africa – they do, it’s a scandal – no, it’s the Green New Deal, you see.  Cow farts hurt Gaia and normal people just have too much to eat.  This must be, how do you say, stopped.

Les agriculteurs en colère. The protests spread to France, where farmer’s protests are a regular occurrence, and quickly escalated as the farmers closed the roads around many of the largest cities with tractor blockades and the occasional fire.  The farmer’s weapon of choice has been straw.  Usually alone, but sometimes used straw in the form of what the Irish call muck.  They’ve been piling it in front of government buildings and shooting it out of harvesters through the cities and towns.  In one case, enterprising abattoir workers dumped the waste from their day job in front of the local mairie. 

They seem to have been rather more thorough than their Canadian counterparts. The roads into several cities were blocked.  Ports were closed and life thoroughly disrupted all over the country.  There are pictures of empty supermarkets, but it’s not clear how representative they are.  Still, in what the French press is calling a political masterstroke, while the President of France was photographed enjoying a white-tie dinner with the king of Sweden complete with liveried servants, his new Prime Minister, who’s all of 35, looks 12, has been in office for less than a month, but he’s gay so it’s OK, completely capitulated to the farmer’s demands.  They do that in France, every year of two.  The German government has capitulated too.  No government can be trusted, but they’ve given way so far.

The situation escalated in Belgium where farmers surrounded the headquarters of the EU chanting Ursula, we’re coming for you.  They piled up straw and muck while the jeunes threw firecrackers – the press said explosives and incendiaries, but they were just firecrackers.  EU bureaucrats were trapped inside, and the police responded with water cannon.  There were reports of rubber bullets being fired, but I’ve been unable to confirm if this is true – we’ll come back to that.  The Brussels protestors seem to have been mostly Belgians, but significant numbers of Italians and French are reported too.

There are reports and pictures of roads blocked throughout Portugal and a delicious clip of tractors seeing off a police armored car in the Netherlands (it might be Belgium; the caption was Pays-Bas.)  Expect to see all the local governments capitulate sooner than later, the farmers know where they live.  The EU is different, and this is where it gets interesting.  The EU “has the organizing ability of the Italians, the flexibility of the Germans, and the modesty of the French. And that’s topped up by the imagination of the Belgians.”  They are not accountable to anyone, and they are the true believers in this gnostic death cult that seems to have taken hold of the world’s managerial class.  They can be counted on to do something really, really stupid.  

The English language press is more useless than usual.  One expects that from the American press who couldn’t find Canada on a map never mind Belgium, but GB is just over the water and the entrance to France was blocked.  Not peak holiday time so they didn’t notice, if guess.  The Daily Mail, which is the best source for middle class wine-mom opinion and loves to bash the working class, has nothing on it.  The broadsheets mention it with the most detailed coverage being in the Grauniad.  They get it entirely wrong as you might expect, but at least there’s something.  The French language press is covering it, but they are party political organs, and the media isn’t trustworthy.  The German’s have more, but my German is dire, and I’m limited to the English versions, which often don’t align with the German language version. 

Our hostess asked me for links, which I cannot provide.  The press Is useless, and I’ve had to go into X to find out what’s going on.  It’s worth scrolling through and, for those with better language skills than mine, to find out what’s going on.  Sure, it’s unfiltered and not curated (snicker,) but that’s where the pictures are and pictures or it didn’t happen.  Find the tractors and the armored car, it’ll make your day. The 24-hour rule should prevail, see the rubber bullets above, but this is, so far, a popular uprising rather than a bunch of spoiled children.  The managerial class has had it all their own way for too long and maybe, just maybe, this is a step toward balance and eliminating this gnostic death cult.   Keep in mind that the German and French governments capitulated and as an earlier peasant revolt had it “when Adam delved and Eve span, who then was the gentleman.”

Humans always strive for perfection. It’s something in us. We can conceptualize perfection. We also know when and how we fall short, and in what myriad ways we fail.

To an extent striving for perfection in the individual is fine. To an extent, even, it is a — not unique but the degree of application is unique — part of the American character. When I first came to the US as an exchange student, I was startled at the EXISTENCE of a self-help shelf. Things on how to cope with brokenness, how to improve your performance, etc. ad nauseum.

Some of them were very obviously insane or infantile — I came over the first time in 1980, which is to say at the very end of the 70s when everything was infected with the pseudo-just-so-stories of Freudianism. (In fact, I’ve been reading a lot of books that came out late sixties to the early eighties, and it’s amazing how every author — every single one — dives into Freudianism to attempt to make the book “profound” or “literary.”) — but a lot of the techniques described still worked.

The techniques are usually behavioral, which, as an explanation for what humans are, for the human ethos, sucks, but as a way to modify and regulate your behavior for the inside works more or less unfailingly. (More or less. Humans can always invent new ways to fail.)

Note I said from the inside. From the outside… Well, every time a dog salivates, a Pavlovian must ring a bell, to paraphrase Heinlein.

Which brings us to the urge to improve humans from the outside. Those other humans. Yes, them, outside my head. While I might be falling short of my own potential, brother, what’s their excuse?

I mean, I won’t deny that I’m not a particularly charitable person. And I confess I suffer from intellectual pride. But there are exchanges one witnesses online — particularly between people we know both exist — where the only possible response is “I didn’t realize the baseline of humanity is mentally dead.” Particularly when one knows neither of these people are actually stupid by any other marker.

The truth is that raising kids who tested in the stratospheric line for IQ made me very skeptical of IQ as a measurement of any use for anything but academic achievement (And even then! For instance, until trained both sons scored abysmally in multiple choice tests, due to an inability to accept an answer could ever be “that simple” or “that stupid.” Instead they would try to complicate things and justify in their heads why an obviously and clearly absurd answer “must be” right.) Because while the kids — saltational development is a thing — could demonstrate some bizarrely high abilities, at the same time they could pull mistakes that you couldn’t even figure out how someone could make. And then I’d sit there, holding my head and going “And if these are the creme de la creme, how do other kids even survive?” (I have an answer to that, actually. Normal kids don’t get in half as much trouble, and don’t come up with half that many crazy things to do, that could either blow up the house or poison them, or whatever. It’s like raising my very smart kittens. It’s driving me bonkers. I’ve now raised fifteen cats, but none that got into drawers that are child-locked, to find twist ties to eat.)

Everyone seemingly is incredibly stupid at times. Geniuses just are stupid faster, harder, and from above, so to put it.

Come on, you know if you look back, there were entire periods of your life when you were convinced of something, or attempting to do something that in retrospect was incredibly stupid or at the very best misguided. (Around here we call it Sarah’s so called writing career. It continues, too.) But at the time you couldn’t see it, and what you were doing seemed logical. (To be fair, I’ve known it for some time. And it’s not logical, it’s compulsive.)

However, from the outside in, looking at other people, it’s easy to think you know exactly what they should be doing, what they should be trying, how they should be solving their issues and mitigating their trouble.

In my fifties, I finally understood mom’s most annoying habit. No, seriously, I’m now 61. I’ve been on my own since 22, so almost the time I was a child in her house, doubled, but if I mention I’m doing anything at all, from cleaning something to making something, I get advice as though I were about 10. And heaven forbid I’m having some problem, health or motivation or something, and mention it, because the instruction will be very minute, take hours, and tell me everything I’ve known for 39 years, give or take.

I understood it, because looking at my sons as they launched off into their own lives, the impulse to tell them what to do, so they avoided making the same mistakes I made was almost unendurable. You could see them tottering off to do exactly the most stupid things you did. And you wanted to physically reach out and redirect them.

It took a lot of self-control, and even more self-reflection to realize that no, it wasn’t my mistakes they were making, but their own. While sometimes there were echos, mostly because there is a familial temperament (depressive and anxious and neurotic as a shaved cat– like you’re surprised, right?) their path was not mine (thank heavens, even if both of them write) and their time is not mine, and the country they grew up in is not mine (We could ease up on the echoes of recent developments any time now, or why do you think my PTSD is keeping me up on the black-swan blind?) In the end turned out some of the things they were doing I thought were horrible mistakes, were not. And some of the actions I approved of based on my own experiences, might have been mistakes, and–

Now, these are our kids — speaking in the general — that we have that impulse about. And the impulse is often wrong. I know in the village, from listening in to the gossip of women, that half the “nice girls” women hoped their sons would marry were disastrous. And have of the “that whore” they did marry did turn out to be very good wives, and often very good to the complaining mother in law, as well. Yes, sometimes parents are right after the kids are adult, and beyond the obvious “don’t drink too much, drug too much, whore or waste money” but– It’s not often.

Almost all my friends were their family’s tragedy, taking a path that the parents didn’t like, and the extended family disapproved of. Often they were their own tragedy, balked of the initial path for some reason, physical, mental or just fate. Often they spent years lamenting the path not taken.

But in the end, we all came to a place where we’re doing pretty well, at peace with ourselves, and looking back, we can’t see it any other way. (Which is why the so called career still exists. That and because I enjoy writing more than having written.)

The point is….

Self-improvement is a grand and noble ideal if undertaken from the inside out. And it has been known to score some remarkable successes.

We often hear about them, and not just when someone is trying to sell you something.

Sure, about half of the prisoners who gave up drugs and found Jesus in jail will fall back into criminal behavior once they come out. Given what militates against them, from habit to the friends they choose, to the circles they’re used to navigating in, and the way they are used to things working, the big shock is that only half of them do so.

We tend to hear about the big transformation projects in movie-of-the-week type thing, and it’s always huge: the drug abuser who went clean and became a multi-millionaire entrepreneur; the alcoholic who went clean and became a philantropist, etc. etc. etc.

But those are not the most common transformations. In fact, I’d say those are the rarest, because they happen to people who had reached a level where saving themselves is almost impossible. It’s not one habit or one tendency, but an entire complex of them pushing them a certain way. And those are very hard to break.

The most common transformation will be the C student who formed new study habits and seemingly overnight becomes an A student. The basement dweller who wakes up one day and realizes he must stand on his own two feet, and starts reaching for everything and anything to make that goal happen, including putting in a lot of work. And similar cases, which we all know.

These cases we know and see every day, just about. We don’t fully remark on them, just treat them as “Oh, he finally grew up.” Or “Oh, she got serious.”

I’ve done this a number of times, with different things. Including fiction writing. I do really well with a regular writing schedule, and habits. This makes perfect sense, if you know I’m ADD AF. Habits or medication are the only ways to deal with it. But habits break, usually with…. moves, illness, various issues. Like, you go through two or three weeks of not being able to do whatever you made an habit of. So I will fall off the wagon, and have to reform the habit again. (I’m in the middle of this, which might or might not be perceptible from that side of the screen.)

The power of doing this is outright transformative. And therefore it gives people illusions.

“If I can change that much, I who am so superior,” okay, most of us know that’s BS, but self-obviously a lot of people don’t, “Surely if these mugs just did what I told them, and worked at it the way I tell them to, they too could be perfect. And then the world would be perfect.”

That is where the issue starts, because that’s not how any of this works. Habits imposed from outside are notorious for not sticking, if they ever take in the first place.

I think this illusion that you can change others from outside is one of the oldest temptations of mankind.

But in the twentieth century it became the illusion of nations.

More tomorrow.

This is not a post about writing, but it is a post about reading – or a post about fiction and reality, humanity and myth.

There is a way in which fiction forms our mind.  Shakespeare has, after all, been accused of inventing modern men with modern emotions.  Then, through the immense popularity of is plays, these character types, these ways to react to things… spread.

This is possible, though I don’t think it’s true, which is good because if it were it would make a very bad case against the bard’s legacy.  It is true that before Shakespeare there were fewer plays that were coherently organized around character types and character dilemmas that made sense to the modern man.

But I grew up in Europe.  I was taken to see art from the middle ages and before before I even had an idea of art.  I remember the medieval statues, their proportions all askew.  I don’t presume that Leonardo DaVinci and Michaelangelo invented the modern body and we all grew up to conform to it, and part of the reason I don’t believe it is that the ancients pictured bodies similar to our own.

Now, as with the argument with the Venus of Dusseldorf and whether it was porn or an accurate representation of women during the ice ages, it is possible to say that with Barbarian invasions, malnutrition and colder climate during much of the middle ages, it is entirely possible bodies had a totally different shape.  One does periodically meet a person walking around who looks like one of those medieval statues, just as one does, occasionally, bump into a woman shaped like the Venus of Dusseldorf.

In the same way it is possible that during the middle ages, while trying to survive, the idea of the individual mind and emotions counting for much fell right out of the culture.  (It was never as dominant as in our era anyway.)  Survival and times of scarcity always bring about a tightening of social norms to whatever the society considers “average” or “normal” behavior, sometimes with lethal consequences for the odd.  (One of the reasons it always puzzles me why Odds – people who don’t fit in our society – admire despots and societies of enforced poverty.)

Romeo and Juliet, and certainly Hamlet are not fully comprehensible unless we realize we’re watching the struggle of the individual against the group and that social obligations which were considered paramount.

But enough of Shakespeare.  As you know – or possibly, fortunate people that you are, don’t – you can say the words “William Shakespeare”, start me talking, provide me with food and water at intervals, and I’ll go on under my own power, with no audience interaction, for a day or two.  (Possibly more if my voice doesn’t give out.)

However, the fact that the very notion of Shakespeare having invented the modern human exists tells you with absolute certainty how much we’re aware of having acquired our notions of how the world should work from fiction, in all its means of delivery.

Fiction serves – or can serve – great purpose.  It can show things that otherwise can’t be seen in human life except in the very slow development of a whole life, clearly and in a minute, and through emotional delivery.  Concepts like deferred gratification or limited altruism (sacrificing for one’s kids) or even the ups and downs of a long marriage.

That is the problem too – It shows us what is slow and mostly internal as immediate and external.  Where fiction gives us odd notions – oh, all but the very “literary” sort, and that, I dare say might inform the minute moments of life, but will not (from what I read) give you a general thesis of existence (unless it is “Kill yourselves, all is lost” – the slightly more elaborate form of “Fly, all is discovered”) is the climax.  (You, the lady in the back row, stop blushing.  I didn’t mean that kind of fiction.)

Terry Pratchett whose works are, in a way, a meta-critique of our fables and stories pokes fun at this in (I think) Men at Arms (I always confuse it with Guards! Guards!) when they’re on the roof top and have a bow and one arrow and are attempting to hit the dragon on the “voonerables.”  The clinching argument is “There’s a million to one chance, so it’s a sure thing.”

Fiction operates on creating cathartic release.  As such, it requires a big climax for big stakes (or arrows) and a reward immediately after.  I try my best (because I have trouble believing it otherwise) to indicate there will be a long slog to set all right after the big climax, while still making it satisfactory to people.  But it’s not easy.  

I’m not criticizing literature (or other fiction) mind.  The other times I’ve written this sort of thing people get all mad and say “what do you want then?” – but I like literature fine the way it is.  I like the big climax and the big payoff precisely because they rarely happen in life.

On the other hand, it is important for the readers to remember that fiction is a representation, not the reality.  In reality, when you take the one in a million chance, there’s a good chance you’ll fail.  And even if you succeed and the dragon is gone, you still have to deal with all the crazy people who brought the dragon over and wanted to crown him king.  (The plot of whichever of the Pratchett books is mentioned above.  The covers I have are so similar I routinely confuse them.)

They’re not going to vanish over night; they’ll get up to ever more interesting stuff; and killing them is just not part of the game because it creates other problems.  (We all know what happens to societies that do that.)

So killing the dragon in real life would never be the all-encompassing solution it is in the Discworld  world (though Pratchett too hints at other issues, of course.)

There is a moment when I’m very ill – I don’t know if it happens to everyone – usually in the middle of the night, when I wake for a moment, and I feel the wellness below the illness.  (Just like when I’m getting sick, I feel the sickness beneath what’s as yet health.)

It doesn’t mean I’m well.  There will be days of feeling terrible still, and impatience with weakness, and sleeping far too much.  But it means I’ve turned the corner and I’m going to get well.

In real life it is somewhat like that, and when we throw fits and demand perfect and stark choices, we’re doing it because we want life to be a fairytale.  We want someone to offer us a choice between death or a bowl of ice cream with extra marshmallows, and we’re going to hold our breath until we get every last sweet mushy marshmallow.  We earned it, we deserve it, and we’re going to enjoy it.

I think this is part of human nature and fiction merely gives us an outlet for it.  In the same way I don’t believe Shakespeare invented modern humans, I don’t believe fiction invented the big climatic choice.  It goes back through our fairytales and legends – far back indeed.

But let’s remember that’s the only place it can be achieved, shall we?  The starkest choice you’ll get in real life is between sure death and less sure death (or whatever other evil you’re trying to avoid.)

So, you can choose between death and a bowl of ice cream that might be cyanide laced.  You can choose between letting illness take its course or feeling that moment of wellness and building on it, and taking great care and eventually after a lot of work, getting well. It won’t be easy.  It won’t be fast.  Recovery is not assured.

I’m an optimist.  I’ll take the chance.  And hey, cyanide tastes like almonds.

The first time I heard of deer-blinds — in this case a platform, up on a tree — it was of someone — a kid of 12 — dying because he’d been so still so long that a blood clot, formed from his position against the side, migrating to his heart and killing him.

Metaphorically speaking, I’m that kid, atop that duck blind. Only I’m waiting for the black swan to erupt.

Which is both insane and counterproductive. My watching for it or not won’t make the black swan erupt.

By definition a black swan is an event you can’t predict, which changes everything.

And part of me thinks that this obsessive — it’s interfering with life, because I have to check through the news so often — checking and watching is wishful thinking, because the depressive thinks we’re headed to h*ll in a hand-basket that’s already on fire. But part of me refuses to give up, and is hoping. Hoping for the event that turns everything upside down.

Except this doesn’t feel like hoping. Or waiting hopefully. More like….

Okay, so I went through a lot of fire-seasons in Colorado, some worse than others. Twice, we had the radio on all the time, waiting for the order to evacuate. Once a friend left our dinner party to rush home to pick up stuff so he could evacuate. (He didn’t lose his house, turned out, but it came this close.) And at least once, we had everything in the car that we absolutely couldn’t afford to lose, and our important documents in a briefcase, in case word came in the night. And took turns sleeping, so the other could be awakened.

This is what it feels like, though I be covered in fish and called Persephone if I have any clue what urgent action I’d need to take should the black swan take flight. Particularly since I don’t know where the black swan is, when it will appear, or–

Look, chances are it’s something really big, far away from me. My knowing about it the first five minutes will make absolutely no difference.

And yet, here I am atop the deer, duck, black swan blind, afraid to move or make a sound and startle it was it starts and —

Why do I think a black swan event is about to happen?

Part of it is “Because it feels like it is” and part is, because there have been a series of black swans flying recently. Actually a lot of them.

Some were sort of predictable, like the stolen election. I mean, given the lockdowns, but the lockdowns themselves, and the cascade of crazy that followed was a black swan. The Canadian — CANADIAN! — trucker convoy was a black swan. What is going on in TX is a black swan. BUT on a less happy note, 10/7 in Israel was also a black swan. And way, way, way back? The USSR falling. Just collapsing. The collapse was baked in, but…. like that?

Once black swans start taking flight, they seem to come closer and closer.

Digging deeper: A black swan is something you wouldn’t believe if someone told you about it before it happens. Sometimes, dream or nightmare, something you end up thinking you dreamed up, and keep trying to snap out of it and wake up.

So, why would they be coming closer: Well, because we’re living in an era of high instability.

Partly because of catastrophic innovation. And partly because the “blue model” — the centralized governance and society model slapped on the US by FDR and on the rest of the world at various points of the 20th century– is falling apart. It’s falling apart because it’s run as far as it could, and it’s starting to fail. A centralized model always fails, and this one lasted a long time, because it left bits of freedom around the edges. Less and less as time went on. Till it’s gobbled up almost all areas of innovation and privacy. Not all. Not yet. But it passed some critical point, and it’s falling apart.

The number of people telling you exactly what the curvature of bananas should be has grossly outnumbered the people who know how to grow bananas, or even how to make banana bread. At that point society can’t work, because the people regulating the curvature of bananas are starting to branch out to the ovalness of eggs. And no one knows — or is allowed — to do the essential. And things start collapsing. Combine it with the literal culture shock of changing tech, and you’re in unknown territory.

Most of us my age or twenty years either way have already changed our lives so much in our lifetimes that my having literally changed continents is a minor thing in comparison.

Oh, another black swan: A university president was pulled down and her record revealed utterly fake. And the ivy leagues are in the process of discrediting themselves.

So many black swans in the last 3 or 4 years, and coming closer and closer and closer.

And because the left is trying to play the 20th century communist revolution script, including trying to make people share their houses (they had to import destitute for that!) only none of it applies properly to the US and to current tech, or current popular sentiment, I keep expecting them to unwittingly provoke a massive convulsion, similar to the fall of the USSR or the tearing down of the wall.

Something that just happens, one day. Good or bad? Oh, it could fall either way.

Now, is it likely to have anything to do with me, directly? Or be something that an early warning could help?

Unlikely, short of us all having to run to the most distant member of the family, or his having to run to us. And both are unlikely for various reasons. Possible, but highly unlikely even in a black-swan event.

And yet–

And yet I feel like I need to stay vigilant and sit here and watch for the first signs….

Just up here, in the black-swan blind, watching the shifting darkness for movement.

And waiting.

This week our church bulletin had an added feature, and I’m going to bet our pastor, a working class boy, got it pushed on him and he thought “Oh, why not” and didn’t look too closely at it.

Because the church hasn’t given a hint of “praying for cease fire” or anything of the kind. if they had, I’d have left so fast it left a hole in the air. But this amid fairly innocuous questions and answers had a question about what was licit to achieve a good end. And amid a bunch of self-obvious examples, there was a stern condemnation of … wait for it… carpet bombing German cities in WWII, because killing people was wrong, no matter how good the end.

I’m fairly sure this is crazy cakes in most Christian theology, except possibly whatever the Quakers used to do the job. I’m also fairly sure they pulled this from the left hand of the underwear gnomes’ underpants in order to make a point about Israel and Gaza.

The point is that there are age-old answers to this. And while it’s true that it’s no part of Christianity that “The end justifies the means” it’s also true that there is an entire doctrine of just war.

And I’m fairly sure that defending yourself against a relentless enemy who won’t stop is a just war. Yes, there are things about doing the minimal damage to achieve your end. Looks sternly at Gaza: If more than the necessary damage had been done, Hamass would have surrendered by now. But it hasn’t.

Or Germany you know? While yes, a lot of people died in carpet bombing, no more than necessary died to stop the regime from killing a lot more. Because, you know, if Germany hadn’t been stopped, they wouldn’t have stopped. The fact that as they were aware they were losing, they just sped up the “final solution” tells you they would have tried to exterminate Jews from the world, as well as anyone who didn’t measure up to their semi-mythological standards.

The truth, actually is that national socialist — LIKE ALL SOCIALISM — is ultimately incapable of feeding even its own country. And in their extreme form, as fascism, the same as international socialism in its extreme form as communism, it becomes a ravening beast, just to keep its core supporters happy. So first, it has to devour more and countries by conquest. and then it has to start devouring people inside its own territory and expropriating them. Which is part of what Germany did, yes. And the USSR too, just not as openly.

And if it hadn’t been stopped, Germany would have killed a lot more people.

And on the same, point, yeah, we didn’t bomb “Innocent civilians” to stop the USSR (arguable about Vietnam, very arguable, but we certainly didn’t take the war to the USSR) and you know, there’s 100 million dead of communism, and the death toll hasn’t stopped yet.

It’s like the old argument over whether bombing Japan was good or evil. It saved lives. Was it “the end justifies the means”? No, because there is no optional evil performed for utopic, optional good. It is a distasteful, painful undertaking of a terrible duty to stop evil.

Yes, it would be better if good people could somehow wave a magical wand or say an incantation and conquer evil without having to shed blood. But until G-d himself chooses to put both thumbs and a full fist on the scales, we will have to do what we will have to do.

The carpet bombing of Germany was no more evil than a surgeon cutting into a person to remove the cancer is evil.

And what Israel is doing in Gaza is no more evil than a man shooting at the people trying to kill him, to make them stop.

If Hamass wants a cease-fire or peace? All they have to do is surrender utterly and give up the leaders responsible for the October 7 massacre.

Because if that doesn’t happen, what Israel will be doing is inviting a lot more massacres of its people. This needs to be finished now, or next time there won’t be enough carpet bombing to make it stop.

Allowing evil to rampage the world is not good. And pacifist — true pacifist — cults are either small, limited, and set in very safe areas, or are extinct.

The right to self-defense is G-d given and the most basic and fundamental part of civilized society, without which civilization cannot exist and without which nothing is left but savagery and fighting, everyone’s hand against everyone else’s.

I’m not impressed by those “theologians” who I think would do best to crack the source book now and then. And note the source book is not the New York Times editorial pages.