Don’t Look Down, it’s a Long, Long Way To Fall* a blast from the past from November7,2013

I confess yesterday I was very depressed.  I don’t think it came across how depressed I was – I was trying to be reasonable and being, by nature, depressive, I’m aware of how to compensate for depression – but I was.  Between certain speculations on who will run against Hilary in 16, which prompted me to say “In that case, I don’t have a dog in that fight,” and “let it burn” there was an article about how thoroughly screwed my kids’ generation is.

The article was written from the POV of “you bought this, you voted for this buffoon.”

Except that not all of them did, of course.  (At least I hope not.)  When I was manning the phones, many people my kids’ age were there and they were fully aware of what waited them if the buffoon won.

So to have them be told “you’ll never pay your student debts, you’ll never have a decent job, you’ll never be anything but some sort of retail aid, no matter how brilliant or what your degree is” depresses me.  It depresses me more than it would if you told me that I had no hopes of ever getting anywhere.  Because I know my limitations.  I’ve stared my potential failure in the face.  I don’t even expect full success at this point, just “not dying” as far as career goes.  I’m me, I can cope with that.  But not my kids.  I’ve known them all my life, I know their potential.  Yes, I’m their mother, but I see their failings too –but they’re not the sort of failings that should consign them to a life as debt slaves.  They’re hard workers, they’re focused, they’re battlers.

Don’t tell me “But they’ll be all right then.”  Meh.  Guys, I grew up in a country where my limitations were stark and clear.  For instance, I never considered writing as more than an hobby, because in Portugal it wouldn’t be.  The excuse is that the population is too small to support full time writers without government grants and stuff.  I call poppycock.  The population is large enough for writers – multiple – to earn a living.  I suspect the Portuguese publishing industry is even more effed up than ours.  Not that it matters to me at this point, except if I had money – like, if I won the lottery – I’d start an ebook publisher publishing exclusively in Portuguese and serving the entire Portuguese speaking world.  License to coin money – maybe – but above all a chance to destroy the entrenched publishers in Portugal.  (Okay, I was born a trouble maker.  Deal.)

And I knew just how far my lifestyle could go, and where it was limited.  In the same way, even in the States, my generation’s chances have been limited in comparison to the older boomers (which fuels some of the generational hatred on blogs.)  Inevitable given their population-bulge and the fact they were post war babies.  (It’s really not their fault, not even the lefties.  We just like slapping them.  But it’s irrational.)  We have friends who are ten years older than us who never had to make as many sacrifices, and who are looking at retirement.  We aren’t.  By the time we came along the housing market had been inflated, and a lot of our work has been running to stay in place.

What I mean – I don’t want to start boomer bashing, so please none of that in the comments.  It really is a matter of chance.  No one chose this – is that when you are born and when you come of age, and when you enter the work force shapes your life and limits your choices.

And d*mn it, I don’t want my kids’ limited.

So, I was a wee bit depressed.  Sort of.

You see guys, I have some insight you don’t have.  Some insight I’m sure those who want to bring us to the level of “other countries” don’t have, because they’re pampered little snowflakes, whose pampered paws never touched hard ground – and it’s encapsulated in that title above, which I woke up with it running through my head, “Don’t look down.  It’s a long, long way to fall.”

Look, I grew up upper middle class.  I also grew up dirt poor.  Yes, both are true.  For the village we were “of good families.”  My family had never been barefoot laborers, we owned land.  We didn’t own enough land to amount to anything but a small farm, but…  And my grandfather was a skilled worker – a cabinet maker – and my grandmother ran her own business (would you believe hand painting/building cosmetic boxes?)  Yeah.  And my dad had a college education and a white collar job.  And all the grandkids attended college.  (Though a couple didn’t finish.)

We were not “peasants.”  I doubt we ever had been.  All my ancestresses as far back as memory stretches knew how to read, which is not normal in Portuguese peasants.  And we had some nice China and stuff.

So, why do I say we were dirt poor?  Oh.  Well, there was the three suits of clothing, one for best, one for everyday and one for rough.  (We might have had double that, because mom made them, but honestly, she stored ALL our clothes – for the four of us — in ONE dresser and one wardrobe, when my brother was a teen, and I was little.)  I had a never ending succession of pinafores, which is what I wore to keep the “good clothes” clean.  There was the ONE alarm clock in the house, which had to be moved around depending on who needed to get up (and for these purposes the “house” included my grandmother’s next door.

But perhaps nothing will encapsulate it as well as the fact that it was normal, both from my family and other middle class families to take a sweater apart, re-dye the yarn, and make a “new” sweater.  You could go three or four rounds before the yarn itself became too bad to use.

Relatives from abroad brought us chocolates as gifts when they visited.  You know, your normal multi-square candy bar.  We hoarded it like gold, and ate a square or two a month. (Yes, there’s Portuguese chocolates.  I believe they are categorized as soap.  Or were, at the time.)

I don’t say that to induce pity.  We were neither conscious of being poor nor were we in bad shape in relation to other people.  On the contrary.  And in a comparison either with the world or with historic norm, we were rich.  Rich beyond the dreams of avarice.

This is something that shocks Americans born-and-bred.  But it is true.

We are so rich that even the rich of other countries don’t fully get us.  They don’t see how well off we are.  They don’t see how our MIDDLE CLASS lives better than their upper classes.  Sometimes, and in some things, better than their middle class could dream.

Portugal is considerably better off (technically, though it’s all apparently borrowed money) now, but still, guys, I’ll be blunt with you.  I’ve been to their grocery stores, and I don’t know how people live.  I know what they make, and their salaries seem to range about half of ours, but everything – EVERYTHING – is in a smaller package and costs more.

I submit to you a lot of our stupidity is the stupidity of the well off.  You can decide to be vegan – if you have enough money.  You can be very tolerant of stupid people yelling at you for being imperialistic, if they don’t destroy your way of life.  You can pick odd styles of dress and “go back to nature” because you have enough money and because other people are well off enough they don’t care.

That I’m very much afraid is coming to an end.  I’m not a clairvoyant, if I were I would not have spent two years trying to break into short stories and twelve years trying to keep a foot in other-publishers-than-Baen.  I’d simply have gone Baen only twelve years ago and right now would have piles and piles of mysteries to go up.

But I do have the ability to get pictures in my head that describe a situation. Sometimes a situation I can’t explain rationally, and one no one believes me on.  When I first came into publishing, I could see it as a rotten ladder, breaking low and middle.  If I got to the top, I’d be safe, but there was no path there.

Everyone kept telling me I was seeing what wasn’t there.  “Publishing has always been in trouble.  It’s okay.”  It wasn’t okay.  The combination of consolidated publishing houses and big bookstores was killing the field, low and middle, and only the darlings survived (but lost readership every book.)

The image in my mind right now, with this Obamacare insanity, is of someone taking a car that is barely running, opening the hood and pouring a few buckets of fresh cement over the engine.

Don’t look down.  It’s a long, long way to fall.

And as I said, the prospects for my kids, and for all the bright kids of their generation HURT me.

But we’re all born where we are and even I can only do so much to prepare the kids, and to ensure they’re not hurt by this.  And cr*p like what is already in the pipe and flowing at us?  It’s going to hurt EVERYONE.

However, I’m no longer depressed.  I’m no longer depressed because… well… turn that around.  “It’s a long, long way to fall.”

We could lose half of our easy wealth and we’d still be better off than 90% of the world (let alone history) and that’s if THEY don’t fall too.

And that’s the other reason.  The crap that’s flowing down the pipe?  It’s going to hit the whole world.  America is a late-buyer into teh shiny (I typed that initially whiny) of socialism.  Which is why we’re the world’s largest consumer and the best well off.  And the shiny is running out of other people’s money all over the world, because the system promotes redistribution, not creation of wealth, which means people slowly get poorer.

America is going to hurt.  I’m not going to lie to you.  Are we going to hurt as much as the rest of the world?  Impossible.  Wealth doesn’t vanish over night. Look, I think I admitted to you before I buy most of my clothes from thrift stores.  This is something that’s not even really available in other countries (oh, yes, it exists, but there isn’t that much surplus.)  Nine times out of ten the clothes I buy are new, sometimes still with labels.  Someone bought them/got them as a gift, and either gained/lost weight and never wore them.  I think it’s expensive to pay $10 for a pair of designer jeans.  I wait for the half price sale.  This is only possible in a VERY wealthy country.  And that wealth won’t vanish.  Not for a decade or two.  The surplus is still around.

There is another reason – when societies are shocked, they revert to their founding myth.  It’s not by chance that things like Golden Dawn are resurgent in Europe.  A lot of the countries are going to revert to their founding myth which is both racist and triumphalist.

BUT that’s not our founding myth.  We were founded in liberty.  Yes, there are many who think this mean “liberty to have everything I want given to me.”  But those are not the active, able people.  Those who can stay on their feet during the tumble are people like us, who believe in individual liberty.

Is this guaranteed?  Oh, h*ll no.  We could end up with a strong man.  (Only we won’t.  We’re ungovernable, as the idiots at the top are finding out.  A state or two could go for a strong man.  The rest of us?  — pah.)

The statists think out of disorder will come communism.  Guys.  Remember they’re a religion.  A particularly dopey one.  There’s almost no chance of that, because communism requires a strong man.  The current buffoon ain’t it.  Nor are any of the people around him.  And given present-day America, there might be no one strong enough.

My biggest fear is that we’re wealthy enough to limp along another three generations, by which time we would be tenderized as it were, for the “Strong man.”

Bah.  Won’t happen.  They want the full socialist shiny and they want it now.  They’re pouring the cement over the car, because the engine is still running.  And if it stops – communism!  (The poor dears never get over the idea that the starving masses are JUST waiting for the intellectuals to lead the revolution.  Poor num’kins.)

A rebirth of liberty is far more likely than communism.  And it something we can fight and work for.

As for my kids and their future?  Well!  Who in the depths of Carter foresaw the Reagan boom.  And guys, if we can arrange for a boom now, it will be bigger and better than Carter.  Has to be.  Like after WWII, the rest of the world will be in a shambles.  Which is why my kids are so lucky to be American.

Is this pie in the sky?  Not hardly.  You’re going to have to work for this one.

First, the preparation for the crash, which you should already be making: pay off/streamline/prepare.

Then the preparation for the resurgence: this has to do with what makes us uniquely American and I can’t give you instructions because I’m not there.  Which is good.  You’re Americans.  Make your own instructions.  “An Army of Davids” – what the man said.

Roll up your sleeves and see what you can do – ideally what will make you money (multiple streams of income) and also keep things going.  If you don’t have my brown thumb and have land, growing some food might not be amiss (I think food will get expensive and there will be disruptions in delivery.)  If you have the time and the inclination, learn how to keep cars running.  People are going to be holding onto them for longer, and it will be needed.  Other stuff like that – not preparation for the stone age, but for the conveniences getting more expensive and harder to find. Figuring out how to keep computers running, or small appliances, might not be a bad idea either, though there is a lot of wealth between us and new ones being utterly unaffordable. Learn to cook from scratch if you don’t know how.  Learn to make bread by hand.  Flour is cheap.  So is rice. (I wish I could have either.)

I’m a fairly useless person, other than telling stories and doing some art, but yes, I’m working on both of those.  People don’t live from bread alone.  They’re still going to need entertainment.

My kids are in STEM degrees and hopefully they’ll find jobs, but if not… well… I told them my best advice, the one that kept me working throughout 10 years in which everyone in the publishing field except Baen seemed to be actively trying to sideline me: I won’t die.  Even if they kill me.

I’m now giving that advice to all of you – and to America in general.  Refuse to die.  Even if they kill you. (Metaphorically speaking, of course, though if you find how to do the other, do let me know.)

It might be, and I always certainly guarantee will be, that you’ll hit the wall on what you’ve done all your life; what you know how to do.  Don’t sit there and go “it’s all over.”  Despair is a sin. It’s also a sure route to utter destruction.

Instead, go “I won’t die, even if they kill me.”  Find new ways to do what you love, or find something new to do.

Go under, go around, go over.  Use their regulations against them.  And never give up.

Don’t look down.  It’s a long way to fall.  Fortunately, we’re on the high wire, and as long as we keep moving and doing, we’ll be fine.

*Give me a break okay?  The furniture refinishing mysteries will ONLY be written to Evita.  Other music, nothing happens.  And then you guys wonder why I cry, bitch and moan about writing another of those.

Lately, as in in the last year or so, I’ve been discovering that a lot of things I blamed myself for were baked in, part of who I am, probably physiological not psychological, and likely impossible to budge.

Not mind you that psychological problems aren’t real, or easy to overcome, but that the things I’ve spent my life trying to brute force simply couldn’t be brute forced. Things like ADD. I can manage some improvement, brute-force some concentration, but I pay for it, in the fact that I shut down afterwards sometimes for months, while I rabbit around doing crazy stuff that amounts to nothing. This is basically why my career had the iteration of a book in two weeks, then nothing for six months. And it wasn’t some gigantic personal failing, though it felt like it. Still does.

Yes, ADD can be treated, and … Look Adderal makes me borderline psychotic and has the neat side effect of shutting down the writing. Dan shouldn’t have to live with me on Adderal, (I don’t want to live with me on Adderal.) Vivanse (sp) works and I can actually sort of kind of get stuff done, except that…. so, I can sit down and force myself to write. Which I grant you is an improvement over sitting down and watching a youtube video, shopping for private planes or Persian carpets (no, I don’t buy them. I just shop for them, price them and rank them as to which I’d buy. I mean, I am not, thank heavens, so insane that I will try to buy things I can’t begin to afford. I just do a “the price is right” type of info-dive) or trying to establish once or for all whether dinosaurs were cold blooded. On the other hand, for whatever reason (and not a hundred percent sure so another test might need to be done. Might have been other factors) the gateway-in-head shuts down. So, you know, I can type whatever on command, I just can’t “feel” the story or the words. If you think about it as clay sculpting while blindfolded and wearing oven mitts, you might have some idea what it’s like.

I’m fairly sure my problem with Chapter House (link to it on the right side) and the novel serializing is exactly that. I’m trying to be regular and my brain isn’t regular. In my defense Witch’s Daughter really is almost done. My brain just got high-jacked by No Man’s Land which is also almost done. Except that I might as well have flushed May down the toilet or spent the month sleeping for all I accomplished. That was, illness and recovering from illness, which probably has to do with being old, which I also haven’t processed yet, and then this week trying to get the house’s last nests of utter disorder fixed and triggering my raging household-dust allergy. (Which is why this post almost didn’t happen.) Hopefully functioning by the end of the week, but there’s not much use sitting here beating myself because it didn’t happen. The result might seem like laziness, but the origin of the issue is very much physical and flattened me.

So, what is this in name of, other than making excuses for myself? Um… They’re not precisely excuses for myself. They are “these are the limits of what I can do.”

I don’t like them. And they’re perfectly insane compared to the “Standard issue human” our industrialized situation has convinced us we’re SUPPOSED to be, but they are what they are.

The situation we’re in as a country, or even if you prefer as a culture, for the entire west, is rather similar to me trying to navigate my body.

Just like 100 years ago, in complete ignorance of neurological weirdness, I’d have gone to my grave thinking I was incredibly lazy and couldn’t be redeemed, we live in complete ignorance of culture, and the issues wrought by culture and how culture propagates/changes/is transmitted.

Today talking to a friend, she was amazed mules are still used to grade roads/landing strips in the rural west. And you know, it reminded me of things in Portugal that are still the domain of one family, for centuries and many millennia. And at the same time there are other things that have changed so completely since I lived there that my memories of childhood seem like an acid trip.

And that’s physical processes/events. Beneath it there’s …. buried stuff. Stories that kids get told and in some form tell to their kids, some of which I’m convinced has passed from brides that were kidnapped or captured in war when the rest of the tribe was killed and their whole culture destroyed to the point we don’t even know it ever existed.

Our very languages have things embedded in them we’re only partially aware of.

So as rational human beings, when we sit here and we watch, say, to use an example, our country shut down for a case of the common cold, or start to kill its dairy herds for fear of a bird flu that’s completely treatable in cows and which has failed to kill a single human (though it allegedly infected one,) all under the impression it will have a 25% mortality rate because “the experts” say so, and feel we should do something…

For most of the insanity — oh, including throwing things in the atmosphere to make the Earth colder, and other shananigans — in this, the craziest of all timelines: there’s nothing you, an individual human can do to fix it. It’s not yours to fix, anymore than you can fix your ADD or my ridiculous auto-immune, or….

Does it mean it’s all hopeless? Well, no. Humans do some pretty bizarre and irrational things over the course of history. The fact that all over the world, periodically, we’ve buried cities and walked away from them is one of those. And yeah we have tons of theories on those “It was ecological collapse” being the favorite, except that really, it’s a just so story. We don’t know, and it couldn’t possibly apply in every circumstance. And given the material culture of various times, walking away from a perfectly good city made probably less sense than locking our entire culture down for the sniffles.

But there we are. We as a group aren’t rational. We respond to deep set prompts, some of them from our very language. And we get panics and strange ideas about how things work.

But– But, we survive.

So to cheer — eh — you up, here are some thing to keep in mind:

What can’t go on won’t go on, but there’s no set timetable. Because people haven’t yet, visibly, en masse reacted to injustice or abuse, it doesn’t mean they never will. It also doesn’t mean they aren’t reacting, in subtle and yet paradoxically perhaps more effective ways.

There is nothing you can do that’s a big hero solution, where you explain things, and suddenly “everybody” does thing a or b. That’s not how any of this works. BUT that doesn’t mean you’re utterly impotent. Talking back still has value. Speaking up can slowly turn the culture. In fact, you can say that is happening, as mass media loses its grip. And if you can’t do either, if in fact career and feeding your family requires you to stay embedded in highly leftist locations/jobs, I salute you. You know what you risk — when the worm turns it will be sudden, and there will be friendly fire. And you’re not stupid. You know that — but you’re doing something highly necessary. There’s whole fields of human endeavor that might be lost or impossible to restructure, unless we have sane people among the Marx-insanists. Neither talking back in a small (in my case mediumish, but hey) way, nor educating are nothing. And staying embedded in enemy territory is certainly not nothing. You’re all our advance troops, our culture sapper specialists. I’m proud of you. (Which granted won’t buy you a cup of coffee, but is important.)

What you should do, in and around this: Stay informed. This is important, because it keeps you abreast of situations, and able to better:

Look after yourself. (Secure your oxygen mask before applying others, metaphorically speaking.)

Look after your family and those dependent on you that can’t look after themselves.

Keep yourself out of catastrophic trouble.

You should also do things you enjoy. Yes, I know everyone is pinched, we are all enormously stressed. But that’s the more reason to do things that bring you joy. Pick up a new hobby or an old one. Have dinner with friends, even if it’s sandwiches in the park, go for a walk withy our sweety. Pet your cat or dog. Listen to a favorite piece of music. Build in something like that every day. You are not a machine. Don’t treat yourself like one.

Be kind to yourself and others. Don’t assume the worst. Don’t assume someone is the enemy due to circumstantial evidence. (This is very important if things get spicy.)

Practice joy and mercy. And patience too. We’re going to need all the patience, one way or another.

And accept, at a deep level that yes, the worst could happen to you or those you love as a result of your action (or inaction.) But that’s known as the common flaw of mankind. You could die right now because a very small meteor drops on you.

Do the best you can. It might not be enough, but by definition no one, not even you, can require more of you.

And be not afraid.

Able, Differently Abled, Disabled by David Bock

I’m a regular contributor to Blue Collar Prepping, and over the years many posts have addressed things such as Bug Out bags (BOB), Get Home Bags (GHB), and the like. Several articles have also addressed physical limitations and pain management.

One thing that hasn’t gotten a lot of attention lately is actual disabilities and self-perception.

This was driven home to me recently when my doctor advised me to file for disability. I’m only in my mid-50s, and while I have health issues, I don’t think of myself as disabled. Or at least I didn’t.

One of the consequences of this image of myself, is thinking I can manage more than I really can, frequently to the dismay of My Wife. One of the benefits of my doctor’s recommendation is I’ve started to take a harder, colder, and I hope more honest, look at myself and my abilities.

I’m not young, I’m not in very good physical condition, and my health limitations need to be taken into consideration when planning for disasters or emergencies.

I approached the self-assessment as if I was considering another person for a variety of jobs, mostly physical at different levels of exertion.

Can they regularly lift twenty or more pounds multiple times a day? Yes, I can still do that.

What about fifty. Probably not, or at least not as frequently.

Are they able to carry a fifty pound pack for several hours? No, I’m no longer able to do that due to medical issues.

What about a twenty pound pack? Possibly, though I’d likely be in considerable pain at the end of that time.

Can they walk five miles? Maybe, but depending on the pace there would be a certain amount of health risk.

Can they cover broken ground at a reasonable pace? No, I can’t do that.

Could they carry another person a short distance? As long as the person wasn’t too big and the distance wasn’t too far, probably. But there’s a good chance I’d require medical assistance after.

And so on.

Based on this assessment, at this time Bugging Out is pretty much off the table for me, especially on foot. I can no longer carry a significant quantity of gear, and I can’t carry it very far. While physical conditioning may improve this to some degree, there’s the counter weight of my deteriorating health.

I’m not planning on dying any time soon, but part of that is accepting that I need to live within my limitations.

Moving forward, more of my preps will focus on Bug In situations, and making sure our home can be maintained in adverse conditions. Never a bad plan, but even more so now.

I also plan on seeing what physical therapy can do with regards to some of my medical limitations. Of course, that will also run into my financial limitations.

I strongly recommend all our readers take a dispassionate assessment of their own health and abilities. Then work at tailoring their disaster plans and supplies to that reality. No matter how mentally uncomfortable it is, for optimum survivability, it needs to be done.

Stay safe, and good prepping.

*First an announcement: A year or so ago, a fan asked if I’d let him set up my blog with AI reading and put it on youtube. The idea being that this way people could listen to it while cleaning or driving or whatever. Since cleaning (or unpacking and setup) only happen around here when listening to audio books, many of whom yes, I’ve heard before, I couldn’t tell him there wasn’t a market. Also he has some financial need he hopes this will help with if he gets enough subscribers.

I’m not wholly disinterested in this, financially. He wanted to take 10% and leave the rest to me, but that was grossly unfair, since he’s done all the work, it’s not me reading it, etc. HOWEVER I almost had to torture him to get him to agree to an even split. So if a lot of people subscribe I get 50%. Which — the fundraising days cometh — would help, since I suck at fundraising. BUT it’s his thing he did. It’s not my voice reading it. And… well, if you decide to subscribe it’s because of his work and effort. I’ve linked before and there were some problems with the reading. He says he’s fixed most of them and the rest might be unfixable. (Also sound really minor.) So if you’re interested, this is the AI reading of the blog posts. (Yes, at some point I’m going to start posting readings, but I’m trying to figure out how to make it semi-interactive, so it’s like attending a reading with me at a con. Abide in patience another couple of months please. And you’ll know when it’s me reading it by my call sign: Moose and Squirrel! 😉 ) -SAH*

Book Promo

If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. 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 JERRY BOYD: Gone Fishing (Bob and Nikki Book 47)

Bob and the family thought it was about time to kick back for a few days on Charlie’s Planet. Of course, that brought all of Bob’s friends out of the woodwork, needing help with their old business. Can’t an Admiral get a break?

FROM RICHARD F. WEYAND: Conflict (Talbot Book 4)

Humans and bird-people are friends, right?

Fortuna colony continues to grow with the effort of humans and bird-people both. Arnie, the artificial intelligence who pilots Earth’s space effort, continues to look for new planets to colonize.

But there are some surprising new colonists and some surprising new discoveries.

Not all of them are going to work out.

Can Fortuna Governor Susan Talbot keep the colony moving forward?

Or will the whole project sink into conflict and war?

FROM JAMES TOTTEN: South Korean Blues: Breaching Ain’t Easy (Breaching Ain’t Easy Book 9)

North Korea gets real quiet when the Chinese Communist Party Kingpins die in an orbital strike from the US Space Force. South Korea gets presented with a once in a generation oppertunity to reunite Korea with Seoul in charge. Will crossing the DMZ going noth present that much of a problem? What can be done to prevent the NKPA from rushing reinforcements to the DMZ? The NKPA has special forces that can enter the South through invasion tunnels. What about the North Korean leadership and the nucelar weapons? Will the US get directly involved or sit on the sidelines? What in the heck is “Rapid Weseal?” Find the answers to all of these questions and more in this fast paced novel of World War Three becoming a global conflict.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Same Liver, Different Vulture (Modern Gods)

When you know you can regenerate any organ, fast…why not donate your kidneys?

Prometheus has been a teacher all of his life, nearly. Sometimes, like with teaching Man to harness fire, it got him in trouble. Sometimes, he’s able to make an even bigger difference for his students. Especially when they need a kidney as much as they need knowledge.

FROM ANNA FERREIRA: A Capital Whip: A Pride and Prejudice Sequel

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

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

FROM MARY CATELLI: Sorcery and Kings

Tales of wonder and magic.

A fire master must find a magical starter of fires.

A mysterious queen holds a ball in a city filled with magic.

Magic of roses and gold are needed to fight a dreadful war.

An oath keeps a ghost captive.

FROM JULIE FROST: Cry Havoc

Nate Cassin, the alpha werewolf of Missoula, Montana, finds his little city has a big wolf problem when shredded bodies start showing up all over town. Faced with a hostile press and even more hostile hunters, he tries to protect his innocent pack of eight at the same time they try to track down two elusive killers in an area of 35 square miles with a plethora of hiding places.

He’s seen this before. And the hunters always, always go overboard and decide the only good werewolf is a dead one, no matter who’s actually responsible. His pack will be collateral damage unless he can find the enemy wolves—and stop their broken alpha—before they turn his hometown into a human buffet.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Grandmaster’s Gambit

The disastrous war of 1913 is over, and young journalist Isaak Babel has used his fame as a war correspondent to win a peacetime job covering an international chess tournament in New York City. However, trouble is aboard the airship Grossdeuschland, in the form of the notorious Bolshevik terrorist Koba and his henchmen. Men with a dark plan, and New York City will not welcome their visit

AND NOW A VERY SPECIAL PROMO. COLONEL KRATMAN POSTED THIS ON FACEBOOK:

And this is the link to Bob Hall’s Author Page, yes, with my code appended, if you’d be so kind.

This is his most recent book: Quotes for the Conservative Heart: Ideas as Weapons of Defense

Quotes for the Conservative Heart is a collection of over 1,900 quotes, thoughts, and adages that will make you think (which may be an uncomfortable experience), which will help you defend yourself against ad hominin attacks, and which will help your writing and speaking. They will inspire you to fight a bit harder and a bit longer. As necessary to your security as an extra magazine, this book will help you identify threats to you, your family, and your culture. Open carry (of this book) is encouraged. We hope it will be a constant companion and a treasured possession.

Robert A. Hall is a Marine Vietnam Veteran who holds a BA in Government and a Master’ in History. He served five terms in the Massachusetts Senate, managed associations for 31 years, and has 12 other books in print.

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: GAINFUL

This is not the end. This is not the end of the beginning, much less the beginning of the end.

I have two questions: First, was that verdict so unexpected? That’s kind of like everyone being surprised by fraud in 2020 after the Potemkin campaign of Joe the Zombie. If the fraud weren’t baked in, they’d have nominated someone else. And in this case, if the verdict weren’t a foregone conclusion, they’d have tried to make the trial more plausible.

Second: are you buying the leftist narrative again? Have you forgotten that Donald Trump is our instrument? Our battering ram. Our sledge hammer. Our screaming defiance in the face of the screaming bastards who think they can put us in the 15 minute gulags, take away our ability to drive freely, and make us eat the bugs? Yes, Trump is also a human being, and we can feel for what they’re doing to him all because he — stomp stomp — had the nerve to win in 2016 when it was “her turn.” But he is not our leader, or the embodiment of our great cause. He’s our instrument. If they cut him down, we’ll find someone twice as brash, twice as loud and twice as determined to get up their noses. And to destroy their grimy tentacles in the corridors of power. In fact to destroy the corridors and the power, and bring the power back to as small as possible, as local as people and as residing in we the people as possible.

No, it’s not going to be easy. It can’t be easy when they have ensconced themselves in every place with power, every official association, every political sinecure. On the other hand, it won’t be as hard as you imagine, because the left ain’t very bright, and they certainly don’t know us.

There are no guarantees. I believe that their attempts at scaring us and controlling us are going to explode in their faces, metaphorically speaking, just like all their insane attempts to scare us with yet another ‘pandemic’ have. In fact just as the original lockdowns have.

So don’t be despondent. Neither be you stupid. I don’t know what they want us to do, but it’s likely to be something crazy, since they think we are quite different than we are. So don’t do anything crazy.

Keep calm, and keep annoying them.

Oh, and keep your clothes and weapons where you will find them in the dark.

You got this. We got this. We’ve barely started fighting. Keep it up.

Some weeks ago on twitter, I ran into the fascinating, mildly horrifying phenomenon of “neo feudalists” which like “Democratic Socialism” means institutionalized oppression, but with sprinkles and fun confetti. Yes, I’m being dismissive. Brutally and bluntly dismissive, just as I’m dismissive of the idea that us becoming monarchists would fix everything that hails us and be much much better than what we have.

I am mildly horrified that these strains of so called “thought” occur at all. The mechanism seems to be “Well, you know what we’ve been doing and what it claims to be has not worked, so the things that our teachers said were terrible must really be the way to go.” This is applying for everything, btw, from the relationships between the sexes to government, to how to find happiness.

Sometimes, if you’re lucky and your teachers/influences were exceptionally malicious you might, like a blind pig, happen onto the truffle of happiness, but that’s not the way to bet. Because the reverse of “so wrong it’s not even wrong” is more “so wrong it’s not even wrong.”

But despite the fact I slept only about four hours (apparently May was cursed. All of it can be summed as “it’s always something”) I’m going to try to take this from the top.

First on the monarchy will solve everything that hails us. It will too. In a fantasy land, in which the king is a magical being wedded to the land, etc. In the real world? Francis Turner yesterday pointed out the succession problem, but there’s another one that none of the would be faithful monarchists have given a thought to.

Okay, as far as I can tell one of their “ups” for monarchy is that kings are national, so at least you have a champion who, viewing your country as his fiefdom is of course pro-your-country.

In theory this is absolutely true. Note “in theory.” In practical fact, over the course of history kings viewed the country not as an extension of themselves but as their farm. And depending on whether they’re a good landowner or not, that can be very bad, very fast. Countries were impoverished by kings sucking any and all bits of wealth they could, regardless and using them on what they liked. Usually stupid wars (and some were incredibly stupid) because they viewed that as increasing their prestige. See all the contesting of far flung kingdoms to which the king had a tenuous claim. Look, ultimately the truth is that administering the competing legal rights of your subjects and keeping the law impartial is not sexy. Leading in war is sexy.

Francis Turner either in the article or in our talk before he wrote it (note I slept four hours last night, and not the hours you’d expect. Sleep started at around six I think) said at least monarchy wouldn’t have the “deep state” but this is not true. A lot of kings, at times grew a “deep state” as a way to avoid work/be able to drain the treasury behind the cover of the bureaucrats/creating a baffle of bullshit so the parlous state of the kingdom didn’t attach to them.

BUT no one has seemed to realize what monarchy would mean in the modern world. Look, kings and queens were already all cousins/linked, even in days with really, really slow travel. They honestly weren’t nationals of that country, but practically their own breed. (One of the reasons I laughed like an hyena when some idiots claimed Portuguese used to be all blonds, because look at picture of Portuguese kings.) Now have that in a world with flights and instant communication. You think we have a detached more interested in each other’s opinion than anything else international elite? Oooh, boy, you ain’t seen nothing yet. If you want to be governed by Hollywood? Go ahead. Because regardless of what you start out with, you’re going to end up with that kind of insular, super-rich elite. Only now they have not just propaganda and money, but actual de facto power that you gave them. At birth.

Are you people actually on drugs? And why are you boggarting them?

I can now hear “But we want a constitutional, parliamentary monarchy!” My throat clearing and coughing might be “Great Britain.” And if you think the king is an impartial figure head, you’ve not heard the British opinions of say King Charles III. Yes, some royals will become very popular. But it’s hit or miss. Like presidents, you know?

Okay, now I hear “but monarchy is natural to humanity.” So are lice, intestinal parasites, and sleeping naked in trees. Just because evolution predisposes us to it and there’s a hole in our heads marked “king” there’s no reason to indulge it, much less give it power.

As for republics only lasting x amount of time? Yeah. Well, you know? Monarchies, even if you have a dynasty that lasts however many years? The system only lasts about that long, between getting rid of main branch of family, younger son is installed, all the bureaucracy changes/advertises itself as totally new thing. So, pah.

As for Neo Feudalism…. My answer was “You want to jump to late stage communism?” and I was told no, because in Feudalism the upper classes had duties they were honor bound to obey, etc.

It’s like the idea Monarchy will be fine, because the kings will be Christian.

People, I can’t believe I have to say this explicitly: You can’t mandate that someone be Christian. Not really Christian, to the point that it puts internal stops on their ability to be tyrants. You can mandate that to hold office someone be outwardly Christian, sure. But that might only accelerate the level at which everything is taken over by non believers who make the right mouth noises. Because real believers will ask themselves if they’re really Christian and can call themselves that, while someone doing it for the power will just say yeah, they’re super duper Christian. (We’ll leave as an exercise for the reader WHICH brand of Christian, which at this point is not even just an American thing. Even in technically very Catholic Portugal, you got all sorts.

So if you’re counting on the oaths and mutual duties being enforced by the fact that everyone is “really Christian” I have some swampland in Florida I’d like to sell you, gators and all. Because no. You don’t get to mandate what is in other people’s minds and hearts. That’s not how any of that works. And if you read medieval treatises, while believe in “God” was more or less universal, at least in written documents, people often didn’t act as if they REALLY believed. Or they came up with really interesting ways to carve themselves exceptions.

“Oh, but it will be written. The rights and obligations will be written down!” Looks meaningfully at the US constitution. Yeah. Sure. Spelling out rights and obligations in a written document will avoid all problems. It’s not like people in power have ignored that before. Not at all. It’s all unicorns and pretty flowers.

Also the way things were arranged in the middle ages was three classes: nobles,(those who fought) farmers (for simplicity let’s say workers, since farmers barely registers now) (those who fed everyone) and clergy (those who prayed). We’ll not even poke at clergy, because who is going to certify that? Again we come up with “Which denomination?” (Note feudalism broke down in any country in contact with other countries with different religions. Because a powerful Church (and that broke down too, see Henry VIII) punishing transgressors with excommunication was necessary for the whole thing. So what’s your substitute for the Church? The UN? (Laughs out loud.)) Who is going to arbitrate all the mutual obligations and such? The king? See above. And who is going to invest in industry, particularly when it changes? Do you really want to depend on the nobility all being genius planners who understand technological innovation? Because I don’t. I’ll point out the “best people” in France had a carefully planned central communication thing with computers, that got end-run by the chaotic innovation called the internet.

What is the advantage of this neo-Feudalism? “Everyone knows what their rights and obligations are!” Is that it? Because, what you just said is “If only everyone” only in a more complicated way. Look, I had toddlers. They knew exactly what should be done/shouldn’t be done, etc. BUT, get this, they were really good at rule-lawyering. If you think that adult humans aren’t just as good at rule lawyering, you might never have met humans. (And your human-suit is wearing thin.)

But but but… Neo Feudalism. Like old Feudalism, super-stable (It wasn’t. Let me sing to you of horrible peasant revolts.) BUT Neo, which means everyone gets sprinkles and cupcakes.

I’m just saying it sounds better in the original Frankish, okay.

Ultimately ANY form of government works great is small and voluntary. Even communism works great in those circumstances.

No form of government works well for large nation-states. Not really. And all of them deform over time, as the powerful try to become more powerful and the less powerful fight back as best they can.

ULTIMATELY, stripped down, there are two basic forms of government:

The one person as leader, born that way (or can pretend to be), chosen by G-d or the international bodies, or the best people, or whatever you want, has power over everyone else. There’s the succession problem, but it’s relatively stable and fills the niche in our instinct trained by evolving in ape/early human bands. “A strong leader protects us all!” In practicality, it depends on the leader. And it always devolves to the king not being particularly interested in the welfare of his citizens. ALWAYS. Yes, there are exceptions to stupid/glory-seeking kings. They are exceptions. And usually have trouble accomplishing much, because by then the system is designed for the default.

The other option, relatively recent and feels super risky — let’s call it “The American Way” — is “Every man a king.” Every little potentate can choose to surrender his or her power to someone for governance and to deal with other people/nations. It works mostly in the default. I.e. it kind of functions while falling apart. And it feels super-risky to the primeval monkey in the back brain. As in “The leaderless band gets destroyed.” But we’re not a primitive band.

The second one has the advantage that you can take back the power you surrendered. And that the people in power know it. Also called “Why the Biden Junta still hasn’t accomplished what they would like to have done to us the first month, even if nothing has gone kinetic yet.”

Neither is ideal. Both have issues, because both are designed for humans. There is no ideal system.

Given no ideal system, I choose the one where I can take back my power at least in theory over the one where I’m born fitted with a saddle someone can ride by “custom and religion.”

You make your choice. And you pay the price.

The Problem With Monarchy and Democracy – By Francis Turner

Winston Churchill had, I think it is fair to say, mixed feelings about democracy. In addition to the quote above he also said that the best argument against democracy was a five minute chat with the average voter. This no doubt explains why he considered democracy to be the least bad as opposed to being actively good.

Anyway, I don’t recall a Churchill writing where he explained why democracy is least bad so I’m going to explain.

The fundamental positive of the democratic process is that it solves the succession problem

The fundamental positive of the democratic process is that it solves the succession problem. I should note that this is not a new thing thought up by me, it’s a moderately well known concept in political science and similar fields.

What is the succession problem?

The succession problem is the issue of how to transfer power from one leader to the next. It’s an issue that affects any organization from a local volunteer club to a vast nation state/empire but it is generally more important for the nation state. If a gardening club gets the wrong leader then typically it fails and some of the former members form a new one (making a note to absolutely NOT allow crazy to join). If a nation state tries the same thing that’s a civil war and those rarely end well.

Monarchies are well known for having good kings/queens and bad ones. Often a bad one is the son/grandson of one of the good ones. That’s because monarchies usually use direct primogeniture (oldest son is next king) as the way to ensure succession. This has the advantage of being easy to understand but it has the major disadvantage that not every oldest son is the most competent or wise. Hence the bad king. It also suffers from the failure mode of “no sons” which leads to various nephews, cousins and so on fighting it out. I.e. civil war. See also “king dies while heir is still a small boy” and the installation of a regent to rule until the child comes of age. Regents may be competent and loyal but history suggests they often aren’t.

Monarchies that try to avoid the single heir issue by splitting the kingdom between all heirs rapidly end up with dozens of pocket kingdoms that are ripe for takeover by a neighboring realm that has primogeniture and therefore is larger. No successful monarchies have extended the “split the kingdom” trick beyond a single generation. It can work fine as a once off (see William the Conqueror splitting his Norman and English lands, though that wasn’t a massive success) but never more.

Some monarchical traditions (see e.g. the Ottoman Empire) allowed someone such as the previous ruler or a council of elders to select the best son of the previous king. Sometimes they could even (in IIRC the Mongol tradition) pick nephews and other relatives who were not direct descendants of the previous ruler but were part of the royal family. This seems to solve the “oldest son is a moron” problem and potentially the “no sons” or “too young a son” problems, but it comes at a clear cost because there’s an obvious literal game of throne to be played in which potential future rulers have a strong incentive to kill off all their siblings. This is actually worse than the traditional primogeniture system. The “oldest son is a moron” issue gives you a chance of a bad king which is somewhat random. The “kill all your relatives before one kills you” issue pretty much guarantees the king will be a paranoid schemer because all the non-paranoid schemers will have been killed by their relatives. Paranoid scemers rarely make good monarchs.

Monarchies have one other problem. King goes ill/senile/mad but doesn’t die. At which point you are looking at the regent problem only often the “regent” is some combination of heir, queen and courtiers who spend much of their time fighting each other and/or other potential regents.

These problems are inherent in how monarchy is defined. A single ruler for life, followed by another such. There is rarely a system to replace the monarch and if there is one (see Japan and the various retired emperors) it generally results in monarchs being forcibly “retired” prematurely and a power struggle as they object to this.

People who don’t like kings and don’t like democracy may try other approaches but so far all the ones tried seem to suffer from the succession problem too.

Your standard issue dictatorship always hits the problem of who succeeds the glorious leader. It is actually worse than a monarchy because there is no particular expectation that the eldest son inherits so as soon as the glorious leader is unable to exercise authority the would be successors start fighting it out. Plus every glorious leader knows that competent underlings are likely to replace the glorious leader before the glorious leader is willing to step down so (see Putin) glorious leaders tend to arrange accidents for underlings who might make good successors. That means that the next generation is almost certainly less competent than the current glorious leader. A couple of generations of that and (see Africa) you have really stupid rulers.

So people try ways to avoid the glorious leader dictatorship. Take, for example, communist countries where a politburo rules and the General Secretary (or President or…) is the leader. The General Secretary can, in theory, retire at any time and allow another member of the politburo to become the leader. There may even be rules that say that the General Secretaryship has to rotate or that it has a limit of some number of years. This is something that the post Mao communists of West Taiwan tried. It worked pretty well for the first two or three changes of leader and then Winnie the Flu engineered his rise to the top and, magically, the requirement to step aside for the next leader went away as did all the other checks and balances designed to stop someone becoming ruler for life.

About the only way that sort of works is the high priest model. But that only works well if the priesthood is somewhat democratic in how it selects the next high priest (see the Pope and College of Cardinals as an example) and it can often lead to a de facto monarchy as the high priest’s son becomes the expected next high priest.

Democracy Solves The Succession Issue

In a democracy representatives (and presidents / prime-ministers) serve for a limited time before having to be re-elected. Assuming that elections happen periodically and mostly honestly when the leader is too old he (insert your own “or she”s if desired) retires and a successor is elected. Moreover if the leader’s policies are unpopular he will lose the next election and power is transferred to a new leader who has different policies. Or maybe the same policies but is more charismatic and/or less corrupt.

A critical difference between democracy and monarchy is that democratic leaders expect to retire and live on in the country ruled by their successors. As a result the incentives for power transfer are quite different. A democratic ruler wants a trouble-free succession because he likely has several years if not decades of life ahead of him after he loses his position. That same factor of life afterwards, and often the possibility of a return to a leadership position after another election, means that he won’t want to prosecute his predecessors for wrong-doing either, unless the wrong-doing is so egregious that a majority of the electorate agrees that the predecessor needs to be punished.

With succession solved, and with regular elections to permit the option of change and provide feedback to the rulers by chucking the bastards out when needed, it would be hoped that democracy would be rather better than Churchill’s “least bad”, but it isn’t

Where Democracy Fails

Just because democracy appears to solve the succession issue doesn’t mean it is all sweetness and light. We can look at a certain swamp on the Potomac and see how democracies can fail at the successor problem to a degree. Lust for power and money has resulted in representatives that gerrymander districts to ensure their re-election and/or not retiring until death but so far – despite all the histrionics – changes of representative and president have happened without serious repercussions. Now we are right up against that line with the hate for OrangeManBad but so far the norms are holding and the US still has a form of representative democracy (yes I know “it’s a republic” – elections happen to choose rulers which is a basic bit of democracy, deal).

However, the US is not the only nation where democracy seems to be having issues. Not just the US but also the UK and much of Europe seems to be stuck in a situation where the faces at top may change but the policies don’t and where, if they look like they might change, the bureaucracy exerts itself to stop that. See Brexit, Trump, the AFD in Germany and so on. In the UK, Liz Truss was almost certainly set up for failure in large part by a civil service and related bureaucracy that feared what she wanted to do. In that regard, what she says in this video is absolutely fascinating (source)

About the only (minor) positive of the bureaucratic state is that probably also solves the succession problem too because bureaucrats like to retire. Unfortunately (see Fauci, A) some bureaucrats seem able to stay on in positions of power and influence when they should have retired and some allegedly retired bureaucrats (e.g. Brennan and numerous other past CIA heads) seem to wield considerable power despite lacking an official position.

So far the only solution appears to be the Milei one – fire the entire bureaucratic establishment and deal with the fall out. However in order to get someone like Milei elected with a clear enough mandate that he can remove most of the bureaucracy you need to be circling the drain in failed state territory. That’s not a place we want the country to be in.

So, let’s talk conspiracy theories…

Largely what we’re facing is not a conspiracy, but a prospiracy. Yes, there are conspiracies within it, before you start screaming. We all know about journolist. That one was easy. Look, it’s a highly incestuous field, where people can only get jobs by toeing the political line. Trust me on this, I have friends who are journalists. Any hint of being on the right, and you’re doing the weekly articles with the shopper ads in Podunka Kentucky. Or you do your thing for tips on substack. It is of its kind as controlled a field as traditional publishing. More really. So, yeah, the fact that already fully controlled assets conspire to make their reporting more uniform is not surprising. (And if you think there isn’t still an active list, you’d be naive.) That they were caught at it is the only surprising thing.

Mostly though it’s a prospiracy: people thoroughly indoctrinated in “the proper response and what signals to watch for” all do the same thing, because they’re all trying to stay in and signal louder. Or strike a blow against the other side. the end result is…. well. What we have.

But it is not an actual conspiracy. A conspiracy would be both more dangerous and less.

What do I mean that? Exactly that. If they were a coordinated conspiracy, their responses would make more sense and be less insane. (Take this. They’re just throwing things at the wall.) Yes, they talk about five year plans and how it’s all coming true, but seriously? They always have five year (ten year, twenty year) plans. They’ve never worked, ever.

No, we’re not living through the end of a USSR plan. None of the USSR plans ever worked, and this is no exception. But the USSR was always good at rewriting whatever happened as “we meant to do that” and it’s entirely possible the person talking about how this is all a plan actually believed it. (To think it fits you also need a highly — highly — skewed view of events. You need to cherry pick a lot.)

They would be less dangerous if it were an actual conspiracy because leftist conspiracies have never worked, ever. They tend to think the intention is the thing and ignore that individuals have agency, and it kind of destroys all their beautiful shiny plans.

Most of the things that we think are conspiracies really aren’t. They’re just people being people over structures that aren’t designed for much of anything.

Look, the Great War. The left has this theory, or did in the sixties, that old men send young men to die in war, so they can shape the future without the disruptive youth.

It’s neat, clear and false. Wars happen because nations want resources or powerful men wnt more power. Or yes. Young men are the ones who fight, because they always are. The powerful men don’t want young men to die. They want their young men to win. And be loyal to them forever for the great Victory.

That young men die in great numbers comes from the fact that no centralized authority is very good at it in any way.

In the same way, take the cold war. We kept the USSR going for probably a good sixty years extra, with all our aid, our help, and our — frankly — kowtowing to them.

Was this some grand conspiracy because we wanted to stay at war? Not hardly. Because it was some great profiteering? Sure there was some of that.

BUT MOSTLY? It was the knowledge problem.

Heinlein said, and he wasn’t whistling Dixie that our intelligence services have always sucked. He was not wrong. Well, I don’t know ALWAYS. But they’ve sucked my entire life.

And part of the reason for this is that we’re a very large country and the three letters themselves are huge, complicated and contradictory.

Worse, they’ll all part of the mind set that we’ve had inculcated into us. So you know, the three letter agencies in the mid twentieth knew central planning was more efficient. So they bought into the USSR’s claims of great production, etc.

It’s important — very — to recognize that in a centralized, top down system errors get passed along and magnified. Hence, if someone overestimated the USSR, everyone else worked around that. No one dared question it, because what if they were right?

That’s what we’re prisoners of. Not some grand conspiracy, but prospiracy and the flaws inherent in the system.

The good news is the distributed information system we call the internet and we call various electronic means of communication is breaking that.

When you feel like everything is falling apart, it’s because it is. And it’s not because the enemy is so powerful, but because they’re losing control, don’t understand what’s happening, don’t know how things are going to change, and are losing their minds.

It’s not some grand plan. It’s the little plans blowing up. It’s the beliefs we all were taught falling apart.

The future is terrifying. And the blow up of all our corrupted information and all our corrupted structures is going to hurt badly.

But this is not anyone’s plan, and certainly not the enemy’s. The left hasn’t been hoodwinking us for decades. They’ve been careening through information errors and trying to cover their asses.

It’s just they controlled the media and that covered for them.

But we? We’re distributed. We’re chaotic.

And the future is unscripted. But we have an advantage.

Keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark, and stay frosty.

We got this.

It’s now over 100 years since WWI.

We still haven’t digested it.

Some people think that the trauma of WWI is what set the West on the road to insanity. I used to think so, but it’s not that simple.

The path was laid. The war happened because the world was already saturated with hubris and progressivism, and partly the war happened because the idea of world-spanning empires that transcended nationality.

Oh, it was newspapers, and trains, and fast ships. It was conceiving of a world that could be conquered, of people that could be integrated into a great, progressive project.

Everyone blames WWI on Nationalism, mostly because the Marxists — ascendant in the aftermath — were so mad people fought for nations, and not class against class. But the truth is that the royal families who started the music and pitched everyone into the pot were dreamers of international empires that spanned the world. Kind of like they still are. (Joined in by the super rich and the pretend “intellectuals.” Same as it ever was.)

WWI was an attempt to leave traditional culture behind, to transcend, to become “civilized” and industrial, and regimented, and– Oh, what’s the use. It is what it is. A product of the time and particular knowledge that made them have a certain view of the world.

In a way they only doubled down after WWI, only then we were supposed to be communitarian, and not care about nationalism, and–

The long war of the twentieth century was a struggle to remake humans.

They’re still at it, still trying to form us into units of production or something. But we are fighting back, at last. Unorganized, and all thumbs, but we’re fighting back.

It’s easy to look back at the 20th century and mourn the loss of life, and think we wouldn’t have been part of it.

But the truth is, there was no room for pacifists. There still isn’t. Wars don’t start and end because “everyone decides to”.

And in that time and in that place, fighting Germany was the most ethical thing to do. Now, the way they fought, and how, and the ridiculous war tactics, sometimes make one wonder if it was on purpose, if eliminating the youth of Europe was intentional to make it easier to rebuild Europe in a progressive image. But the truth is they aren’t that smart. They never were. They were trying to devour each other, to conquer the world. The dead people were just a consequence of the fact that they don’t much care for individual humans. They’re not that good at planning. Otherwise we’d be in the world of 1984.

None of which means it wasn’t honorable and right for the individual men, in the trenches to fight for their land and their friends and their family. Because once the machinery is in motion, it can’t be solved if one side refuses to fight. Yes, it could be solved “if only everyone” but that’s not how humans have ever worked, ever.

We live each in our capsule in time. We can’t judge the past any more than it could understand us.

The best we can do is honor those who sleep in Flanders Fields and those since and before who fought the best they knew for freedom and a future.

For our lacunae and our mistakes, for our losses and our despair, may future generations forgive us.

And may history be kind.

Today let’s us honor those who went before, lost in their capsule in time, who had the courage to fight for their beliefs. And fell for them. Their fight is now done. Ours goes on.