Aug 16 2021

I’m a BIG Fan of Local Groups

As in, block-level organization.

The best ones start off as Neighborhood Watch-type. It can be informal (barbeque buddies shooting the bull, and deciding on organizing to keep an eye on the neighborhood. Those who need to walk a dog are likely recruits; they are out there already, and might as well make themselves useful.

In a SHTF situation, it will really pay off if you know your neighbors, who can be trusted, and – more importantly – who cannot. That information can save your life.

This post reminded me of all the reasons NOT to work with larger organizations.

Now, will neighboring groups occasionally interact? Sure. The Block Captains should have a working relationship with nearby groups. They can learn a lot about local government, common problems, and ways to improve life for their own neighborhood.

But, the main focus needs to be on those near to you.

Aug 16 2021

The Rats Are Leaving The Sinking Ship

     The collapse of a regime is reliably preceded by the undisguised abandonment of its external allies. This is particularly visible among its former media supporters.

     Have a few links:

     As this will cost American lives and still more American treasure, your Curmudgeon is steadfastly resisting the temptation to lick his chops. While cheaters and the malicious don’t always get what they deserve in this life, it happens more often than not.

Though the mills of God grind slowly; Yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience He stands waiting, With exactness grinds He all.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Aug 16 2021

This Man Is Your Enemy

     …and he’s not troubling to hide it:

     “You have to get the overwhelming proportion of people vaccinated, but you also have to do mitigation, and that gets to the controversial issue of mask wearing, and the mandating of things,” [Fauci] said. “Mandating vaccines, for example, for teachers and … personnel in the school.”…

     “It’s the unvaccinated that are [spreading the Delta variant], so we have a lot of tasks,” he said. “We’ve got to do mitigation. Put aside all of these issues of concern about liberties and personal liberties and realize we have a common enemy and that common enemy is the virus. “

     War metaphors are the common tactic of men who want you to shut up and do as you’re told. Here’s another, from a time few Americans still living can recall:

     If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other; that we can not merely take but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline, because it makes possible a leadership which aims at a larger good. This I propose to offer, pledging that the larger purposes will bind upon us all as a sacred obligation with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in time of armed strife.

     [Franklin D. Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address, 1933. Emphasis added by your Curmudgeon, as HTML had not yet been invented.]

     Have a nice day.

Aug 16 2021

Must.

Any political settlement that the Afghans pursue to avert bloodshed must include having women at the table.

~ Nancy Pelosi, Statement on Afghanistan, 8/14/21.

Aug 15 2021

War Has Been Declared

     …and there’s no such thing as a one-sided war:

     The United States Department of Homeland Security made a quiet and alarming announcement yesterday, creating the official position of the United States Government under the Joe Biden regime. [SEE DHS STATEMENT HERE] According to the statement, if you question the orthodoxy, mandates, or COVID-19 response from the U.S. government, you are now considered a “terrorist”, specifically a “Domestic Violent Extremist” (DVE).

     This is quite a remarkable development and seems to underpin the tenuous, unstable and fragile disposition of the current regime. The Department of Homeland Security seems rather paranoid in their need to label anyone who would question the COVID-19 response. More than half the country would now be defined as dissidents and domestic terrorists within their[/]our homeland. Think about that.

     Please read it all.

     There’s your notification, Gentle Readers. By explicit decree of the Department of Homeland Security, one of the most heavily armed of all federal bureaucracies, we are now officially enemies of the State. This presents us with a trichotomy:

  1. “Shall I surrender to the Usurpers?”
  2. “Shall I resist as best I can, without taking up arms?”
  3. “Shall I take up arms and fight openly for the restoration of the Republic?”

     Each American must decide for himself.

     Thank you for being a patron of Liberty’s Torch. I’ll see you on the flip side.

     Have a nice day.

Aug 14 2021

Wedges

     Most people who study physics at any level know the Inclined Plane as the first machine of their acquaintance. It’s the simplest machine I know of. It serves admirably to illustrate the fundamental nature and purpose of a machine: to make some human undertaking easier than it would otherwise be. The illustration commonly presented to the schoolboy is of the elevation of a heavy object. The inclined plane reduces the force required to lift such an object, though it increases the distance traveled, and in some cases the total work done.

     In other applications, the inclined plane is called a wedge. The wedge is used to start or widen a gap in something, for example a large block of wood. Once again, the point is the reduction of the force required, though the time required to achieve a gap of the desired size will be greater.

     There are legal and political wedges, too. We call them “wedge issues.” They’re used to create a hole in individuals’ rights, particularly our rights to be left alone, to travel freely, and to preserve our bodily integrity.

     The wedge issue on my mind today is “public health.”

     Does anyone in the Liberty’s Torch audience know what that phrase actually means? The conventional understanding is approximately this:

     [T]he science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals.

     That’s exceptionally vague, on the order of “reasonable and proper.” Yet it’s been used to infringe on Americans’ rights several times. It’s being used that way now.

     Disease, if I may, cannot be “prevented.” It can be defined and thereafter detected. In some cases, its spread can be retarded or prevented. In other cases, once detected it can be cured. In many cases, neither of those things is possible; consider the common cold.

     When a communicable disease poses a serious risk of killing or crippling the sufferer, we readily accede to governmental measures designed to prevent its transmission. Fear for one’s life is a great motivator. The lethal communicable diseases of that time – cholera, diphtheria, tuberculosis and the like — provided the entering wedge for the “public health” organizations that first sprang up in 1866 and since then have multiplied like bacteria. Americans in cities stricken by such diseases allowed incursions on their Constitutionally guaranteed rights. No doubt it seemed like a good idea at the time.

     Over the decades since then, public-health “authorities” have used ever less threatening diseases to perform such incursions. The Kung Flu / Chinese Lung Rot / Covid-19 is the latest and least threatening of the series. Its foremost promoter – should a disease have a promoters? – is the notorious Anthony Fauci. He has made his intentions clearer than clear:

     In another one of his infamous corporate media talking head moments, Dr. Anthony Fauci said that baseless mandates for masks and vaccines are more important than Americans’ constitutional rights.

     “I’m sorry, I mean I know people must like to have their individual freedom and not be told to do something, but I think we’re in such a serious situation now that under certain circumstances, mandates should be done,” Fauci said.

     Fauci’s “I’m sorry” rings hollow. This is a man who glories in public attention and adulation, and who has persistently pressed for greater exertions of power on his say-so. Considering the absurdly low lethality of the Wuhan Terror, no other explanation for his authoritarianism holds water. Given that the lethality of the “vaccines” is comparable to that of the virus, the only difference between them is that you have to acquire one of them intentionally, by appointment.

     The highly deadly communicable diseases of the 19th and early 20th Centuries were an entering wedge for medical authoritarianism. What we’ve endured these past eighteen months over a disease no more threatening than common influenza – which the most commonly used test misidentifies as Covid-19! – is the fruit of that poisonous tree. And Americans, cowed by the phrase “public health” and the looming frowns of innumerable fear-mongering politicians, have accepted it.

     Government mandates? Accept the “vaccine” or be forever unemployable? Really, “Dr.” Fauci? For that verdict, I shall yield the floor to Mike Hendrix:

     This pig-ignorant little Nazi, remember, has held a powerful and remunerative position in the federal government for his entire career, since 1968. The poisonous dwarf has “served” under five Presidents—two Democrat-Socialist, three Repugnican. And in his view, the mandate of freedom and individual self-determination upon which this nation was founded can be flippantly discarded with no more than a casual wave of his mighty hand, the US Constitution be damned. He knows virtually nothing of the most fundamental American ideals, and cares about them even less….

     And some long-ago chair-warmer in goobermint actually thought it would be a good idea to hire this cretinous cur? SRSLY? Worse yet, nobody since—not even Trump—ever saw him for what he really is and righteously shitcanned his sorry ass? I repeat: the mind, it reels.

     Where’s your musket, Gentle Reader? Got powder and ball handy? You’re going to need them.

Aug 14 2021

More pearls of expression.

This person of apparent European heritage should be charged with cultural appropriation!

Comment by Efficacy on “Unusual weapon in road rage…“

Aug 14 2021

Pearls of expression.

It’s no surprise, certainly around here, that the Taliban has won the war without firing a shot, if you don’t count the last 20 years.

Comment by gottlieb at Moon of Alabama.

Aug 13 2021

The Fallen Republic: A Summing-Up

     I found this at IOTW Report. I hope that site’s proprietors won’t mind that I’m reproducing it here. It deserves the widest possible audience:

     I never dreamed that I would have to face the prospect of not living in the United States of America, at least not the one I have known all my life. I have never wished to live anywhere else. This is my home and I was privileged to be born here.

     But today I woke up and I realized that everything is about to change. No matter how I vote, no matter what I say, something evil has invaded our nation, and our lives are never going to be the same.

     I have been confused by the hostility of family and friends. I look at people I have known all my life so filled with hate that they will agree with opinions that if they were in their right minds they would never express as their own.

  • If a dude pretends to be a woman, you are required to pretend with him.
  • Somehow it’s un-American for the census to count how many Americans are in America.
  • Russians influencing our elections are bad, but illegals voting in our elections are good.
  • It was cool for Joe Biden to “blackmail” the President of Ukraine, but it’s an impeachable offense if Donald Trump inquires about it.
  • Twenty is too young to drink a beer, but eighteen is old enough to vote.
  • People who have never owned slaves should pay slavery reparations to people who have never been slaves.
  • Inflammatory rhetoric is outrageous, but harassing people in restaurants is virtuous.
  • People who have never been to college should pay the debts of college students who took out huge loans for their degrees.
  • Immigrants with tuberculosis, Covid and polio are welcome, but you’d better be able to prove your dog is vaccinated.
  • Irish doctors and German engineers who want to immigrate must go through a rigorous vetting process, but any illiterate gang-bangers who jump the southern fence are welcome.
  • $5 billion for border security is too expensive, but $1.5 trillion for “free” health care is not.
  • If you cheat to get into college you go to prison, but if you cheat to get into the country you go to college for free.
  • People who say there is no such thing as gender are demanding a female President.
  • We see other countries going Socialist and collapsing, but it seems like a great plan to us.
  • Some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, and other people are not held responsible for what they are doing right now.
  • Criminals are catch-and-released to hurt more people, but stopping them is bad because it’s a violation of THEIR rights.
  • And pointing out all this hypocrisy somehow makes us “racists”?!

     Nothing makes sense anymore, no values, no morals, no civility and people are dying of a Chinese virus, but it racist to refer to it as Chinese even though it began in China.

     We are clearly living in an upside down world where right is wrong and wrong is right, where moral is immoral and immoral is moral, where good is evil and evil is good, where killing murderers is wrong, but killing innocent babies is right, where darkness is light and light is now darkness.

     Wake up America, the great unsinkable ship Titanic America has hit an iceberg, is taking on water and sinking fast.

     The choice is yours to make. What will it be?

     Time is short, make your choice wisely!

     The choice is being taken from us by the Usurpers: through uncontrolled borders, rampant election fraud, insane borrowing and spending, the strangling of our energy supplies, and the across-the-board displacement of facts in favor of regime-dictated propaganda echoed by their Big Tech allies and “narratives” to which media handmaidens eagerly assent.

     Time isn’t “short;” it has run out. Either we rise now or we fall forever.

     Remember that you read it here first.

Aug 12 2021

2nd Day, No Vox Populi

I found his new (perhaps temporary) site – here.

Let this be a warning:

  • The Co-opted PTB can take you down anytime they want.
  • There is no appeal or recourse.
  • It will be unexpected and sudden.

So, make sure to back up regularly, offline. Have an idea of where you could post, should the hammer fall. Some will set up a site of their own; others will, like Blanche DuBois, depend on the kindliness of strangers.

Consider this a reminder to diversify your income, and outlets.

Aug 11 2021

Politics Uber Alles

     John Hinderaker pins it:

     The Democrats are bidding Andy Cuomo a fond farewell. They want to pretend that he was a successful governor and his downfall was solely attributable to sexual harassment.

     Not the untimely and unnecessary deaths of 15,000 nursing home residents? Not the immense damage done to New York’s already fragile economy by his lockdowns? Hm. Perhaps we should ask why…or rather, “Cui bono?”

     Democrats nationwide are finding themselves beleaguered politically. Consider the recall effort underway for California governor Gavin Newsom. Consider the low public opinion of administration spokesmen such as Anthony Fauci and Jen Psaki. Consider the exploding popularity of figures such as Florida governor Ron DeSantis and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. Consider the several assessments of the upcoming midterm elections as disastrous for the Democrats in Congress. Why, you’d think that they’d done something destructive and unpopular!

     They’re in trouble. Many of them face the prospect of needing new jobs. But the party’s strategists are still analyzing and plotting out courses designed to minimize the damage. One stroke in the plan is to sacrifice a sheep or two to the pursuing wolves – but in a fashion that doesn’t imply massive policy failures or a platform founded on wrongthink.

     They chose to sacrifice Andrew Cuomo for two reasons. First, he is deeply unpopular. As a governor with a national profile, he could have weighed down Democrat prospects both in New York and nationally. Second, he could be pilloried and removed for a non-policy sin: his Bidenesque habit of groping any woman who came within arm’s length. Thus, he could be sacrificed without implications for the party’s overall policy stances.

     Cuomo, for all his faults, is not stupid. He knew his number was up, so he agreed to cooperate. The Democrats’ media allies were happy to cooperate as well. The party “pushed him off the roof where the fall was shortest:” the sexual-harassment allegations lodged against him. He and his family may yet suffer monetarily, but he’s unlikely to serve a prison term for those “he said / she said” accusations.

     Hearken to left-wing political damage control in the Year of Our Lord 2021.

     Scant wonder why the popular opinion of politicians as a class puts them on the level of organized crime. Today that’s an objective assessment, though perhaps a trifle unkind to Mafia capi. (At least their neighborhoods are orderly and peaceful.) Recall Ferdinand Lundberg’s summary from 1968:

     …it is a settled conclusion among seasoned observers that, Congress apart as a separate case, the lower legislatures — state, county, and municipal — are Augean stables of misfeasance, malfeasance, and nonfeasance from year to year and decade to decade, and that they are preponderantly staffed by riffraff, or what the police define as “undesirables,” people who if they were not in influential positions would be unceremoniously told to “keep moving.” Exceptions among them are minor. Many of them, including congressmen, refuse to go before the television cameras because it is then so plainly obvious to everybody what they are. Their whole demeanor arouses instant distrust in the intelligent. They are, all too painfully, type-cast for the race track, the sideshow carnival, the back alley, the peep show, the low tavern, the bordello, the dive. Evasiveness, dissimulation, insincerity shine through their false bonhomie like beacon lights….

     As to other legislatures, Senator Estes Kefauver found representatives of the vulpine Chicago Mafia ensconced in the Illinois legislature, which has been rocked by one scandal of the standard variety after the other off and on for seventy-five years. What he didn’t bring out was that the Mafians were clearly superior types to many non-Mafians.

     Public attention, indeed, usually centers on only a few lower legislatures — Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, California and Illinois — and the impression is thereby fostered in the unduly trusting that the ones they don’t hear about are on the level. But such an impression is false. The ones just mentioned come into more frequent view because their jurisdictions are extremely competitive and the pickings are richer. Fierce fights over the spoils generate telltale commotion. Most of the states are quieter under strict one-party quasi-Soviet Establishment dominance, with local newspapers cut in on the gravy. Public criticism and information are held to a minimum, grousers are thrown a bone, and not many in the local populace know or really care. Even so, scandalous goings-on explode into view from time to time in Florida, Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Missouri and elsewhere — no state excepted. Any enterprising newspaper at any time could send an aggressive reporter into any one of them and come up with enough ordure to make the Founding Fathers collectively vomit up their very souls in their graves.

     Lundberg wrote that fifty-three years ago. We can no longer deem “Congress apart as a separate case.” Not with Pelosi, Schumer, and their ilk at the helm. As for the White House, is comment really required?

     The Republic is no more. We are ruled by vultures, swindlers, and fiends.

     But do have a nice day.

Aug 11 2021

The enemies of our liberty.

Sam Jacobs has provided a disturbing and compelling picture of the Great Reset.[1]

In times when words and politics have broken loose from their moorings in common sense, history, custom, and decency, it’s important to educate yourself, at the very least, about how government has completely abandoned the idea of salus populi and its responsibility to be the guardian of our liberties. If you read about the Great Reset you simply cannot but fail to see that ordinary people are to be expropriated and reduced to the status of piss ant. Those people who survive, that is.

If government malevolence is a concept that disturbs you, consider two things. Many more things can be highlighted but consider, first, that it has been official policy throughout the Western world, and especially in the U.S., to destroy small business and jobs through absurd lockdowns that are in no way required by the insignificant risks of dying from covid-19. (Risks that have been wildly exaggerated by absurdly high PCR cycle rates and false statistical reporting, let it be said.) This is much like saying we have to shut down the interstates because the skateboard injuries since January 2020 have soared to 45. So, immense damage justified by absurdly low risks.

Secondly, you can clearly see the absurd government push to vaccinate children, the least susceptible segment of the population. This is a vicious policy that has nothing to do with an honest and common sense assement of the risks involved. It’s all about getting some experimental, supposed “vaccine” into the blood vessels of kids. To what end? Certain speculations are disturbing, to say the least. On the surface, it’s like mandating crash helmets for infants who are merely at the stage of crawling on all fours. (If there’s another way of crawling I’m unaware of it so I suppose that’s a redundancy.)

Given this kind of viciousness and dishonesty, the question of the hour, therefore, is what exactly are these toads planning for us? The observant and insightful Mr. Jacobs’s views are worth your time but, frankly, I’d rather not have to deal with information that shows very clearly that the nation bequeathed to us has been infiltrated by demons.

How this will play out is anybody’s guess. I take heart in Charles Hugh Smith’s notion, quoting Ugo Bardi , that complex systems like ours are susceptible to collapse. These globalist/reset swine who are so blithely meddling with our lives seem to think that everything will function just like before when 90% of the population of earth goes away (such soothing language). More likely, the enormous damage they will try to initiate will blow up in their faces just as much as in ours before too much damage can be done.

Notes
[1] “The Great Reset: The Global Elite’s Plan to Radically Remake Our Economic and Social Lives.” By Sam Jacobs, Ammo.com, 8/__/21.

Aug 10 2021

The Meaning of Blood Feud, and How it Affects You Today

Here – at The ZMan.

Now, this puts the WWI-WWII entertwined and extended wars into a different perspective. The reaction of the Allied side – Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Japan (yes, JAPAN!), and the late-entering USA – to assign all blame for the mess, and the entire cost of compensating the Allied side for their expenses in participating in it – was, in many peoples’ minds, the proximate cause of the rise of the Third Reich, and WWII.

Never mind that Hitler managed to get both Italy and Japan to fight on his side. Never mind that, in the early days of the Third Reich, Russia sided with it (bolded sections found here):

“The war in Europe began on 23 August 1939, when the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed a pact that created a partnership between them in dividing up Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe. Under the terms of this pact, the German Wehrmacht moved into western Poland on 1 September 1939, and the Soviet Red Army moved en masse into eastern Poland sixteen days later.”

Only later, when the German Empire decided they didn’t need Russia, did the Soviets switch sides.

“The German attack against the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, codenamed Operation Barbarossa, constituted the largest invasion in history, with millions of troops, tens of thousands of tanks and artillery systems, nearly 5,000 combat aircraft, and hundreds of thousands of combat vehicles. The all-out onslaught of the Wehrmacht nearly knocked the Red Army out of the war in the initial days and weeks, yet somehow, despite appalling conditions at the front, Soviet soldiers managed to rally back.”

This was History Re-Written, to blame a nation’s enemies for ALL the misfortunes of that nation, and force them to pay. It was done in Germany, but also by the victorious WWII Allies. It was done in a softer manner by the USA after WWII, when we used the Marshall Plan to jump-start the European economy – at least those that supported us. That later extended to our foreign aid expenditures, particularly in the Asian arena.

Blood Feuds are common throughout the world. They are often behind the oppressive policies of nations towards their minority populations. They are being used in the United States, at present, to force money out of White Americans, for presumed abuses by OTHER Whites against Black Slaves.

None of which exist today. And, with whom very few of today’s American citizens have any connection. It is a blatant attempt to coerce money and power, using past grievances to justify it and ‘pretty up’ the theft.

Aug 10 2021

Assorted

     Forgive me, Gentle Reader; I haven’t the strength to think up a cleverer title today. Just read on.

***

1. Ownership of books is under threat.

     People were concerned about major software vendors (especially Microsoft) going to a “rent” rather than “buy” model for important applications. But what about the next most important digital good we enjoy: reading material?

     Maybe you’ve noticed how things keep disappearing—or stop working—when you “buy” them online from big platforms like Netflix and Amazon, Microsoft and Apple. You can watch their movies and use their software and read their books—but only until they decide to pull the plug. You don’t actually own these things—you can only rent them. But the titanic amount of cultural information available at any given moment makes it very easy to let that detail slide. We just move on to the next thing, and the next, without realizing that we don’t—and, increasingly, can’t—own our media for keeps….

     Unfortunately, today’s mega-publishers and book distributors have glommed on to the notion of “expiring” media, and they would like to normalize that temporary, YouTube-style notion of a “library.” That’s why, last summer, four of the world’s largest publishers sued the Internet Archive over its National Emergency Library, a temporary program of the Internet Archive’s Open Library intended to make books available to the millions of students in quarantine during the pandemic. Even though the Internet Archive closed the National Emergency Library in response to the lawsuit, the publishers refused to stand down; what their lawsuit really seeks is the closing of the whole Open Library, and the destruction of its contents. (The suit is ongoing and is expected to resume later this year.) A close reading of the lawsuit indicates that what these publishers are looking to achieve is an end to the private ownership of books—not only for the Internet Archive but for everyone.

     Now, The Nation is nobody’s prayer book, as we papists like to say. But the factual assertions in this article appear to be objectively correct. That worries me, as I’m not just the president of Hair Club for Men I’m not just a writer but an avid reader, and a huge fraction of what I read today is in eBook form. Something to think about.

     [Applause to Gerard Vanderleun for the link.]

***

2. Some very, very bad ideas appear immortal.

     If this story is at all factual, quite a lot of people will be locking and loading very soon:

     Before anyone cries conspiracy theory, this document is sourced from the CDC website.
     The CDC has outlined a plan to segregate “at-risk” individuals from the general population and place them into internment camps.
     Their document includes the elderly and immunocompromised.
     But who wants to predict they’ll eventually add the unvaccinated to the list of “at-risk” individuals?
     Labeled “green zones,” the CDC document states these internment camps will rip “at-risk” people from their families and relocate them to designated facilities.
     A protocol of establishing concentration camps within our own communities in the United States.
     Another conspiracy theory coming true before our eyes.
     The Stew Peters Show had the report on Rumble.

     Please read the whole thing. Then think “Bergen-Belsen.” Or “Buchenwald.” Or “Japanese relocation centers.” And pray.

***

3. The inflection point for Wokeism…

     …could prove to be this matter of transgenderism:

     Erick Erickson, a self-described conservative, was temporarily suspended for saying Laurel Hubbard, a New Zealand trans weightlifter, is a man. She is transgender. In other words, she is a man who changed certain physical characteristics to look like a woman. Biologically, she still has the chromosomes she was born with — XY.

     Erickson was repeating Allie Stuckley’s comments about that biological fact. Stuckley and Erickson are back on Twitter and Erickson is sticking by his biological statement of fact.

     People are already upset about the censorious behavior of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, and with good reason. But this business of transgenderism being treated as beyond criticism by a supposedly open forum could be the last straw.

     I have two transwoman friends. I don’t give them a hard time about it, but the biological reality is what Erick Erickson has stated: they are men who have elected to present themselves to the world as female. Those around them accept their presentations and treat them as they would like to be treated. (For the record, so do I.) Whether we are enabling them is a moot point; we have decided to avert strife over the subject, as long as peace can be maintained.

     But if such cases are tolerable – and my two friends are agreeable sorts in every important way, which to me is the sole criterion of importance – the suppression of dissenting views is not. Neither is transgender evangelism aimed at impressionable children, nor the use of corporate or political power to impose such notions willy-nilly. That line must be drawn and maintained. Any serious attempt to erase it would eventuate in social chaos even worse than what we already suffer.

***

4. Few things are as amusing as a panicky politician.

     And Andrew Cuomo is definitely panicking:

     Cuomo has reportedly been working on brokering a deal with the Assembly to get out of the impeachment predicament.
     In exchange for his promise not to run again in 2022, the Assembly would hold off from impeaching him, according to The City.
     Heastie denied the notion at his Monday press conference, telling reporters, “I am not negotiating any deals.”
     From Cuomo’s perspective, this would be the best compromise he could reach, and he would at least tie his father when it comes to the length of their tenures as governor.
     For Cuomo’s accusers, such a deal would let the governor get off far too easy.
     Debra Katz, an attorney representing the former Cuomo staffer Charlotte Bennett, has remained adamant that justice for her client involves the legislature holding Cuomo accountable.
     “Further delay is an affront to the women who came forward and to survivors everywhere,” Katz wrote in a statement last week.

     Cuomo has done enormous damage to New York residents. His removal from office should have occurred at least a year ago. But this is New York, the Vampire State, where the Left runs things as it pleases unless and until it’s caught buggering a corpse in Macy’s window at high noon on Christmas day – at which point the Left’s media handmaidens revive the old chorus: It’s just about sex, just about sex, just about sex…

***

5. “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!”

     Guess who’s chanting that now?

     While honoring the efforts and sacrifices of the people whose struggles culminated in Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court case that ended school segregation in this country, New York University Professor Derrick Bell provocatively suggested last week that generations of black children might have been better off if the case had failed.
     “From the standpoint of education, we would have been better served had the court in Brown rejected the petitioners’ arguments to overrule Plessy v. Ferguson,” Bell said, referring to the 1896 Supreme Court ruling that enforced a “separate but equal” standard for blacks and whites. While acknowledging the deep injustices done to black children in segregated schools, Bell argued the court should have determined to enforce the generally ignored “equal” part of the “separate but equal” doctrine.
     Bell, a visiting law professor at New York University, lectured at the opening of a symposium April 15-16 to mark the 50th anniversary of the landmark Brown decision. Presented by the Program in American Studies, the event included two discussion panels that considered some of the unrecognized catalysts and unintended consequences of the historic court case.

     I never fail to get a chuckle out of black racialists’ cries of grievance. Even when they get what they wanted –all of it – they’re never satisfied. By now the reason should be quite plain:

Integrated schools have made racial differences in intelligence distributions, work ethics, and aggression impossible to conceal.

     But let’s imagine that we could get into a time machine. go back to the Brown decision, and somehow induce the Supreme Court to give professor Bell what he’s suggested. Fast forward to 2021. What do you suppose we would see? Genuine equality of educational achievement between white and black kids? Or perhaps a state of affairs comparable to today?

     My guess is that black-run schools with all-black student bodies would produce black graduates with grades comparable to those of their white counterparts. However, while the grades would be comparable, the actual learning and achievements of the graduates would not. The business world, in which performance is ultimately all that matters, would soon discover that black graduates average less capable, less diligent, and more troublesome than whites with the same academic credentials. So the black racialists would still stridently demand legal accommodations for “their people.”

     But at least a few more white kids would escape high school alive and unmarred.

***

     That’s all for today, Gentle Reader. I have to get to work on Novel #18. No, I’m not going to tell you what it’s about just yet. Suffice it to say that it will involve, at the very minimum, a gallon of white, latex-based paint, a dozen oysters on the half-shell, and the Eiffel Tower or a facsimile thereof. As you can imagine, a great deal of work lies ahead.

     But do have a nice day.

Your humble Curmudgeon Emeritus,
Fran

Aug 09 2021

Assorted Fiction Notes And Observations

     In case I haven’t done so before, I’d like to issue a hearty recommendation of Philip S. Power’s Damsel series:

  1. Damsel: No More
  2. Damsel: Slaying Demons
  3. Damsel: Wilderness Hannah
  4. Damsel: Soda Supreme

     You know what a raving beast I am about originality. Well, here’s a giant helping. Hannah de Peyser is an heiress to a great fortune. As with most heiresses, her potential cash value makes her the target of kidnappers. Unfortunately, Hannah’s world is thickly populated with superheroes…and supervillains. This makes her situation rather less pleasant than that of heiresses in our reality.

     After the Nth such kidnapping attempt, she decides she’s had enough, and will be “the damsel in distress no more.” She resolves to become better able to fight off those who have targeted her – yea verily, even the super types. The story of her emergence from aimless party hound to a significant hero in her own right is both entertaining and inspiring.

     You can read the Damsel books as pure entertainment, which they certainly are, or as a tale of maturation and discovery, which they also are, or as a sermonette on the infinite possibilities open to one who has taken her life into her own hands to make what she can of it. In any case, give them a look.

***

     Two good bits of reading about fiction have recently come my way. Colonel Bunny supplied the first: Why Men Don’t Read Books By Women. The second is a brief Breitbart piece about some observations by Amanda Milius on “dissident” reactions against the politicization of entertainment. Both are worth your time, especially if you’re an indie writer, musician, or visual-media creator.

***

     Sigh. Another giveaway has come and gone, and once again I’m feeling a bit low. The inability to sell my novels is one thing; the inability to give them away is another, and considerably more depressing.

     You’d think a free, no-strings download of a book in your favorite genre would elicit the reaction “Why not?” After all, there’s no downside. You can read the book or discard it without having cracked its digital cover. You can even remove it from your “Content and Devices” library, leaving no evidence that it ever passed through your hands. Apparently I’m wrong about this. I’m still trying to figure it out.

     I’ve known for a while that my subject matter isn’t in the popular domain. (No space wars, apocalypses, time travel, vampires, werewolves, zombies, or harems.) But such are the stories I write. And so once again, I’ve been asking myself that deadliest of questions: What’s the point?

***

     Apropos of the above: In a last, despairing attempt to stimulate some sales, I’m reducing the prices of The Athene Academy Collection, the “prequel” to the Futanari Saga, and Innocents, the first full-length novel of the Saga, to $0.99, at which they will remain.

     These are not tales for persons averse to exploring the consequences of an unpleasant idea. The original premise was supplied me as part of a “challenge.” The three novelettes in The Athene Academy Collection were the first result. After I’d done a lot of research on the international sex trade, Innocents was the next.

     I’m also reducing the price of Which Art In Hope, the first novel of the Spooner Federation Saga, to $0.99.

***

     If you like F&SF conventions, be aware of BasedCon, a convention for indie fantasy and science fiction writers and fans. It will be held in Norton Shores, Michigan, and will run from September 15 through September 17. Have a few words about the Con’s intent:

     Sci-fi cons used to be a lot of fun. They were places where people of all colors and creeds could get together to talk and learn about science fiction and fantasy books, games, movies, and TV shows. Then, starting a few years ago, things changed. Cons became increasingly dominated by a small clique of authoritarian jerks who made them into venues for pushing social justice dogma and, in the name of “inclusiveness,” shut down any opinions that didn’t align with progressive orthodoxy. You may remember the Sad Puppies saga, which culminated in WorldCon voters selecting “No Award” in several categories of the Hugo Awards rather than reward people outside their tribe. Maybe you’re familiar with the Gamergate debacle. You probably heard about Gina Carano being fired from The Mandalorian because she voiced thoughts outside the acceptable range of opinion. Undoubtedly you’ve heard about the push to get Critical Race Theory and other social justice garbage into schools.

     Each of these controversies start the same way: a group of progressive malcontents moves into a space, takes it over, molds it to suit the group’s agenda, and then brands anyone who fights back as racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. For whatever reason, the problem is particularly bad in the realm of science fiction and fantasy publishing. As a result, a genre that has historically been about the unfettered exploration of ideas has become stagnant and derivative, and the people running the industry are often openly, unapologetically hostile to a significant portion of their audience. And if you’re an openly conservative sci-fi or fantasy author, good luck getting published.

     The publishing industry’s hostility to authors who are critical of progressive dogma was the primary impetus behind BasedCon. I wanted to put together an event where non-leftist authors could network and where new and aspiring authors could learn from authors who had already navigated these treacherous seas. When I mentioned the idea on Twitter, someone asked, “Are non-authors welcome?” And I thought, “Why not? A big meetup of sci-fi/fantasy authors and fans sounds like it could be a blast.” BasedCon was born.

     Sounds good, doesn’t it? At 850 miles away, I can’t get there by any of the methods of travel still open to me, so if any of my Gentle Readers should attend, I hope you’ll provide a full report!

***

     Finally, Hans G. Schantz, author of the Hidden Truth series, is organizing a multi-writer book sale that will commence on September 15 Midnight Pacific Time and run to September 22 Midnight Pacific Time. He’s timing it to coincide with BasedCon, mentioned above, at which he’ll be a featured guest and panelist. The books included will be priced at $0.99 or free. Books by some fairly well-known writers will be included in the sale, so if your To-Be-Read stack is getting short – mine always is – here’s another reason to mark your calendar.

     Hans’s last such group sale is described here, at his website. Some of the names will surely be familiar to you, so don’t miss out!

Aug 08 2021

The Instruments Of The Faith

     First, a few thematic quotes:

     No power is strong enough if it labors under the weight of fear. – Cicero

     Fear is an acid which is pumped into one’s atmosphere. It causes mental, moral and spiritual asphyxiation, and sometimes death; death to all energy and growth. – Horace Fletcher

     Fear is like fire: if controlled, it will help you; if uncontrolled, it will rise up and destroy you. – John F. Milburn

     Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. – Bertrand Russell

     Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it….The basest of all things is to be afraid. – William Faulkner

     Fire and fear: good servants, bad lords. – Ursula Le Guin

     Fear always springs from ignorance! – Ralph Waldo Emerson

     I know, I know: that’s more quotes than most people have the patience to read. But each of them says something important about the most important psychological element in our contemporary milieu. That element is the chief weapon in the hands of those who would reduce you to submission and subjugation:

     Fear of disease.
     Fear for loved ones.
     Fear of social exclusion.
     Fear of loss of livelihood.
     Fear of “expert” disapproval.

     That’s a fair number of varieties of fear. Moreover, I omitted an important one that we’ll address a bit later. (Yes, it’s included in one of the quotes above.) But take a moment to ponder which of those fears has helped to shape your decisions these past eighteen months, and to what extent.

     Now consider these questions:

  • Who caused you to fear?
  • What was his most persuasive pitch?
  • In retrospect, were your fears well-founded?

     Depending on the specifics of the fear you have in mind, you might not have sufficient information to address those questions confidently. For example, if one of your fears was the Kung Flu / Wuhan Bogeyman / Chinese Lung Rot / COVID-19, then what information, suitably documented and confirmed, would have allowed you not to fear it? Is that information available today? How long has it been available? Was there an attempt to suppress it, or to keep you from obtaining it?

     So many tawdry little secrets have come to light over the past few months that the “pandemic panic” under which the nation has labored now seems absurd – that is, if you have the best information about:

  1. The WuFlu’s actual lethality (minimal),
  2. Its transmissibility through non-fluid contact (it isn’t),
  3. The PCR test’s inability to tell it from common influenza (admitted by the CDC),
  4. The great destruction the panic has inflicted upon our society and economy (still being measured).

     Yet even in the face of the most recent revelations, those who find your fear politically useful are still trying their damnedest to keep you firmly in fear’s grip: socially isolated, economically strangled, and willing to clutch at any straw “the authorities” tell you might save you from this viral phantasm.

     Fear is the primary weapon in the hands of those who seek to shrive you of your rights. They aim to destroy America’s norms of individual liberty, private property, free markets, and the degree of tolerance consistent within public order. And they’ve made one hell of a lot of progress.

     Their aim is what it has always been: unbounded and absolute power. They currently control the instrument called “the State:” i.e., government. They’re striving mightily to extend its reach through every nominally private institution in American life: companies, media, churches, schools, neighborhood associations, and other venues for social or commercial intercourse.

     Their arm has grown long. Already the largest corporations in the nation, which employ half or more of American wage employees, are largely in their grasp. Most of the main-line churches have kowtowed as well. As for the media, the entertainment and leisure industries, and the schools, must I be minutely circumstantial?

     The whole point is the perpetuation and intensification of your fears. The fear-filled man is the easiest of all creatures to control. Simply do as we say, and we’ll relieve you of a portion of your fears. Not your fear of us, mind you, but we’ll command the other chimeras that have bedeviled you to retreat a few paces. Yes, we can do that. Trust us.

     Once you have faith that doing as “the authorities” say can relieve you of your fear, the rest follows.

     Cui bono? To whose benefit is all this? The answer is not hard to find, for there is only one institution that always benefits from others’ fear:

     The State is based on threat. – Robert Anton Wilson

     Your fear is the State’s best nourishment.

     Have a nice day.

Aug 07 2021

Bent Brains

     Accepting a lie in place of the truth will do bad things to you.

     I once advanced the thesis that if a man should accept even one fact as absolutely true, it would compel him to accept all the rest of objective reality. Herbert Spencer believed this as well:

     I asked one of the members of Parliament whether a majority the House could legitimize murder. He said no. I asked him whether it could sanctify robbery. He thought not. But I could not make him see that if murder and robbery are intrinsically wrong, and not to be made right by the decisions of statesmen, then similarly all actions must be either right or wrong, apart from the authority of the law; and that if the right and wrong the law are not in harmony with this intrinsic right and wrong, the law itself is criminal.

     However, until recently I hadn’t considered the inverse thesis: that if a man should accept even one untruth as absolutely true, it would compel him to reject all the rest of objective reality. I don’t know if that ever occurred to Spencer, but he had enough to occupy him in any case.

     This essay isn’t about psycho-epistemology or the processes by which the mind digests and sorts its inputs. It’s more about false faiths and the way they divide us.

     Longtime Gentle Readers will already know that I’m a Catholic. Catholicism is the parent branch of the faith called Christianity, from which all the other offshoots sprang in response to doctrinal, procedural, or organizational schisms. Christianity qualifies as a religious faith because:

  • It is a system of belief;
  • Which posits a theology;
  • Whose veracity can neither be proved nor disproved.

     As such, there is no way for the Christian to establish, beyond the possibility of objective contradiction, that Christianity is objectively true. However, because of certain of its premises, it can be attacked by persons who have decided to reject it. The most important of those premises is the Crucifixion and subsequent Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, whom Christians hold to be the Son of God and Second Person of the Divine Trinity. He who rejects the Resurrection rejects Christian theology, though he might still approve of some of Christianity’s behavioral prescriptions.

     BUT: If someone could establish beyond all doubt that the Resurrection did not occur as narrated in the three synoptic Gospels – i.e., that the Resurrection story is untrue — Christianity would fall. Over time, persons who continue to believe in it would be forced to reject many objective truths, because they would induce doubt of the Resurrection premise. The rejections would spread until they had made the believer’s acceptance of every fact conditional upon a satisfactory answer to the question “Does it induce doubt in the Resurrection?”

     As reality is essentially indivisible, that process could not be kept from enveloping all facts, though it might not be evident ab initio. There would be those who accept reality as it is, and those who reject it as incompatible with their faith…even as they rely upon certain portions of reality in the regular conduct of their daily lives.

***

     I’m on this track this fine Saturday morning because of two posts by two personal favorites:

     Please read them both. The first is long and explicit about the falsity that’s dividing us. The second is short and leaves it unexpressed but implied. However, a certain amount of penetration is required to get past the political decorations and reach the base untruth that’s causing these enmities and divisions.

     Time was – as I’m sure I’ve said before – liberals and conservatives agreed on ends but disagreed on means. They both wanted strong defenses, a sound currency, a vibrant economy, the deterrence and prosecution of crime, the reduction of personal poverty, a unitary and broadly tolerant Republic, and so forth. This is no longer the case. Today, the Left has elevated its preferences to moral principles: absolute articles of faith that demand equally absolute allegiance. Whether they bring about the ends predicted for them (when anyone actually bothers to predict such things) is immaterial. The Right disagrees, even in those cases where conservatives allow partial approval of the phenomenon under discussion.

     But for Smith to disagree with Jones’s religious faith can have consequences, according to the nature of the disagreement. For the two to differ on the theology might still allow them to get along, but should they differ on moral principles, the game is up: the two must be enemies. The gulf between them will be unbridgeable, even if Smith bears Jones no ill will and is quite content that Jones believe as he pleases.

     Again as I’m sure I’ve said before, the Left has awarded itself a status of absolute moral superiority, specifically because of Leftists’ political positions. It clutches that palm of righteousness with a fanatic strength. Yet it is false to fact. It has warped the minds of those who cling to it. And by implication, it must condemn and abjure those who differ…and that’s all of us in the Right.

     For political differences to divide families is not unprecedented. After all, we do have a Civil War in our history. But the enmities of today go well beyond the divisions of those times, which often had more to do with place of residence than with any divergence of beliefs about some political issue. They are essentially religious, and thus cannot be argued, much less resolved. One element, the Left’s all-consuming hatred of President Donald Trump, makes this too clear to dismiss.

     There is only one direction in which matters can progress. I’ll leave the elucidation to Mike Hendrix:

     I’m sick and damned tired of trying to explain myself to people who aren’t listening; trying to debate rationally with hysterical nitwits who aren’t rational; trying to be civil with obnoxiously self-righteous twits who don’t even know what the word means; and pretending to be “friends” with nutcakes who explicitly, loudly hate my guts and want me and mine dead, dead, dead.

     I could quite easily live next door to just about anybody at all, without hassle or angst, as long as they’re willing to leave my ass the fuck alone. That is the one and only requirement I have, and it is NOT negotiable. I don’t think that this one tiny little ask—mind your own business, and keep your nose out of mine—is over the top, not at all. Certainly, it is noway nohow, seeing as how I make it standard practice to see that it goes both ways. Clearly, the Outraged Left does not agree.

     Well fine then, fuck it. Let’s everybody stop pretending that what’s staring us in the face isn’t really there at all, and just get on down to business.

     But do have a nice day.

Aug 07 2021

Free Fiction

     For today only, my latest novel In Vino:

     …is a free download at Amazon.

     Pope Clement XV, the first American to be raised to the papacy, is under attack from within the Vatican. Powerful cardinals, averse to his efforts to reform the Catholic clergy, are trying to force him to resign his office. To undermine him, they spread rumors of his involvement in financial and sexual improprieties. To retain the papacy he must discover their identities and defeat the rumors…but how?

     The foremost technology firm of the day, Todd Iverson’s Arcologics, is about to introduce an artificial, completely automated womb. The device is capable of protecting and nurturing a child from zygote state all the way to birth. It would make the destruction of unborn children utterly unnecessary…but there are forces determined to see that it never reaches the light of day.

     Fountain, a young futanari with unprecedented powers over food, is exploring wine: what it is, what it can do, and what it can be persuaded to do. Pope Clement has asked her if she can concoct a wine that elicits utter, perfectly candid truth from those who consume it. Her explorations lead her into realms never before penetrated by even the greatest of vintners…and a moral thicket that tests her understanding of right, wrong, and God’s will to its limits.

     Get it while it’s free!

Aug 07 2021

Timid, feckless, useless, peckerwood Republicans.

He [Christopher Roach in The Salazar Option ] only wants to tell us that the revolutionary Left is relentless and ruthless, today just as much as a hundred years ago, and won’t be defeated by gentlemanly forbearance and appeasement—which has basically been the posture of the Republican Party in recent decades. As he comments:

Thus, Trump did not clean house of his enemies in the government, nor have he and other Republicans done much—other than kvetch—at the hostile political interference of Big Finance and Big Tech.

Aug 06 2021

Fighting FB Disinfo

At every post that mentions the vaques, FB intrudes the tag shown in the picture below. While it is impossible to reply to the intruders, a rebuttal has been permitted and it gets copied and repeated. So there are ways to fight back, at least until FB decides to penalize every account that repeats it. It may come to that when the fascist hierarchy insists they crack down. But for now, it’s better than saying nothing at all. Cheers.

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