Mar 21 2022

The Mrs. Jellyby syndrome.

Here’s a good description of our Iraq misadventure:

America has made plenty of blunders as a global superpower, but the Iraq War was the worst. It was entirely optional, easily avoidable, strategically worthless, hideously wasteful, and far too often, morally compromising.

As bad as a mistake as Iraq was, in the moment it can be understood. The 9/11 attacks were a profound shock to the national psyche, and for years the nation remained paranoid that deadly enemies were everywhere and 9/11 would just be the prelude to future, much deadlier attacks. Not only that, but the national security state had not spent 20 years lying about Afghanistan then, and had not declared war on American conservatives as a class, so the need to distrust them was not quite as obvious.[1]

Our rage has dissipated since 2001 but the receding tide of rage did not expose anything noble or rational. A global American crusade of stupidity and viciousness gradually appeared but you have to be blind not to see the futility of it. Vicious Talibs abusing Afghan women were proof of a barbarism seemingly endemic in the Muslim world. Against which Bunny is but are such these things that ANYone can change and is it a unique US obligation to oppose and vanquish loathsome behavior wherever it can be found?

Our own nation has been subverted and cheapened on an immense scale and yet one hears nothing from the political elites making the case that there needs to be any balancing of priorities. It’s just assumed that foreigners come first under any and all circumstances. (And home-grown and imported minorities here at home too but that’s for later discussions.)

The clue that our World Crusade is off is in the question “what’s the missing part in all of this?” In slaying dragons in the Hindu Kush and Mesopotamia what were we NOT doing? Well, the political class was NOT fulfilling its responsibility to take care of our own people first. Oh, that! What a novel idea.

If you’ve ever known someone who is endlessly fixated on the needs of others you know that that is unhealthy behavior. As a commenter on some ZeroHedge article today observed, “we” are unwilling to spend $3B to pay for the completion of the wall on the southern border but sending something like $13B to Ukraine, so help me, to help them fight another war a long way away that doesn’t concern us is all in one morning’s work for the sell-out crowd.

You can see the problem. We have tens of thousands of U.S. troops in foreign climes dealing with primitives and their murky or unknowable ambitions, obsessions, and resentments BUT not a bleeping troop one on the U.S. border. It makes one weep or want to chew nails in absolute frustration, the betrayal shining like a bright star when you forget the foreigner. Compared to the endless sophistries and chest thumping about some distant Dogpatch the agenda of the diseased American political class and its yet-more-diseased billionaire controllers is abundantly clear. Not us.

Notes
[1] “The America First Movement has a Sean Hannity Problem.” By Darren J. Beattie, Revolver, 3/20/22.

Mar 21 2022

Prep for This Year’s Elections

The FIRST task:

Let your party know, in clear and unmistakable terms, that NO Representative will be returned who voted to impeach Trump for Jan. 6th events.

NONE.

Specifically, wave a check in front of them, and inform them that you will NOT be handing it over, should they nominate one of those Quislings. Further, that you will ACTIVELY vote for ANY opponent, EVEN if it means that a Democrat is elected.

PERIOD.

Mar 20 2022

The Numbing

     I wrote not long ago about the fraying of the norms that bind Americans together as a coherent society. That process is been going on for long time now, and has almost reached the level necessary for complete social collapse. However, while the fraying of our norms is necessary for collapse, it is not sufficient to bring it about. Another process, operating in parallel to the fraying, is joined to it in the effort to destabilize us. Together they just might do the trick.

***

     A significant array of considerations, influences, and forces act upon the typical American’s consciousness each day. Some of these are matters of necessity. Others arise from our routines; Those in a third group have little or nothing to do with our conscious choices. In aggregate, they induce individuals to perform mental context switching — i.e., leaving one chore temporarily behind to attend to another one – more frequently and therefore faster than ever before in the history of civilization.

     Trust an old system software engineer to know about context switching and its hazards. It’s the blessing and the curse of contemporary operating system design. Computers today must handle more needs faster than any previous generation. Nor is the trend likely to be reversed any time soon. In consequence, multitasking architectures are now ubiquitous even in the designs of the smallest microprocessor-based systems. But that has elevated consideration of the problems that arise from a multitasking design. One of those is called thrashing.

     A system afflicted with thrashing is switching contexts so frequently that it’s unable to attend adequately to “real work.” Needless to say, this is an undesirable condition. It usually occurs in “underpowered” systems: i.e., those that lack adequately fast processors or sufficient memory. However, any system, regardless of the speed of its CPU and the copiousness of its memory, can suffer thrashing if external conditions become perverse. For example, a sufficient frequency of device interrupts will do it. Whatever the cause, the effect is massively undesirable.

     However, computer systems have an advantage over the human brain: no matter how severely they thrash, they don’t get numb. Subject a human to a sufficiently sustained, sufficiently rapid series of interruptions, each of which demands that he switch his attention from this to that, and he’ll shut down…blank out…cease to perform any task that requires attention coupled with rationality. This is what I mean by the numbing.

***

     In many ways, contemporary technology is a great boon. I’m sure I need not detail the reasons for the Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch. Yet it also makes possible the bombardment of our senses with a series of interruptions – demands that we “context switch” – that can rise high enough to overwhelm us. Some, under such a barrage, cease to function at all. These may wind up in places where others will attend to their necessities for them. The rest of us aren’t so lucky.

     Remember this classic soliloquy from one of the great movies of the Seventies?

     I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV’s while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

     We know things are bad – worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.’

     That closing plaint represents the numbing: the shutting-down of our interest in and attention to all inputs, however loudly they may shriek for our concern. It’s not the only possible response, of course:

     Well, I’m not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot – I don’t want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad. You’ve got to say, ‘I’m a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!’

     So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’ I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell – ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!… You’ve got to say, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Then we’ll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: “I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”

     That’s the alternative response to being overburdened and over-interrupted. And yes, some people will choose to lash out, whether with words or with deeds. But in the main, the numbing is what we should expect. It’s easier, requires fewer calories, and doesn’t draw complaints from the neighbors. More critically yet, it leaves the destroyers of our norms unfettered, free to continue their destruction.

***

     So, Mr. Citizen! Your kids’ teachers are urging them to change sex, or experiment with sodomy, or call you a racist. Your neighborhood is going to Hell from rising crime and unfilled potholes. The prices of the necessities are rising but your income isn’t. Your income taxes make you feel like a mugging victim. Your property taxes are slowly forcing you out of your home. You can’t get away for even a weekend, out of fear that you’re return to find that your job has been eliminated. Your wife wants to know why you come home from work too tired for anything but sitting before the Idiot Box and eventually falling asleep.

     Work used to stop when you left the workplace. Not anymore! Through the miracle of the Internet, today it can follow you home, and it does. Don’t shut off your smartphone; your boss could need you at any moment, and he won’t hesitate to call, regardless of the hour. He’ll take it badly if you fail to answer.

     On the news the commentators are talking about mandatory bank account monitoring, and Internet censorship, and injections against some virus or other, and the elimination of cash, and the rationing of fuels and electrical power. It’s bizarre! Did we just declare war on someone and you didn’t notice? Perhaps so. At least, a number of talking heads are nattering about some dustup in Eastern Europe, our “duties” as world policemen, the need to sacrifice for “the common good,” and the possible reactivation of the draft…this time, for both sexes.

     But you don’t have to watch the news. There are fifteen hundred channels of entertainment waiting for you. None of them are particularly entertaining, but at least they don’t demand anything of you. So what if you know that homosexual couples and interracial couples aren’t nearly that common in real life? So what if you’ve never met a black or female tech whiz of the sort all the crime and espionage dramas present? You’re not watching this stuff for its conformance with reality. You’re just not good for anything more demanding, so you “veg out” with the Box for a background light and noise show. That way they can program your brain with their preferred Weltanschauung when you’re too tired to resist it.

     If The Numbing hasn’t got you yet, it will soon.

***

     There’s no Last Graf. I have no solution, other than withdrawal to a laager insulated against the tide, in which you can defend your convictions and your rights against the tumult beyond. And yes, a significant number of Americans are constructing and moving to such redoubts. But it’s not a solution everyone can use.

     Forgive me, Gentle Reader. All I’ve ever wanted for the closing years of my life was to sit under my own vine and fig tree, where none shall make me afraid. But our nation is crumbling as we watch. All the certainties of our youth are turning to ashes as we speak. Afraid is getting to be all I’ve got.

     “Hey, I know a place. Let’s go.” – Russell Baker

Mar 20 2022

I Try Not To Use Certain Words

     Indeed, I try really hard. But sometimes, I can’t resist.

     Today’s word is inevitable:

     Analysis of the Russian attack on Ukraine has rightly focused on the strategic, military and humanitarian considerations of the conflict itself. Soon, however, domestic implications will begin to impinge on the geo-political. Maintaining public support will be critical as President Biden and other democratic leaders around the world ask their citizens to sacrifice for the cause of countering Russia’s war.

     The pressing nature of this challenge is made obvious by the ban on Russian energy imports that Biden announced on March 8. Cutting off the revenue that Russian oil and gas sales generate for the Kremlin is of clear strategic importance, but most analysts agree that it will raise gasoline and other energy prices for American consumers. Such hikes will come on top of the existing inflation problem with which the Biden administration has struggled for months.

     So far, just the sort of pro-war obfuscation expected from the types who want us to look anywhere but at our own troubles. But here’s the Sunday punch:

     Most mainstream economists today oppose price controls, although in recent months a sometimes-intense debate has emerged over the issue. Critics point to the pitfalls of the policy, such as the way that they can exacerbate shortages by preventing price signals (i.e., price increases) from inducing producers to increase supply. There is also the problem that controls cannot by themselves fix underlying structural causes of inflation.

     Defenders of the approach note that a nuanced regime of “administered prices” has worked in the European Union, and that China relied on a system of price management during the early stages of its rapid economic development in the 1980s and 1990s. They also argue that controls can prevent corporate profiteering.

     Whatever the drawbacks of price controls, however, the issue is no longer one of economic policy alone. It is now a strategic problem too, as the Biden administration’s other options for cushioning the impact of the Russian energy ban have their own downsides.

     PRICE CONTROLS! Great God in heaven, are the people who write this bilge stupid, evil, or both? The history of price controls is entirely black. They create shortages of the very things the controls supposedly make “affordable!”

     Yet it was inevitable that the Usurpers would seek to impose price controls. Price controls are actually people controls. They say to the producer and the vendor, “We the Rulers will decide what your goods and your labor are worth” — while those same Rulers go on merrily inflating the currency, rendering it worthless, and arrogating huge chunks of the price-controlled items to themselves. “The needs of the State come first,” don’t y’know. There’s no more effective method for reducing a society to poverty, black-market dependency, and dog-eat-dog savagery.

     The suggestion of price controls is always accompanied by insinuations that producers are “profiteering.” People must be provided with a villain to blame other than the regime. It’s worked in the past; it would probably work today.

     Did Nixon’s price controls on gasoline increase the supply of gasoline? If you’re not old enough to know about that episode, allow me to provide the answer for you: NO!

     One of the reasons FDR seized all privately held gold was to allow him to conceal what he intended to do to the dollar. Today the dollar’s purchasing power is down to about 4% of what it commanded in 1913. Think about it.

     It’s time to hunker down:
     Fill your pantry and freezer to bursting.
     Advance anticipated purchases of clothing.
     Keep your oil, gasoline, and propane tanks full.
     Buy gold and silver, and tell no one that you have it.

     Beware, Gentle Reader. This won’t be the last time you hear about price controls as a “remedy” for what the Usurpers’ radically inflationary policies are doing to us.

Mar 19 2022

The Wide World Of Pranks

     We’ve all heard about them. Some of us have perpetrated them. The easier and more common ones – filling someone’s bedroom with Styrofoam® peanuts, or turning every item in his room upside-down – have lost their humor value through overuse and are merely irritating. But there are still a few that can tickle one…as long as you’re not on the receiving end.

***

     When I was in college, one weekend some contemporaries of mine who were at “loose ends” decided to exercise their dubious sense for vengeance upon an officious Resident Assistant. As it happens, that fellow had left campus for the weekend. He’d made the mistake of taking the train and leaving his Volkswagen behind. So his “friends” took the opportunity to break into it – it was easy with a mid-Sixties Beetle – hotwire it, and re-park it in the lobby of his dormitory. They then proceeded to call Campus Security and have a parking ticket put on it.

     They thought themselves clever, but they were unaware that some CalTech students had already one-upped them. Those gentlemen emptied their target’s dorm room of everything movable, disassembled his Beetle, and reassembled it in the target’s dorm room – with a parking ticket affixed. Surely this is an adequate demonstration of why undergraduates need to be kept busy.

***

     An old friend of mine told me about a corker from Buffalo, New York, whence came Grover Cleveland and spicy chicken wings. Two bored young men, resolved upon doing something memorable, marched into the city and picked out a barber shop. Back then, the tradition of the helically striped barber pole was still alive and widely practiced. Our heroes negotiated to purchase that barber’s pole, asked for and received a written bill of sale, and told the proprietor that “We’ll come back later to pick it up.”

     And come back for it they did…at 2:00 AM. They were toting the pole down the street when a cop saw and stopped them. He arrested them on suspicion of theft and hauled them into the precinct HQ, at which point they showed the bill of sale to the watch commander. The WC let them go.

     Within fifteen minutes of their release, another cop had stopped and arrested them and brought them to the precinct HQ, where the same scene was played out a second time. This time, the watch commander put out an APB to all on-duty police that “If you see a couple of kids toting a barber pole, leave ‘em be. They’ve got a bill of sale.”

     By dawn there were no barber poles left in the City of Buffalo.

***

     While we’re on the subject of chicken…we are, aren’t we?

     The rise of wireless digital communications has made pranks possible that were impossible only a little while earlier. One that never fails to tickle me involves a pair of neighbors at odds over what constitutes endurable noise. The noisier family is unwilling to acknowledge the grievance of the quieter household. So the young son of the quieter family went looking for a way to take vengeance. He found it in the unsecured wireless printer of the noisemakers.

     Whenever the noisy folks get cranked up – music, television, a family fight, what have you – our hero sends a document to their wireless printer. 

     The noisy family is apparently on the clueless side. To this date, they have no idea why this is happening.

***

     System Administrators must be sobersided types. The power inherent in SysAdmin privileges can be used for many things…some of them quite funny, at least in the aftermath.

     At one place I worked, the SysAdmin was seriously underappreciated. He was seldom treated with the degree of respect appropriate to one who bears System Administration powers. Also, he was perhaps not quite as serious an individual as a SysAdmin should be. After one particular engineer had treated him especially badly, he decided to strike back.

     First he inserted into his target’s logoff procedure a simple script that would display a GIF guaranteed to freeze the blood: one that made it appear as though a script were formatting his hard disk. After a brief time interval on display, the GIF would disappear and the user would be logged off. Thus it would appear that all the user’s personal files had been irretrievably wiped.

     Second, he incorporated in his target’s logon procedure a keyboard diverter that captured all the user’s keystrokes. In response to anything but the ls command (this was a LINUX-based shop), the diverter would respond with ?Unrecognized? and the prompt. In response to the ls command, it would respond with a carriage return and nothing else. This, of course, caused the unhappy engineer to panic and run to the SysAdmin shrieking of disaster.

     The SysAdmin listened briefly to the panicky engineer, held up a hand, and said “Let me try it.” He logged into the engineer’s machine remotely, quickly and silently executed a command that undid his previous hackings, and demonstrated that everything was as it should be. That sent the engineer back to his desk bewildered and shaking his head. When the door had closed behind him, the SysAdmin had hysterics.

     Be good to your SysAdmin, so he’ll be good to you.

***

     Got any of your own to tell us about, Gentle Reader?

Mar 19 2022

The Neglected Patriarch

     Today is the feast day of a remarkable saint, the stepfather and protector of the most important Child ever to be born: Joseph of Nazareth. Yet few give him much thought, as virtually nothing about his life is included in the New Testament. For a modest taste, one must turn to a “non-canonical” document: the Protoevangelium of Saint James.

     The Protoevangelium tells a beautiful tale. It speaks of how Joseph, “an old man with sons,” grudgingly accepted the guardianship of the virgin Mary from the priests who had raised and educated her, of his subsequent discovery that she was with child, and of the tests the priests applied, to him and to her, to test his claim that he had never had coitus with her – indeed, that she was virgo intacta, and thus that hers was a miraculous conception. Yet because it is believed to have been composed in the Second Century, it is regarded by many as apocryphal. At any rate, the Church has deemed it insufficiently well confirmed to be included in the Biblical canon.

     The lives of the Holy Family, as recorded in the Gospels, make little mention of Joseph. Yet Mary’s pregnancy posed him a hazard no less than it did her. The authorities of the time, had they not been convinced that he was blameless and that she was still a virgin, could and would have put the two of them to death for adultery, as the Mosaic Law commands.

     Joseph supported and protected Mary and Jesus for many years, until that “good and faithful servant” was received into eternity. Yet the Gospels record nothing about him past Jesus’ childhood. He was a “silent witness” to the maturation of the Savior: present, toiling and nurturing, but unspeaking.

     This quiet man, faithful steward of an unsought responsibility, exemplifies all the virtues of the responsible husband and father – for a virgin less than half his age, and a Child not of his flesh, whose very existence put Joseph in peril of his life. Today he is deemed the patron saint of fathers, families, married couples, children, pregnant women, workers, craftsmen, against doubt, the dying, and a happy and holy death. He is a model that deserves to be honored and emulated…but seldom is.

     Saint Joseph has two feast days: March 19, in commemoration of his protection and support of Mary and the child Jesus; and May 1, dedicated to Saint Joseph the Workman, the model for all men who labor. Indeed, the Church dedicates the entire month of March to the honor of this saint. Yet of the Holy Family, his are the labors and the virtues least remembered and appreciated.

     Saint Joseph, laborer, reluctant spouse and steadfast protector of Mary the Mother of God, stepfather to Jesus Christ Our Lord, pray for me.

Mar 18 2022

Theorizing Unbounded

     First, a few quotations – hey, quotations are my thing, you know:

     “The Shing law forbids killing, but they killed knowledge, they burned books, and what may be worse, they falsified what was left. They slipped in the Lie, as always. We aren’t sure of anything concerning the Age of the League; how many of the documents are forged? You must remember, you see, wherein the Shing are our enemy. It’s easy enough to live one’s whole life without ever seeing one of them — knowingly….There is no trust in them, because there is no truth in them….It was the Lie that defeated all the races of the League and left us subject to the Shing. Remember that, Falk. Never believe the truth of anything the Enemy has said.” [Ursula K. LeGuin, City of Illusions]

     “A thousand truths do not mark a man as a truth-teller, but a single lie marks him as a damned liar….Lying to other people is your business, but I tell you this: once a man gets a reputation as a liar, he might as well be struck dumb, for people do not listen to the wind.” [Robert A. Heinlein, Citizen of the Galaxy]

     “You spoke of trust. If there is no truth, there can be no trust.” [Jack Vance, Araminta Station]

     How odd a thing it is, that the most striking statements I can recall about the imperative of truth should come from great writers of fiction! Yet it is so. Oh, wait: here’s another one, this time from a non-writer:

     “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it – no matter if I have said it! – except it agree with your own reason and your own common sense.” – Buddha

     That should suffice for authoritative references.

***

     The years just behind us have given Americans reason to doubt any and every claim, almost without regard for its source. A handful of sources retain some shred of credibility, yet even they are subject to demands for verification and confirmation. One thing has become clear: we cannot trust our political class. Nothing a politician says can be taken at face value. Even the best of them are subject to suspicion and scrutiny – and that is exactly as it should be.

     However, the foulest offense against truth – the capital offense, if I may – is to the account of the “news media,” which are no longer any such thing. Their partisanry stands revealed. The tawdriness of their motives is irrefutable. Yet they strut as shamelessly as ever. Trust us, they say. Ignore the so-called “alternative” media and the “citizen journalists.” We’ve got the real news.

     A few Americans, incredibly, still buy it. I hope you don’t, Gentle Reader. There is no truth in them. There is only an all-eclipsing agenda. They demonstrate it every day.

***

     Today, the media offense at the center of engaged Americans’ attention concerns the Hunter Biden laptop:

     …Last year, prosecutors interviewed Mr. Archer and subpoenaed him for documents and grand jury testimony, the people said. Mr. Archer, who was sentenced last month in an unrelated securities fraud case in which a decision to set aside his conviction was reversed, had served with Mr. Biden on Burisma’s board, starting in 2014.
     People familiar with the investigation said prosecutors had examined emails between Mr. Biden, Mr. Archer and others about Burisma and other foreign business activity. Those emails were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.
     In some of the emails, Mr. Biden displayed a familiarity with FARA, and a desire to avoid triggering it.

     When the New York Post broke the laptop story, the rest of the “major media,” with the Times leading the charge, pissed on it and the Post from a great height. In tandem, Facebook, Twitter, and other “social media” platforms censored any reference to the Post’s article. And of course we had these tidbits:

     The Post, of course, is gleeful in vindication:

     Forgive the profanity, but you have got to be s–tting us.

     First, the New York Times decides more than a year later that Hunter Biden’s business woes are worthy of a story. Then, deep in the piece, in passing, it notes that Hunter’s laptop is legitimate.

     “People familiar with the investigation said prosecutors had examined emails between Mr. Biden, Mr. Archer and others about Burisma and other foreign business activity,” the Times writes. “Those emails were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.”

     Authenticated!!! You don’t say. You mean, when a newspaper actually does reporting on a topic and doesn’t just try to whitewash coverage for Joe Biden, it discovers it’s actually true?

     Any honest organ of journalism would be pleased to be so definitively vindicated. The pity of the thing is that the damage done is likely to be irremediable. And I’m not speaking solely of the damage to our nation by a usurped federal government.

***

     There are consequences to the destruction of trust. Miriam of Chicks on the Right mentions some of them today:

     Daisy sent this to me this morning.

     I offered to address it because she was afraid she’d be too mean. 🙂 I’m not promising I won’t be, because you guys, this is freaking batsh*t….

     I’m convinced that all of the Big Tech censorship that’s happened over the past year has actually made people MORE susceptible to conspiracy theories, radicalization, and ideas like those espoused by the woman in the above video. I’m not sure how many more times folks who believe in all of this stuff need to be let down by their own deadlines, their own theories not coming to fruition, before they realize they’re being played.

     Now, whatever the truth of the matter – and it may be quite a long time before we have it, if we ever do – the proliferation of wild theories is a direct consequence of the loss of trust in the major media. The dynamic is fairly straightforward:

  • The organs of information have proved themselves un-trustworthy, and the fora for discussion arbitrarily silence persons who deviate from the “official truth.”
  • Thereafter, conversation will admit any and every thesis that might explain why we’re being force-fed a steady diet of lies.
  • Since there are innumerable possible explanations for such a thing, they will multiply and proliferate without limit.
  • The “zero plausibility threshold” was set by the major media, which have demonstrated indifference to the truth.

     Perhaps this would be beyond the comprehension of a small child. However, I’d expect a teenager to get it without a beat. Look at how much crap the “authorities” in their lives feed them.

     It’s bad. Expect it to get worse. What the ultimate consequences will be, I cannot say.

***

     It’s not just the profusion of new, barely comprehensible conspiracy theories that should concern us. The loss of trust in our informational institutions has begun to atomize our society. The groups in which individual Americans invest themselves grow steadily smaller. The extent to which we’re willing to burden ourselves for others’ benefit is dwindling. And of course, we grow ever more cautious about what we say that we allow others to hear, and what we do that we allow others to know.

     I’ve written before about the importance of “identity management:” the practice of deciding whom you can allow to know what about yourself. Outside our homes, we’re letting less of ourselves be known. The dangers from allowing others to know much about you have risen higher than the interpersonal and social advantages from disclosure. No one can be certain what would follow the admission of some unpopular belief or position.

     Our trust in the organs that disseminate information of all sorts cannot fall much further before our suspicions isolate us all. For my part, I don’t like the idea of having to arm myself before I answer the door. I’ll do it if I must, but I’ll hate it – and I’d bet that you’d hate it too.

     See also this old piece about trust. And have a nice day.

Mar 17 2022

The Gods Of The Not Quite Copybook Headings

     You know the old Kipling poem, don’t you? You should, really. Like many of his poems, it speaks of something beyond our preferences: laws that no amount of human effort or ingenuity can repeal. That there are such laws is a reflection of what Clarence Carson called “the moral order of the universe.” That order is as relentless and unsparing as the most malevolent gods of ancient history.

     But the moral order is not the only order in the universe. There are others that derive from it, and are equally unmodifiable. One such is this:

Men’s desires are their own.
You cannot make a man not want what he does want,
Nor can you make him want what he does not want.

     This is demonstrated daily, in every corner of the globe. Yet there are persons determined to ignore or gainsay it. Some are so determined that they’ll knowingly act against their own interests to do so…and will reap ruin thereby.

     This lesson is nowhere more imperative today than in relations between the sexes.

***

     The plaints – “Where are all the masculine men?” “Where are all the feminine women?” – are louder today than they’ve ever been before. We’ve spoken of marriage being endangered for many years already. Today even non-marital romantic partnerships are in trouble. A great part of the phenomenon stems from that bizarre determination to “rewrite the laws:” specifically, the laws of attraction and bonding.

     Ralph Waldo Emerson has already told us once:

     The ingenuity of man has been dedicated to the solution of one problem – how to detach the sensual sweet, the sensual strong, the sensual bright, etc., from the moral sweet, the moral deep, the moral fair; that is, again, to contrive to cut clean off this upper surface so thin as to leave it bottomless; to get a one end, without an other end.…

     Steadily is this dividing and detaching counteracted. Up to this day it must be owned no projector has had the smallest success. The parted water reunites behind our hand. Pleasure is taken out of pleasant things, profit out of profitable things, power out of strong things, the moment we seek to separate them from the whole. We can no more halve things and get the sensual good, by itself, than we can get an inside that shall have no outside, or a light without a shadow.

     Emerson’s terminology is oriented towards matters of right and wrong. Yet his observation applies equally to morally and ethically neutral dealings between individuals. Its baldest demonstrations are in the marketplace: You must pay for what you want. The man who seeks to get without paying is called a thief. When thieves are so numerous and so clever that they cannot be thwarted, the goods they hope to steal vanish from the shelves.

     You must pay for what you want. It’s as inexorable as gravity…and it’s equally applicable to relations between the sexes.

***

     Not long ago I was charmed by this essay by Stephanie Edelman:

     You’ll see her perched at a banquette at the bar after work: the millennial college grad nursing that outdated American dream of marriage, kids, and the house with the lawn and the white picket fence… She’s nursing a stiff drink, too, because husband-hunting is hard work these days, not to mention frowned upon in college-educated career-girl circles. She toys with a stray curl and sucks listlessly at (how fitting) an Old Fashioned, or a gin martini (but only one) if she’s out with an older man and wants to seem sophisticated.

     She may go full-blown retro and have her hair done in pin curls, or it may be modern, but her lips are likely stained a crimson shade—Bésame’s Red Velvet 1946 as seen in ABC’s “Agent Carter” is a good bet these days. She’s dressed in something fetching and feminine that she got from Etsy, eBay, or one of the dozens of “vintage inspired” or reproduction clothing companies that have gained popularity in the last decade (PinUp Girl, Tatyana Boutique, Stop Staring, Collectif, Trashy Diva, Bettie Page Clothing, Queen of Heartz, Heart of Haute, Voodoo Vixen, ReVamp Vintage…the list goes on.)

     Of course she’s seen “Mad Men,” but she will tell you she’s been dressing this way since before January Jones ever graced our television screens in all her manicured and wave-set domestic beauty—that it comes naturally to her, along with her maternal instincts, her culinary prowess, and her 36”-25”-37” measurements (well, those may require a little assistance from an old-school waist cincher, corset, or longline bra.)

     However she came by it, our girl’s mid-century aesthetic—not to mention her domestic aspirations—is giving Third-Wave feminists fits.

     There’s a refreshing quality about that piece. These women – the ones who have embraced “retro-sexism” — are acting on a dual insight: first, into what they really want; second, into what the sort of man they hope to attract would want from them. No one is “objectifying” them. No one is “keeping them in their place.” They are consciously acting on their insights in pursuit of what they want – and militant feminists are up in arms over it.

     You see, the militant feminist’s cry is that “You mustn’t want that!” Concerning which, please recur to the large-font proclamation near the start of this tirade. But the inviolability of a natural law has never daunted a dogmatic feminist.

***

     Dogmatists and ideologues put their hopes in the strangest of imagined allies:

     You may have noticed that everyone seems to be dressing like a lesbian these days, and by everyone, I mean even — and perhaps especially — straight-identifying or otherwise hetero-presenting women.

     From the baggy, loose-fitting silhouettes that have replaced the skinny jeans of yore to the practical footwear that has taken over since women (reportedly) ditched their heels in the pandemic, the most popular mainstream women’s fashion trends of the day all reflect a certain sapphic influence. And androgynous style isn’t just for ordinary women reluctant to return to their pre-pandemic uniform of skin-tight pants and sky-high heels; from queer icons like Kristen Stewart to supermodels like Gigi Hadid, androgynous fashion has taken over Hollywood as well. Traditionally straight-presenting A-listers like Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid — icons of conventional female attractiveness as dictated by the male gaze — have been photographed rocking the lesbian-chic aesthetic, sporting power suits, designer loafers and oversize everything.

     Read the rest for yourself, if you can stomach it. Then tell me if you detect a certain gleeful applause for “the pandemic” for nudging women’s sartorial choices in the “sapphic” direction.

     I have no doubt that women find loose-fitting clothing and flat-heeled shoes more comfortable – and in many contexts, more practical – than body-conformant garments and high heels. However, there is no concealing the intention, or the lack thereof, behind such choices. It’s diametrically opposed to the “retro-sexist” choices of the women in Stephanie Edelman’s piece. Men find women garbed in oversize clothes and flat-heeled shoes much less attractive than women who dress to emphasize their figures, however subtly. Any woman who has attained her majority will know it.

     Women, quite as much as men, must be assumed to intend the foreseeable consequences of their decisions and actions.

***

     In relations between the sexes much as in marketplace behavior, you must expect to pay for what you want. The woman who laments that “all the good men are taken” while styling herself in “lesbian chic” is trying to have it both ways. A masculine man, who can be relied upon for the many things women have always looked for in a mate, won’t feel a pull toward her if she dresses – or conducts – herself in a fashion that expresses indifference to what he wants and seeks.

     No, it’s not quite “Gods of the Copybook Headings” stuff. But it’s just as immutable, and just as deeply resented by entitlement-filled persons – of both sexes.

     Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

Mar 16 2022

Is This a New Thing?

I had need to consult with senate.gov about a committee membership. I noted that many of the Senate biographical information does NOT provide information on party membership, other than listing the members of sub-committees as Majority/Minority.

Is this something new? I seem to remember several years ago, it was common to find party affiliation.

Mar 16 2022

Synonym for Leftist

Clueless Elitist.

I saw this, and had to respond directly.

My answer:

Mar 16 2022

One Melody, One Rhythm, One Agenda

     It’s Ukraine all day, these days. You can hardly go to the corner store for milk without hearing some talking head blustering about Ukraine. Congress is feverishly debating how to help the Ukrainians resist the Russian invaders. Elected officials of both parties bloviate endlessly about Ukrainian sovereignty and the evil of Vladimir Putin. And of course Ukrainian flag images litter social media.

     So…Ukraine. What can we do? No: not about helping the valiant Ukrainian people to resist Vlad the Conqueror. What can we do to put a stop to the unceasing Ukraine-flogging around us? It’s threatening to give me a massive Ukraine migraine.

     Of course, the most significant aspect of this is what the drums aren’t pounding out: all the little bits of political sleight-of-hand going on as we speak, while our attention is on Ukraine. Keeping our attention on Ukraine – say, hasn’t it been the pinnacle of military wisdom for about five centuries to stay out of land wars in Asia? — allows the Usurper Regime a free hand to destroy what remains of our economy, our institutions, and our rights as individuals. And brother, they are busily at work at all three.

     As usual, the more telling the development, the less likely it is to get media attention. Consider this item from a couple of days ago:

     Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin will oppose President Joe Biden’s nomination of Sarah Bloom Raskin to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, ending a standoff over the Obama Treasury Department official’s status.

     Bloom Raskin, the wife of Democratic Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, is an advocate for using the Federal Reserve to promote green energy policy, which would mark a dramatic departure from the central banking system’s dual mandate of maintaining maximum employment and keeping inflation in check. The Biden administration promoted Bloom Raskin’s nomination as contributing to “bring long overdue diversity” at the Federal Reserve. She has also served as a Duke University law professor and on the board of a major financial services provider. [Emphasis added by FWP.]

     Why on earth would a supposed financial expert make “green energy policy” the center of her agenda for the Federal Reserve Board? It makes no sense whatsoever…but there it is. As of this morning, Raskin has withdrawn her candidacy, but the significance of her nomination remains huge…and essentially undiscussed.

     There have been other straws in the wind: The Atlantic mumbling about what effect a “small” nuclear war would have on “climate change;” our armed forces’ insane emphasis on “diversity” and “gender identity” while they continue to persecute soldiers who refuse The Jab; the Usurper-in-Chief’s repeated insistence that high fuel prices are the doing of Vladimir Putin; Congress’s stealthy grab of a huge pay increase in the most recent appropriations bill; the sealing-off of the District of Columbia against private citizens; and so forth. In aggregate, what could they mean other than that our high officials don’t want us to know what they’re really doing?

     “Don’t look there; look over here!” is the prestidigitator’s meat and drink. It’s a tough trick to beat for several reasons. In politics, the press is supposed to provide a countermeasure. It hasn’t done so for quite a few years now. That might be the most frightening aspect of this whole sorry mess.

***

     A couple of Gentle Readers have noticed that my pieces here have been trending shorter. I’ve noticed, too. There’s just as much to rant and rave about as ever, but my ability to fulminate at length about any of it is declining. I’ve been having regular attacks of what’s the use? It’s a malady my Primary Care Provider can’t prescribe a pill for.

     It doesn’t help that I’ve barely been able to sleep lately. But that might yet pass.

     If you haven’t yet started stockpiling against an economic crash, you’d better get to it. If you haven’t yet armed yourself adequately to defend your property, your loved ones, and yourself, the time is now. And if you haven’t yet acted to protect at least a part of your savings against the torrent of inflation the Usurpers have inflicted on us, all I can say is that I warned you. Opportunities to do any of those things under favorable terms are dwindling. Meanwhile, as the COVID hysteria fades, the Usurpers are sharpening their “emergency” and “national security” tools for the reimposition of de facto martial law, this time with the war in Ukraine as their rationale.

     Apologies, Gentle Reader. I never meant to be a Debbie Downer. Perhaps I’ll be in a better frame of mind tomorrow. Keep the faith.

Mar 16 2022

The circus freaks who run the U.S. government

In August 2020, the Washington Post published an opinion piece, “What Americans should learn from Belarus” as part of a flurry of articles setting the narrative that Trump was doomed to lose the election and that he would attempt to seize power by authoritarian means when he did. It directly drew parallels between the BLM protests and Belorussian protests and correctly identified them as the same phenomenon. Left unsaid was that neither movement was organic but in fact were manifestations of elite-sponsored terrorism against democratic norms of orderly political and civil processes.

A month later, investigative journalist Darren Beattie published an investigation warning that the same constellation of NGOs and Washington apparatchiks that coordinated color revolutions abroad were actively plotting one right here at home. Election Night came and it happened: The infamous halt of the vote count; the coordinated declaration by the media that Biden had been elected president before the vote count was complete. Then . . . .

* * * *

The successful overthrow of the Trump presidency . . . .[1]

RTWT.

Notes
[1] “The Architects of Our Present Disaster. American foreign policy is buckling under its own contradictions. We no longer have the luxury of decadence.” By Benjamin Braddock, American Greatness, 3/14/22.

Mar 15 2022

For Services Rendered

     [A short story for you today. There are days when I languish in the Slough of Despond over my personal insignificance. I have no idea how widespread this malady is, though I suspect that many people suffer it from time to time. And in a sense, it’s a problem all of us humans share, for what do our personal accomplishments really matter? What man, be he titan or bum, will be remembered for eternity? Whose doings will amount to more than a brief ripple in the currents of time?

     But the perspective of eternity, though important, is not the one that matters to the evaluation of a human life. We will not be judged on how deeply our deeds reverberate through time. We are merely expected to do our best with what we have…as co-protagonist Allan does in the story below.

     This story is dedicated to Gerard Van der Leun…and, as always, to the greater glory of God. — FWP]

***

     Before she embarked on her trip to America, Amelie’s supervisor had told her that Americans are different. She’d been warned that she would encounter behavior a good distance from what any European would exhibit, that the strangeness would come from both men and women. She’d been advised to brace herself for anything, to cultivate an impersonal demeanor and a smile that would stay glued on her face regardless of what she might encounter.
     She’d tried very hard, practicing her English several hours per day, studying Americans’ modes of dress and their public conventions, familiarizing herself with their most popular celebrities and forms of entertainment, and generally steeling herself for eccentricities beyond her imagination. In her twenty-seven years she’d not previously exerted herself so single-mindedly, but it was only what L’eclat expected from its American representatives.
     On the morning of her first day as Albrecht’s L’eclat saleswoman, she donned the prescribed form-fitting black scoop-neck top and short pencil skirt, ornamented it with a single gold chain, added a pair of black patent leather high heels, and went to her post with a confidence and aplomb that her efforts had surely justified. Yet with the very first customer that approached her counter, her resolve failed her completely.
     He appeared ordinary: age perhaps forty, about 175 centimeters in height, brown eyes, brown hair just starting to thin, a pleasant, smooth-shaven face, and a slender build. His clothes revealed nothing of wealth or status, but that, too, she’d been told to expect. Americans of both sexes, it seemed, all wore loose-fitting sweatshirts and faded jeans whenever they weren’t going to a wedding or a formal ball.
     “Oui, Monsieur?” She smiled just as she’d practiced it. “How might L’eclat and I help you today?”
     He mirrored her smile, albeit with a hint of weariness.
     “I’m on a quest,” he said. “A gift for a woman about my age.” His voice was a pleasant baritone.
     She nodded. “A special gift for a special woman on a special occasion?”
     “Yes to all three,” he said. “Tomorrow is her birthday. She treats her husband with contempt, and I’m trying to seduce her away from him.”
     With that, Amelie’s smile, her breath, and all of her preparation for American strangeness fled from her.
     He looks normal enough. Why would he say such a thing to a complete stranger? And why would he want a married woman who abuses her husband? Is he trying to spare the husband out of friendship? Does he think he can reform her? Or is he…what do they call it?…a masochist?
     “Monsieur, I…don’t know if I can help you.”
     The customer smiled crookedly at her astonishment. “I imagine that wasn’t anything like what you expected to hear,” he said. “But you haven’t heard the punch line yet.”
     Punch line? He intends to punch her? No, wait: that’s an idiom. It means the last line of a joke.
     “What…what is the rest of the story?” she forced out.
     The customer’s smile was unchanged. “I’m her husband.”
     She began to laugh crazily, and found that she could not stop.

#

     Amelie returned to consciousness several minutes later. The mysterious customer was crouched over her, chafing her hands and stroking her forehead while murmuring entreaties. Two older store employees looked on with expressions that blended concern with embarrassment.
     As she opened her eyes, his smile returned with added warmth. He looked over his shoulder at the Albrecht personnel.
     “All is well, ladies,” he said. “This was my fault. I think it was my statement of needs that made your young colleague faint. But she appears to be with us again, so you can relax.”
     Both women looked somewhat dubious. Amelie forced herself to sit up, smile, and nod at them. They retreated with evident reluctance.
     “Are you all right?” he said. He hadn’t released her hands. “I didn’t mean to shock you.”
     “Yes…yes.” She shook her head briefly. “I was told that…to expect surprises, but—”
     He chuckled softly. “You’re European, aren’t you?”
     Amelie nodded again. “French.”
     “Americans can be a difficult lot,” he said. “Quirky. Given to spontaneous silliness. We act as if all the world’s a stage, and we’re all auditioning for better parts.”
     It brought a fresh smile to her face.
     He has an endearing manner.
     “Is that what you were doing?” she said. “Auditioning?”
     His own smile faded. “I’m afraid not. I meant what I said. My wife treats me with contempt. I don’t know why.”
     “Yet you still want to…to please her.”
     “It’s more than that, dear,” he said. “I want the woman I married back. But she doesn’t seem to want the man she married any longer. I was hoping that a really special gift might open her eyes, make her see me instead of whoever it is she despises.” He frowned. “Are you married?”
     “No, Monsieur.”
     “Do you think you might marry someday?”
     “Someday,” she said, “if God should smile upon me, I will marry.”
     “Well,” he said, “I pray you never have so sad a story to tell about your husband.”
     But not that he might tell one about me?
     “Monsieur—”
     “Please call me Allan.”
     “Allan, I don’t know if anything L’eclat sells has the power you require, but…” She wrestled with her timidity. “I would like to hear more. I will have an hour to myself starting at one. Would you care to stop by then? We could meet at the store cafe for lunch, or perhaps just have coffee.”
     Something subtle but unmistakable flowed into his expression. It lifted the corners of his eyes and mouth ever so slightly.
     “I would like that, too,” he said. “What’s your name?”
     “I am Amelie du Nord.”
     “I’m Allan Parterre.” He helped her to stand. “I’ll see you at one, Amelie.”
     He squeezed her hand gently and departed.
#

     “It developed over time,” Allan said. He cast a quick glance around him, apparently concerned that someone might be listening, but the cafe’s two other patrons were at the extreme opposite end of the seating area. “Our first couple of years were good ones, but after that she gradually lost interest in…well, everything. Our home. Our mutual friends. The things we once did together. These days, she doesn’t even speak to me, at least when she can avoid it.” He sipped at his coffee. “At this point we’re just two people who live under the same roof.”
     “Do you still sleep in the same bed?” Amelie said.
     He nodded. “Not that anything ever comes of it.”
     “How long has it been?”
     “About eight years now. We’ve been married for thirteen.”
     I can’t imagine it.
     “How do you cope?”
     His half-grin was replete with sadness and longing. “I try not to think about it.”
     Except today.
     “Allan,” she said, “is it possible that she might have someone else?”
     The spasm that crossed his features made it unnecessary for him to answer, but he did anyway. “That’s something else I try not to think about.” He looked down at the table.
     But if it’s so…
     She was seized by a realization. She laid a hand on his. It brought his eyes up to meet hers.
     “You have wondered,” she said in a measured cadence, “whether this is your fault. Whether her coldness is something you’ve earned. Isn’t that so?”
     His eyes widened. He nodded.
     “But you’ve tried to treat her as you always did before, as the woman you loved enough to marry, haven’t you?”
     “As best I can,” he murmured. “It’s hard.”
     She thought about it briefly, reached an unpleasant conclusion, and summoned her forces for the revelation.
     “Allan…” She paused to gather her forces. “I know something that you need to know,” she said. “It’s a secret among women, something we try not to let men learn, but I will tell you if you’ll promise never to let another woman know that you know it. Will you do that for me?”
     Intensity flowed into his expression. He gazed at her as if he were a biologist studying an entirely new species. Presently he nodded.
     “You have my word.”
     She looked briefly away.
     Though I know I must do this, it will cost me.
     “Your wife is a woman, yes?” He nodded. “Then she shares the traits that all women share, including this one. We are whores. Every one of us, wherever we may be, at every moment of our lives.”
     His mouth dropped open. “What do you mean?”
     “Have you ever patronized a whore, Allan? The admitted sort?”
     He shook his head.
     “A whore does what she does for payment,” she said. “And she will insist that she be paid before she provides her services. But imagine for a moment what would happen were you to pay, and then turn your back on her for a minute or two.”
     It took him only a moment. “She would slip away.”
     She nodded. “Of course. She would take your payment and leave without giving you what you had paid for. No whore wants to provide her service. The money is all that matters. If she can get that without having to…to…”
     He held up a hand. “I get it, Amelie. But how does that bear upon the frost between a husband and a wife?”
     “No matter what she has told you,” she said, “your wife did not marry you out of love, but because she wanted a husband, and you seemed suitable. Eight years ago she ceased to be a wife, while you have continued to be a husband. She is in the position of the whore who has contrived to slip away with the payment…in your case, a payment she continues to receive.” She spread her hands. “Why provide the service if she will be paid even if she withholds it?”
     He stared at her, unspeaking.
     “I know it’s hard to believe,” she said. “Women are supposed to be the romantics, the ones always reading and talking and thinking about love. Perhaps it was once so, but it hasn’t been that way for many years. Men are the romantics today. Men are the ones who think of love, who imagine it and strive for it and sometimes give their lives for it. My own mother told me so as part of my instruction. She told me that the only relationship I should ever have with a man is one of a whore with a paying client.”
     “And you believed her,” he whispered.
     “I didn’t take it on faith,” she said. “She told me not to. She told me to look at the world through unclouded eyes and decide for myself. So I did. I put my assumptions aside and looked, and I saw. And what I saw confirmed her words beyond any possibility of error.”
     She smirked at the recollection. “Mother was honest with me. She told me to look at her and my father as I would look at a pair of strangers, and I did. And I saw. For thirty years he has paid with loyalty, affection, and a comfortable home. She has provided him what he paid her to provide, but no more.”
     “And you,” he said.
     She nodded. “Yes, children too. Two of us. That was part of the bargain. But Allan, had she ever refused him the services he expected, he would have ceased to pay. He has told me so.”
     “Does he have a mistress?” he asked.
     She shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps. If he does, I would bet that she is married, too. We French are more realistic than you Americans. You give of your strength, your money, your concern, even your lives. You give without limit or condition, you ask nothing in return, and you expect to be loved for it. Why do you think the people you help consider you fools and hold you in contempt?”
     There was a long silence.
     Presently he said “Amelie, you may have healed me, and you may have ruined me. Right now I can’t decide. But either way, I am grateful…and if it’s all right with you, I would like to continue this conversation. Could we meet for lunch here tomorrow?” She nodded. “But before we part for the day, tell me, please: do you think of yourself as a whore?”
     She’d known the question would come. It had been part of her reluctance to speak at all. Still, she faced it with a gentle smile and all the stoicism she could muster.
     “I don’t think of myself at all, Allan. I decide what I want, look for it around me, and think about how I might get it.” She glanced at the wall clock and rose. “I must return to my station.”
     He nodded and looked away.
#

     Amelie presented herself at the cafe at one the next afternoon, as promised. Allan was already there. He saw her enter, smiled, stood, and beckoned her to his table. A waiter arrived as she seated herself, took their orders, and moved smoothly away.
     “Thank you for coming,” he said.
     “De rien,” she said, then put a hand to her lips. “Excuse me, please. I meant to say ‘think nothing of it.’”
     “But I do think something of it,” he said. “You could be spending your lunch hour in some other, more pleasant way. Perhaps with a friend or colleague. I’m just a sad sack of an American you deigned to help.”
     “What is ‘deigned?’” she said.
     “Oh. Forgive me.” He smiled. “It’s an old word for ‘agreed.’ No special connotations involved. At any rate, I’m happy to have your company.”
     She felt warmth blossom in her bosom.
     He is a charmer.
     Why would a woman mistreat a man such as this?
     Perhaps he is not what he seems?
     “I am happy to have yours, Allan,” she said. She produced what she hoped was an appropriately mysterious smile. “But I must admit I had hoped for some compensation.”
     It brought his eyebrows up. “All right, lunch is on me, but—”
     “Not that,” she said. “I sell L’eclat jewelry. I draw a commission for my sales. When you approached me yesterday, I was hoping to sell you some, but we never got to…that part of our relationship.”
     He laughed. “Right. We can fix that, but…after lunch, okay?”
     She nodded, and they proceeded to talk of other things.
#

     When Amelie was back at her jewelry counter with him standing before her, she clasped her hands at her middle and intoned in her best saleswoman’s voice, “Does Monsieur see anything he might like to bestow upon the object of his affections?”
     Allan chuckled. “A few pieces, but they’re not for me. Perhaps Mademoiselle would favor me with the use of her taste and judgment?”
     “Certainly, Monsieur. This one is only too pleased to be of assistance.” She cast her gaze along the rows of top-tier items. A lovely gold chain of Cuban links sat at the left end of the display. She unlocked the display, fished it out, and laid it fetchingly on a mat of black velvet for his inspection.
     “This is twenty-two carat gold, about forty grains. The design is simple yet elegant, made to be worn with any ensemble and on a wide variety of occasions. Does Monsieur think his intended will find it attractive?”
     He nodded. “I’m certain she will. However, I’d like to accessorize it in a fashion that would allow her to dress it up, or not, according to her fancy. Perhaps a removable pendant, and of course matching earrings. What would you suggest?”
     “Ah! Monsieur thinks flexibly. I believe I have just what he has imagined.” She turned, retrieved a one-carat water-white diamond pendant in a gold teardrop setting, added a pair of matching earrings from the display case behind her, and set them in the appropriate positions alongside the chain. “Does Monsieur think his intended would approve?”
     He smiled brightly. “I have no doubt of it. Consider it a sale.” He reached for his wallet. “What is the total, please?”
     She punched at her calculator. “For all of these together, ninety-five hundred dollars and no cents, before the set discount of fifteen percent. With it…” she punched again, “…eight thousand seventy-five dollars and no cents. Before the state sales tax, of course.”
     “Of course.” He pulled out his wallet and passed her a gold credit card. She ran it through her reader, nodded at the acceptance, and handed it back.
     “Your total is exactly eight thousand, four hundred thirty-eight dollars and thirty-eight cents, Monsieur. I assume you would like these gift-wrapped?”
     “Oh, no need for that at all.” He picked up the chain, slid the pendant onto it, and before she could react was standing behind her.
     “Monsieur, this is not—”
     “Hush, Mademoiselle. This will take only a moment.” He looped the chain around Amelie’s throat and clasped it. The diamond hung just above the start of her cleavage. He circled the counter once more and beamed at her in evident satisfaction.
     “I’m afraid I’m no good with earrings,” he said. “Would you please put them on for me?”
     Hardly daring to speak, she took the earrings from the velvet mat and applied them to her ears. He smiled and nodded.
     “Just as I thought. They suit my intended to perfection. Are you happy with them, Mademoiselle?”
     “Allan,” she breathed, “this is not—”
     “Please,” he said. “Just look in the mirror and tell me.”
     She did.
     It was adornment of a height to which she’d never aspired, far beyond her means. Yet it did suit her. The brilliance of the diamonds and the warm golden shine of the chain lent radiance to her features. They glorified her, made her seem a creature of stature and substance rather than a mere saleswoman at a department store jewelry counter.
     “Do you truly mean to do this?” she murmured.
     “I do,” he said. “You are a jewel in your own right, and you deserve jewels with which to announce it to the world. But it’s time for you to compensate me.”
     “What do you seek from me?” she whispered.
     “Only the answer to a single, simple question.”
     “What question?”
     His eyes bored into hers.
     “Do you really think yourself a whore, Amelie?”
     Her heart leaped in her chest. She gazed once more into the mirror.
     The woman whose image I see is pampered, cherished, exalted…and loved. A creature whose lover has raised her above the common earth. She need sell herself to no one. She is no one’s whore and never will be.
     She is Amelie du Nord. Me.
     “No,” she whispered.
     He smiled and nodded. “Neither does Monsieur. Remember it.”
     He pocketed his wallet, turned, and left the store.

==<O>==

Copyright © 2018 Francis W. Porretto. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

     “I shall pass this way but once; any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.” – Author unknown

Mar 15 2022

Fundamental atrophy.

While the war [in Ukraine] is of huge importance geopolitically, it would, however, be misleading to overstate its economic effects, given all the other enormous economic challenges already in place. For example, the Financial Times claims that the war has ‘shattered hopes of a strong global economic recovery from coronavirus’. But this implies that a strong recovery was already on the cards. There has long been a prevalent complacency that ignores the fundamental atrophy afflicting most advanced industrialised countries. War or no war, the high debt and weak investment common to many Western economies are likely to mean a continuation of the sluggish growth of the past decade.[1]

High debt, weak investment, and weak growth are only part of the problem we face but the author’s views are helpful nonetheless. Anything and everything that calls attention to some aspect of the neurtered, crippled, not-so-aimless, globalist, statist rush to elite rule and denigration of Western civilization is all good.

But atrophy we have in spades and all the best and the brightest have engineered for us is anarchy, thugs in the street, a joke electoral system, and a slick jettisoning of the rule of law and our Constitution. A functional, resilient, adaptive economic order is not part of their agenda, at least if you accept that people intend the natural consequence of their acts.

Notes
[1] “The End of the Age of Globalisation. How Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could hasten the demise of the US-led economic order.” By Phil Mullan, LewRockwell.com, 3/15/22.

Mar 14 2022

How to Reform Education

As a retired teacher, who experienced a variety of working situations, from very good to unbelievably bad, I developed some ideas about how to both reform the delivered product to American citizens, and how to reduce that cost.

Let’s start with the level that is perhaps the most debased from what any sane person would choose to fund through their taxes. The university or college level (including 2-year, 4-year, and graduate/professional levels).

If a student is not capable of functioning at a college level in basic introductory courses, that student must be referred to a tech/community college (generally 2-year, few frills), for evaluation and remediation. The cost of any coursework would be paid by the district that gave that student a diploma without requiring that student to be actually ready for college. That student would qualify for another whack at the ACT upon satisfactory completion of those remedial classes. Presumably, they would score higher on that try.

Assuming that the student qualifies for normal freshman placement in classes, EVERY student must take the same core coursework in English, Math, and Science. Electives will be left up to the individual student. Failure to pass the core classes will result in reduction of money received from the government, whether grants or loans. Students may attend a summer school session to make up for any deficiencies (yes, they will need to pass exams to move to the next round of school without penalty). They can either pay for the summer school themselves, or scrounge for a scholarship (this would be a great place for those NGOs that want everyone to go to college to put some money where their mouth is).

Financial aid would be based on monetary return. If you choose a field that’s filled with opportunities for employment, you get more money. Higher grades? You get more money. Use CLEP to reduce the time in school? More money. Work-study? More money.

In other words, we (the taxpayer) help those that help themselves.

That aid, for tuition, is based on actual costs – up to a point. If students go to schools that are pricier, they can only get an amount up to 2-3 times the cost of the average public university in that state. Any addition to their loans/grants will by on a 1:1 ratio of money provided by the public to money provided by private sources, including scholarships, grants, and loans. Colleges will be expected to pay at least 1/2 that money from their endowments, up to a total of 10% of the total endowed funds. Will that reduce the endowment? I certainly hope so. Many of them could easily fund ALL students attending without cutting into their principal.

Money provided by the government for housing will be the same throughout the state, equal to the average cost of rental housing in that city for a 1-bedroom apartment.

The above means that colleges with lavish amenities will have to pay for them, without expecting the students to kick in the cost.

Would that kill the private university? No, but it would definitely lead them to stop their building frenzy, and stop treating students like entitled lords of the manor.

As for classes:

  • All syllabuses are public.
  • All materials used in class must be posted – not only texts, but readings, videos, and guest speakers.
  • No credit given for partisan activity by the students.
  • Political affiliations and political donations must not reach a lopsided level. If a department is overly on one side or another, that is prima facie evidence that hiring and selection decisions have become politicized. Department budgets will be cut 10% each year, until the balance approaches a level more in line with the state average.

That won’t stop the problems, but it will help keep the citizens from financing the damage.

Any other suggestions? Put them in the comments.

Mar 14 2022

Fun As A Sociopolitical Weapon (UPDATED)

     Good morning, and Happy Pi Day, to all my Gentle Readers. It comes but once a year, so make the best of it. Do something round. Do something irrational. Perhaps – if you can work it out – do something Eulerian:

eiπ + 1 = 0

     And do it loud!

     Now, on to the day’s chosen subject. I wrote some time ago that the Left hates fun for a critically important reason: it’s inherently apolitical:

     We play – i.e., we engage in activities that have no deliberate gain in view – specifically because it’s fun. It comes naturally to us to do so, especially when in the company of those we love. One of the great quantitative differences between America and other nations is the fraction of our resources we have available for play. It could justly be said that Americans are the world’s foremost players – no pejorative intended.

     Americans are so fun-oriented that we devote whole industries to it, most emphatically including the video gaming industry. We even seek to make our work lives fun, to the extent that might be possible. My favorite source of business advice, Robert C. Townsend, put it this way:

     If you don’t do it excellently, don’t do it at all. Because if it’s not excellent it won’t be profitable or fun, and if you’re not in business for fun or profit, what the hell are you doing here?

     (Granted that not much can be done for coal mining or grave digging. But note how such jobs are the ones most swiftly put to automated techniques.)

     George Orwell, that hugely important voice to our time, came at it a bit differently:

     “When you make love you’re using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don’t give a damn for anything. They can’t bear you to feel like that. They want you to be bursting with energy all the time. All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour. If you’re happy inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minutes Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot?”

     Fun is at the core of the contemporary sociopolitical struggle. One side is massively, scathingly, bellowingly against it. The other – that’s our side, Gentle Reader – is mostly puzzled about “what’s crawled up their asses and died?” The matter is not trivial, and must not be treated as such.

     This is on my mind for several reasons, not the least of which is the way the anti-Funnists behave on social media. I had an example of it thrown my way just this morning. Someone on Gab.com, noting how certain persons were straining to divert all attention to the invasion of Ukraine, asked her interlocutor, “Are you going to blame Putin for everything from now on?”

     I, being in a jocular mood, remembered something someone else had said during the Obama years, when the Obama-led Left was trying to blame George W. Bush for everything. So I resurrected and “adjusted” it:

     The traffic outside my front windows is horrible at 3 PM on school days. Damn that Putin! 😉

     My effrontery drew a response I should have predicted:

     At least your children and family aren’t being murdered by putin for the last two weeks, right? Would it be as funny if putin was making your family dead?…You compare school traffic to children dying and cry that your morals are being questioned? Your mom did a bad job. Really bad.

     Yes, Gentle Reader: they’re even on Gab, that hotbed of conservative sentiment. So I backhanded him:

     Oh! I see your problem! You lack a sense of humor, or at least the ability to detect sarcasm. Perhaps you should see a professional. Your malady is definitely outside my skill set.

     Because the one thing the anti-Funnists cannot abide is having their sense of humor lampooned. It reveals their essential emptiness, which they struggle to fill with Causes and moral indignation.

     This sort of thing rams home how important it is to have fun, to poke fun at what’s inherently ludicrous, and to laugh like donkeys at the anti-Funnists. They hate it; it’s “the unanswerable weapon.” Not only does it express disdain for their monomania; it also makes them look ridiculous: an invaluable twofer in these days when the Left seeks to politicize all of human life. Remember “The personal is political” — ? They mean it – and they mean to inflict it on you.

     And what better motto to proclaim and implement on Pi Day?

Have Fun!

     I’ll be doing so with the rest of my day. Go thou and do likewise. Maybe with pizza. Or ice cream. Or both! On a roller-coaster! With fireworks and Beach Boys tunes!!

     Whew! Apologies, Gentle Reader. It got away from me for a moment. But do have a nice, fun day.

     (Sorry, Pascal: No interesting graphic today. I’m having too much fun.)

UPDATE: EVEN DOGS are smarter than anti-Funnists! — and Newfs are very smart dogs!

Mar 13 2022

No Title Could Possibly Serve

     There are days I wonder if it’s even possible for a human being, however vigilant, to keep track of all the truly significant events and precursors that flood past us each day. I read several dozen news sites and aggregators, and I still miss developments that make me kick myself when I finally do notice them.

***

     Way back in the Eighties, when Americans were still Americans…well, mostly, anyway…a certain Ronald Reagan said:

     “The nine scariest words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”

     Well, if we hold the limit at nine words, President Reagan was correct. But if I may add a few carefully chosen ones to his saying, I think i can amplify the scare factor:

     “I’m from the government and I’m here to help, and these companies will help, too.”

     There is never a good reason for private companies, however focused, to get into bed with the Omnipotent State. “Public-private partnerships” have done at least as much damage to Americans’ rights as the federal government alone. Yet in these latter days of the Republic, such “partnerships” arise with terrifying frequency.

     Courtesy of IOTWReport, I learned only a few minutes ago about this obscenity:

     This is the only report of its type to assess market opportunities for infrastructure support of the social credit market. The report evaluates market drivers, use cases, and consequential impacts/implications (anticipated and likely unanticipated) for social credit market implementation and operation.

     The report also evaluates some of the leading companies that are anticipated to drive social credit market evolution. This report includes detailed quantitative analysis driven by market needs with forecasting for all major infrastructure elements from 2021 to 2026.

     There follows a long list of companies, most of which my Gentle Readers will recognize, that will involve themselves in the “social credit market.” And to what effect?

    

  • The COVID-19 pandemic has facilitated substantial interest in citizen monitoring solutions
  • Infrastructure to support social credit systems represents a $16.1B global opportunity by 2026
  • Cameras and other optical equipment for social credit systems will reach $723M globally by 2026
  • Advanced computing will be used in conjunction with AI to provide nearly flawless identification and tracking
  • Various forms of biometrics will be used for identity verification as well as verifying the presence/location of people
  • Starting as tangential to public safety and homeland security, the social credit market becomes mainstream by 2026

     Social credit systems represent the ability to identify (mostly people but also some “things”) and track activities for purposes of grading behaviors and applying “social credit” scoring. A given grading/scoring methodology depends largely on social credit system objectives and metrics.

     However, most systems will have socially acceptable behaviour at their core. This presents both a challenge and an opportunity as a combination of government, companies, and society as a whole must determine “good”, “bad”, and “marginal” behavior within the social credit market.

     Beginning as a trend largely orthogonal to public safety and homeland security concerns, the market for social credit system infrastructure will ultimately become a mainstream component of both business and public policy.

     This means that systems will ultimately be used for a variety of commerce and lifestyle-related issues ranging from risk assessment (access to credit, financing fees, insurance, etc.) to accessibility within public places such as concerts, sporting events, and other assemblies. High social scoring individuals within the social credit market will be granted preferred access to both real and digital assets.

     That report is dated December 23, 2021: almost three months behind us, and I had no knowledge of it until this morning.

     Did you, Gentle Reader? And now that we do know about all these megacorporations banding together with the State to determine who can do what, and where and when, and with whom, and under what terms, what on Earth can we do about it?

     The largest three thousand corporations control the majority of productive and commercial activities on this sorry ball of rock. Now, in the pursuit of still further profits, they’re proposing to team up with Leviathan worldwide. They seek to run our lives more minutely than any girls’ dormitory matron. I was ignorant of this development until today. Now that I know about it, I haven’t got the faintest idea how to thwart, oppose, or escape it.

     One brief piece of advice: If you’ve purchased a television since the Clinton Administration, unplug it when you’re not watching anything. Apart from that, have a few words from Stephen King:

     “Once upon a time there was an experiment in which twelve people participated,” Quincey said. “About six years ago. Do you remember that?”
     “I remember it,” Andy said grimly.
     “There aren’t many of those twelve people left. There were four, the last I heard. And two of them married each other.”
     “Yes,” Andy said, but inside he felt growing horror. Only four left? What was Quincey talking about?
     “I understand one of them can bend keys and shut doors without even touching them.” Quincey’s voice, thin, coming across two thousand miles of telephone cable, coming through switching stations, through open-relay points, through junction boxes in Nevada, Idaho, Colorado, Iowa. A million places to tap into Quincey’s voice.
     “Yes?” he said, straining to keep his voice level. And he thought of Vicky, who could sometimes turn on the radio or turn off the TV without going anywhere near it-and Vicky was apparently not even aware she was doing those things.
     “Oh yes, he’s for real,” Quincey was saying. “He’s—what would you say?-a documented case. It hurts his head if he does those things too often, but he can do them. They keep him in a little room with a door he can’t open and a lock he can’t bend. They do tests on him. He bends keys. He shuts doors. And I understand he’s nearly crazy.”
     “Oh … my … God,” Andy said faintly.
     “He’s part of the peace effort, so it’s all right if he goes crazy,” Quincey went on. “He’s going crazy so two hundred and twenty million Americans can stay safe and free. Do you understand?”
     “Yes,” Andy had whispered.
     “What about the two people who got married? Nothing. So far as they know. They live quietly, in some quiet middle-American state like Ohio. There’s maybe a yearly check on them. Just to see if they’re doing anything like bending keys or closing doors without touching them or doing funny little mentalist routines at the local Backyard Carnival for Muscular Dystrophy. Good thing those people can’t do anything like that, isn’t it, Andy?”
     Andy closed his eyes and smelled burned cloth. Sometimes Charlie would pull open the fridge door, look in, and then crawl off again. And if Vicky was ironing, she would glance at the fridge door and it would swing shut again—all without her being aware that she was doing anything strange. That was sometimes. At other times it didn’t seem to work, and she would leave her ironing and close the refrigerator door herself (or turn off the radio, or turn on the TV). Vicky couldn’t bend keys or read thoughts or fly or start fires or predict the future. She could sometimes shut a door from across the room and that was about the extent of it. Sometimes, after she had done several of these things, Andy had noticed that she would complain of a headache or an upset stomach, and whether that was a physical reaction or some sort of muttered warning from her subconscious, Andy didn’t know. Her ability to do these things got maybe a little stronger around the time of her period. Such small things, and so infrequently, that Andy had come to think of them as normal. As for himself…well he could push people. There was no real name for it; perhaps autohypnosis came closest. And he couldn’t do it often, because it gave him headaches. Most days he could forget completely that he wasn’t utterly normal and never really had been since that day in Room 70 of Jason Geameigh.
     He closed his eyes and on the dark field inside his eyelids he saw that comma-shaped bloodstain and the nonwords COR OSUM.
     “Yes, it’s a good thing,” Quincey went on, as if Andy had agreed. “Or they might put them in two little rooms where they could work full-time to keep two hundred and twenty million Americans safe and free.”
     “A good thing,” Andy agreed.
     “Those twelve people,” Quincey said, “maybe they gave those twelve people a drug they didn’t fully understand. It might have been that someone—a certain Mad Doctor—might have deliberately misled them. Or maybe he thought he was misleading them and they were deliberately leading him on. It doesn’t matter.”
     “No.”
     “So this drug was given to them and maybe it changed their chromosomes a little bit. Or a lot. Or who knows. And maybe two of them got married and decided to have a baby and maybe the baby got something more than her eyes and his mouth. Wouldn’t they be interested in that child?”
     “I bet they would,” Andy said, now so frightened he was having trouble talking at all. He had already decided that he would not tell Vicky about calling Quincey.
     “It’s like you got lemon, and that’s nice, and you got meringue, and that’s nice, too, but when you put them together, you’ve got…a whole new taste treat. I bet they’d want to see just what that child could do. They might just want to take it and put it in a little room and see if it could help make the world safe for democracy. And I think that’s all I want to say, old buddy, except…keep your head down.”

Mar 12 2022

Painful Remedial Lessons

     If you’ve seen Tucker Carlson’s show of last night — I catch it on YouTube – I hope you paid close attention to his exposition on inflation. The Usurper Regime and their media handmaidens are doing their damnedest to persuade Americans that the cause of today’s inflation, which we experience as price increases in the things we buy, is anything but government policy. All of it is lies. Tucker’s few words on the subject are the absolute and irrefutable truth. Take it from someone who’s studied money and currency for thirty years.

     We’ve been here before. The years from the end of the Ford Administration through the whole of the Carter Administration should have taught us what we need to know today. But that was forty years and more ago, wasn’t it? Who remembers much about those years? Why, you’d need to be as old as I am!

     So we’re getting a refresher course. It’s already hurting. It will hurt still worse, especially if the Usurpers embroil us in a land war in Eurasia. That didn’t go well for Napoleon. It didn’t go well for Hitler. It won’t go well for us.

     I’ve written about this subject more than once. I’m not going to do so again this morning. I’m weary of it. But I’ll ask you to pay attention to Tucker, Peter Schiff, and the other honest commentators on this subject. Satisfy yourself whether they make sense. Ignore the self-serving bilge emanating from the Usurpers, their media mouthpieces, and their talking heads.

     Have a few suggestions for further reading:

     Note that all those books are free downloads. You needn’t spend a penny for any of them – and under current conditions, let us all rejoice that the prices of some things aren’t shooting through the clouds. (Of course, if you’re feeling flush, you can also spring for some Milton Friedman, but you might prefer to save a few pence for lunch.)

     For a palate cleanser, read this exposition on Gresham’s Law. Reflect on why, whenever governments start to meddle with the money supply, people start hoarding gold and silver – gold above all else. Ponder the common practice in India of paying for expensive items with one or more thin gold bracelets, a number of which affluent women will wear when they shop. And think about the Weimar Republic, the 1926 hyperinflation of the mark, and why the Nazis found it so easy to take power.

     And put gold and silver on your shopping list.

Mar 11 2022

Love, Duty, And Adventure

     Politics? Bah! Economics? Please! Current events? Enough already!

     Perhaps my Esteemed Co-Conspirators will provide some such material a bit later in the day. Just now I have storytelling in mind.

***

     Some years ago, when I was finding my stride as a fictioneer, I had something of an epiphany about plotting. Crafting a satisfying plot is quite difficult. Not many writers can pull it off, at least if we judge by the overwhelming display of trite, unoriginal stories being vended today. Quite a lot of writers rely on a formula of some sort to guide them in plot construction. However, plotting by formula usually produces unoriginal fiction and an unsatisfying reading experience.

     Yet beneath all fiction lie important truths, including (in the majority of cases) the answer to the question “Why does this piece of tripe bore me out of my skull?” The late John Brunner captured the answer to that question and many others in his Two Laws:

  1. The raw material of fiction is people.
  2. The essence of story is change.

     The insight a writer can derive from contemplating those simple dicta is too huge to capture in words. If you’re not writing about people changing, you’re not writing a story. But why do people change? What are the drivers of change in the human psyche?

     There are reductionist analyses of the genesis of human change, some of them rather famous. They pertain to the things that address and activate deep motivations that virtually everyone shares. Yet if I may judge from the torrents of essentially indistinguishable tales being pumped out today, those things tend to bounce off many a writer. This might be a consequence of inadequate life experience, though even the widely traveled, widely experienced man can fail to understand it.

     So as a public service to writers who can’t quite understand why they keep producing crap, I offer – girls, hold onto your boyfriends – a “formula” of my own. It marries the development of characters with the construction of plot. As with most of my bilge, it’s worth what it costs. Operators are standing by. Past returns are no guarantee of future performance. There are no warranties, express or implied. Sorry, no CODs.

***

     First, love – the desire to love and be loved – is a fundamental motivator. The writers of conventional romances lean on it heavily, some of them exclusively. It’s a valuable, reliable element in plot construction. But you can’t simply contrive two characters and throw them at one another. There are questions you must ask yourself first: Why are these persons currently without love? What developments in their lives would give rise to romantic possibility? Can I make them different enough to make their attraction to one another fresh and intriguing?

     If in answering those questions you can come up with motifs and character elements that are fresh, or at least not yet so overexploited that all the bolts are falling out, you can produce a satisfyingly original romance. It helps if the setting is averse to romantic entanglement, too – we all need a challenge to surmount – but that’s a sidelight rather than the “main event.”

     You’d be well advised to avoid the overused paths so heavily trodden by contemporary romance writers: billionaires, special-forces soldiers, vampires, and so forth. Once upon a time, those were fresh motifs; today they’re cliches that have been worn flat. Try something else. Also, there’s romance and “advanced” romance: the combination of love with other motivators and modifiers. But that’s a subject for another day.

***

     Second, duty drives a huge share of human actions. To get through life without incurring any duties is an aspiration of some. Incredible as it sounds, a few persons actually achieve it. But it’s not much of a life. Moreover, those who manage it tend to be uninteresting, mere tourists through life regardless of what they may have seen or done. For a character to command readers’ attention, duties of some sort are essential.

     In plotting, introducing your protagonist character to a new duty – one he can’t walk away from without doing critical damage to his self-regard – is a fine way of getting the action going. The obstacles he must face in the performance of the duty are meat for the tale. Don’t make them too easily overcome; the harder he must work, the more gripping his story will be.

     You can ramify this by including important persons in the protagonist’s life who are averse to his new duty. What if his new love feels the duty to be her enemy in winning his heart? She might become determined to impede him from carrying it out. What if she’s morally or aesthetically repelled by his new duty? How does he slice through that knot?

***

     When the action starts to flag, bring on a man with a gun. – Mystery writers’ maxim

     Third, a truly riveting tale will usually include some sort of adventure: a challenge presented to the protagonist(s) by other people or environmental conditions. If there’s danger involved, all the better. Danger “wakes up” the reader and forces him to pay close attention – if, that is, you’ve managed to make him care about your protagonist. This is especially effective when the danger arrives suddenly, without any warning, and threatens more than just the protagonist’s personal well-being.

     It’s long been observable that the television shows that most reliably command viewer loyalty are those that involve systematic danger. Usually the danger is built into the characters’ occupations:

  • Cop shows;
  • “Secret agent” shows;
  • Doctor / hospital shows;
  • Lawyers and courtroom dramas.

     Now, unless you’re writing for television, you probably can’t use any of those patterns “off the shelf.” Nevertheless, the lesson they offer is valuable. Also, there are ways to vary these ideas. Consider Lee Child’s “Jack Reacher” novels, for example. The nomadic Reacher is unusual and interesting all by himself, but add to his choice of modus vivendi that he’s always finding danger: if not for himself, for others. A retired military policeman, his tropism for danger and bringing justice drives everything he involves himself in. The effectiveness and longevity of Child’s formula seems well explained.

***

     A random thought along these lines: Most fiction is “single-threaded.” The story advances along a single timeline, as a single set of protagonists, antagonists, and Supporting Cast involve themselves in a single skein of events. There’s nothing wrong with that sort of construction – quite a lot of famous fiction follows that path – but an alternative approach can increase the complexity, mystery, and conflict of a tale. This is usually called a “braided” plot.

     Braided plots usually have either two or three separate lines of action and development. The construction of such a plot is several times as difficult as that of a single-threaded plot, because the separate lines of action must be kept relevant to one another. Moreover, the plot skeins must be tied off in a single knot at the end of the book. So this is not a course a writer should adopt lightly.

     A question occurred to me as I’ve been writing this piece: can one produce a braided plot with only a single protagonist? Is there a way to separate a single protagonist’s love, duty, and adventure motifs into three distinct plot threads? Or would that be merely a single-threaded plot whose developments alternate among three driving motivators?

***

     I don’t consciously plot according to this “formula.” But in reviewing my own novels, I found the love / duty / adventure trio of drivers in virtually all of them. That suggests that there’s something fundamental about the combination. For readers: What about the tales that have most pleased you? Can you find the trio in most or all of them? For writers: What uses have your stories made of the trio? Were they conscious, or did they “just happen?”

     Food for thought.

Mar 11 2022

If You’ve Been Puzzled By The War on Cash…

     …have a brief video from a British subject that will chill your blood:

     Could it be any simpler?

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