Description And The Telling Detail

     Happy Feast Day of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Gentle Reader! It’s a day for deep but pleasant thoughts. I suggest the love and mercy of God, the lightness of the New Covenant, the generosity of the Paraclete, and the glory of the Beatific Vision. Saint Thomas dwelt on these things until they filled him to the top of his tonsure. Then he wrote more than 3,000 pages about them. The volume of his writings alone would make him the Supreme Doctor of the Church. But alongside that, he really liked to eat: just one more reason to venerate him.

     But I digress. Regard the following tweet, especially if you’re a writer… or a reader:

Nothing is more humbling than spending 4 hours researching the specific architectural layout of a 14th century tavern just to write the sentence: "They went inside."

— Anamika Pandey (@ianamikagautam) January 27, 2026

     I laughed long and hard at that. I’ve been there, you see: specifically, with my romance Doors. That novel has one of my favorite Laura Shinn covers. Yet when I saw it, I felt compelled to rewrite a half page of description. Same old sixes and sevens.

     But as I’m thoroughly sick of current events, Anamika’s tweet serves as my justification for posting a snatch of my nonfiction guide for developing writers, The Storyteller’s Art. (No, it’s not for sale just now. I’m working on a second edition.) Here it is:

* * * Description And The Telling Detail

     Many a novice fictioneer labors over description -- when to do it; how much of it to do; what to leave in and what to leave out -- as he does over no other aspect of the narrative craft. Strangely, the preponderance of the anxieties felt in this regard are unnecessary. Description is actually a much easier, and more easily comprehended, matter than most writers think.

     Granted that first-class description can produce a unique effect:

     Day was opening in the sky, and they saw that the mountains were now much further off, receding eastward in a long curve that was lost in the distance. Before them, as they turned west, gentle slopes ran down into dim hazes far below. All about them were small woods of resinous trees, fir and cedar and cypress, and other kinds unknown in the Shire, with wide glades among them; and everywhere there was a wealth of sweet-smelling herbs and shrubs. The long journey from Rivendell had brought them far south of their own land, but not until now in this more sheltered region had the hobbits felt the change of clime. Here Spring was already busy about them: fronds pierced moss and mould, larches were green-fingered, small flowers were opening in the turf, birds were singing. Ithilien, the garden of Gondor now desolate kept still a dishevelled dryad loveliness. [J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord Of The Rings, "The Two Towers"]

     ...one cannot over-indulge in such effects without losing the reader.

     Why? Because of Brunner's First Law of Fiction: The raw material of fiction is people. More specifically, what your characters are saying, doing, and doing to one another.

     Elmore Leonard, famed for his humor-laced thrillers, was once asked by a fan why he wrote so few descriptive passages, and kept them so short. Leonard smiled and replied, "I try not to write the parts that people skip."

     Ponder that. The typical reader skips descriptive passages. Why? Not because they're badly written, though some surely are; they're skipped because most description contributes nothing to the forward movement of the story!

     Remember how a typical reader chooses the books he'll read:

• He heads for the section(s) of the bookstore where he can find his favorite genre(s).
• He looks first for authors whose works have pleased him in the past. he doesn't find any unread works by familiar, approved writers, he scans spines and covers for clever titles and provocative art.
• When a title or cover painting catches his fancy, he picks it up and reads the back-cover or dust-jacket blurb. If it fails to intrigue him, he puts the book back on the rack and resumes his search.
• If the blurb has, at the least, not dimmed his tentative interest, he opens the book to the first chapter and reads one or two pages. If these don't impress him, he passes on.
• If the first page or two engage his interest, he might riffle the pages of the book, scanning it for "density." That is, he looks to see how tightly the words are packed on a typical page. If it's too high -- that is, if descriptive and pure-narrative passages overwhelm dialogue and character interaction -- he passes on.
• Finally, if all the above tests have been satisfied and his funds will allow, he buys the book.

     To be agreeable to the overwhelming majority of readers, fiction must concentrate on dialogue and active events in the lives of his characters. A writer who forgets or disdains this pattern and concentrates on description might get invited to a lot of faculty teas, but he won't sell many books.

     For all of that, some description is necessary if you want the reader to see your fictional world vividly. But there are guidelines to make it plain when it's necessary, how much of it there should be, and what specifically one should describe. These guidelines are nicely synopsized in the imperative: Cultivate an eye for the telling detail.

     Let's unpack that command a bit.

     1. What is an "eye for the telling detail"? Where does one find it?

     Probably the best approach to acquiring this "eye" -- that is, the sense for what ought to be described and when -- is to concentrate on the consciousness of one's viewpoint character. That is: the sensorium, sensitivities, and priorities of the viewpoint character, through whose "eyes" the story is currently being told, should dictate what one describes.

     For example, let's imagine that your viewpoint character is a doctor who labors, as so many do, in a hospital. The hospital is his typical frame of reference. While the precise details of the hospital do matter to him, on a typical work day he doesn't take active notice of ninety-five percent of them. He would not fix his attention on a respirator that he passes twenty times per shift. He would not muse upon the height, shape, or color of a reception desk. He would not remark to himself that Joe Smith is wearing a stethoscope, unless that were in itself an unusual thing that should trigger heightened attention (e.g., if Joe were a janitor, or a serial killer whom your character had thought confined to a jail ward).

     Since the goal of good fiction is to involve your reader in the emotional lives of your characters, your descriptive prose should be guided by a cognizance of the sort of things your characters would care about, and the sort they would glide past, whether from their regularity or from their irrelevance.

     2. What is a "telling detail?"

     In keeping with the guideline above, a telling detail is a detail that tells the viewpoint character something that ought to arouse his active interest. Note the phrase "ought to." It might, or it might not; after all, he might be having a sub-par day. But either way, it should, because the detail itself is important to the course of the story:

• It indicates a difference in his environment -- either in the physical setting or the people that inhabit it -- that will factor into the plot.
• It characterizes a figure with whom he'll be involved in the subsequent action.
• It impels him toward his deeds in the subsequent action;
• It enables him to do something he'll need to do, or constrains him from doing something he'll want to do, in the subsequent action.

     The way to describe a telling detail is through the viewpoint character's perception of it, including those aspects of its setting that make it significant. Note how, in the Tolkien passage above, the author makes note of the "change of clime" and that "spring was busy" around the hobbits from whose perspective the details of Ithilien were described. These features of the physical environment are why Frodo and Sam noticed their surroundings; they constituted a noticeable change -- and a most unusual one, given that their course was taking them toward a land of limitless foulness.

     Here's another illustrative passage:

     Lori took in the situation with a glance, glared at Aaron, and immediately slapped the code call button. Andrew went to Berglund's bedside and sank to his knees. Incredibly, he groped for the patient's flailing hand and folded it between his own. The volunteer's eyes closed and his lips moved rapidly.
     The etheric sense Aaron had cultivated over his years of exploration of the dark forces quivered like an alerted hunting dog. A miasma of power was forming in the room, hovering over Andrew's head. It was not a familiar one. Aaron's inner eye watched it wax in potency. It grew blindingly bright, then descended and wrapped itself around the thrashing, dying man.
     Berglund's eyes closed. His spasms slowed, became progressively gentler. By the time the team with the crash cart had arrived, the old man was still and his breathing had ceased.
     The glowing cloud of power was gone.
     Andrew rose from his knees and deposited the limp hand onto its owner's motionless chest. He turned to the crash cart team, who had frozen in place upon first confronting the strange tableau.
     "He's gone." The technicians started forward, but the volunteer held up a hand. There was an ineffable authority in him that halted them where they stood. "Let him be."
     Lori was trying to jam her fist into her mouth.
     Andrew slipped past the emergency team, wrapped an arm around Lori's shoulders and coaxed her from the room.

     [From "Virgin's Prayer," in The Sledgehammer Concerto]

     The viewpoint character, Aaron, doesn't dwell upon the mundane features of the scene before him. Indeed, he hardly notices them. He's fixed upon the things that matter most to him: the immanence of a great cloud of supernatural power, apparently invoked by Andrew; Andrew's own assumption of authority, before which everyone else at the scene automatically gives way; and Lori's reaction to it all. These aspects of the scene are critical to the action that remains; nothing else about the scene matters at all.

     3. How much description is enough? Is there a way to know?

     In a word, yes.

     Enough description is description that follows the guidelines above. It tells the reader what the viewpoint character is thinking and feeling about his surroundings. It also tells the reader what the viewpoint character ought to notice, whether he does so or not; this is particularly important in stories with an element of mystery. Finally, it's married to what's happening to and around the viewpoint character at the moment, rather than being a superfluous lump that sits in the way of the action.

     This gives us a third guideline that proves most useful in practice: The best description is married to what the characters are doing.

     Consider the following passage:

     The tall, ungainly woman walked haltingly up the winding, tree-lined path that led to the large, green-shuttered sprawling old white mansion. Her old, arthritic vein-corded hands gripped her silver-topped cane, and its worn brass ferrule stabbed feebly at the unyielding earth with every faltering step she took.

     To the best of your Curmudgeon's knowledge, that passage is not from a published story. Lawrence Block uses it as an example of overwriting in his book Telling Lies For Fun And Profit. But it's also an example of pointless description. It's unmated to any significant action of the viewpoint character -- not clearly revealed here, though one might assume from this snippet that it's the old woman being described -- and advances nothing in which the reader might take more than a yawning interest.

     Here's another passage, from a masterwork by one of the funniest and most creative writers ever to scatter words upon a page:

     "Well, then," Sir Gules said, leading his guest down the carpeted floor past the silent manservants to a high wainscotted room in which a cheery fire snapped and crackled in the great onyx fireplace.
     Marvin did not answer. His eye was taking in the details of the room. The carven armoire was surely tenth century, and the portrait on the west wall, half-hidden by its gilt frame, was a genuine Moussault.
     "Come, sit, I pray thee," said Sir Gules, sinking gracefully to a David Ogilvy half-couch decorated in the Afghan brocade so popular that year.
     "Thank you," Marvin said, sitting upon an eight-legged John IV with rosewood handles and a backing of heart-o'-palm.
     "A little wine?" Sir Gules said, handling with casual reverence the bronze decanter with gold chasings engraved by Dagobert of Hoyys.
     "Not just at the moment, give thee thanks," Marvin replied, brushing a fleck of dust from his stuff-colored outercoat of green baptiste with lisle froggings, made to his measure by Geoffrey of Palping Lane.
     "Then mayhap a touch of snuff?" Sir Gules inquired, proffering his small platinum snuffbox made by Durr of Snedum, upon which was portrayed in steel-point a hunting scene from the Orange Forest of Lesh.
     "Perhaps later," Marvin said, squinting down at the double-furled silver thread laces on his dancing pumps.

     [From Robert Sheckley's Mindswap.]

     If you're not rolling on the floor, just barely keeping your sides from splitting, it's not your Curmudgeon's fault. Sheckley has brilliantly pinned the very worst failings of innumerable writers of historical and Gothic fiction, so funnily and perfectly that comment is unnecessary -- as was every one of the interminable details of that passage. A novice writer can learn better what not to do by studying that passage than from any dozen books on the writer's art.

     Bad description is almost always over-description. It's "the parts that people skip." Your reader's principal reward for consuming your work is the emotional journey he takes alongside your characters. That's the prize. Everything else is, well, just details.

War News

     I could write about any of many things today, but the envelope into which the most recent events fit is the Second American Civil War.

     Minnesota and California have practically declared themselves to be in insurrection. Excuse me, what did you say? President Trump cut a deal with Tim Walz? That’s nice. What’s been happening since then?

     The insurrectionists are largely organized, though some are responding spontaneously. Some are native to the districts they trouble; others are bused in. They’re young and old, armed and unarmed.

     They’re unified in one thing only: their opposition to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency’s attempt to locate, detain, and expel illegal aliens. President Trump has given ICE carte blanche to fulfill its duties. Some of what’s happened has struck even conservative observers as excessive. The insurrectionists have capitalized on the two deaths to date by shouting “Nazis!” at peak volume… mostly at ordinary private citizens.

     There’s little point in trying to change the label. The American Left has gone to war against the Administration, the immigration laws, and the electoral system. What more is required to deem the Left in a state of insurrection?

     The Left has gone “all in.” It has fully mobilized its financial and personal resources for the conflict. The Democrat Party, while giving lip service to “the rule of law,” is aligned with the insurrectionists. Indeed, its hope of political survival rests on their success.

     There are only two ways to quell a rebellion: by surrendering to it, or by defeating it. Don’t expect President Trump to surrender to it. But defeating it will require more dramatic action than merely having ICE agents detain suspected illegal aliens and deport the ones who can’t establish that they’re here legally.

     Blood has already been spilled. There will be more.

     I hope the National Guard need not be dispatched to the loci of insurrection with free-to-fire rules of engagement. But it’s a real possibility. Were President Trump to federalize them and send them forth, would they be willing to obey his orders as Commander-in-Chief? It might require them to act against people they know, their neighbors.

     This isn’t Armageddon yet. But things are not looking good. Stay tuned.

     (For my views on the illegal-alien crisis, see this Baseline Essay.)

Hippee Skippee!

My laptop died last week. It was a quick death, no lingering.

Since then, I've been using my Fire tablet. Its not all that powerful, but for the money, was a good bargain last Amazon Day.

I tried using an old Chromebook my brother had passed on to me. It's really slow, running Windows 10, and without the hardware to be updated. And, it's a small complaint, but no touchscreen. Until you have to go backwards, you don't understand what an annoyance that is.

I just checked the status of my new laptop order and it will be arriving today. Likely not until late in the day.

It's not a new machine, but a refurbished HP. But, for $200, it doesn't have to be great.

Snow Day

Forgive me, Gentle Reader. I'm pooped.

See you tomorrow, I hope.

The Betrayal Of The Meliorists

     It’s exciting and gratifying to see so many people on X talking about C. S. Lewis’s masterpiece That Hideous Strength. There’s a general sense that the Satanic dystopian England Lewis depicts in his novel is “where we are now” – a sense that is largely correct. But the understanding of why and how we got here / there remains to jell.

     Which of course calls your Curmudgeon into the fray.

* * *

     Time was, there was a movement called “Progressivism.” (Don’t laugh.) It was largely propelled by Christian religious sentiments that had been twisted into political activism – and for that perversion, twisted is exactly the right word. Another word for that movement, one that isn’t heard much today, is meliorism.

     Meliorism is a largely emotional position: the meliorist “wants to make things better.” For whom? Why, for everyone! He loves a particular vision of progress: a vision in which all desires have been satisfied, and all fears have been dispelled.

     Yes, Gentle Reader: meliorism implies a total detachment from reality. But the meliorist doesn’t allow that to trouble him. The vision is all!

     If meliorists weren’t gullible, they might be tolerable. But they are gullible. They’re easily swayed by the promises of politicians. And politicians are willing to promise them anything. (No, they don’t give them Arpege. )

     The politician, by definition, is one who seeks power over others. That and nothing else is what politics is about. What he promises you is not truly his objective. His objective is power. What brings him power, he will promote; what diminishes his power, he will oppose.

     The politician, therefore, must not be assumed a sincere meliorist. But he relies on the support of meliorists to put and keep him in power.

* * *

     Lewis’s nightmare vision of England in That Hideous Strength is premised on popular acceptance based on the unwillingness of ordinary Englishmen to object to melioristic initiatives. The N.I.C.E., a government program, is facially melioristic. In reality, it’s a grab for total power over everyone and everything on Earth.

     Contemporary Britain has some features in common with Lewis’s tale, and some that depart from it. Lewis didn’t imagine a huge influx of culturally immiscible immigrants, for example. But the central commonality, which makes all the other horrors – fictional and real – possible, is meliorism as a premise and political exploitation of that premise to extend and deepen the power of the State.

     Every State that lasts for a significant period must be founded on superior force. But to acquire that force, the masters of the State must persuade their subjects to allow it to them. The chief tools of persuasion are deceit and fear.

     It doesn’t matter whether the initial set of politicians sincerely want to “help” some subset of the people, or to ameliorate some nagging condition that affects all. Once the State has accumulated unopposable power, men willing to do anything for power will displace the original, supposedly sincere ones. For the sincere ones would balk at methods their challengers willingly adopt – including lethal violence. So nominally decent and trustworthy politicians are steadily replaced by men who observe no moral limits.

     Britain’s national government fell into the meliorist premise many decades ago. Each generation of power-wielders was succeeded by a harder-nosed, less scrupled set. But even as the quality of its politicians declined, the verbal emphasis on meliorism never waned; indeed, it seems to have increased. The power-wielders promise, hands on their hearts, that We’re here to help – to serve! If any of them really mean it, I’m unable to name them.

     Americans should not look at Britain with scorn. The same progression is in effect here. Leaving aside the Great Maverick, President Donald Trump, I’m hard pressed to name a high-ranking politician whom I would trust.

* * *

     In 1962, Joseph Clark, one of Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senators, was asked to define liberalism as he understood it. Senator Clark replied:

     “A liberal,” he writes, “[is] one who believes in utilizing the full force of government for the advancement of social, political and economic justice at the municipal, state, national and international levels.”

     That’s political meliorism straight up, with no chaser. Whether or not Clark was sincere about his aims, he was consistent. One of his enthusiasms was for the establishment of a world government to which national governments would be subordinate. He pursued that aim as a member and president of World Federalists U.S.A.

     Clark was very popular. His successors in the United States Senate have varied in that regard, but they’ve all given copious lip service to meliorism. And they’ve worked diligently to expand and deepen the power of the federal government. Republicans, unable to oppose political meliorism effectively, have largely endorsed it. Which is why I joke that the GOP’s true platform is “We Can Do It Cheaper!”

* * *

     Power over others always ends up in the hands of those who want it most. As Friedrich Hayek told us in The Road To Serfdom, over time the progression brings men to power who recognize no moral limits, regardless of the platitudes they mouth. Their sole aim is power: getting it, keeping it, and increasing it.

     George Orwell told us what follows:

     ‘How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?’
     Winston thought. ‘By making him suffer,’ he said.
     ‘Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see then what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world that will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress toward more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love and justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotion except fear, rage, and self-abasement. Everything else will be destroyed--everything!...If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face--forever.’

     O’Brien was free to say that to Winston Smith because he had Winston totally in his power. But outside the Ministry of Love, the Party pretended that its governance was in the best interests of the people of Oceania. It had to lie and demand doublethink to do so, but the meliorist pretense was always there.

* * *

     I could go on, but I think the point stands. He who wants power over you will always tell you he intends to use it in your interests. Sometimes he’ll be sincere… but his successors will be less so, and on it will go until the nation is under a Stalin. Clive Staples Lewis has shown us the face behind the meliorist mask in a work of compelling power. Yes, his heroes invoked supernatural aid to cleanse Britain of the N.I.C.E. and its works. Perhaps that makes That Hideous Strength too fanciful for some. But Lewis’s depiction of the N.I.C.E. and its Satanic evil remains one of speculative fiction’s highest achievements.

     To the political meliorists who look upon the N.I.C.E. as a template for their own advancement in power, I offer no apologies.

The Last Of The Really Fluffy Towels

     [This story first appeared at Liberty’s Torch V2.0, on September 29, 2021. – FWP]

* * * The Last Of The Really Fluffy Towels

     Alex Smith dried himself as best he could, scowled at the sandpaper texture of the burlap towel, wrapped it around his waist and cinched it, and headed to the bedroom to garb himself for the day. Maura looked up from her book. Her expression was curious, as if he’d done something not to be expected, possibly even unprecedented.
     Well, she doesn’t really know me yet.
     He smiled. “What’s the matter?”
     She shook her head minutely. “Oh, nothing.”
     “You’ve already seen me in all my Neanderthal glory, haven’t you?”
     She grimaced. “Of course. I was just wondering...no, forget it.”
     “Oh no!” he said. “Now you’ve piqued my curiosity. What was the look about?”
     “When I looked at you?”
     “Yeah, that look.”
     She hesitated. Her expression suggested that she’d taken a mouthful of something nasty.
     “Come on,” he said. “I know we’ve only been together for a night and a morning, but still...!”
     Her eyebrows rose. “Still what?”
     “Well, still you can trust that I won’t explode if you have something critical to say, can’t you?”
     “Yeah.” She looked a little away. “It was the towel.”
     “Hm?”
     “It was just...”
     “Yesssss...?”
     “You don’t have to, you know, conceal yourself from me,” she said. “As you’ve already observed, I have seen you naked.”
     “Oh.” He looked down at himself. “Habit, I suppose.”
     “You said you’d been alone here for years,” she said.
     “I have. So?”
     “So who’ve you been concealing yourself from?”
     He winced.
     Good point.
     “Well, yes,” he said after a moment. “But I wasn’t born here. I had parents and sisters. I got it drilled into me pretty early that it was unacceptable to parade around the house naked.”
     “Yeah,” she said. “I get it. But it’s not necessary now. And those towels...how can you stand to have one wrapped tight around you like that?”
     “Oh. Yeah, it is kinda scratchy.”
     Doesn’t dry very well, either.
     “So feel free to, ah, relieve yourself of it,” she said. She set her book aside, pulled back the bedcovers, rose and ambled toward him. “I like looking at you.”
     He admired her petite, trim form afresh as she put her fingers to where he’d cinched the towel at his waist, gently pulled it away, and let it fall to the floor. “And I don’t like the idea of Oscar and his side boys—” She glanced pointedly at his genitals “—of whom I’ve already grown fond, getting all scratched up for no good reason.”
     He grinned and took her hands. “You win.” He kissed her gently. “Would it have been an issue if the towel were nice and soft?”
     She made a who-knows gesture. “Less of one, I guess. I mean, I’d still like to look at you.”
     “Thank you.” He kissed her again. “May I offer you breakfast? I have a couple of soy cakes that aren’t too old, and an ounce or so of corn syrup for them.”
     “Okay. But,” she said with a mock-severe look, “I forbid you to eat your breakfast naked.”
     “Oh? Why is that?”
     “Because the splendor of you would impede my ability to savor so luxurious a repast.”
     He laughed and went to the closet for his robe.

#

     They sat at his tiny dinette table lingering over the meager meal, doing their best to prolong it into something worthy of the name. The thought irritated Alex briefly. He had nothing else to eat in the apartment. The emptiness of his cupboard griped him more than it would have had Maura not chosen to stay the night. If it weren’t that his new ration card was scheduled to arrive that morning, the little soy cake would be the last thing he would eat that day.
     “Alex?”
     He looked up from his plate. “Yes, dear?”
     “I know someone.”
     Her deliberate, gently emphasized full stop immediately piqued his interest.
     “Always good to know...people,” he said. “What brings whoever it is to mind?”
     She locked eyes with him. “Towels.”
     “Oh.” He carefully returned his gaze to his plate. “Who runs it?”
     She shook her head. “Not like that,” she said. “It’s just someone I know. His name is Phil Marsden.” She looked away. “He’s pretty old.”
     The unspoken word trader seemed to hang around her like a cloak of mist.
     Old people are getting to be few and a long way between.
     “Do you think he might need something?” he said.
     She shrugged. “Who doesn’t, these days?” But her eyes and voice said of course.
     And the regime has just cut rations for anyone over sixty to half of the standard allotment.
     “Well,” he said as casually as he could manage, “if there’s some way we can help him, I certainly wouldn’t be averse to it.”
     The entrance monitor chimed the tone that indicates that a delivery had just come through the slot. Alex stabbed the last fragment of his soy cake, mopped up the drops of syrup that remained, stuffed it into his mouth, chewed laboriously, and rose. “Two seconds.”
     A small brown envelope that lay on the floor behind the door. He stooped to pick it up. The return address announced the arrival of his coming week’s ration card.
     Thank God.
     He returned to the kitchenette and made to reseat himself.
     Maura said “Alex...”
     He froze, half seated. “Yes?”
     “I often don’t go all the way through my ration allotment in the course of the week.”
     “Really?” he said.
     But they hardly keep. The soy cakes were less than four days old and they were already almost too tough to eat.
     She didn’t need to say what she was doing with the uneaten portion, and he didn’t need to guess.
     She’s been giving whatever she doesn’t eat to Marsden.
     He glanced at the envelope that contained his new ration card, still clutched in his hand.
     “I think...” he said, and faltered.
     “Yes?”
     “I think we can help Mr. Marsden,” he said. “Do you think he might be able to help, ah, someone else?”
     She smiled. “Why don’t we pay him a visit and find out?”

#

     Phil Marsden was very tall, and very old. Alex estimated him to be about six feet four and in his early eighties, if not older still. He was emaciated, no longer able to fill out his clothes. His tunic hung from his shoulders like a tent. His trousers were held up by an elastic belt drawn frighteningly tight. But even if the spareness of his figure could be ignored or explained, his skeletal hands and arms and his skull-like face could not.
     He’s starving to death. Whatever Maura has denied herself to give him, it hasn’t been nearly enough.
     He was acutely aware of the fresh ration card in his pocket. A radical thought came unbidden and unwelcome.
     If he were careful, he could stretch my card and what Maura can spare into two weeks’ nutrition.
     Wait a minute: what would I eat?
     Yet the thought would not leave him alone.
     “I haven’t got much left,” the old man was saying. “Just my clothes, that love seat in the corner, and what my wife left behind when she passed. But it’s all on the table.”
     “Mr. Marsden,” Maura murmured, “did Mrs. Marsden maintain two sets of bath towels, by any chance?”
     Marsden’s eyes lit with a knowing light. “As a matter of fact, she did. I always wondered why. We didn’t need two sets. Just to wash one regularly every Saturday, which she did.” He rose from his battered leather armchair. “Get it for you if you’re interested.”
     “We are,” Maura said.”
     Ninety seconds later Marsden had trotted out a pair of large, fluffy bath sheets in a delicate pink. Alex fought back the urge to grab them and flee.
     Maura flashed an inquiring look at Alex.
     He hesitated, then nodded.
     “I can see that even with what I’ve been saving for you, you’re not getting enough to eat,” Maura said. “Would you consider a ration card—a standard allotment ration card—to be worth one of those towel sets?”
     Marsden tried to hem and haw and dicker, but he couldn’t keep the naked lust for calories out of his eyes.
     “Mr. Marsden,” Maura said, “it’s our one and only offer.”
     Marsden’s resistance crumbled. He held out the bath sheets like an offering of alms. Alex took them and handed the old man his new ration card.
     “Thank you,” Marsden whispered.
     Alex nodded. He and Maura made their exit.

#

     “I can’t go without eating for a whole week,” Alex said.
     “You won’t have to,” Maura said. She fondled the bath sheet in her lap and hummed with pleasure. “I can get by on half rations. You’ll get the rest.”
     Alex started to reply, checked himself.
     I guess we’re an item.
     The towel in his hands was the softest, fluffiest piece of fabric he’d ever encountered. The loops of terry stood out at least a half inch from the base weave. He could imagine having it wrapped around him after a shower, thirstily soaking up the moisture that lingered on his skin, and shivered with anticipation.
     Probably the last of its kind anywhere in the city.
     I’ll be pretty damned hungry after seven days on half rations, but I’ll live. Then it’ll be back to the previous regimen.
     It’ll be worth it.
     “All right,” he said. “I suppose you’ll want to keep one of these at your place.”
     “I would,” Maura said, “but it was your ration card we traded for them. So only if it’s all right with you. Or,” she said with a sudden lilt, “I could do my showering here.”
     He summoned his gallantry.
     “You could,” he said. “You’d be very welcome, always assuming the city doesn’t clamp restrictions on water usage. But even so, go ahead and take one home. I only need one, and we’ll get by well enough on one if you ever decide to stay the night again.”
     She smiled brightly. “Thank you, Alex.”
     He was in the process of framing a courtly demurrer when the apartment door burst open.
     The shattered doorframe revealed Alex’s worst nightmare: two large Community Monitors in full armor, including the blast-hardened full-face shields that guarded their identities while allowing them a hundred eighty degrees of outward vision. The two strode in, stun batons at the ready, to confront Alex and Maura.
     “Citizen,” the one poised before Alex droned, “a local informant has reported observing you entering this dwelling in possession of luxury textile goods unavailable from the government’s dispensaries.” He indicated the towel in Alex’s lap. “That was not acquired recently. Was it an inheritance?”
     Alex fought to control his shaking. “It was.”
     The Enforcer snatched the towel from him and tossed it well behind him. “Then if, without looking at it, you can describe it accurately in all particulars, you will be permitted to keep it.”
     Alex darted a glance at Maura. The Enforcer that stood before her had done the same.
     The end of a stun baton rose to prod the underside of his jaw. “Well, citizen?”
     Alex could only manage a quavering croak.
     “We’ll be confiscating them, then.” The Enforcer turned and picked up the bath sheets. He and his partner marched out of the apartment, leaving it open and utterly violable.
     Alex turned eyes of woe to Maura. She appeared perfectly composed, far better in command of herself than was he.
     “I couldn’t—”
     She held up a hand.
     “I know. It’s all right.”
     He nodded, face crimson with humiliation and shame.
     They won’t turn them in for destruction. They’ll keep one each.
     “Alex?” she said. “Come stay with me tonight.”
     “You would have me, after this?”
     “Of course.” Her eyes were sad but understanding. “Everyone knows how unwise it is to resist them.”
     He rose. “Give me a minute.”
     He went to his bedroom, pulled a fresh shirt and a change of underwear out of his tiny bureau, stuffed them into a brown paper bag, and returned to the little living room. She rose as he approached.
     “Let’s go,” she said.
     He nodded, and they left.

==<O>==

     Copyright © 2021 Francis W. Porretto. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

I Didn’t Expect This

     The nation is agog over the rocketing price of silver. Despite my interest in the money metals and my frequent advice to my Gentle Readers to put some of their savings into gold and silver, I must admit that the recent sharp increases trouble me. I’m caught between possible explanations.

     Silver was the money metal of the United States for the nation’s first century. It satisfies the chief requirements of a money:

• It’s durable;
• It’s easily recognized;
• It’s divisible without loss;
• It possesses intrinsic value.

     So possessing a store of silver, in a time of inflation, is a good thing. Should the current inflationary practices of the federal government “run wild,” as happened in Weimar Germany and contemporary Zimbabwe, silver will be negotiable. Indeed, given current valuations, silver is a more practical store of value than gold.

     But let’s look at that phrase current valuations a bit more closely. There’s no central authority decreeing “This shall be the dollar price of an ounce of silver.” What Kitco and other sources tell us about the price of silver – or anything else, really – is the price paid for it at the most recent trades. How much silver was purchased at that price? That’s not reported. Are there still buyers offering that many dollars for an ounce of silver? That too can be hard to discern.

     It’s the same with stocks, in case you were wondering.

     The question uppermost in my mind, and probably in many others, is whether silver’s explosive price increase is telling us about something that’s coming, or about something that’s already happened.

     It’s possible that up to now, the dollar price of silver has been well below its “real” exchange value. After all, recent Administrations have created a lot of new currency and credit to support their spending, while the dollar price of silver stayed relatively stable. So silver’s price could be “catching up” to that spell of high inflation.

     The alternative is that those driving silver’s price are aware that something on the horizon would greatly depress the dollar’s purchasing power. Perhaps it’s fear of the U.S. purchase of Greenland. Or it could be that the Administration is pondering the repudiation of the national debt. The dollar would be badly shaken by either of those events, and they’re not the only possibilities.

     I intend to investigate “institutional” purchases. If the large creditors and debtors in our economy are buying silver, we must infer that their analysts see either an opportunity or a looming fiscal disaster. The former is for currency speculators alone, and therefore not for us small fry. The latter would justify a “flight to safety” of the sort that silver represents.

     But let’s imagine that the dollar price of silver is being set by the purchases not of institutions but of individual Americans. That would tell quite a different story, one summarized by economist Gary North and quoted in Robert Ringer’s How You Can Find Happiness During the Collapse of Western Civilization:

     When a majority of depositors become convinced that a majority of depositors have become convinced that a majority of depositors are going to try to get their money out simultaneously, a majority of depositors start trying to get their money out simultaneously.

     “Getting your money out” really means doing whatever you can to preserve your purchasing power. If the dollar is losing purchasing power as we watch, then the sensible thing to do is to “get out of dollars:” to extract whatever purchasing power your dollar-denominated assets still possess and put it into a more stable store of value. In short, it would signal that ordinary Americans have lost confidence in the dollar and have started “a run on the bank.”

     I’ll be looking further into this. Stay tuned.

The Plausibility Chestnut

     We who write speculative fiction are regularly besieged by critics over plausibility. “Is that really possible?” they ask. “Could it happen in the ‘real world?’” Sometimes, the answer is “No.” At others, the answer is “No, but that’s irrelevant.” And at others, the answer is “What’s this ‘real world’ you’re talking about?”

     Speculative fiction is fiction that speculates! I should have thought that was obvious on its face. But then, obvious really means overlooked, doesn’t it?

     Critics and their hangers-on do a lot of overlooking.

     I got lambasted for Christine D’Alessandro. I got it again for Althea Morelon. The exceptional nature of those characters seemed irrelevant to my critics’ determination to pick nits. I can’t help wondering what kind of crap Malorie Cooper has had to put up with.

     Now, there is a downside to depicting super-competent female warriors. Most women simply aren’t equipped for combat, whether melee-style or ranged. They have disadvantages in strength, speed, endurance, and the ability to tolerate serious injury and keep fighting. But there are exceptions, whose exceptional nature ought to be obvious… oh, there I go again. A full-scale, lifelong dedication to physical conditioning and the acquisition of combat skills might conceivably result in a warrior as capable as Charlize Theron’s Lorraine Broughton, though we wouldn’t expect it of Taylor Swift or Sydney Sweeney.

     We certainly shouldn’t expect it of the Girl Next Door. Nor should we expect the Girl Next Door to be ready and able to protect herself against real-world male predators.

     The Girl Next Door should carry some defensive equipment, to be sure – a pepper spray, a Ken Onion assisted folding knife and a KelTec P11 with two extra mags strike me as about right for ladies in the beleaguered Northeast – but she should also expect the assistance of masculine help and call out for it at once. She should not carry a broadsword. (Do you know how hard it is to accessorize those things?)

     But we were discussing fiction.

* * *

     Genuinely entertaining, uplifting fiction cannot be about dead flies in the bottom of cracked teacups. It also cannot be about someone’s angst or his unfulfilled yearnings. Things must happen. Characters worth paying attention to must be challenged, must rise to the occasion, and must prevail, albeit at a price. Anything else is too dreary for me, and – I suspect – for most other readers of fiction.

     My sort of fiction requires heroes: characters of great stature, or at least great potential. Such people, male or female, are exceptions. You won’t find them on streetcorners. And if they cluster in a wholly fictional county, what of it? Birds of a feather and all that, remember?

     So plausibility, in the strict, real-world sense, must sidle over to make room for fictional heroes. There are some in the real world, to be sure, but they’re few. They don’t get a lot of air time or column-inches. Which, semi-ironically, is why there’s a stronger demand for fictional heroes than in many years.

     Of course, for those who disagree, there’s always “literary” fiction.

Uncorrectable

WARNING!
The following piece will contain a common profanity.
For today, I found that profanity unavoidable.
Read on at your own risk. * * *

     There are two kinds of people: those who believe that there are two kinds of people, and those who don’t.

     Yes, yes: it’s an old gag. But I’m an old man; what do you expect from the likes of me? Anyway, I got up humming an old song, one that everyone has heard but is light-years distant from “the charts” in our time: this one. Being analytically inclined and surrounded by people desperate for an explanation for our current state of FUBARity, I gave it some thought.

     What’s that? You don’t understand FUBARity? Aw, c’mon! FUBAR is older than I am! FUBAR is a companion concept to SNAFU: “Situation Normal: All Fucked Up.” That droll assessment is commonplace these days:

• We know things are fucked up;
• We also know that fucked-upedness is “normal;”
• So we relax.

     But we’re not supposed to relax when things are fucked up. We’re supposed to fix things. Common though it may be, fucked-upedness is an undesirable state. So let’s get to work!

     Wait: there’s a missing step in the above: We can’t just blindly “get to work;” we must first understand why things are fucked up. Where is the error, the mistake, the wrong turning that led us away from acceptable conditions into the land of the fucked-up? We must isolate that first and foremost.

     So we try, and are repeatedly thwarted. Our search leads us to people much like ourselves, except that… well, they aren’t. They don’t respond to citations of that essential ingredient in all investigations of fucked-upedness: reality. We shower them with actual data drawn from the experiences of men and nations, and they dismiss it! They talk around it; they shrug it off; they change the subject, hurl imprecations, or both. There’s no getting them to live in the same universe as we do.

     Some of them counter-shower us, sometimes with inane platitudes, but at other times with “studies.” The conclusions of those studies strike us as perverse. But given our inclination to respect systematic investigations of any sort, we trace those studies back to the people and institutions that emitted them, and we find… more fucked-upedness!

     There’s an enraging circularity about it all. It can drive a sane man mad, a peaceable man violent. We resist those inclinations and try again. After all, we’re talking to people much like ourselves. They must be reachable! But nothing changes.

     Presently we give up. We accept that though we may have found the problem – indeed, we most certainly have found it – we cannot fix it without violating the “rights” of those people who, after all, are much like ourselves. We shy back from the required means. We look for other measures, but in vain.

     For what we have found is FUBARity: that condition of being which is “Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.”

     There’s a small dissonance in there. We recognize the fucked-upedness; it’s those who suffer it that don’t recognize it. But fixing the condition is what matters. Fixing it eludes us because of our respect for their “rights.”

     Our frustration knows no bounds.

* * *

     It’s time for a quote. This is one for which my source is hearsay. I’m told that the person who emitted it said it at a public appearance that I did not attend. I trust the person who repeated it to me, so I’ll give it to you as he did:

     “Savages have no rights.” – Ayn Rand

     Enormous dismay ensues. No rights at all? Not even the right to life? That can’t be right! Surely there’s some escape clause here.

     But there isn’t. The problem lies in the meaning of that term savages.

     A savage, in Rand’s lexicon, is someone who doesn’t recognize or honor rights as such. His ethical metaphysic is “What can I get away with?” Dangerous as individuals, savages are genocidally lethal when they band together. And there are bands of them ravaging our land even now.

     Savages yield only before overwhelming force. But we shy back from using force against them, because… well, they have rights! The right to life, at least. So running one over is out.

     But that yields the street to the savages. Unacceptable! What, then? Drive around them? Well, if possible… which it often isn’t. To get to where we must go, force will be required.

     You cannot concede rights to others who don’t concede yours.

* * *

     As you can surely tell by now, I’m not talking about the stereotype of a savage. That “black Sambo” figure in a loincloth with a bone through his nose blocks a lot of people’s thinking. I’m talking about people much like us in appearance and overall conduct, but who are willing to do anything and everything to get what they want politically. It doesn’t matter to them whose rights they must trample, or whether the end they seek is fatally unstable. They get their satisfactions from their political stances and those who share them. That’s the sustenance they seek: acknowledgement from their sort that they’re “good people.” Compared to that, what relevance has reality?

     There’s the core of FUBARity: it cannot be corrected by reference to reality. Those people who look like us and (mostly) dress like us yearn for acknowledgement that they’re good people much too strongly to be deflected by reason or evidence. Reality is, for them, an obstacle rather than a reference point. It must be defeated, and it will! Surely older and wiser heads who share their views are already working on it.

     I could go on, but I don’t think there’s a need. In closing, please have a look at two tweets: This one, which fancifully compares those people just like us to “large language models;” and this one, which invokes a term from systems theory for the self-referential defensive behavior of an institution that resolves to ignore reality to the extent it threatens the internal logic of the institution itself. Yes, they’re a bit fucked-up themselves, and they complicate something that’s really quite simple, but they illustrate how far reasonable people will go to explain the impenetrability of FUBARity.

     Have a nice day.

The Self-Correcting System

     When you break the big laws, you do not get liberty; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws. – G. K. Chesterton

     The Holy Grail of all designers, no matter what they design, is the self-correcting system. Decades spent in systems design and implementation taught me how ardently such systems are pursued… and how impossible they are.

     Actually, that’s an overstatement. A self-correcting system might be possible… if it had no inputs and no outputs, and if all it ever does is correct itself. It can’t do anything else, because that would require a “monitor and correct” subsystem to monitor and correct the “worker” subsystem. That in turn would require yet another “monitor and correct” subsystem to do the same for the other subsystems, which would require yet another “monitor and correct” subsystem, which would require yet another “monitor and correct” subsystem… oh, forget it.

     Any system that couples to the world outside itself will eventually break down. A system that doesn’t couple to the outside world is useless. Toss it into Plato’s Cave and forget about it.

     Man’s societies can’t be made perfectly self-correcting. Our attempts to do so have always had vulnerabilities. The most important of those vulnerabilities – the one that’s always targeted by the agents of destruction – is the set of rules that defines what it means for the system to work.

     Some such rules are made into laws. No murder! No stealing! No contract-breaking! No false witness! Simple rules like those are widely understood. Yes, some will break them, but as long as the overwhelming majority continue to believe in and support them, that majority will serve to correct the lawbreakers.

     The society will break down if the number of rulebreakers grows so large that the work of correcting them won’t allow the normal functions of society to continue. The more correcting is required, the less time, material, and energy remain for getting other things done. Imagine a society where 50% of people are criminals and the other 50% are law enforcement.

     But that’s not the only way a society can break down. It can also fail if too many rules become laws.

* * *

     Jamie Wilson has produced a fine, compendious piece on the importance of etiquette to liberty and civilization. The heart of the matter:

     When politeness weakens, institutions compensate. They add rules and procedures and signage, training, scripts, escalation protocols, and enforcement mechanisms. This expansion is not driven by malice, but by necessity. When informal, community- and self-enforced norms fail, formal control rushes in to fill the gap.
     In high-trust environments, rules are sparse because people regulate themselves. Courtesy absorbs friction before it escalates, apologies work, discretion works, and flexibility is possible because bad faith is the exception, not the expectation.
     As trust erodes, however, discretion becomes dangerous. Zero-tolerance policies replace judgment, and escalation replaces conversation. Enforcement by bureaucracies and government structures replaces negotiation. The result is a paradox familiar to anyone living in a bureaucratized society: the more formal rules are added, the worse public behavior becomes. Not because rules are evil, but because rules cannot substitute for internal restraint.

     But “formal control” – i.e., enforcement of norms by law – can’t do the job of self-control. In the nature of things, it cannot be enough. And self-control has been under sustained attack since the end of World War I.

* * *

     Chesterton’s glum reference to the “small laws” doesn’t address the problem of enforcement. He probably felt he didn’t need to go there; it “should” be “obvious.” It’s plain enough from the history of overregulated societies.

     The dismissal of prior norms for public conduct has produced a situation in which many Americans find going out of their homes distasteful or worse. The dismissal of norms for private conduct, which many hardcore libertarians are wont to shrug aside, may be even worse. It’s especially worrisome in a society that upholds the concept of privacy as a right.

     We’ve had some ghastly examples of what can occur behind closed doors. Jeffrey Dahmer. Ed Gein. Ted Bundy. There are many others that are less famous.

     Nothing could have stopped any of those men other than a forceful invasion of their private lives. Others are among us that have similarly decided that there are no rules, and we don’t know who or where they are. We won’t know until some mistake reveals their horrors. Matters have become serious enough that we must suspect that there are many of them.

     No, I’m not suggesting that mass murderers are consequences of the failure of etiquette. But the enervation of self-control, coupled to the premise that if it’s behind closed doors, it’s alright, is what makes their infamies possible.

     The social system cannot self-correct. It requires a reinstitution of norms, and law enforcement is not equal to that task. Their origin was in faith.

* * *

     When John Adams wrote:

     Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

     … he was expressing the premise required for a society to have both a high degree of liberty and a tolerable amount of order. For liberty to be not only possible but sustainable, the rules of order must be internal to us. They must be as self-enforcing as the law of gravity. Today, owing to the increasing disaffiliation from our previously common Christian faith and the norms it propounded, that self-enforcement has largely failed.

     See also Lynne Truss’s valuable little book Talk To The Hand.

Breakfast All Day

     [I’ve been tempted to use that phrase in a great many contexts. This morning I woke up actually thinking it. So here it is. If what follows fails to make it “make sense,” sorry! No refunds! – FWP]

     There are some very smart people saying some very penetrating things… and not being listened to. I’d imagine we feel many of the same things, including frequent sieges of weariness from “shouting into the wind.” Yet we keep doing it. Some of us die with such sentiments in our minds and mouths, unable to reach the keyboard for a final sally.

     Would you like to know the secret to universal peace and amity? Not the secret to universal happiness; I’m still working on that one. But we’ve got the peace and amity bit down pat. Here’s how you can get it:

Mind Your Own Business,
And Keep Your Business To Yourself.

     That’s it. That’s all it takes. It’s been clear for millennia. So why haven’t we achieved universal peace and amity? I can answer that one, too.

     Because we’re shitheads. Meddling shitheads. Each and every one of us carries around a demon whose mission on Earth is to interfere in other people’s lives. Some of us manage to master that demon. Others? Their demon masters them. And there’s no tolerating them.

     No, I’m not the first to make these illusion-shattering observations. Thousands, maybe millions of other people have offered them to the world. But they weren’t listened to. Many of those to whom they spoke simply waved them off: “Naah, he’s just another shithead.” And they went on trying to run others’ lives, or offering power to people whom they thought would do it for them.

     A great man of times past, Frederic Bastiat, expressed the essence of it compactly and brilliantly:

     There are too many "great" men in the world — legislators, organizers, do-gooders, leaders of the people, fathers of nations, and so on, and so on. Too many persons place themselves above mankind; they make a career of organizing it, patronizing it, and ruling it.
     Now someone will say: "You yourself are doing this very thing." True. But it must be admitted that I act in an entirely different sense; if I have joined the ranks of the reformers, it is solely for the purpose of persuading them to leave people alone. I do not look upon people as Vancauson looked upon his automaton. Rather, just as the physiologist accepts the human body as it is, so do I accept people as they are. I desire only to study and admire.

     No one listened to him, either.

* * *

     A hot flash for my Gentle Readers: it is possible to have what you want, but there are requirements:

• You could make it yourself, beholden to no one;
• Someone else could make it for you, for a price.

     Real deep intellectual insight, eh? Maybe I should have it printed on a T-shirt. But it really is that simple. The trouble starts when you decide that you can force other people to give you what you want.

     That doesn’t apply solely to material things. Most other wants, like peace and privacy, are available on the same terms. You can make them, or buy them. At least you could, if it weren’t for all the meddlers.

     Meddling isn’t just irritating; it’s also expensive. Professional meddlers pile costs atop what it “should” cost to get what you want. Sometimes they tell you “No, you can’t have that” quite flatly. Punching them in the nose carries a cost, too. (Shooting them is frowned upon. Especially by them.)

     The great challenge of the man who would be free today is to escape the meddlers.

* * *

     If it weren’t for SpaceX, Mankind would have no hope at all.

     For a very long time, spaceflight was entirely the province of governments. Elon Musk and SpaceX have shattered that cartel. Spaceflight is now available to anyone with the money.

     Yes, it costs a lot, but that’s in the nature of things. It’s hard. It’s dangerous. There are no McDonalds up there. And the training required is no joke. So for the moment, access to space is an extreme “luxury good.” But most luxury goods grow more accessible over time: easier, cheaper, and available from more sources. So if present trends should continue, our descendants will have easier, cheaper, and more available access to space.

     But “present trends continuing” is a bad bet. There are too many meddlers to count on it. And they don’t want you to escape their grip.

     Governments are poised to clamp down on space travel. They don’t have to do so yet. They’ll wait until billionaires start looking at the Moon as a vacation destination and start planning Lunar playgrounds for themselves and others. When spaceflight stands at the doorstep of true popularity, governments will pounce. They’ll start nattering about “safety” and “the rule of law” and “the need for regulation.” That low-gravity condo you’ve been dreaming about will be made impossible for you to afford… or acquire.

     You see, they’d be unable to meddle with you if you’re a light-second and a half away. Meddlers can’t stand the thought of that, and governments are the quintessential meddlers. So they’ll make it impossible for you to get out there.

     Either we do away with these monstrosities that we call “necessary evils” right BLEEP!ing now, or they’ll strangle the last hope for human freedom while it’s still in its crib.

* * *

     Many years ago, I worked a weird shift: from roughly 4:00 PM to Midnight. It was tough to get used to. It separated me from most of the rest of the world. Others who’ve had to do similar things will tell you about it. Ask a friendly bartender.

     But it gave me an appreciation for the nearby diner that would serve breakfast all day. Waffles, pancakes, French toast! Oatmeal with cream and brown sugar! Sausages, eggs over easy! Bacon, bacon, bacon!!

     I came to love that place and the Greek immigrant family that owned it. On the rare occasions when it had to close, I would pout. I’d go home and do my best: toast an English muffin, slather it with butter and jam, and chow down. But I’d miss the home fries and the pretty waitress.

     Time passed, and I went back to working a regular daytime shift. But I retained my affection for that diner… and for breakfast foods. It came as a shock when the diner closed permanently. I had to know the reasons, as I wasn’t the only regular patron who loved it.

     The reason? Someone on the town planning / zoning board had a friend who wanted to build an apartment complex where that diner stood. So he persuaded the board, the board got together with the health authorities, and together they made it ever more difficult for the diner to stay in business. The builder came along with an offer for the locale. The family bowed to the inevitable, took the money, and moved on.

     I think I want a waffle with butter and syrup. Or maybe a three-egg omelet with lots of cheese and diced ham. And home fries! Lots of home fries.

     Have you ever had a craving like that, Gentle Reader? Better satisfy it now, before the meddlers get to it. There are a lot of them, you know. And shooting them is still frowned upon.

Education And “The Conditioners”

     From time to time I’m struck by the extraordinary insight of the great Clive Staples Lewis:

     Where the old [education] initiated, the new merely 'conditions'. The old dealt with its pupils as grown birds deal with young birds when they teach them to fly; the new deals with them more as the poultry-keeper deals with young birds— making them thus or thus for purposes of which the birds know nothing. In a word, the old was a kind of propagation—men transmitting manhood to men; the new is merely propaganda. [From The Abolition Of Man]

     And so it is. The origin of education as the Western world once practiced it is in the Socratic method:

1. Select a topic: a proposition in causation perhaps focused on an important event;
2. Question the causative forces that underlie it;
   1. Confront the proposition with clarifying questions;
   2. For each further proposition introduced:
      1. Question the causative forces that underlie it;
      2. For each further proposition introduced:
         1. Confront the proposition with clarifying questions;
         2. For each further proposition introduced:
            …

     Yes, the Socratic method is recursive – and with no guaranteed exit criterion. But that is part of its effectiveness: to instill in the student the inclination to look deeper. This is how a good teacher leads his student to form the habit of thought: the determination to seek reasons and explanations.

     In a classroom setting, the honest use of the Socratic method will often cause two (or more) students to differ on the reasons for something. A really good teacher will then strive to get the students to perpetuate the method, by questioning each other’s proposed explanations. If successful, this teaches the student three things of inestimable value:

• Differences of opinion are normal and tolerable;
• He will regularly confront such differences among his peers;
• Some propositions aren’t plumbable “all the way to the bottom.”

     Clearly, the Socratic method is a lot of work. It demands patience of both the teacher and the student. It also requires “guardrails:” prohibitions on personalities and indoctrination. Yet it is the foundation for acquiring facility with the one and only tool Man possesses that the lower orders do not: reason.

     Lewis saw the acquisition of both reason and a grasp of what he called “The Tao” – i.e., those properties of existence that cannot be established irrefutably through a reasoning process – as indispensable to the formation of character. Given what’s become of both education and human character over the century behind us, I’d say he was correct.

* * *

     What our “public” schools call “education,” outside of mathematics and the sciences, bears little relation to education by the Socratic method. It comes closer to indoctrination: This is the reason! Don’t you forget it! And no questions! The late Robert M. Pirsig provides a striking demonstration of this distinction in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:

     But then, below the definition on the blackboard, [Phædrus] wrote, "But even though Quality cannot be defined, you know what Quality is!"
     and the storm started all over again.      "Oh, no, we don’t!"
     "Oh, yes, you do."
     "Oh, no, we don’t!"
     "Oh, yes, you do!" he said and he had some material ready to demonstrate it to them.
     He had selected two examples of student composition. The first was a rambling, disconnected thing with interesting ideas that never built into anything. The second was a magnificent piece by a student who was mystified himself about why it had come out so well.
     Phædrus read both, then asked for a show of hands on who thought the first was best. Two hands went up. He asked how many liked the second better. Twenty-eight hands went up.
     "Whatever it is," he said, "that caused the overwhelming majority to raise their hands for the second one is what I mean by Quality. So you know what it is."
     There was a long reflective silence after this, and he just let it last.
     This was just intellectually outrageous, and he knew it. He wasn’t teaching anymore, he was indoctrinating. He had erected an imaginary entity, defined it as incapable of definition, told the students over their own protests that they knew what it was, and demonstrated this by a technique that was as confusing logically as the term itself. He was able to get away with this because logical refutation required more talent than any of the students had.

     When an “educator” does such a thing, he’s rejecting the probing, questioning approach of the Socratic method and “laying down the law.” This obviously has nothing to do with developing a habit of thought or scrutiny.

     Of course, Pirsig / Phædrus had reasons for doing what he did to that class. He was attempting to show that his conception of Quality, if it has a place in existence, must be part of Lewis’s Tao — and that his students were overwhelmingly able to perceive it as such.

     Indoctrination is never appropriate under the guise of intellectual inquiry. Indeed, it’s the diametric opposite of inquiry as we understand it. Perhaps the tensions that drove Pirsig to his mental breakdown arose from his determination to assert undefinable Quality to an intellectual audience. But I digress.

* * *

     It’s possible that schooling as practiced today is incompatible with inquiry, and therefore with the Socratic method. One instructor / many students / an established syllabus and a schedule to keep: What are we to expect from such a situation when – or perhaps if — one of the Great Questions arises in the course of events? It seems that either the Question must be tabled indefinitely, or the instructor must give “the official answer” and march on.

     That’s no way to foster a habit of thought, Rather, it suggests that Authorities have already decided once and for all Why Things Are As They Are. Further inquiry would be at best pointless, at worst subversive.

     I could go on, but I think my Gentle Readers can do so for themselves.

     If you haven’t yet, get your kids out of the “public” schools.

The Era Of Universal Distrust

     Regard this, from CBS News:

BREAKING: The ICE agent who fatally shot Renee Good on Jan. 7 in Minneapolis, Jonathan Ross, suffered internal bleeding to the torso following the incident, according to two U.S. officials briefed on his medical condition.

— CBS News (@CBSNews) January 14, 2026

     Various persons on X are proclaiming it “proof” that Jonathan Ross was within his rights and his rules of engagement when he shot Renee Good. Others are saying “why believe it? It’s from the government.” Of course, those two groups align nearly perfectly with their prejudgments of the tragic event.

     But just after the event, a video was available that could be interpreted as Officer Ross shooting Mrs. Good without cause. One community of opinion claimed that to be irrefutable, while another argued that the perspective from which the video was shot made the matter unclear. Once again, there was near-perfect alignment of those judgments with their prejudgments of the justice of the act.

     And both communities have arguments of a sort for their stances.

* * *

     Time was, hard evidence was broadly trusted. “People lie; evidence doesn’t” was the watchword. That time has given way to advances in manipulative technology. No picture or video one hasn’t shot for oneself is guaranteed to be accurate. Arguments for disbelieving other sorts of evidence are plentiful. Belief in allegations and affirmations now derives from political or emotional premises.

     Even once-trusted “chain of evidence” procedures are no long assumed to be reliable. After all, the people maintaining those chains are employees of the State! Why wouldn’t they falsify records or give false testimony to protect their paychecks?

     We’re in a lot of danger, Gentle Reader. Our previous “high-trust society” is very near to a “zero-trust society” today. But without at least a modicum of trust in the benevolence and veracity of others, a society can’t function at all. Willingness to accept another person’s statements on his word alone is demanded of us several times every day.

     Yes, I’ve written about this before. The problem hasn’t gone away. No, I don’t have a solution. I do have quite a lot of fear.

* * *

     This is just a quickie, an “early-morning thought.” I couldn’t shake it, so I decided to write it out. Have you had thoughts along these lines? What conclusions did you reach, if any?

     If a “large” high-trust society has become impossible for us, what’s next? A lot of “small” societies of trust, based on community and personal acquaintance? Or a condition of perpetual suspicion?

     How much longer before the supermarket down the road becomes untrustworthy because the manager “isn’t one of us” -- ? Or before the contractor recommended to you for waterproofing your basement makes you uneasy because of his skin tone… or his name? What happens when whole occupations are regarded with suspicion because of a fraud rampant among them at some earlier time?

     Oh, right. We’re already there, aren’t we? Apologies, Gentle Reader. My memory isn’t what it was. But I’m still working to enlighten and edify you. Trust me on that.

There is no need in human life so great as that men should trust one another and should trust their government, should believe in promises, and should keep promises in order that future promises may be believed in and in order that confident cooperation may be possible. Good faith -- personal, national, and international -- is the first prerequisite of decent living, of the steady going on of industry, of governmental financial strength, and of international peace. -- Benjamin M. Anderson, Economics and the Public Welfare: A Financial and Economic History of the United States, 1914 -- 1946

Tyranny 101

     So! You have your eye on a career in Statehood, do you? You hope for a satrapy of your own? One you can enjoy lifelong, untroubled by the currents that roil the larger world, serene in the knowledge that “your” people love you and would never dream of rebelling against you? Well, my young friend: here at the Academy for Dominator Development, we’ve assembled a comprehensive program for the likes of you.

     Yes, our program is effective. It provides a complete education for the dictator-to-be. But it’s not an easy course of study. You’ll find yourself marveling in horror at the fates of the tyrants of yore. You’ll be expected to analyze the wherefores. Many a failed tyrant has spent his last moments wishing someone had counseled him against his follies. Ironically, in many cases someone did… and was summarily executed for his cheek.

     Let’s open the catalogue and have a look.

     The syllabus for the required introductory course, Stability of Regime, might suggest something other than a progressive programme. Rather than what you’d think would be the subject of a freshman-level course, it focuses on the elementary sins that have brought down mighty States. Also, it gives its overarching lessons in short, pithy phrases. You’ll look at the headings and scratch your dandruff. You’ll think “How did he / they not know that? It’s so elementary!” Yet those missteps have brought down failed States throughout history.

     How about this one: Don’t meddle with religion. You know that already, don’t you? Look at how many States have embroiled themselves fatally in wars with their neighbors over doctrinal differences, some of those differences finer than a red hair! Because its monarchs refused to let godly subjects alone, Europe didn’t know a moment’s peace for a thousand years. Royal families that had enjoyed centuries of hegemony were laid low over it.

     Then there’s this one: Don’t play favorites! Power requires the consent of those you rule. Once a ruler starts handing out privileges, exceptions from evenhanded justice, because the king owes this one money or fancies that one’s daughter, the jig is up. Your people will no longer think of themselves as “your people.” They’ll assign that status to those you let get away with their crimes… and out will come the torches and pitchforks.

     But this next one eludes all but the most insightful students. You might think it silly. After all, hordes of tyrants throughout history have done it. But where are those once mighty lords today, youngster? Do any still wield power? How about their descendants: what condition are they in?

     So Don’t fuck with the money!

     Money is to a nation what blood is to the body. It must be kept clean. It must flow freely. And above all, it must never be diluted! Yet the Sirens’ song of money manipulation is as indisputable as its fate is inevitable. When a monarch lays his ravenous hands on the coinage, he loses his reason… and often his head.

     If you tax with a light hand – never more than a tenth of the national product – it may pinch when you have a grand scheme to fund, but it won’t evoke unrest. The commoners are never more sensitive to their king than when the tax collector is on their doorstep. Besides, the history of grand schemes is anything but grand. That alone should be a stark warning to you.

     Yet there may come a day when you or some halfwit advisor concocts a scheme too beautiful to dismiss. It would solve a pressing problem! It would placate the restive and unruly! It would make your people love you all the more! But where are the funds for it to come from?

     And a demon in a gilt robe will whisper to you in the sweetest of tones, Why not debase the coinage?

     The seductive power of that suggestion is why Stability of Regime is an entrance-level course. You must understand the fury currency inflation would unleash. It dwarfs all else in statecraft. You must see it, in all its gory grandeur, and never feel it in reality. Else your reign will be doomed by your own cupidity and vanity.

     You may say to yourself, “I can get away with it.” You can’t. You may say to yourself, “Just this once.” That, too, is a lie.

     In all of recorded history, only one tyrant has resisted that lure: Napoleon Bonaparte. “I will pay cash, or nothing!” he proclaimed. He knew the importance of sound money, for the Revolutionary regime had demonstrated it by violating it. Had the rest of Europe not banded together to depose him, his descendants might rule France today.

     Stability of Regime is a one-semester course. It’s the prerequisite to all the Academy’s other courses of study. The textbooks are kept continuously available at the Academy bookstore. Yes, they’re hefty tomes for what seem simple lessons, but it takes a lot of pages to properly chronicle the errors of rulers past and present. Classes are held in the lecture hall at 8:00 AM. Bring pen and paper.

     Register at the desk to your right. Use black ink only. Tuition is due before classes begin on Monday. Cash only. No checks or credit cards. We will test your coin.

Day Off

     I need some downtime. This old age stuff is wearing. Back tomorrow, I hope. Meanwhile, pray for Scott Adams: that he depart peacefully from this life, and that his soul find its way into God's arms.

This Greenland Thing

     Greenland in the news! Contention over Greenland! NATO roiled by tensions over Greenland! War threatens! Film at eleven!

     I know, I know: you’ve been there. Actually, for those with short memories, I too have been there, and if the tune is the same, the words differ somewhat:

     President Donald Trump and his top officials have framed their drive for Greenland — a semi-autonomous Danish territory — as all about U.S. national security, broader NATO footprints in the increasingly competitive Arctic and grabbing critical minerals.
     This is a somewhat thin justification. The U.S. has for many decades had a defense agreement with Copenhagen to keep a military presence in Greenland.
     Plus, much of the concern plaguing Europe for the last year is built on a fear of the U.S. pulling away from the continent — not committing more American troops to a region NATO is desperate to safeguard against growing Russian and Chinese influence.

     Please read the rest. It’s not bad for a Newsweek article. But most of the salient points are already part of public discourse.

     There’s a strange feel to President Trump’s desire that Greenland become a part of the U.S. Since this is the second time around for this initiative, I have to wonder whether America’s national interests are his real reasons for pursuing it.

     A few things that Greenland is not:

• It’s not arable.
• It’s not “living space.”
• It’s not easily exploitable.

     I’m told it’s valuable for military purposes. I’ll accept that; many harsh places stand guard over strategic travel routes, and the North Atlantic is forever full of vessels, both surface and subsurface, that bear watching. But the U.S. already has military bases on Greenland. Denmark, which claims sovereignty over Greenland, has expressed willingness that American military exploitation of Greenland should increase.

     I’m also told that Greenland is rich in natural resources. That may be so, but again, the Danish government has been accommodating toward commercial exploitation of Greenland’s resources. We must ask why the formal acquisition of Greenland – its transfer from Denmark’s jurisdiction to ours – matters so greatly to President Trump.

     The simplest explanation may be the correct one: Trump’s a real-estate man. Any real-estate man would rather own than lease. And there are possible advantages in not having to bargain with another power for the use of Greenland. But responsibility for the people of Greenland would come with it.

     Another, somewhat darker explanation, would be that contention over Greenland makes an ideal lever by which to pull the U.S. out of NATO. NATO is the conduit through which American resources are pulled into Europe. The drain NATO places on American military power and funding was the original reason that President Nixon ended the redeemability of the dollar in gold. Fomenting discord over Greenland might be an indirect method for ending NATO, an alliance long overdue for dissolution.

     There’s been talk about a morphing of the Monroe Doctrine into a “Donroe Doctrine,” under which American authority and responsibility for the Western Hemisphere would justify enfolding Greenland. That’s a bit thin. Greenland isn’t really part of the Western Hemisphere, and as previously stated, our military is already there.

     A minor possibility is that the matter is ego-driven: President Trump may envision American acquisition of Greenland as securing his place in the history books. It would be America’s largest territorial acquisition, edging out the Louisiana Purchase. That would be an impressive enlargement of the U.S., but in practical terms it would change almost nothing. Anyway, President Trump’s place in the books is already secure for other reasons, and I’m sure he knows it.

     Finally, there’s this: Back in the days of the Plantagenets, it was a common practice for the king to “give” a province to a brother or son. If President Trump is thinking of Greenland as a college-graduation gift for Barron, I’d suggest a snowglobe instead. Young men don’t often cherish such gifts for long. They thank Dad for them, but soon enough they stick them in the back of the closet and forget them. There they languish until their wives-to-be decree a “cleanup” that sees them left at the curb for the recyclers. No one would want to see Greenland suffer that fate. Especially the Greenlanders.

     Anyway, I still think if we’re going to go national-real-estate shopping, we should buy Canada. The National Hockey League Hall Of Fame really belongs in America, don’t you think?

The Baptism Of Jesus

     According to Matthew the Evangelist:

     Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John, to be baptized of him. But John forbad him, saying, I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?
     And Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness. Then he suffered him.
     And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him: And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

     [Matthew 3:13-17]

     It’s a curious episode: the Son of God submitting himself to baptism by a mortal! Why? What made it necessary, or appropriate?

     This morning’s Mass celebrant offered his thesis, which for all I know may be official Church teaching: that by accepting baptism by John, Jesus was validating Baptism as a sacrament. As Catholics believe that sacramental Baptism cleanses the new Christian of the burden of original sin, that has some weight. But it might not be a complete explanation.

     For further insight, let’s look at Jesus’s lifelong adoption of lowliness.

     Jesus was born to two poor travelers, who were far from their home. He spent his earliest hours in a manger. He spent his youth laboring alongside his father. When he undertook his ministry, he traveled Judea as a mortal, in the humblest of all modes of travel: on foot, without any money, luggage or “extra” possessions. He depended upon the generosity of those he visited for his sustenance and his shelter. He would die in the most torturous and ignominious manner of that time – and between two petty thieves!

     Accepting baptism by John was fully consistent with Jesus’s adoption of other lowly practices. Only in his miracles, most of all his Resurrection, did he display divine power and status.

     There’s a lot to ponder in there, especially in light of what Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen had to say about him:

     When God came to Earth, there was no room in the inn, but there was room in the stable. What lesson is hidden behind the inn and the stable?

     What is an inn, but the gathering-place of public opinion, the focal point of the world’s moods, the residence of the worldly, the rallying place of the fashionable and those who count in the management of the world’s affairs? What is a stable, but the place of outcasts, the refuge of beasts, and the shelter of the valueless, and therefore the symbol of those who in the eyes of public opinion do not count and hence may be ignored as of no great value or moment? Anyone in the world would have expected to find Divinity in an inn, but no one would have expected to have found it in a stable….

     If, in those days, the stars of the heavens by some magic touch had folded themselves together as silver words and announced the birth of the Expected of the Nations, where would the world have gone in search of Him?

     The world would have searched for the Babe in some palace by the Tiber, or in some gilded house of Athens, or in some inn of a great city where gathered the rich, the mighty, and the powerful ones of Earth. They would not have been the least surprised to have found the newborn King of Kings stretched out on a cradle of gold and surrounded by kings and philosophers paying Him their tribute and obeisance.

     But they would have been surprised to have discovered Him in a manger, laid on coarse straw and warmed by the breath of oxen, as if in atonement for the coldness of the hearts of men. No one would have expected that the One whose fingers could stop the turning of Arcturus would be smaller than the head of an ox; that He who could hurl the ball of fire into the heavens would one day be warmed by the breath of beasts; that He who could make a canopy of stars would be shielded from a stormy sky by the roof of a stable; or that He who made the Earth as His future home would be homeless at home. No one would have expected to find Divinity in such a condition; but that is because Divinity is always where you least expect to find it….

     The world has always sought Divinity in the power of a Babel, but never in the weakness of a Bethlehem. It has searched for it in the inns of popular opinion, but never in the stable of the ignored. It has looked for it in the cradles of gold, but never in the cribs of straw – always in power, but never in weakness.

     The Jews of First Century Judea believed that their Messiah would be a temporal leader, a warlord who would cast off the yoke of Rome and lead them to glory among the nations. They got a man in a simple robe and sandals, who sought neither power nor status. He accepted baptism from a crude wilderness figure, and went on to preach gentleness, simplicity, and repentance. Is it any wonder that so many failed to accept him?

     May God bless and keep you all.