New For 2026!

What do you think, Gentle Reader?

Making It Clear

     Every now and then, someone will post a rendition of the following sort, somewhere on the Web – typically, these days, at X:

One year ago, I publicly came out in support of President Trump.

I had absolutely no idea how severe the backlash would be.

The Left tried to destroy everything good in my life.

My job. My family. Our safety.

We lost more friends than I ever could have imagined.

Politics is…

— Matt Van Swol (@mattvanswol) February 15, 2026

     Please read it in its entirety, Gentle Reader. It’s worth your time.

     The story isn’t a new one, of course. We’ve heard similar accounts before this. The commonalities among them are striking. But the differences among them are just as important. It’s worth noting them for general consideration.

     Matt Van Swol describes himself as “Former Nuclear Scientist for US Dept of Energy.” So we must suppose he has a few working brain cells. Despite that, it came as a surprise to him when those that he regarded as friends before he announced his support for President Trump turned against him as a person. Hadn’t he noticed the pattern? Or did he think it wouldn’t apply to him?

     Then there’s this part:

     There’s a specific kind of grief that comes from realizing people didn’t just disagree with you… ...they re-categorized you as "unsafe." Someone once told me that, in person. "We don't feel safe with you." Like you became a different species overnight.

     Now, in point of fact, Matt’s former, left-leaning “friends” don’t feel “unsafe” around him. They’re not worried that he might hurt them, steal from them, or kidnap their children. As an intelligent man who consciously changed his opinions, the threat he presents is to their assumption of righteousness. That’s the core of the Left’s appeal to its adherents: “Just adopt this political posture and you can preen yourself as being smarter and more moral than those Neanderthals in the Right!”

     This too is part of the pattern. It’s been on display throughout the Twenty-First Century… but one must see it to acknowledge it. And it speaks volumes… but one must hear it to comprehend it. Many people, including some highly intelligent ones, fail to do those things.

     This is not a major new revelation. Thomas Sowell covered it in detail in his masterpiece The Vision of the Anointed. Nearly every other significant aspect of the Left-Right divide flows from it. On June 28, it will be thirty years since the publication of that book, yet far too few people have read it.

     But I don’t mean to make heavy weather of that facet of things. Rather, allow me to note one more thing about Matt’s “transition:”

     We went to church for the first time ever, with our kids.

     Just twelve words. A simple declarative statement. But it says more than one might think upon first reading it.

     Conservatives tend to be practicing Christians. Religion of any sort mixes dubiously with politics, but the correlation between conservatism and Christianity among persons in the Right cannot be denied. Note that Matt and his family went to church “for the first time ever.” That’s a haymaker… but for the full impact one must ask “Why?”

     Allow me a snippet from an old Heinlein story, “The Man Who Sold the Moon:”

     "Ever read Carl Sandburg, George?"
     "I'm not much of a reader."
     "Try him some time. He tells a story about a man who started a rumor that they had struck oil in hell. Pretty soon everybody has left for hell, to get in on the boom. The man who started the rumor watches them all go, then scratches his head and says to himself that there just might be something in it, after all. So he left for hell, too."

     I have no doubt many of Matt’s family’s friends were practicing Christians. But he’d had no interest in such things… until he noted the correlation between conservative opinions, decency and courtesy in treating with others of divergent views, and Christian faith. He saw, and he wondered. Maybe he thought that there just might be something in it, after all.

     It’s happened before, hasn’t it?

     Spread Matt’s tale around, Gentle Reader. It has more punch than many thousands of my own words.

Valentine’s Day

     I got nuthin’, as they say, so have a few words about the saint whose deeds inspired this day:

     Saint Valentine, officially known as Saint Valentine of Rome, is a third-century Roman saint widely celebrated on February 14 and commonly associated with "courtly love."
     Although not much of St. Valentine's life is reliably known, and whether or not the stories involve two different saints by the same name is also not officially decided, it is highly agreed that St. Valentine was martyred and then buried on the Via Flaminia to the north of Rome.
     In 1969, the Roman Catholic Church removed St. Valentine from the General Roman Calendar, because so little is known about him. However, the church still recognizes him as a saint, listing him in the February 14 spot of Roman Martyrolgy.
     The legends attributed to the mysterious saint are as inconsistent as the actual identification of the man.
     One common story about St. Valentine is that in one point of his life, as the former Bishop of Terni, Narnia and Amelia, he was on house arrest with Judge Asterius. While discussing religion and faith with the Judge, Valentine pledged the validity of Jesus. The judge immediately put Valentine and his faith to the test.
     St. Valentine was presented with the judge's blind daughter and told to restore her sight. If he succeeded, the judge vowed to do anything for Valentine. Placing his hands onto her eyes, Valentine restored the child's vision.
     Judge Asterius was humbled and obeyed Valentine's requests. Asterius broke all the idols around his house, fasted for three days and became baptized, along with his family and entire 44 member household. The now faithful judge then freed all of his Christian inmates.
     St. Valentine was later arrested again for continuing to try to convert people to Christianity. He was sent to Rome under the emperor Claudius Gothicus (Claudius II). According to the popular hagiographical identity, and what is believed to be the first representation of St. Valentine, the Nuremberg Chronicle, St. Valentine was a Roman priest martyred during Claudius' reign. The story tells that St. Valentine was imprisoned for marrying Christian couples and aiding Christians being persecuted by Claudius in Rome. Both acts were considered serious crimes. A relationship between the saint and emperor began to grow, until Valentine attempted to convince Claudius of Christianity. Claudius became raged and sentenced Valentine to death, commanding him to renounce his faith or be beaten with clubs and beheaded.
     St. Valentine refused to renounce his faith and Christianity and was executed outside the Flaminian Gate on February 14, 269. However, other tales of St. Valentine's life claim he was executed either in the year 269, 270, 273 or 280. Other depictions of St. Valentine's arrests tell that he secretly married couples so husbands wouldn't have to go to war. Another variation of the legend of St. Valentine says he refused to sacrifice to pagan gods, was imprisoned and while imprisoned he healed the jailer's blind daughter. On the day of his execution, he left the girl a note signed, "Your Valentine."

     [From Catholic Online.]

     Happy Saint Valentine’s Day, Gentle Reader. Be with someone you love today. And may God bless and keep you both!

“Self-Government”

     Just recently, I stumbled upon this:

     If those percentages still hold, then once again we’re in the mystifying position where an overwhelming portion of the country is demanding a policy change that Congress is resisting with every trick at its disposal. Senate Majority Leader John Thune says one thing but does another. Several GOP Senators have pledged to oppose the SAVE Act anyway, so even were the filibuster barrier to be overcome, it probably wouldn’t garner a majority of the votes.

     Of course, it’s not the first time. A strong majority wanted Obamacare repealed; remember what happened to that? A strong majority wants federal taxation and spending slashed, the troops brought home from wherever, and Jeffrey Epstein’s porno-pedo clients hanged. Given those precedents plus what we know about the dynamic of power, the probability is that the SAVE Act – i.e., the act that would require voters to present proof of citizenship at the polls – will die aborning.

     Yes, that will allow the Democrats to steal future elections with fraudulent and otherwise illegal votes. Likely it will also cost the Republican Party both Houses of Congress in November. But so what? This is “the system.” You know, that nebulous but supremely important thing Pam Bondi has told us will collapse if Epstein’s associates are indicted and tried. Apparently that’s what Pam Bondi has sworn to protect.

     It’s out in the open, now. “The system” will defend itself and its allegiants a outrance against the nation itself. There’s no pretense of anything else any longer. “Self-government” has been revealed as a joke, an empty notion that regime propagandists have foisted upon us to pacify us. We are ruled by men whose aims run counter to our well-being, and they don’t care who knows it.

     Don’t mind me, Gentle Reader. I’m having “one of those days.” I’m sure that I’ll soon be numb enough to get back into step with the thing. I’ll get back to writing these screeds as if the details matter. It’s just that for the moment, I can’t believe any of it.

     Have a nice day.

The Fermi Paradox And Other Conjectures

     He who writes science fiction is regularly embroiled in certain arguments about what’s possible, what’s impossible, and what might be coming soon to a planet near you. He who writes far-future SF invariably resorts to “handwavium:” the postulation of imagined developments that would make possible the sort of events he wants to write about. One of the developments that’s frequently hand-waved into fictional existence is very rapid interstellar travel: i.e., travel at speeds faster than that of light.

     When I decided to write Which Art In Hope, I resolved to avoid postulating faster-than-light travel. That first volume of the Spooner Federation trilogy does a little hand-waving – e.g., it postulates developments in the biological sciences that would extend an individual life to span many centuries – but it does avoid the FTL premise. (Yes, the latter two volumes do “go FTL.” That was forced on me by the themes I sought to explore.)

     There’s much talk among SF writers about whether we’ll ever encounter other sentient species, or extraterrestrial life of any kind. Some make probabilistic arguments; others simply say “yeah, we’ll see.” But if our knowledge of physics today is accurate and sufficiently complete, we might never know.

     If we omit all hand-waving, what remains are the speed-of-light limitation and the problem of lifespan. For travel of any kind rests on two factors:

• The risks involved in undertaking that travel;
• The ratio of the time it will require to a human lifetime.

     For creatures with human-like longevity, interstellar travel is a non-starter. Let’s say Smith boards a vessel bound for Proxima Centauri, or any other “nearby” star. He will die en route. Perhaps descendants of his will get there; he won’t. And he will know that ab initio. So what’s his motivation for boarding?

     Yes, Smith could be under the pressures that motivated the Spoonerites. He’d know that he wouldn’t live to see the destination, but he might undertake the journey to perpetuate “his people.” Would any other motivation suffice?

     The enthusiast now waves his hands: “What about suspended animation?” Well, we don’t know how to do that just yet. “What about relativistic time dilation?” That would require propulsion of a magnitude that’s beyond us today and possibly tomorrow. Besides, where’s the reaction mass to come from? Newton’s Third Law can’t be suspended by Congressional decree. So present conditions continuing, Mankind will likely be confined to the Solar System.

     This makes me sad. I’d love for Mankind to “go interstellar.” The adventures our progeny would have are beyond anyone’s imagination. But physics will have the last word. Unless some currently unborn or unrecognized genius can break the lightspeed barrier, or can extend a man’s life to many centuries in length, we’ll be “staying home.”

     But let’s imagine that there are other sentient species in the universe. Might they be equal to the challenge, by virtue of extreme longevity? A species whose members expect to live a millennium or two would look at the matter differently, especially if they could solve the propulsion problem. Yes, it’s hand-waving again, albeit of a different kind, but that desire to believe in interstellar travel, galactic confraternity, and so forth is very strong. Maybe, rather than humans going to them, they might come to us.

     Maybe. The famous Green Bank Equation suggests that there’s life elsewhere in the Milky Way – if we set its variables to the “right” values. But we’re hand-waving again. How would they get here? What would they necessarily be able to do that we aren’t, to make that possible? Given the costs, the risks, and the difficulties, what would their motivation be?

     We don’t know enough to be certain of anything. We don’t know whether there’s a way to slip past the lightspeed barrier. We don’t know whether there are methods of propulsion superior to what we possess today, or whether Man or any other sentient creature is capable of living long enough to survive an interstellar journey. Even if the trip should become possible, we have absolutely no idea whether there’s a reason to undertake it other than sheer curiosity.

     The Fermi Paradox is summarized thus:

     The Fermi paradox is the discrepancy between the lack of conclusive evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life and the apparently high likelihood of its existence.

     That “paradox” is only worth consideration if:

• There’s another sentient species “out there;”
• There are ways to communicate reliably over the intervening distance.

     But even communication over interstellar distances is dubious. Ultra-collimated, ultra-powerful lasers? Modulated gravity waves? Using the resonant frequencies of stars to encode messages? It’s all hand-waving. Physics as we know it today says it won’t happen.

     But what if we “know differently” somewhere down the timestream? What if the lightspeed limitation is just a misunderstanding that some future Einstein will dismiss with a grin and a wave of his whiteboard marker? What if we manage to “cure death,” or extend human life far beyond what’s currently possible? Don’t get me waving my hands. I write this stuff for the entertainment value!

The Pressure

     The technophiles and space-travel enthusiasts are moderately agog that Elon Musk has shifted his focus from colonizing Mars to colonizing the Moon. For my part, I’m pleased. It was always the more sensible first step, if less glamorous. It’s also a necessary one: the Moon is the low-gravity resource base from which to continue on to the rest of the Solar System.

     But questions have arisen, with this one front and center: Why would anyone want to live on Mars / the Moon? A lot of people appear to be entertaining it, which suggests that there’s been a fall-off in Americans’ imagination and drive.

     I can think of two reasons to remove my elderly carcass from this ball of mud:

• The sheer adventure of the thing;
• To live in freedom.

     While I’m no longer of an age or fitness to go adventuring in the classical sense, neither were a lot of the European migrants who populated North America. They went anyway, often entire clans at a stroke. Some of them believed that the choice was between migration and extinction. In the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, for some of them that was demonstrably the case.

     But is that the case for anyone today? Are there subpopulations for whom the hardship of Lunar living would be preferable to remaining in the grip of an implacable fist that’s threatening to squeeze them to death? Perhaps we should ask the dwindling Christian populations of the Islam-dominated hellholes of the Middle East.

     We of the Western nations have begun to sense similar threats. Hostility to freedom is the central forward pressure of the Left. The elimination of all resistance is its aim. And it will never relax or relent.

     Eight years ago, I wrote:

     For a while I was cheered by the rapid development of privately owned and operated orbital transport. It seemed that free enterprise had at last accepted the challenge of taking Man to the ultimate frontier from which the U.S. government had retreated. And indeed, companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin have made considerable strides toward more economical (albeit still too expensive for a holiday weekend) access to Earth orbit. Perhaps, in another decade or two, we’d see construction begin on space habitats, and perhaps on some persistent human-occupied installations on the Moon.
     Maybe...but more likely not. The principal customers for orbital access are national governments. It would be in those governments’ interest to squash any private effort to colonize space or any of the other bodies in the Solar System. They could do so rather easily, either by terminating all contracts with the company that tries it or by invoking “national security” laws to forbid the effort altogether. Of those two paths, the latter is the more likely. Any government with a “national security” statute could claim that its “security” depends on not being bombed from orbit – and never mind that the owners of a privately-operated space station would have neither a reason nor an incentive to do so.

     The political dynamic continues to operate in its time-honored fashion. Power still attracts the worst members of our species. Governments are still inherently totalitarian: “Oh no, there’s no law against it. You just have to get our permission. It’s just that there’s a little red tape to get through. Please be patient.” They don’t like competition, and they don’t like for anyone to get beyond their reach:

     On the morning of the fourth day, also, a delegation of high-ranking government officials, including a three-star general from the Pentagon and a gentleman from the President’s office, called on [Spacecraft CEO Theodor] Deane.
     The gentleman from the President s office was brief and to the point. Deane was forbidden to undertake any venture whatsoever in space without the permission and control of the Federal Government. To do so would be a violation of national security equivalent to treason. Injunctions would be issued at once if Deane so much as lifted a finger to put an unauthorized satellite into orbit.
     “Do I understand,” Deane demanded, “that a law has just been passed to that specific effect?”
     “Don’t talk foolish, boy,” the general said. “We can make the existing security laws fit you like a straitjacket. Try us and see!”

     [J. W. Schutz, “The Bubble”]

     SpaceX is now racing the clock. Colonizing the Moon is far more feasible in the near term than colonizing Mars. You can bet the rent money that the cleverer folks in Washington know that too. Unless SpaceX establishes a proprietary Lunar colony before the power-mongers in D.C. can get their forces mobilized, the federal government will make such a thing impossible.

     The same pressure that propelled the Puritans to board wind-powered wooden vessels to reach the New World is at work today. The possibility of colonizing other worlds is the last remaining hope for human freedom. Many of us, young and old, would risk all that we have for the chance to be free. The States of Earth will not be pleased should the Moon become a place where we can go to escape them.

Undiscussed

     I was maundering over the rising White Identity movement, and the fierce resistance to it on the Left, when a memory from long ago returned to visit.

     The year was 1967. I was a senior year in high school at the time. There was a scholarship available to seniors who’d expressed an interest in becoming teachers. My school submitted me as its contestant. The award decision would be made by a committee of three, after meeting and conversing with all the contestants as a group. The get-together was held in New Paltz, a “college town” in Ulster County, New York, on the western side of the Hudson River.

     There were a dozen contestants. There were three on the award committee. I was the only one from a “downstate” school. I was also the only male present.

     Needless to say, I found the atmosphere somewhat intimidating. What was I, a mere male, doing among all these women? Conversation among the women, young and old, continued freely for over an hour without anyone addressing or even looking at me. Finally one of the committee members turned and addressed me directly: “What about you, Fran? Don’t you have anything to say?”

     I can’t remember what I said. No doubt it was something bland. I don’t remember what followed. About fifteen minutes later I was on my way home.

     Though I didn’t participate, I do remember the thrust of the conversation. It was about dealing with “colored students.” Everyone in the room agreed that they were a taxing problem, both pedagogically and behaviorally, and were becoming ever more so.

     I suppose I should include that all of us present were White.

     Now, that was what we of today fatuously call “the Civil Rights Era.” Which is to say: We had been propagandized out of our natural rights, such as freedom of association, in favor of “civil rights” defined by legislators and courts. We didn’t grasp the implications of having politicians tell us what our “rights” would be. We would find out soon enough.

     But “civil rights” or no, the eleven “upstate” young women in that discussion group were tacitly unanimous that educational institutions’ problems with non-Whites were real and rising. They had no solutions. Their unstated premise made a solution impossible. It was just something, they quietly agreed, with which future teachers would have to cope as best they could.

     Most of that was indirectly expressed, sotto voce. Yet there could be no doubt about the consensus. It bewildered me somewhat, but then, there were only three “colored” out of the two thousand students in my high school. The problem had yet to become visible in Rockland County, New York.

* * *

     Nothing reveals group differences as effectively as forcing disparate groups together. Fifty-nine years after that group talkfest, the quiet prognostications of those young women have proved accurate. America’s “public” schools have largely been reduced to daytime housing for minors, some of whom are determined to fight with others and abuse the rest. White kids in such an environment are in peril throughout the day. Many don’t make it home unscathed.

     But let’s leave the disorder and violence problems to the side. In an attempt to achieve some education, at least, the schools have steadily “dumbed down” their curricula. What was fifth-grade material a century ago is now being taught in high schools. The scandals about schools where no student meets grade literacy or numeracy standards, and about college entrants being unable to read, write in cursive, or do simple algebra, are legion.

     The few “colored” with a real interest in learning are intimidated out of it by their fellows: “Why you actin’ White?” The important subjects are to which gang you belong, how to deal with the members of other gangs, and how to treat the White kids. Better take those subjects seriously; the tests are frequent.

     But hearken to our political class! Do any of our Establishmentarians even hint that there might be a problem with all this “diversity?” Not to my knowledge. But let anyone mention the rising White-identity movement, and the condemnations are immediate and plentiful. Apparently the worst thing one can be is White and proud of it.

     If the cries of “Racist!” and “Xenophobe!” are losing their effect, it’s not yet evident from their frequency of use. Demographic-geographic trends tell us that some Whites are “voting with their feet.” An unfortunate number of us are pinned in place by occupational or familial considerations. These must be prepared to cope with being members of a shrinking community.

     Fifty-nine years ago, a group of young women in their senior year in high school could clearly see what was coming. Their voices were soft. Their words were measured. But their opinions were unanimous and clear. They foresaw what would happen to the trade they sought to enter.

     Those that are still on the sunny side of the sod would be in their mid-seventies today. I should remember to pray for them.

Consciousness And Conscience

     An old story came to mind a little earlier, as I was doing my morning tarantella (i.e., brushing my teeth, feeding the dogs and cats, making and drinking coffee, and cleaning up the detritus of the previous evening): “The Cage,” by A. Bertram Chandler. It involved a group of human spacefarers captured and caged by an alien race. At first that other race isn’t aware that humans are intelligent, purposeful creatures. What clues them in is when one of the humans captures a vermin creature and builds a cage for it. The final line of the story: Only intelligent beings put other beings in cages.

     Striking, isn’t it? Communication alone isn’t guaranteed to be possible with the completely alien. Actions must fill the gap. If the Other can deduce one’s intelligence from one’s actions, that can unlock the cage door. But that opens another door as well: the nature of purposive consciousness.

* * *

     Consciousness is the beginning; purposive consciousness – what I’ll henceforth call sentience — is the end. Sentience is born from simple consciousness when the conscious one turns his awareness on himself:

I am something specific, distinct from all other things.

     In facing that realization and the questions it compels upon him, the individual’s capacity for abstraction is unleashed. It has broached the threshold to reasoning. In particular, it becomes capable of categorization: the assembly of real things into abstract groups, according to the properties they possess.

     Let’s pause here to simplify the rest of the discussion. The individual under discussion shall henceforward be called Smith. Smith is not alone in the world. There are others like him. As he encounters them, he becomes aware of the commonalities and distinctions among them.

     One property Smith quickly perceives is his own purposiveness. Some of the things he does are automatic, but not all. Those other actions are taken to fulfill a purpose. That purpose may not last long, but while it does, it determines his non-automatic thoughts and deeds.

     From his purposiveness Smith infers that property in others like him. This is the germ of another property soon to impinge upon his consciousness: his conscience.

* * *

     The above is semi-fanciful. We don’t know very much about the development of the intellectual primitives. What we do know is that sentience precedes conscience. Only the sentient can have a sense of what Clarence Carson called “the moral order of the universe.” We believe nonhuman animals to lack sentience – i.e., that their actions are guided by commands embedded in their flesh, which we call instincts.

     Now and then a departure from our assumptions will arise to trouble us. We deem ourselves superior to “the lower orders” by dint of our sentience and our consciences. Animals, we tell ourselves, have no concepts; therefore they can make no distinctions between right and wrong. But then we hear of a dog sacrificing himself to protect his human, and we wonder. We learn of a brute torturing or killing a parent, sibling, or child, and we wonder further.

     My surmise is that some animals can be “ennobled” (C. S. Lewis) by the affection that springs from a long association with and care by a human. It’s more difficult to explain why some humans behave as if they lack consciences. Suffice it to say that our understanding is less than perfect.

     For conscience, in a purely secular and spatiotemporal view, arises from the perception of humans as a category: conscious animals with reasoning powers and purposes. That evokes species-kinship, sometimes expressed by the phrase “We are all brothers.” Adam Smith called it “fellow-feeling.” Today we call it compassion or empathy.

     Conscience – the product of self-awareness and our common possession thereof – underpins all the rest.

* * *

     Hillel’s dictum “What is hateful to you, do not do to another” is the foundation layer of conscience. There’s more, of course. Conscience doesn’t just restrain us; it also impels us to help one another, to do good and charitable works. Christ’s decree “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” embeds Hillel’s rule and extends it. Yet our consciences get many of us there long before we encounter either Hillel or Christ.

     But there are still those questions: Why don’t all humans respond to their consciences? Why do some animals act as if they have consciences of their own? No one has a watertight explanation for psychopathy or sociopathy. No one has a convincing explanation for a dog’s protectiveness over his master. We can’t communicate reliably with sociopaths or dogs, though we can, and often do, put them in cages.

     We need those questions answered.

The Epstein Files

     I haven’t read them. I don’t intend to. I don’t need more misery or darkness, thanks. But the following caught and held my attention:

People are now openly stating:

"If even a small fraction of what the Epstein files imply is true...

...the good guys lost WWII 💀"

We urgently need full disclosure and many arrests to nip such speculations in the bud.

The entire liberal world order depends on it.

Godspeed!

— Erik Dale 🇳🇴 (@EuroDale) February 4, 2026

     Whoever this gentleman is, I’m certain his heart is in the right place. But is he quite sure what “the entire world liberal order” is? One should know what one has set out to defend.

     The world, partitioned as it is into States that don’t recognize the concept of freedom, does not qualify as “liberal” in the dictionary sense. Not one of the nearly 200 States that exist today respects the rights of the individual. Rather, they assert supremacy – sovereignty, if you prefer – over all persons and things. You must ask their permission for damned near everything.

     Can there be a “liberal world order” when the States that dominate the world are unanimously illiberal?

     But let’s pass on to the Epstein files. From what I’ve read – all of it secondhand, of course – those files implicate many powerful, wealthy, and famous individuals in the most horrific crimes Mankind has ever known. The Iceberg Premise – i.e., that what we can see is only a tiny fraction of what there is – suggests that virtually the entire “upper crust” of American society is vile beyond imagining. That includes the national political class: everyone who wields power at the national level, or who has significant influence over the power wielders’ decisions.

     The word corruption pales beside the monstrousness of what the files have revealed. Yet though Lord Acton is probably spinning in his grave, I must admit that none of it surprises me.

     Visualize me shrugging as I write: So what now?

* * *

     Except for the ministry of Christ, the United States of America was the grandest effort in all of history. A dear friend has called America “the crowning glory of human civilization.” He’s right. Even in our decayed and tottering state, we outshine anything else any nation can offer. That’s why the rest of the world seeks to batten on us; what excellence and virtue remain belong to America and Americans.

     Yet we teeter at the edge of the abyss. We’ve gone badly wrong, and we know it. Some of us can even tell you why: We put our trust in princes.

     Outside the narrow bounds of the family, for any man to claim and wield power over another is evil. There are no escapes; it’s an arrogance that merits scourging or worse. So why do we tolerate it when it calls itself government?

     The lust for power is a lust that cannot be sated. It always demands more. And it demands proof as well. The proof is provided by power’s victims:

     ‘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.’

     How many times have I cited that passage? Its insight into power-lust is unequaled. Yet even those who praise George Orwell’s masterwork to the heavens shy back from its full implications. The great majority of Mankind insists, vocally or silently, that the State is “a necessary evil.”

     What other evils would you deem “necessary,” Gentle Reader?

* * *

     “Utopia is not one of the options.” – David Bergland

     For as long as there are men, there will be evil men. Human free will and our susceptibility to temptation guarantee it. But the great majority of us are, if sinners, at least aware of the dividing line between what we can get away with and what will get us invited to a necktie party as guest of honor.

     It’s when evil men have access to power over others that the worst problems arise and proliferate. For over time, the dynamic of power operates to bring evil men to power. They have a natural advantage over good men in pursuing it: they want it more.

     It doesn’t matter what form the State is given: autocratic, oligarchical, republican, democratic, what have you. The State is where the power is, and therefore where those who most want power will go. Could it be any clearer?

     But we were talking about the Epstein files, weren’t we?

     What those files reveal are the foulest deeds of the evilest men of our time. Should it come as a surprise that those evildoers were power-wielders, elite members of the Establishment? It seems perfectly in keeping with their villainy. Yet millions of people are in shock: How could they? Look at all they have, all they were given!

     Shock can be useful. It can shake the scales from our eyes. I submit that it’s time and long past time. Don’t let this moment pass unrecognized for what it really tells us.

From Little Acorns

     Time passes swiftly for those of us in our seventies. Sometimes we don’t notice the passing of a whole decade… and this was more than a single decade ago:

Woman: ”OJ. Simpson represented something for the black community in that moment, in that trial, particularly because there were two White people who had been killed”

Eh, what? pic.twitter.com/zt8VAtLjAe

— Taya (@travelingflying) February 2, 2026

     The murders of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman took place in June, 1994. Yes, Simpson was acquitted of them, but a subsequent civil suit held him responsible for the deaths even so. In 2008 he was convicted of armed robbery and kidnapping, and served a prison sentence for them.

     Now we have the nonsense above.

* * *

     I just snagged this:

what is it with third worlder obsession of having a servant https://t.co/qfngwNVbGb

— miritsua (@m1ritsua) February 1, 2026

     Immerse yourself in that image for a moment. The question posed by “miritsua” is relevant and staggeringly important. It’s not just Third Worlders who think they deserve servants.

     Have a snippet from a novel that should be more widely read:

     “It was a world in which there were only two models, slave and master. A master is not the same thing as a free, independent man. A master is himself contaminated by slaveholding. When the slaves were freed, they were only technically free. They're right about that. They continued as spiritual slaves — most of them, not all — right until the Civil Rights Act, until they could vote. Then they started acting like masters.”

     If you have only two models for human relations – master or slave – then you will see yourself as one or the other. You’ll have no alternative structure into which to fit yourself.

If you’re not a slave, you must be a master – and masters have slaves.

     That is the African experience. It was brought here by imported Negro slaves. It’s been perpetuated by Negroes as well. What else could their ceaseless demands for “reparations” mean?

     Thinking yourself a master, but having no slaves, makes you resentful and angry.

* * *

     In one of my novels, there’s a character who was raised from birth to see herself as a slave. She was conditioned to accept it as her proper place. When she managed to escape her captors, she stumbled by chance into the protection of a very good man. Her conditioning compelled her to take that good man as her master. The limitations it compelled upon her left her no third model. When she was presented with freedom as a third way, she rejected it. It would mean rejecting everything else she’d ever been:

     “Miss Celia, I don’t understand!”
     The shorter of the visitors cringed. “There’s nothing to understand, Fountain.” She rubbed the backs of Fountain’s hands with her thumbs. “It’s just the way it is. I’m free, Juliette is free, and Trish is free. You’re free too. No masters. No lords. No slaves. Just people, doing whatever they want to do.” Her expression darkened. “Don’t you like the idea that you’re free?”
     Fountain glanced furtively at Juliette. The tall girl leaned against the wall with her arms crossed over her breasts. She nodded.
     “It’s true, Fountain. Nobody owns anybody here.”
     The notion found nowhere to lodge among her lessons.
     I was trained to be his. To serve his pleasure. I have no other purpose.
     I want to be his.
     “I cannot leave my lord,” she murmured. “I will not.”
     Celia grimaced. “You might not have to. I mean,” she said, “he might not tell you that you have to go away. But he’s free too, Fountain. Free people don’t own slaves. We settled that a long time ago. Whoever taught you different was...bad. Taught you bad stuff. Probably a lot of it.”
     How can this be? Their bodies are like mine. Their beauty is no less than mine. Yet they claim to have no master. They could not possibly be masters themselves, so what else could they do? What else could they be?
     The clash between her lessons and this new instruction became insupportable. A high, shrill siren issued from her backbrain, a response instilled in her by years of merciless conditioning designed to deny her any outlet for rebellion. It surged at once to disabling pitch and volume. She ripped her hands free of Celia’s, put them to her ears, and howled in torment.
     The others crowded close around her and wrapped her in their arms, probably in an attempt to calm her. It only increased her anguish, but her wriggling failed to free her from them. She endured it as she must.
     When the siren in her head and her responding howl ceased and the others’ grip upon her slackened, she shook herself free, rose, said “I must use the bathroom,” and strode out of the room. Once she had closed and locked the bathroom door, she sat upon the toilet lid and waited for her tears to dry.
     They do not understand. They cannot understand. I cannot be free. I am his.
     I must be his.
     The thought that she might be forced to be as they were—to be apart from her lord, without his protection and guidance, even for a brief interval—threatened to break her self-control once again. She forced it away before it could drive a wedge into her slowly returning composure.
     She had been a good student, attentive to all she’d been taught and diligent about the practice of her lessons. Her teacher had seldom spoken the mildest word of reproof. It had not been necessary. The pains of the chastisements her teacher could inflict, once they’d been demonstrated upon her flesh, were forever after vivid in her memory.
     Yet Fountain possessed interior resources that went well beyond what one might have expected from her history. Her resolve had been the key both to enduring her training and to effecting her escape. She knew the forces at her disposal, even if only dimly. She marshaled them to the unprecedented challenge.
     I will not listen to them.
     I will not be free.
     I will not let them take me from him.
     I will not let them take him from me.
     With that thought, a curious sort of circuit completed in her brain. It snapped into being with a firmness that spoke of an immutable solidity.
     I am his.
     I will remain his.
     Now and forever.
     She rose from the toilet, unlocked the bathroom door, and returned to the bedroom her lord had assigned her, where two earnest young women, well meaning but incapable of understanding her, waited to resume their tortures.

     Yes, the story of O.J. Simpson and his crimes is part of that. So is the seething resentment expressed and encouraged by blacks with a public platform. It’s all they know. Therefore, if you are not their master, you must be their slave. They will compel it upon you.

     Never forget it.

Poverty In Spirit: A Sunday Rumination

     [I'm tired and in several kinds of distress this morning, so I'm recycling a piece that first appeared here on November 1, 2015 -- FWP]

* * *

     Perhaps the most famous of all Jesus’s words:

     And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him:
     And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying,
     Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
     Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
     Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
     Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
     Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
     Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
     Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
     Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
     Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
     Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

     [Matthew 5:1-12]

     The very first of the Beatitudes is for many the most troubling. What can it mean to be “poor in spirit?” If we can’t figure it out, how can we achieve it? and if we can’t achieve it, is there a path to heaven open to us?

     It had me baffled for a while. I had to reflect on the nature of poverty and the nature of the soul before I could make any sense of it – and I don’t guarantee that I’ve got it right. As I’ve said before, I write these Ruminations principally for my own benefit, but in the hope that others might glean something of value from them, too.

---

     To be poor in the material sense is to lack; in extreme cases, to lack one or more necessities. But there are instances – today, many instances – of persons deemed “poor” who enjoy material comforts beyond what a middle-class European enjoys, or a middle-class American of a few generations ago would have enjoyed. Genuine poverty is vanishingly rare in America. To find the real McCoy, one must go into the Third World, many of whose denizens can’t even secure food enough, clothing enough, or a shelter from predators and the elements. Those are people who genuinely lack.

     What does the human soul lack? It’s immaterial; it has no survival needs, at least as long as it’s bound to a working body. So the material conception of poverty is irrelevant to it. But to lack and be aware of it has other implications.

     In the material realm, he who lacks something that he truly needs feels a hunger for it. In the spiritual realm, there is only one need: grace, the acceptance of God and His gifts.

     Thus, to be “poor in spirit” would suggest an awareness of the importance of grace and a desire for it. That has its own implication, for grace is available only from one Source. That Source has made His requirements explicit:

     Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him? [Matthew 7:7-11]

     Prayer – the humble admission of spiritual need to Him Who can fill it – is the engine. The hunger for grace – spiritual poverty – is the fuel. Combine those ingredients, and all else follows.

     But there's a trap to be avoided as well.

---

     I’ve harped so often on the critical importance of humility that no doubt many Gentle Readers have tired of hearing about it. Indeed, I’m sure a few among you, reading this essay, have just said to yourself, “Oh boy, here he goes again,” and have tuned out. But there is no venue in which humility is so great a need as in this matter of grace.

     Christ made a powerful statement about it:

     Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.
     I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

     [Luke 18:10-14]

     He who is confident of his place in God’s eyes is in a greater degree of spiritual danger than any other living man. He who doubts his spiritual standing and is willing to abase himself before God, pleading for His love and mercy, is the one who will receive the gift of grace. The Redeemer said it as plainly as it can be said.

---

     A few words on prayer and its objects, and I’ll close for today.

     Among the faults our Protestant brethren attribute to us is that we “pray to saints,” when prayer is properly directed only to God. The accusation would have a great deal of force if it were true – and I cannot doubt that in some cases, it is. The object of prayer is to secure God’s grace for oneself, and no mere saint can grant that. However, several of the saints, designated as patrons of some special occupation, context, or need, may be asked to pray for us as intercessors.

     Prayer must always have God as its ultimate destination. However, it does no harm to ask a saint associated with our particular need to “put in a good word.” The Blessed Virgin is paramount in this regard, as the Queen of Heaven among all the saints has the greatest influence on her Son. Note that though the Hail Mary seems to address her rather than God, it asks her to pray for us: indirectly identifying God as the true Source from Whom we hope for a benison.

---

     If the above is well reasoned, then perhaps poverty in spirit is attainable by any sincere Christian. After all, we claim to love God and desire His acceptance. We claim to believe in the bifurcated afterlife, and to prefer – I should hope! – one fork over the other. How much greater could the contrast between two paths be? What could possibly elicit a greater sense of need?

     May God bless and keep you all. (And happy All Saints Day! Perhaps you might pause to thank your name saint for sharing his appellation with you.)

For Younger Men

     We’ve all heard about the “male loneliness epidemic.” There’s a lot of substance to it. American men of all ages are having more difficulty forming social connections, especially ones that offer romantic possibilities, than in any previous era. The institutions that supported such connections have weakened greatly. Some have disappeared altogether.

     But a part of that has nothing to do with institutions. Consider the following:

Let's say you are a 25 year old man who

> Looks average
> Is 5'6–5'8 tall
> Has a private job
> Earns 30–50K
> Lives on rent
> Has a simple bike, no car
> Is a virgin, kind, and religious
> Has a good personality
> Respects women

On dating apps, you won't find even one girl,…

— ︎ ︎venom (@venom1s) January 30, 2026

     Now, that list is somewhat restrictive. You won’t find many 25-year-old male virgins in these United States in the Year of Our Lord 2026, “average looks” or not. You also won’t find many who don’t have cars, outside the larger cities. But it does describe a number of young men. Relax the aforementioned two restrictions, and the number swells greatly.

     Now, this aspect of “venom’s” claim:

     On dating apps, you won't find even one girl, unless she's ugly/fat.

     …might not be perfectly correct. But where our proposed young man would find a potential wife, and what sort of woman she might prove to be, deserves consideration.

     It’s been said, and truly, that while men are attracted by looks, women are attracted by status. Yes, women have appearance standards, particularly as regards men’s height. But whether a young single woman regards a young man as a “catch” depends more on his “prospects” than his looks. If she sees “make it big” prospects in him, he could look to her like a winner even if he’s short and visually unimpressive. So the major impediments our proposed young man faces are occupational and financial.

     Time was, the received wisdom was that a man should “be more than you appear.” In today’s “get it now and damn the future” social clime, the reverse just might be true.

* * *

     I don’t advocate striving to “appear more than you are.” The truth will emerge over time. Occupational possibilities and bank balances are hard to fake for long. Yet a number of young men will try it anyway: some out of cynicism, others out of desperation.

     Young women’s expectations and demands are the largest part of the problem. Their starry-eyed dreams of handsome, wealthy princes come-a-courting take years to dispel. The mass one-way media have conditioned them to believe that he’s out there, girl; just wait. The scales fall from their eyes eventually: usually, some time after they reach thirty years of age.

     Are you beginning to get a sense for where this is going, young man?

     The typical single woman in her mid-thirties feels a subliminal panic. She can feel herself “aging out” in ways that men don’t suffer. Her looks are going. She has increasing difficulty maintaining her figure. She knows that her fertility is fading as well – and even if she already has children, that tells against her in the romance market. Maybe especially if she already has children.

     She might actually be ready for true commitment.

     You, the twenty-five-year-old male singleton, might not look upon her as a plausible romantic candidate. That’s shortsighted. She’s primed and ready for you, despite your youth. She might actually be willing to care for you in a half-romantic, half-maternal way. Indeed, she just might be the support you need to “make it!”

     This will strike you as bizarre. It’s an inversion of the longstanding pattern of men marrying younger women. That pattern definitely made more sense. He, the older, was already somewhat “established.” She, the younger, needed protection and support, and – in the usual case – was ready for children. Their desires and positions in life were in alignment.

     But things have changed, quite definitely. Young men can’t get a fair shake from young women. Older women, with rare exceptions, can’t win the affections of older, well-established men. (Cf. “trophy wife.”) But both younger men and older women are hungry for love, for sex, for affection, for an enduring commitment.

     The Army recruiting slogan was “Be All You Can Be.” I have an addendum: “Yeah – And Make Sure It Shows.”

     Things being as they are, you, young male reader, might not manage to catch the interest of the young woman you want. But her single older sister has eyes. Should they come to rest approvingly on you, will you spurn her just because she’s older? Or will you see and value her mature potential, just as she sees and values your youthful vigor?

     Give it some thought.

     A matchmaker’s predatory gleam shone from Adrienne’s eyes throughout the dessert course. It was still there as they said their good-nights at the front door. It kept Sumner on edge, but remarkably, Redmond didn’t appear to notice it.
     Sumner closed the door behind him and released an explosive sigh.
     Adrienne frowned. “Was it that hard?”
     “Uh, no.” How do I tell my wife that she was eyeing our guest like a lioness assessing an unsuspecting wildebeest? “It’s just that...well, from everything I’ve heard at the office, Louis is pretty special. I didn’t expect him to be such an, ah, easy guest.”
     “Charming,” she said. The feral gleam had not left her eyes. “Utterly charming. I can’t wait to—”
     “Sweetie,” he said, desperate to derail his wife’s obvious train of thought, “has it occurred to you to wonder why he isn’t married?”
     She shrugged. “These days men his age mostly aren’t.”
     He grimaced. “True. All the same, would you give me a little time to get to know him better before you script his future unto the seventh generation?”
     “Steve!”
     “Sweetie,” he said, “you’ve had that look ever since he arrived. You had me thinking you were going to call Rosalie and invite her over for a piece of cheesecake. ‘Fess up, now.”
     She giggled. “The thought did cross my mind.”
     “Sweetie, he’s twenty-four. Twenty-four. Keep that firmly in mind.” Sumner wrapped his arms around her waist. She reciprocated and laid her head on his shoulder. “Rosalie is thirty-six and Allison is forty.”
     Another giggle. “So what, Mr. General Counsel? Are you trying to tell me that New York has outlawed cradle robbing?”
     “Adrienne...” Sumner pushed his wife to arms’ length, glared at her from under lowered brows, and deployed his best cross examiner’s courtroom tone.
     Her grin was the naughtiest thing he’d ever seen. “All right, so there’d be a little age gap—”
     “Little? That’s like calling the Grand Canyon a large hole!”
     “Hey! Men marry women that much younger all the time! Isn’t it about time we ladies got a little payback?”

     [From Statesman]

Savings

     The rapid increases in the dollar prices of precious metals are alarming for more than one reason.

     Yes, I’m alarmed. Even though I hold large quantities of the money metals, what’s happening has me frightened. The dollar prices of the money metals don’t say that gold and silver are getting more valuable. Rather, they say that a large number of people are worried about the future of the U.S. dollar and the American economy generally.

     You can’t pay for your groceries with gold or silver, just yet; you still need dollars for that. The metals are hedges against further declines in the purchasing power of the dollar. They’re something else, as well.

     Among the reasons gold and silver served as Mankind’s currencies for so long is that they’re easy to recognize. Yes, it’s possible to make fake gold coins by plating tungsten slugs with a thin covering of gold, but such fakes are detectable by simple tests. It’s harder to fake silver coins at a profit, though should silver continue to rise in dollar price, that might not remain true. So gold and silver make trustworthy currencies as well as reliable stores of purchasing power.

     Gold and silver in private hands represent purchasing power no government can control. They make possible both completely private transactions and completely private savings.

     States don’t like for private persons to have private savings. That’s one of the motivations behind the worldwide drive for Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). The State wants to know everything: who has what, in what forms, and what he’s doing with it. Over time, a CBDC decreed to be legal tender would allow the State to eliminate its physical cash – those Federal Reserve Notes in your wallet – and make all “above-ground” transactions vulnerable to State monitoring and control.

     Gold and silver are the State’s enemies. As long as there are reserves of those metals in private hands, there will remain an underground economy that’s proof against State intrusion. Worse – from the State’s point of view – those reserves could power a revolution. Their very existence would force a degree of moderation upon the State. Even the idea of that makes the masters of the State uneasy and sullen.

     You and I, Gentle Reader, aren’t the only ones watching the prices of the metals. The masters of the State are watching them too. And they’re as alarmed as I am. Their best hope for total and irreversible control over all human enterprise is being threatened by the rising consciousness of private persons that the State’s “money” is merely wastepaper.

     When the masters of the State feel threatened, they tend to do alarming things. They pass insane laws. They stifle private communications. Sometimes they go to war, to create a pretext for “emergency measures.”

     The Year of Our Lord 2025 was an interesting year. One thing many hoped for was an immediate, sharp decrease in the cost of living. That hasn’t arrived, though some commodities have dropped in dollar price. The new tariffs intended to rebalance America’s international trade, bring expatriated industries home, and garner new federal revenue have pushed the prices of imported goods upward. A lot of people who supported President Trump have begun to wonder if he can deliver… or intends to.

     Americans need reasons to believe in America’s future. Failing that, they’ll use whatever private measures promise protection for their resources. That’s clearly expressed by the prices of silver and gold and the expanding interest in the cryptocurrencies… and the State could shut down all traffic in the cryptos by throwing a switch.

     Verbum sat sapienti. For those interested in a fuller exploration of methods for financial self-protection, please read John Pugsley’s classic The Alpha Strategy.

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.