Keeping the Faith

Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

This is not a religious post. It is a creedal one.

Guys, gals, mantis shrimpies, we’re headed into pretty hard times. We’re already living in a clown timeline, or if you prefer we’re living in a clown car that is inside a dumpster fire.

It’s situation normal, really. We’re doing pretty well for a country that’s been invaded and conquered by a death cult.

And no, I’m not even hanging out at the black dog cafe. Not this morning. I sent the second of the series Barbarella script out late last night, and I’m editing Bor, so I can write a novel that is downloading into my head at speed. I might have to write all six before it’s done. In the middle there, the USAian anthology will get compiled. I’m too busy to be depressed.

I’m also too busy to fully reality check, much less make sense of the news that make no sense what-sofluffy-ever and which are maybe hiding nuggets of truth or maybe not. Pravda is always hard to read. Half the time you have to make a judgement call on whether there’s something behind it or not. And you really can’t tell. And these days the “trustworthiness” of the news have nothing to do with it.

After all trustworthy means part of the establishment, by and large, and the establishment has lied to us by every means available and some they invented for the last two years. We had a spokesthing from Pfizer yelling at me in the comments (I don’t object to that. I object to her stealing a friend’s first name for her handle) because of what I posted at insty about a CEO of her company having said the wuflu is just like the flu. She wanted to know how I very dared post that. The CEO never said that. And how could I post without verifying.

I spammed her, because frankly yelling at me on my blog is over the top. Yes, I did realize the guy was saying that the Wuflu was like the regular flu season NOW but frankly, I preferred to make it sound like he was apologizing for past deception. Because not only was the Wuflu “just a bad flu” hitting only the most vulnerable, but his company conspired with others and the establishment to make it worse. Granting him the pretend-grace of admitting it a-posteriori is merciful of me, and much better than what he deserves, which is one of those creative Tudor executions.

And no, I certainly wasn’t going to do a deep dive of “trusted sources” to find out what he’d said precisely. The word-parsing of con men doesn’t interest me.

And the establishment is con men all the way down. Oh, pardon me, one must not be sexist. Con women. And con gender neutral critters too.

I don’t know where the over-under for “conspiracy theory is revealed to be true” but I think it’s probably under two days at this point.

The “blue” — which is to say centralized, statist, center out and top down “rule by experts” — model is dying ugly all over. And it’s a bit of a problem.

How is it a problem you’ll ask, if it never worked?

It’s a problem because in the US full implementation of the blue model was FDR, which means most of the people who are older but still active in politics were raised when it seemed to be shiny and new, and when enough of the original American culture remained to give them the bizarre idea not just that the model worked but that the corporatist fifties were a sort of halcyon age.

I think this is like the golden age of science fiction being twelve. The halcyon age is always when you were under five.

Even I have misty-eyed memories of Portugal when I was under six, and we were all poor as Job due to government malfeasance. And indoor bathrooms were a rarity. And baths were accomplished in a hip bath of Napoleonic vintage, with water heated on the wood stove. (Ah, but the festas, the orange tree, the kittens, the meadow full of daisies. Stop laughing.)

The problem with this is that the blue model is failing EVERYWHERE but we have a bunch of people with power and influence that think it would work, if only it were more traditional and enforced THEIR values.

To be fair, if I had to choose national socialism or international socialism I’d come down on the side of national all the time (to the idiots who just said AHAH, take a powder. I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. It’s not original but it’s truth nonetheless, and that applies to BOTH forms of socialism. This choice is under “Do you prefer to be drawn and quartered or slow roasted alive?”) because at least the nationalists by definition don’t hate their country.

Which doesn’t mean they don’t impoverish it and slowly destroy it, only that that’s not their aim. Also they’re slower.

Anyway, as the model fails and burns — and I think this winter not to mention the next, a lot of it will burn just for heating — nations revert to their basics. In Europe that mostly means nationalism. God, Country, Family, more or less in that order.

And there are any number of people who want to bring the same here. The problem being of course that Americans are Americans. (And have always been. I think American is one of those things embedded in the matrix of the universe. Before we existed as a nation, it was probably pronounced “Those ornery SOBs”)

We probably have the largest percentage of religious people remaining in the world, but any attempts to impose a universal religion on us are going to meet with knives. And probably guns. And ooh, boy, would it then get hot.

All of y’all who say America needs to turn to G-d aren’t precisely wrong, but half the time the form your comments take offends half the other commenters who are sincere believers and most of them offend me, because honestly, so much heresy it’s almost funny. (The heresy train has no stops.)

What I mean is Europe can turn to their state church, which is what they mean when they say G-d and enforce attendance while killing faith, but despite all the vapors of some of my favorite authors (including the one, yes, RAH) a theocracy was always unlikely in the US, because there is nothing a sincere believer resents more than having another’s sincere belief imposed on him/her/it/kumquat.

Marxism almost managed it — and arguably it’s the STATE religion, just not the people’s — by pretending not to be a religion, but it’s now headed down. (Which is the good part. It’s a death cult.)

Family… ooh, boy. Y’all are aware it doesn’t mean the same here as it means in Europe, right? And I’m not just talking of our charming habit of serial monogamy, which yes, perhaps could be less flamboyant. (Except that we live very long lives, and have the ability to change a lot in that time, which in turn means our partnerships change. I don’t approve, but that doesn’t mean I don’t UNDERSTAND. Also I don’t approve for myself. I’m not in the business of judging my friends and neighbors.)

In Europe “family” really means tribe. As it does in most of the world. And while we have those, they tend to be… self-chosen. Witness the vastness of this duct tape family and its ever-increasing glory.

Country I’ll give you means the same as in Europe. Kind of. Sideways and upside down because it’s what we do to concepts.

Country for an American means not “our old and respected boundaries full of people who look like us, because frankly the paint is still drying in some states, and well… my mom nailed it when she said she couldn’t figure out what the American “look” was. (This because any European can usually, with some fails, identify another’s origin on sight.) I told her “A look of justified and self-assured arrogance” and she made the sound she makes when she doesn’t like my response.

So– As the wheels come off old blue, there’s going to be a tendency from the bien pensant, who are forever sorry they weren’t born in Europe to turn on a dime to the new shiny European model.

… Which means it’s going to need us. It’s going to need us to point at the constitution and the bill of rights. It’s going to need us to dunk their heads in the nearest toilet bowl and flush hard. (What? I didn’t say we should hold them under until bubbles stopped coming up. If they’re going to behave like middle schoolers, a swirly will give them a world of good. Yes, we could also lock them in lockers, but there aren’t enough lockers.)

They need to be made fun of, and stopped as relentlessly as we’ve laughed and ignored the commands of the Marx Commands.

Because they are the same, just another form of plague.

The fun part — I swear this is not the black dog, just realism — is that whether we manage to vote our way out of this, or not, we’re in for another massive round of destruction by the Marx fanatics.

If we win the election, they’re going to hurt us in revenge. If they manage to fraud their way in, they’ll hurt us because they’ll think they’re untouchable.

Either way, it’s going to hurt like a mother. And they’ll find out. Eventually.

But through it all remember, a nation can come out stronger and more faithful to its principles after a terrible time than they were before.

Hold on to your scrap of flag. Remember the words:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government …

We’ll come through this. We’ll endure. We’ll survive.

We’re part of something bigger than us. We’re free, no matter how they try to enslave us. We’ll remain free. And we’re going to the stars.

And if I die before we’re through the time of troubles? This is possible. I’m turning sixty this year, and heaven knows how long we’ll wade through stupid.

But as long as I’m here, I’ll keep the light on.

It’s all right. I was part of something greater. I was part of something magnificent.

Tell the boys I died standing pat.

 

Reprinted from According to Hoyt for October 21, 2022