Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

It’s hard to fight a culture war when you ain’t got no culture. The conservatives I knew in the arts, in broadcasting, in writing in the eighties used to say that and laugh bitterly.

Mind you we were a small group and had trouble finding each other. We had to first identify the other was safe enough to come out to, a process that involved mutual signs and countersigns, and straying ever so slightly into forbidden territory and seeing how the other reacted, always ready to pull back and say “it’s a joke.” Honesty, hanky codes would have been easier: yellow for slightly right of center, blue for old-fashioned so-con, purple for small l libertarian, psychedelic tie dye for the Libertarian party, black for Anarcho Capitalists, brown for OWL (Older, wiser Libertarians), pink for voluntarianists, chartreuse for “I’m just so tired of what pigs leftists are” and red for the blood of our heroes.

The problem of course is that if these handkerchiefs started showing up everywhere, the left, in their idiotic way would decide that they meant something else completely different, and try to destroy your life with it. Or worse, they’d know exactly what it meant but accuse you of meaning something different so that they could destroy you.

And they owned all the means of mass communication and signaling. Which frankly is why we used to say that. It wasn’t that we had no culture. It was that those of us who worked in those fields had to pretend to be on the other side so that we could work at all. And those of us who were socially smart enough knew it.

Weirdly a lot of the survivors were women of interesting heritage, (for this purpose being a first generation immigrant from a Latin culture and having been exquisitely “educated” in Marxism helped. I knew what to fake) or gay people (this probably helped me fly below the radar too. No, I’m not gay. I’m about as straight as the next person, and in this case the next person has a ram-rod for a spine. But there is no use denying that some part of my brain is devoted to “weirdness with sex, attraction and, yeah “gender””. Possibly because I read sf/f at an early age and therefore became interested in how things might change in ways that broke society/people and what came after. I don’t know. This thing isn’t exactly under my control. All I’m saying is that my first books published contained a gender-changing elf, and they weren’t by any means the most bizarre thing I’d written by then along those lines. I think I’ve figured out how to make my first world palatable to humans. We’ll see) or people whose day job/education was in other fields wholly controlled by the left, or well…. very odd people. (Raise your hands brothers and sisters, and say Amen.)

I bet you that’s why a lot of you managed to fly under the radar then, and maybe were not even aware of how bad it was. ( “In the prison of the gifted, I was friendly with the guards, so I never had to witness what happens to the heart”—Leonard Cohen.

Others had got into the field as extreme left, and then changed. So slowly, and so strangely, and along such paths, that the leftists never figured it out or couldn’t figure it out.

Part of it you have to understand, and yeah, studies have revealed this, but we didn’t need it, those who have lived in the dominated fields, and passed well enough to be sitting at revelatory conversations, is that the left has no idea what the opposition is. Absolutely zero. None.

They construct these straw men, and never actually seem to realize they’re completely wrong. You’ve seen the idiots who come spinning onto comments and insist we’re racist, sexist, homophobic, uneducated hicks, who’ve never left the American South. I mean it takes about three seconds to figure out that this is, a an acquaintance called it in the early days of my blog, Hoyt’s Refuge for the tragically gifted, and that education formal or not is what most of us have spent our lives absorbing. But their beliefs require them to see illusions, and humans will kill and die for the right not to break their easy assumptions.

One of my areas of interest, mostly because I saw an early boyfriend (I’m not even sure we were dating, just sort of vaguely sweet on each other. And we were very young) disappeared into a cult, forever, is to read about cults, both the ones that led their followers into horrible, tragic ends, and those that have adapted to something more normal (not going to name names, and no, I’m not being snarky about anyone’s religion. The ones I’d name flourished in Europe in the sixties and seventies, and still have enough power and influence, I don’t need that additional trouble.) One of the things I know is that it’s almost impossible to deprogram someone from a cult, unless there is a personal and Earth shattering event that causes them to want to change. It is in that way very similar to drug addiction. You have to hit rock bottom and realize everything you want and think is wrong. And then start to rebuild.

And the left is effectively a cult.

Sure we know how we got here. The left controls schools, entertainment, news, corporate management. They basically control all the centers of soft power. (How much of the hard power of the military they have gotten hold of, I don’t know. And I’m afraid to find out.)

Those of you who say it wasn’t as bad before are kind of right. But only kind of. You see, once they’d taken the universities, and the ways to signal “high class” (entertainment, the arts, the awards, the tv shows, the movies, the markers of success) they controlled everything. It was all over but the shouting.

Those of you who marvel as to why a self- made millionaire like the owner of Amazon, or any of the social media owners sing in the choir of the left are entirely missing the point.

The point is that THESE PEOPLE AREN’T POLITICAL. Yes, I know what social platforms have done. I know what insane things some of these people say and post. But the problem is not that they are political. Most of them are focused on their field, very good at what they do (which make money from the most unlikely things) and completely blind to political philosophy.

This is very hard to believe given the damage their do, their crazy donations, and the way they signal. It’s also very hard to believe they’re non-political, because let’s face it, you and I and the rest of the people here are as political as it’s possible to be. Either by a natural bend of the mind, or whatever (and note that I always assumed it was my early experiences, but I’ve seen normal, American people fall into this too) we have a passionate interest in politics and forms of government, and in my case an utterly paradoxical (if you know what I do for a living) hunger and thirst for the truth. (And yes, I have long, long wondered what is meant by “for they shall be satiated.” I’m not sure it’s a promise I’d want fulfilled, and yet I do. Yes, even so.)

But these people don’t care about politics. They’re making money, they’re successful, and like very noveau riche, they want the social acceptance, the “intellectual bling” that makes them accepted by the elite.

If this were the Victorian age, they’d found hospitals or libraries (if only the poor were educated, they’d be more like us!) or build hygienic villages, or send boat loads of pants and Bibles to Africa.

Nowadays, the culture, the social signaling, the ostensible admiration of the lumpen crowds, the certainty that they’re shiny and smart and brilliant comes from signaling left as hard as they can.

Yes, they’re doing horrible things for that. What? You think it never happened before in history? But they really have no idea. Even if they know what will result, they don’t know what will result. They might know they’re sweeping all those bad people from public life and silencing them, but they don’t know that in the end it will be them against the wall. And they have absolutely no clue what the policies they support will do, because the “smart” (smart in our day and age is determined by the fact you mouth the right or rather left platitudes, at least for purposes of recognition, jobs as, oh, respected public health experts, and/or experts of any kind) people that surround them have excuses for all the failures, assure them that Cuba is beautiful and quaint, and tell them paradise lies that way.

Perhaps I should tell you about the most 2020 week ever, in some ways (not I hope all the ways. No rains of fish today, please.) at least in the ideological sense. I’ll start with yesterday evening.

As some of you know I watch second-hand movies and television. This is not intellectual posturing, btw. Yes, much of what’s on TV is bloody stupid. But even for what’s good, I need to be doing something at the same time. I’m not visual enough for visual-only story telling to hold my interest. (To be fair, I also tend to do other things while reading, which is why my kindle often wears a ziploc and why paperbacks used to be covered in stains from cooking or from cleaning fluids.)

So, in the evening, I sit at the social-media laptop in the family room, and check in with my homies (shut up) or write non-fic (or lately edit Jane Austen fanfic) while my husband does his equivalent activity, which he does when his mind is completely exhausted: watch a movie or tv series. I will get bits and pieces, and sometimes look up to see what’s going on. Weirdly this is enough to get most of the plot, mostly because frankly my husband—by that time—isn’t looking for intellectually stimulating fare. (Younger son listens to political podcasts for the same “my brain is on spare cycles” function. Which is weird. And also, I’ve mentioned that one is mine, right?)

Yesterday husband said he really couldn’t even stand anything but rom coms. The first one he put up was SUCH a spectacular piece of lefty bullsh*t even he noticed. While I sat there horrified, for once actually watching, mouth agape at the non-stop bullshit, he was seemingly not reacting. And I know that though our political opinions are not that different, he’s by and large WAY more tolerant about this crap than I (to the extent that is a ton less interested in politics and thus doesn’t see them everywhere. He is in fact like those people above and was soft-left and thought his wife was insane until I came out politically and had to explain to him why. And why I believed what I did.) But fifteen minutes in, he got up and went “Well, that crap is enough.” And turned it off. For a gauge of what that means, he then proceeded to watch in full a rom com in which all the characters are democrat activists, and in which this is not only a good thing, but means they are GOOD people, and in which the most appalling leftist crap was celebrated throughout, openly and not, all of it wrapped in the veil of “these are normal people, and this is about their romance, and this is how everyone lives.” The most right wing people there might have been the ones who didn’t want to kill everyone to the right of Lenin. And it was a love story, played for laughs.

Afterwards I talked to him about it, and yes, he got these were all crazy bullshit points, but the fact that it was set a few decades ago, and that everything was presented as normal, including the pov on history from an exclusive left (and insane) stand didn’t kick him out of the story.

This morning he told me ruefully that the two most popular book genres (he reads both, because “spare cycles.” Mystery and sf/f are for when he can think) of thriller and romance don’t even bother with research, they just do “what everyone knows to be true” aka, what is on TV, and in the news, and in all entertainment. So, you know, Leftist Fantasy.

Note these are the most popular genres because most people who read them only read to decompress. They don’t want their views challenged or to find themselves researching what really happened in Bumf*ck Redistan 50 years ago, that everyone has lied about. So, just going with “what everybody knows” works. And what everybody knows are big, big lies. Things like every woman is discriminated against at work. People die on the streets for lack of health insurance. Leftists are the under dog. And everything wrong with society is brought about by greedy capitalists. (Not an exhaustive list. Dig far enough into what “everybody knows” and you find that everybody knows I’m a white Mormon male who is racist, sexist and homophobic. And that was my only reason to oppose the awards in my field going to sophomoric dreck dominated by one house.)

(“Everybody knows the war* is over. Everybody knows the good guys lost” -Leonard Cohen. *Yes at that time, it meant the cold war.)

This piled on on an …. interesting week. I found one of my remaining soft left friends has gone…. well, the way they go. And no, there will be no public breach. But psycologically this is not good for me. Not good at all. Other people’s friends might be redpilled, mine all seem to run screaming the other way. Which makes me wonder if I know how to pick them, or if this cult is impossible to recover from. Either way. That’s what we’re up against, and I’m not …. sanguine.

Two days ago, here, I posted about why I don’t want people to gleefully, joyfully join in saying “if the left wants a civil war, we’ll give them a civil war.”

As usual I got the strange accusation that since I don’t want us to jump into immediate chaos and violence (which, yes, the left is practically begging for, and yeah, they might think it’s better for them than it is, but after the last century I think you guys would be less sure that the other side doesn’t know what they’re doing, okay?) That I think all is lost. That other than voting, I want to lie here and just let it go into communist paradise without fighting back.

You have no idea. And the weird thing is that you have no idea, after all the years I’ve been fairly frank on this blog. Though granted I’m somewhat sparing with my history in public, mostly to protect the guilty. (The guilty who aren’t me.)

Suffice it to say I’m a berserker. I’m also, naturally, attracted to simple solutions, which are often violent ones. There is something simple and clean about physical fights. The pointy end goes in the other guy (Or the side that goes pew pew, but that’s a recent accomplishment for me.) And the other guy is the person physically attacking you.

It’s so simple, it’s so clean.

It’s so dangerous in the circumstances we’re in. Which brings me to the other two events this week that hit me hard psychologically.

One was a stranger’s death. An Omaha NE, bar owner who fought (physically) against an antifa attacker and for his trouble was indicted, maligned, lost his properties, lost his home, got so much hate and slander poured on him (guys, you have no idea, unless you’ve been on the other side of these campaigns, and frankly the one I fought in was beanbag compared to this. It will strip you bare and destroy everything you care about, even so. Most of my friends who fought that one alongside me have been suffering from it ever since, in career, in psychological wounds, in physical health.) that he killed himself.

This is a reminder of the power they STILL have. If you needed another one after this year of gross civil rights violations instigated by their “scientists” and “computer models” and crazy media. They still have the power to destroy completely random and innocent individuals, even if they fail sometimes, as they did with the Covington kids. Yeah, their power is no longer absolutely universal, and it won’t stick, but it will stick long enough to kill you. Or as I told the circle of guys with machine guns, while I held a (granted weaponized) umbrella “Sure, you can kill me, but I can f*ck up one of you before you do. Volunteers?” The left, metaphorically has that umbrella.

Their power is waning. They are in trouble. Probably in more trouble than any of us realizes, which justifies the measure of their insanity. But they still have the ability to destroy us if we do anything stupid, or even if we are just in the wrong place at the wrong time and they need to make an example.

Do I want to beat them all? Sure. Do I think many of the crazier ones are utterly nonredeemable? Sure. Do I think when it comes to the sticking point, we might have to fight physically? Sure. Do I think we should be prepared? Sure.

Do I think that time is now? Sure. If you wish to lose. Because right now they still have enough power to tar whatever you do as utterly unprovoked and evil. And to convince those “non political” people that everyone to the right of Lenin MUST be utterly destroyed. And then what comes out of that? Ah. Well, you know. Quaint paradises like Cuba.

And don’t delude yourselves that we’ll utterly destroy them, okay? I too have fantasies of beating them to death with their “institutional patriarchy” signs. But they’ve sold that fantasy to enough people. They might have sold the fantasy of “mostly peaceful protests” to enough “non political” people too. And even if you utterly destroy them, who is you? You are aware a lot of the younger people who are non leftist have totally turned leftism on its head. Which—because leftism isn’t the exact opposite of reality, but more like a vicious fantasy land—means they landed in a fantasy land of their own. Even if you—for values of you—win utterly, most of the readership on this blog will be as out of place. And most people will be as broken and poor in all senses, as if the other side wins.

No, that doesn’t mean I don’t want to fight.

(“I was handy with a rifle, my father’s .303. I fought for something final, not the right to disagree.”-Leonard Cohen.)

And no, it doesn’t mean I think everything is lost. I did at this time in 2016. You might not realize it, since I often post my most hopeful articles here when I’m most hopeless. Not exactly lying to you, honest. More lying to myself. Call it “Sarah’s depression management.”

I didn’t realize how much I thought everything was lost until Hillary didn’t win. The relief. The stunning, unexpected relief. I walked in a dream for a week, in fear it WAS a dream. And yeah, that’s a measure of how well they “sold” their narrative even to those of us who are politically plugged in and addicted to the stuff.

So, what do I think? What do I think our chances are? Do I think we shouldn’t bring the cartridge box out, ever? What would make me bring it out?

Ah. Shake the magic eighth ball and ask again. Right now? I don’t even know what the result of the elections will be. To be fair, I don’t think I’d trust any prognostications after 2016, but also…. well, they’ve pulled all the stops on the fraud. And I thought they’d already done that in 2018. And I can’t tell if we can beat the margin of fraud. I can’t tell if anyone could. Even if every living person went in and voted straight GOP. And you know they won’t. A lot of them are non political and believe the narrative.

So, why not go at them, now, before they fraud their way to power?
Partly? Because they want us to. Which means right now they have strategies in place. They are ready. Dear Lord, what do you think the Summer of lack of love has been all about?

(“Everybody knows that it’s now or never. Everybody knows that it’s me or you. And everybody knows that you live forever, once you’ve done a line or two” —Leonard Cohen.)

Yes, they might be wrong. They’ve been wrong before. And yes their “troops”are pathetic, and the people who tell us “but they got bloodied” need to take a powder already. I do agree with you on that. Because most of their “troops”that are in anyway effect are violent criminals. They’ve long ago been blooded. But their ante-fa only gambols where authorities are friendly for a reason.

BUT—

The night between Monday and Tuesday my profile disappeared from Facebook, and yesterday I had to log on to FB TWICE and change my password twice. Apparently this happened to a lot of people on what I’ll broadly call “our side.”

Sure, it might have been a technical glitch, but wait: I also had to log onto WordPress TWICE. The chances of having a glitch hit both companies the same day is….. uh. lower. Though I’ll give you that tech in general is capable of a lot of that.

I don’t know, because I no longer have reliable sources on the other side.

And frankly that’s the biggest problem with going hot. It’s mutual assured destruction. Yeah, I know, a lot of you don’t use FB, I personally don’t really use Twitter, etc etc ad definite nauseum. But are you sure of your cell phone? Are you even that sure of your snail mail? (Were you ever? For those who think vote by mail is a good idea: take a $1000 dollar bill, but it in an envelope addressed to yourself, place the necessary stamp, and mail it to yourself. Go on. I dare you.)

No, they can’t black us out completely. As I’m fond of saying the photocopier and fax brought the USSR down. But organization will be interesting, and do you really want to bet the life of the republic on this leaky sieve before it’s absolutely necessary?

So when will it be absolutely necessary? When you have a reasonable expectation that it’s either the Glorious People’s Republic of Bumf*ckistan or the regime in Starship Troopers. Because in those circumstances, yeah, Starship Troopers is preferable. (And those who think that means I want it need their heads examined. But it’s still preferable to communism. [And for those who’ve never read the book, read it. The bullshit in the MOVIE wasn’t preferable to communism. It also wasn’t Heinlein’s ideas.]) Because it’s quite likely at that point it is our best case scenario and our best hope: that the veterans will have had enough. It won’t be the Republic, though. Remember that. They can’t win, but we can lose. And we probably will, for a definition of losing.

And yes, it might all come to a head in less than a month and a half, though things usually take longer to percolate.

I wish I could tell you it won’t be needed. I wish I could say those of us who have been fighting the cultural civil war are winning. I wish I could tell you that it won’t come to the death of the Republic in both constitution and territory, or that we’re not in danger. Or that the dread fourth box won’t be needed. But I only lie in fiction and this ain’t fiction.

I came out of the political closet in what can best be described as a Road to Damascus experience. Some of you know what I’m talking about. Some don’t. Let’s say it was a very bizarre thing to happen to completely non-mystical me who dreads woo woo stuff even from the religion (s?) she was raised in (it’s complicated.) Let’s say I didn’t rush out of the political closet. I was shoved. Or drop kicked. In a way impossible to resist. I’m not a happy warrior. Not intellectually. And only some of you know how hard those first steps were. I’m conflict averse, and I used to cry while writing. And shake so hard it was hard to type.

I just had to, and resisting it would be harder than doing it. Kind of like when I was giving birth to second son, and they told me not to push because the doctor wasn’t there yet. Worst half an hour of my life. And it only kind of worked.

But I’ve been doing this now for what? A decade? And yet…. well this year. Despite me and all like me who scream in the desert.

(“Me I’ve broken every window, but the house, the house is dark. I care but very little what happens to the heart.”—Leonard Cohen.)

So am I saying we’re winning the cultural war, and even if the left frauds their way to power we can’t lose?

Tickle me. See if I laugh.

I’m saying the nihilist Marxists had won the culture so completely by the time I was born, that we are a rearguard action, a regiment of the damned, the crazy Nekulturny bastages willing to take what they fling at us, willing to give up on the cocktail party circuit, or more importantly on acclaim, security, respectability, because we think Marxism is that bad, and that the future and civilization are that important.

Yes, people like us win. Sometimes. That level of insanity commands its own respect, and wins its own victories. If we have enough time.

Do we have enough time? Who the heck knows. We might. Miracles do happen. We saw one in November 2016 and honestly, back then I didn’t even know what we were handed. I expected at best that we’d slowed down the death camps and our utter destruction. Because well… Himself chooses the strangest instruments. (Yes, I know, Noah was a drunkard, Moses was tongue-tied, and the list goes on. Sometimes I think He delights in contrary plotting. Yes I do keep telling Him He needs a writers’ group. He’s becoming predictable. Speaking of miracles, still not charred here, on this side of the screen.)

In case anyone is keeping score at home, lately—like the last three weeks—I’ve been getting the sort of push I got towards coming out of the political closet, but this time it could briefly summed up as “Write fiction and release it as fast as you humanly can.” And “Make all your friends on the side of light do the same.”

THIS part is true and puzzling. I mean, that’s a true push, and not just from my broken mind. When it’s …. THAT, whatever it is, it’s undeniable.

What does it mean? Heck if I know. Do I look to you like I have special knowledge? It could either mean that “we win they lose” and He’s moved on to incite warriors to win the culture fight. OR it could mean all is lost, and perhaps a fragment of a novel or two will be needed ten thousand years from now. I’m just passing it on, because if I seem less stable than usual, for the record, it’s really hard to go about our lives “in these trying times” while a divine boot is being applied repeatedly to one’s backside. And because it maybe means something good. Maybe. I don’t know. I’m not writing this novel.

So, we could get a miracle. Or not. I’ve now for some time been getting the sense I should leave my beloved Denver. For, oh, a little over a year, now. At the same time events have conspired to make it impossible for us to leave under two years.

Is that feeling right? Well, it’s coming from ME and my back-brain, not from whatever it is that pushed me out of the political closet. And who knows? All we can do is make preparations and set things in order so we can leave in two years, if we can leave then. If it waits that long.

And in the end, that’s where we are in the largest sense. Will this whole thing go hot, and go up like a Roman candle?
I don’t know. And neither do you.

Will we prevail when we’re forced to fight? Will what emerges be at least as good as Starship Troopers? Will a miracle occur and we get to keep the republic?

Magic eight ball is broken. You’ve poked it way too much. My friend to whom I’ve been pasting this as I write it, because this is the longest blog post in history, has just sent back “This too shall pass, possibly through the plumbing system, all things considered, but still…” And she’s not wrong.

So I am saying there’s nothing we can do?

No, no, I’m not. Remember half of this blog is me talking to myself. Besides, making use of the wonderful term one of you dropped in comments yesterday, I’m not Martyrbator. I don’t expect to be glorified through holy martyrdom. Nor do I want it or wish to hasten it. I’m not the type to sing hymns and turn my eyes to heaven as I’m herded into a place filled with hungry lions. By genetics and disposition, I have a dream of going out as I came in: screaming and covered in someone else’s blood. (Naked at this point would be sad for everyone’s sense of aesthetics. And hopefully not prematurely.) At least if I don’t get the option to go quietly, at an advanced age, surrounded by my children, bio and adopted, including those adopted as adults (ever so useful. No diapers to change) and their tribe of children and grandchildren.

I’m saying the time is not yet. I’m saying now is the time to prepare on all fronts. You know what they are, and if you’re smart, you’ll include ways to communicate with and help those you trust.

And that the time might be very short indeed. Or not. Because miracles do happen. No, you shouldn’t count on them. But at this point well…. even I have had to admit they happen. Call it quantum uncertainty. Call it life being whimsical. But they do happen.

Prepare for the worst. No, worse than that. No. Even worse. Look, just prepare for the worst you can imagine. Then grab your most pessimistic friend and ask them what he can imagine. Then have him get his most pessimistic friend….. You get the point. Prepare for THAT.

And if that doesn’t happen, be aware you’re not off the hook. We have to change this ridiculous culture, or our kids will fight this with fewer resources. Or their kids after them.
So, physical or not, as is needed at whatever point, fight now. No matter the cost. Even though the cost of the culture war is all out of proportion to the rewards any of us will see.

Fight as you can, while you can. And remember, physical or metaphorical, the pointy end goes in the other guy. And if you can, poison it. And if appropriate, break it in there.

This is no time to go wobbly. Be not afraid. And do prepare.

And now I’m going to finish one of those novels, a fragment of which might be needed—and completely misunderstood—in ten thousand years. Because Someone refuses to join a writers’ group and is fond of convoluted plotting. (Still not charred. Winning. But you might not want to stand so close to me.)

 

Reprinted from According to Hoyt for September 23, 2020