Planetary Anthology: The Moon, open submission.

You will, of course remember that Superversive Press has a series of Planetary Anthologies. Each one revolved around the theme of each planet.

... They're doing 11 anthologies. One for the sun, and another for the moon. And yes, Pluto is a flipping planet, damn it.

The most recent open submission is for Luna, ... or The Moon anthology, depending on what sounds better.

Insert obligatory "That's no moon! That's a space station!" joke here.

Take a wild guess who is going to be editing that one.

Yes, me. No need to be so shocked about it. I'm allowed to handle sharp objects, and that includes the scalpel required for editing.... or the butcher knife, depending.

The theme for the moon will be relatively straightforward and obvious: dreams and illusions, despair and madness, isolation. You know, all of that fun stuff.

Stories should be between 3,000 and 8,000 words. Stories should center on themes of those mentioned above. You want someone going crazy during the full moon? Go for it. (Also see: Hollywood Moon by Joseph Wambaugh).  Want the last man standing from a mission to the dark side of the moon? It can be done (See: Rod Serling).

Do you want to write about a man crazy enough to believe he's a Middle Earth elf, but is the only thing standing between an astronomer and a legion of hit men out to kill her? You can't. I've already written it.

These are just ideas I'm throwing out there. The themes listed need not be specifically the primary plot, just part of the story.

Any genre is allowed, though science fiction and fantasy in any of the traditional forms is preferred.

Remember that this is Superversive press. There should be stories that speak to heroic aspects of man; man as he can be, not as he all too often is. The stories should to the reader’s soul. Make the reader yearn for the life that he ought to live. Nihilistic drivel need not apply.

Think this is difficult for a theme that revolves around madness and despair? Depends on the madness.

As Man of La Mancha put it:

When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. To seek treasure where there is only trash. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!

Go out and do me proud.

Cut off date for submissions is April 1, 2018. The date may be extended depending on quality of submissions.

Send submissions to: planetaryantho@superversivesf.com

Music blog: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Meets Metal (2017)

Yes, I know the TV suck was cheesier than a pizza. Just roll with it for a moment. There's some good singing here, and some good guitar work.

And yes, I can write to this one. Why? Mostly the guitar I think.

Review: Torchship Captain, by Karl Gallagher

Just when I thought that the series could have ended with book two, Karl found a way to throw a heck of a monkey wrench into the ordeal.

I have already reviewed book 1 and two of the Torchship Trilogy, and boy has this been a fun ride.

But now, round three: Torchship Captain.

Michigan Long blackmailed her enemies into joining the war against the AIs. Now the secret she used is leaking out and the Fusion is shattering. Caught in the middle of a civil war, she will have to use any weapon that comes to hand—her wits, her ship, her mate.

And that barely scratches what happens in the first hundred pages.
As the Fusion -- the high-tech Orwellian world that has locked down technology since the AIs went rogue -- falls apart, well, let's just say I was wondering if this was the end of Firefly or the start of Honor Harrington. I was looking for Robert S Pierre along the way. And with good reason. If you ever wonder what a historian designing society looks like, here you go.

But a complaint I often heard lodged against Honor Harrington is her navy is "too perfect." If that's your problem, meet Michigan Long. Long is a Sparrow with Ahab syndrome. This is the book where it looks like it's gonna cost her. There is a reason no one wants to be the Count of Monte Cristo when they grow up. While it always simmered below the surface in Torchship and Pilot, this is where it, and she, goes full tilt.

One of the major threads in this book is the politics of the competing factions -- going from the Fusion Orwellian state of societal manipulation, to the Disconnect Libertarian anarchy, to a new player called "the Harmony," Confucian principles turned to totalitarian state. The politics of it were all handled deftly and in details without becoming too boring ... though it does start to drag around the middle. Someone should probably do a sociology paper on this book.

But as I hinted, there are some problems though. As I noted before, Long is basically a former Sparrow -- a spy who uses sex as a primary weapon in her missions. Unfortunately for her, she's still using it. And yes, she's married. And you can guess how just from the description. The sex scenes are thankfully not explicit, and her husband is Confucian, not Christian, so he's relatively laid back about it ... but not very happy about it. It's complicated and messy, and while it fits with the characters, personally I think it went a step too far. There's a stretch around the middle you will probably want to skim through -- between the politics and the Harmony subplot, there's some drag in the pacing. It seemed a little excessive and slow. I'm not even going to touch on moral / immoral aspects of it. I can't even say it was padding, since the book is just over 350 pages long. While book 1 and 2 fit together like one long novel, this almost feels a little off at times.

Thankfully, the book rallies quickly by the last third. At the end of the day, this wraps up every dangling thread, leaving it all tied in a bow. Everything is resolved, including elements that lead back to book 1. There was so much Fusion-Harmony politics, I half-suspected that the AI solution would happen off screen. It wasn't. It was integrated beautifully back into the overall plot. Karl could have easily made this final part a fourth novel, but he tied it off like a surgeon with a suture in a lovely 30 pages of epic warfare that I did not see coming, though I probably should have.

Hell, the only thing I thought Karl would do and didn't would be with the terraformers. But they already served their purpose in books 1 and 2.

Overall, solid book, good end to the trilogy. If you've bought books one and two, get Torchship Captain here. If you're new, just purchase the whole Torchship Trilogy.

For the record, yes, this is going to be my 2018 Dragon Award pick for Best Novel.

As an aside: Dear David Weber, if you have any problem with continuing or concluding Honor Harrington, I recommend you and Karl have a conversation sometime.

What I'm working on 3: Hell Spawn

When Russell Newquist announced that his Silver Empire was going to rerelease my Love at First Bite series, he stated

In addition to this excellent series, we’ve also commissioned Mr. Finn to create an entirely new Urban Fantasy series. We’re not ready to share the details on this just yet, except that I can say a few things. The book is set in New York, the city that Mr. Finn knows so well. It does have some of the religious elements his fans love so much. And it will proudly feature the insane action that we’ve all come to expect from Mr. Finn.

Also, the one-paragraph pitch that Mr. Finn gave me is the best book pitch I’ve ever heard. And the outline for book one more than lives up to that pitch. And… book one is already half done.

Expect this new series to go live right after we finish republishing Love At First Bite.

I finished the project Russell is talking about in about six weeks. I did a little under ten thousand words a week.

Anyway, when Russell asked me for a new IP in UF, I didn't send him one pitch, I sent him four.

A) "Arresting Merlin"-- Taken from a short I did for Tales of Once and Future King.
Premise: A cop arrests a ten year old for trying to murder the mayor of New York City. The kid insists that the Mayor is one of the Fae, and he's the only one to stop him. because he's Merlin. When he sets two of the fae on fire with an explosive rune, the cop is inclined to agree with him.

 For the record, this is the short story that I pounded out about 36 hours to deadline, and sent it in at the last possible minute. It got accepted easily, and the editor didn't ask for any edits.

B) Magic Graduate school.
NYU's Emerys Graduate School for the Magically inclined is in a part of Manhattan that no one has ever seen... mostly because it exists behind a glamour wall that keeps the citizens from seeing it. They now have a new magical self defense professor... who doesn't have any magic. But he does have a certain set of skills. Skills that make him a nightmare to people like them. A magic wand is nice, but doesn't help if someone with a Glock blows the back of your head off.

I partially stole this concept from a friend of mine. I say partially because I went a completely different route with it in my head. It's become an RPG with friends of mine on the weekends, and becoming even further along from the original concept. So, yeah. 

C) Cop versus Demons.
Officer Thomas Nolan is a saint. He can smell evil. He's forgiving to the lesser criminals who are merely desperate, and even the criminals he put away tend to like him. But when a serial killer wages war on the city, he's going to face the darkness on more levels than he can imagine. Because this killer leaves a stench Nolan can follow a mile away: but proving it is going to be a problem: because how do you do forensics on a killer possessed by a demon?
(I figure the opening line is "My name is officer Thomas Nolan, and I am a saint.")

 This was actually a premise I first thought of during my undergraduate years in Christian spirituality and mysticism. Between levitation, flying, smelling evil, and bilocation, tell me these don't sound like superpowers for a comic book.

D) The Ri
A project I'm working on with Dawn. We're 23000 words in. A YA UF project with warring fae in the city. There is a male lead and a female lead, and there's already an outline. Book 1 is stopping a faction of the fae from becoming Mayor of New York City.

D I mentioned the other day.

At the end of the day, C won. Apparently, that was a really good pitch. Who knew? I literally just wrote the flap copy for the idea in my head at the time.

The next problem was, well, writing to spec. After dealing with my Tolkien-sized cast for The Pius Trilogy, I think that Russell really wanted me to cut down my character count, and had specific figures on how many characters he wanted. I thought the only proper answer would be to have Detective Nolan and the enemy .... then Nolan needed a partner. Then Nolan needed an ME.  Then a priest. Then his wife and son.  Then an ADA. Suddenly I had the Magnificent Seven.

That was easy.

And hardest of all: Russell wanted me to outline.

For those of you who are new here, I generally don't outline. I sit down, I start writing, and I don't stop until I need to eat or sleep. This tends to be a general strain on my ability to rest, but it keeps the words flowing. I work 9-5, if not 10-6. No outlines usually mean that I can throw in a gunfight whenever the I feel the plot slows down. 

But after a few days of dwelling on it, I had an outline. There were only two murders, but they utilized everything I knew of serial killers and everything I could put together on demonology.

Along the way, I may have made a mistake and ended up with a horror novel instead. Oops.

Once I started writing, the outline didn't quite survive first contact with the enemy. I felt the plot slow down at least once ... so I threw in a gunfight. In the outline, I had a random encounter at his precinct ... during the writing of the novel, I had a completely different random encounter (that I hadn't planned) that allowed me to tie everything together, and created a subplot that I hadn't known was there. And there's at least three chapters that went entirely the right direction by the wrong route. 

I finished this novel at just under 60,000 words in 6 weeks. I was slowed down by Christmas.

Right now, the most difficult part of the series has been a title -- either for the series or for the individual novel.

I'm told it should by out by September. Making it eligible for the Dragon Awards in best horror in the 2019 Dragon Awards. Heh.... Yeah. I really do want one of those awards. Not for the PR, or for the honor, necessarily, but damn those are shiny.

Anyway, expect it out in September. Ish. The second book is already outlined. I may have the second book out in October.

New Trailer: ANT-MAN AND THE WASP

For those of you who don't recall, there are three -- count 'em, three-- Marvel films coming out this year.

February is Black Panther.

May is Avengers: Infinity War

And then there's this.

I guess the first thing to note here is the Wasp, played by Evangeline Lily. I can only suppose someone saw her choreography from The Hobbit films and said, "Yeah. We can make her a superhero." And with all the little jabs at Scott Lang ... this is Scott Lang. I think his entire character is "eternal punching bag." It seems to be less a matter of being beaten up on by the female lead, and more of being beaten up on by the world in general. Not to mention the aspect of "Yes, I gave my daughter on-board offensive weaponry, not the ex-con" fits perfectly well with Michael Douglas' Hank Pym.

While it's nice to see Laurence Fishburne join the Marvel Universe ... he's going to play Goliath? From what I recall of the character, isn't he getting a little too old for action lead? He's in great shape, but they're very clearly letting him go gray here.

I notice this entire film takes place post-Civil War, but makes no mention of the Infinity War. If this means that Scott Lang won't be in Avengers 3, I'm good with that. Though I suspect that we'll be seeing both of them in Avengers 4, when we have been threatened with a new Avengers team.  (I'm expecting it to consist of Black Panther, Doctor Strange, these two, and maybe Carol Danvers. Just a guess.)

If Ant-Man is a heist film, this one looks like a fugitive film. It already looks better than Ant-Man, which was on the low end of the MCU films.

What I'm working on 2: The Ri

I'm so going to have to have a conversation with Dawn about the title. In the current environment, it almost sounds like REEEEEEE.

Anyway.

This one is about the fae of New York City. Not the fairies -- those live over in Greenwich Village. We're talking more Jim Butcher's fae, only the lines are a lot less blurry between the two sides.

This project is more Dawn Witzke's baby, and we're about 30 chapters in by the time of this writing. It's a YA project, and we're going back and forth, so between her schedule and mine, it's slow going.

Simple premise: boy meets girl from opposite fae courts. Both are adopted. He knows what he's doing. She doesn't.  He's a human, she's ... unknown. One side wants her back at any cost, and the other wants to protect her from the other, just to protect her.

Hilarity ensues.

This one has been an odd experience. Largely because I'm used to just sitting down, pounding out a novel until I stop for the day, then repeat. Waiting on someone else, working on other projects, then coming back to the original project is new for me.

It's even more interesting when I'm looking at the outline and thinking, "Hey, I can do the next three chapters without working very hard. I'll do three of these at a clip."

Because if I'm not working, what the hell am I doing?

Probably to no one's surprise, that's why when I have blogs come out, they come out in blocks. I write several of them at one time.

If I recall correctly, once we're done with the project, Dawn will be shopping it around. As she's the lead on this one, she gets to have that joy. I'm a little busy on a few other things. Here and there.

Non Illegitimi carborundum.

What I'm working on 1: Tales of White Ops

I recently ran a poll past my Facebook group, Finn's Firebrands, asking what they want to see more of.

The winner was more about what I'm writing.

I'm working on three things right now.

So, step one is actually the first thing I ever worked on.

It's a space opera centered around space Templars. It's born of a visit to the planet Earth, where aliens named the Renar met an interesting PMC, whose philosophy is simple: find those who prey on the weak, beat them up and take their lunch money. The Renar adapted the concept to their own culture.... Because that's never happened before (except for most of Japanese culture, which was taken from somewhere else. I think they may have invented "cultural appropriation"). The Renar only accepted the best, most qualified members of any race who could gain entry. They're basically Special Forces, only more picky.

Eventually, the Earth organization the Renar stole it from, (a family run business) moved off world, and ran alongside the Renar organization. The human end of it is respected and allowed a lot more latitude, as it is the founding concept.

The Renar called their organization and their members the totentanzers.  Literally it translates as "dancers with death." A more flexible translation is "sentinels against death."

The English translation is Rangers: Because there are only a hundred law and military organizations of the same name. It's fairly ubiquitous.

But the human end of the "company" of Rangers is incorporated with the others. And it starts with one man, who runs it as a family business. He grew up with the family money (which is about four hundred years of investments on a starting capital of a billion dollars), and started training from insanely young. He was heir to the family fortune, only the rest of the family didn't come with it. He grew up in a religious monastery, the Holy Order of Saint Patrick, in Ireland. They happened to run the Interstellar Renaissance Faire, which has taken to incorporating every alien military style ever. Add a physique about two meters tall and one wide, an eidetic memory, you have one interesting badass.

But when a minor threat to the Renar graduates from nuisance to genuine threat, making leaps and bounds in technology that seem impossible, said badass smells a rat. There's something out there using this "minor" threat into a litmus test to see who in the galaxy can stop them. If there are any victors, they are to be suborned or destroyed.

So the Rangers need a team from the existing Ranger corps, only the best. Within this group of the elite, this would contain only the top ten percent. It's a small group, meant to perform strikes against this new enemy, wherever and whatever it might be.

And this team is called White Ops.

This project is currently under review with Christopher Kennedy's publishing company -- the man you brings you Mark Wandrey's Cartwright's Cavaliers. I ran it past Baen, but they gave me a strange rejection of "Unfortunately, again we will not be able to find a place for it in our lineup." Which is an odd rejection. I'm happy with "It sucks, thanks."

And since I plan to be rejected by everyone, I'm going to use any free time I have (Ha. Free time.) to clean up books 2 and 3. That way, while I'm waiting for rejection from Kennedy, I can have three books to run past, and be rejected by, Vox Day. Then I can be rejected by Superversive.

You're wondering why I'm not running this first past my primary publisher, Silver Empire and Russell Newquist? Russell already has 9 books coming out from me this year, and he wants more of a focus on urban fantasy. I figure by the time I get rejected by all of the above, Russell's schedule might clear up enough to take a crack at it, and see if he wants to expand to another genre.

If everything gets rejected, I figure I could have five books ready to go by the start of 2019, and they can come out once a month. Or as fast as Dawn can pump out covers.

Non illegitimi carborundum.

Lou Antonelli and the Attack of the Schizophrenic Cat

So I'm pounding out blog posts for next week on the works in progress, and up comes this little gem.

For the love of God, are these people insane?

Sigh. In case you're unaware, recently, Lou Antonelli unveiled that Camestros what's his name is actually Foz Meadow's husband, Toby Meadows, a PhD in philosophy at the University of Queensland, Brisbane.


If you don't know Camestros Felapton, he's an odd duck who posts over at File 770, and his own blog. I've never really been able to pin him down as to if he's crazy or if he's just got a public persona. And his posts are so all over the place, some look schizophrenic, and some look perfectly lucid. Some are straight numbers crunching and reasonable, some are head-tiltingly "WTF did I just read?" In particular is his "talking cat" reviews, where he actually reviewed Honor at Stake ... still not sure if he liked it or not.

Lou, being a newsman, has sources with a good idea that Toby Meadows is Camestros. I'll be happy to take him at his word.

But it is just so FASCINATING to see the insanity that these people have gone to in rewriting the laws of reality, and history.

I think I first mentioned Lou on the blog in relation to his being banned from WorldCon, and the fuckery involved there. 

Author Lou Antonelli, who I follow on Facebook, is a nice guy. And I don't mean that in my usual, dismissive New Yorker sort of way. He's a good guy. He's a funny author. At one point, he'd been driven around the bend by Gerrold and his band of misfits, to such an extent that he sent a letter to the Spokane police informing them that Gerrold and the Puppy Kickers formed a credible threat to his life. Given fellow puppy kicker Arthur Chu and his bomb threatening minions? I don't think that's particularly out of line.

But no, it was used as evidence against him. A short story contract had been revoked. Gerrold won't shut up about it and has thrown every act of friendship and apology back in Lou's face.

Their version? As seen above, "Heh heh he. Lou tried to SWAT someone at WorldCon."

Um... no. SWATting someone at a hotel or a convention is A) a cute trick and B) never done, to my knowledge. Don't you just love how the story went from "He wrote a letter to Spokane PD," and became "EVIL LOU WAS GOING TO SWAT SOMEONE!!!!"

Sigh. Such lying sacks of crap I have never seen before. And the lies are just so obvious it's really painful. The stupid, it burns.

It gets better, because when you look at the link cited above -- which is right here, click on it -- you will notice no one used the word "dox," even in the comments. Go ahead. Check. I'll wait.

The entire post is about how Lou uncovered Mr Meadows' online identity. He's busy practicing good investigative journalism, as these pimps are practicing ... I wouldn't even call it tabloid journalism, since some tabloids have had to put in an honest day's work from time to time.

But no, going after Lou for outing someone as a glorified annoyance is bizarre, stupid, and their accusations are delusional.

Even in Lou's own post, he dismisses Felapton as a snob and a jerk. That's it. The reasonable response should either be to confirm or deny. If Felapton and Meadows deny -- truthfully or not -- they should laugh it off and move along. If he confirms, he should confirm and move on. Since there is no call to dox them by anybody I've seen, what's the problem here? Hell, no one doxxed me, no one seems to have doxxed 770.... so why would anyone dox this relatively minor figure? The biggest insult I've seen about him is that he's a troll. So... what? Seriously, what's more embarrassing here? Felapton as a philosophy professor, or Meadows as an internet troll?

I've asked several of my Australian friends. There are apparently no real world consequences for a professor to go off the reservation online. So his job isn't even threatened.

I'd tell these jokers to grow up, but that would require they stop playing in the mud.

On Writing "Deceptive Appearances" for Mercury

Mercury is known for many things. Superversive wanted to focus on a theme of journeys and messages. As the Greek deity Hermes, he is known as a healer.

I wanted to focus on something a little different: Mercury as a trickster.

Enter my hero, Sean Patrick Ryan.  No, not Sean AP Ryan, Sean Patrick Ryan, who you saw in Astounding Frontiers #1, the first Ryan I ever wrote. The original. I wrote this SPR, space ranger, years before SAPR came on the scene. He's two meters tall, one wide, and he never suffers fools.

Sean Patrick Ryan, in this case, has a name as a mercenary, a fixer, and has the unfortunate sobriquet as "the most dangerous man in the galaxy." Why unfortunate? Because that means that every idiot and lowlife wants to test him, and bring him down, just to earn the "honor" of the name.

So with Sean and his friend Peter Sierra walk into a bar, and everyone else is being charged admission fees.... but not them... they know that they're about to become the floor show.

When the first alien comes in and Sean lays him out, the threat seems to be over....

And then the Touri, a seven-foot bipedal velociraptor, named Fe'eshar Straczyn strolls into the bar.

Then the fun really starts.

Purchase Mercury right here.

The Story of Moira Greyland continues

In case you haven't heard, Moira Greyland Peat, the daughter and prey of author Marion Zimmer Bradley, wrote a book about her life with the monsters who spawned her in The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon.

Marion Zimmer Bradley was a bestselling science fiction author, a feminist icon, and was awarded the World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement. She was best known for the Arthurian fiction novel THE MISTS OF AVALON and for her very popular Darkover series.

She was also a monster.

THE LAST CLOSET: The Dark Side of Avalon is a brutal tale of a harrowing childhood. It is the true story of predatory adults preying on the innocence of children without shame, guilt, or remorse. It is an eyewitness account of how high-minded utopian intellectuals, unchecked by law, tradition, religion, or morality, can create a literal Hell on Earth.

THE LAST CLOSET is also an inspiring story of survival. It is a powerful testimony to courage, to hope, and to faith. It is the story of Moira Greyland, the only daughter of Marion Zimmer Bradley and convicted child molester Walter Breen, told in her own words.

This is not usually the bright cheery and sunshiny thing that I have the tendency to recommend.

Now, the nice thing about Moira is that she's sane. She will occasionally mention on Facebook that she occasionally suffers panic attacks. I suspect that is the basic minimum of reactions to being used as a sex toy by both parents from the age of preschool onward.

When I interviewed her on this topic the first time, before the book came out, she was very matter of fact about all of this. She was straightforward, and delivered an R rated topic in PG terms.

So, of course, as she's taken several sacred cows and turned them into hamburger, those people who used to worship said cows are upset.

It's interesting, and darkly amusing to see the same people who cry #MeToo on Twitter turn to Moira and go #NoNotYou.

Moira

In unveiling the child molestation of Marion Zimmer Bradly, Moira has unnerved a lot of "feminists" who used The Mists of Avalon as a template for their ideology. Also leftists in SF.

Moira also pissed off the LGBTQ movement by noting that both of her parents, both of whom were gay advocates, were child molesters. And, as her parents would screw anything with human anatomy (I have not read the book, so I presume that bestiality was one of the few vices they did NOT cultivate) they were at least bisexual, if not pansexual, supersexual, and whatever sexual is left that means "total slut." Funny enough, as a result, Moira is not a fan of most of the gay social agenda we've been seeing ... perhaps because her entire exposure to the gay agenda can be summed up in court transcripts.

For this, she's been labeled a "homophobe." Because, you know, being raped repeatedly by two Bs from LGBTQRS for over a decade is just such a positive experience.

Hell, I'm surprised she doesn't have an actual allergic reaction.

Is the stupid starting to burn yet?

Add to this the latest issue: pagans are upset with her because Moira highlights that she was used as a party favor, given to a friend of the family called Isaac Bonewits (Pronounced bon-a-witz). Who the Hell is Bonewits? A Pagan Pope, if you will, founder of a Druid "fellowship." So, yeah, now there are pagans are apparently losing their minds over it. I don't think any of my pagans have issues with her, since the pagans I know tend to be Norse.

But the more I look at all of this the more I wonder at the fragility of these people who go AWOL as Moira unveils the rot behind the curtain. Splash some BBQ slash on the sacred cow, watch them all lose their minds.

You know, when I studied and dissected the life and times of Eugenio Pacelli before and after he became Pope Pius XII, I was quite ready to string him up and burn him in effigy if I proved to myself that he was just as bad as certain "historians" said he was. Why didn't that disturb me to deep dive? Because if it turned out he was a schmuck, that just proves that he was a schmuck. It didn't disprove anything about Catholic dogma, philosophy, theology, or my own personal faith. This meant I could do my research without worry, and do the graduate paper that would become A Pius Man: A Holy Thriller.

But these people? Their very way of life relies on their idols being perfect. Finding a dent in the gold calf du jour means that their entire life is meaningless. Therefore, denting the calf means that the worshipers freak out, foam billowing from their mouths as they grind their teeth and come howling for your blood.

That's one of the nice things about Catholicism. We start with the premise that, no, we're not perfect, but thankfully, God is, and we don't have to worry all that much about not being worthy to perform services. But Leftists don't have that comfort. They rarely, if ever, hold to a deity that is a Deity. They would sooner worship the golden calf instead of the Lamb of God. The Left's usual golden calf is, of course, socialism -- a Godless and godless system. The only problem with these systems is that they really only work is everyone is a good, pure, just human being.

Obviously, this doesn't end very well.

But this is what happens when the philosophies of the Left are really just cults of personalities. When the cult leader is found to be not just imperfect, but a monster ... well then, just what sort of monster are you for following along? (Answer: You may not be)

Instead of asking that question, they hide from the answer, and form a lynching party for a blonde harpist who decided that she'd rather not be a victim.

Who knew that self-reflection would be that difficult?