I’m always surprised when I hear someone refer to me as a happy warrior (which happens about once a week.)

I’m not a happy warrior. I try really hard to be a nice person. I know my anger can cause a lot of harm to me and others, so I try to keep it in check, to the point of inducing depression to stop myself expressing it.

I’d prefer, by far, to live as so many female writers in the past, dreaming up nice stories and never pronouncing on politics.

Unfortunately I was born too late for that. Even more unfortunately I was raised by a father who belonged in the Republic of Rome, when it comes to holding fast to a set of principles, and having a weird, inflexible idea of honor, particularly his own honor, and how he had to behave in an honorable manner. (When I was little, and understood less of the world than I do even now, I thought dad was Roman, mom was Spanish and my brother was French. In retrospect, I might have been right, in ways deeper than mere reality.)

My father believed everyone should be raised to be a gentleman of honor, genitals not withstanding, and he raised me that way. (Yes, there are different female civic virtues. Very different. I learned that from his mom.) And one thing a gentleman can’t do is let evil flourish under the sun, without attempting to fight it.

Which is why I was an anti-communist even when I was a — I know, Bob the Registered still thinks I am — soft liberal, which is the natural consequence of being raised in Europe. In fact, those opinions — such as on gun control, say — changed through examining how these opinions HELPED communism. To this day I feel icky if I have some opinions in common with the left, and I examine them extra hard. (Though to be fair even when I agree with them on something, I neither agree on what it does to society, nor how it should be fixed. So, there’s that.)

Why talk about this now? Because every time I come across that “happy warrior” thing, I smile a little, because it’s so wrong.

I’m an unhappy warrior, who often triggers her auto-immune through anger and frustration. But we weren’t put on this Earth to be easy and besides, they wouldn’t let me do the one thing I wanted to do in peace, without bringing politics into it. So I fight.

In the same way, when I was young, stupid and an exchange student, I once heard my fellows talk when they thought I was asleep, and they all agreed I was a conventional, sheltered young Latin girl. Something about “must have been raised in a convent.” In fact, I was a young hellion, with acidic opinions and at the time had ideas of how things like the relationship between the sexes should be that would have made most of them not just blush but run and hide.

It took me a while to realize that the fact I was an introvert, and thought most of them were too dumb/young/conventional to have a true discussion/argument with meant I rarely said much, and what I said was usually of no great consequence, so externally I presented as they expected a nice Latin girl to present.

I think it was part of how people misjudged Cruz — tying in to what Amanda said last night — versus Beto. You see, I’m 99.9% sure Cruz is one of us. It’s not just the weird affect which would pass unnoticed in an sf/f con. It’s weird things he lets drop, when he quotes Star Wars or the Princess Bride, for that matter. I think he knows how weird his points of reference are, so he keeps quiet, so he’s not one of those “out there” sf/f people, who are, as everyone knows, crazy.

I think he should put on a costume and hit comicon. Sure, pay attention to the costume so it’s nothing the left can pick on him for, but let people see him having fun. He underestimates to what extent the geeks have taken over the culture.

But besides that, I think it’s also why we miss-perceived Trump. At least I hope we did, and I hope my suspicion is right.

Because the left enforces conformity in areas — physical or professional, or even creative — that they control, a lot of us keep/kept under very deep cover, even going to the point of sometimes saying things that could be perceived as supporting lefty povs. (Or writing. There’s a reason the Magical British Empire is still under revision. It gets tiresome.) OTOH every time you bow, every time you scrape. Every time you’re forced to pretend to be something you’re not the resentment grows.

If I’m right, Trump was under deep cover, and now, having won a measure of power, he’s going to take revenge. All the revenge. Which suits me fight. And I sympathize with. If I’m ever in a position of power in my field, whatever that position is now, in the changed climate, it’s going to be interesting.

I never understood the left’s belief that if they stop opponents from talking, or even force opponents to behave as though they agreed with the left, the opposition will go away.

It leads me to believe either they’re incredibly shallow thinkers, or they think that any opposition is lack of information (they do. Hence the ubiquitous “educated yourself” from the indoctrinated, ill-educated left) OR they’re aliens and have no idea what people really are and think.

Sure, run us from the public sphere. Make our believing in your weird cult, or at least expressing outward belief, a condition of working or prospering in the areas you control, people will conform outwardly. Sure, some of them, those who want to go along to get along, might even change their minds.

But there are many who will keep quiet and hate you all the harder for what you’re making them do: for making them complicit in evil. And sooner or later they’ll get power.

Also, when they do, not only will those like them join them, but so will the go along to get along. This is how you get black swans. This is how people in Romania turned on their brutal leaders in the course of a day.

You can tell the left is no longer sure what hold they actually have on the country. You can tell they know the counts are corrupt, because they, like us, are trying to read the tea leaves.

But because they’ve isolated themselves so thoroughly from who their opposition is and what they believe, preferring to view them instead through flawed Marxian lenses, their attempts are almost bizarrely strange.

Such as… there was some idiot saying there must be more of them than of us because more people did Yoga than watched Nascar.

Uh…. and? I have never watched Nascar. I’ve never watched any car racing, unless forced. Just a total lack of interest. I’ve done yoga once or twice — it was a class in my high school. In the seventies. In Portugal — though granted, I never stay with it, because it’s too woo-woo for my tastes (though one of the times I lost weight it was yoga that did it.)

The point is, what the heck does either of those have to do with believing in individual liberty, right to property, and the constitution of the united states?

And, at any rate, isn’t Nascar a regional thing?

Well, it has to do because in their hearts they KNOW we are all redneck hicks, and therefore we need to behave like redneck hicks. In their minds, too, Yoga is new and daring and therefore lefty. (Memo- Neither the left nor Yoga are new and daring. In fact, they’re both conventional and mainstream. I.e. you ARE the man.)

Why does this matter?

In 2008 we voted early (I was still not aware of the amazing levels of fraud) and so we voted in downtown Colorado Springs, early one morning. I stood in line looking at all the people around me and going “hell, they’re all libs.” You know, women with short hair, men with long hair, sloppy in their attire, etc.

Then I realized I presented more or less the same way. I tend to forget to dye or cut my hair. (I’ve been grey since 28 and right now the “time to stop dyeing” is “when I have first biological grandchild”. Because it’s as good as any.) So I often have half-grey, long, and pulled into a mommy bun hair. In the dark and in a hurry, I’d dressed in one of my Indian skirts and a peasant blouse. And I had a bag with my artwork, and another with my pastels, because I was walking to art class after voting.

To anyone who watched I was one of them.

More and more I see the right making target acquisition errors that mirror the left and the left’s weird assumptions.

Does most of the right live rural? Some, surely, though I know my share of farmers who are all for subsidies, my share of postmen in rural areas who are all for unions, my share of– You get the point.

Are the cities/creative professions/educated people overwhelmingly leftist?

Oh, for fuck’s sake. Seriously, guys. The left might have a majority of those. MAYBE. I was always shocked when I stepped out of line in sf/f and people in deep cover sent me support…. privately. These are people who were way better than I at faking it, many of whom I thought were darlings of the left (many of whom WERE darlings of the left.)

The problem with the left suppressing dissenting opinion, is that a lot of people not only keep quiet but pretend. To be allowed to do what they want, they have to.

And of course, vote fraud is easier in cities, so cities present a uniform lefty front.

But is it true? BAH.

Don’t fall for the lies of the left or the enforced conformity they create. You could be wrong about half or even a majority of city dwellers/creative people/young people/minorities/etc.

And if I may, if it comes to hell and high water, you guys are going to need US. We know how to talk to the middle squishes, and we reassure them that the right are not all REALLY hicks. And we know how to talk to furriners too, which will be needed in the future.

Yes, I am sure that if the rough music starts to play, I and others like me will be killed in red-on-red violence. I tan, I’m urban (well, suburbanish now), I have an accent, and I speak in big words. Depending on the day, I might or might not have pastels or watercolors on my fingers. The left thinks I naturally belong to them. For our sins, so does a lot of the right. And when the rough music plays no one stops and thinks. I’m not even trying to stop that. It might be a reason I don’t want this to devolve to mass violence, but I also know there are worse things than mass violence.

But let’s suppose I’m lucky and escape that first impact. (I live in a semi-hidden suburb, judging by friends who have tried to find us and get confused. And the neighbors are simpatico. Guys, you’re going to need me. You’re going to need others like me. If for nothing else than you’re going to need shapers of ideas, people who make sure what gets passed to the next generation isn’t as crazy as what this generation has been taught. Sure, you need me less than you need farmers, mechanics and cooks. Weirdly, though, I can also cook and sew and in a pinch I’m a more than decent jack leg carpenter. But I don’t think civilization is going to devolve to the point ONLY those are needed. And I definitely don’t think they SHOULD.

Sure, the founding fathers were men with the practical skills of their time — farmers, and cobblers and the like — but they also had lawyers. And almost every founding father was a man of the intellect and the mind.

Without it, the left, however many of them remain, will shape the future. They’ll just couch their ideas in a different way and have a go at the kids again. Because they have the words and can create the narrative.

Let me remind you that while national socialism (Germany excepted) is less lethal than international socialism, it’s still lethal, particularly to the human spirit, to innovation, to freedom and particularly to people like us who stick out.

Stop stereotyping us just as the left does. Stop buying the stereotype. Yes, this is also self-aimed. I almost didn’t vote for Trump. I bought the cover. Many on our side still do which is something we need to fight.

The fact their stereotyping us is so powerful tells you the power of the narrative. Be aware of it, but don’t buy it.

Oh, sure, if the rough music starts to play people like me are gone. Most of them. Depends on when it hits. Like a tsunami, it’s not controllable and can’t really be planned for.

But if we are lucky beyond our deserts and this can be turned slowly, in debate and opinion, in daily work, in education, in words, in diplomacy, be aware the left is wrong about the opposition, as they’re wrong about almost everything.

We might — and will — find allies in the weirdest places. Don’t be too trusting, (note I’m still not sure about Trump) but don’t write them out.

Remember external conformity is not conformity of thought. Only a fool or a leftist (BIRM) believes that.