Some awkward conversations

Posted on by K. M. Herkes

This one is for my friends who are struggling with the questions, “How can people believe these things?” and “How did we get here?” after the events at the US Capitol Building and sundry other places on 6 January, 2021. This one is about dealing with the people we know who even now cling to lies in support of violent insurrectionists.*

My sorta comprehensive answer is “It’s been a bumpy decades-long road paved with bad intentions, and many of the people who say these horrible things don’t believe in them. The lies serve them, or did, right up to point they don’t The others who spread them want to believe as badly as Agent Mulder wanted to believe in aliens and for the same reason: the lies give them meaning and the comfort of purpose in a harsh and meaningless world.”

The two articles below dig up the foundations of the nasty place American Culture has become. Fair warning, they’re from Patheos.com, which means they’re informed by Christian traditions, so if that offends, stick to the TL;DR summaries. That said, I HIGHLY recommend the Slacktivist blog by Fred Clark.

1: Bad Faith In Witch Hunts And Moral Panics TL;DR summary: The mix of self-interested lying leadership & want-to-believe followers on obscene display in the 1/6 Ku Klux Coup is all familiar to any nerd who lived through the Satanic Panic years. There wasn’t an epidemic of satanic child abuse then, the elections weren’t stolen this year.

2: The IndigNation TL;DR summary: indignation is a hell of a drug, & guilt is painful. It’s human nature to prefer comforting lies that feed resentment over truths that require admitting fault. The seductive righteousness of narratives about welfare queens, black violence, predatory criminals, lazy immigrants, and other LIES is all tangled up in this ugly facet of being human and fallible.

My takeaway from these two explainers: steadfast defense of facts is vital & necessary. Be indignant in the cause of truth. Push back as hard as you’re being pushed. Raise an unassailable wall of reality.

I’m not saying anyone should debate with LieBelievers. That way lies exhaustion & burnout. Don’t go there. It’s a dead end.

Deny, drop, and deflect. Or question & drop if, like me, you prefer putting a nice rubber coating on your wall.

NOTE: all this assumes you can’t or don’t want to cut LieBelievers out of your life entirely. That is a valid choice, and one I support. Do what keeps you healthy and safe! But if you plan maintain relationships with the lie-addicted, here’s a few sample examples of how to raise an indignant wall that repels argument.

“The election was stolen.”
“You don’t really believe that.”
“It’s true! There’s tons of proof.”
“No, there isn’t, because it isn’t true. How ’bout them Cubbies, though, huh?” (change the subject to something irresistable to your chosen audience.)
–> PRO TIP: repeat that last part in a firm and friendly tone until they give up & move on. With family, it can take two or three firm repetitions.

“Biden has dementia.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“Haven’t you ever listened him? He’s obviously mental.”
“Huh. Yeah, I’ve listened to hours and hours of speeches. But if you want to believe that, go ahead. It isn’t worth arguing about.”**
“No, you don’t understand–” (or any other attempt to continue the discussion.)
“Nope. I do understand. Anyway, let’s talk about that puppy you adopted. How’s she doing?”
–> and repeat the deny-disengage-deflection until they give up & move on.

“This pandemic response is overblown.”
“You can’t believe that, do you?”
“I do! People are losing their jobs, kids are getting depressed, we need to get back to normal.”
“Wow. Okay, no, but I’m not going to talk about it with you because you won’t like what I have to say. Tell me how you’re doing with <insert topic here>”
–> repeat that last part etc etc.

Deny. Drop. Deflect. Rinse & repeat.

The use of the word believe is deliberate and important. Don’t give lies the dignity of being “thoughts” or “opinions.” But! You don’t feed the conflict by calling them out as lies, either. Diminish them with pure, solid dismissal.

This isn’t, “you have your opinion, I have mine, let’s agree to disagree.” This is, “You’re poisonously wrong, it isn’t my place to cure you, so I’m containing the poison.”

No one who spreads these lies is thinking about them. Yes, they’ve all “thought hard about it” and “done the research,” and they do believe they have done that because they want to believe. (Or they’re deliberately, knowingly throwing out ‘controversial’ ideas because they’re pot-stirring agitating instigators, but that’s a whole ‘nother issue. Also a read-flag reason to refuse the bait and redirect the convo.)

From my side, being told I’m believing something immediately triggers an important critical process: questioning WHY I believe it. The Slacktivist blog tagline is one of the reasons I love it so much. “Test everything. Hold fast to what is good.”

That’s a good motto to live by.

I go over a “you believe” conversation in my head multiple times later and in private, and I investigate the facts that were challenged. And I do that research using new sources, not the ones I used to get to my original viewpoint. Do I change my mind? All the time. Do LieBelievers? It’s possible. Learning is lifelong. You never know what will spark an epiphany.

And if you spot people in your life refusing to discuss your beliefs…well. You might want to do some serious questioning, reflection and new research.

person wearing flag shirt holding both hands over their face.
Image by Ajju prasetyo from Pixabay

That’s enough blog.Onward to other news

I’m wrapping up Day 5 of 7 in my Ghost Town draft. What’s th new project about? Little downstate Illinois college town, new police chief who talks to her great-great-granddad’s ghost, and the county’s first murder in twenty years. What could go wrong?

The Sharp Edge Of Yesterday is out for final continuity checks & is listing for March 23 release.

Until later!

*don’t @ me with anything like “but BLM or any other false equivalencies, what-about-ism’s or other logical fallacies. Do you really believe the George Floyd riots and the Red Hat Insurrection are the same? REALLY? Okay, then. You’re wrong, but we can talk about something else.

**in case you don’t know me well, my emotional read on all phrases like “you’re not worth arguing with,” “this isn’t worth arguing about” and “we’re not talking about this,” is as deadly conversational insults. They are messages of Ultimate Disrespect. I accept that I am delivering disrespect along with my denial. Nah, tbh, I REVEL in that part. I don’t respect lies. And, hey, some people think those phrases means they’ve won the conversation. That just adds a delicious little spice to the exchange.

Oranges.

Posted on by K. M. Herkes

No, really. That’s what this post is about. Oranges. That’s all it’s about. Me, and oranges, and random orange trivia.

I am unreasonably proud of myself for remembering the orange-rolling trick in November this year. Usually the memory resurfaces two months, buckets of cursing, & dozens of badly peeled clementines later. This year, I grabbed a bag on on-sale Cuties ™ on my latest supplies run and–AND! I remembered to roll the very first one.

Yay, brain win!

I know, it isn’t much of a trick. People who grew up eating oranges have probably known it forever. But I couldn’t eat oranges until I was in my 30’s, and I still can’t handle most varieties most of the year. I get welts. And nausea. It’s a reaction to citrus of all kinds, although grapefruit are The Worst for me. No I don’t know why. No, I haven’t “been tested.” I’m not fond of spending money and time on medical Validation For the Sake Of Validation. I mean, what would it change? I already know what to avoid when.

Like a lot of allergies, time and hormones changed my tolerances. When I noticed I didn’t always get welts on my fingers from removing lemons off iced tea glasses, that made me brave enough to try clementines. Thus I learned I could tolerate them! Rapture! Orangey, sweet, welt-free deliciousness!

But real clementines are only available from Mid-November to maybe end of January. I always end up with a bag I can’t eat. Spouseman gets stuck with those, or I cut them up for the birds & squirrels.

Oh, and random trivia: not all Cuties are clementines. There are now loads of orange cultivars/hybrids that ripen at different times of year and they’re all marketed the same, but they have hugely different acidity profiles, scents, and peel thicknesses. My body knows the difference. And most of them will cause wicked awful skin reactions & an unhappy gut. But not anaphylaxis, so, hey. Not complaining.

I’m just careful about when I buy Cuties. Last year I was able to find safe oranges all the way into the first week of lockdown, so. Things are improving. Bottom line, winter-ripening real clementines are YUM, but they aren’t simple an easy like a banana.

Unless you know the trick. Which I do now! Huzzah!

What is it? Simple. Rolling an orange between your palms or against a hard surface (like, say, the kitchen counter) with steady, firm pressure breaks up the pithy inner part of the peel. Do it long enough, and you can actually feel the peel loosen from the fruit. This makes peeling MUCH easier.

So.
Much.
Easier.

Pistachios and oranges are my winter go-to treats. And now you know that.

That’s all for now. Until later!

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Mini rant followed by a personal happy

Posted on by K. M. Herkes


It does NOT matter how good or bad a leader is at every other aaspect of their job. If they fail to condemn lies, bad acts, and even atrocities committed in their name, they are themselves in the wrong.

There is no morality balance sheet when it comes to choosing leaders. Good deeds do not balance out bad once.

If you say, “Yes, but_____” (for example, “Yes, that’s bad, but it isn’t him doing it, and sure he isn’t coming out against it, but he’s done this good thing or that good thing…”) you are accepting the YES part. It’s on you.

So if you say, “Yes, but Trump isn’t a dangerous rabble-rousing, racist bigot just because some people who follow him are, he’s a good businessman, and he’s done great things for foreign policy…”

I won’t argue with you. Imma look you straight in the eye and remind you that Hitler loved dogs and Mussolini made the trains run on time and you’re deliberately supporting a bad moral position with a bad faith argument and a bad debate tactic, and doing so means you aren’t interested in listening, only denying.

And then Imma avoid you on the internet until February or so. (That’s assuming you don’t unfriend & block me, which is probably optimistic, but I’m Sunshine Care Bear I guess?)

There are millions who welcomed this presidential circus in ’16 and want it to continue, and they’re seriously fucked up and not worth engaging.

Now I figure about 20 million are suffering from deadly cases of sunk-cost fallacy, and another 20 million are so fond of the misinformation the’ve been given that they would glue the scales right back onto their eyes if God themself appeared on the road to reveal the Way, the Truth, and the Light.

Bottom line, I see no point in engaging with anyone from those groups. I love a good, meaty political discussion, but online, I bring steaks to the grill and get handed soy burgers for my plate. No, thank you.

ANYway.

I’m feeling grouchy today.

Tired of watching misinformed people full of the arrogance of their ignorance harass people who are trying to save them. We’ve reached a point in this out-of-control-again pandemic in which people are dying with COVID-19 denials on their lips instead of prayers.

It didn’t have to be this way. It isn’t this way anywhere else on Earth, not even in the other worst-hit developed countries.
(Except maybe Great Britain, with Trump-lite? And possibly Sweden? LOOK UP THE STATS YOURSELF I BET I’M RIGHT THIS IS JUST MY BLOG THINKING HERE KTHXBAI.)

In any case, for sure the numbers are public and the comparisons are painful. COVID-19 is a scary disease, but what’s really deadly is ‘Murica.

But that’s another post. I digressed again. ANYway.

Here’s the happy thing: SOMEONE WROTE FAN FICTION in the Rough Passages world.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I found this out a little while ago, but I’m gonna keep sitting in that bright happy-happy spot for a good, long time. This was an Author Achievement Trophy I didn’t expect to unlock for…ever, tbh.

I’ve updated my Achievement Trophies page on the site here and got another happy surprise. I’ve collected almost all the trophies I set out to unlock when I started this whole publishing game. You know what that means?

I’ve leveled up!

I shall put on my thinking cap & come up with a new set of trophies to unlock. Ideas welcomed. I may not USE any of them, but I love reading clever ideas.

And lastly, a weekly status report:

Sharp Edge of Yesterday is ~5/6 of the way done now, and I should finish the last of the pt 5 revisions this weekend. I’ve laid in one extra plot development scene and expanded a second, and I’m going to skip the remaining planned one because…I don’t know that this story needs it? Sure, it would develop that character, but she isn’t the protag, and it would slow down pacing just at the point I’m trying to push events faster. So unless feedback really thinks it needs to be ‘on screen’ so to speak, I’m saving moving onwards to other stuff. Squishy, angsty aftermath stuff that will set up later stories.

<cue evil laughter>

That’s all the all until later.

Except for this cute pupper picture. Click it & you might end up on my Bookshop.org page where you could look at my growing collection of book lists & perhaps even get some gift ideas.

Photo by Josh Hild on Pexels.com