“The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a ‘warm body’ democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens… which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it… which for the majority translates as ‘Bread and Circuses.’
‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome.”― Robert A. Heinlein
Tag: Ed Brault
Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 01NOV2025 – Goin’ South
We moved from Burlington, VT, to Charleston, SC, 13 years ago, and never looked back. It took about six months to realize we were spending $1000 LESS per month . House payment (a real HOUSE, not a condo), gas, electricity (we bought an all-electric house and I feared the worst, and was VERY pleasantly surprised). I did a little research and found SC power is around 12.9 cents/kWh, while Vermont is 21.5 Mapped: The Average Cost of Electricity by U.S. State
Groceries, pet supplies, home repairs, etc. were all lower. the Charleston cultural life is as vivid and varied as Boston or NY. And perhaps more culturally balanced. Museums, sport arenas, the Galliard Playhouse, North Charleston Performing Arts Center, are always booked with everything from rock concerts to Broadway plays, The Sound of Music just opened for an 8-day run, and Jeff Dunham will be turning Walter and Achmed loose just before Thanksgiving. The SC Aquarium will be kicking off its annual Christmas program with light shows, music, and yours truly —among others —as SCUBA Santa!
And not a bottle of hot sauce in sight!
We’ve had snow twice since we moved down here, the first time literally a year to the day we moved in. We played it smart and stayed home until it melted off. The way you drive in snow in Carolina is YOU DON’T! We Damnyankees may know how, but the locals have not got a clue!
Overall, I will take Southern Living over Vermont. We don’t get Leaf Peeper Season here on the coast, but a short drive up towards Clemson gets you into some nice color. And I definitely do not miss having to dig my car out of a snowdrift at 5AM in double-digit-below-zero temperatures. I saw it as a sure sign of civilization when I drove past Lowes and Home Depot in November, and there was not a single snow-blower or even shovel on display!
Stay warm, my friend!
Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 01OCT2025 – Military Revival
Been a long time coming. I saw the “Social Laboratory Syndrome” creeping through the military for over thirty years. The worst started with Obama’s purge of true warfighters and replacing them with careerist toadies who would rubber-stamp his social agenda. Then the loss of standards in dress, fitness, and appearance, and the transgender idiocy. When Biden came in with his policies and appointments of deviants to high office, I was glad I was retired. Now we have leadership that knows what the military’s job is and will enforce standards, performance and mission…at ALL levels. I admit I had put on weight in my later years, but I could still pass the PT tests, and I worked out every day, and could keep up or surpass the younger troops, even working for three hours in a Level-A HAZMAT suit in 90-degree heat.
I’m waiting to see how many of the perfumed princes at that meeting put in for retirement.
Updates and Comments
Chemist
“Full disclosure: I have never served.
But I have to believe that the PT standards are different for a logistics specialist than for a Special Forces operator.
So if you have some middle age spread but still can pass the PT test for your specification – that’s all Pete is asking for.
And I think that’s fair.
We’ve all seen the videos of the 110 pound female cop trying to control a 300 pound ‘roided up perp and they are not pretty. (The videos, not the cops. Or the perps.)
But I hope to never see the day when a 200 pound jihadi starts pounding on undersized US servicewomen.
If this makes me a misogynist – then the definition is wrong.”
Jess
“My brother was in the Air Force, looked good, not carrying any noticeable weight, achieved Staff Sargent, and was over ten years in service, but was worried because he was notified his weight, and waist size, need to lower or face being removed. That was in the eighties. Seeing some of those in the military over the last few years made me wonder what happened to the discipline, since many looked way beyond anything resembling an effective military member demanded thirty years ago.”
Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 17JUL2025 – The Workers’ Paradise
Burlington, Vermont, experienced a mini-version of this when the increasingly socialist city government raised property taxes on businesses to the point that all the grocery stores moved out. In response to the “food-desert” crisis, the city tried to lure food stores back, but the restrictions and requirements for what products had to be stocked, how much had to be “organic”, etc, resulted in only one taker, a “Whole-Foods” type grocery, with prices way too expensive for the low-income neighborhoods it was supposed to service.
Reductions in the Police Dept have resulted in some areas of the city becoming no-go zones, and the once-prosperous Church Street shopping district has lost its major anchor stores, and is overrun with panhandlers and homeless.
(Thanks, Bernie!)
Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 12JUL2025 – For We Were Young and Sure to Have Our Way
I started reading science fiction almost as soon as I learned to read. My folks belonged to the SF Book Club, and also subscribed to Analog and the magazine of fantasy and Science fiction. One of the first stories I remember was called “Callahan and the Wheelies. That got me started and I never stopped. I still read Analog, but in the online version. Been reading it since the early sixties.
Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 09JUN2025 – Fate
It’s interesting when something happens, and you think, “If I had left 5 minutes later”, or “If I hadn’t tossed X-item into the car.” I had one of those in 2018 when I was trying to get a hotel reservation for a hurricane evacuation. We needed a pet-friendly room, and just as I was about to hit the “Confirm key” >BLIP< -room gone! So I scrambled and found an alternate 30 miles further on. While there, we rescued a little tortie cat who had apparently been dumped at the motel. We added her to our clowder and named her Florence, for the storm that brought her to us. She crossed her Rainbow last April due to FIV and Thyroid trouble, but we loved her, and she had a good life with us, and we miss her.
Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 27MAY2025 – Niven’s “Known Space” on Screen
I would love to see Larry Niven’s Known Space stories and novels brought to the screen. Big, sweeping arcs like Ringworld Series, The Fleet of Worlds, or the epic Man-Kzin Wars; or smaller sets like the Gil Hamilton organlegger detective stories, or the individual novels that help flesh out the Known Space Universe: Becalmed in Hell, the Coldest Place, World of Ptaavs, A Gift from Earth, and especially, Protector, and the related Peace Corben novellas. These would probably be best done like The Expanse; a multi-year episodic TV drama.
The biggest problem would be preventing the studio suits from doing a Disney on the stories. I would consider that an Organ-Bank-worthy crime!
Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 03FEB2025 – The Dreaded White Stuff
Good luck with the snow. I grew up on the MA North Shore and then 40 years on the Northern Tier with the Air Force and Army. Heartily agree about freezing rain. We lost power for 27 days in Plattsburgh NY due to an ice storm back in ’98 (Thank Ghu for wood stoves and oil lamps), and saw a lot of VERY slick road and dead-stopped traffic due to iced pavement. Major reason for moving to South Carolina in 2014. And what happens in 2015? The first snow in 40 years, followed by more of the cussed stuff 10 years later! I tell ya I don’t get no respect!
Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 15SEP2024 – Known Space
You might try fitting your story into Larry Niven’s Known-Space/Man-Kzin Wars Universe. Since Niven allowed other writers access to what is now a shared universe, over 15 books of short stories, novelettes, novellas and novels have been written by numerous authors. The Tech timeline goes from 19th Century India, through the age of fusion reaction drives, Bussard Ramjets, and the 3-days per lightyear Hyperdrive. You could set your story in any period along more that 1000 years of technology. The Kzinti Occupation years on Wunderland are ripe for Resistance stories, as are the post-liberation years of political upheaval as surviving working-class colonists try to overthrow the semi-aristocratic Herrenmen who are descended from the original Fifteen Families in the first colony ships, who claimed all the good farmland, industrial concerns, and control of the government.
Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 04APR2024 – The Witch’s Curse
I grew up not too far from Dunwich; Danvers, MA, better known among the arcana-read as the real site of the Salem Witch trials. Back then it was known as Salem Village, while modern Salem was Salem Towne. Growing up I noticed that when a storm was forecast to bring, say nine inches of snow, we got 12. Or a Foot was forecast and we got 18 inches.
I finally had a chance to put this question to no less than Don Kent, meteorologist at WBZ-TV. He looked me in the eye and said “You’re from Danvers aren’t you?” I said yes, and just why is the weather so weird? He answered honestly “We don’t know…BUT…” and then he told me about how, during the Trials, one of the accused witches, on the way to the gallows, laid a curse on the town, that it should always suffer a harder winter than the rest of the county. And this curse WORKED! Even changing the town’s name didn’t help (That’s why the town seal says “Without the King’s Consent”. They did it without the approval of the Colonial Office.)
Best regards to the First Select-Entity. The Eldrich Powers are hard at work in other regions as well.
[Editor’s Note – The First Selectman sends his greetings to his cousins on the shore and hopes they are enjoying the weather they ordered a while back from his cousin. Gurgle, glug, gurgle, gurgle glug glug glug.]
Reply from Tregonsee 314
I live just down the road from Danvers, Close enough that when the leaves are off the trees I can see the remaining building of the Danvers State Hospital (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danvers_State_Hospital )
the alleged inspiration for Lovecraft’s Arkham Asylum (amazingly there are now expensive Condos there, with only the historic main tower remaining as a shared space). Our little town was part of Salem Village but split in the early 18th century from Danvers. We also seem to share in that curse 🙂 . It has to be true Mr. Kent was one of New England’s top meteorologists for most of my life and if that was the explanation he had that is good enough for me, certainly nothing else makes sense,
Reply from photog
Tregonsee. there used to be a similar mental hospital in Worcester.
Likewise it was recently demolished leaving only a replica clocktower to mark its former presence. But when it stood it was an eerie reminder of a different world.
