Jack of Harts

Cedar Sanderson does amazing art. And as Raconteur was gearing up to release The Big Ones, she asked who wanted her to do some art for their stories. I held my hand up, and she made this beautiful image of the Pashina locomotive in action. The art didn’t make it into the anthology, but it has been in my screensaver for over a year now, and I smile every time it appears. Every single time the work of another artist that they created for one of my stories appears on my screen, it is pretty much one of the best feelings ever. The idea that my creation sparked someone else’s willingness and ability to create something is the kind of thrill no amount of money can buy.

Planks and Plunder be yarns o’ piracy that take place in the near future, or the far past, in worlds almost too fantastical and mayhap too glacial, eerie, and everywhere in between. You’ll come upon pirates ruthless, some with hearts of gold, some on a mission, and some learning a thing or two about themselves in the thick of things. We may be outlaws, but we still breathe the same life-giving mixture of oxygen and whatnot as the haughtiest king and humblest Calesian civilian. We’re just more honest and forthright about our intentions. Savvy?

Wench! Another round for my fine crew. We need to slake our thirst during the telling of these fine tales…

You may remember demonstrations of the last few years where they chanted, “We’re coming for your children.” They meant it then and they mean it now. The simple fact is, based on statistics, that the more Leftist someone is, the fewer children they have. Some of it is just biology. Adam and Eve make kids. Adam and Steve do not. Some of it is social. They tell us that the planet is dying, so having kids is a terrorist act against the planet. Or they tell us that the responsible thing to do is not to start a family until you have gone to college and secured a good job, and so many people wait until they are financially secure to look at having kids. And by then, they are on the tail end of the biological clock. Older mothers have more complications, not just themselves but the kids. Children born of mothers in their 30s and 40s have far more health complications than kids born of mothers in their teens or 20s. That’s statistics. That’s, dare I say it, The Science.

So while an increasing number of Leftist families don’t get together until their late 20s at the earliest, often waiting until their 30s or 40s, Religious families often get started in their late teens or early 20s, because they are taught that the best thing they can do for the world is to have children and raise them up to take care of it. To make it better. And instead of having one or two children in their 30s or 40s, or just going to a foreign country and adopting a kid or two, they are having three or four or five kids, starting in their late teens and going through to their mid to late 20s. Their kids are graduating and starting a new life while their parents are in the prime of their lives in their 30s and 40s, 50s at the lastest, and they have healthy examples of moderately strong, fit, and active parents to take into their adulthood.

That’s why the Leftists chant, “We’re coming for your children.” They are literally breeding themselves out of the population. They have to take our children if their movement is going to survive into the next generation.

That appears to be what happened last week. The young man who killed Charlie Kirk had a good upbringing from everything we can see. A good Christian family who raised him up to being a functional young man who left the home to go out and learn how to do a job that would help him make a home and a life. That was him two years ago if the pictures and other things we see are accurate. And over a period of what looks like two years, they groomed him into being the kind of kid that inspired the meme about kids coming home from college and hating their families and everything they grew up liking.

And according to the evidence that has come out so far, they came for him, they took him, and they twisted him into the kind of person who would feel good about shooting a man who’s crime was saying things they hated. When they say “We’re coming for your children,” this is what they mean. They want to take our children and replace them with people who hate us just as much as they hate us. Someone who will cheer when someone kills us.

Charlie Kirk is not the only victim of this assassination. The first victim of the assassination was the former bright young boy that pulled the trigger. And the next victims are his own siblings who grew up with him, and Charlie Kirk’s children, and so many other children and young adults who saw the voice of their generation shot because he dared to say things that other people hated.

We have to make our children the kind of people who will build a better world for the children to come, and we have to make them mentally strong enough to resist the grooming of the Leftists, or the children to come will grow up in a far worse world than the one we grew up in.