Europe is sort of like derpfish.

Sarah A. Hoyt is a science fiction/fantasy author, originally from Portugal, now an American. She is also one of those authors who helped pioneer self-publishing in the modern era, providing an example to would-be writers incapable of breaking through the old guard gate-keepers of traditional publishing.

While occasionally chaotic for my preferences, I usually find her writings intriguing and always a different perspective. I enjoyed this piece, Fish And Water by Sarah A. Hoyt. She is addressing the perennial problem of calibrating what constitutes Left or Right when speaking across Europe or the USA. It is a fruitful discussion because we use the same terms for dramatically different meanings and, while laborious, it can lead to insight.

Hoyt makes the argument that European chattering classes have absorbed a gramscian framing of ideas that is unconscious on their part and Marxist in origin. I would make the same argument with different evidence, less stridently, and with more caveats but still fundamentally along the same lines.

I liked this passage.

Look, it’s like Derpfish, my betta. (He’s better, thank you. An aggressive new filter and part water changes are getting rid of his face fungus, slowly.) He’s not aware of everything I have to do to keep his aquarium at right temperature, filtration, salt content, etc. to keep him alive. He’s not aware I buy water so his acidity level doesn’t change. To him, that’s how life is, is all. And it’s natural, of course.

Now suppose Derpy were a little derpier and thought to start a war on “people who change water in aquariums at least part way every day” because he doesn’t like the agitation and changes in temperature (though I try to keep it pretty close.)

Well!

If he succeeded in that campaign, he’d be doing the back stroke in no time at all.

Europe is sort of like derpfish. It never got that “pacifism” and “internationalism” were ideas propagated by the soviet union, to make it easier for them to invade with no resistance. They also never noticed that the ONLY thing keeping the Soviet Union from marching across Europe was …. the US. The US whose “militarism” they reviled.