[Psst! A surreptitious note from the Editor]

[ Edward Pahjorndice--the Editor]

[Ssshh! Quiet! Ruhe! The "Urther" hippies who have "taken over" this thing-called-a-blog don't know it but we here at the Mt. Palomine Institute are, in fact, conducting an experiment in gullibility and are still firmly in control. Fear not, Creatrix-blessed reader, for despite the possibly ironic edging of the postings, we Erdens have not unfastened our equally measured distaste for nearly all sides in nearly all conflicts we have uncovered--as one would overturn a rock--on "da Urth." Blue-Staters--as you would have them--aggrieve us most because their self-buffalo-ing, augmented by an unwarranted elitist arrogance (as in we are well-read and highly educated and therefore impervious to Tomfoolery), is intense and stupefying. While they wallow in multiculturalist nick-knacks, daubings, bangles, and affectations, they fail to acquire any genuine wisdom from aboriginals; most primitives teach the base-line truism--via engaging stories about talking coyotes and wizened owls--that pride begets blindness. Go then and instruct a graduate from an ivy-bedecked institution that they may be off-kilter in their social and political judgements and note the results--a pigheadedness worthy of any who beats upon a Holy Book as if it were a bass drum! Suggest, for example, that a certain war, bad as it is and unapproved off as you may find it, may involve other motivators than petroleum products and corporate larceny and witness a fluffing of feathers followed by a curt dismissal. Sadly, most Blue-Staters in their best finery hold to a simple baker's dozen of predictable opinions and few could provide elaborations, theorems, or citations of historical evidence as to why they even maintain these rigid thoughts, beyond, that is, those provided by their cherished pornography--Chronicles of Abuse! (We are flabbergasted by the popularity, with these types, of finely crafted and printed books of no little expense stuffed with vivid descriptions and even daguerreotypes of torture, mayhem, massacre, and genocide, as if tisk-tisking over souvenirs of these horrid misdeeds is somehow a good and noble thing! An average Erden citizen needs only possession of knowledge of an uncivil act to react--and react they do! The Beslan incident, against our ethical principles on free speech, was passively kept from the public here for fear it would precipitate a pell-mell intervention of your world to rescue the children!) Red-Staters, contrariwise, often actually revel in being buffaloed or they maintain easily dismantled views on power, authority, and responsibility that would find comfortable homes within "Urther" Medieval Castles (as we had no scrofulous Feudal era, instead battled with Aztekian heart-hunters and enormous kraken). From the perspective of Erde and the Empire, it's all quite simple: Maternalism vs. Paternalism, i.e. the politics of a never-ending and not-so-happy childhood.]