The Mother Hive

When Kipling Got It Right and Wrong

In one of Kipling’s collections of short stories - Actions and Reactions - there’s one called “The Mother Hive” about a healthy hive of bees that is penetrated by a wax moth who then ruins it.

It’s not long, feel free to read it and come back here.

If you think that this story might be a parable then I’m sure you are not alone, though I don’t think Mr K understood just how broken society would become in the century and more since he wrote it. Nor how fractions of society would apparently want to invite more wax moths in while failing to handle the problems of the existing ones.

Still his description of the “oddities” sounds remarkably prescient:

When the caterpillars became moths, they made friends with the ever-increasing Oddities—albinoes, mixed-leggers, single-eyed composites, faceless drones, halfqueens and laying sisters; and the ever-dwindling band of the old stock worked themselves bald and fray-winged to feed their queer charges. Most of the Oddities would not, and many, on account of their malformations, could not, go through a day’s field-work; but the Wax-moths, who were always busy on the brood-comb, found pleasant home occupations for them. One albino, for instance, divided the number of pounds of honey in stock by the number of bees in the Hive, and proved that if every bee only gathered honey for seven and three quarter minutes a day, she would have the rest of the time to herself, and could accompany the drones on their mating flights. The drones were not at all pleased.

Another, an eyeless drone with no feelers, said that all brood-cells should be perfect circles, so as not to interfere with the grub or the workers. He proved that the old six-sided cell was solely due to the workers building against each other on opposite sides of the wall, and that if there were no interference, there would be no angles.

Anyway.

The point where Kipling goes wrong is the way the story ends, with a bee keeper coming in and destroying all the rottenness. For all that there’s a certain amount of heroism among the loyal worker bees to bring up a new queen in secret, the story requires an external actor to do the big work of clearing out and burning the poisoned parts of the system.

That’s wrong.

There is no all powerful bee keeper who can step in and clean up the mess.

We are all our own bee keepers

Western nations are going to have to do it themselves. The good citizens of those nations have to man up and remove the infection and that includes removing sons, daughters and loved ones who have imbibed too much of the poison and so are now spreading it too.

American society has always had that individualist streak so I think it is less surprising that Americans elected Trump and other Republicans who are doing their best to clean out the mess. There’s still a lot to do and, as the murder of Charlie Kirk showed, the poisoned will neither repent nor go quietly away. HollyMathNerd has a big picture and somewhat depressing post where she points out that the infected have most of the psychopaths and plenty of weapons

A lot of right-side commentators have been correct when they’ve said that leftism is cluster B at scale. It’s a culture that valorizes narcissism, borderline instability, histrionics, and manipulative cruelty. They’re right about that.

But I often get the impression they don’t really believe it. And the cries demanding war validate my fear there — because if they did, they would be taking this moment much more seriously.

Instead, the fantasy goes like this: we have the guns, they’re just a bunch of wimps who don’t work and can’t even figure out which bathroom to use, so it’ll be easy.

That. Is. Fucking. Delusional.

First, they have guns too.

Second — and this is the part that nobody wants to say out loud — they have most of the psychopaths.

Take it from a deaf woman who has had to file multiple police reports over graphic rape and death threats: there is no shortage of people on the left fully willing to inflict sadistic suffering — to do it, to livestream it, to put it on their resume as evidence for what a great person they are.

A psychopath with inferior weaponry is, far more often than not, a safer bet in a fight than a sane man with an arsenal.

I think (hope) this is not correct. I think Holly, perhaps because she lives in occupied Vermont, has not been exposed to how the “right” in other places are likely to react to psychopaths killing people and telling the world that more people will be killed unless everyone complies.

I refer you to the Ringo Xeet about Jacksonians.

One thing about Jacksonians. Do not mess with the kids. Do not ever mess with the kids.

Jeffersonians barely breed. 'Breeding is evil.' They do not understand how parents react to people touching kids.

In the original essay by WRM note the part about how Jacksonians and Native Americans both had a code of 'honor' but it was so different each was evil to the other.

That's how Jacksonians look at Jeffersonians. 'You're so evil you need to be exterminated, not reasoned with.'

The process is starting with the gathering of names of the gloaters. A lot of lefty psycho sorts have been unable to restrain themselves from dancing on the grave or Charlie Kirk. As I said in my previous post¹, the right is making lists.

Those people are getting on those lists and, it seems, getting fired by their employers and so on. Sure some of them will get other jobs, but they are going to discover that the internet doesn’t forget. Even if google goes all censorious and tries to hide the evidence other places won’t and potential customers, students and employers are going to learn to search these other places to find out whether the person they are involved with is a psychopathic lefty or not. The left have not yet been on the receiving end of cancel culture and I think they will not like the result.

Moreover, the evidence from mass shooter events is that if the bubble is punctured a lot of the crazy just curl up in a ball and give up, or run away or some combination. This is why I think Holly is being overly pessimistic. If enough Trantifa sorts are turned into the authorities by their less radicalized roommates and neighbors I suspect all but a few of the rest will fail to take action. I also suspect that those who now try to take action will be shot out of hand by bodyguards and/or bystanders with concealed carry firearms.

The (Northern) Ireland Example

It is worth considering Ireland, particularly Northern Ireland, in the 1990s when the IRA eventually went too far. In the 1970s and 1980s both communities in Northern Ireland, as well as the establishment in the Republic, gave tacit support to the radicals. They let them hide their weapons, they denied knowledge of people or witnessing suspicious events. Etc. Then the IRA blew up one too many crowds and people in general decided that enough was enough.

No longer were their activities tolerated. The ones that got the message faded back into society. The ones that didn’t were rounded up by the authorities because their own families and former comrades turned them in.

Antifa, Trantifa, Palestinian supporters and so on, are discovering that normal people have had enough.

That’s a problem because they have been relying on the fact that the normies sort of went along with the “be nice” thing and didn’t pay much attention. Now, however, they are paying attention. I predict that a lot of school boards are going to get unwlecome attention, curricla are going to be changed, and many teachers are about to be fired. And then (see above) they won’t be able to get rehired. A ton of other brainwashed sorts are likewise going to find that they have employment issues too and since the USAID and other government funding spiggots have been turned off for many American non profits, they are going to struggle to find a new job.

So far, from what I see, this has not yet spread to the larger tech companies. Yet. But I expect it will. The Palestine idiots who occupied Microsoft will probably not be the last to take the additional steps that make them fireable even in employee friendly states. From what people like Mark Andreessen said last year in the run up to the election, a lot of tech CEOs etc. are sick of the wokeist infections in their companies. I suspect a lot of such CEOs and executives are taking a look at corporate slack channels, teams channels and so on and seeing who has been mouthing off about recent events to see if they have crossed the line. I expect some will have and will be fired for it. I expect this to cause much heartburn and protest by their coworkers who will then also find themselves fired.

I doubt this will impact the big tech companies negatively at all (unfortunately), though it is not impossible some of the people they fire will turn out to have access to some critical systems and they take revenge by triggering some large outage, probably while replacing pages with Trantifa slogans.

Meanwhile in Blighty

The US is, as I say, in the process of identifying the rot and starting to take measures to clear it out. Back in the Britain, a large demonstration took place in London. It included a moment of silence in memory of Charlie Kirk and is a sign that the general British public is getting to the same place as America. But the journey is longer.

The Brexit campaign ten years ago was less successful at reforming the UK than most of its supporters (including yr humble scribe) expected because we took the government at its word and also naively believed that the civil service was neutral the way it claims to be.

COVID and susbequent events, such as the Boriswave of immigration, have shown all that to be rubbish. So effectively the British population who want to clean up their country and remove the parasites are starting, more or less now, while the US has already seen Trump 1.0’s attempts (and mostly failures). The good news is that the British can learn from our revolting ex-colonial brethren, the bad news is that the rot seems to be deeper and the required effort to remove it correspondingly greater.

On the other hand, the British are less individualistic and have more expectation that the government will fix things for them. See, for example, the NHS. It is taking the British longer to realize that they really have to do it themselves and not just vote for a government to do it for them. However trust in the government is low and falling lower every day. One of the practically daily recent scandals was the clear documented close links between Rapist-pedo playboy Epstein and Peter Mandelson, a long time Labour party fixture and fixer. Both Two Tier and his top aide Morgan McSweeney have had close relationships with Mandelson and seem likely to be caught in the backsplash of the recent Bloomberg yahoo email archive².

However step 1 of solving a problem is realizing that you have one and Britain is solidly past that step. The argument now is between groups who want to solve it in different ways and, as I said in another recent post³, for now Nigel Farage can plausibly present himself as the nice moderate guy with people like Tommy Robinson being the nasty threat he can point at to say “if you reject me, then this is who will replace me”.

The message is resonating. If an election were held today Farage’s Reform would win a majority on the same order as the Labour Party has today, possibly larger. Gawain Towler has the details

Reform's Unyielding Surge:

But there’s a problem. The problem is that there’s no election required to be held for almost another four years. Moreover, Labour’s majority is so large that it is unlikely that it will lose a no confidence motion. If nothing else the fact that most of them will lose their seats, with all the salary and perks of office that go with them, in a subsequent election is going to incent them to remain loyal.

But, as I noted above, electing a government is not the solution on its own. British people seem to be aware of this, and those that aren’t are given new reasons to become aware every day as the current government and the police crack down on mean posts while ignoring the more general breakdown in law and order. My guess is Britain needs another year of governance failure to get to the point where people are willing to go all Nepal on the British state, but I could be wrong. If there’s a major loss of electrical power this winter, say, then that could easily cause the pace to be stepped up.

I am however, fairly sure, that the British population will reject the current idiocies and that they will realize they have to be their own bee keepers and clean out the mess themselves. It may take 4 years. It may kick off next month. Or November 5th. But I’m sure it will happen.

I am rather less confident about continental Europe. At least the Western part. Maybe Kratman’s Caliphate will turn out to be true.

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2. See the latter part of this for more details

☕️ RECKONING, REDUX ☙ Saturday, September 13, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

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