TIP OF THE SPEAR

The Wheel of Fortune. Not the one with Vanna.

O, Fortuna! She turns her wheel at whim, ignoring virtue or vice. O, Warlord Benjamin Colt! You and the boys are for sure riding that Ferris wheel. The Carmina Burana isn’t the theme for the game show, but it would be hella cool if it was.

BY Doc Spears

I most assuredly believe that history repeats and as firmly, that it does seem to organize very well into four definable phases of societal trends. Though I’m extremely fond of the meme, “Strong men create good times,” etc., etc., there’s a lot more to be gleaned from this idea—that our history is a four-song playlist, set on permanent repeat.

As Sargon of Akkad recently reminds us (not the Mesopotamian ruler, rather, Carl Benjamin of the Podcast of the Lotus Eaters fame) it’s worth examining the medieval idea of Rota Fortunae—the Wheel of Fortune—and it’s four major stages, often represented as the progression of a single protagonist’s life as it moves from the left of the wheel, to the top, over, and down.

Regnabo

Regno

Regnavi

Sum sine regno

If your Latin’s rusty;

I shall reign

I reign

I have reigned

I have no kingdom

Fortune’s wheel turns, the world changes, with the goddess Fortuna blind to the virtues or vices of those on the wheel.

The case for such a pattern of definable change was wonderfully made in a recent book, The Fourth Turning is Here, an academic yet readable explanation of the theory of the saeculum; four periods within the span of a long human life—periods of recurrent patterns of predominating worldviews that define the society—each described by the authors in convincing detail.

The only fly in the clean ointment was that which the authors and their editors placed in the work themselves; choosing to interpret our own current period of “Crisis” as the verity to their Trump Derangement Syndrome; misplaced, unnecessary, and detracting from an otherwise excellent treatise. It’s truly a shame.

(Please read on even if you disagree with my political views, because my dedication is to entertain through military realism, not to beat anyone over the head with my politics.)

In my Warlord series I’ve had a lot of fun with the theme of the saeculum, particularly in the fourth installment. Vistara is a Mars-like world from the Golden Age of Science Fiction, one that our Earth soldiers find themselves on, a world bound for extinction. Yet despite our protagonist’s success in changing the course of Vistara’s history for the better, they find themselves fighting against an irrational current, bent on pushing their adopted culture off the cliff.

I take dark inspiration from the world we have been living in.

Europe is shambling into a dark spiritual age, one from which it seems unlikely to recover in my lifetime. Our neighbors to the North are racing in those same footsteps. Free speech is Orwellian Double-Speak in those countries, and we find ourselves losing common ground with cultures we once thought ourselves bound to by shared Western values.

Until only recently, we were essentially under this same media control here. (Think our 1^st Amendment was going to protect folks here from being arrested over “hate speech” like is happening in the UK? Think again.)

Note that you’re reading this on Substack.

I launched the first three books of my Warlord series in an environment that has now been openly admitted to in congressional testimony by Meta as an information suppression machine and propaganda arm of the Left.

I received a stellar review of the first Warlord by no less than Analog Magazine—no one was more surprised than me—but the series still foundered, with there being zero promotion through the Amazon algorithm.

My own Amazon author page sent ZERO emails to subscribers to let readers know I had books releasing on Kindle and Audible. My FB and IG pages were shut down or shadow-banned; whereas posts of mine frequently receive a thousand views, anything to do with my book releases went virtually unseen. And I’m a small fish. Look what they did to the big guys, like Nick ,and Jason, and Blaine.

I was late getting to X, but do most everything there now, because Meta has gotten no punishment, and will undoubtedly return to their old ways. And Amazon Prime studios will take a bath for billions of dollars to produce woke abominations mutated from Tolkien’s perfect creation, and also suppress the promotion algorithm of books by authors that don’t favor those same DEI themes.

You’re reading this on Substack—all because Wargate could no longer trust social media to fairly let their products be promoted, and for our fans to interact with us on those other platforms.

Regardless of the actual content produced by a publishing house like WarGate—specializing in military-type fantasy and science fiction—White, presumably Christian, and Male; those were reasons enough for us all to be silenced.

I’ve tested the Meta waters, and haven’t had a post or reel banned lately, and even the dull ones are getting hundreds of views. But, I don’t trust them. I’m all in with my bosses to dedicate my extra time to blogging on the WarGate Substack, and on X.

Unlike the Warlord Benjamin Colt, I believe we’re past the Unraveling, on our way through the end of the Crisis, and headed for a High period of our history.

Anyway, if you missed it, give the Warlord series a try, because it didn’t get a fair shot at entertaining you its first time at bat.