Monthly Archives: January 2019

Building The Wall Could End America

Of course the wall I am referring to is President Trump’s ill-conceived border wall between the United States and Mexico. It is ill conceived in terms of its purpose, its economics, and its blindingly obvious racist implications.

The efficacy of a border wall is highly dubious. Illicit market driven material does not come across in deep isolated area of the desert carried by dirty criminal migrant with comically over-sized calves as describe with over racist imagery by GOP Representative Steve King of Iowa, it crosses in trucks and cars and other cargo carrying vehicles through regular ports of entry. For decades now, with sporadic variations, the number of people crossing the border illegally to find work has been decreasing and the recent increases have been from family units appearing at those ports of entry making asylum claims, something a border wall will have no effect on.

President Trump’s motivations for the border wall appear to be blatantly racist, something he has hardly hidden since the start of his campaign, and driven by fear of his base turning against him. His often repeated ‘evidence’ of the need for his wall cherry pick horrific stories to emotionally manipulated and terrify people into supporting his proposal, much like how some gun control activist do the same.

But these considerations are not my real concern. Politics and policy rarely are about facts and data, people, particularly in large numbers, are not motivated by cool reason but hot emotion. I am fearful of the symbol the wall represents and what that means to our national character. It is with a very specific intention that my title uses the word ‘America’ and not ‘The Unites States of America’ as those of two very different concepts.

An often-stated premise from President Trump is that you can’t have a country without borders, falsely imply that we do not have borders now. A state cannot exist without borders that I cannot argue with but a nation exists regardless of borders.

One definition of nation is a group of people with a common history, culture, or language that see themselves as something apart from the rest of humanity and it does not required that they control a state; the Kurds are a nation, tribe of American Natives are several nations, Palestinians are a nation. Often nation and state do go together, the Irish are a nation and a state, and the Japanese are a nation and a state. The United States of America is our state but our nation is America. Our national identity started out weak, strengthened over time, and was forged into its central concept through the fires of our Civil War and the assimilation of waves of new comers. Unlike most, if not all, of the nations of the world, our sense of nation comes not from being at one time a single ethnic people but from a population that share a set of ideals. Granted, we have never fully lived up to those ideals, but it is by defining ourselves by those ideals that we strive to come close to them and better ourselves as a people and as a state. The key concept here is that our entire national identity is bound up in the ideals we believe in, change those ideals and you change the nation, or end it all together.

Building the wall is a symbol of a change in a national character. It is a symbol on Americans turning their backs on the world, focusing on their interior issues, and starting a slide into global irrelevancy. Symbols are powerful things, not mere decorations on ideas, but ideas in themselves. To hand such a symbol on ourselves is to change what it means to be ourselves, it does not merely broadcast a change in a character it creates the change.  For utterly practical we must not build the wall and for souls we must face the world and future not cower from it in terror.

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Faulty Target Selection

It’s been bizarre watching the conservative movement unleash unhinged attacks on freshman Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Not for the policy or politics of the freshman rep, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is clearly much further left than many established Democrats, is a vocal critic of the Republicans an Conservatism, and has captured the imagination of the younger more liberal cohort of the Democratic Party, but even with all that she is a freshly minted Representative from a fairly large delegation of twenty-seven and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez herself in terms of House Seniority ranks 398th out of 435. And yet this very junior member has attracted fire all out of proportion with her ability to actually move legislation.

From the more balanced side of the conservative movement the critiques have been more about policy and position, such as about proposed tax rates and expansion of government programs, but focusing on the talent politician’s positions has only brought it further into the public consciousness and made a rising star out the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. How many freshman Representatives get interviewed on major national news programs? That is the sort of exposure that is impossible to buy and in a process much like the Streisand Effect, amplifies her voice. At a time when the Republican’s are in a perpetual state of public relations crisis due the leader of the party being an impulsive, narcissistic, unpopular figure they have precious few resources to waste. Mind you I am not passing judgment on the soundness of either the conservative or miss Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez policy positions, but rather on the foolishness of the conservatives’ attacks.

When we moved beyond the critiques of her policies things get stranger and even disgusting.

There have been attempts to paint her as dishonest based on the clothing she wears, attempts to dismiss her ideas because she once appeared in a dancing video from her college days (really, I can’t even wrap my head around how that bit of propaganda was supposed to function,) and for truly slimy techniques her opponents even have tried to fake pornographic imagery of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

I can’t recall another time when a freshman Representative attracted so much fire and fury. It’s bizarre and from what I can see it has been entirely counter-productive.

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A Strange Discovery: The Gilligan Manifesto

Sunday Night as I surfed through available and suggested videos from Amazon Prime I stumbled across a very different documentary The Gilligan Manifesto.

The central argument of the documentary is that the television show Gilligan’s Island was actually well produced propaganda for Marxist Communism. The argument is built around several central premises mostly dealing with the castaways farcical attempts to recreate the society that has been lost to them and to inevitable collapse that follows these futile attempts to recreate class, money, markets, and the like. While there are interview clips from Sherwood Schwartz and cast members it seems clear to me that the subjects of the interviews are not advancing the same conclusion as the documentarians making these quotes border on dangerously out of context. The conclusion that Gilligan’s Islanddepicted communism’s idyllic promise strikes me as something more of the documentarian’s interpretation that anything intended by the producers, writers, or cast of the series. It reminds me of the kerfuffle a few years back between John Carpenter and Neo-Nazis over the intent of They Live. Yes, if you choose to ignore central conceits it is possible to view Gilligan’s Island  as a communist parable  just as it possible to view The Lion Kingas a critique of a social welfare safety net that dooms the society that attempts it. (Scar comes to power by promising an underclass that they shall never go hungry again and when he institutes that policy the system crashes. However because I can read it that way does not mean it was intended that way.) Communism can work on the castaway’s island because the show itself is a fantasy, recourses are plentiful, without limit, and obtained with very little effort while the population, even the ‘greedy’ millionaire, is composed of entirely good, ethical, and moral people. A community of angels has no need of government or markets.

As a cinematic product The Gilligan Manifesto  is deeply flawed. With a relatively brief running time of 95 minutes the film still feels quite padded and bloated. Many of the clips used to illustrate premises or arguments run far too long, dragging out an argument that doesn’t require such detail. Between the padded running time and the misuse of the interview clips the documentary carries a feeling of dishonesty never presenting its argument with enough authority to rely on its logic and strength but rather a facile facsimile of an argument that in the end is rather unconvincing. While for baby boomers there is nostalgia in watching these clips from the hit series the documentary itself o vapid and empty, scarcely worth the time.

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Not Much To Say Today

My mind is deep into plotting some story elements and I find it difficult to focus on an essay topic. So here is a placeholder post and here’s hoping that tonight Oval Office speech doesn’t inspire terror essaying tomorrow.

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More Thoughts on Get Out

For Christmas I received a copy of Get Out  on Blu-ray and I have been digging through the bonus material including the writer/director Commentary by Jordan Peele. Peele reveals that the story has a deep mythology/backstory extending all the way to the Templar Knights and I respect the world building and considerable thought given to the back-story.

One of the aspect I watched closely as I reviewed the film was approaching it from the criticism that the film was racist in it depiction of its white characters. Naturally since the characters represent a small secret society they should not be taken as representation as a generalization of any lager demographic. These characters are racists, not the cross burning variety but racists just the same. However how does this work in conjunction with the theme, story, and film over all?

When I watched then movie in the theater I did not come away with the impression that it was racist or prejudicial and that remained my reaction as I re-watched it, even though throughout the running time there is not s single admirable Caucasian character. This was not reaction to some other media constructed made a similar situation; two examples are the Harry Potter franchise and Sleepless in Seattle.

In the Harry Potter films much is made about the difference between magical people, Wizards, and the non-magical, Muggles, with the author herself making the statement that the overarching theme of the work is a plea for tolerance and yet throughout the seven books and eight films, I am not speaking about the sequel franchise, there is not one admirable muggle character. The lack of an admirable muggle bothered me and in my opinion undercut the story’s powerful theme. It has sparked of heated debates between myself and some Potter fans that I consider this to be a fault in the story’s execution.

Sleepless in Seattle  possessed a similar dynamic but one that is driven around the difference between men and women. Throughout the film’s running time a common recurring motif is the difference between the sort of movies men like, such as The Dirty Dozen  and films that women enjoy such as An Affair to Remember. In the script it is a repeated concept that men just do not ‘get’ An Affair to Remember  and there is no male character that loves that movie, presenting the divide a reality. (And ignoring that An Affair to Remember, was written, produced, and directed by men, so at least some men must ‘get’ it.)

So if I had a reaction to the broad stereotyping of characters in these two films why did I not have a similar reaction to Get Out?

I think I have puzzled out the answer. In the two examples the broad difference are part of the theme and the manner in which the character react to each other. in Harry Potter the subject of muggles, how they lives, and what they are like surface again and again comically for our heroic wizarding characters and with fascistic overtones when touched on by the villains. In Sleepless in Seattle  the issue of the difference between men and women is s central aspect to the story a point emphasized by the film An Affair to Rememberis used to illustrate.

In Get Out none of the black characters make broad generalized comments about white people. The character’s comic relief best friend Rod, who often voices the wise advice for his friend to be wary makes no comments that the wife girlfriend or her family are not to be trusted because they are white, his warnings are caused by the situation and his ‘TSA Tingle.’ This simple but important element allows Get Out  to avoid the stereotype trap that others stories with this sort of subject fall into.

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A New Year and A New Computer

January 1 rolled around and as my sweetie-wife and I played an on-line game of Dominion I checked with Apple in the refurbished computer section and discovered that an iMac that perfectly fit my needs had popped up on the menu. 16GB of RAM, nearly all of the refurbished only offered 8 GB, 1 TB fusion drive, and 4K monitor. I ordered the machine straight away. Thanks to Apple’s ‘Ship to Store’ option I could avoid the hassle we always encounter when FedEx delivers to our home and yesterday I picked up the new system.

At ten years old my previous system had aged beyond decent functionality, key programs, including the OS, could no longer be updated and there were serious signs of physical fault to could crash the machine at any moment.

I was shocked just how much lighter the new system was over my older iMac. I had a few moments of concern when it looked like I didn’t have the right cables to connect my external HD, with my system back-ups, to my new computer but a bit if research and digging in my officer produced the USB3 I needed. After that set-up and transferred went fairly smooth and frankly faster than I has anticipated.  Once I got the process started it took less than 90 minutes to get my system configured from the Time Machine back-ups. The only glitch that I am still working through is that my Word 2011 activation code is not working and that is a bit of a pain.

All and all I am happy with my purchase and I look forward to writing a new novel and several short stories in 2019.

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Power’s Conquest Over Principle

The GOP is the party of Trump. It has been for sometime ad before Trump came along the various actors on the Republican side have been carving out an ecological niche for someone like Trump so his sudden rise to take control of the party is only surprising in that it cam from outside, from hated Hollywood and not from some fire and brimstone social conservative politician.

Trump has laid bare that there are very few, if any, principles that the GOP are willing to jettison in order to win and retain power. I say this as someone who at one time registered as a Republican, who has voted for Republican candidates, but fled the party when it became clear that the rot ran deep and that the corruption could not be excised I departed without any qualms.

This past week has brought their abandonment of all previous pretentions of principal into sharp focus.

If you are younger you are unlikely to remember the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. In 1979 the Soviets invaded that graveyard of empires and propping up a puppet government sparking a guerrilla war that bled the evil empire of blood, treasure, and prestige. President Carter ordered the United States to boycott the Olympics as a protest earning a merciless mocking by conservatives for his perceived weak and ineffectual response. One of the few unifying elements running through the GOP of the Cold War was staunch anti-communism. The collapse of International Communism robbed the GOP of that grand unifying force and now the leader of the GOP, the standard bearer that they are willing to change to rules to protect from potential insurgencies in 2020 has rewritten in accordance with Russian propaganda that depicts the invasion of Afghanistan as a noble struggled against thuggery.

Donald Trump this week on the Soviet Invasion:

 

The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there. 

 

This really should be no surprise to anyone, Trump loves displays of violence mistaking them for strength it is at heart why he admires the murderers of Tiananmen Square, and dictators from the south the pacific to the Kremlin. What cannot be ignored is the complicity of the Republican Party. In pursuit if lax business regulations, reduced taxation for the wealthy, regressive social engineering they are all too happy to join Trump and to never cross him less their base rebel and coast them their precious power. A power that has becomes unyoked from any morality.

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My Writing Year of 2018

Well, it is now 2019 and it’s time to look back over 2018, a mildly eventful year in my writing history.

I complete another novel manuscript in 2019, a sequel of my military SF manuscript that is currently making the rounds with the major publishers.

I produced a number of new short stories including one that I had suspected I would never write due to its dark nature.

After many entries I scored a spot as a Finalist in the Writers of the Future Contest. This was an achievement I had not expected. The contest if very difficult, thousands of pieces are submitted every quarter and of those thousands only eight are placed as Finalist, of which three go on to become winners, 1sr, 2nd, and 3rd places. Below Finalist are the categories Semi-finalist, Silver Honorable Mentions, and Honorable Mentions. With earlier attempts I had placed as high as semi-finalist but a few years ago the coordinating judge, who determines the Finalists entries, changed and my batting average dropped off the charts. When this story made Finalist and I got the call that I was in the running to possibly win it was quite a shock. I did not win but apparently it was a close thing. That story is now making the rounds seeing if a magazine might want to pick it up.

During 2018 my military SF novel got a ‘full’ request from on of the major publishers of a SF novel. Let me explain what that means. When you submitted a novel directly to a publisher most publishers that take direct submission as for the first three chapters of the manuscript and a synopsis and for most submission that is all they need to issue a rejection. Having read from slush piles before I can fully understand this, it is often evident with a page or two if the writer has progressed to professional levels of skill. IF they like the sample then the editor will request the entire, or a ‘full’, manuscript and that it exactly what happened. Now I wait as the editor reads the novel and maker their decision.

September also the publication of my latest short story sale to NewMyths.com of AnyLanding …a story about a family that crashes in territory controlled by artificial intelligences and the crisis this brings out in the personal conflicts.

Sadly 2018 was also the year that my agency dropped me from representation. These sorts of reversals will occur and the important thing is to move on and not let such event derail the progress I have made.

I have high hopes for 2019, the novel is still under consideration, I will be attending the SDSU writers Conference for the first time, and I have many more stories to tell.

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