Politics of Discontent

Any politician can appeal to the discontented to acquire power.  It's not a bad ploy, especially in a democracy, where some percentage of the population can always be counted on to be cranky.

And, naturally, a number of politicians have.  Here's some quotes from three (the source of all are Wikipedia/Wikiquote, since my point is more about words than the three individuals here).

First, three quotes from one politician:

⦁    "Democracy is impossible in a capitalist system. Capitalism is the realm of injustice and a tyranny of the richest against the poorest."
⦁    "We must confront the privileged elite who have destroyed a large part of the world."
⦁    "Let the dogs of the empire bark, that's their job; ours is to battle to achieve the true liberation of our people."

Who said that?  None other than the late President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez.

He's an easy target, of course; the North American Congress on Latin America (said to be "left-wing") looking back on Chavez: "reductions in poverty and inequality during the Chávez years were real, but somewhat superficial [...] structural poverty and inequality, such as the quality of housing, neighborhoods, education, and employment, remained largely unchanged."

Second, three quotes from another:

⦁    "[I]f you don't modernize yourselves, leave.  You're poor?  Whore mother!  Suffer through hardship and hunger.  I don't care."
⦁    "What I don't like are kids [being raped].  You can mess with, maybe Miss Universe.  Maybe I will even congratulate you for having the [crude word for daring/chutzpa] to rape somebody when you know you are going to die [for your crime]."
⦁    "Just because you're a journalist you are not exempted from assassination if you're a son of a [expletive deleted]."

Whose words were those?  Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, of whose first year as president the Human Rights Watch (HRW) called a human rights calamity.

Third, one more politician, three more quotes:
⦁    "Our religion has defined a position for women: motherhood. Some people can understand this, while others can’t. You cannot explain this to feminists because they don’t accept the concept of motherhood."
⦁    "Those who do not want to take a side will be eliminated from (meaning: irrelevant for) the process."
⦁    "...it's not possible for a Muslim to commit genocide."

Who said those?  Turkish President Recep Erdogan.

What kind of president is he?  Well, once again from Wikipedia, political scientists no longer consider Turkey as a fully fledged democracy, citing the lack of free and fair elections, purges and jailing of opponents, curtailed press freedom, and Erdogan's efforts to broadening his executive powers and minimize his executive accountability.

So, what's my point?

Namely this.  I regard the only real criterion for rating presidents as whether their country benefited or not from that leader's administration.  People who exploit discontent to attain power don't have a good track record for improving their country.  They're best at showing the way for future heads of state to get there: to keep people discontented, and use them.  Exploit them.

How can we spot such politicians?  Not just because they anger people, because that can happen anyway.  Look for loaded words (I talked about them a little in "Writing 102," Part 6: Tone, and more in "Writing 201," Goal 3: Anger.)  Words packed with emotional loading are meant to get the audience feeling rather than thinking.  (Examples from the quotes: "tyranny," "elite," "dogs," "whore," and crude words and expletives.)

The politics of discontent are a great way to take your country into diminished democracy, disintegrating human rights, and a declining economy.  Those who employ these tactics aren't there to help you, just to help themselves.  Something to keep in mind when watching ploys, and to avoid being played.

Truth, Fairness, and Dubious Tactics

The BBC recently ran a really interesting piece about Trump and Brett Kavanaugh borrowing from Bill Clinton:  "Brett Kavanaugh deploys the Trump and Clinton playbook."

As the article shows, all three (and Hillary too) used or are using the same tactic when confronted by scandal, which is to say framing the issue in terms of taking sides.  Not in terms of what the truth might be, what is fair, or what is moral, not even what's best for the country.  Just are you with me or against me.

Now, none of us should be surprised.  After all, most of our politicians started out as lawyers, and legal battles don't ultimately search for the truth, or what's fair, or equitable.  (If truth were primary, all evidence would be admissible; if fairness and equity were, the rich wouldn't be the only ones to hire the best attorneys.  But I digress.)  Everyone would like those to be the main goals, but the law is imperfect, and uses courtroom battles as a way of deciding issues as close to correctly as it can.

And that's fair enough, it's as good as we imperfect mortals can do.  But we need to remember that defense lawyers who get their guilty clients convicted will have as little career success as any other attorney who loses cases.

Anyone who wants to get anywhere as a lawyer has to put truth and fairness and equity into secondary priority, and win.

So we shouldn't be surprised when our politicians have the same mentality.

If you follow the news, the narrative is likely to suggest that American voters are fine with that, that everyone is increasingly polarized and uninterested in truth, fairness, and all the rest.  And certainly there's some truth to that.

But if you look back at the last election, turnout was something like 55%.  Granted that there will always be some who aren't paying attention or whatever, but I would suggest that some significant proportion of the US population, under 45% but still significant, doesn't see any better option than not voting at all.

So I can hope that at some point both parties stop and take a longer-term view, and start thinking in terms of engaging more than 55% of the population.  That they think about what's best for their party in the years to come, if not the nation, and stop focusing solely on winning their current case—I mean, election.

That's the truth as I see it, and I think it's a fair view of the overall situation.  But I doubt that dubious tactics will give way anytime soon.  I'm 55% sure of it.

11 Things I Try to Do as an Author

Since posting this, I've removed my books from Amazon, and am moving them to Project Gutenberg Self-Publishing Press.  They're all pdf ebooks, all free, and always will be.  I apologize if you wanted one of the trade paperbacks.

If you've only read the free fiction I've posted here or on Goodreads, I probably haven't shown you what my novels and short story collections are like (although the Bear and Mouse story comes close to my novels).  (Edit: It's now become one, titled In Solstice and in Peril.)  Other than Aunt Gabby Saves the Universe, which is young adult, I've so far done nothing but science fiction (Department G is also horror), although I've got some fantasy in the works.

So, what do I go for when writing novels?  What can you expect?  Well, here are eleven things I try to do every time (I've already talked about what I don't do):

11. Carry you along with flowing sentences.  Here's an example from Across the Worlds with Aimee and Phineas: "This moment, this moment when this woman looked into my eyes, this moment when I saw into those limpid depths, when I saw beauty, innocence, self-possession, strength and compassion, this moment my life stopped."

10. Build the worlds.  I try to create settings that have pasts, that then developed into their presents.  I try to give them cultures that aren't all at the same point on the Society and Culture Curve.  I want them to feel real while I draw you in and immerse you in them.

9. Create interesting characters.  Even my first novel, Roads Between Worlds, had an antagonist that I still think has exceptional depth.  Rock Alvarez in T-Man is larger than life, or at least is inspired by people like that I've known, but is still as three-dimensional as I could make him.  Phineas in Across the Worlds with Aimee and Phineas is a rascal, and likeable, I hope.  And I've tried to do likewise in later works.

8. Create diverse characters.  Most of my novels have protagonists, if not viewpoint characters, who aren't my gender, along with someone who isn't purely male or female in gender either.  They aren't all the same race as me, not even always the same species.  I try to keep my worlds rich in the kinds of people inhabiting them.

7. Create strong relationships.  There's nothing wrong with going through life alone, but in a novel, dialog helps break up the narrative and establish characterization.  If I'm thus going to have two characters, I'm not going to stop with trying to make them engaging.  I'll try to make the bond between them engage you too.

6. Give them witty dialog.  As long as I'm putting words in their mouths, I might as well put in wit as well.  Here's a small part of an exchange between the viewpoint character and Rock in T-Man:

"So, what were you asking about?"
"The plan," I said.
He glanced at me indignantly.  "I thought you had the plan!"
"What's the penalty for striking a superior again?"
"Finally," he said, "you admit it."
"What?"
"My superiority."

5. Keep it dynamic.  Scenes where "nothing happens" can be highly readable, but are all too easily filled with static prose.  My approach is for things to happen, and I try to keep the prose dynamic and moving as well.

4. Provoke some thought.  I don't want to provoke you otherwise, but I do want to give you something to think about; that's why all my novels reveal more and more about the characters, societies and worlds as they go along.  So I give you things to think about, but I won't make you figure them out, since it's my job to make all clear.  I want you to end up thinking, "That was really interesting" for as long as possible.

3. Avoid the expected.  I've been reading science fiction for decades, and I make every effort to avoid giving you plot developments or worlds or scenes that either of us might already have encountered.  I do my best to be as original as I can.

2. Have something to say.  I've read novels written purely to entertain, and did have a good time.  On the other hand, I see no reason why something that takes so long to write, and somewhat less to read, can't have something more to be gained, and be memorable.

1. Entertain!  When I want to write an essay, I do, and I post it on the blog.  I'm not going to put my time or yours into an essay disguised as a novel (no self-indulgence!), because I want to have fun writing it, and even more for you to have fun reading it.  And I hope you do!

When American Presidents Underestimate Russian Leaders

Terrible things happen when US Presidents underestimate or, worse, trust Russian leaders.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt is mostly considered a great president, but one of his biggest, most devastating mistakes came in trusting Josef Stalin.  A few quotes to illustrate, first these two:

• "Poor Neville Chamberlain believed he could trust Hitler. He was wrong. But I don't think I am wrong about Stalin."
• "I come from the Crimea with a firm belief that we have made a start on the road to a world of peace."

Added to that:

By March 21, Roosevelt's Ambassador to the USSR Averell Harriman cabled Roosevelt that "we must come clearly to realize that the Soviet program is the establishment of totalitarianism, ending personal liberty and democracy as we know it." Two days later, Roosevelt began to admit that his view of Stalin had been excessively optimistic and that "Averell is right."

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yalta_Conference

Plus one more quote, which I had in a previous entry (see which for sourcing):

• "I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask nothing of him in return, noblesse oblige, he won't try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace."

The result of this massive miscalculation was the people of Poland, what became East Germany, and much of the rest of Eastern Europe losing their freedom for decades.  Millions upon millions more harmed by World War II than had to be…all because a president was too arrogant to realize he was naive.

Maybe we can learn from that, and not do it again?

Department G

They were left to the study of academics, relegated to the realm of literary criticism.  They were dismissed as creations of a poet, remnants of an ancient literary tradition.

But they were more than that, far more.  Grendel and his mother were living creatures.  And they were more than relics.  We know, because their descendants live today.  We just don't think of them as Grendels anymore.  We lump them in with serial killers.

And we dismiss any hint of supernatural ability.

Department G was formed at a British professor's insistence, as an American parallel to Britain's MI-G.  The department's Team One has a proud tradition of protection…and an increasingly impossible task of providing Americans that protection, without causing too much risk, or panic.

Impossible means lethal.

* * *

This is a near-future science fiction novel, in a world that isn't ours but only differs in the detail of Grendels.  Those serial-killing creatures make it horror as well, comparable I think in frightfulness to Patricia Cornwell's early Scarpetta novels.  (If it's comparable in any other way I am blessed indeed.)  The e-book is $3.99, and the trade paperback $11.49 (priced for the same royalty either way).

I just don't want horror fans to be surprised by the science fiction elements, and vice-versa.  Happy reading!

Since posting this, I've removed my books from Amazon, and am moving them to Project Gutenberg Self-Publishing Press.  They're all pdf ebooks, all free, and always will be.

See my entry Ebooks Update for a full list. 

Agnes Meyer Driscoll Pictures

There are a dearth of pictures of this seminal American codebreaker available.  The originals are better than the selections below; they're just high-quality screenshots taken from The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll (pdf here; use this contact form to request a free hardcopy).  But they might help someone who needs a picture, and doesn't have time to contact the publisher, The Center for Cryptologic History.

Age 13

Hall of Honor photo

Age 21

Yeoman First Class Agnes Meyer

Agnes Driscoll, mid-1920s

Agnes Driscoll, probably mid-1920s

Agnes Driscoll, probably mid-1920s, close-up

Agnes Driscoll, late 1920s

Agnes Driscoll, circa 1932

Agnes Driscoll, mid-1930s

Agnes Driscoll, 1958

Agnes Driscoll, 1963

Hope these prove useful.  (As always, I also hope they help this woman get the recognition she has long deserved.)

February 9, 2024: For some reason, Blogger has decided not to let me comment on my own blog.  (If anyone is wondering if I had more than one reason to stop blogging and move my content to ebooks, the answer is yes.)  So for the recent commenter, and anyone else in the future: I put everything I could find out into the biography linked in the opening paragraph above.  I'm sorry I wasn't able to find out anything else that isn't in there...but I didn't.)