The Supreme Court vs. the Will of the People

This being a democracy, the majority is supposed to rule.  So when, for example, polls show that 75% of the country supports an existing ruling, the Supreme Court has no business overturning it.  Do they?

Yes.  And no.

Let me pick a couple of related, unpopular cases (which I've summed up in the past).
https://kevinwadejohnson.blogspot.com/2020/09/only-somewhat-supreme.html

One is the infamous Dred Scott decision.  In language I would consider much more intemperate that a court should use, that Supreme Court majority opinion referred to people of African origin as "an inferior class of beings."  That went over so well that we ended up with a civil war and three constitutional amendments to stop such nonsense.

Only the second case showed it would take a lot of stopping.  Plessy vs. Ferguson resulted in the court declaring that one of those amendments, the Fourteenth, was only meant to enforce racial equality, not erase racial distinctions.  It went on to declare segregation constitutional, and let Jim Crow laws stand.  It's considered another of the most atrocious decisions.

Even though, racism being even more prevalent then than now, I have little doubt that a majority was okay with them,* particularly Plessy.  (Note to oppressors: Pick a gender, skin color, etc., then deny those people educations and opportunities.  Voila, many people will find them inferior.  The fact that the oppressed were given no chance to demonstrate equality will not generally register.)

*Just among abolitionists, some opposed slavery as morally wrong.  Some opposed it because of the way it was splitting the north and south.  Some opposed it for what it was doing to the slaves.  Some opposed it for what it was doing to the slave owners.  And so on.  How many of the population then thought blacks and whites should be treated equally?  I doubt a majority.

So, that's two.  Here's two more, on the other side:

Loving vs. Virginia struck down state laws against being allowed to choose a spouse from another race.  Roe vs. Wade, as we all know, made state laws against a woman's choice to terminate a pregnancy unconstitutional.

Those last two verdicts are well-regarded, and certainly a majority supports them.  Dred Scott and Plessy, on the other hand, probably were the will of a majority at the time, but are rightly condemned today.

What's the difference?

The difference is that the United States was founded on freedom: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  We hold those truths to be self-evident, we said so.

So when the Supreme Court puts forth an unpopular verdict that affirms freedoms, then despite unpopularity those verdicts last at least for decades, and remain well-regarded even longer.  When the court takes freedom of choice away, that court is consigned to ignominy.

Because the majority in this democracy may not agree on an issue, but freedom is the foundation our forefathers made.  Build up from it, and you build something lasting.  Take away from that foundation, and watch our constitutional edifice totter.  Sometimes fracture.

US Gummint Cunning Man

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 links to all of my free ebooks.

Shade mammoths, iron buffalo, and dodos; honeyberries, lightning pines, and mistle…

It's 1840 in the United States, but a different country from the one we know.  Magic has been known for tens of thousands of years, and the only reason the colonies freed themselves from British domination is that Pennsylvania Rifles outrange the tyrannical power of Mastery.

The colonies haven't gotten far into the interior yet; a different man from Thomas Jefferson was born in this different world, no one sent a Lewis or Clark to cross the continent, and any such expedition would have had to fight their way through undervines and dust wolves and more.

Zebulon Japheth Wright finds himself in a pivotal position.  Even though he grew up just another hunter-farmer, he knows about yet another danger: society's suspicion of people who might be witches, especially slave liberators, gets those people attacked.

What Wright will do with the power he finds he has, how he will use it in a society of individuals that distrusts individual power, and how his use of it will shape both him and his society, underlies a tale of magic, exploration and adventure.

* * *

I'll explain in a minute how this novel came to be, since it's pertinent.  Meanwhile, do I wish I hadn't let this one sit the way I did, because underlying the adventure is the issue of personal power, because of course that's what magic is.  #Metoo, BLM…this novel is more timely now than ever before, and I wish I'd put it out a year ago.  But better late…

* * *

The original draft of this novel started in October 2011, and got to novella length by June 2012.  At which point I realized that, despite an immense amount of world-building, I'd made a fundamental error as far as story was concerned, and so what would have been my second novel got put aside.

Flash-forward to May 2018, when I decided to tackle this again.  I fixed my world-building mistake (witches no longer require familiars), and started over.  I got a draft I was happy with done in November…at which point Department G seized my imagination, and this got put aside again.

We get to this year, and pretty much all summer covid blues had me not wanting to write…but willing to revise.

All of which is a long-winded explanation for how I can put a novel out only two months after my last one.  No, I can't write one that fast (or at least I never have), and, no, I didn't slap together something slipshod.  But if I take time off from writing, I've got stuff stockpiled.  And if I need to take that time off, well, that's why I have a stockpile.

* * *

The ebook ($.99) and trade paperback ($7.49) are both available; I'll put the ebook on sale for free in a couple of weeks, and will announce it in the blog.

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.

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?

Agnes Meyer Driscoll: Marking History

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll was published by the Center for Cryptologic History in 2015.  It won an award around that same time.  Now, it's made an impact, on 22 July 2017.  A visible impact.

Driscoll spent most of her formative years in Westerville, Ohio, near Columbus; The Neglected Giant gave the address of her childhood home. Some history-minded Ohioans noticed, and decided to do something about it:

I found out about the historical marker when one of the movers and shakers behind it commented on this blog:

I enjoyed your work on Agnes that I did a short (amateurish) video for our local Field Of Heroes we do for Memorial Day in 2016. We were honoring Women in the Military.

That and the work of many others has turned into Agnes being recognized by the Ohio Historical Society and a plaque being erected in front of one of her childhood homes here in Westerville.

If you search my name on YouTube hopefully you can find the video, and there are photos of the ceremony on Facebook at @WestervilleHistory.

Feel free to contact me directly if you would like to know more... thank you for doing this. The impact from your work has been wonderful here.

Driscoll's work in breaking codes, including her contributions against the Japanese JN-25, which helped win the turning-point Battle of Midway, made a mark in history, but that work has largely not received the recognition that it no doubt should have.  I'm not just pleased that Ohio chose to highlight the history made by one of its own, I'm thrilled I helped this happen.

Her grandnephew Capt. Victor Meyer, USN (ret.), pictured, was among those I interviewed in the researching The Neglected Giant.  His pride in his relative was evident then, and visible now.

The Neglected Giant: Writing about Agnes Meyer Driscoll

You don't have to read too far into the biography I wrote of codebreaking pioneer Agnes Driscoll (nee Meyer) to realize it's got its scholarly side; the footnotes are a pretty good indicator of that.  If you go all the way through to the seven appendices, you'll have an even better idea.

(Form for ordering a free hardcopy here; softcopy directly here.)

But, although getting the scholarly side right was critical, the aspect of writing about Driscoll that concerned me most was making it readable.  I did my darnedest to make it a page-turner, even literary.

The page-turner part, as far as I could make it so, came about through three elements.  The least of the three was throwing in a little foreshadowing here and there.  More useful was pacing: Many of the narrative sections are followed by reflective ones.  The major element was through the section and chapter transitions.  I put a lot of figurative sweat into those.

See, any time a written work has a portion that's clearly ending, that's an opportunity for readers to stop turning pages and do something else.  So making not just a smooth transition to the next part, but an engaging one, is crucial.

Here's an example:

...She might have been seething with resentment, fuming with frustration, or burning with ambition, but the evidence is inadequate for us to be sure.

"We Didn't See Anything Burning": 1938-1941

The "heat" imagery of the last sentence of the one section, and the word "burning" (a repeat, as well) in the following section heading didn't happen by accident.

Whether the biography has any literary merit or not is for others to say, but I did strive to use what techniques I could.  For example, since the theme of the work is what a giant she was, I used wording throughout to reinforce that image.  If you want to know what I mean, go back and look at the fifth paragraph of the previous entry, starting with (italics added), "She raised herself..."

The biography was a lot of work, but it was also incredibly gratifying.  If you get half the satisfaction from reading it that I had in writing it, you're in for a treat.

If you have a Goodreads account, you can rate The Neglected Giant here

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll

The links in this entry are correct as of September 2020 

She helped save thousands upon thousands of American lives, but you've probably never heard of her.  A remarkable woman who lived a remarkable life, she was never famous and has become almost forgotten.  History has neglected her.

Codebreakers don't tend to gain fame in the first place, although Alan Turing is a welcome exception.  But even among those who pay attention to such a specialized field, Agnes Driscoll (nee Meyer) gets name recognition, but is rarely mentioned in the same breath, or even the next breath, as a William Friedman.

But she should be.  Hired as a stenographer, which was typical for women almost a century ago, she turned herself into a codebreakder, and became one of the best.  She is given credit for breaking two Japanese codes virtually single-handedly.  She was almost the only codebreaker for the Navy for a couple of decades.  You would think that would be enough.

But she also did more individually than all but one other person to break JN-25, the code Japan's navy used at Midway.  (The organizational credit for breaking it correctly goes to the Navy's Station Hypo.)  Midway was the turning point in the Pacific war, putting Japan irretrievably on the defensive, and breaking JN-25 helped save many thousands of American lives.

She raised herself up to become a premier codebreaker.  Anecdotal evidence abounds that she was a warm woman, encouraging others' growth.  She soldiered on, standing tall, doing so at an age long after virtually all of her peers had moved on to other duties or retired.  Yet she never rose through the ranks as high as they did, and their names are typically mentioned above hers even today.

Why?

One of the last things I was able to do before retiring from government service was to tell her story.  It's a free federal publication, and a free hardcopy can be ordered using this request form, or the softcopy viewed here (links updated September 2020).  Go read it.  You can skip through the technical parts; you don't have to learn old codes and codebreaking.  But do learn about a great codebreaker.  Better yet, about a great American.

Help undo decades of neglect.