Looking at my upcoming trip to Virginia, and yeah, I know, I waited way too long to do this.
I’ll be attending Ravencon in Glen Allen, Virginia, the weekend of the 29th. I’ve got the dealer table, I’m on programming, I’m all set… except that I don’t have a place to sleep. The convention hotel has been sold out for several weeks (I keep checking) and the overflow hotel, likewise, has been sold out for at least a month. So now I’m doing the serious find-a-place-to-stay stuff. Priceline is offering me a 2.5-star hotel somewhere in the Glen Allen area for $79 a night, though of course I’d be much happier in the convention hotel, if anyone is looking for a roommate. On the other hand, if anyone else is in the same situation as me, I’m willing to split that room once I reserve it.
Also, I’m planning to get into town Thursday, the 28th, kind of late, so that early Friday morning, before setting up at the convention, I can go to the Hollywood Cemetery to visit Presidents Monroe and Tyler (and possibly Jefferson Davis), if anyone wants to join me.
Last night at the Academy Awards, Chris Rock made a joke involving Jada Pinkett Smith’s alopecia. Her husband, Will Smith, responded by walking up on stage and hitting Rock. Then he sat back down, yelled at Rock, and the awards program continued.
In other words, the AMPAS, the people running the show, everyone in that audience, decided there was nothing wrong with assaulting someone on national television for the offense of making a joke at someone else’s expense.
I wish I could say I’m outraged, but I’ve stopped being surprised by such things. We’ve been plummeting to this level for a long time.
When I was a child, my parents taught me the mantra “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” I was a big child, and a target of taunting and teasing from smaller children with smaller intellects. Smaller children trying to goad me into acting on their subpar level. My parents were trying to teach me that—though most in the world are good, caring, and thoughtful—there are always people who are mean and nasty, who can only raise themselves up by tearing down others. But that a physical response to verbal taunts is not acceptable in a civilized society.
I learned that lesson well. I do not hit people who call me names, who insult me. I don’t even respond in kind. I do, however, remember them. I keep them on my list of those who are undeserving of help or even consideration. But I do not hit them, because I am not an animal.
We’ve spent a generation or two teaching our children how evil it is to say certain words, express certain ideas. We’ve been trying to make the world a better place. But we seem to have glossed over the “be strong, grow a thick skin” aspect of it. Recently, a friend wrote of her trans-child’s pain over a store clerk misgendering the child. It was a clerk in a store, a stranger, who said sir instead of ma’am. No outside observer would ever mistake that situation for an attack, but apparently my friend had not taught her child the mantra my parents taught me, and the child suffered great emotional pain because of the incident.
Last night, Will Smith showed that he, too, had never learned that lesson. In his field, he’s a powerful man. He could have exacted revenge on the writer of that jape, could have damaged his career. He could even have simply stood up, turned his back on Rock, and walked out. But he didn’t. He did not try to rise above the situation. Instead, he dove even lower, offered a completely uncivilized response. He showed us that—at least in Hollywood—public violence is acceptable, and an awards program is no place to stand up for civility.
An hour later, while accepting one of the night’s awards, Smith apologized, saying “love will make you do crazy things.” But the whole point of being civilized and rational is that we ought to be able to think through our actions, even in such a situation, and not do such crazy things.
If it was acceptable to walk up on stage and hit Rock, would it have been acceptable to pull out a knife and stab him? Or shoot him with a gun? And if, instead, Smith had waited until after the show, would that have been better or worse?
How can we express confusion over the rise in violence in our cities, when our idols do what Will Smith did last night?
After-effects: the Los Angeles Police Department said Rock declined to file a police complaint. The Academy said it does not condone violence of any sort.
Today on Facebook, I saw a post from a friend saying “tomorrow I’m going to say something about my upcoming novel.” I also saw several iterations of a post from Mensa’s Annual Gathering Chair saying “tomorrow I’m going to tell you who the gala speaker is.”
I know we’re all trying to grab as much publicity as we can, get people to notice whatever it is we’re doing, by doling out tidbits of information. In publishing, we send out pre-publication galleys in hopes of garnering reviews timed to the book’s release. Announcements in the trade journals of book sales are a staple. And now, “cover reveals” have also become a thing. (As an aside, I’m still not sure why “gender reveals” are a thing, so I’m just going to ignore them.)
But I’ve always been annoyed at politicians and business leaders announcing that they’ll be holding a press conference to announce thus-and-such. It seems to me that making the statement is making the statement. “I’m going to announce my support of this bill at a press conference tomorrow,” or “we’re going to announce this new product line next week.” So why do I have to go to the press conference? Aren’t you telling me now?
On the other side of that coin, of course, are the reporters asking those politicians or business leaders what they’re going to do or say or announce in the coming days when they don’t. “You’ve scheduled a press conference for tomorrow. What are you going to say at it?” Grr.
Do those things really work? Are you more engaged in the upcoming new book or movie or sponsorship when it’s hinted at and teased and pre-announced before it’s announced before it’s finished before it’s available for sale? Am I just failing in my job as publicist by not doing all of that, by not making up pre-news news to share with you constantly?
Guess what? There are fiction readers out there with money they’re willing to spend on books.
Yeah, okay, that’s not terribly surprising. What’s surprising (to me) is how many of them can wind up wanting the same books.
I’ve been pointed to Brandon Sanderson’s current Kickstarter campaign, and I’m stunned, amazed, at the speed with which it was funded (an initial goal of $1 million was apparently met within minutes of launching the campaign), and the speed with which it continues to attract new backers. He doesn’t need my support, doesn’t need me to further share the link. I’m doing it because it’s awesome to just open the screen and watch the numbers scrolling (up, Up, UP!) for a few minutes. As I’m writing this, he’s got 69,882 backers pledging $17,767,653 for his four new novels and assorted other goodies. Just take a look, and then remember that his “overnight success” has been building for a couple of decades.
Meanwhile, down here among the mortals, I mentioned that I’ve got a story in the upcoming anthology The Fans Are Buried Tales, edited by Peter David. That campaign ended yesterday, garnering 283 backers pledging $8,564 of the initial $7,000 goal. So I’m thrilled that the book will be along sometime soon. Anyway, just being amazed that writers can find incredible success if they can build sufficient audiences.
The current state of political strife in the United States is something we should all fear. It is dangerous to our continued mutual welfare and well-being, as well as dangerous to our hoped-for future.
But it is not something that simply arose, not a natural outgrowth of our thinking and feeling. It is a result, carefully built, that points to an incredibly successful, decades-long campaign. It is something from which we can recover, but that will take a lot of effort.
When I was in college, in the 1980s, one of my political science professors described the political spectra here and in the European parliamentary systems. Here, he said, the difference between the liberals and the conservatives is that the liberals want to set Social Security at $3.00, while the conservatives want to set it at $2.00. In Europe, the difference is that the liberals want to set Social Security at $5.00, while the conservatives want to set it at zero. He was teaching us that, though (at the time) we saw vast gulfs of difference between our liberals and conservatives, in comparison to the rest of the world, our extreme wings were so close to the middle of the road as made no real difference.
The reason for that very narrow, very central political spectrum was our electoral system. In the parliaments—and he was thinking more of countries such as Israel and the Netherlands, where members are elected at large from the whole country—a political party only needs to win two or three percent of the vote to earn a seat in the governing body. People can vote for a party that aligns precisely with their views, knowing that they can be represented, even if only by a small party. And in the no-party-with-a-majority outcomes of those elections, even the smallest parties have a chance to be important in the formation of a coalition government.
In the US system, however, our governmental representatives are elected by small geographic districts, each one a winner-take-all election. In such a system, if you don’t get the plurality of the votes, you don’t get a seat in the government. Such a system will naturally and instantaneously devolve into a two-party system. Each election, one wins and one loses. And the way to win elections in such a system is to get as close to the middle as possible. A candidate knows he has the support of the extreme wing of his party, because there’s no chance they’d ever vote for the other party, so he doesn’t have to convince them to vote for him. The votes that are up for grabs are the independents, the undecideds, the middle-of-the-road voters who see some good in each party. In that system, being extreme is a losing strategy. And so, for many years, we had a mostly middle-of-the-road government: perhaps not awe-inspiring, but comfortable.
But there was a snake in that grass: gerrymandering. In the early days of gerrymandering—the first decades of the 1800s—it was a blunt instrument, used to separate towns and communities, or group them together. But in the last two decades, with the growth of ever more powerful computing capabilities and incredibly precise polling data, the people redrawing voting district lines can map them to include and exclude specific houses. And the political parties have taken that ability so far beyond the bounds of reason. A phrase that’s been thrown around the news of late is “the politicians picking their voters, rather than the other way around,” and that really is what’s happening. In a district that is drawn to be “safe” for one party, the general election is a formality, a waste of time. In my own district, for instance, the closest election the incumbent Democrat has fought was in 2020, when she took only 83.1% of the vote. In the past 30 years in my district, there were only two other elections in which the incumbent got less than 90% of the vote. There is no point in a Republican even running in my district, though they usually put up a token sacrificial lamb for appearances’ sake. But that means my Representative doesn’t have to do anything to win except be a loyal Democrat.
U.S. congressional districts covering Travis County, Texas (outlined in red) in 2002, left, and 2004, right. In 2003, the majority of Republicans in the Texas legislature redistricted the state, diluting the voting power of the heavily Democratic county by parceling its residents out to more Republican districts. In 2004 the orange district 25 was intended to elect a Democrat while the yellow and pink district 21 and district 10 were intended to elect Republicans. District 25 was redrawn as the result of a 2006 Supreme Court decision. In the 2011 redistricting, Republicans divided Travis County between five districts, only one of which, extending to San Antonio, elects a Democrat.
U.S. congressional districts covering Travis County, Texas (outlined in red) in 2002, left, and 2004, right. In 2003, the majority of Republicans in the Texas legislature redistricted the state, diluting the voting power of the heavily Democratic county by parceling its residents out to more Republican districts. In 2004 the orange district 25 was intended to elect a Democrat while the yellow and pink district 21 and district 10 were intended to elect Republicans. District 25 was redrawn as the result of a 2006 Supreme Court decision. In the 2011 redistricting, Republicans divided Travis County between five districts, only one of which, extending to San Antonio, elects a Democrat.
It also means that the real election—if there ever is one (which doesn’t happen in my district)—is the primary election, when the Democratic party decides who is going to be their candidate. That’s what we had last year when New York City elected a new mayor. There was no discussion of the general election; everyone knew the Democratic primary was choosing the next mayor; Republicans need not apply.
But this shift means that the electorate a candidate has to convince is no longer the middle-of-the-road, could-vote-Democratic-or-Republican independent voters; they don’t matter, because the stalwart party members are the majority of the district. That means the middle-of-the-road, I-welcome-everyone type of candidate is an automatic loser. Because when the primary is the election, the way to win the primary is to appeal to the most ardent, strident, non-centrist members of the party. The candidate has to convince them that he will represent only their views, and screw the other party. When it’s the primary that matters, running to the extreme is a winning strategy. Because whatever level the election is (primary or general), money talks. And those most willing to donate to a campaign are always the farthest-out fringe members, because they see not just bad ideas, but actual evil in the other party.
In the days when it was the general election that mattered, party leaders were smart enough to know that the way to win was to run to the middle. But now that the general election doesn’t matter, because the party leaders have already rigged the districts to be “safe” for the party, the way to win is to run to the outermost edges to get the funding to win the primary.
And that results in a Congress full of politicians who aren’t working for the common good, but for the party’s good. That’s what gives us a Mitch McConnell, who won’t allow a Supreme Court nominee to be considered because it’s an election year (2016), but will rush through a Supreme Court nominee because it’s an election year (2020), based solely on who put forth the nomination. And that’s what gives us an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who won’t vote for the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill because it does everything she wants, but she also wants Build Back Better right now at the same time, because she wants what she wants and she wants it all right now. It’s what gives us a country in which the continued health of our democratic republic truly is in jeopardy. It turns a deliberative, thoughtful body of legislators into a raucous madhouse of children trying to score points with “the folks back home” by being as nasty and uncooperative with their fellow members as possible.
I lay these problems squarely at the foot of gerrymandering. But we’ve gerrymandered ourselves into such a deep hole, and the two parties that won have so entrenched themselves in the system, that I fear we’ll never be able to get out of it. Ballotpedia, for instance, shows that in the election of 2020, only 41 of the 435 House districts were “battlegrounds.” That is, 394 of the Representatives knew they were winners as soon as the primary was over, and only 41 had to bother with the general election. (See https://ballotpedia.org/U.S._House_battlegrounds,_2020)
So how do we get out of our gerrymandered quagmire? It’ll take a true statesman. Actually, we’ll need two. Because to get out of it, each of the parties will have to say (of their own polities) “we currently have the majority, and we can redraw the districts to ensure that we always have the majority, but that would be bad. So we’re going to redraw the districts to ensure competition, for the good of the country.” If only one party does it, the other will swoop in and kill them as quickly as possible. Both parties have to do it, and they have to do it together.
And we’re all stuck in it like insects in a pitcher plant, because it feels good to be winning, to be on top, to be a supporter of the candidate and the party that wins. But we have to put aside that good feeling, and adopt a longer-term view that, though we feel good about winning today, if we break the system, we sure won’t feel good in the future.
I remember the Soviet Union and the Cold War. I remember the Berlin Wall, the Iron Curtain, and an air raid drill when I was in elementary school. Mutually Assured Destruction, nuclear-armed bombers constantly in the air, and the horrors depicted in Solzhenitsyn and White Nights.
Those memories, I’ve just realized, are what was on my mind while listening to National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan give us a war warning this afternoon. (For those of you who weren’t paying attention, he urged all Americans in Ukraine to get out now, because a Russian military invasion “before the end of the Olympics” is possible.)
As the news stations have told us repeatedly in the last few weeks, very few Americans even know where Ukraine is, let alone what it stands for, or why we should care if Russia invades. And as a single country, somewhere out there in “eastern Europe,” Ukraine probably doesn’t matter.
But as a symbol, a sign, as step two or three in a very intense long game plotted by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukraine matters a great deal.
Putin has not made a secret of his desire to reconstruct the Soviet Union. He’s been working on it slowly and methodically, watching the West’s will to fight against it crumble as he goes. We lost our will to fight after two decades of dirty wars. Our reaction to the fall of Afghanistan, and the fact that we blame only our own government, rather than the Taliban, tells Putin we don’t have the stomach to do anything more than make feeble pronouncements when he does whatever he wants.
Putin’s first step in his grand plan was the theft of Crimea from Ukraine. Even then, we showed our stripes quite clearly when we made mealy-mouthed protestations of sanctions, but ultimately did absolutely nothing to prevent it or react to it.
It’s been eight years since Russia took Crimea, and in that time, not only we, but most Ukrainians have come to live with it. Listen to any reporter in eastern Ukraine: the one I heard today asked locals their views of a potential Russian invasion. Their responses were “what invasion?” while they listened to Russian television stations.
So Putin has no great fear of losing when he orders his troops into Ukraine (after sufficiently softening up the target by turning off the power and disrupting communications). And it will be a nice pincer move, since Putin already had Belarus in his back pocket. Russia will take over Ukraine, the US and NATO will make some half-hearted protestations and issue a few warnings not to attack any NATO members (which Putin isn’t planning anyway), and we will allow ourselves to be distracted by the latest scandal of the week.
But taking Ukraine isn’t his end goal. It’s just an early step.
The Soviet Union. Remember, that’s his goal.
So Putin and Russia take Ukraine. It’ll take them a year or three to digest it, but somewhere in there will be a new election with only one candidate—one who just happens to think a close alliance with Russia is in Ukraine’s best interests—and a hundred thousand Russian troops occupying Ukraine will vote for that new candidate, and a treaty will be signed, and Ukraine will take its place in the regrowing union.
Meanwhile, Belarus is nearly there anyway. The Union State of Russia and Belarus has been in place since the beginning of the century, with Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko (he’s been in office for 27 years) quite comfortable with their close relationship. Russia doesn’t need to invade. Heck, there are already tens of thousands of Russians in Belarus, at Lukashenko’s invitation, for “joint military exercises,” which we assume will move beyond Belarus’s southern border, and in two hours they’ll be in Kyiv. That makes a three-country union (the compact forming the Union State already has provisions for adding more countries).
And once it’s clear that those three are working together, it won’t be long before tiny Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia will also want to sign on, rather than being forced to do so.
Then Putin can look to central Asia. The violence in Kazakhstan is bound to flare up, time and again, until the leadership (though he left the presidency after 29 years in office, former President Nursultan Nazarbayev is apparently still the power behind the throne there) asks for Russian intervention to help secure the government. Well of course Putin wants to be a good neighbor. And of course Russia will have to protect their own interests in the country (for instance, the Russia’s Cape Canaveral is the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan). And the largest of the central Asian countries will once again become a welcomed part of Putin’s new union.
Once that happens, the other tiny central Asians—Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan—won’t even be a blip on the world’s consciousness as they are re-absorbed. Oh, Putin may toss Kyrgyzstan and Tajkistan into China’s orbit, to placate his new buddy Xi Jinping, but that won’t make a difference one way or the other.
And voila, Vladimir Putin will be the first leader of the second incarnation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; a strong man in a world of sheep who don’t want to fight. Putin might not even care that he’s no longer getting love letters from President Donald Trump.
That’s what I was thinking, listening to the news this afternoon. That’s why a very good, productive morning turned into a rather depressing afternoon.
I don’t know if anyone is really surprised that boxes of what should be public presidential records were secreted out of the White House to Donald Trump’s own property. He has a very long history of attempting to keep his actions secret. Instead of being surprised that he did so—again—we should be asking “What is he hiding?” What, for instance, is lurking in his tax returns that he has worked so hard to keep secret? Who does he owe money to? Who did he owe money to while he was president, and how much of those debts were reduced by means other than simple repayment? How much money did he receive from which foreign countries during his administration?
The ostensible purpose of the current investigations are to see how much he was the impetus for the attack on the Capitol building in January 2021, but I think we should also be asking just how much of an independent actor he was during his presidency, and how much he was indebted to—and acting on behalf of—others.
Fantastic Books is participating in this month’s “Scoundrels in Space” story bundle, in the form of Tom Purdom’s Romance on Four Worlds: A Casanova Quartet. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of story bundles (as I was), it’s a group sale program: you pay $5 for the four main ebooks, or $20 (or more) for all 12. The money goes to the authors and a little to the sponsor, and you get some great reads for really cheap. The bundle is only available for a limited time (in this case, until February 24). But to grab your cheap reading, follow this link: https://storybundle.com/scifi
Fantastic Books published Romance on Four Worlds a few years back, and when it came out, Publishers Weekly called it “delightful” and “a pleasure from beginning to end.” So now you can get a copy cheaper than ever before, and another 11 wonderful books, too. Check it out!
The Democrats are doing it again: they’re so busy fighting amongst themselves that the Republicans and the Trumpians can just sit back and laugh, knowing they’re going to win because the Democrats are their own worst enemy. How many of them are yelling at Senators Manchin and Sinema to change the filibuster rule in the Senate, instead of yelling at the Republicans and the Trumpians to protect voters’ rights? They’re just wrong. The reason the original filibuster existed—and the current horrible incarnation of it is in place—is to prevent the tyranny of the majority over the minority. Yes, of course, the majority should decide. But if the slimmest of majorities can stomp all over the largest of minorities, that’s not what we want either. And overturning the filibuster now will only result in even unhappier Democrats in the future, because the pendulum continues to swing, and there will be a time when the Democrats are a minority.
Every time there’s a political debate, it’s the same story: the Republicans yell at the Democrats, the Trumpians yell at the Democrats and threaten the Republicans, and the Democrats yell at… other Democrats. Just the latest instance of the gang who couldn’t shoot straight, DC edition. If they ever focus on those who are actually in the wrong on the issue, they might be able to accomplish great things.
In a ongoing discussion of the Mensa Bulletin (the national publication of American Mensa), one topic that came up is members who don’t read it at all. One of those members commented “I realize part of it is my own fault. When I received the print edition, it would be on the kitchen table. I’d pick it up and read it over meals by myself. When I changed to the digital edition, I stopped reading the Bulletin.”
That, more than anything, is why I have spent years railing against the trend to all-digital publication. A physical magazine is there, in front of your eyes. You see it, even if you’re not going to read it. An electronic publication is so easy to ignore, to skip today because you’re busy, and then have it scroll down to the unnoticeable part of your unread in-box, that it won’t be many issues before you stop reading it altogether.
If the goal is to save money, to do everything as cheaply as possible, then by all means, we have to drop paper publication and shift to all-electronic.
But if the goal is to produce something that people notice, pay attention to, and read—and in the case of a membership organization, produce a regular reminder that readers are members of this organization, and may want to renew their membership regularly—then the printed magazine is a necessity.
The current state of political strife in the United States is something we should all fear. It is dangerous to our continued mutual welfare and well-being, as well as dangerous to our hoped-for future.
Ian Randal Strock 