I don’t claim to be a great marketing guru, with reason. When I was younger, after a tour and a half in the Navy, largely as a helicopter search and rescue pilot, I spent a year as an industrial economist, technically a market research analyst for a company that manufactured compressed air valves, regulators, filters, and lubricators for heavy industry, largely automobile manufacturers. I wasn’t a good fit. The next year I got a real estate license, and in that year, I sold two houses, just two very modest dwellings.

Then I started writing science fiction stories, quickly discovering that the few stories I sold didn’t come close to paying the bills. But the writing and economic skills landed me in paid political positions for the next eighteen years, while I wrote and sold SF novels on the side. Those novels paid much better than stories, but not enough to leave the day job, not until I wrote my first fantasy novel – The Magic of Recluce.

When I started getting those first stories published, most of what was selling in the overall speculative fiction field was science fiction, particularly novels by Heinlein, Murray Leinster, Asimov, Simak, Poul Anderson, Arthur C. Clarke. While Lord of the Rings was first published in 1955 in Great Britain, it didn’t appear in the United States until 1965. Despite the fact that Lord of the Rings sold something like 150 million copies, it took a while for overall fantasy book sales to surpass SF sales, but by the mid-1990s, total fantasy sales were definitely eclipsing SF sales.

This trend appears to be continuing. The editors I know say that it’s getting harder and harder for SF novels to be published, while the fastest-growing segment of speculative fiction is Romantasy – fantasy novels with sexual and romance content verging on the pornographic.

Part of the decline in the sales of SF novels is that the wish-fulfillment aspect of those novels gets harder and harder to pull off (if the author wants to stay close to the scientifically accurate), given scientific discoveries over the past few decades. Venus can’t be a tropical planet because it’s a hellhole in reality, and Barsoom can’t really exist, although several authors have gotten around those facts by setting their stories in alternate universes, but that makes those books science-fantasy, rather than SF.

There certainly are exceptions, such as Andy Weir’s The Martian, but they’re getting fewer and fewer. Part of that may be because SF has historically been dominated by male authors writing for male readers, and the reading rates for men have dropped dramatically since the advent of the internet. Whatever the other reasons may be, from what I can see, publishers overall are releasing and selling less hard SF, and even less fantasy that doesn’t have either sex-related romance and heavy action-adventure.

But what do I know?

Now that Memorial Day has passed, in roughly two weeks Donald Trump will preside over a military parade on Flag Day, which also marks the 250th “birthday” of the U.S. Army, and incidentally is also Trump’s birthday.

The parade, which is estimated to cost $45 million, will feature tanks and other military hardware, but what of those whose deaths, sacrifices, and all too often unseen gritty valor and lifelong suffering seem ignored – except in high-flown and soon forgotten rhetoric?

It all reminds me, sadly, of the Kipling poem “Tommy,” written more than a century ago, which illustrates how soldiers are momentarily praised when needed and later ignored and discarded.

Trump is all in favor of triumphant trappings of military success, of shiny aircraft and unblemished tanks – as most dictators or would-be dictators are. And of course, he wants a bright and shiny new – or newer—Air Force One to carry him around the world like Apollo in his light-encrusted chariot of divinity, for he is, in his own mind, a god of sorts, who’s already proclaimed that he runs the world.

At the same time, he’s cut the Veterans Administration, the only arm of government dedicated to the support and health of veterans, especially those disabled and without other support. He’s also called those who served “suckers” and “losers.” But he’ll publicly praise newly commissioned junior officers, while reducing the support and benefits of those who served in the past.

I can recall all the times I flew a vintage H-34 (helicopter) on its last legs, with patches on the fuselage where it had been hit in Vietnam and later repaired. I also haven’t forgotten searching in the darkness for one of many H-2s that went down over the ocean because there wasn’t enough funding to upgrade those helicopters properly, an H-2 that was never found, although the body of one of the two pilots was recovered. The other, whom I knew, was not.

Those aspects of military service haven’t changed that much, from what I can see, where funding goes to shiny new aircraft, without enough spare parts, and where there’s never enough funding to keep everything flying or to keep pilots in training. Just last week, the Navy announced that it’s revamping pilot training to eliminate the requirement for pilots to make carrier landings before they get their wings, which translates to less rigorous training. Both Navy and the Air Force don’t have enough jet trainers to train the pilots they need to the level they require, and the training jets they have are old and worn out. But the services and the Congress seem unable to decide on and fund new trainers, while keeping open scores of bases they don’t need because of Congressional pressure.

In, the meantime, Trump offers empty words to new junior officers, billionaires get tax cuts, Congress, for all its rhetoric, ignores too many of the pressing needs of the armed forces, and Trump will blow $45 million on a parade for his ego.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has been insisting that the armed forces of the United States need to return to a “Warrior Ethos,” along with removing women from any number of positions and eliminating anyone who isn’t “straight.”

Personally, I have a real problem with that crusade, and the way he’s approaching reforming the armed services is, in fact, an unthinking crusade. He’s also assuming that males of a certain physical type are the only ones with the “correct” mindset.

War is no longer, if it ever really was, just a massive struggle of big-biceped males. Even the Bible makes that point in the story of David and Goliath, where the slight shepherd boy destroys the giant with his skill and his sling, and in fact, back then most armies had slingers. And, so far as being gay, Richard the Lion-Hearted was, and he was certainly a “warrior,” if not always wisely, which might also suggest certain drawbacks to the “warrior” mindset.

Modern warfare requires an enormous array of skills from its soldiers. Even in World War II, infantry soldiers, who took seventy percent of the casualties, only represented fourteen percent of overseas forces.

In the Vietnam era, when I flew H-34s, each hour of flight time required between five and ten hours of maintenance, and I wouldn’t be here today if those techs hadn’t done their job. Today, for every hour of flight time, an F18E/F Super Hornet requires twenty hours of maintenance. The F-14 required 40-60 hours, one of the reasons it was phased out. An aircraft carrier requires 5,000-6,000 personnel onboard to support the operations of between 64 and 80 aircraft of various sorts, with roughly 180-200 pilots and NFOs.

The armed forces don’t require or need macho-muscled males to fill every position, and in terms of flying, women and shorter men can actually handle gee forces better than tall brawny males. While there are certain specialty positions in the military that require great muscular strength and abilities, they represent a small fraction of the skills necessary in a modern military force.

At a time when the United States is relying on an all-volunteer military force, and when the military is often failing to meet recruiting goals, does arbitrary and unwise removal of soldiers, sailors, and others make sense, when their only “detriment” is that they don’t fit an outdated “warrior” image?

This past weekend, General Stanley McChrystal made the observation on “Face the Nation” that Trump’s lack of character wasn’t the problem with the United States, but a symptom of a much wider loss of character in America.

While General McCrystal was absolutely correct, in my opinion, I would agree, partly because of what I wrote in February of 2018 (more than seven years ago):

“Trump is not so much primarily either solution or problem, but a symptom of what’s gone wrong in American politics and society…”

In part, in that earlier blog, I was talking about intransigence and not listening to anyone “on the other side,” but General McChrystal made that observation as well, and the fact that he did suggests that American beliefs – and the unwillingness to compromise with or listen to the other side – haven’t changed much, if at all, over the last seven years, except possibly for the worse.

The current budget legislation in the House of Representatives is a reflection of that. The legislation that failed in committee was essentially a mirror image of every budget proposal passed in the past decade – more spending for defense, mostly maintaining social programs currently, but with severe/modest (depending on viewpoint) budget cuts/reforms promised for the future. The Republican hardliners want more defense spending, heavy cuts in social programs and large tax cuts, primarily for the wealthiest taxpayers, while the Democrats want to maintain and often expand social programs, increase taxes on the wealthy, and cut defense spending, except where it impacts their own districts and/or states.

Neither side is being realistic, but it’s hard to expect realism from a nation that gorges on social media and reality shows, a nation that has watered down education so that everyone can pass, even if they haven’t learned anything and can’t write a coherent paragraph, and where far too many young people idealize cultures that are brutal and oppressive, while trashing their own country, which is far more open and freer than the cultures they support in their protests.

While Trump is, in my opinion, a miserable excuse for a human being, the majority of those voting elected him… and that strongly suggests that General McChrystal and I not only share views, but also are correct in viewing Trump as a symptom and not a cause.

I dislike touchscreens, iPads, and the like. Part of that is that, while my muscular gross motor control is good to excellent, I don’t do as well with fine motor control, one of the reasons why I gave up trying to be an artist, although I actually won a scholastic art show in high school.

The other reason is that I have flat oblong fingertips, which means that it’s a bitch to compose anything on my iPhone. That’s why I use a mouse on my surface pro when I travel. For me, precision is far easier and quicker with a full-sized keyboard and a mouse. As for signing anything electronically, on those occasions, my barely legible signature turns into abstract art.

In a way, I could claim that iPads and touchscreens are discriminatory against people with large hands and broad or fat fingers, but then, if we really look at the physical world, every device and structure could be said to be discriminatory against someone. In fact, even the environment discriminates.

The sun blisters fair-skinned people in tropical climes and induces vitamin D deficiencies in dark-skinned people living in arctic areas (unless they take vitamins or watch their diet carefully).

Genetics discriminate, because some people are born more intelligent or stronger or faster or more coordinated than others.

Societies and governments usually discriminate in various ways, sometimes for the public good, as in locking up lawbreakers and forbidding children to drive some killing machines (i.e., automobiles) while often allowing young teenagers to drive smaller killing machines (i.e., ATVs). Often, societies discriminate on the basis of appearance, skin color, gender, and age, or religious faith or the lack thereof, and the culture/society into which one is born determines the degree of discrimination and challenges faced.

We all can cite blatant and obvious cases of discrimination such as slavery and lack of civil rights for African Americans in the U.S.; the holocaust in Germany; the Armenian Genocide in Turkey – and that list is long. But moving away from the blatant and obvious, “discrimination” isn’t always so easy to define or remedy.

Recent studies show that family backgrounds, especially their degree of prosperity, have a great impact on children’s futures. So does the physical environment. But to what degree should governments address the conditions that disadvantage children?

Both the right and the left have been debating and fighting over this question for generations, and while conditions have improved in the U.S., in many areas, obvious discrimination still exists. At the same time, some groups have filed lawsuits against governments and universities claiming that certain anti-discrimination measures discriminate against them.

But how much discrimination is structural? How much can be addressed by laws? And how much is chance?

I have no sense of pitch or rhythm, and I’m extremely fortunate to have been born into a culture that doesn’t require a high degree of linguistic inflection and pitch change, because I’m fairly certain that I’d be at a great disadvantage in China, Japan, or Vietnam. I couldn’t even hear the changes in inflection and pitch in Vietnamese when I was being prepared to be sent to Vietnam as a junior Navy officer.

All of which illustrates, in an odd way, why dealing with “discrimination” can be fraught with pitfalls. Even laws requiring perfect equality of opportunity wouldn’t make touchscreens any easier for me or allow me to sing professionally.

And while that seems far-fetched, how far can we take “anti-discrimination?”