Proposing a peace for Ukraine,
But all of it for Russia’s gain.
Who’s the chump?
You… or Donald Trump?

Some eight years ago, I wrote a blog post about the swallowing of Thanksgiving by the commercialization of Christmas. From what I can see, at least here in Cedar City, Thanksgiving has almost vanished, and Christmas decorations are proliferating in early November, along with greater hype of special buying days like Black Friday, Black Monday, and cyber-whatever-the-hell-day it may be.

Now that the Christmas commercialists have vanquished Thanksgiving, which isn’t totally surprising, given that Thanksgiving is based on expressing thanks and gratitude for what one has rather than spending more and more on everything for longer and longer, those self-same Christmas commercialists appear to have taken aim at Halloween.

Or perhaps some other group has, and the Christmas commercialists are merely taking advantage of it.

We’ve lived in the same house for thirty-two years, and, on average, the number of trick-or-treaters has declined over this period. Part of that I attributed to the aging of the homeowners in our area, but for at least the last five years, more and more younger families with small children have been moving in, yet the numbers of trick-or-treating children have reached the point to where we had exactly two this year, leaving us with an inordinate amount of individually wrapped candy.

I’ve wondered if it was just a cultural peculiarity of our area, but I did an informal canvass of friends in Cedar City and of our offspring spread across the United States (if predominantly on the coasts), and they’ve all noticed the same phenomenon.

Now, possibly this diminution of Halloween decoration and trick-or-treating may also be the result of internet-created isolation, ICE-induced fear of public spaces, and growing public paranoia, or it just might be an outcome from internet-created laziness, because trick-or-treating requires costumes, parental supervision (at least for small children), and lots of walking, and candy can be ordered with a mouse click or iPhone tap and delivered to the door.

Whatever the reason, from what I can tell, there definitely is such diminution, no doubt to the delight of the accountants of the Christmas commercialists.

Over the past two months, I’ve had email after email from various “book clubs,” each praising a book of mine recently published and saying that it really deserved more acclamation and attention. While I had to agree with that (what author wouldn’t?), it was clear that these were blatant scams, some even suggesting that paying a few “influential readers” would spur greater attention. Others were more indirect in their initial “inquiry,” not that I pursued any of them.

The most recent, and most ironically amusing, came from an individual purporting to represent the Washington [D.C.] Science Fiction Association and declaring that WSFA wanted to highlight Haze and The Hammer of Darkness for the association’s 2025 “Autumn Author Spotlight.”

Having lived in the Washington D.C. area for nearly twenty years, at time when I was active in attending WSFA conventions – primarily the long-vanished Disclave, I was rather skeptical about an “Author Spotlight,” given that WSFA doesn’t promote books except through its convention.

In addition, I’ve retained loose ties with individuals prominent in area conventions and was the Author Guest of Honor at Balticon in 2024, where a number of convention functionaries were also involved with WSFA, and it would be highly unlikely for them to spotlight me so soon after Balticon. Add to that the fact that conventions take a year or more to organize of fans and someone offering to “spotlight” me for a fall event this year was preposterous. Then add that the book they wanted to spotlight was a mass-market paperback reprint published nine years ago that contained two novels – The Hammer of Darkness (first published in 1985) and Haze (published in 2009). At the time, Tom Doherty thought that the reprint would be a good idea, because he thought neither book had gotten the support it should have, but even then, there wasn’t that much publicity.

And, finally, WSFA had to put a warning on the WSFA website that scammers were impersonating WSF.

Obviously, these scammers are targeting authors who don’t seem to be best-selling authors and are playing on authorial vanity, and no author is without some vanity, including me. But scammers annoy me, and as a semi-public service, I thought I ought to bring up the matter.

Criminals strike in the dark
But ICE patrols the sunlit park.
Who’s the chump?
You… or Donald Trump?

Most of the people in the United States, if you asked them, would say that they’re for individual freedom.

The first problem we face in maintaining freedom lies in the definition of “freedom,” because each individual has a personal definition of what freedom should be, and that makes it difficult for government to come up with laws define liberty or freedom in a fashion satisfactory to all Americans.

The second problem lies in population density and the need to maintain order.

As Thomas Jefferson and other founding fathers pointed out, one cannot have freedom without an ordered society, and the greater the population density, the more restrictions that are necessary to maintain order.

Those restrictions don’t have to be imposed by law, and, in fact, in the past many restrictions maintaining order were socially imposed through manners and customs. Those manners and customs were essentially based on British culture, and as more and more Americans come from other backgrounds and/or question “the old ways,” customs have become less effective in maintaining social order.

So, governments impose standards of behavior through laws. This has created a growing attitude of believing that, if something isn’t prohibited, it’s acceptable to do it, an attitude taken to extremes by Donald Trump and many of his followers. As I’ve pointed out before, this trend leads either to anarchy or authoritarianism.

It also leads to more people wanting to use government as a means of imposing their beliefs on others, contrary to the views of the founding fathers that government should provide a basic framework of laws, as opposed to a legal structure regulating every aspect of life.

Such an all-encompassing legal structure, of course, effectively limits freedom, yet few people seem to realize that, if we just behaved ourselves and respected others, we wouldn’t need so many laws and regulations.

The problem with that is that there’s always someone who wants money and/or power and has no respect for others, or for what others have built or created, and believes that they are entitled to do anything that isn’t prohibited… and when they get away with it, it encourages others.

All of which is why Benjamin Franklin said that the founding fathers had created a Republic… if future Americans could keep it.