Late last month, Trump supporters were again chanting “Lock her up!” at a political rally, even though Hillary isn’t on the ballot anywhere. Republican campaign ads target House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. In Utah, the lone black woman Republican Congresswoman, as an incumbent, is fighting a tooth and nail battle against her Democratic challenger in a district that usually gives Republicans 65-70% of the vote. Might it just be because she’s black and a woman? Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have nearly identical political stands, but Bernie polls twenty points higher than Elizabeth.

Just what is it about Americans that prejudices them against women, whether in politics, the professions, or business?

Oh… the vast majority of people claim they’re not anti-women, but when it counts, as in salaries, votes, and getting jobs, the numbers say that a significant majority of Americans prefer men in the executive suite, in the professions, and in politics. Even when men and women hold the same job with the same experience levels, the majority of women get paid less.

On average, women still only make about 70% of what men make, and in some states it’s worse. Where I live, in Utah, although the percentage of married women who work is higher than the national average, women have lower average wages than women in any other state, and what’s more, last year their wages dropped an average of $1,000 from the previous year.

Studies have also shown that when companies receive identical resumes, except for the name, the resume with the woman’s name always gets less consideration.

And when women become the majority of individuals in a field, all of a sudden, the pay raises for everyone in that field slow down.

Now, one of the so-called rebuttals to these numbers is the claim that we’re better at not putting women down, that our medical schools don’t actually lower the test scores of women the way all the Japanese med schools were discovered to do, but then several years ago, in a fact since conveniently forgotten, several Ivy league schools were discovered to have been admitting men with lesser qualifications than women who were rejected, in order to have “gender-balanced” classes. I don’t recall anyone doing that for young women years ago when fewer women went to college.

I’ve noticed that there’s also a growing movement to help young men in school because they seem to be having more trouble with their studies. Maybe, if they don’t want to study, they should be the homemakers.

Just face it… too many men don’t like competition from women, and even some women don’t like competition from other women.

But most people still cling to the delusion that they’re not prejudiced against women, no matter what the facts and the votes show.

R. F. Kuang’s recently released novel – The Poppy War – has received a great deal of publicity and praise. It’s a remarkable book. It’s also an incredibly brutal book set in an analogue to the Song Dynasty that incorporates the issues of the long-standing conflicts of the Sino-Japanese wars, including a fictionalized, but not glossed, rendition of the Rape of Nanking; the legacy of the Opium Wars; the incredibly marginalized status of women; the roles of power and religion in society; the failure, unwillingness, or inability of the elites to govern fairly; and the inability of the people to hold those elites accountable.

While most reviews have centered on the use of a Chinese-centered cultural and political background, and a very-well researched and presented one at that, and the protagonist, who is an orphaned girl from the lowest possible status in the most despised backwater who is driven to succeed at any cost in her efforts to right all manner of past wrongs while justifying her very existence and her right to be heard and respected, what struck me most about the book was how Kuang used the accuracy of Chinese history to present a fantasy story and a tableau that represents current global challenges in a stark and bleak way, that in a strange fashion, is far more dismaying than George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones. I say “strange” because, while Kuang doesn’t pull any punches in depicting the total inhumanity of both sides, the ineptitude of those in power, and, also, the unwillingness or inability of the “masses” to rein in their ruling classes, neither does she glorify or exaggerate. It all just is.

Whether she meant it or not, in the ending of the first book, she’s also posited a damning view of deities and religion, and of their believers and followers, but that’s an open question, because the remaining two volumes of the trilogy have yet to be published.

The Poppy War is not a book for the faint of heart, or for young readers, and it’s definitely not a “fun” read. And if American chauvinists read it, they’ll likely either see it as just an improbable Chinese fantasy or something that “can’t happen here.” Unfortunately, as American and world politics have changed, or perhaps reverted to the worst in history, it strongly appears that they’re wrong on both counts.

But, most likely, those who understand history will wince slightly, then nod, and those who don’t will think that these kinds of events only happen in other lands. It’s still a remarkable book.

Quite a number of writers have a successful first book, possibly even a second… and then fade into obscurity. There are several reasons for this. The first is obvious. The fact is that later books often just don’t sell as well, either because they aren’t written as well or because they just don’t hold the readers. From what I’ve observed, publishers will publish books that even editors aren’t that fond of, or decent books where the author is a real pain in the ass – if they sell. They’ll also continue to publish books that get great reviews and that editors like, even if the sales are disappointing, but just not disastrous. But if an author is obnoxious and the books don’t sell that well, usually that author’s career with an established publisher is rather short.

But there’s another reason why some authors fade after a few books. Some authors never truly understand the lead-time problem. These authors, from what I’ve observed, share similar circumstances. They wrote a book, often working on it for some considerable time. Then it sells, and they get the advance, usually in halves [on signature and on publication] or thirds [on signature, on acceptance of the final manuscript, and on publication]. What many fail to recognize is that this may be the only money they get, because, if the sales aren’t good, the royalties won’t exceed the advance, and the advance is just that, a non-returnable advance against royalties.

This means that a writer had better start working on the next book immediately after finishing the first one – or resign himself or herself to staying at the day job forever. Publishers really want the next book in hand or close to being in hand by the time the first book is published, usually about eighteen months after it’s accepted by the publisher. Yes, a few authors do flout that convention and expectation and get away with it – but only because their first book continues to sell, and that only happens, so far as I can see, in less than once in a hundred times.

Part of this inability to recognize this situation, I submit, is that computers and the internet have fostered the idea that everything can be accomplished faster. And that’s true in part for writers. Having a computer file available as the basis for re-writes and revisions makes that part faster, but it doesn’t speed up writing the first draft that much from writing on an electric typewriter. Since I wrote my first books on electric typewriters, and likely remain among the comparative handful of writers still writing who did, I can assure you that that the computer makes revisions and re-writes much faster and easier – but that the computer only speeds slightly that first draft.

So… if you’re fortunate enough to sell that first book, do not pause; do not relax and celebrate for more than a few days before you get back to writing. You don’t want the editors or your few fans [and most beginning writers only have a few fans] to forget about you.

I never knew John McCain personally, although we certainly could have met. We were both Naval aviators, but I got my wings only months before he was shot down over Hanoi, and I later worked as a Congressional staffer, including duties involving the House Armed Services Committee, while he was the Navy liaison to the Senate. But in the Navy he was a jet pilot, and I was a helo driver, and we were stationed in different places, just as our coinciding times in Washington, D.C., involved different spheres and duties.

For all that, John McCain embodied many of the characteristics I’ve done my best to depict in my heroic protagonists. He made mistakes, often large ones, but he learned from them and persevered. Regardless of mistakes, in his Naval career and his personal and political life, he put his beliefs in the kind of country the United States can be and should be at the forefront and continued to persevere in working toward improving it. Sometimes, I had doubts about the approaches he took, but no one should ever have doubted his desire to better the country or his dogged determination against obstacles that would have destroyed a less motivated and determined man.

Among Republicans, I see no political figure even close to filling his shoes, and I have doubts that there ever will be one in the next decade. Ill as he was, even last month, he stood up to Trump while most Republicans either fawned, equivocated, or changed the subject.

Did I always agree with him? No. Was he perfect? Far from it. But I’ll take one John McCain over all the burnished politicians with seemingly few flaws, no real core, and only the ability to get re-elected by essentially standing for nothing, mouthing whatever will get them votes, and ignoring the challenges that face our nation.

In past blogs, I’ve talked about the problems created by the willy-nilly unaccepting push to adopt new technology and new software simply because it’s “new,” and new must be better. But there’s a situation where “early adoption” is not only counter-productive, but the negative effects can be far-reaching.

Needless to say, as is often the case, I heard about this instance from my wife the music professor. Her institution has decided that, following the example of several private and very well-endowed universities, that the music department should require all incoming music students to purchase customized IPads that can display what used to be called sheet music. The rationale behind this is that students won’t have to carry around reams of music; all of it will be displayed on their IPads.

At a state institution such as the one where my wife teaches, the department budget won’t cover the estimated $800-$1,000 for each of the special IPads, and most of the students are drawn from rural and small town or working class backgrounds with large families, for which such an outlay immediately on entering college will be quite a burden, especially if the student drops the major. This cost, of course, was ignored in the enthusiasm of “new technology” and the thought that the department could be a “pioneer.”

And, yes, this approach could be a boon of sorts to students in orchestras and bands and other large ensembles, all of whom have a comparatively limited number of works performed in a year, and the instrumental ensemble directors were all for it, effectively insisting that one approach fits everyone. Unfortunately, vocal students face a different situation… because every vocal student has a largely different repertoire from every other one, and must learn more new music every semester, especially if they’re classical performers. Music departments, and especially universities with schools of music, may be dealing with at least 30-50 students, and often hundreds of voice students. That requires music for thousands of individual pieces. While the idea of consolidating all that music in electronic format sounds wonderful, the reality of the situation is far different. My wife the professor, who has a wide range of contacts, got in touch with several music publishers, and all of them made, in various ways, the observation that, at present, only about twenty percent of the vocal music they controlled and had as sheet music was available in electronic form, and that it would be between five to ten years before they’d be able to catch up, given the volume of such music. And that’s probably an optimistic projection.

Now… that doesn’t mean that the students couldn’t scan the sheet music and upload it, but… then there’s the problem of copyright, and for the music to be “legal,” the student needs to keep available the hard copy. This is also a problem for those students entered in various competitions, because they have to have produce “original music” for every piece that they sing, and in some competitions, two copies, one for the singer [even though the singer has to sing from memory, because the singer is supposed to have bought the music, rather than copied it and stiffed the composer] and the other for the accompanist.

Since the most accomplished students, those aiming at a career as either a performer or a teacher, need to prove their ability through competitions, and since those organizations sponsoring the competitions have not yet made provisions for certifying “original electronic” copies, the IPad requirement becomes superfluous and expensive at the present time, at least for vocal students.

In addition, because voice students are largely broke, the IPad requirement is going to encourage even more copying of music, and more copying is going to reduce even more the payment living composers receive, while encouraging singers to sing older works no longer in copyright… and thus further reducing income to living composers.

Then, too, there’s the question of what happens when the accompanist’s IPad crashes during a performance or recital. Sheet music doesn’t crash.

I’m not against change, and neither is my wife, but history shows [even though most people don’t learn from it] that early adoption of new technology can be far more expensive, to everyone, than waiting a bit until things sort themselves out.

But then, you can’t claim to be the great pioneer, while putting the costs off on everyone else.