Early this week, the Department of Interior announced plans to increase the entrance fees to some seventeen of the nation’s largest national parks in 2018, more than doubling the previous fees during the most crowded times. Among those parks are several here in Utah, including Zion, Bryce, Canyonlands, and Arches.

The local reaction was fierce and immediate, not to mention negative, all along the lines that families can’t afford to pay $70 per car [now $30] or $30 per individual [up from $15] just to get into a national park. And if families can’t or won’t do that, Utah tourism will take a significant hit.

I understand the reaction, even if the proposed fee is far less than a day at Disneyland or Disney World. But I also understand the problems facing the National Park Service, which needs desperately to repair decades-old and damaged infrastructure, an infrastructure that gets damaged more each year by the increasing number of visitors. Currently, the Park system’s maintenance/repair backlog exceeds eleven billion dollars.

What also struck me was that this is the same reaction to all too many government programs, whether it’s SNAP/food stamps, health insurance, Medicaid, Medicare, disaster relief, interstate roads and bridges, tuition and fees at state universities… the list is seemingly endless. The least affluent members of society are hit the hardest by either increasing costs or decreasing services, and because politicians don’t ever want to raise taxes on anyone, either things don’t get fixed, or a few things get some help, and federal spending is financed more and more by increasing deficits.

It’s a national epidemic of “We need this, but we don’t want to pay for it.”

And yet, despite ballooning deficits, the Republican-led Congress and the President are pushing for massive tax cuts, claiming that such tax cuts will fuel growth that will wipe out the deficits. This is political bullshit and voodoo economics erroneously based on the experience of the tax cuts proposed by President Kennedy and signed into law by President Johnson as the Revenue Act of 1964, which reduced the top individual rate from 91% to 70%. The corporate tax rate was reduced from 54% to 48%. In fact, there was a moderate but significant growth attributed to those tax cuts.

Today, the tax rates are much different, and much lower than then. The top individual rate is 39.6% for individuals [with taxable incomes above $418,000 a year] and 35% for corporations, although the average rate paid for corporations is closer to 20% [and some large corporations pay no tax at all]. In addition, statistics show that there’s plenty of unused capital that’s not being invested in new businesses or jobs because the demand isn’t there. Since most of the tax cuts will go to the well-off, they won’t increase spending by the bulk of the population, which is what would be required to stimulate demand significantly.

And that means that the problem of “needs” being greater than the funds to pay for those needs is only going to get worse. And while many decry the growth of Social Security and Medicare, exactly how else, at present, are we as a nation going to provide for people too old and too infirm to work? Then, too, regardless of political philosophy, meeting some of those needs, such as our aging infrastructure, an overcommitted military, disaster relief and rebuilding, and yes, the national parks and the environment, are vital to the future of the country.

But no one wants to pay for enough for them… or to agree on what spending can be cut.

I can’t say that, with a few notable exceptions, that I’ve found many books to be slow reading. I’ve found books that I thought were less than well-written, books whose action sequences, upon reflection, seemed to have little point, books where I didn’t care about the main character, and books where there was less action, but I didn’t think of them as “slow.” I can only claim to have found one set of books truly slow, the Gormenghast Trilogy, but I know that there are a few readers who don’t find it slow.

One thing I have noticed, though, is that more and more readers are complaining that books are slow. I was astounded to find a huge listing of “slow” fantasy books on Goodreads. Some of those listed as slow included Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series, George Orwell’s 1984, the Harry Potter books, Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, Andy Weir’s The Martian, and even George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones. The list of “slow popular books” was over 900 books.

As I’ve mentioned before, I try to read a number of new writers every year, and it does seem to me that there are fewer and fewer books with slower pacing every year… and yet the number of readers complaining about slow books seems to be growing.

So… is it about the books? Or is it that more and more readers are used to fast-paced [and often shallow] video-based entertainment and expect books to be “faster” in the same way? Or could it be that more and more Americans have less ability to concentrate and possess reading skills inferior to the readers of previous generations? Given the huge expansion of graphic novels and manga, there certainly seems to be a segment of the “reading” public that prefers fewer words and more pictures. Is this because of declining reading skills or because the expansion of “visual”/video culture has stunted the ability of some portion of the reading public to create mental images of what they read? Perhaps both?

Certainly, the scores of teachers I know and have asked about this all believe that, in general, students in high school or college have more difficulty focusing,tend to avoid reading whenever possible, and complain that reading assignments that would have been considered light or easy a generation ago are too long and too hard – and that includes even students who score high on SAT or ACT tests, suggesting that they’re not lacking raw brainpower.

Slow books? Maybe. But I’m inclined to believe that it’s as much poor and slow readers as slow books.

For the most part, the manners of the first half of the twentieth century have been “modernized,” ignored, trashed, or updated. Which word describes one’s assessment depends on the individual and background, and there may well be additional terms better suited in the minds of others.

The social upheaval that began in the mid-1960s focused on manners as hypocritical and dishonest, among other things, and while that doubtless wasn’t the only factor, it was likely the most significant. What the downgrading or even disposal of manners and social custom ignored or disregarded was the role manners played in affecting individual self-worth.

Hypocritical as manners may be and often are, they require effort on the part of individuals. When people say “please” and “thank you,” when they address or refer to people as Mr., Ms., Mrs., or Miss and the appropriate last name, when they don’t crash or crowd lines, when they open doors for people who need help, when they address letters and emails with names and titles, rather than “Em” or “Bob,” it tends to send a message that others have worth. And when millionaires and billionaires dismiss the concerns of the poor, the working class, and minorities or when political figures call the supporters of an opponent “deplorables,” it’s neither accurate nor useful. More important, such behaviors send messages of devaluation.

How does this tie into Donald Trump and the polarization of the United States?

Both “sides” feel that they’re being devalued by the other side, especially by the leaders of the “other side.” There’s no sense of polite disagreement. The other side is “the dark side,” to be attacked and trashed for their “values” or lack of values. The large majority of Trump supporters, in particular, feel that they’ve been devalued and disregarded and that no one was speaking up for them. Ironically, many of them are willing to overlook Trump’s total lack of manners because they didn’t see anyone with manners able to articulate their views and feelings strongly enough.

Hillary Clinton was more mannered, but far less passionate, and it showed. As a result, too many Democrats drew the conclusion that she needed to be more of a gutter-fighter. Add to that the fact that many people seem to equate crudity with honesty, and manners as a trait of the self-serving elite, and she came across to too many of the undecideds as manneredly dishonest. Trump has proved, rather conclusively, that crudity doesn’t mean honesty. Politeness doesn’t, in itself, mean honesty either, but politeness has a far better record in allowing people to talk over controversial issues.

The more someone feels devalued, the less they’re going to listen to the other side, and the only way to even begin to bridge that gap is for the name-calling and vulgar and incendiary epithets to stop, and for people to address the issues politely. Being polite and mannered doesn’t mean giving up passion. Whether one liked Martin Luther King or not, he was both passionate and fought for his goals in a mannered fashion. The same can also be said of our greatest Presidents.

Like most social conventions, manners are a tool, one devalued in false service of “honesty” and one whose employment would be most useful today.

A while back, I got an interesting comment from my editor about a section of a manuscript I’d submitted. Her words were, roughly, “Here, it’s better to tell than show.”

I bring this up because one of the maxims pounded into beginning writers is: “Show; don’t tell.” That means the writer should describe the action as it happens, letting the reader “see” it as it happens, so to speak. In general, that’s good advice, but not everything needs to be shown. Not every step of a fifteen mile march, let alone a hundred mile march, needs to be described. Nor does every part of most love letters need to be read to the reader.

The pertinent wording of a law lends a certain authority if the speaker is an advocate, attorney, or judge… or a trader trying to pull off a shady deal, but what those words are isn’t necessary for a scrivener engaged in copying book after book – unless they bear on the plot specifically or a sentence is used to show how boring the tome truly is.

On the other hand, some excruciating detail in certain situations may be vital. The detailing of woodworking in The Magic of Recluce or of barrel-making in The Wellspring of Chaos are necessary in terms of defining the character and character development of Lerris and Kharl.

And sometimes, there’s no happy medium, as I discovered when Solar Express was published. As a technology-based near-future SF novel, the detail is vital for some readers and drags the story for others, which is why Solar Express is fast-moving for one category of readers and “slloooww” for others. Without the technical detail the story wouldn’t feel real to the first readers, and for those not into such technical intricacies, the details just got in the way. Some readers have been delighted when I’ve gone into the details of food and food preparation…and complained when I didn’t in a later book.

What book was my editor talking about? And what aren’t you ever going to read? I’m not saying. That’s one of the uses of a good editor – to make the book better than it would have been. And I’m not about to show you that it wasn’t as good as it turned out to be.

What’s the point of law? Or law and order?

I’d say that it’s to provide a common set of rules that everyone in a society can understand and accept, ideally to accept as providing a degree of fairness. Others have or might have another concept – law as a hard and fast rule that defines good and evil in terms similar to their theological beliefs – and still others might feel that law is a tool for the elites of a society to control those beneath them. Some lawyers, I know, believe that the law is a tool they use in attempting to obtain justice, meaning a “fair” outcome for their clients, but, of course, what “fair” is always depends on individual viewpoints. From a technical point, in the United States, a law is essentially a statement by enacted by a governmental body which allows or prohibits certain acts, or imposes certain limitations on them.

And I’m certain there are other definitions of law, but why do we need laws? And why, once we have laws, do we seemingly need more and more of them?

Human societies need laws because there are always individuals who refuse to accept limitations on their acts, even when those acts harm others.

The answers to the second question are more multifold. Every law has areas where it lays down absolutes. Every time an absolute is codified into law, it creates situations where the absolute imposition of that law is unfair and unjust, or perceived as such. And someone often wants to remove that unfairness, which requires another law. In addition, every law excludes as well as including, and people want to “clarify” the law to assure that something heretofore excluded gets included. Then add to that that certain groups want certain laws for their benefit.

When people who share the same culture enact laws, they see those laws similarly among themselves and in a different way than do people who come from a different culture or economic class. That’s one reason why more egalitarian and homogenous societies tend to have lower crime rates.

In addition, equal penalties or “requirements” under law have differing impacts on people from differing social and/or economic strata.

The entire issue of so-called “voter fraud prevention” laws” being pushed by affluent white Republicans in the U.S. provides a good example of this, because those laws are regarded essentially as voter suppression laws by those of minority and lower income levels.

The difference in viewpoint comes from the difference in situation. For me, a photo ID isn’t a problem. It’s a slight hassle at most, a few hours once every five years, when I renew my driver’s license, and because I travel occasionally internationally, I have a passport as a back-up. Because I live in a moderate sized town, it’s a ten minute drive to the post office or the Department of Motor Vehicles, and because I was educated to the need for certain papers, I’ve always kept copies of things like birth certificates.

That’s all very easy and convenient – for me. My offspring, however, all live in large metropolitan areas where obtaining or renewing a driver’s license – or a passport — can be a lengthy affair, requiring travel and time. But they’re well-off enough that they can arrange the time and deal with the costs… and they had parents who prepared and educated them to those needs.

A minority single parent working a minimum wage job who lives in a state requiring a photo I.D. has a much tougher time of it. First off, most of the offices that can issue an I.D. are only open during working hours, and most minimum or low-wage earners don’t have much flexibility in working hours and often have to forgo paying work to get through the process. Also, the fees for getting such an I.D. take a greater percentage of their income. Then, even before that, they may have to obtain a certified birth certificate – taking more time and money. They are likely renting, rather than owning a home, and that requires more documents to prove where they live.

And the impact of other laws falls harder on the poor. If you don’t have the money to immediately fix a broken tail-light or a faulty muffler, that risks getting a ticket, and the cost of the ticket just adds to the burden. If you can’t drive the car, you may not be able to work. What is a modest cost and inconvenient repair for a middle-class worker can literally be a disaster for a poor worker.

What so many Americans fail to realize is that “equal” laws, even assuming that they’re enforced equally, which study after study shows they’re not, fall more heavily on the poorer members of society.

In reality… the “law” isn’t the same for everyone, nor is it seen as the same by everyone…but we’d like to pretend that it is… or that it’s stacked against us – and which belief you’re likely to hold depends on where you come from…and, often, how well off you are.