Last week, a former fire fighter from a neighboring town was shot dead by a local police officer. The officer was responding to a 911 call that reported a man severely beating a child. When the officer approached, the man shouted something and raised a gun, aiming it directly at the officer. The officer fired twice.The man died on the way to the hospital.

The news story in the local paper had a headline that read, “Victim Had the Greatest Heart” or words to that effect, and went on to quote friends and relatives about how the victim was such a good person and how it was all such a tragic mistake. What was never mentioned was that the victim was indeed a very good person – when he was sober. What was not mentioned was that the dead man had a history of violent actions and arrests when he was intoxicated, and there was absolutely no doubt that the dead man had been carrying a loaded weapon.

Several of the other incidents that made headlines this past year featured similar cases, such as a young man who robbed a convenience store and attacked a policeman, and was shot by the officer, but whose family insisted he was a good-hearted young man. Or the young woman who tried to run down police officers on foot with her car. She had been previously arrested for various problems, including another high speed chase, but her family insisted she was a good girl. Or the St. Paul man who tried to run down two police officers with his SUV. Family said he was good hearted, despite the fact that he had a court-ordered restraining order because of violent actions. Or the Denver man with a felony record who was driving a stolen car and was shot when he tried to run down two police officers, also described by family as “good-hearted.”

I’m sorry. Good hearted people don’t beat up others. They don’t steal goods, money, or cars. They don’t try to run down police or shoot at them. And, if one of these so-called “good-hearted” individuals gets shot by police officers who are threatened with weapons or vehicular force, the officers shouldn’t be vilified. Yes, it’s always regrettable when a police officer has to use a weapon, especially when the results can be lethal… but in a nation with 300 million firearms, like it or not, there are going to be cases where people who break the laws and attack police in one way or another are going to be shot.

Just don’t tell the world that people who’ve perpetrated violence, robbery, and assault are good-hearted. That’s not helping anyone, especially those unfortunate unarmed individuals with no criminal record and no acts of violence who are truly good-hearted and still get shot, by either police or criminals.

The other day I came across an observation about one of my Recluce books noting that the Saga of Recluce, unlike many popular fantasy series, does not have an “overriding plot line.” While I agree with the observation, what struck me as I read it was why so many fantasy series do in fact have such an overriding plot line. The most obvious reason for “an overriding plot line” is that such series tend to sell more books, but I find such plot lines that span years and even generations to be somewhat artificial.

Perhaps it’s my background in history and experience in politics, but when it’s rare for even a capable and distinguished family to maintain power and influence for more than a few generations, when most rulers are fortunate to last a decade, trans-generational consistency and aims seem rather unlikely, except in the most general way. Even in ancient Egypt, which boasted the longest continuity of any earthly ruling structure and culture, there were dynastic changes, outside invasions and foreign rulers.

My own years in politics taught me that accomplishing even a few goals took an incredible amount of effort, coordination, and resources… and that there are almost always those with power who, for various reasons, oppose what seem to be the most reasonable goals. As for secrets, forget it. Over any length of time, the old adage that three people can keep a secret only if two are dead pretty much holds. It’s also true that a good leader can maneuver matters so that acts and events that supposedly serve one purpose serve another as well – provided he keeps the details in his head and to himself. But that effectively limits the scope of his actions in double-dealing.

Admittedly, there are scores of books about secret societies that have manipulated governments for centuries, and there are some institutions, such as the Catholic Papacy, whose influence has indeed last centuries, but the evidence of long-term success of such societies is virtually non-existent, and it appears that few popes have followed very closely the aims of their predecessors in anything but attempting to keep the Catholic Church strong.

Human beings seem incapable of or unwilling to maintain eternal and unchanging governments, and the stability of human governments seems almost inversely related to the level of technology, in that the higher the level of technology the faster governments change or rise and fall.

For better or worse, I’ve tried to stick fairly closely to that model in what I write. In the Saga of Recluce, over the roughly two thousand years about which I’ve written, empires have risen and fallen. Cities have been destroyed, some never to rise again. The balance of power between nations and continents shifts. There’s no such thing as an “eternal empire,” even though some lands have styled themselves as such.

In the Corean Chronicles, the almost magic feudalism of the Alectors only holds Corus together until the Cadmians and Soarers gain enough power to destroy the basis of that power, while in the Imager Portfolio, governments are continually in flux in one way or another.

So it’s not surprising that I have no “overriding plot line,” except perhaps for the principle that extremism in any form inevitably leads to disaster.

Last week we had a brief and very local gully washer, the kind of storm that happens comparatively infrequently here in the high desert, where a given area gets an inch or two of rain in less than an hour, and it remains hot and dry everywhere except in a few square miles. During the storm, a white Ford sedan hydroplaned on the interstate and crashed into a guard rail. A Utah state highway patrolman investigated to see if anyone was hurt. Just as he approached the vehicle a late model BMW hydroplaned into the Ford which was pushed over the trooper. The trooper had to have heavy equipment and “jaws-of-life” to extricate him from the wreckage. He was life-flighted out and spent several days in intensive care. He remains, at the time I write, in serious condition, but is expected to recover, but not for months, possibly a year. Those in the vehicles suffered far less serious injuries.

The speed limit on that section of the interstate is 80 mph. What any licensed driver should know is that speed limits are set as the maximum under good conditions, not in a driving rain. Not only that, but exactly why was the driver of the BMW still driving too fast for road conditions, especially considering that it was pouring rain and a highway patrol vehicle had flashing lights on and there were stopped cars at the side of the road? And if the driver was going too fast to see all that in time… what else does that say?

That at least two drivers were idiots, and almost killed a highway patrolman, and possibly crippled him for life… because they were either too self-centered, too thoughtless, or too stupid to pay attention to the road conditions. And they not only injured him, but risked their own lives as well.

This isn’t a sometime occurrence. Virtually every time there is a rainstorm, or a snowstorm, there are accidents, often fatal ones, on I-15, because people are driving too fast for the road conditions. If these individuals only injured or killed themselves, that might be one thing, but even when no one else is injured, their deaths have impacts on spouses, children, parents, or… highway patrol officers.

Sometimes, accidents do happen, despite the driver’s best efforts, but most times, they wouldn’t happen if we didn’t do something stupid. But then, isn’t every day a challenge not to do something stupid?

Last Friday night, my wife and I saw the Utah Shakespeare Festival’s production of South Pacific. [For those of you not familiar with the festival, in the summer season they do three Shakespeare plays – this summer, Henry IV, Part 2, King Lear and The Taming of the Shrew — and two non-Shakespeare plays, South Pacific and Amadeus.]

When Lieutenant Cable finished singing “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught,” I realized, again, what a powerful song it is, especially considering that it was an anti-prejudice, anti-racist song composed in 1949 by two white males, and a song that initially stirred more than a little controversy in the then-largely white theatre community because it points out graphically the prejudice is taught, not inherited, and that whites were the ones doing that teaching. I don’t think that it was incidental that Cable is portrayed as a Princeton graduate, a university that was then a bastion of upper-class white privilege.

But my second realization was the fact that in more than fifty years of hearing popular songs, I’ve only heard it performed once outside the context of South Pacific, unlike songs from many other musicals, such as “Send in the Clowns,” which has been performed by something like fifty different artists. When I tried to search for singers who had recorded it solo, I could only come up with two, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Barbra Streisand. There certainly may have been others, but I doubt that there are many.

At the same time, there are many written references to the song, but a written statement doesn’t have the same impact as a song, as witness the impact of many black and protest songs, ranging from “Follow the Drinking Gourd” (associated with the Underground Railway), “We Shall Overcome,” “If I Had a Bell,” “This Land is My Land,” etc.

The “problem” with “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught” is that it’s not a triumphant song, but a remonstrative one, and one that strikes directly at the failings of the “white culture” of the pre-civil rights time period… and, unhappily, still is relevant to far too many white Americans….which is why I suspect you’ll seldom hear it outside of South Pacific.

On Wednesday, various computer glitches resulted in the cancellation of more than 800 flights by United Airlines, as well as delays of hundreds of other flights, the closing of the New York Stock Exchange for roughly four hours, and similar problems at the Wall Street Journal. While three such occurrences in one day appears to be unprecedented, it should hardly come as any great surprise.

Our technological world runs on computers, and almost every business of any size is hampered, if not brought to a halt, by anything that crashes its computer system and online/internet communications. Equally to the point, all too many businesses do not to have back-up plans/systems because: (a) they can’t or don’t want to spend the money; (b) back-ups aren’t technically feasible, usually because alternative access to the internet isn’t available; or (c) no one even considered the necessity.

Most of these problems get back to money. As I noted before, several years ago, one backhoe in the wrong place knocked out fiber-optic internet access for much of Southern Utah for over a day. Did anyone even think about a parallel line? Hardly.

Then add to this the continual changes and upgrades to computer systems. Some companies can barely keep up with upgrading one system, and if the back-up systems aren’t upgraded and maintained as well, then they’ll soon be useless as well.

And what about all that data? Is it backed-up and stored elsewhere? Just how reliable and accessible will it be if internet connections are disrupted? Yet, if it’s onsite, that’s a different vulnerability. What tends to be either overlooked or minimized is that the world wide web not only maximizes opportunities, but also maximizes vulnerabilities, and minimizing those vulnerabilities takes time, resources, and money… and those measures don’t always work, as Wednesday’s events just proved.

Good computer systems can multiply advantages, but those systems are anything but as cost-saving as too many individuals and businesses seem to think. Cyber cheap is courting disaster…but I’d wager that lesson will be lost on too many CIOs and corporate managements.