After President Obama’s State of the Union, quite a number of Congressional Republicans were both perplexed and almost outraged. Why, the Republicans had won overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate. Why wasn’t the President seeking cooperation? Why wasn’t he acknowledging that the “people had spoken”? How could he not “listen” to them? One even declared that the President needed a “reality check.”

I have no inside track to the President. I’ve never met the man, and I think he’s made a number of mistakes, many of which weren’t necessary and got in the way of what he wanted to do. I also think he’s gone overboard in a number of areas. Technically, I’m a registered Republican and always have been, and even was staff director for a Republican Congressman and served in the Reagan Administration. More to the point, I’m not terribly happy with either party, and I suspect I’m far from the only one.

As for the President, why would he want to “cooperate” with Republicans? They have a radically different ideology than his, and one even more right-wing than the beliefs of the majority of Americans [just as the Congressional Democrats have an ideology far more left-wing than the majority of Americans], and they’ve rebuffed what few attempts he’s made in that direction. Republicans have been very clear on what they want – and that’s nothing for anyone but business. “No,” if you will, except for “yes” to big business and vested interests. They harp on the need for lower taxes, despite the fact that individual tax rates are the lowest they’ve been in more than sixty years and that the country needs massive infrastructure replacement and repair; they want less government interference, i.e., less regulation on business, especially on big business and the financial community that has already wrecked the economy once; and they’re demanding a repeal of health insurance just gained by millions of Americans… and that’s just for starters. Exactly why would a President want to “cooperate” with a Congress whose agenda is to dismantle what few things he has been able to do?

As for the people speaking, well… the people spoke twice in electing and reelecting Obama, and the Congressional Republicans didn’t listen to the people then, but they’re expecting him to listen when they “won”? But did the Republicans even win in the larger sense? Oh, there’s no doubt they won the majority of the votes cast in all those districts and states, but given the fact that turn-out was just about the lowest on record, because it was an off-year election and because a significant number of Americans are disgusted with both parties, to characterize the GOP majority as a mandate of any sort is misleading at best. Obama actually won far more votes than the Republicans in 2008 and 2012, and the Republicans certainly didn’t consider that a mandate.

Reality check for the President? What about for the Republicans?

And what about some “cooperation” in the areas where they actually agree… and there are more than a few of those. That way, we could at least see some progress.

… or not nearly what those who endorse it claim. Far too many social theorists, educators, and politicians push more education, especially higher education, as a solution to the problem of too many people who are poor or economically disadvantaged. The President’s latest initiative of wanting to provide free community college education is certainly well-intentioned, but, even if enacted, which frankly appears doubtful, would at best only provide marginal improvement. From what I can tell, the push for more higher education is based on two undeniable facts. First, in general, people with more education make more money. Second, more and more of the highest-paid salaried jobs demand higher education as a prerequisite for entry and employment.

Unhappily, very few people seem to be looking at the other side of the equation – jobs. There are only so many high-level, high paying jobs in any society, and American business has been quite busy reducing the number of decent-paying mid-level jobs. If we as a society continue to produce more and more graduates of traditional higher education every year, what is the likely result? More competition for those jobs, more unemployed or underemployed graduates, and most likely an eventual reduction in pay.

In my wife’s field, which is classical voice and opera, the United States produces more graduate singers, especially sopranos, in a year than jobs for them are created in roughly more than five years… and does so every year. The result is that competition for those jobs is absolutely brutal, and that the pay, until a singer reaches the very top tier, which only a fraction of a percent do, ranges from abysmal to modest. The other day I was talking to the conductor of a fairly well-known Russian symphony, and he observed that the United States has, overall, the best training and education for singers of any nation… and that even some of the very best end up taking jobs in Europe because there are so few openings in the United States.

Despite or perhaps because of all the MFA programs that profess to teach writers, the same thing is true in the field of writing, except since the U.S. is effectively the largest single market for fiction, there are few alternatives.

Now, the lack of remuneration in the arts, except for a comparatively small percentage of success stories, has always been a fact of life, but it’s even more noticeable now.

What’s different is that we’re also beginning to see gluts in other fields. The number of moderate and high-paying jobs for lawyers has decreased even as law schools produce more graduates. There are more job seekers in health care than there are jobs, with the possible exception of doctors, and most of the openings for physicians are in small towns, inner cities, or rural areas. There is far higher unemployment, according to a recent article in The Atlantic, among scientists and engineers than is recognized, far higher than in professions such as physicians, dentists, and registered nurses, and surprisingly high unemployment exists for recent graduates even in fields with alleged serious “shortages” such as engineering (7.0 percent), computer science (7.8 percent) and information systems (11.7 percent).

Half the twenty-two year old college graduates over the past three years are working in jobs not requiring a degree. Only 27% of all U.S. jobs require a college degree, but now some 47% of the workforce has a college degree, and the number of jobs requiring such a degree is forecast to grow by less than one percent per year.

The problem isn’t just one of education, and, in fact, education may be making the problem even worse for those with only a high school diploma – or less – as over-educated graduates continue to push the less educated into less and less remunerative fields.

The mass market paperback book is rapidly becoming a threatened species. Now, I knew that the paperback market has largely collapsed, as least for science fiction and fantasy, but until I talked with my longtime editor last week and went over some numbers, I hadn’t realized just how bad it had gotten. I did know that my own paperback sales had dropped off, but the increase in ebook sales has largely compensated for the paperback decline in my own case…. but only because I have a large backlist, since the increase in ebook sales from more current titles has not compensated for the drop-off in mass market sales of those titles.

Historically speaking, for most authors, more than half, if not more than eighty percent, of paperback sales of a title occur in the year or so after the initial paperback release. Because the decline in mass market paperback sales has been so precipitous, more and more authors sold by major publishers, especially midlist authors, are discovering that their only print publication is either in hardcover or trade paperback, after which the titles are only available in ebook format.

At the same time, it appears that self-publishing in ebook format is becoming increasingly competitive and that, as a result, for many authors who’ve chosen this route their ebook revenues are also dwindling. Then add to this the fact that Amazon is still pressing, if less obviously, for the top price for ebooks to be $9.99, and the fact that author revenues for ebooks are calculated as a percentage of the net revenues based on the sales price and not the list price. In addition, Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program in a very convoluted way [involving an opaque pooling system] that I’m not about to try to explain in a blog will reduce the revenues of participating authors considerably. Then add in the impact of the shift/increase in VAT tax rates for EU countries, and the likely decrease in revenues from that, one way or another.

While industry-wide publishing statistics indicate that ebooks only comprise around a quarter of total book sales, I have serious doubts about the applicability of those statistics to fiction publishing and especially to F&SF sales, since Nielsen statistics indicate that for the last quarter of 2014, 65% of all ebook sales were adult fiction of some sort.

The bottom line is pretty simple from what I can see. On average, the very top authors will continue to sell about as many units as they recently have, but will make somewhat less money. Best-selling authors below the top hundred [that’s an estimate] will see noticeable declines in revenues per title released… and authors below that level will likely see even greater decreases in income unless they increase their output and/or marketing efforts. This is, of course, a prediction of a general pattern, and there will always be some authors who will prove the exception… but I doubt there will be many.

Everywhere I look, today, large numbers of people are taking things to extremes, and declaring they’re exercising their Constitutional rights. Some are; and quite a few are carrying the exercise of those “rights” to extremes. Even when the extremes are legal, and many aren’t, is this always a good idea? Even when one can make a case for such excess, is it good when so many “rights” are being pushed to the limits… and beyond?

The first amendment grants and protects the “right of the people to peaceably assemble,” as it should, but all too many assemblies these days are anything but peaceable. The first amendment also prohibits abridging the freedom of the press, and with each year the media pushes out more obnoxious, vulgar, intolerant, and generally inflammatory content, with less and less factual substance. It’s become more and more about “stirring people up,” as a fictional politician in the movie Primary Colors once declared.

And somehow, the Religious Right seems to believe that: (1) allowing women to decide whether they want to be pregnant or not violates religious rights of the Religious Right; (2) private corporations are individuals that can impose their beliefs on their employees; (3) while insisting that every zygote be carried to full term and born, they also insist that government should provide no aid or support for all those unwanted children once they are born. And they honestly feel that these beliefs are not in the slightest extreme.

Then there’s the second amendment. Now that there’s no doubt that any gun-lover in the United States can own and shoot semi-automatic weapons with fifty bullet magazines, what’s next? Private armored personnel carriers [after all, the police now have them] or your own suitcase A-Bomb?

How about a little self-restraint? Not that our media will allow that, because restraint doesn’t sell. As a matter of fact, at least one media outlet has suggested just such restraint – and has been roundly criticized in some quarters for betraying “freedom of the press.”

Charlie Hebdo carried freedom of the press to extremes; the gunmen who brutally assassinated twelve people at the newspaper carried their beliefs to extremes. Is this the world we wish to create, where extremes battle extremes, and the one with the most firepower wins?

And, please, forget about declaring that extreme use of words and cartoons isn’t the same as extreme use of bullets. No, it’s not, but what the extreme users of words and symbols so easily forget or ignore is that such extreme use of words shapes social and political structures, and that shaping influences those with bullets, just as the words and “teachings” of extremist Islamists influenced the killers of those at Charlie Hebdo. Being one step removed from causing violence doesn’t remove all the blood from your hands. Like it or not, people are swayed by words and symbols, and the extreme use of either all too often results in disaster. Just look at what Hitler accomplished, and it all began with words… just words.

What’s the reason for all this extremism? Is it because we’re all so busy trying to be heard and to make our points that the din we’ve created drowns out all our efforts… or is it because we’re so preoccupied with what we’re doing that we’re not listening… or is it because we’re so convinced of our own “truth” that we disregard the “truths” of others?

Whatever it is, the result is the multiplication of extremism in all forms, and that is the road to hell, superbly paved with our good intentions based on the assumption that we know best, and that only we have the truth on our side in exerting our “freedoms” and beliefs to their extremes.

Recently, following the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, signs have sprouted in numerous places and at a number of rallies and protests concerned with “police brutality” and the way in which police are alleged, and certainly do at least at times, to deal with minorities, particularly those of African-American descent. Those signs read “Black Lives Matter.” Since I cannot read the minds of those creating and parading the signs, I will assume that the full meaning of those signs is that black lives matter just as much as white Caucasian lives, especially in the administration of law by the police. That is certainly an appropriate and understandable principle.

Except… principles in theory and administration in fact are two different things.

In point of fact, I know very few people who value all lives as equal in meaning and value. The vast majority of us value our own lives highly, and those of our nearest kin highly. Some parents value their children’s lives more highly than their own; some do not, but almost all individuals value the lives of those near and dear to them more than the lives of those they do not know, or know but slightly.

People also value the lives of those who have accomplished worthwhile goals more than the lives those who have not. They may deny that, or even say something to the effect that, in the eyes of whatever Deity they worship, all lives are equal. That’s a polite admission that they don’t place equal value on all lives.

While the laws of the land, and those who enforce those laws, should in fact treat all those innocent of wrong-doing equally, and should presume someone innocent until proven guilty – or, at the very least, observed in wrong-doing – that does not mean that all lives are in fact equal, or that we truly value them as equal.

At the same time, the fact that we place differing levels of value on life, depending on who we are and where we live, does not justify differing treatment under the law. Laws are meant to be applied fairly and evenly to all. Unhappily, often they are not, and at times, as I have noted before, sometimes the laws themselves have been written in ways that disadvantage one group or unfairly advantage another.

Equally unfortunate, however, is when laws are applied equally, and some group or another believes that they are not.

Then, too, there is the very difficult problem of dealing with those apprehended for breaking the law when such individuals do not wish to be detained or arrested. The Garner case is an unfortunate, but illustrative, example. No matter what anyone claims, Garner was not choked to death. One cannot say he “can’t breathe” a number of times if his airway is blocked. That doesn’t mean that the police efforts didn’t result in his death. Based on the situation, his ill health, and the autopsy reports, he most likely died of an internal violent asthmatic reaction to stress and to his attempted arrest. The simplistic explanation that he was choked to death, unfortunately, obscures the more difficult problem facing police officers. To what degree should force be used? How are officers to know if someone has a health problem, as Garner did, especially if they resist arrest? Garner’s situation is truly unfortunate, but it’s also an example of how complicated the issue of “rights” can be.

While one can and should expect police officers to treat people equally, what exactly does “equally” mean when they are dealing with individuals whom they have either witnessed committing a crime or who they have strong reason to believe have committed a crime – as in the case of Michael Brown? The recent case of the two New City detectives who were shot by individuals committing a burglary is an illustration of the other side of the issue.

What also seems to be overlooked is that mandate laid upon police officers is to keep the peace and apprehend law-breakers. Are they supposed to ignore less violent crime because the perpetrator is black or another minority? Perhaps they should, given that current law certainly doesn’t require the immediate arrest and hand-cuffing for white-collar crime, a less violent form of crime committed disproportionately by whites. And maybe, just maybe, we might then see some “interesting” results.

Either way… the issue is anything but simple, and simple slogans, by themselves, won’t resolve it.