I recently read a reader’s comment about Overcaptain, a statement that he wasn’t about to pay trade paperback prices for an ebook. And yes, the initial publication ebook price is $15.00, but the trade paperback price in roughly eight months will likely be around $21.00, if not more, since the U.S. is the largest importer of paper in the world and most of that comes from Canada. Now that Trump has declared he’s going to impose a 25% tariff on Canada and Mexico for all imports, I suspect any such tariff will increase the price of printed books.

Inflation is hard on everyone, and it prompts recollections of the past. I can certainly remember when eight-ounce bottles of Coke were a dime and you could get a hamburger and fries at McDonalds for a quarter. But back then, the minimum wage was seventy-five cents an hour.

In the real and present world, inflation isn’t going away. So long as Americans insist on not paying enough taxes to cover the costs of what we want (collectively) while complaining about the government “stuff” the other guys and gals want and bitching about who is and who isn’t paying enough taxes, and wanting someone else to pay for it, we’re going to have inflation.

Also, just because something costs more doesn’t mean that those who provide it are getting rich. What too many readers don’t understand is that publishing is a low profit industry. Legal secretaries in New York can make 30-40% more than a senior fiction editor. One long-time very senior and successful F&SF editor (with a Ph.D. in comparative medieval literature) I knew used his expertise to find undervalued rare books and resell them in order to make ends meet. Most authors can’t make a living off their writing. I worked long hours in D.C. for nearly 20 years after first getting published (while writing on the side and selling every novel I wrote) before I could live off what I made as a writer… and I’m one of the fortunate few who’s managed to do so for an extended period of time.

So, while I can reminisce about inexpensive Cokes and hamburgers, I can also remember classmates wearing braces from polio, acquaintances with vision damaged by measles, a swimmer I knew dying from an automobile accident before seatbelts were required, and a whole host of other recollections far less pleasant, most of which kinds of unpleasantness no longer occur because of government regulations.

But nostalgia about the past, anger about the rising costs of inflation, and blaming the rest of the world and imposing tariffs on ourselves are so much easier than actually dealing with the causes of that inflation.

One of the skills my wife the professor and her colleagues attempt to develop in her voice students is the ability to learn how to sing from sheet music. It’s not easy. It requires piano skills, the ability to sight-read music, the ability to pronounce foreign words (which they’re theoretically required to develop by using the international phonetic alphabet), working out the timing and breathing to fit their own voice, and a great deal of hard work. Most students resist doing the work. Instead, they find a UTube video of the piece and sing along until they think they’ve learned the piece.

Except… they haven’t. Many of them won’t even study the lyrics, even when the words are in English, at least until prompted, because they don’t even consider how they’re going to convey emotion, particularly in a foreign language, if they don’t understand the full meaning of the words.

That’s just the beginning. Even if they find a video sung by a truly great singer, it doesn’t that mean that particular version suits the student’s voice, especially if the student is young and the recorded singer is fully mature. It also doesn’t take into account that even good singers make mistakes, or the fact that even accurate copies are less vital and accurate than the original. Add to that that “copying” a range of singers will keep the student from truly developing their own voice.

And, of course, there’s the “small” problem that the student can’t learn music that someone else hasn’t already recorded, not to mention that not all recordings, especially off UTube, aren’t that good.

But “copying” is so much easier.

Unhappily, this tendency isn’t confined to would-be classical singers. All one has to do is listen to current pop singers. Until about twenty-five or thirty years ago, listeners could identify singers within a few bars. Now, the majority all sound the same.

The “copy culture” isn’t limited to music, either. There’s rough “copying” in writing as well. The advent of the computer, combined with the internet, has spawned widespread and persistent plagiarism. At the same time, I’m seeing more and more grammatical and technical errors in commercial and semi-commercial material appearing on the internet, suggesting a lack of basic technique.

One of the reasons why I wrote the first Recluce novel [The Magic of Recluce] was because all too many fantasy novels at that time were set in pseudo-medieval cultures and the magic systems were largely based on spells or tradition folk magic, and I didn’t feel like “copying.” That’s also why each of my fantasy series has a unique magic system.

But because the “copy culture” is far cheaper than good solid originality, it’s growing and invading everywhere. And what does that say about society?

Last week, when I was watching a news story on the results of the election, a particular news item caught my attention – that a number of ballots cast by young people in Nevada were being scrutinized because the signatures on the ballot didn’t match the signatures on file.

Fraud, you might ask. Apparently not.

The signature on the mail-in ballot or in some states on the voting register has to match the signature on file, and that is noted on the ballot, and the signature on file has to match the name on whatever legal document was used to register.

That’s true here in Utah as well, so while my friends know me as Lee Modesitt, and I write under L.E. Modesitt, Jr., the signature on my mail-in ballot has to be my full legal name – Leland Exton Modesitt, Jr. Otherwise, the ballot will be questioned, and possibly thrown out, or I might have to prove to the County Clerk that I’m the one who cast the ballot.

This is spelled out clearly, but the ballots of more than a few ballots of young voters in Nevada were being scrutinized for inadequate signature matches, according to the news.

I’m hardly surprised. Too many of my wife’s college students don’t read the syllabus (and often don’t listen to the same information imparted orally), and then protest that they didn’t know an assignment was due or that a test was scheduled for a given date. So it’s not exactly shocking that some young voters didn’t read the ballot instructions, either.

The American people voted decisively to “restore” a past that never was and to again reject a qualified woman candidate in favor of a male misogynistic convicted felon and sex offender, in part because they desperately wanted certainty and put their hopes in a traditional (but highly flawed) male authority figure.

No matter who was elected, there will be no permanent certainty, possibly not even temporary certainty, given Trump’s past instability and narcissism and given the unstable world political climate, but the American electorate has always been susceptible to the appeal of charlatans, to a greater or lesser degree, especially those who appeal to the idols of nostalgia and prosperity.

One unspoken problem with the Democrat campaign was the excess baggage of the far left and its woke agenda. Most Americans still don’t like to be told which pronoun is “proper” or that they should support Palestinian people who firmly deny that Israel has a right to exist, and the Trump campaign capitalized on that, and on the fact that not all women want to be liberated from the patriarchy.

Not least of all was Trump’s appeal to less educated males, not just white less educated males, who see modern technology, globalization, and educated women as threats to their social and economic future, a threat, in a way, personified by Kamala Harris herself.

The supreme irony of it all is that many of the acts and laws pushed by the Biden Administration are just now beginning to bear fruit and likely will be recalled in the future nostalgically as the wonderful second Trump term (assuming Trump takes credit for those initiatives rather than torpedoing them).

The question ahead is whether Trump can be magnanimous, and merely revel in his success, or whether he’ll vigorously pursue his enemies, as he’s threatened, and whether the Congress can or will rein in his excesses.

These days, my wife the professor has observed that rigorous tests in education are fewer and less rigorous than ever before – and the majority of students are less prepared and more fragile when they don’t perform well on tests or in class, and too many administrators worry far more about feelings than facts or competence. Unfortunately, this trend isn’t limited to students.

Yet tests are a necessity in a technological society. We require people to pass tests to obtain drivers’ licenses, pilot licenses, medical licenses, legal licenses (even if it is called a bar exam), and the like.

The one area where native-born Americans don’t have to pass a test is to vote. All that’s needed is citizenship, registration (no test required these days, unlike for African Americans in the past, particularly in the South) and being a local resident of legal age.

Benjamin Franklin said that the Founding Fathers had created a “Republic, if you can keep it.” At that time, the United States was the first large, self-governing nation in the world. But the test Americans face is, as Franklin put it, whether we can maintain that heritage.

Unlike authoritarian regimes, democracy is messy, and it requires citizens to make choices that are often complex and far from ideal.

Most people, however, want simpler choices. They don’t want to look at an array of facts, or look deeply into much of anything, particularly the background of political candidates who strongly appeal to their beliefs and prejudices.

When a candidate lies, and admits that he created a false story to dramatize an issue, as J.D. Vance has with his tale of immigrants eating pets, doesn’t that suggest both oversimplification and a willingness to say anything in pursuit of power?

Americans have always been leery of politicians who change their mind about issues, calling them flip-floppers. The senior President Bush declared at one point, “Read my lips. No new taxes.” Then several years later, faced with a fiscal crisis, he changed his mind and increased taxes. He lost the next election because he changed his mind, but his judgement was correct, and his taxes balanced the federal budget for years. No president since then has shown that kind of courage.

Trump has remained steadfast in wanting lower taxes, especially for billionaires. He’s also been steadfast on other issues, including stricter abortion laws and punishing tariffs, and in denigrating any woman in a position of power who opposes him, while praising dictators, and promising to be one. He’s been steadfast in declaring he won an election he lost, one declared fair even by the vast majority of local Republican election officials.

Kamala Harris has moderated her positions on a number of issues, mainly in the environmental area and immigration, and she’s been attacked for changing her stance on those issues, while remaining steadfast in terms of personal rights and freedoms.

But is changing positions to reflect reality bad? Is remaining steadfast or lying about bad policies and election results good?

This coming election is in fact a test, like it or not.

The test of democracy is whether voters will look beyond the obvious, beyond their confirmation biases, to pick the better candidate based on the facts or to stick blindly to what they find comfortable.

And, always, the certainty of autocracy can seem so much more comfortable than allowing people greater personal freedom.

What we choose is a test, and we’ll have to live with the results for at least four more years, possibly far longer if too many voters choose unwisely.