As with many, if not most, of my books, the “reviewer” reviews of Contrarian include those reviewers who often review me but didn’t, to those who didn’t like the book very much, to those who liked it, and those who liked it very much.

As some readers may know, more than thirty years ago, after having published eight novels and nine short stories, all science fiction, over the previous seventeen years, I took on a new challenge, that of writing a fantasy novel with at least semi-realistic economics and politics, and a logical and internally consistent magic system integrated within the economics and politics of that world. That novel was, of course, The Magic of Recluce.

At that time (1989), there were few fantasy novels that even attempted the goals I set out. And then, and even today, many readers were looking for escapism unconstrained by reality. In either arrogance or naivete, if not both, I thought it was possible to write a fantasy novel with realistic people, economics, politics, and logical magic that some readers would buy and enjoy, and I think it’s fair to say that I’ve done so repeatedly, or at least come close.

But along the way, I’ve come to realize that many of the readers and even some professional reviewers who reject more “realistic” fantasies don’t reject them because they’re realistic, but because they don’t understand, or don’t want to understand, certain aspects of the real world.

That’s why one reviewer of the Grand Illusion books can term them taut political thrillers while another rejects them as boring and unrealistic, why one person smiles knowingly when reading about a seemingly boring vote on agricultural subsidies or “incidental” appropriations and another puts down the book.

In the end, how interesting and exciting a book is – or isn’t – depends not just on the author, but also what the reader brings to the book… or doesn’t.

People are angry, and they’re unhappy with the state of the economy. So they blame the current President. That’s not only unfair; it’s also stupid.

The current state of the economy is largely determined by events in the past. Most of the inflation we’ve suffered in the past two years was rooted in decisions and actions that occurred in the Trump Administration, but people blame Biden because they’re hurting now.

This is hardly new. George Bush senior made unpopular tax increases, but those tax increases were beneficial. Unhappily for him, they took effect in the Clinton Administration and boosted Clinton, not Bush.

But the internet and instant everything has made people even more impatient. When people can order something online and get it in days, if not sooner, they tend to think everything can be done quickly, not even considering that they’re ordering something that was already manufactured.

Biden pushed through the inflation reduction and the infrastructure act over a year ago. With the time that it takes to determine what projects can be done, to let the contracts, finalize the plans, get the permits, and assemble the right workforce, any project takes time, and most of those projects are just beginning. They’re barely breaking ground on the first of the new computer manufacturing facilities.

This also isn’t new. At the beginning of WW II, it took time to change auto plants into aircraft factories… and then there was a recession when the auto plants had to retool back to producing automobiles.

But the “I want it now” mentality, unfortunately, isn’t just limited to politics and industry. It’s pervaded everything.

I’m astounded at the number of automobile accidents, many of them fatal, caused just in southwest Utah by drivers speeding through yellow and red lights or not even stopping at stop signs. That doesn’t include those caused by speeding – and I mean really speeding, like at 100 mph. All of which are caused by impatience and the “I want it now” mentality.

Some people want environmental improvement now. Others don’t think the environmental conditions aren’t that bad. Both types fail to understand, or accept, that decades of using fossil fuels and greenhouse gases can’t be undone any time soon, and possibly not at all, given human nature.

Some people on Maui are already getting impatient at the “slowness” of disaster relief and the lack of housing for those whose homes burned, while “property sharks” are trying to gobble up burned-out properties even before authorities and families have sorted out who’s dead or missing, but Maui is an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and all the necessary goods, tools, and personnel have to be flown or shipped in. That takes time.

Some Americans are now getting impatient that Ukraine hasn’t been more effective against Russia, apparently without considering that Ukraine has stalled one of the largest military forces in the world, and without having adequate airpower. And these impatient Americans are wondering why the U.S. can’t get the F-16s to Ukraine quicker. These folks don’t seem to realize that it takes the U.S. a good nine months to train a pilot in the F-16. U.S. military experts have consistently made the point that it will take 4-6 months to adequately train a Ukrainian pilot already proficient in flying a MIG 29 – and that’s if the pilot’s fluent in English. Compressing that training much will just result in dead pilots and lost aircraft.

Lots of times, you just can’t have it now, but too many Americans can’t or won’t understand, and then they blame whoever’s in charge, even when it’s not the fault of who’s currently in charge.

For more than fifty years, the Republicans have been preaching that tax cuts, especially for the wealthiest Americans, are good for the country. Yet years of research all across the world show that tax cuts, possibly except when the marginal tax rate is above 70%, actually hurt the poor and the middle class, while benefiting the rich.

A recent report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) also rejects the trickle-down theory and states that “increasing the income share of the poor and the middle class actually increases growth while a rising income share of the top 20% results in lower growth—that is, when the rich get richer, benefits do not trickle down.”

Why? Because the expenditures of middle- to-low-income sectors are the drivers of the economy, and increasing the incomes of low-income earners increases gross domestic product (GDP), while increasing the income of the top 20% of high-income earners decreases GDP.

Not surprisingly, U.S. tax cuts over the last thirty-five years have resulted in almost no increase in real income for typical working families in the U.S., while the wealthiest one percent of Americans became $29 trillion richer, and more and more assets flowed into Wall Street and the financial community.

A study from the London School of Economics says 50 years of such tax cuts have only helped one group — the rich. The study compared countries that passed tax cuts in a specific year, such as the U.S. in 1982 when President Ronald Reagan slashed taxes on the wealthy, with those that didn’t, and then examined their economic outcomes. The incomes of the rich grew much faster in countries where tax rates were lowered, but that “prosperity” didn’t even trickle down to the middle class, let alone to the working poor.

Research from two prominent economists, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman of the University of California, published in 2019 shows that for the first time in a century, the 400 richest American families paid lower taxes in 2018 than people in the middle class. Even before the pandemic, income inequality had reached its highest point in 50 years, according to Census data.

And since the pandemic began, the combined wealth of America’s 651 billionaires has jumped by more than 25%, that growth exceeding $1 trillion, according to Americans for Tax Fairness.

Yet while we’re still not catching up on collapsing bridges, highways, and other infrastructure, or the medical needs of veterans, and quite a few other needs, America’s billionaires are doing just fine, and the GOP is pushing more tax cuts for the wealthy and benefit cuts for the working poor and increasing deficit spending as well to finance those tax cuts – while blaming it on the Democrats.

What’s more… most people seem to believe the GOP about tax cuts and have for fifty years, despite all the research findings to the contrary.

House Republicans are pursuing an impeachment “inquiry” against President Biden, largely on the grounds that his son, Hunter Biden, cashed in on his father’s name. While millions of dollars were paid by foreign entities to Hunter Biden and others while Joe Biden was vice-president, so far, the House Republican Oversight Committee has found no financial links to President Biden.

House Republican Oversight Committee Chair James Comer insists that payments to family members to corruptly influence others can constitute a bribe.

There are several problems with this. First, there’s no evidence Joe Biden benefitted. Second, there’s no evidence that he was influenced to do something. Third, Washington, D.C., is flooded with family members cashing in on elected officials’ positions, and that’s been the case for generations on all sides of the aisle.

But what’s even more hypocritical is that the House Republican Oversight Committee is ignoring even more obvious and blatant examples of corruption in Republican appointees to the Supreme Court.

Over the last twenty years, Clarence Thomas accepted from wealthy individuals at least 38 vacations, 26 private jet flights, eight flights by helicopter, a dozen VIP passes to sporting events, as well as stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica. In addition, Harlan Crow, a Texas billionaire, not only paid for many of Thomas’ vacations, but also his mother’s house and a nephew’s tuition payments. Wayne Huizenga, another billionaire, provided cost-free flights on his personal jet to Thomas.

Justice Samuel Alito went on a fishing trip to Alaska with hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, a Republican donor with cases before the Supreme Court. Alito traveled to the remote Alaska site on Singer’s private jet, along with Leonard Leo, a longtime leader of the conservative Federalist Society. And the salmon fishing lodge that they all stayed at was owned at the time by another big Republican donor, Robin Arkley II, who footed the bill for Alito’s lodging. Alito did not subsequently recuse himself from a case involving Singer’s legal interests before the court.

Neither justice disclosed any of this.

Justice Neil Gorsuch tried for years to unload a 40-acre property he co-owned in Colorado. Nine days after he was confirmed to the Supreme Court, the property was purchased by the CEO of a law firm that has had numerous cases before the court — and whose clients Gorsuch has sided with much more often than not.

Now, while it may be that Congress cannot “regulate” the ethics and conduct of Supreme Court Justices, Congress can impeach justices and remove them from the bench – but there’s not a word or a hint that the Republicans have any interest in looking to impeach justices who have documented evidence of receiving payments, services, and goods from wealthy donors, especially when all of those donors appear to have had cases or issues before the Court.

But the Republicans seem determined to take on Joe Biden, while, at the very least, indicating that Republican corruption is perfectly acceptable.

And they’ll probably get away with it, just as they have by refusing to deal with Trump’s crimes.