“Magic Thinking” is the idea that belief can change the physical world. Now, I’d be the first to admit that someone’s beliefs can motivate them to accomplish great things, but in the end it is the accomplishments that can change the world, not the beliefs. Belief is the first step, and at least in my experience, the easiest.

Yet today, all over the United States, we’ve had a resurgence of “magic thinking” totally divorced from reality.

How can a culture that promotes Viagra, movies and television with intense sexual content, that supplies its young people with private transportation and funds, and that now has the largest gap between the age of physical maturity and financial and social maturity honestly believe that abstinence is going to be practiced for ten years or more by a significant fraction of the young population? It isn’t; and the facts show it, but legislators across the country continue to push abstinence as the solution and to reject any form of realistic sex education. But then again, perhaps Twitter or TikTok might increase abstinence, but not the rhetoric of rightwing fundamentalist legislators.

Thirty to thirty-five percent of the American population continues to believe that the 2020 Presidential election was “stolen,” despite study after study, audit after audit, and election officials from both major parties declaring that it was a free and fair election and that the results are accurate.

Scientific study after study has also shown there’s no significant difference in overall mental ability of human beings linked to skin color, but significant percentages of populations in the U.S., Japan, China, and elsewhere believe such a difference exists, when all the evidence links the vast majority of differences to nutrition and income.

There’s a simple fact that all too many “magic thinkers” don’t understand: The strength of one’s beliefs does not make something so. All the denying in the world isn’t going to change physical facts. Unfortunately, magic thinking can lead to riots and storming the Capitol, or to unwanted and neglected children born out of wedlock, or to massacres of people who are different.

The other day I read a reader review of Isolate, the first book of “The Grand Illusion,” my newest series, which features a junior military security officer essentially ordered to work as an aide for a senior politician, in a constitutional empire with a mandated three party system. In this world electricity doesn’t work as a power source, and a tiny percentage of the population have empathic talents, either as empaths who can read and project emotions or as isolates whose emotions cannot be read or influenced by empaths. The book begins with the main character and his partner fending off an empath attack on the politician as they leave the capitol building.

What I found both amusing and slightly appalling was that the reader gave Isolate a five star review (which I certainly appreciate) with the sole comment of: “A little too political at times but a good read if you like his books.”

I’m still shaking my head about it, because the book is avowedly political. Everything revolves around the politics and how those politics influence everything from the politicians to the large corporations and the poorest field workers. I can see a reader who doesn’t like politics disliking the book, but saying that a science-fantasy political novel is a little too political leaves me baffled, especially with such a good rating.

I suppose it’s possible, and perhaps it’s happened, but I wonder if anyone would say that a thriller is a little too thrilling at times, or that a detective novel has a little too much detecting, or a romance novel has a bit too much romance.

For the National Football League, the game might as well be called “Get the Quarterback!” Or perhaps the modern equivalent of the Roman Empire’s gladiatorial games.

By the end of November fourteen teams (out of thirty-two) had started two or more quarterbacks this season. Over the entire season, the San Francisco Forty-Niners went through four quarterbacks, losing two for the entire season, and they lost the conference play-off because one quarterback was concussed and the other had his throwing elbow injured enough in the game that he couldn’t throw a pass. The Los Angeles Rams lost all the quarterbacks on their roster one week and had to sign Baker Mayfield two days before the next game.

From what I could determine, at least twenty-four quarterbacks were injured in the current NFL season seriously enough to miss at least one game – not counting the Superbowl, which hasn’t been played.

Eight quarterbacks were concussed severely enough to miss at least one game completely. Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa is still in the NFL’s concussion protocol more than a month after he last entered it. He was already out for two games earlier this year because of a previous concussion, and some doctors suggest that it might be best if he retired, rather than risk another concussion.

And despite the playing longevity of a few select, talented, and lucky NFL players, the average career playing span is a little over three years, not all that different from a Roman gladiator, the significant difference being that most less successful gladiators died, while NFL football players ‘only’ have their lifespan reduced by thirty percent on average, and that doesn’t take into account the high rate of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and the considerable risk of dementia in their later years, which some studies have shown may well be over 70%.

But that’s football… and lots of money for franchise owners. The Walton-Penner group paid $4.65 billion when they bought the Denver Broncos last year, and Denver’s hardly likely to be the most profitable NFL franchise.

All of a sudden classified documents are showing up in more homes than those of Donald Trump or Joe Biden, and I’m more than certain more could be found. While Trump willfully knew about the hundreds of documents he kept and insisted that they were his, it appears that both Biden and Pence were unaware that classified documents were included among their personal papers.

Given the volume of papers crossing their desks, it’s hardly surprising that comparatively small numbers of classified documents slipped through scrutiny. But the hullabaloo over Biden and Pence ignores a far larger problem.

Part of the problem is that the classification system is broken. More than forty years back when I was a Navy pilot and then a Congressional staffer, everyone in defense-related fields new that far too much information was overclassified, and that much of that information that couldn’t ever have been kept out of public view. Aviation Week was known in the military-industrial community as “Aviation Leak.”

Since then the problem has grown, partly because it’s far easier to classify information than to ask if it really needs to be classified, partly because classification is also a way to mute public and media criticism , and partly because the media has become more and more tabloid, ever more willing to disclose and publicize not only material that should never have been classified, but also to publicize information that legitimately should not be presently in the public domain.

Too much information that was classified legitimately years and years ago remains classified, not because its disclosure now would be detrimental to national security, but because its disclosure would be detrimental to the national image or to the reputation of institutions and individuals. But you can’t learn from past mistakes if you never know what they were and if you accept the images founded on incomplete information.

And the media, unfortunately, can’t be trusted to determine what should or shouldn’t be made public, especially not when the media’s primary goal has become profits, and when disclosing secrets raises ratings and, consequently, profits.

Nor can the military be totally trusted, but details and specifications for new weapons systems don’t belong in the public domain. Neither do intelligence findings about foreign military readiness… nor do the names of covert intelligence operatives.

What’s necessary is a balancing of interests and national needs, but balance doesn’t serve the short-term interests of politicians, the media, or the military-industrial complex…which is why we have an overclassification problem.

A while back, I made the observation that technology is, of itself, neither good nor evil, but that its basic function, whether intended or not, is as a multiplier. In warfare, technology multiplies the force wielded by an individual or a group of individuals; it multiplies the distances from which one can strike and the impact of that strike. In transportation, it multiplies how far and how fast one can travel. In communications, technology allows the transfer of more information almost instantly [at least on our planet] to more people.

But there’s one aspect of technology that’s seldom mentioned, and that’s the impact not only on the person or people affected by the technology, but also on the individual using the technology, where often technology multiplies the ability to do harm and the ability to avoid being caught or punished for that harm..

Donald Trump effectively mobilized somewhere between thirty thousand and a hundred thousand protesters (depending on where people were counted and by whom) on January 6th, from all across the nation, and more than a thousand actually stormed the Capitol, of whom more than 700 so far have been arrested and charged, with most being convicted or pleading guilty.

The problem with technology, in the case of Trump and others, is that while technology multiplies their abilities, it fails to multiply their accountability. In fact, in the case of Trump, his uses of technology has made it difficult to enforce any accountability.

Con men and swindlers can commit thefts from places where they can’t be discovered, let alone prosecuted. Cyber-bullying among teenagers has become endemic, and definitely contributes to increases in teen suicide. Trolls can badger and harass people with little fear of either retaliation or repercussion.

Functioning societies fall into two categories – autocracies and those based on popular trust, generally but not exclusively democracies. But technology is increasingly being used in ways that isolate people and create greater mistrust of any one who is different. Because isolation and mistrust undermine governments, one of the questions facing democracies is how to stop the increasing misuse of technology, because, skeptic that I am, I sincerely doubt that the people who are using technology to harm others are going to stop of their own free will. Trump and Putin certainly aren’t, nor are all the others.