Last week, President Trump effectively stated that the nation’s air safety was degraded by federal diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, even going on to say that FAA air traffic controllers needed to be “brilliant,” in a context implying that anyone benefiting from DEI policies was unqualified.

While federal DEI programs were designed to promote equal access, opportunity, employment, and inclusion of underrepresented people in the workplace, they did not override or supersede existing job or position requirements based on ability to do the job. Nor did they mandate replacing existing employees with underrepresented individuals. What they did attempt to override was a long-standing and unspoken cultural assumption that the best person for a position was a straight white male.

The problem with DEI was that it went too far, especially on the state level and elsewhere, with an assumption that diversity, equity, and inclusion can and should be mandated, and achieved instantly and without adverse legal effects, rather than requiring efforts to attain DEI objectives.

The state of California enacted a law requiring corporations to place members of unrepresented groups on their corporate boards. That requirement was struck down by a federal judge in California, but the state is pursuing an appeal. The Nasdaq Stock Market had required corporations listed on the exchange to report that they had, or explain why they did not have, racial, gender or LGBTQIA+ diversity among the directors on their boards. That requirement was struck down by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Both decisions were based on earlier Supreme Court rulings that racial and ethnic quotas are unconstitutional.

The examples of DEI overreach created a backlash, primarily from conservative white males, who saw and apparently continue to see DEI policies as a threat, with the result that Trump issued an executive order not only eliminating all federal DEI policies and actions, but also effectively removing most federal affirmative action programs and threatening to remove federal educational aid to colleges and universities that do not remove all DEI policies and programs. (Of course, Utah already did that last summer).

In the end, overreach by either side usually results in overreaction, certainly as it has in this instance. Unfortunately, it appears that this was just the beginning.

The Amazon “survey” that I conducted last week revealed the emphasis and market power of series or linked books, but I didn’t say much about one of the most negative aspects – the fact that books not linked to “series” don’t sell well (at least not in the fantasy genre). Out of the 500 fantasy novels I looked through, so far as I could determine, less than a score, possibly less than that, were stand-alone novels.

I’m well aware of that problem. My last two stand-alone novels were Solar Express (2015) and Quantum Shadows (2020), neither of which sold anywhere near what my “series” books do. Every once in a while, a “series” author does write a stand-alone novel that’s wildly successful (such as V.E. Schwab’s The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue), but that’s the rare exception and not the general rule.

Even modest-selling linked books are being pushed out of the marketplace. I was thinking about writing another novel in my Ghost world, but Tor had no interest in such a book, and I know several midlist authors who can no longer sell novels to commercial U.S. publishers because their work doesn’t sell enough against the impact and marketing of multi-volume mega series.

Series books written by a single author have been around from the beginning of science fiction as a genre, but became more prevalent in the 1960s and 1970s, including E.C. Tubb’s Dumarest series, Doc Smith’s Lensman books, and Marian Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover books, but these were essentially science fiction (if with often dubious science). The first popular English fantasy series is likely that of L. Frank Baum, beginning with The Wizard of Oz in 1900 and continuing with other authors for roughly 30 years, but after that, there wasn’t that much interest in multiple fantasies in a continuing setting until after the U.S. publication of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings in 1965, although the first widely popular non-Tolkien-spinoff fantasy series was The Wheel of Time, after which all manner of fantasy series proliferated (including the Saga of Recluce).

This proliferation has turned into an unkempt jungle, in which very few stand-alone fantasies rise out of the canopy of intertwined series. One of the ironies of the Recluce Saga is that, unlike The Wheel of Time, which was planned as a series from the beginning, The Magic of Recluce was written as a stand-alone novel, and after its initial publication, David Hartwell, my long-time editor until his death, asked for a sequel.

So, in a way, I’m also part of the problem, but I still continue to worry about the over-emphasis on mega-selling series and the way in which the internet and the marketing strategies of Amazon and Barnes & Noble effectively force traditional publishers to minimize stand-alone novels and make it ever more difficult for unknown authors to self-market.

Donald Trump appears to be out to undo one of the philosophical and legal bases of the United States – the idea that the United States is based on the rule of law and that our representative democratic republic is a government based on laws, and not on men. He’s also served notice – again – that he’s above the law.

This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone, at least if they think about it. Trump declares that any law he dislikes is aimed at him personally, and he’s apparently willing to pardon anyone convicted of breaking a law he or his followers don’t like.

He’s already attempted to undo the birthright section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and pardoned every single person convicted of anything to do with the January 6th insurrection, as well as pardoning anti-abortion activists who were convicted of using violence against abortion clinics and against those attempting to use such facilities.

He’s immediately fired eighteen federal inspectors general (whose job is to monitor federal agencies for misfeasance, malfeasance and/or corruption) without notice, even though the law requires him to notify Congress thirty days in advance of any planned removal.

Under Trump’s orders, acting Attorney General James McHenry has fired twelve Department of Justice attorneys not because they didn’t do their jobs, but because they cannot be “trusted” to “faithfully” implement Trump’s agenda. The actual language of the dismissal letters reads:

“You played a significant role in prosecuting President Trump. The proper functioning of government critically depends on the trust superior officials place in their subordinates… Given your significant role in prosecuting the President, I do not believe that the leadership of the Department can trust you to assist in implementing the President’s agenda faithfully.”

Attorneys and officials at the Department of Justice are tasked with enforcing the laws of the land, not with implementing the agenda of the President.

Trump’s also removed Secret Service protection from two Republicans who served in his first administration where they carried out Trump’s orders and policies. Because they did, both have become targets for Islamic extremists, yet because both have been critical of him, Trump has removed their protection.

And for all the talk about illegal immigration, one of Trump’s first acts was to freeze and nullify the legal immigration process for people who’ve completely followed the legal procedures and were nearly through the process.

And all this has come to light in just one week. What else is in the works… and what other laws will Trump attempt to trash or flout?

As the old radio/TV slogan says, “Stay tuned!”

Finding” decent” books is getting harder and harder, “decent” meaning books from which I can derive both entertainment and enlightenment, without being depressed as hell.

It’s not that such books don’t exist, but finding them is getting somewhere between difficult and close to impossible, particularly if you live in a town/small city of 50,000 people some sixty miles from the nearest large bookstore. But even if I did live closer to that store, it wouldn’t help much because, that Barnes & Noble store carries an incredibly limited stock of speculative fiction, as do many these days.

Then, of course, there’s Amazon, where everything under the sun is theoretically listed. I checked out “fantasy books,” supposedly ranked by best-seller listing, and went through the first 150 books listed. Of those 150, a third were “sponsored,” i.e., placed there because someone paid for that placement. More than half were by “name” series authors, i.e., Sarah Maas, Brandon Sanderson, Jennifer Armentrout. Ten percent were variations on endless series, and that left roughly six to eight books, half of which I’d read. (Disclosure: I have read several Sarah Maas books, and a few Brandon Sanderson books, but those few were enough for me).

After roughly 350 books, the number of “sponsored” books stabilized at around six out of roughly twenty-five, and right about that point, Overcaptain showed up. I went through over 500 books before I quit. Out of all those 500, I bought exactly one book, by an author I recognized, having read one of her books several years back.

Now, because I was counting as I browsed, it took a bit longer, but spending an hour plus searching for a book I might like is why many readers rely on the recommendations of others. My problem is that my tastes differ from those of most reviewers, possibly because I’ve been reading so long that I really don’t like mindless or single-minded mayhem, nor graphic violence and explicit sex. I’m also not all that fond of “whipped cream” reading unless it’s really good whipped cream (like Legends & Lattes), and I don’t read it all that often because more often than that is cloying.

The other day I read what was a quite good and well-written military/dragon novel – until I got to the ultra-sex romantasy part, which I skimmed, and which was, to me, a considerable detraction(but apparently not to many readers, since the book was listed in the first four Amazon pages).

All of which may be obvious, but, at the least, I thought the Amazon numbers were intriguing.

Trump’s Inaugural Address definitely set the tone for the next year, and possibly for the next four. Why do I say “possibly?”

For one thing, Trump has promised some things that, at least under the Constitution, he cannot do. Birthright citizenship was established by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, but Trump’s legal advisors claim that the language of the amendment – “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside” — allows federal government not to recognize automatic birthright citizenship for children born in the U.S. to parents without legal status. One way or another, any government action to deny birthright citizenship will come before the Supreme Court.

If the Supreme Court agrees with such a broad interpretation, then some estimates show that as many as five million people in the U.S. could be affected. Even more important, such a ruling would also suggest that the Supreme Court would effectively be a rubber stamp for Trump, and that the government has the ability to circumvent the Constitution.

If the Supreme Court denies that interpretation, then Trump will be somewhat limited in what he can accomplish, although he now has the means to block almost all legal immigration and has already apparently closed the southern border.

Changing the name of the “Gulf of Mexico” to the “Gulf of America” is problematical, although he could conceivably require that name change on all maps and publications printed by the U.S. government, but he certainly doesn’t have the legal authority to require map-makers elsewhere to comply, even U.S. mapmakers.

And those are just the beginning of the struggles that Trump faces, which means “interesting” (in the worst way possible) years ahead for all of us.

Often, in U.S. culture, Justice is portrayed as a blindfolded female goddess holding a set of scales with two pans to weigh the evidence. Now, of course, I could ask more than a few questions, such as how could she see the results if she’s blindfolded or how does she know the evidence is valid if she can’t see it, but those questions spoil the image and the metaphor.

Yet, in so many ways in the United States, the pursuit of justice can be blind, and it’s certainly biased against those without the resources to fully utilize the skills and tools of law.

The fact is that the majority of criminal charges in U.S. courts are settled through plea bargains, with various studies showing that only two to ten percent (depending on the study) of criminal cases are settled by actual full-scale trials, with evidence and legal examinations, etc. Why are there so few actual trials without a plea bargain? The answer, as in so many areas of U.S. culture, is simply money. Trials cost money and take time, and few criminal defendants have any significant financial assets, and most public defenders are overloaded, underpaid, and less experienced. In that sense, lack of money can blind justice.

But there’s also another blindness in criminal justice, and that blindness, or at least impairment, lies in which cases law enforcement pursues and how effectively they’re pursued. When Brian Thompson, the United Healthcare CEO, was gunned down in New York, a nationwide hunt ensued, and the news has been filled with stories about his death. But 23 others were killed in New York City in December, and none of them received such coverage or such intensive law enforcement efforts – likely not even close. Most of them are statistics to everyone but immediate friends and family.

How many murders go unsolved? Currently, roughly half of all homicides in the U.S. go unsolved, but how many more might be solved if the level of resources focused on finding Brian Thompson’s killer were focused on all murders? Except they can’t be, because local authorities don’t have enough resources, and why justice is so often blind… in the worst way.

Recently, a number of readers have commented and/or complained about how long it takes between the time I finish a book and when it appears in print, often telling me or my publisher to release the books sooner. While the time delay might seem capricious or calculated for some nefarious reason, unfortunately, it’s not.

Publishers, at least my publisher, won’t schedule a book for release until it’s under contract, and I’m one of the few writers who won’t ask for a contract until I’ve usually finished the first draft of a book. Getting a contract through the paperwork of a publisher can take weeks, if not longer, depending on the time of year.

That’s one reason why it takes longer from the time I announce a book until it’s published, but I’m old fashioned in that I prefer to write a book without either time pressure or pressure from editors or marketing people to write a particular kind of book or to slant a book in one way or another. Also, while I announce when I’ve finished a book, I wouldn’t be surprised if some authors don’t announce a new book until it’s been scheduled.

The second reason is that spacing two similar books, i.e., two Recluce books, closer together than ten months reduces the sales of both books. Neither the publisher nor I favor that. As readers can note, this doesn’t apply to books in a different series, which is why Legalist is being released roughly three months after Sub-Majer’s Challenge .

The third reason is that Amazon and Barnes & Noble require at least a year’s advance notice of publication of a book, or they won’t commit to carrying as many copies. Although my books sell modestly well, no single book is or has been a “million-seller,” and that means Tor has to play by the rules of the big retailers in positioning when my books are released.

None of these reasons make eager readers happy, but they’re the facts of a marketplace in which I write, and while I did manage to get Tor to space the Recluce books closer together, that’s the limit of what I can do.

As I was walking the dogs this morning, we passed a tall flagpole in the front yard of a house on our normal route. Instead of the usual two flags – the U.S. flag above the Australian flag – only the U.S. flag was displayed, at half-mast, clearly in memory of former President Jimmy Carter.

Jimmy Carter was, as his entire life demonstrated, a good man. He wasn’t the best politician the United States has had as President, but he was far from the worst. Like many men who are successful in business, he tended to try do too much himself and he strove to make things better, excellent if possible. This is a great temptation in government, since successful government is based on compromise, simply because too many people want more from their government than any government can deliver, and compromise too often undermines excellence.

In the end, in his administration, despite his success on many fronts, Carter wasn’t successful in persuading people of his real achievements as President, and the combination of inflation and the Iran crisis led to his loss in the 1980 election. Ironically, the credit for one of his greatest accomplishments – appointing and supporting Paul Volcker and the policies that finally broke the near-runaway inflation of the 1970s – went largely to Ronald Reagan, a pattern that persists to this day, because most Americans are too focused on today and too ignorant about how government and economics really work and how long it takes to change economic conditions.

Whether history will be kinder and more objective about the Carter administration remains to be seen, but there’s no doubt about the accomplishments of his post-presidential career, including the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize for his life-long humanitarian efforts.

Somehow, I think I’ll remember seeing that sole United States flag at half-mast for a long time.

CEO turnovers are up — considerably, at possibly the highest rate in years.

One of the reasons cited by analysts is that while the profits of the “Magnificent Seven” (Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Nvidia, Meta Platforms, and Tesla) have ballooned in recent years, the returns of other corporations, while perfectly decent, aren’t keeping pace, and the corporate boards of other corporacions are demanding more from their CEOs.

So… everyone wants more profits, and CEO’s who don’t deliver get sacked or are forced out.

At the same time, there are only three ways to increase profits – be more innovative, cut costs, and raise prices. Being more innovative usually means using knowledge and technology to do more with fewer people or less material. Fewer people means more stress on those who remain, and even more stress on those who lose jobs. Less material means less durable products and higher costs to customers over time. Cutting costs means paying people less or paying fewer people and/or paying suppliers less.

In short, pushing for more and more profit screws pretty much everyone (and sometimes even CEOs) except large shareholders.

Or put another way, when is more profit too much? Or is it ever too much?

So often in my life, I’ve heard, or overheard, phrases along the lines of, “It’s not personal; we need to make a change…” Or it’s not personal because corporate headquarters, or the state legislature, or someone else cut the funding. It might not be “personal” because the business is failing.

But whatever the cause, to the person or people affected, it’s personal; it’s very personal.

And for large corporations, such as United Healthcare, it’s definitely never personal. It’s just about the need to maintain profit, and whether the so-called “impersonal” axe falls on employees being let go or policyholders not getting the benefits they paid for, the corporation seldom, if ever, considers the personal costs.

Yet, in a way, many of the “personal decisions” are in fact personal, just not in the way most people would consider personal. Corporate profit increases tend to boost the price of the stock, and, in the case of most CEOs, increasing profits and stock prices increase their compensation. According to the latest publicly reported information, Brian Thompson was paid slightly more than $10 million annually. But his salary was only one million dollars. The rest, 90%, came from stock, stock options, and bonuses.

So those decisions on how to raise profits had a decidedly personal effect on Mr. Thompson. He may not have considered the algorithms “personal,” but they not only increased the negative effects of healthcare denials and delays on policy holders in order to increase profits., but also significantly increased his personal compensation.

Not personal… really?

In the case of Brian Thompson’s murder, there’s been a decidedly strong reaction on both sides, and that clouds the underlying issues that led to his death.

According to all reports, Thompson was a devoted and dedicated husband and family man, and a respected and well-liked colleague by those in the health insurance field. The healthcare industry is clearly stunned by the public reaction and how many people viewed his death with little or no sympathy.

But the fact is that Thompson was also a cold-eyed, analytical, profit-maximizing executive who clearly had no difficulty making decisions and implementing programs and systems that devastated thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of families in order to maintain or increase corporate profit margins. During his tenure as President of United Healthcare, Thompson raised profits from $10 billion to $16 billion, a sixty percent increase in three years. During that period, UnitedHealthcare was rated the worst of all U.S. healthcare firms in denying claims, turning down 32% of all claims, twice the industry average of 16%. For this, he was paid over $10 million last year.

What I find disturbing is the “mainstream” news media’s emphasis on Thompson the family man and nice guy persona, who was unjustly murdered. I’m not condoning the murder or the murderer, who appears to personify anti-establishment zealotry, and represents, on the other side, the same lack of humanity that Thompson represented professionally in his time with United Healthcare.

Just because Thompson was a loving devoted family man in his personal life and a good professional colleague doesn’t mean that he wasn’t a cold-blooded bastard in designing, implementing, and using methodologies designed to deny healthcare to people who had already paid for what they believed was adequate coverage.

At least one media newscaster made a comment along the lines that Thompson was just doing his job, but what was his job? Was it to effectively fund the healthcare of millions of Americans so that they could receive proper medical treatment, or was it principally to increase the profits of United Healthcare? That 32% rejection rate and 60% profit increase strongly suggest that the health of United Healthcare’s Medicare Advantage and other patients came in a distant second place to increased profits.

And the healthcare insurance industry is stunned by the reaction to his murder?

Utah state legislators are “renowned” for talking out of both sides of their mouth. One of their proudest achievements is reducing state income taxes for four straight years, by more than a billion dollars. But what they’re not telling constituents and taxpayers is how little those tax cuts really mean… and what they actually cost.

For example, the latest tax cut was estimated to reduce the tax bill of Utah taxpayers by $167 million, which sounds significant, but isn’t. The lowest quintile of taxpayers would only get a $24 tax cut. Upper middleclass taxpayers, those making $200,000, would receive $174. In addition, Utah is one of only eight states to tax Social Security income.

In the meantime, the legislature just mandated a fifteen-million-dollar budget cut for the university (SUU) where my wife works and a hiring freeze, as well as comparable cuts for all state universities. Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz, a Republican, recently stated that, in addition to that cut, the Legislature was exploring cuts of around ten percent across all sixteen of the state’s public colleges and universities in 2025.

This might make some sense if enrollment were declining, but Utah is the only state in the union where non-immigrant population is growing, almost certainly because the Mormon faith continues to emphasize large families. In response, SUU’s enrollment grew by 1,000 students this school year (up to nearly 16,000), and total public university enrollment grew by over 8,500 students, one of the largest increases in years.

Yet the legislature is mandating that universities accommodate more students and provide more services with less funding. This is at a time when an increasing percentage of teaching employees are leaving the field because of comparatively low pay and increasing bureaucratic and administrative loads having nothing to do with teaching. One of the unmentioned side effects, also, is that the legislature mandated a 3.5% tuition increase for the 2024-2025 school year, so that students and their parents pay more (roughly $300 per student just this year ) while the state funds a smaller and smaller percentage of the costs of running the universities.

But the politicians continue to trumpet near-meaningless tax cuts.

The real question facing Democrats is whether they want to be a successful political party or whether they want to emphasize an ideology that most Americans believe is excessively liberal.

From what polls show and from what I’ve observed, most Democrats don’t fall into far left/woke mindset, but the far left tends to be far more active politically and socially than the more “mainstream” Democrats, and thus tends to have influence out of proportion to its actual numbers.

Recent poll analysis by The New York Times suggests that one of the reasons Kamala Harris lost was that something like seven million Democrats who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 did not vote in 2024. That alone wouldn’t account for her loss, but that combined with more liberal voters who oppose what they see as excessive support of trans/LBTG+ initiatives very well might. Nor did ads suggesting that wives hide their votes from their husbands help, since any woman so inclined didn’t need the ads, and any woman thinking about it would likely be worried that the ad would prompt inquiries by husbands and boyfriends.

Like it or not, a majority of Americans, for whatever reason, are leery of women running for the presidency, and the combination of a woman who was perceived as liberal was also a strong factor in the campaign.

The fact that the Democrats actually made a very slight gain in their numbers in the House of Representatives (if only by one member) at a time when they lost the presidency and the Senate suggests that Democrats who addressed the issues in their districts could be very successful, but that the national ticket had too many negatives.

Not that anyone is going to change their mind based on my observations.

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.

American males in the 18-29 age group favor Donald Trump disproportionately. In today’s United States, that shouldn’t be a surprise.

In a way, Trump represents everything that most young males want – money, the ability to have their way with women, the apparent ability to tell the government to stuff it, the ability to avoid adult supervision, and the ability to put down women, especially strong women, at will, all without repercussions – not to mention the ability to complain endlessly about how everyone is against him.

I’m certainly not the only one who’s made that connection. There was a New York Post story earlier this week about Trump’s “unabashed machismo vibe,” and its effective appeal to 18-29 year-old American males.

But the appeal goes beyond that. Too many men are still boys. As they get older, their toys just get bigger, and more expensive. I see it all the time – small houses with powerboats almost the size of the house, families with multiple ATVs and multiple trail bikes, but who plead poverty and can’t or won’t provide health insurance or help their children with college expenses. Male students driving late model cars or pick-up trucks who claim they can’t afford textbooks.

When men complain that their wages haven’t kept up with inflation, and that housing is too expensive, I have to wonder. The mortgage rates they complain about are lower than any mortgage I was able to get for more than forty years. The only time they were lower was after we’d slaved to pay off the house, but as an adult, you have to realize that matters don’t always go your way, no matter how long and hard you work (the odds are just far better if you do)…and that most women get tired of boys who never grow up (which might help explain why more women oppose Trump).

Back in 2016, Donald Trump said, “I love the poorly educated.” That was after polling showed that less educated voters contributed to his winning the Nevada caucus during his 2016 presidential primary campaign. Voters who are poorly educated about the facts of key issues — including inflation, immigration, and violent crime – are much more likely to vote for Trump than Democratic rival Kamala Harris, according to new research released last Thursday by Ipsos’ political tracking team.

Analysis shows that voters’ primary media sources strongly determine their voting preferences. The primary news sources for less educated Americans are the Fox News Channel and other conservative media outlets – and/or conservative social media. Followers of such media sources were and are markedly more likely to incorrectly answer fact-based questions about inflation, the stock market, FEMA’s hurricane aid, violent crime, and illegal immigration.

The irony of this is that the primary purveyor of false (factually incorrect) news in the United States is Fox News and the greatest beneficiary of that false news is Donald Trump, who is trying, and often succeeding, in convincing Americans that the more accurate news sources are peddling false news.

It’s fair to say that Donald Trump and Fox News are a marriage of convenience and misinformation, because neither Trump nor his supporters are in the slightest interested in factual news that conflicts with their views.