Perhaps because I have a degree in economics and spent roughly twenty years in politics, I tend to look at numbers, and what they suggest about people… and about political parties.

I’ve felt for a long time that Republican politicians and Republican voters are very uneasy about women in politics. Certainly, Donald Trump doesn’t care much for women, and he certainly doesn’t respect them, but it’s definitely not hurting him among Republican voters.

Going into the recent Iowa caucus, polls suggested that Nikki Haley would get around 22-24 percent of the vote. But she only got 19 percent, a shift of almost five percent overnight, when nothing else changed. My own personal feeling is that nothing did change, but that three to five percent of the Republican voters could say they favored Haley, but when it came to voting, they couldn’t do it, but they never wanted to admit it.

Women in the U.S. have had the vote for just over a hundred years, but today only thirty percent of the members of the U.S. House are women. But when you break those numbers down, they get really interesting, because 46% (almost half) of the Democratic representatives are women, while only 14% of the Republican representatives are women.

In the Senate, 33% of the Democratic senators are women, but only 16% of the Republican senators are.

Why might that be?

Could it just be that Republicans just don’t like women in public office?

Those statistics might just explain a lot, including much of the support for Donald Trump, but I haven’t seen any poll or study that addresses this aspect of political parties, possibly because men don’t want to address it directly… and women in politics can’t, not without alienating too many male voters.

The other day I ran across a reader comment that said (I kid you not) that the Corean Chronicles were derivative from the Crescent City series (Sarah Maas), which is a little problematical, since Legacies, the first Corean book, was published eighteen years before the first Crescent City book. Even if the reader had meant to say that it felt derivative, that really doesn’t make much sense because the meaning of derivative is “imitative of the work of another person,” and, since I don’t have a time machine, how could I be imitating work that hadn’t even been published, let alone considering the fact that Ms. Maas was all of sixteen years old when Legacies was published.

So…barring that non-existent time machine, either Ms. Maas’s work is derivative from mine or she came up with her concept and stories independently of mine, which is most likely, although given how long my books have been in print, it’s possible she picked up a little from me.

All authors are influenced by what they’ve read, and any author who denies that is either lying or deceiving themselves, but usually, because most authors read widely, the influence of any one author is rather dilute, unless, of course, the author is actively trying to replicate another author’s style. One of the great examples of this is Zelazny’s “The Naked Matador,” in which he offers a modern version of the Medusa myth told in the style of Hemingway.

In turn, some of my books certainly have a hint of the flavor of Roger Zelazny, no doubt because I read a great deal of Zelazny when I was much younger.

This sort of reader misunderstanding is hardly new. More than twenty years ago, I came across a reader who commented that Tolkien had borrowed way too much from Terry Brooks, which is another reason why I deplore blind reader reliance on ratings and on-line comments.

I’m now receiving roughly a hundred emails a day, and sometimes more, from right-wing Republican candidates for office, from ultra-conservative right-wing groups, and from both Trump and Trump Junior. I’m even getting blasts on my cellphone, and that’s a number that I only give to a few people and certainly not to political types.

These emails are essentially devoid of even the semblance of factual accuracy, with such leads as Get Justice for all January 6th Protesters!; The Need to Impeach Joe Biden; Impeach Alejandro Mayorkas; Stop the Media Blitz to Destroy Clarence Thomas; Stop Biden’s Assault on Retirees; The Democrats Lied About January 6th; Investigate the Corrupt January 6th Committee; Expose the Democrats’ Plan to Establish Authoritarian Rule.

I even got one entitled “GOP Election Integrity Report” – which I find rather ironic coming from the party who tried to steal the 2020 election and whose leadership continues to lie about what happened.

All those don’t include near-hourly protests from Donald J. Trump about how the entire government is persecuting him and how all the judges are corrupt and impossibly biased.

And why am I getting this barrage of rightwing falsehoods?

I suspect there are two reasons. First, email barrages are cheap. I took a look at some of the bulk email services, and the rates for continuing services (most offer free services for a short time to hook the user) seem to run between 1-2 cents per name per barrage (if I read the information correctly), which is far, far cheaper than junk postal mail.

Second, so far as I can determine, it’s simply because I’m a registered Republican. It’s not because I contributed to any Republican candidates for office, because I haven’t made a contribution to any Republican candidate or organization in twenty years. I also haven’t ever contributed to any PACs, conservative or otherwise.

But if I’m getting all this bombardment of garbage propaganda, I hate to think what most Republicans are getting… and from the polling data I suspect it’s having some effect. How much we may not ever be able to determine, but the only effect it’s having on me is convincing me that the Republican Party leadership and most of its candidates make Darth Vader look like an honest man.

Last year, those of you following my blog read about the Christmas dog lawn ornament, a smiling canine with paws atop a wrapped Christmas present. That Christmas dog failed to survive the holiday season because, cheerful as his demeanor was, his internal construction was no match for three storms with close to hurricane-force winds, despite my best efforts to patch and restructure the Christmas canine’s internal bracing.

Hearing that we were bereft of a suitable holiday hound, our youngest grandchildren pled with their parents, and, low and behold, well before the time of holiday decorating, a package arrived from them – an inflatable dachshund wearing a red Santa hat and a green vest, and, of course, a wide smile. The pneumatic canine, if of a size five times that of either of our flesh and blood dachshunds, also came with lots of tie-downs and stakes to anchor him relatively close to the ground.

The scientists have already declared that 2023 was the warmest year ever, and, here in Cedar City, so was the fall, as well as December, and there were no hurricane-force winds, and no appreciable snow at all, for the first time in the thirty years we’ve lived here. So, the giant dachshund was neither shredded nor blown to the nether reaches – until New Year’s Day, which arrived with snow, followed by more snow two days later, and then even more, along with freezing temperatures.

And the poor, low-slung, giant holiday dachshund certainly won’t be blown away, even if we do get high winds, because all we can see of him now, even fully inflated, is his cheerful grin and his red Santa hat.

PS Last night (January 11th) we got another 6-8 inches of snow, totally burying the dachshund, although he just might be able to peer out later today.
Last

A number of years ago a couple we know well visited us, and the talk briefly turned to music. Now, as some readers know, my wife is a former opera singer who’s also taught music on the collegiate level for over fifty years, and who diligently keeps current on developments, techniques, and new works and new findings about old ones. The visitors were both professionals with graduate degrees, one in finance, the other in computer science, certainly well-educated in their fields. But they made a number of assertions about music that were, shall we say, less than well-founded, but became almost confrontational when my wife pointed out that what they believed wasn’t in accord with what most music scholars believed.

My wife, being well behaved, did not persist, but said after they left, “I’d never dream of impugning their statements about finance or computers, let alone be that insistent.” What she didn’t say was that we both knew they’d be outraged if she’d done the same to them.

Just because someone is an expert in a field, or perhaps two or three, doesn’t mean that they’re experts in everything, or that their judgment about matters outside their expertise is anywhere close to comparable to what they know in their own field. But in the arts and in fields where most people have some limited knowledge beyond their recognized expertise, such as writing, the environment, education, and politics, I’ve found that far too many highly educated individuals are woefully ignorant and refuse to realize it, let alone admit it, and often pontificate inaccurately even when their knowledge is limited and/or inaccurate – and then get offended when corrected.

Part of this comes from the belief many people have that because they went through school, they’re experts in education, or because they play an instrument or sing, they’re experts on music, or because they follow politics, they’re political experts. Or because they’re experts in their field, they’re experts in all fields.

Another part occurs because people have a tendency to believe that what they like is good or excellent, whether it is or not and often feel that what they believe is correct even when facts show otherwise.

Part of it is also because knowledge in many fields becomes dated, more quickly than ever before in human history, and even older experts in a field, unless they keep up to date, may not be aware of recent advances or discoveries. (Fear of becoming dated is why I subscribe to and read a wide range of periodicals dealing with science, avionics, economics, environment, politics, archaeology, and history).

But then, since when has ignorance ever stopped anyone from revealing it?

The other day I was talking to one of my children about some of the problems high school students have in applying and getting into the better colleges. While I’d heard some of this from what my wife the college professor has told me, it’s clear that times have definitely changed from when we applied for college. Back then, anyone who had a straight A average, near perfect SAT scores, was a National Merit Scholar, and had a range of other activities or outstanding achievement in one particular field, often athletics of some sort, could usually get into one of the more demanding colleges. Today, that simply isn’t enough.

Without perfect or near perfect scores on advanced math or science courses, or other demanding subjects, and test scores to back those up, without intellectually demanding outside activities, and without an overall perfect presentation on essays and questionnaires, the “merely” highly intelligent student will have a hard time impressing elite schools.

But, as I thought it over, I realized the college-seeking- and-acceptance process was just another facet of the “brave new world” in which those in the high-tech cultures of the world live. No longer is great expertise in a field – any field – enough for success. Expertise must be presented expertly and with great appeal, often with great visual appearance as well. And, in too many cases, the visual and personal appeal greatly outweigh the expertise.

My wife has seen this transformation in the world of opera. Once, a singer with a great voice and less than great physical beauty could be a star – but there hasn’t been a star diva who isn’t also close to a beauty in the last two decades, and few of the recent divas have lasted all that long compared to their predecessors.

In the popular music area, I don’t doubt that Taylor Swift can sing; but there are many singers who sing as well or better, and some of them are doubtless as attractive as Swift. What they don’t have is the strength of overall presentation.

And sometimes, the presentation is so appealing that no one seems to notice its flaws, as in the crypto-currency fraud perpetrated by Sam Bankman-Fried with his FTX cryptocurrency exchange.

Donald Trump is an outstanding performance and presentation artist, so much so that he can get away with lies, crimes, and criminal charges, although he’s done far less constructively than Joe Biden. Despite Biden’s greater achievements and lack of documented evidence of wrongdoing, almost half the USA prefers the Trump presentation to the Biden presentation.

So, I have to ask, “How’s this Presentation World thing working out for you?”

One of our Founding Fathers, John Adams, said that a republic was “a nation of laws, not of men,” meaning that men were not above the law.

And for generations, politicians and others have claimed that a distinction of the United States was that we are a nation of laws, and that no one is above the law.

Yet today, we have a former president asserting that, as president, he was and is above the law.

Legal scholars, some of them quite conservative, have also charged that Trump cannot be president again, because the presidency is forbidden to him by the wording of the Fourteenth Amendment, which declares that no one who has taken an oath to the United States and then betrayed it by taking part in an insurrection can hold public office.

Both these issues are being appealed and will likely come before the Supreme Court.

Trump supporters and populists are opposing limits on Trump, primarily on the grounds that the application of these laws would deprive the American people of a free choice.

What this “free choice” argument means, make no mistake about it, is that any man popular enough to gain great support is above the law.

Now, the Supreme Court may issue a weasel-worded opinion allowing Trump to run for President, or create a narrow exemption for him, but such an opinion, however worded, is simply an endorsement of power over law.

The Trumpists will come up with legal contortions to deny that, but the fact remains that Trump created an insurrection in an attempt to overturn a free and fair election.

They may also claim that Biden is “corrupt,” but so far, there is no evidence to prove that. More important, even if Biden were corrupt, that has no bearing in law on whether Trump should be allowed to seek the presidency again.

Also, Trump has already been convicted of sexual assault and defamation. He has also been found guilty of tax evasion and fraud. And he faces four indictments and ninety criminal charges. Equally important, he’s already stated that he’ll set aside the Constitution if it gets in the way of what he wants to do.

He has built a campaign on denying the laws, and vilifying those who want to hold him legally accountable… and gaining greater and greater popularity and power through those continuing lies.

The question before the Supreme Court is rather simple.

Will we continue as a nation of laws, however imperfectly? Or become one based solely on power and lies?

There are certainly books that deserve a one-star reader review, but there’s one phenomenon that I find amusing in a cynical way. That’s when more than ninety percent of the hundreds or thousands of reader reviews of a book are four or five stars and the one star-reviews barely register.

All of that suggests to me, in such instances, that the handful or less of readers who post one-star reviews not only don’t get the fact that the book isn’t one-star bad, but they’re screaming in print that no matter what the universe says, that their opinion is the only one that counts. That’s true in the sense that their opinion is all that matters to them.

But why post a one-star rating or review that suggests, not that the book is bad, but far more that the author didn’t do what you wanted?

No author does what every reader wants. Some authors come closer than others, and some authors who are critically acclaimed can be a sales disaster. One award-winning author published a SF novel with a 98% return rate, according to the late David Hartwell, who definitely knew. That makes The Green Progression, my worst-selling book, look like a best-seller in comparison, even if comparisons are odious, a phrase that has been around since 1440, and has been joyfully pirated by Cervantes, Marlow, Dunne, and, of course, Shakespeare.

But then, despite their insidious and often overwhelming presence in our electronic society, ratings are all too often overrated. Of the 50 highest rated books on Goodreads with more than 10,000 ratings, 39 (if I counted correctly) are part of a series of some sort. Most are genre books of some sort. And what does that indicate? Only that people rate what they like as excellent, which means that ratings are indeed excellent for determining what people like, but far less valuable for determining any form of excellence besides popular appeal.

But then, that’s why I’ve found that some highly-reader-rated books left me cold enough that I never finished them. Unfortunately, I’ve found a number of books with great reviews from critics that I only finished through sheet willpower.

Here’s a letter I’d like to send, but which I’ll just post, because it will have the same impact. That is, no impact at all.

Dear Media –

Would you please stop giving Donald Trump moment-to-moment continuous campaign exposure?

Are you so stupid to think that all your negative coverage of Trump is doing anything but boosting his image – or perhaps we’re stupid in believing that you’re interested in presenting the news rather than obsessed with gathering every last viewer and every last penny of advertising revenue, regardless of the effect on the nation… and likely the world.

Like every bully, Trump’s reveling in the attention, and every attack results in more voters and more donations.

You’ve even aired shows describing that effect, but you keep up attacking and analyzing, as if that would do anything. The only thing that would have any possible effect would be a Trump news blackout or brief bulletins saying, “Trump Made Another Legal Motion Just Like All the Others.”

But you’ll keep on, regardless of the consequences, and I won’t even be able to tell you that I told you so, because once he becomes President, he’ll likely abolish you as Fake News, unless you can fawn enough to become his de facto ministry of propaganda.

Sincerely,

What made me think about this was something my publisher, Tom Doherty, told me more than twenty-five years ago, when I worried about a not-so-good review one of my books had gotten.

He said, “There’s no such thing as a bad review. Even bad reviews increase sales. The attention helps.”

For years, I had my doubts, but Donald Trump has proved that Tom Doherty was right.

Part I

The Jewish people have had a difficult time in holding on to their identity and their presence in what is now Israel. Back in the eighth century BCE, a portion of their population was expelled from Samaria (Israel) over the period from 733 BCE to 722 BCE. That was followed by the Babylonian captivity in the early sixth century BCE. The Jews revolted against the Roman Empire in 66 BCE in the First Jewish-Roman War, which culminated in the Siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of most of Jerusalem and the Second Temple. In 132 CE, Bar Kokhba led a rebellion against Hadrian, and after four years of warfare, the uprising was suppressed, and Jews were forbidden access to Jerusalem.

The Jewish community in Palestine regrouped and remained numerous, until the Byzantine–Sasanian War in 614 CE, when Jewish rebels aided the Persians in capturing Jerusalem, where the Jews were permitted autonomous rule until 617 when the Persians reneged on their alliance. After Byzantine Emperor Heraclius promised to restore Jewish rights, the Jews aided him in ousting the Persians, after which Heraclius subsequently conducted a general massacre of the Jewish population.

Following the Muslim conquest of the Levant area, Jews were initially allowed to re-enter Jerusalem, but subsequent taxes and restrictions on non-Muslims significantly reduced the Jewish population. Depredations by European crusaders and others over the years further reduced the Jewish population so that by the beginning of the Ottoman Empire in 1517, there were only some 5,000 Jews in Palestine.

Matters weren’t that much better in much of Europe. In 1290, English King Edward I expelled all Jews from England. Shortly thereafter, Philip IV of France ordered all Jews expelled from France, with their property to be sold at public auction, and some 125,000 Jews were forced to leave. Then in 1315, Louis X lifted the ban on Jews, but later in 14th century Jews were accused of poisoning wells in France, and five thousand Jews were killed, after which Charles IV expelled all French Jews. Spain expelled all Jews in 1492. A great many Jews fled eastward and ended up in Poland and Lithuania.

In Russia, in the early 19th century, matters became worse, due to a series of Czarist decrees, beginning with the Pale of Settlement, establishing where Jews were allowed to live, which immediately uprooted 100,000 Jews, and forbade the Jews from living in any of the main cities. Next came the Cantonist Decrees which effectively forced military service and “indoctrination” on the Jewish population. By the end of the 19th century and into the 20th, Russian pogroms were intermittently ongoing.

The last and most horrific of attacks on Jews, of course, was the Holocaust, which almost no nation in the world even mentioned while it was occurring and which killed six million Jews, as well as five million others, the Nazis found “undesirable.

This summary is far from inclusive and doesn’t include the hundreds if not thousands of smaller incidents since 1945,

Part II (which may seem irrelevant, but isn’t)

The United States has mythologized itself as a bastion of freedom and a “shining city upon a hill,” and more than a few (older) histories have described North America before colonization by Europeans as a wilderness and sparsely filled with savages.

In fact, neither was ever true. Recent studies show that, before Europeans arrived, North America likely had between ten and twenty million inhabitants, that is, before gun powder, horses, greed, and European diseases ravaged the continent and destroyed more than ninety percent of the population because they lacked immunity to European diseases and because they didn’t have the tools of power – especially usable beasts of burden. It wasn’t that they didn’t know. There’s evidence that Indians were smelting copper on the banks of Lake Superior 6,000 years ago. But they gave it up because, without any supporting technology and beasts of burden, it wasn’t cost or labor effective, which also limited the development of weapons.

Historically speaking, what human beings can do without domesticated animal power is extremely limited, and there weren’t any powerful and domesticable animals in the western hemisphere.

So the indigenous peoples couldn’t compete with Europeans, initially. But some indigenous tribes went to work, and by 1830, the “Five Civilized Tribes” (the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee, and Seminole) began to compete on the white man’s terms… and were successful enough that Southern whites got “good ole boy” President Andy Jackson to pass the Indian Removal Act (which the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional and which finding Jackson ignored) and to use power – the U.S. Army, in fact – to force 60,000 Indians onto the Trail of Tears, killing thousands along the way.

But this abuse of white power wasn’t limited to the indigenous peoples.

In the century after the Civil War, almost every time a successful black business community developed, white men destroyed it. In 1921 mobs of white residents destroyed homes and businesses of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma, burning and destroying more than 35 square blocks of one of the wealthiest black communities in the United States, colloquially known as “Black Wall Street.” More than 800 people were admitted to hospitals, and as many as 300 may have died. While the most notable massacre occurred in Tulsa, there were at least fifty others, with twenty-five occurring between 1917 and 1923, with an estimated death toll in the thousands.

The Point of All This?

History is littered with discarded or ignored principles that fell by the wayside or were pushed there by the unbridled desire for wealth or power or both, and the history of even great nations has more than a few despicable acts.

No people can rely on the promises of others unless it has at least a modicum of power.

This is a fact that nearly 3,000 years have taught the Jewish people, and asking them to forgo that power when they’ve been betrayed over 3,000 years is not only unwise, but, frankly, insulting, even if Netanyahu is little more than a corrupt street thug in tailored suits.

Despite both George Santayana and Winston Churchill declaring that those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them, most people really don’t learn anything from history. They’re more inclined to agree with Henry Ford, who declared, “History is more or less bunk.”

Not only that, but even when they’re faced with great horrors, unless it affects them, most people are inclined to do nothing.

In the time of Hitler, most Germans did nothing to oppose the death camps that killed millions of Jews and others classed as “undesirable” by the Nazis. Neither did most Poles or most French people. Americans, for the most part, ignored the genocide, at least until Germany was defeated.

Few if any Turks did anything to oppose the killing of Armenians, and many Turks still deny that genocide. The list of genocides is long, and most people know about only a small fraction, if that, unless they have personal, familial, or cultural experience.

Hitler’s death camps weren’t the first or only time Jewish people were threatened. Pogroms were common in Russia from the second half of the nineteenth century well into the twentieth century. Some of the bloodiest pogroms took place in England in the late twelfth century, which culminated with Edward I issuing an Edict of Expulsion that removed all Jews from England and forbid their presence until it was effectively revoked in the 1650s.

Given more than two thousand years of attacks and persecution, and given that history shows that almost no one steps up to prevent genocide, although there’s often futile handwringing and a great deal of tears [many of them of the crocodile variety] after the fact, is it any wonder that Israel has reacted as it has?

Exactly what is Israel supposed to do? Be “lenient” and give Hamas yet another chance, when all of Hamas and the majority of Palestinians seek Israel’s total destruction?

Too many of those condemning Israeli tactics have forgotten or never learned that defeating someone who wants to destroy you is anything but bloodless. Among the forgotten or ignored knowledge is the fact that over 600,000 German civilians, including 75,000 children, died from allied bombing in the effort to defeat Hitler, and, back then, Americans certainly weren’t bemoaning German civilian deaths when “American boys” were dying for their country. Or is it somehow different when “Israeli boys and girls” are dying for theirs?

A year and a little less than ten months ago, Russia launched a brutal attempt to crush Ukraine. Since then, the Ukrainians have slowly reclaimed some but not all of the territory seized by the Russians.

In late November, the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has confirmed that to date, more than 10,000 civilians have been killed, and more than 18,500 injured, since Russia began the invasion. At least 300 children have died, and that doesn’t include thousands forcibly removed by Russian troops to Russia or Russian-controlled territory.

British military intelligence reports that Russian troop casualties are in the range of 120,000 Russian dead and 180,000 injured, while Ukrainian troops killed or wounded are in the range of 80,000. That doesn’t count the nearly three million displaced people or the scores of towns leveled by the fighting.

Yet, if one follows the U.S. news media, since October 7th, when Hamas attacked Israel, it’s as if the Russia-Ukraine conflict has almost vanished.

To date, in the conflict between Hamas and Israel, Israel has reported 1,400 deaths, the vast majority of which occurred on or from events on October 7th.

The Palestinian Authority’s Government Media Office has reported total deaths of 14,800, including 6,000 children and 4,000 women. This unverified number has been printed everywhere, but is currently likely exaggerated, given the past unreliability of figures coming from Gaza.

So… why has the Russia/Ukraine war almost vanished from the U.S. media.

Partly because it’s a grinding and ongoing war with no end in sight, and the U.S. media consumers are tired of hearing about it, but mostly because the Israel-Gaza conflict is so much more exciting, with hidden tunnels, the surprise that the IDF was caught so unaware, and all the possible deaths – and kidnapping – of children, not to mention the “bombing” of a hospital that wasn’t an Israeli bombing, and the humanitarian crisis that is more easily captured for media.

Of course, there’s a definite similarity, in that Hamas and Putin have both expressed the desire to crush the people they attacked.

But still…won’t what happens in Ukraine have a much greater long-term effect on Europe and the United States than what happens in Gaza?

Or is it that the news media are so narrow-minded or profit-driven that they can only cover one crisis at a time?

The other day I read the prequel to a very popular fantasy that I’d enjoyed a year or so ago, but somewhere around halfway through the book I knew exactly how it would end. Well, except for the death of the largely-out-of-view-until-the-last-chapters villain, whose way of death was definitely a surprise, but not quite enough to overshadow the feeling that the “emotional plot” was identical to the first book.

That brought up the question of where one draws the line between a novel set in the same world that, by necessity, shares a certain resemblance to others in a series, and a novel that is far too predictable.

Now, it’s pretty clear that, in books that have the same protagonist, the author isn’t likely to kill that protagonist in book one. I don’t consider that an overly predictable flaw.

Readers being readers, I doubt that few draw that line in the same place. That’s why some readers find some of my books too predictable, because my competent protagonists always find a way, if indirect, or excessively bloody, to obtain their goal, or a different goal that they never considered at the beginning of the book. Perhaps I’m too grounded in reality, but I’ve never seen someone who “lucks” into money or power, or who is strongly flawed, really make much of it in real life – not over their entire life (we’ll see how that works with Trump).

And sometimes, when readers get upset with predictability, it’s for the wrong reason. In a lower-tech world, when a leader first uses a significant innovation in weapons or tactics, each land he or she conquers will use the same old predictable tactics against the attacker – and usually fail – because no one’s seen them before and because, first, communications are slow, and, second, it’s often difficult to describe new tactics and weapons until you’re faced with them, and then it’s a little late. This problem becomes less and less of a difficulty with higher technology and faster and more in-depth communications systems.

In the end, every author has to find a balance between predictability and surprise, because too much surprise can be unbelievable to readers and too little makes the book too predictable. But readers have differing thresholds for determining what’s too unbelievable, even in fantasy, and what’s too predictable… and that’s why what’s too predictable for one reader can be just right for another, and why reader recommendations need to be taken with the proverbial grain of salt.

There are two basic problems with fanatics. First is the extremism of their beliefs, an extremism that they are fully convinced is anything but extreme. Second is their belief that everyone should be forced to follow all of their beliefs to the chapter, verse, and letter.

I don’t have a problem with other people’s beliefs – with three provisos: (1) no one gets hurt, physically or psychologically; (2) any adult is free to leave at any time; (3) no one is forced to conform to their beliefs, beyond the “normal” requirements of non-criminality, normal requirements being those agreed to by virtually all societies.

The attack on Israel by Hamas, or for that matter, the Nazis’ attack on western European civilization illustrates a great problem, and that is to stop the attack of a fanatical culture, you have to destroy it. Hamas continues to declare that they will never stop until Israel is destroyed. Israel attempted to contain Hamas within Gaza, and we’ve just seen how that turned out. Hitler refused to stop until Germany was flattened, and his death camps were killing those he claimed were “undesirables” almost to the moment when allied troops arrived.

There’s effectively no compromise with fanatics, and more reasonable people often have great difficulty understanding that the only thing that restrains fanatics is force. Within a society, the force of law may work, at least until the fanatics declare that they won’t respect the law in some fashion or another or until they take over the government and impose their beliefs on everyone else.

But this leads to the problem of those opposing the fanatics having to use massive force against the fanatics, with exactly what’s happening in Gaza… or what happened in Europe during WWII.

And, frankly, I don’t see this changing.

Here in the U.S., the far right is insisting on imposing a strict evangelical Christian set of beliefs on a nation where the majority of Americans don’t share their views, and they’re using laws and lies to do so, because they fervently believe that their way is the only “true way.” That’s why the House of Representatives is essentially paralyzed – because fanatics won’t compromise – unless forced to do so.

Over the past year or so, more and more Americans have been complaining about inflation, yet, on the surface, the usual statistics don’t seem to support those claims. But that’s only on the surface.

In September 2023, prices had increased by 3.7 percent compared to September 2022, according to the 12-month percentage change in the consumer price index, down from a monthly high of 9.1% in June 2022.

The problem with the statistics is that they only show the rate of price increases, not the comparison of real prices. For example, in October of this year food prices were up “only” 3.7%, but what that doesn’t reflect is the real pocketbook impact. The average cost of a pound of bacon was $5.34 in March 2020; today it’s around $7.25. That’s a 36% increase in two and a half years.

Gasoline prices have bounced around over the past three years, but even with recent price decreases, gasoline prices per gallon are 42% higher than three years ago.

For people who were already having trouble making ends meet, dealing with price increases often results in more credit card purchases. In March of 2022, the interest rate on the average credit card was 14.6%; today it’s 21.2%. With a credit card balance of $8,000 (the national average), the additional monthly interest expense is almost $50, or $600 annually.

At the same time, Americans keep racking up bigger credit-card balances. In the third quarter, the country’s credit-card debt burden hit a new record high of $1.08 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That was up $154 billion from the same period in 2022, the biggest year-to-year jump since the Fed started collecting the data in 1999. So, it’s scarcely surprising that, according to a national survey by WalletHub, 56% of all Americans say they have more credit card debt than they did 12 months ago.

All that has created, as the polls reveal, both a growing concern by most people about price increases and, apparently, a lack of understanding, particularly by Democrat politicians, who are looking more at the wrong statistics.

Just who’s behind all the talk and poll figures about Joe Biden being too old or the cause of higher prices? While some Republicans have mentioned it, they’re too smart to mention it, because Trump’s certainly no spring chicken, only three years younger than Biden. Nor are the rock-solid Democrats saying much. According to various polls, the people behind the ageism and ignorance that’s torpedoing Biden are largely unaffiliated voters or sometime Democrats who don’t understand economics or history.

They complain about inflation and blame it on Biden, but he didn’t start it. And, as I discussed earlier, the largest single component behind inflation is the massive increase in corporate profits and high executive pay. But those who oppose Biden and vote for the Republicans are voting for the interests and actors who caused the inflation they hate, as well as for the politicians who don’t want to give women the rights to their own bodies.

Because he’s actually going against his own party, Biden hasn’t said much, but in fact he’s done more to reduce illegal immigration than Trump ever did, and he’s done more to start revitalizing basic industry than any president in years.

But people are angry about high prices, even though inflation has moderated, and they’re going to blame the President, despite the fact that he’s not the one who triggered it. Some Republicans, like Nikki Haley, actually admit that Republicans share the blame, but most of them blame it on Biden, because it’s easier.

And, as for energy, the only real energy Trump shows is to blame everyone else at high volume. He still doesn’t have a practical plan for anything.

But almost half the country swallows his high-volume non-stop blame game, just like they feast on mass-produced “music” that features high -volume percussion and endless repetition of unintelligible lyrics. A certain similarity, perhaps?

This past week, Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of various financial crimes that could carry a potential sentence of over a hundred years, because he essentially created false money through his crypto-currency schemes, causing millions if not billions of dollars in losses. No one got killed, and the vast majority of those losers were speculators trying to make a quick buck. But Bankman-Fried is a crook, should face time in jail, and almost no one thinks otherwise.

Many of our elected federal representatives are demanding that a senator who took lots of money from Egyptian sources and likely influenced defense contract funding be removed from office. They’re also not too pleased with a different congressman who apparently broke every campaign financing law in the book as well as illegally diverted funds for personal use.

But, in comparison, there’s this fellow who’s already been convicted of financial fraud and tax evasion, been found guilty of sexual assault (twice) in a civil lawsuit, who’s stiffed contractors who worked for him, used bankruptcy as a tool to bolster his person wealth, who tried to overthrow a fair and free election, and who now faces four criminal indictments with over a hundred separate charges – and he’s the leading candidate for president, and forty percent of the country thinks he’s wonderful.

Exactly what does that say about both the American people and politicians who back Donald Trump?

The new House Speaker, Mike Johnson, has unveiled his proposal for providing aid to Israel, and it definitely meets the far-right’s approval. The bill would provide $14.3 billion for Israel and obtain the funding by cutting $14.3 billion from funds already provided to modernize the IRS and to provide staff to go after wealthy tax evaders. It also doesn’t deal with aid to Ukraine.

The House passed this proposed legislation late on Thursday, despite opposition from the Senate and the President’s statement that he’d veto that bill if it ever reached him, because it will cost more than a clean bill and because aid to Ukraine is important.

In point of fact, aid to Ukraine is likely more critical to U.S. interests than is aid to Israel, given that Ukraine is the tipping point for stopping Russian efforts to recreate a larger Russian “empire” and one that will most certainly take over smaller nations on its periphery if not stopped in Ukraine. Failure to address Ukrainian aid in a timely and uncomplicated way will likely cost both the U.S. and Ukraine a great deal more in the future, but “Magic Mike” has already indicated he’ll tie other right-wing priorities to Ukraine aid.

Practically speaking, the proposal as Johnson has presented and as passed by the House may well be politically appealing to the far right, but it represents partisanship carried to an extreme that’s not only totally against U.S. interests, but counter to the professed goals of the far-right.

How can that be?

The far-right claims it’s against higher taxes and wants to balance the federal budget, but it’s hard to balance the budget when the people who have the most money are avoiding paying what they owe and the IRS doesn’t have the resources and the staff to pursue them.

But then, the far-right not only doesn’t understand international problems, it also can’t count, or won’t, despite Johnson’s rhetoric about fiscal soundness. Allowing tax cheating to continue and having taxpayers wait for hours or days to get answers from the IRS because of outdated equipment, inadequate funding, and overworked and insufficient staff is hardly a recipe for fiscal responsibility.

Below are a few terms consistently thrown out as Republican talking points or values. Beneath each term is the actual meaning.

Smaller Government

Up to a 30% cut in virtually all programs benefitting lower income Americans; less federal funding for infrastructure and the environment; maintaining subsidies and tax breaks for wealthy individuals and corporations; cuts in foreign aid and military aid to countries such as Ukraine and nations bordering Russia and China, except for Taiwan, because we need their computer chips.

Balanced Budget

A budget balanced on the backs of the poorest Americans, with more tax cuts for the affluent and corporations.

Reducing Federal Regulations

Only reducing those regulations that cost corporations money or require them to protect the environment.

Traditional/Family Values

Emphasis on traditional two-parent family; opposition to equal pay and equal rights for women; banning books and media that depict anything other than “traditional” values; opposition to educational courses that teach unpleasant but proven facts about American society and history; opposition to anything depicting other than heterosexual relationships or life styles; opposition to a woman’s right to choose in the matter of abortion, often even when a pregnancy could kill the mother.

Immigration/Secure Borders

No more immigrants are welcome, unless they’re multi-millionaires or billionaires.

Unconstitutional

Anything proposed by Democrats.

The Republicans in the House have elected a new Speaker – Mike Johnson. By any definition, Johnson is a far-right idealogue – election denier, extreme evangelical, anti-abortion without exception, America-firster who voted against aid to Ukraine, who opposed same-sex marriage and any LBGTQ civil rights, and who continues to back Donald Trump with bogus claims of election fraud of various sorts.

Like all idealogues, for all of his genial soft-spoken manner, he’s an absolutist. Everything is black or white. And that’s the biggest problem with absolutists in politics. Life is filled with shades of gray, and trying to force everything into black and white always results in tyranny, as well as a denial of any facts that don’t fit within the absolutists’ beliefs.

Is Johnson a true idealogue, or an ambitious politician using ideology to gain great power? Or both? In practice, it doesn’t matter. The results will be the same, because idealogues don’t compromise. That should be obvious from the voting patterns of Republicans in the U.S. House.

I don’t see Johnson compromising unless he’s forced to by the defection of moderate Republicans, but if those moderates do defect, the Republican establishment will attempt to handle them in the same fashion as they did with Liz Cheney. If Johnson can hold the House in line, he’s the type to bring the government to a halt until he gets his way, just as the far-right has paralyzed the U.S. House until they got their way.

That kind of mindset can destroy democracy under the guise of saving it, and Mike Johnson is just the type to lead such a crusade.