Or… it’s just a job. Anyone who thinks either of these thoughts often, perhaps more than once, should be considered for flogging, a firing squad, or cruel and unusual punishment. Especially if they utter those thoughts out loud. That won’t happen, of course, because one can’t punish someone for what they haven’t said, or, in the case of these two utterances, for those particular words.

I cannot recall exactly how many times I’ve heard someone, usually an executive, businessperson, politician, or administrator, make the comment, usually after being confronted about the impact of an act or policy they’ve just put in place, “It’s not personal.” Or “Don’t take it personally.” None of them seem to get or perhaps want to admit that ANY act or policy that affects someone else adversely is in fact very personal, whether intended or not. That’s not to say that sometimes such acts are necessary. Reductions in force when sales have plummeted are often necessary, but claiming it’s not personal is not only cowardly and despicable, but also reinforces the idea that those affected are not even “persons”; such words suggest that they’re disposable widgets.

Likewise, for someone to excuse poor performance, lack of performance, or lack of initiative in doing a job with the statement that “it’s just a job,” is equally despicable and dishonorable. Someone is paying for the job to be done. If that job has to be redone, or doing it late or not at all creates problems for someone else, whoever didn’t do the job right has committed a form of theft. Again, I’ve heard similar words, and certainly seen people acting as if they’d said those words, all too many times in recent years. Part of that may be because those acting in that fashion have been treated like disposable widgets, but can’t get, or feel they can’t get, better jobs or positions, and they feel disposed to do the minimum required, because, to them, it’s “just a job.”

The bottom line is simple, and all too often forgotten. Jobs are not just jobs, and anything that affects the people who are doing them or affected by them is indeed personal. And that’s something that too many employers and organizational bureaucrats have forgotten, which has led to too many workers taking the same attitude – and, in the end, everyone suffers.

I’m often asked about how I write, and while, like most writers, I’m perfectly happy to flaunt my knowledge and expertise, one of the things that I’ve learned over a long career is that almost every successful writer is unique in the way he or she approaches the craft. Oh, there are similarities, and a certain degree of grammatical competency is a necessity, but there are hundreds of variations on the theme of writerly success, and most people seem to understand this.

What most people don’t understand is that what is true in writing is also true in all professions requiring skill and thought. Once one gets beyond the mastering the necessary and basic competencies, the variations among the great and the successful are considerable. Again, the result must be outstanding, but how one uses competencies to achieve the result can differ considerably.

All that is why I’m appalled at the current educational craze for quantification and assessment along standardized lines. Using a building metaphor… that’s like saying you need to use a saw twenty percent of the time with a certain motion, a hammer thirty percent, a trowel fifteen percent, etc., regardless of what you’re building or what materials you’re using. Good and great teachers come in all flavors and talents, as do mediocre and poor ones, and trying to shoehorn teachers and students into the same methodology is a recipe for disaster.

Those who favor testing as a determinant don’t do much better, because tests essentially measure the use of certain skills in a short time period and the retention and regurgitation of information under pressure. That’s absolutely necessary in some professions, and counterproductive in others. Test are useful in measuring certain fundamental skills, such as mathematics, grammar, reading, basic history and government, but far less useful in determining how well students will apply those skills in the real world. Winston Churchill was an indifferent student at anything that bored him, but ended up winning a Nobel Prize in literature for his History of the English Speaking Peoples and The Second World War, not to mention becoming prime minister of Great Britain.

Then there is the fact that, whatever the testing methodology, it will play to the strengths of some students and against the strengths, or weaknesses, or others, while not necessarily measuring true ability. Those who think swiftly do comparatively better on objective tests, and may do less well on essay tests requiring longer concentration and focus, while slower, but surer thinkers may not do well on any form of timed test.

Yet it seems that all too many of those involved in education in the United States, whether as teachers, administrators, politicians, or parents, are looking for a magic solution that will instantly tell who is learning well and who is teaching well.

There’s no such thing, not instantly. The results are there, but they take years to show up, when it becomes clear that significant numbers of students from a school, or students who learned from a specific teacher or professor, make their marks on the world in some fashion or another. In this impatient society, that just won’t do. We need to know… now!

And so, flavour du jour solutions come and go, and rather than adapting a system that generally worked well for white middle-class and upper class students to a broader range of students, that system is being replaced with another, every few years, because no one can tell what worked and what didn’t. New buzzwords and approaches inundate the educational community almost every year, and yet there’s little improvement in the overall performance of American students, even while the “reformers” ignore those schools that have actually gotten results because they don’t fit the current new idea or they try to replicate on a large scale the results of a phenomenal teacher, ignoring the fact that great teachers are individuals and cannot be cloned, just as great writers cannot be cloned.

Excellence is individual and unquantifiable; mediocrity is shared and easily quantified.

I’m definitely a Type A, sometimes a super type A. I feel like I’m late if I don’t arrive somewhere at least a few minutes early, and especially more than that at the airport.

One of the things that bothers me, sometimes absolutely infuriates me, is waiting for things that have been promised by a certain time or date and don’t arrive or aren’t completed. I get especially angry when there’s no explanation or when the explanation is clearly a farce. I understand that disasters happen, and that people have personal or family crises upon occasion. But I get very tired of people who have them all the time… especially when they have the same predictable excuses all the time.

I have a friend who’s a contractor, and the bane of his existence is subcontractors. Now, he has his own crew that can do much of the work, including demolition, framing, finish work, tiling, and a number of other aspects of construction, but he’s essentially a custom homebuilder and very detail oriented. He has his preferred list of subcontractors, but he’s made the point more than once that in terms of quality and being on time, the “preferred” list, with a few exceptions, consists of the most reliable of the unreliable.

I also understand, having been in the consulting business, where all too much is wanted on short notice, and where one gets paid only for work delivered, and usually as late as possible [otherwise known as “wise cash flow management” on the part of the person or business who pays you] that there’s a huge temptation to overcommit because there’s no certainty as to when and what the next contract will be or what it will entail.

But when someone makes you wait for a product or service you’ve contracted for, or even comes late to meetings consistently, it’s either a sign of poor personal management or a statement that the individual who makes you wait regards their time as more valuable than yours. Too many doctors fall into that trap, but they’re certainly not the only ones. As I indicated above, even the best intentions can be derailed by events beyond our control, but when they derailed more often than not, it’s time to look at the way in which you’re operating…

And if you’re an author, you’d better be as good as George R. R. Martin if you’re going to make your publisher and readers wait for years for the next book.

Almost thirty years ago, I attended a science fiction and fantasy convention on the east coast, where a then-popular writer was toastmaster, and he made witty remarks, and was in fact the toast of the convention. Around fifteen years ago I attended a large national convention in the Rocky Mountain area, where, again, another locally popular writer was toastmaster and made witty remarks and was generally fawned over. What I’ve found interesting was that the first writer sold a handful of books, then a few written-for-hire Star Wars books, and then essentially vanished. The second writer sold one book, had a falling out with his editor, switched publishers and his second book flopped miserably, but remained a “celebrity’ for another few years before fading from view.

These two examples represent perhaps the extreme, but their cases are far from rare. There are other authors who sold well for decades and were never “celebrities,” except perhaps to a few hundred fans… and tens of thousands of readers who never thought of them as celebrities, just good writers whose books those readers bought… and bought. And then there are the handful of “rock-star” writers whose few public appearances at signings engender lines around blocks and limits on how many books the author will sign for any one individual.

From what I’ve observed over the years, there’s only a marginal relationship between having a celebrity “personality” or public attractiveness and being a good or popular writer, because I’ve seen poor writers treated as celebrities, and good ones who sell well but not spectacularly almost ignored at conventions and signings. Yes, there are good writers who are celebrities, and some are handsome or beautiful, but some are not.

The most obvious problem with being a celebrity is that it requires time, and in that respect, I’ve been most fortunate to be modestly recognized, but never a celebrity. If celebrities aren’t available to be celebrities their appeal fades quickly. At the same time, if celebrity is based on writing books, the time required to appear takes time away from writing, and fewer books get written… and celebrity fades, unless, of course, it’s fanned by a multi-million dollar television spin-off. Then too, for some writers, adulation and praise goes to their heads, and they become, as one publisher put it, “uneditable,” which usually lowers the quality of what they write.

Over time, though, one way or another, the celebrity fades. It fades more quickly for those writers with less ability, but it fades for all “celebrity” writers… and in the end, the books have to stand on their own, and some do. Most don’t.

So if you have the skill and talent and good luck to become a celebrity writer, enjoy the ride while it lasts, because that part of your writing career always ends before you think it will.

I recently ran across a Pew Research Center national poll about the police actions and killing of Michael Brown, the eighteen year old black male shot by a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer. The poll’s results were interesting, in that roughly 2/3 of black respondents said that the police had gone too far, while only 1/3 of white respondents felt that way. Now, many people would immediately claim that such differing reactions represent either white racism or black overreaction. While some of the white response likely is racist, and some of the black response overreaction, I have strong doubts that majority of the difference between whites and blacks represents those at all. I suspect it represents something far deeper than hatred, racism, or prejudice, not that I’m condoning or excusing any of that.

The problem with ascribing the differing reaction of whites and blacks to racism is that racism and overreaction are too simple an answer, and, more important, attacking the problem by trying to eliminate racism or overreaction won’t solve the deeper difficulty lying behind that difference in opinion.

From what I’ve observed, both directly and indirectly, over a moderately long life, and what is also revealed by various studies, is that, in general, but not necessarily in all individual cases, blacks and whites react differently to authority, particularly “white” authority. Like it or not, white authority has a history with the various black subcultures of supporting white suppression of black rights. It doesn’t matter that this white authority today ranges from not very much different than in the past in some areas to close to equal treatment in others. The perception by all too many blacks, particularly young black males, is that police authority is to be distrusted, avoided, and sometimes even flouted. Given history, and given the way the enforcement and provisions of law, particularly drug laws, where drugs prominent in the black drug culture receive far stiffer sentences than the same drugs used by whites, if in different formulations, this distrust, anger, and resentment has a basis, if sometimes tenuous, in fact.

On the other hand, whites, again in general, but not necessarily in all individual cases, have a far more positive experience in dealing with law enforcement.

This difference in outlook further gets exacerbated by economics and by reality. Again, like it or not, police are far more likely to encounter violence and life-threatening situations in economically depressed areas, and far more areas where blacks live are economically depressed. Then add to that that young males are more likely to act out and do stupid things than any other age group, and unemployed young males even more so, and add onto that the factor that a greater percentage of young black males are unemployed. All of these factors make police far more wary and frankly skeptical of groups of young blacks. That skepticism, especially when overtly displayed, in turn fuels resentment and anger among minorities, especially blacks. By the same token, the often seemingly arrogant reaction by young blacks when stopped or questioned by police doesn’t make matters any better… understandable as that reaction is when those stopped are innocent.

All of the outcry over Michael Brown also tends to ignore that being a police officer in the United States is a dangerous job. According to FBI figures, over the last ten years, on average 170 police officers died every year in the line of duty, roughly half of whom were shot. More than 50,000 officers were assaulted each year, and more than 15,000 were injured every year. With 300 million firearms in circulation and a long history of violence, the United States is not the safest nation in the world for police officers, and the majority of areas with high levels of economically depressed blacks are even more dangerous. The leading cause of death for black males between the ages of 15 and 44 is homicide, and in something like 90% of those shootings, the shooter was black.

Compounding this problem is that the statistics show police distrust, in general, nation-wide results in black arrest rates that are far higher than for whites – even when the statistics show that blacks are no more prone to certain types of law-breaking than are whites. Marijuana use rates, for example, are the same for whites and blacks, and with more than six times as many whites as blacks in the U.S, one might think that the arrest rates would be similar, but a New York Times study noted that blacks are four times more likely to be arrested and charged than whites.

In an interesting counterpoint, there have been demonstrations, but no violence to date, in Salt Lake, where last week a “non-white” police officer shot and killed an unarmed 20 year old white male. Unlike in Ferguson, the officer was wearing a body-camera, although the photos have not yet been made public. I do think that body and police car cameras would be a very good start in Missouri, and everywhere, since at the very least, they would eliminate much of the speculation about who did what and when. So would better training in how to approach individuals about whom police have concerns. Again, studies show that greater politeness by police actually reduces violence and confrontation, which actually makes the police safer as well. More ethnic balance in police forces is also useful, particularly in places like Ferguson, where only three out of fifty-three officers are black.

Nonetheless, with all these factors in play, in some respects, it’s amazing that there aren’t more incidents between police and young black males. I frankly don’t have an answer, easy or otherwise, but I do have great concerns that the extremists on both sides are making matters worse, one side in demonizing the police and the other in demonizing young black males. Both sides have legitimate concerns and worries, but a “them” versus “us” confrontation isn’t going to do much to improve things in Ferguson… or anywhere else.

Except that the vast majority of people not only don’t praise excellence; they don’t even recognize it. They only think they do. This is to a greater or lesser extent in all fields, even in science.

In 1912 the German geologist Alfred Wegener proposed the idea of continental drift, now called plate tectonics, and he was ridiculed by the scientific community. It wasn’t until more than 20 years after his death in 1930 that his ideas gained credibility, and are now accepted by that same science community. It goes the other way as well. When he died in office in 1923, President Warren Harding was beloved and respected. The revelations and scandals that followed showed his ineptitude and the corruption of his administration, including the infamous Teapot Dome scandal in which Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall received substantial bribes to secretly lease a Naval Oil Reserve to private oil companies for nominal rates.

Study after study has shown that taller men are thought to be more competent and that they’re paid more than shorter men. The same studies show that there’s absolutely no correlation between height and performance, yet people consistently praise and reward taller men consistently more than shorter men.

I’ve seen the same thing in writing. Readers praise what is popular, and few seem to realize that popularity and excellence are not synonymous. On the other side, I’ve seen academicians and critics praise tedious and obscure prose as excellent because they apparently believe that complexity per se equates to excellence. Certainly, the World Science Fiction awards (the Hugos) have become, if they always weren’t, a popularity contest among attendees of the convention.

My wife, who is a professor of music, opera director, and performer, sees the same thing among music lovers. When she’s explained why a particular piece of music is excellent, she’s often gotten the reaction of, “I know what’s good,” from people who have virtually no background in music. They know what they like, and that’s what they think is good.

This is a close to universal human trait. When most people say that they praise excellence, what most of them are praising is at best the appearance of excellence. What they praise is charisma, presentation, appearance, or whatever else appeals to their tastes, biases, and preconceptions.

Paradoxically, that trait may also explain the popularity of sports. Charisma doesn’t make you faster if you’re running track or a competitive swimmer. It doesn’t score points if you’re a football or basketball player. Being tall helps, but it doesn’t make you a better tennis player or basketball player. For all the faults, and there are many, in amateur and professional sports, excellence is largely decided on performance, unlike in government, politics, and business, where a minimal level of competence and a maximum level of appearance and charisma will get most people further than maximum ability combined with merely average levels of charisma and appearance.

So… think about it when you’re judging people… or art, writing, music, or any number of things. Are you judging the actual excellence, or the appeal to you?

The word “mindset” is so descriptive. The most common definition is something along the lines of “an established set of attitudes held by an individual.” We all have mindsets of one sort or another, beliefs or attitudes, but the most dangerous problem with any mindset is that too often long-established or firmly held mindsets make it impossible to see beyond one’s own assumptions and beliefs. I’m not advocating either changing or not changing one’s beliefs when they come in conflict with another’s, but I am saying that, for all too many people, their mindset makes it impossible for them to see problems, especially problems that others face.

In a previous blog, I mentioned an individual who said that rising sea levels weren’t that big a problem – that people could move. This individual lives in a wide-open state with good highways where the poorest individuals have at least limited freedom of movement. This person was literally unable to comprehend that someone living on an island in the Maldives or any other of innumerable low-lying islands has nowhere to move, and most have no funds with which to move, and that, these days, very few countries will accept such refugees.

My wife the professor attended a meeting dealing with the problems of sexually abused women in certain Middle Eastern countries and was astounded to hear college-educated women ask such questions as, “Why don’t they leave?” “Why do they put up with that?” Some of these women, and they were not unintelligent, could not comprehend the fact that in more than a few strict Islamic societies, women are chattels, with no rights beyond what their father or husband grants them. Without rights, they cannot own property, and even their clothes belong to a man. If they are raped, even if they fight valiantly and they are innocent of anything except being a victim, they can be killed because they have “dishonored” their husband and family. This isn’t hyperbole, but fact, yet it is so far from the experience, especially of “liberated” and privileged Americans, that many cannot accept that fact and place a certain level of responsibility upon the “dishonored” women. And even today, as recent statements by at least one American politician have demonstrated, some American males still manifest a version of blaming the victim.

Gender-based wage discrimination exists in the United States, and it is more prevalent in Utah. Last week a group presented a statistically-based initiative pointing this out, which received state-wide media attention. Several days after that I got a blog comment declaring that the state is opposed to such discrimination, and that the commenter had never seen such discrimination. The state may indeed be “officially” opposed to such discrimination, and that it is technically illegal, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, or that such discrimination is not subtly encouraged by the dominant religion, which I also believe to be the case. Regardless of my mindset and beliefs, however, the documented disparity for pay between men and women holding the same jobs is more than a mere belief… and it didn’t “just happen.”

Mindsets come in all varieties. Liberal educators, in particular, have the mindset that everyone can benefit from an education and that if one praises students to raise self-esteem, that praise will solve half the problems immediately. Conservative educators believe that the business model will solve educational difficulties. Neither mindset seems able to observe that reality differs from their beliefs. The praise-team approach hasn’t worked, and neither has the business model, except in filling college faculties with underpaid adjunct instructors and dumbing down courses because simplified and objectified courses are easier to teach and grade. For that matter, excessive praise does the same thing.

The business mindset that profit is everything is destroying the American economy and middle class, and possibly even society if it continues unchecked, and so few business leaders seem to see that. It’s not that profit isn’t important, because it is. It’s just that profit can’t be the only goal, or the goal that reduces all other business objectives to third-tier tasks that are only undertaken if they don’t reduce profits in the slightest. By the same token, automotive unions pursued the highest possible wage and benefit package for their workers, regardless of the long-term goals… and now Detroit is almost a ghost town and millions of former middle class workers have suffered hugely.

Getting locked into your mindset so tightly that you cannot see beyond it is almost inevitably a recipe for some sort of disaster, and yet, the worse things get, the more tightly most people hold to an ever-narrower mindset. As if what got you into trouble will get you out… except it’s not your mindset; it’s other people’s. But how do you know when that’s true, and when it’s the other way around, if you can’t see beyond your own mindset?

Have fantasy and science fiction become a choice between the endless series and the “end of everything” fiction, with the middle ground being the endless series attempting to fight off the coming apocalypse, otherwise known as the end of everything? And of course, these days in fantasy there are more gods, goddesses, sorcerers and sorceresses, demigods and demons, and various powers of incredible might and unfathomable evil than ever existed in all the belief systems and divine pantheons in all of human history. And then there are the vast and sinister conspiracies that are so well organized and so secretive that, if unchecked, they will rule the world, yet are so often stopped in their tracks by a single bumbling wizard or barely trained whoever or whatever.

The media arena doesn’t have quite the variation, but has a definite emphasis on the evil supernatural, depicted in terms of blood, gore, and sex that would have seemed far beyond decency for movie-goers of 50-60 years ago.

So… why all the incredible evil, the almost unimaginable power, gross sexuality, and all too vividly depicted gore? What is it about American society today that finds all this so fascinating?

Do so many Americans believe that the end of the world, or their way of life, is coming to an end? Or are they so jaded that the simpler evils and triumphs enjoyed by earlier generations fail to move them? Or do they lack the imagination to picture the impact of less vividly described or viewed pleasures and punishments?

Or is it that all too many of the current generation of Americans have no real idea, no personal experience with starvation, death, brutality, tyranny, and the crushing burden of true slavery or even the grinding wage slavery of a century ago? Oh, everyone in range of mass media sees the pictures, hears the trained solemnity with which talking heads present yet another death or disaster. And Americans behave as if the everyday world in which they live is beset with terror, danger, and death, when the fact is that, for all the faults our society has, today we live in a society with one of the lowest levels of overall danger in human history. And, sad to say, even the less privileged position of poor minorities today is far less dangerous the the average middle-class life of less than a century ago.

But then, perhaps too many Americans revel in media death, depravity, and danger because so few of them have truly seen or experienced much – or any, in some cases – of it in real life, and not as the media once put it, “up close and personal” [which was never really either], unlike previous generations who did experience more than most ever wanted, and that may be why they wanted more uplifting entertainment.

As for me, I don’t claim to have experienced it all. If I had, I’d already be dead, but I’ve seen more than enough, and experienced enough of the less than wonderful times, that I find no appeal in the “darkest side” of fiction and media… and still wonder about why so many seem to revel in tales so dark that the darkest of what I’ve written seems light by comparison, despite the fact that some of my work is, beneath the surface, rather dark.

Religious extremists all over the world, and in the United States – as well as religious figures who would never consider themselves extreme – are currently demonstrating the dangers when religious true believers hold power and government. In the Middle East ISIS is busy exterminating anyone who doesn’t hew to their extremist views. Iraq is being torn apart over religious differences. Religious differences accounted for the civil war in Sudan, one of the bloodiest and possibly the longest civil war in Africa, which lasted fifty years by some accounts, and now a prominent radical Islamic cleric is declaring that women and children of faiths other than Islam are no different from soldiers and can be killed according to the words of Muhammad. Mass killings for religious reasons are now endemic in Nigeria, where the Islamic Boko Haram movement has slaughtered thousands and kidnapped and possibly killed hundreds if girls and young women. In Myanmar [Burma] Islamic/Buddhist strife is rising. Religious killings continue to rise in Pakistan.

Whether believers in any faith want to acknowledge the role religion plays, it’s rather obvious to me that the vast majority of believers are totally convinced that their beliefs and ways are the only “right” way to live, and far too many of those believers feel that any ends justify the means in giving their faith the power to compel others to follow those “right” beliefs. The religious “moderates” differ from the extremists in this only in the degree of compulsion they believe is permissible. Thus, in the United States, evangelical Christians trumpet “religious freedom” and attempt to use the laws, rather than bullets and blades, to impose their beliefs on others who do not share their views. This is more civilized than slaughtering those who oppose you, but the principle is still the same – using a form of power to force compliance with a religious belief.

This is, of course, more obvious where I live in Utah, the all-but-in-name theocracy of Deseret, where sixty percent of the population is LDS and ninety percent of the state legislators are LDS, and where nothing of significance opposed by the LDS Church can be enacted, where the wage differential between men and women is among the highest of any state, if not the highest, reflecting the very obvious, but always denied, patriarchal dominance of the culture.It’s also the state where Cliven Bundy, the rancher who provoked an armed-standoff with the BLM and who owes millions in unpaid gazing fees addressed a meeting of the American Independent Party last week, declaring that his armed resistance to the BLM was inspired by God and that, in effect, he was only supporting the Constitution, Jesus Christ, and the LDS faith. While several prominent LDS individuals claimed Bundy did not represent the LDS Church, officially the Church has not taken a stand. It’s rather interesting that Kate Kelley can be excommunicated for advocating that women be allowed into the LDS priesthood, while Cliven Bundy can offer armed resistance to the federal government after failing to pay grazing fees and claim God was behind him… and remain in good standing with his church.

But that exemplifies the underlying problem with religion – for true believers, adherence to belief trumps everything… and that’s exactly why the Founding Fathers didn’t want government making any laws that amounted to establishing a religion – a principle that the Roberts Supreme Court seems to avoid considering.

Much has been written about technology, and there’s been a great deal of discussion for at least a century about technology, its benefits and drawbacks, and rebellions against its use in replacing old ways go back at least as far as the Luddite Rebellion in England in 1811. Although that rising and some twenty years of violence against machinery replacing laborers has been too often depicted as mindless violence against better technology, it was anything but mindless, and it wasn’t directed so much against better technology as against the economic and social impacts created by the use of that technology, which replaced modestly paid skilled work with low paid and almost poverty level semi-skilled work in the textile mills and elsewhere, leaving weavers and textile artisans literally starving in some places.

There’s no doubt that technology has improved the quality of life of those who benefit from its use, but what tends to get overlooked in the praise of technology is that, while technology often “solves” problems of the society which employs that technology, there are always those who bear the costs of those improvements, costs which are not inconsequential, and the employment and utilization of new technology in turn creates its own set of problems, problems which, almost invariably, are dismissed by the innovators who benefit from the technology, but are lamented loudly by those who suffer from it.

The industrialization and “technologization” of the United States created great wealth and a much higher standard of living for the upper class, the middle class, and initially, the working class. It also created in the beginning almost intolerable conditions in factories and sweatshops, incredible environmental problems, and air and water pollution, none of which were addressed until legislation forced the users of technology to do so. High-tech industry is pursuing the same path, except the pollutants are now include trace amounts of highly toxic substances, greenhouse gases, chemical-laced waters from fracking, and continued atmospheric pollutants. With the advent of highly automated manufacturing, the costs of many goods has declined, but that automation – and the outsourcing of formerly skilled and semi-skilled manufacturing jobs – has decimated the formerly economically prosperous semi-skilled working class in the United States, one of the reasons why whole urban areas, exemplified by Detroit, have become economically depressed, with swathes of barren and abandoned structures. The wide-scale use of personal higher-tech transportation has created cities where breathing the air is hazardous to health, and the indiscriminate use of medical antibiotics, while clearly benefitting people overall, has also resulted in the creation of more and more antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Each “improvement” in technology has, in fact, also created another level of problems, and each higher level impacts a wider area, to the point that new technologies are having global impacts. Pesticide residues are now routinely found in the arctic ice. CFCs diminished the world’s protective ozone layer, actually destroying it in places. Tiny bits of plastic are found in all the world’s oceans with negative impacts on the aquatic eco-system world-wide.

Yet, if we abandoned technology, most of the world’s current population would quickly starve. At the same time, because technology is a tool, and one whose costs of use fall disproportionately on those who do not benefit, as well as increasingly on the world as a whole, and one whose advancements inevitably create new and different problems, seeing technology as the total solution to all current problems is a fool’s game. Like all tools, technology can and will be misused. As with all tools, those with power will attempt to use it for their own personal benefit, regardless of the cost to others. And those who suffer most from its use will oppose it, at times close to mindlessly… and the politicians who, unhappily, are the only ones with the power to restrict its misuse and regulate its beneficial use, will listen only to money and votes.

The author David B. Coe (also writing as D.B. Jackson) wrote a piece last week on his pet peeves, one of which was reviews – reviews of any sort. Among other things, he made the point that we writers are ultra-sensitive and that one nasty or negative review remains indelibly etched in our minds, to the point that he can quote from such a review, even if it appears amid a host of positive ones. I’m not quite that sensitive, and I can’t quote the reviews I hated word for word, or maybe I’m a bit more able to mostly ignore such reviews – after the initial fuming and muttered, and sometimes not so muttered, words – feeling that those few reviews are the result of a certain lack of understanding. And part of the profession is understanding that certain reviewers and certain editors simply don’t like certain approaches… and never will. Nonetheless, even telling oneself that doesn’t lessen the initial sting.

It’s possible that any writer can write and publish a bad or substandard book. But no writer published for years by an established press is going to write bad book after bad book – because a string of truly bad books won’t generally sell [there are doubtless some very limited exceptions to this observation, because there are exceptions to every generalization]. So if a reviewer continually pans an author’s books, while other reviewers offer favorable observations, all that means is that the reviewer either hates that author [sad to say, it does happen] or that kind of book. And if a writer sells lots of books and lots of reviewers don’t like that writer, then it’s pretty clear that the reviewers don’t want to look at what makes that writer popular… and there are some books that tell a great story in absolutely terrible prose, and others that use brilliant prose to tell what amounts to an unworkable story. [I read one of those earlier this year.]

The problem most writers face is that we want people to like, or at least appreciate, what we write, no matter what we may say in public, and any writer who denies this is either lying or self-deluded (and there are almost NO exceptions to this generalization). We all think we have a story to tell, if not many stories, and that we can tell them in a way that readers will enjoy and appreciate. The problem, of course, is that no writer can appeal to all readers, no matter how much we writers tell ourselves that if readers just tried a little harder, they’d really like us. Nope. It doesn’t work that way.

And that means, like or not, writers have to expect at least an occasional review where the reviewer really doesn’t understand what’s going on or is so tied to his or her preconceptions of how a writer “should” have done it… and that gives the writer license to fume about “idiot reviewers.” There are books, very occasionally, that do deserve scathing reviews, but far fewer than reviewers think there are, and there are a lot of books – most of them – that could be better, but what too many people tend to forget is that writing is a business, and if I, or any other writer, spent the time necessary to assure that a book had absolutely not a single error, both the publisher and I would be broke. Very, very good in technical terms is possible; faultless is not economically practical, something that too many readers don’t seem to get… or just don’t consider. My long-time editor, David Hartwell, has often said, “A published novel is an unfinished book,” or words very much to that effect, also observing that any book could be better.

But the bottom line is that no one likes really nasty criticism, especially criticism that we feel is unjustified… and writers are people, and we don’t like it any better than anyone else. As for the comment that such criticism goes with the job, it does indeed, but keep in mind that comparatively speaking, most writers make far less than professionals in comparable fields, and very few of even the highest paid ones make anything close to what investment bankers, specialty surgeons, senior partners in law firms, or corporate CEOs do, and very few of those individuals face the public scrutiny that writers do. Of course, they should, but that’s another story.

The other day I overheard a conversation in which one person made the observation that already rising sea levels were affecting millions and that in a century, higher sea levels would make many places inhabitable, if not destroy them. The other individual replied, “So? It’s not the first time that’s happened. Let ‘em move.”

A third person said, “It won’t be a real problem for centuries.”

A few days later, in referring to the thousands of children who have recently flooded into the southern United States, someone else said, “Just send them all home. We’ve got enough problems.”

I wish these were isolated instances, but I’ve heard more and more comments along these lines in recent years, dealing with everything from global climate change to mid-east violence to immigration and air pollution, and almost all of which were along the lines of, “It’s not that big a problem, and it’s not our problem.” Those words remind me of the most likely apocryphal words of Marie Antoinette who reportedly said, upon hearing that the poor of Paris had not even bread to eat, “Then let them eat cake.”

The Russian aristocracy didn’t think the problems of the poor and middle class were their problems, and the British and the French didn’t want to get involved in German politics when a certain rabble-rouser began rallying the disaffected to his cause, because it really wasn’t their problem if a few Jews were being persecuted. Neither did we freedom-loving Americans care much if minorities in Europe were being stripped of their rights; we didn’t care until it became our problem.

What most people don’t want to understand is both the physical and financial impacts of global climate change, and the impact those have on everything else. History shows that comparatively modest climate changes, on the global scale, far less severe than those we face, have toppled quite a number of civilizations, as have mass migrations of people. We’re now facing the largest change in the global climate in at least human history, and something like fifty percent of the human population now lives within sixty miles of the ocean coastline, including the majority of mega-cities, with trillions of dollars of buildings and infrastructure.

Hurricane Sandy was only a class two hurricane when it hit New York, and it caused more than $75 billion of damages, and there are whole communities that still have not recovered or been rebuilt almost two years later. What happens when water levels rise further and storms intensify, which they have been doing? Add to that the fact that the entire U.S. infrastructure – highways, bridges, power and water systems, dams, and ports – is generally in poor condition and vulnerable to disruptions.

Yes, climate change is nothing new, if more widespread and occurring more quickly, and neither are social and political unrest, and, unfortunately, neither is the human desire to believe that such matters are either not a problem or are someone else’s problem.

Recently, USA Today published an article stating that a “middle class” living standard in the United States would require a couple with two children to come up with $130,000 annually. I’d heard this figure cited, and decided to look into it. USA Today broke the numbers down into three categories: essentials ($58,591), extras ($17,009), taxes and savings ($54,857).

Topping the essential category was housing costs, at $17,000 a year. Obviously, this cost would vary enormously by area, but a thirty year mortgage on a $150,000 home, with 20% down, would run around $700 a month, which is middle class if you live in a low-cost area. In much of the country $250,000 is closer to the mark, and that would raise the annual cost of just mortgage and insurance to close to $18,000. I also thought car expenses, figured for a single mid-sized SUV at $11,000 annually, were actually low, because these days it’s difficult if not impossible for most families to get by with a single wage-earner, and that means transportation for two. We’re a two-car family with one 15 year old car that gets 30 mpg and a five year old moderate SUV that gets 15mph, both paid off, and we’re very low mileage drivers – and our annual car costs are still close to $5,000 a year – with no car payments and low insurance. When I was commuting into Washington, D.C., with a small car that got 35 mpg, the gas costs alone for just that one car were over $3,000 annually, and with current gas prices, they’d would be closer to $6,000. USA Today lists medical expenses at $9,000 annually. For a family of four, insurance costs alone will total that – unless that’s a benefit paid by the employer. And total utility expenses of $2,000 a year? My base sewer, water, and trash services are $700 annually, without including gas and electricity. A clothing allowance of $2,600 for four people for a year, when two are children, especially when they become teenagers? All in all, I found the USA Today figures for “essentials” low for a comfortable middle-class lifestyle.

The $17,000 “extras” category included vacations ($4,500), entertainment and eating out ($7,500), communications, such as satellite, cable, cell phones, internet ($3,000), and miscellaneous ($2,000). I do wonder about the entertainment and eating out expenses being far too high, but if one has even the basic version of the communications services listed, I’d like to know how they manage on that little, because we live in one of the lowest cost areas of the country, and the lowest cost variety of each of those services right here total just about $3,000.  Now, obviously, many of these “extras” are just that, but some aren’t, and doing without any of them means you really aren’t living a middle class living standard.

The last category is the one that I have the most trouble with. The total tax bill of $32,000 seemed high initially, but if one assumes an income level of $130,000, for most couples, the combination of Social Security/Medicare taxes, federal and state income taxes, a six percent sales tax, property taxes, etc. comes to between $25,000 and $40,000 for most families, depending on where they live. On the other hand, I don’t see most middle class families saving $23,000 annually. Perhaps they should, but the figures show it isn’t happening.

Overall, after looking at the expenses used to arrive at the USA Today cost figures, I was surprised, because except for entertainment and eating out, most of the costs cited seemed all too in line with actual costs, and sometimes even low, for what one might expect for a middle class life-style. And that’s disturbing, very disturbing, considering the median family income is around $55,000, which, in turn, might explain why more than a few people in the United States are less than pleased with their situation. As a side note, I saw a similar study that made a similar conclusion about Great Britain. What’s happened to those of us divided by a single language?

When I was a Navy helicopter pilot all too many years ago, the only “real” helicopters in the world were U.S.-built, by Bell, Kaman, Boeing, and especially Sikorsky. That’s no longer true, and hasn’t been for a number of years. In the commercial market, the biggest sellers are Airbus Helicopter and Agusta Westland, and what U.S. sales there are happen to be mostly military, based on designs dating back to the 1970s.

UAV development? Israel leads in unmanned aircraft design and sales. Sweden’s MBDA has the most advanced air-to-air missile with its ramjet powered Meteor. At the same time, more and more U.S. military equipment, or key components of that equipment, is based on foreign designs and often foreign supplied parts and sub-assemblies.

In the one area where the U.S. does maintain a lead, if a dwindling one – fighter aircraft – acquisition and operating costs are continuing to skyrocket. Current costs of the F-35 fighter are running $100 million for each aircraft. Proponents claim that once full production runs are reached the cost will drop to a mere $85 million. The operating cost per hour for some types of F-15s runs over $40,000, while the F-18 E/F Super Hornet is the least costly U.S. tactical aircraft to operate, at a “mere” $17,000 per hour.

At one time, again back when I was flying, there were three U.S commercial aircraft manufacturers, and they essentially controlled the market. Now only Boeing is left, and it tends, for the moment, to split the major commercial markets with Airbus, while Embraer and Bombardier, Brazilian and Canadian respectively, currently lead in production of 100 passenger or less commercial aircraft.

What happened?

Actually, from what I’ve observed, several factors have been in play. First, military aircraft became increasingly sophisticated and phenomenally expensive to design, produce and operate, which has meant far fewer are built every year. So, overall, there’s less business to be had. Second, the procurement process on the military side has become a nightmare. Third, U.S. aerospace companies have focused increasingly on profits at the expense of R&D. Fourth, the Pentagon has focused on the one-size-fits-all for new aircraft, and, frankly, I don’t see how designing an aircraft that meets mission specifications for the Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force can be anything but more expensive – no matter what all the cost analysts say, and there have been major cost overruns for just that reason all too frequently.

Then, add to that the fact that foreign competitors are building better aircraft than before, some of which are claimed to have advantages that U.S. aircraft don’t, and many of which offer high performance at far lower costs. There have been more than a few recent reports that Airbus has better pilot emergency warning systems than does Boeing, especially in dealing with auto-throttle and stall warning systems. Boeing’s response has been, essentially, “We don’t need to be any better.” And, for, now, with the cash cow that the 737 has become, apparently Boeing feels it doesn’t need even to address those claims.

Behind all this is another ominous aspect. As the U.S. production and technology lead in aerospace has been eroded, so have the number of high-tech, high-paying jobs, not to mention the number of workers. With fewer jobs, the young talent has to go elsewhere, either to other industries or other countries.

There is far more at stake than whose airliner we ride on, or how much profit the remaining aerospace companies make. In fact, U.S. aerospace profits were up last year… even as the rest of the world continues to overtake us… because niche markets, R&D, and competing for sales with a wider range of aircraft and aircraft systems all eat into this year’s profits, and apparently like every other U.S. industry, this year’s profits are all that matter to U.S. aerospace manufacturers.

The other day I got to thinking about political revolutions, especially about the “successful” ones, and a few of those that seemed successful for a while. From those that I know of and those I’ve studied, it occurred to me that the vast majority fall into two categories – those countries where the leader of the revolution became a despot, or something similar, and those where the revolution swallowed the early leaders, and more cases than not, where a dictatorship of sorts ensued. Now, of course, neither of these happened in the United States, which is why we tend, I suspect, not to look at revolutions in the terms I’ve laid out. And I’m not counting events in countries where the form of government changed gradually and relatively peacefully as revolutions.

Armed and violent revolutions tend to occur when large percentages of a county’s population are unhappy, angry, and feel that they have little or nothing to lose… and almost usually are fomented and led by those who belong to what might be called the educated-alienated or the marginalized middle class who have personal and/or economic grievances against the existing power structure.

Revolutions tend to fail when not enough people feel that disenfranchised and/or when the government has an overwhelming monopoly on force – and when the soldiers who constitute that force are loyal to the regime.

Some historians make a distinction between movements that seek to change who rules and those that seek to change the entire way in which a country is ruled, which might suggest that merely replacing a ruler is a coup and changing the governmental structure by force is a revolution.

Is a revolution possible here in the United States, with all the cries for secession, and the increasing acrimony between the two political parties? History has shown that almost all lands with any lasting history suffer either government evolution, revolution, or coups, if not all three. The United States has revolted against British Rule, suffered through a bloody civil war, and seen a gradual but massive change in the structure and power of government… and faith and support of Congress is at an all-time low, combined with a close to all-time low in public confidence in the financial sector. Interestingly enough, faith in the President, while lower than his average ratings, is nowhere near all-time lows for a President.

Is that enough dissatisfaction to spark a rebellion? It’s certainly enough for some people, but I have my doubts if it’s enough, at least so far, to support any massive change in U.S. government, meaning that the deadlocks will have to get worse before anything – constructive or destructive – happens.

One of the largely unacknowledged aspects of the incredible speed at which personal and professional communications technology change is the fact that such changes not only often waste more time than they save, but that they pander to and foster self-centeredness.

I’ve mentioned the time-wasting before, but I continue to be reminded of it again and again.  Almost every month, my editor’s publishing firm changes some aspect of their software, which means that when I ask my editor for certain information, it always takes longer because it seems that just as he’s learned all the bells and whistles from the last upgrade, the company changes something else.  The same thing occurs at my wife’s university, and even with all those upgrades her computer got ransom-virused – and she’s never used it for anything but business [her IPad is much more convenient for the personal stuff, and I have to admit it doesn’t seem half so prone to viruses, even if it does have other glitches].  Because I have to keep current for a number of reasons, I’m now wrestling with some annoying features of Windows 8.1, and I’m still angry about the fact that the latest version of Word occasionally effectively deletes what I’m working on – without activating the automatic back-up/save if I type too fast and accidentally hit a three key combination that has an H in it.  I don’t mind too much activating spell check or creating a new document, but deleting what I’ve just written has me wanting to assassinate the system designer or marketing manager who decided such add-ons were good. All of these rapid and continuing “improvements” waste most people’s time, but because just enough people upgrade, if you don’t, before long you’re getting documents you can’t open.  So what’s convenient for a comparative handful of IT techies and tech geeks becomes anything but convenient for the rest of us, especially for those of us who use technology as a tool to accomplish something else, rather than to create “new” features just in order to make that claim.

The other aspect of our modern communications revolution is that it both isolates individuals and encourages a self-centered attitude.  Take cellphones.  We now have acquaintances, and even some friends, who switched from landlines to cellphones. Most of them don’t even tell anyone, as if everyone should know.  Then, maybe they posted it on Facebook, as if it happens to be everyone else’s duty to find out.  And when you can’t reach them, they’re the ones who are upset, but it’s rather difficult to reach people without their phone number, either for texting or talking, especially now that more and more of them are abandoning email, except for business.

And social media.  What if I don’t want to be on Facebook or LinkedIn or… whatever?  Or tweet on Twitter?  That’s my choice; it’s anyone’s choice, but now, the attitude of all those on Facebook is that they no longer have to make an effort to actually reach out to others; they just have to post on Facebook, and others have to reach out to them to find out how things are going.  It’s not that people are more selective.  They can’t be, not if they’re posting on social media sites.

But then, maybe that’s not because they’re self-centered.  Maybe it’s because they’ve spent so much time wrestling with technology that’s supposed to be easy, and isn’t, that they only have enough time to post on social media and send 128 character tweets.

Unfortunately, the problem of “rights” is even larger than just religion, as adjudicated in the Hobby Lobby case, because first amendment to the Constitution also states: “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…” The Roberts Court has effectively declared in the case of funding political campaigns that restrictions on contributions are a restraint of freedom of speech. The problem with the Court decision is that it doesn’t address the question of what occurs when the combination of massive amounts of money combine with high technology to assure that the predominant publicly disseminated “speech” dealing with elections is that of the wealthiest one tenth of one percent of the population. In effect, the multi-million dollar megaphones of the rich drown out the views of anyone else. Yes, those without that kind of funds can speak, but their words go largely unheard.

In certain respects, this isn’t a new problem. Because of their position and wealth, the founding fathers had greater access to the press, and often used it, at times not in the noblest of ways, to further their own interests and ends, but because of the lack of instant communications, a press that was largely local, and diverse regional interests, none of them had access to the entire society either continuously or in real time, nor did they have the ability to buy ink and exposure in all media outlets in all states. They could not and did not conceive of the media concentration and penetration that exists today. Their interest was to assure that all views had a chance to be heard.

Yet in citing the Constitution to allow unlimited political contributions and “independent” political media expenditures that are effectively unlimited by individuals who can keep the amount of their contributions hidden, as well as their very identity unknown, the Roberts court has effectively undermined the very goals of the founders in crafting and adopting the first amendment, because the combination of money and technology effectively diminishes the freedom of speech of those who lack both money and access to technology, and, not incidentally, diminishing any public “right to know.”

Yet the far right trumpets this as a victory for free speech when it is really a victory for anonymous plutocratic propaganda.

I don’t watch soccer/football much, in fact, seldom, but I did end up watching the World Cup semi-final match between the Netherlands and Argentina… and the result underscored something I’ve said before, except with regard to basketball. Mastery of the simpler aspects of anything is key to continued success.

The Netherlands and Argentina played to a scoreless tie after regulation, and then after another 30 minute additional period the game was still scoreless.  Argentina converted four out of four penalty kicks in the shoot-out, while the Netherlands failed on two out of three attempts. While a penalty kick isn’t nearly as easy as a basketball free-throw, it’s far, far easier than scoring a goal in play, when it’s often difficult to even get near the goal with the ball, let alone get a clear shot.  Argentina made that abundantly clear, by not being able to score a single goal in two hours of play, but by putting four out of four shots in the goal in the shoot-out.  The Netherlands lost by not being able to accomplish the simpler tasks in the game.

This “case study” goes well beyond soccer or basketball.  I’ve seen people lose jobs because they failed to write a simple thank you note, or to recognize a former colleague or superior in a different setting.  I’ve seen more than one beginning writer destroy/abort his or her career by arguing violently with editors who have seen scores of writers come and go.  I’ve seen political careers tanked because no one asked a simple question – How did things get this way? – before going off in a direction that considering the answer would have most likely precluded.  I’ve seen singers lose competitions because, when talents were evenly balanced, the singer with more carefully chosen attire and polite mannerisms topped sloppy dress and flip mannerisms. And in all these cases, and others, the individuals involved were anything but stupid.  They just relied on their innate brilliance or talent and ignored mastery of simple skills.

A successful writer needs more than mere story-telling ability and more than mere skill with words, and, more than sometimes, some of those extras are simple skills, such as tact, thank-you notes [NOT emails,unless you’re in the tech world, where hand-written or print thank-yous have become a symbol of backwardness], and a certain amount of respect for those who control one’s fate.  And, oh yes, just plain showing up on time…or getting manuscripts in on time — and, here George R. R. Martin is the exception who proves the rule.

More than a few times, I’ve commented on how important it is for a fantasy or science fiction writer to understand basic societal economics if that writer wants to portray a workable and realistic fictional society.  In recent years, more and more writers have become clearly aware of this, and their books reflect this.  More recently, however, the comparative absence of finance and banking has struck me, yet some form of banking, whether it be counting houses, money-lenders, or the like, has existed in virtually every human civilization that became sophisticated enough to have iron tools. Any form of wide-spread trade requires at least a rudimentary financial system, and a financial system allows what one might call an oligarchical concentration of power and wealth, which in turn feeds intrigue and scheming.

One of the problem with portraying stock exchanges and banks is that few writers really understand them enough to portray just how much they can multiply either evil or good…or how quickly they can turn what seems to be good into total disaster. And, of course, the usual depiction of the banker/financier ranges from Shakespeare’s Shylock, to Dickens’s “early” Scrooge, to Mr. Potter in Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life,   to, more recently, the bankers and brokers in Wall Street and The Wolf of Wall Street. The problem with such one-sided depictions is that they actually understate the impact finances and financiers have on society and government.

The key role a financial system plays in any economy is to provide liquidity, because without liquidity transactions and trades become almost impossibly difficult.

I recently read an incredibly detailed massive fantasy epic, one that depicted almost all aspects of society – traders and their formal and informal associations, rulers and their bureaucracies and sycophants, military types, barbarians, entertainers, crafters, laborers, merchant princes, even authors – but not any financiers or bankers, despite a welter of trade and conflict between adjoining lands.  A great story – but I kept wondering what financial structure was behind it all, and why the bankers, or their equivalent, didn’t put the brakes on some of the idiocy, because successful bankers do tend to be conservative [except in today’s USA], sometimes foolishly so.

So… for better or worse, don’t forget the bankers… or their equivalents.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in the Hobby Lobby case, declaring that companies, at least those privately held, are not required to provide birth control benefits under their health insurance plans when providing those benefits is against the religious beliefs of the company’s owners.  Whether the decision sparks other lawsuits or remains a relatively narrow example of an owners’ religious beliefs being able to dictate the scope of health benefits provided to employees remains to be seen.

The underlying issue that the Supreme Court did not address, and which Congress has also steadfastly ignored, is the degree to which Constitutional and statutory “rights” of individuals have been either enhanced or diminished by the exercise of the “right” to apply religious freedom” to others.

In the Hobby Lobby case, the Court verdict essentially states that an employer can effectively limit the access of employees to health care, solely on the basis of religious beliefs.  The employer is not denying birth control services to employees, because employees can theoretically purchase those services on their own.  But there are other aspects to consider, which the Court either did not consider or decided were not important enough to be a factor.  First, when an employee must pay additional funds for health services that the law declares other businesses must provide to their employees, the employee’s access is diminished or costs are increasing, if not both, and they are in a position whereby their total effective compensation is effectively lowered by the employer’s assertion of religious freedom. Additionally, other businesses, which do not have a religious exemption, will likely pay higher costs for employee healthcare insurance.

Thus, in effect, others must pay for Hobby Lobby’s “religious beliefs.”  Obviously, this would not be the case if there were not a law requiring insurance coverage, but there is, and the Court did not strike down the ACA as infringing on religious beliefs. In effect, the Court’s decisions declare that a public policy requiring health care coverage is Constitutional, but that effectively any employers with a clear religious affiliation can refuse to provide coverage for any procedure against their beliefs.  This effectively equates privately held corporations with churches, even though churches are non-profits, and money-making corporations like Hobby Lobby not.  All this brings up an interesting situation, because the Constitution declares that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” but there’s nothing in the Constitution to forbid the Court from issuing a legal opinion that effectively states that religious beliefs trump civil law and can be used to deny some citizens benefits that most others are entitled to receive under that civil law.  This strikes me as a rather dangerous precedent, particularly when it is endorsed and supported by so many of those who have railed against the fact that Islamic Sharia law supersedes civil law in the Middle East.  It’s wrong for Muslims to have Islamic law trump civil law, but fine for American corporations to sue, and win, for religious beliefs to trump civil law?

Not that any of the far right will see, or care, about the hypocrisy involved. They got what they wanted, and that’s all that matters to them.