Month: January 2020

Over in another forum someone arguing for socialist policies (the explicit argument was for estate taxes) made the following argument (and thought it was a “mic drop” since a number of writers were on that forum):  “I know a lot of very intelligent writers who have not been rewarded commensurate with either their talents or contributions” This is the tendency that Thomas Sowell points out frequently where when people talk about “worth” they talk about what they think, as third parties, not part of the transaction, think something should be “worth.”

Now, I am one of those writers and I would certainly like to make more money, but, well, read on…

The only people whose opinion on the “worth” of a transaction matters are those directly making the transaction. So long as the transaction is voluntary (no coercive force used) then the transaction will only take place if both gain more than they give by their own values. (And that’s the key…”by their own values”, not values someone else assigns for them.)

The Dell gaming laptop I’m typing this on? I bought it because the computer was worth more to me than the money I paid for it. Dell sold the computer to me because they valued my money (or more specifically what that money could buy) more than they did the computer. Someone outside might decide that the money I spent was worth more than the computer “should” be worth (by their values, which simply means they wouldn’t be willing to spend that much for it) and thus Dell “cheated” me.

But, the simple fact is, Dell (and it’s stockholders by extention) has lots and lots of money not because they “took” it from others but because they provided goods that people valued more than the money they paid Dell. Yes, Dell has a lot of money. But those people have goods and services that are worth more to them than the money was.  People look at Dell and see “big corporation” with “lots of money” (and its stockholders as wealthy because of it).  They don’t see the lots of people who in turn gained wealth (to the tune of a computer that was worth more to them than the money they paid for it) because they are spread out throughout the economy.  One’s concentrated and thus easily visible.  The other is diffuse, and thus not so visible.  A classic example of Bastiat’s “Seen and unseen.”

Now, let me touch base a bit on the writing and “deserve”. It works the same way there.  People buy my stories if they think they’ll get more value (in terms of the enjoyment they get from reading them) than is charged by the vendor.  I tend to keep my prices low because I’m trying to build readership.  But that “more value than the cost” thing has a couple of factors involved.  First off there’s how well I’m able to convey the value they’ll get–the cover art, description (blurb), right choice of categories, and so forth that give people an idea of what kind of story it is.  The other big factor is simply making people aware that the story exists, to get it in front of people who might then look at those initial bits (cover art, description, etc) and decide whether they want to part with some of their hard-earned money for the bit of entertainment I provide.  And I’m not just competing with other science fiction and fantasy books, but with anything else that might provide some entertainment to the consumer.  I’m competing with Amazon Instant Video rentals, with a six-pack of cheap beer (or maybe a couple of bottles of better beer), with a few minutes of Laser Tag, or with whatever else the person might spend that money on.  I have to serve their needs better than whatever else they might do with that money instead.  Somebody might think my writing is the best thing they’ve ever read.  Drama, pathos, a truly satisfying conclusion, all wrapped around concepts that are worth pondering. (Or, maybe not.) But that they think that doesn’t impose a duty on others to think likewise and shower me with money (although if you’d like to do so, then, please.  Can never have enough). No, that’s a decision each individual has to make.  Is this item, right here, right now, worth to me what I’m being asked to pay for it?  If and only if the answer is “yes” does the transaction happen.

My odds get better as more people become aware of my work, but in the end it remains a matter of do I please my potential customers?  Neither more nor less.

That’s what happens when I, or anyone else, deals with a private business that doesn’t have coercive force a available to make me do business with them.  Let’s look at what happens in the case of government.

When I deal with the government, well, what I “get” is, frankly, worth a lot less to me than the money I spend. Third parties, may try to explain why it “really is” “worth it” but they’re simply imposing their values on me.  They act as if, and indeed seem to believe, that their values are somehow “better” and “more worthy” than mine.

Unlike dealing with Dell, I can’t simply say “no, that’s not worth it. I’m not buying.” If I tried, the government would use coercive force. I.e. the government would send Men with Guns^TM to force me to pay or, in the extreme of non-compliance on my part, kill me.

So, I pay, even though I do not receive value for the money. Or, rather, the “value” I receive is not being imprisoned or killed.

Given the events in Virginia, and some government folk talking about how the Military would just “crush” civilian gun supporters, well, this was appropriate to revisit.

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I had intended to write a blog post on that subject sometime, but as it happens my friend Michael Z. Williamson did one today. [Ed.  That would have been the date of the original post]

Reposted with permission:

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It’s almost always civilians who say this based on their non-experience in the military.

First of all, it would terrify me to believe that there was nothing I could do to stop an invader or rogue government. But apparently, they fear me more than it, while believing I’m impotent to do anything about it.

I would suggest anyone with this combination of neuroses seek mental health help.

But moving on.

To believe that lightly armed forces can’t defeat a government one has to believe that the Vietnamese lost and the Iraqis didn’t tie up the US Army for a decade.

Let’s start with the concept of an invader.

Said invader is likely at the long end of a supply chain. (Canada is not a likely invader, nor Mexico.)

Now, even if we accept the claim that very light infantry can’t do anything effective…it can be a screening force for the military members who can. Every veteran or trained hunter with a rifle acting as support, perimeter security, reconnaissance and facility guard is one more active duty troop freed up to engage.

And they are far more effective if they have commonality of ammo, magazines and parts with the regular forces. AR-15s don’t have quite the same internals as M-16s, but the pins, springs and accessories are interchangeable, as are ammunition and magazines. Suddenly, the US Army has a potential 30 MILLION more basic Riflemen.

But the claim they can’t do anything effective (beyond what we’ve shown) is false.

Rifle fire is just fine for harassment of troops in garrison, ongoing casualty infliction among support elements, and more importantly, their administration.

An invader, once amongst the populace, has limited options. If his goal is simply to destroy the nation, then there’s no reason to waste time within anything below strategic weapons. But what point does that serve?  And if that happens, with no subsequent invasion, then the utter chaos, collapse and starvation that will follow dictates that being heavily armed is among the top survival priorities.

If his goal is to transform the nation, he must have offices, bureaucrats, support personnel. Almost none of those will be military, nor armored, nor armed. They will have to drive or walk the streets, and they can be assassinated easily with rifles.  Rifles being better than pistols, because even a 100 meter head start greatly increases survivability. Semiautos being better than manual actions, because an area can be saturated so that even if the target dodges, he is more likely to be hit.

Keep in mind that a few dozen active PIRA/IRA shooters and bombers kept entire British regiments tied up for decades. A lone rogue cop kept four departments in the LA area tied up for a week. Two bombers in Boston crashed the economy and stopped the city for three days.

Can the invader secure a port on the coast, with air support and materiel ships and a garrison?  Possibly.  Can he move inland with patrols? Yes, while taking horrific casualties.  Can he roll convoys in and establish inland garrisons? Not without great difficulty, coming back around to that “you destroyed what you were trying to claim” problem.

What about his tanks and planes?

What about them?  First they have to get here, then they have to have a secure facility. Modern planes are very susceptible to damage. Rifle fire can destroy engines, airframe integrity, avionics. It can kill all the necessary support personnel–up to 100 per craft.  This means the aircraft must be outside of rifle range of the perimeter, or protected by a revetment constructed by engineers. Those engineers and security are susceptible to rifle fire, while any remaining operational military elements bring mortars or drones into play.

As far as tanks…they have to have a place to laager every few hours, and the tankers have to get out.  Then they’re as susceptible to attack as any other troop.  And that laager will need security and a perimeter. This gets insanely expensive very fast, as many liberals have noted with the operation in Iraq..which they insist the US lost.

No other nation has that ability to project force.

And even if they do, they rapidly lose any possibility of “winning hearts and minds” and are back to the problem of having to destroy the nation, its population and its resources and infrastructure, in order to conquer it.

The arithmetic is simple:  Even if a nation the size of China could mobilize all 5 million troops into the US, the 100 million armed American households, with potentially 2.5 rebels each, means it’s possible for the US to soak up casualties 50:1. Even if major population centers were nuked first, we could manage 20:1, and we’d pick the softest targets first.

Then, when our partisans do eliminate a tank element, or ground unit, its weapons then become ours, and we’re no longer “fighting tanks with rifles.” Because we have diesel mechanics, electronic experts, and rifles.  Will they be as effective as a professional force? No.  But they’ll be effective enough to tie up yet ANOTHER armor unit trying to stop them, which will pin that unit in place for even more harassment and attack.

It is simply ridiculous to claim an invasion is realistically possible.

Now, this doesn’t mean we don’t need those rifles.

Let’s move to a repressive government in the US.

This is not likely to be a fast process.  However, we’ve seen increasing asset forfeiture, denial of due process, corruption, violation of rights.  If it continues unchecked, it’s possible to conceive of a point where the average American will decide enough is enough.

And part of such process is making it harder for the population to resist. Which includes gun control.

One of Diane Feinstein’s arguments for her desired ban on .50 caliber rifles was that they could be used to attack armored cars the police use.

So the question becomes, for what purpose do the police need to send an armored car to my house?

And for what purpose might an even less facilitating government do so?

And if the first argument is armored cars, then what about body armor?

Quickly, the safety of government agents becomes more important than that of the citizens it is supposed to serve.

Well, such a government is not going to send any fighter planes. First, they’d have to find a pilot willing to bomb US civilians, and if they can find that, you better get every weapon you can into the hands of every person you can.  Because that means they’re willing to blow up your house and damage or destroy your neighbor’s house in the process to get you. What kind of crime could you possibly have done to merit that?

As far as tanks, those require a tank hauler to deliver them to the location.  If they’re sending that down the road to an American citizen’s house, for any reason whatsoever, it better have an armed convoy, because I guarantee, I don’t care what crime you may have committed, that is far beyond a reasonable response and I’m going to try to stop that convoy with roadblocks, caltrops, rifle fire, and whatever else. It’s very likely that after you, it’s going to be me anyway, so I may as well get the party started. And I won’t be the only one.

Seriously, what world do you live in where you believe the government could or should use that kind of force, and you’re not offering to pre-register with the resistance? Do you hate any of your fellow men that much?  Do you not see a problem?  Or do you in fact endorse that kind of despotic force? Because the way some of you toss it out there makes me wonder.

Do you see my problem?

And if it comes to that, we’d be back to the position where it’s time to shoot every bureaucrat, every manager, every secretary of that kind of government.

But that’s actually the second part of the problem.

Here’s the first part:

US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8.

The Congress shall have power …
To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;

Read that again, if you haven’t read it before.  Congress has the power to license WARSHIPS that are not part of the US Navy.

This means privately owned warships, WITH CANNON were common enough in 1789 that it was worth writing a rule for their usage.

Quite a few artillery units through the US Civil War were privately owned.

Now, warships are pretty expensive these days…but old torpedo boats can be had for $50,000, and people do own tanks and aircraft with disabled weapons, as well as artillery pieces.

And my question is, why do they have to be disabled?

Well, that comes down to the National Firearms Act of 1934, declaring that such things had to be licensed, both the weapon, and every individual shell, at $200 each.

Then in 1968 there were a few more restrictions.

Then in 1986, the so-called “Firearm Owners’ Protection Act,” which does nothing of the sort, made it illegal to manufacture new machine guns for civilians, even with the tax and license.

So your argument is, “We’ve already violated this amendment to the point where all you have are very basic infantry weapons, and now we’re claiming those aren’t effective without the stuff we’ve already banned, so it’s reasonable to ban that, too.”

And I’m saying, we need to fix the entire problem, which we both recognize, and eliminate those laws so veterans (and determined civilians who for whatever reason were unable to serve), can have the weapons they need so we CAN fight tanks and planes in such an emergency.

The only people who could possibly object are the kind who want to send tanks and planes against civilians.

Many people think that the American War of Independence happened suddenly.  On the 17th of April 1775, we were grumbling but at peace.  On the 20th, we were at war. (Worse, folk think everything was fine on July 3, 1776, but on the 5th we were at war.)

However, the build-up, including violent clashes, had been going on for years before it turned into open warfare.

The Battle of Golden Hill, which could be considered the first blood spilled in the American revolutionary struggle, happened on this date (January 19) in 1770, five years before Lexington and Concord, before the “Boston Massacre”, before the “Tea Party”, before many of the events that we consider harbingers of the rise in rebellion of the American colonies.

The issue started several years before that, shortly after the Stamp Act, which had given the “no taxation without representation” idea its impetus, was repealed.

On May 21, 1765, the Sons of Liberty, a group dedicated to agitating for liberty in the colonies and their “rights as Englishmen” (Remember, at this time the American colonists thought of themselves as British, not as people of a new nation), erected a “Liberty Pole to commemorate the repeal of the hated Stamp Act.  (Note, another source claims the pole was erected on June 4, George III’s birthday.)  The pole carried with the words “King, Pitt, and Liberty”. Pitt, was the individual in Parliament who argued the colony’s case.

British officials hated the pole and soon, in retaliation for New York’s government refusing to enforce the Stamp Act, cut it down.  A second pole was quickly erected.  This, too, was soon cut down.

A third pole was put up which the British, no doubt with much shrugging and shaking of heads (“those crazy Colonials just will not give up”–some British officer, probably).  It remained until 1767 when New York celebrated the repeal of the Stamp Act.  British officials, in response to this, had this third pole cut down.

The colonials, undeterred, put up a fourth pole.  This one secured with iron bands to make it much harder to cut down.

Not long after the erecting of the fourth pole, Parliament passed the Quartering Act, requiring people in the colonies to provide housing for British troops in excess to their local barracks’ capacity. (If you’ve ever wondered why the 3rd Amendment is in the Bill of Rights.  This is the reason.) New York, once again, mostly refused to enforce that law.  Parliament responded by dissolving the New York government and installing one of their own.  The Sons of Liberty responded to this by posting a broadside (basically large posters) titled “To the Betrayed Inhabitants to the City and Colony of New York.” All of this took time, and brings us to the beginning of 1770.

On January 13, 1770 the British military attempted to bring down that fourth liberty pole, using gunpowder (because of the iron bands).  This attempt failed but a second on the 16th succeeded.  They took the wreckage of the pole and dropped it on front of a tavern owned by a Mr. Montagne–where the Sons of Liberty were wont to meet.  They then began their own campaign of broadsides, calling the Sons of Liberty the real enemies of society who thought their freedom depended on a piece of wood.

On January 19th several individuals, including one Isaac Seares, tried to stop some British redcoats from posting their broadsides.  Seares managed to capture some of the soldiers while others ran to their barracks to call for reinfocements.  Seares marched his prisoners toward the mayor’s office.

The reinforcements, numbering about twenty men, arrived, but so did a crowd of townsfolk.  The townsfolk badly outnumbered the soldiers and surrounded them.  Other soldiers attempted their rescue but were ordered back to their barracks.  While being escorted back to their barracks they had reached Golden Hill when an officer ordered the soldiers to draw bayonets and “cut their way through them.”  The soldiers were armed with their bayonets while the citizens were either unarmed or armed with makeshift weapons.  According to one source those citizens with sticks stood their ground in the narrow passageway defending their defenseless compatriots.

While the scuffle was going on, more soldiers arrived to disperse the other soldiers before things got totally out of hand.

In the end several soldiers were badly bruised with one being seriously wounded.  A number of the townsfolk were wounded.  Some sources claim that one townsperson was killed but this is disputed.

Afterward, the Sons of Liberty asked the Mayor for permission to erect a fifth Liberty Pole on public land.  This was denied.  As a result, the Sons of Liberty bought a parcel of land where they erected their pole.  This one had iron bands extending two thirds the way up the pole.

Also, for some strange reason, this fifth pole lacked any mention of the King (or of Pitt).  This one simply said “Liberty and Property.”

 

…then a few oligarchs will end up controlling everything.

This idea, that without “wealth redistribution” (and Socialism/Communism) all wealth will soon end up in the hands of a few oligarches with the rest of us destitute is pure Marxism. (See Thomas Sowell’s book “Marxism” for details–note that Sowell was a Marxist for much of his youth.) It misses important factors. One is that the various goods and services that are popular, that the people at large value, changes over time. Another is that there’s a constant pressure to develop new, more economically efficient, means of bringing goods and services to the market. And when new ones arise, the folk invested in the old ones are rarely the ones to take advantage of them.

John D. Rockefeller cut the legs out of both the whale oil industry (and may be responsible for the survival of several species of whale long enough for groups like Greenpeace to even think about the idea) and rival petroleum companies by coming up with cheaper ways to produce kerosene, like making it several times cheaper.

Andrew Carnegie did much the same for Steel.

Then there was Henry Ford doing the same for the automobile.

James Cash Penny was a serious wakeup call to previous retail giants Sears and Montgomery Ward (mail order giants) with his chain of department stores that improved transportation (the automobile) and the growing network of roads made possible.  He got his start working literally for free just to “learn the business.”  Turned that experience into a major retail empire.

Sam Walton turned the retail industry on his ear. Came out of nowhere to, in a relatively short time, become the supreme retail giant in the US.

Ray Crock took an unknown little hamburger shop and turned it into a Giant.

Jeff Bezos of Amazon. Elon Musk of Paypal, Tesla, and SpaceX. Both folk who came essentially from nowhere to become billionaires building huge businesses that nobody predicted before.

I remember when “Cyberbooks” was a cute science fiction idea by Ben Bova. Now, well, now I carry an entire library in my shirt pocket–literally, more books than some of the rural libraries that I dealt with as a kid had on the shelves. And online? Have you browsed Project Gutenberg?

All of that stuff sprang up, all ended up “reshuffling” the wealth “deck.” New people, producing new forms of wealth and accumulating wealth as a result. Older things falling out of favor and losing share in the overall economy leading to people moving from failing industries to newer growing ones.

And all the rest of us?  Even the poor know wealth that John D. Rockefeller couldn’t even dream of.

At any given time, there are a few people who own a lot of wealth.  Some more who own somewhat less wealth.    And all the way on down to the “poor.” However, the “poor” of today aren’t the same as the “poor” of yesterday.  Those earlier poor did not have air conditioned apartments, cars of their own, cell phones, access (through their local library if not themselves) of computers and internet connections.  Those earlier poor did not have obesity as a primary health problem.  It took a bit of “sleight of hand” promoted by Marx (which didn’t originate with him; indeed, it seems that very little actually originated with him and he stole freely from others who today are far less well known) that someone can get poorer, even with a higher standard of living, so long as their “share” of the total wealth of society is lower.  A nice trick to ensure a never-ending supply of people who can complain about their lot in life no matter how much it has improved over times past.  Weaponized envy.

In any case, the idea that without the action of government wealth will gravitate to a few hands leaving the rest destitute is utter tripe. Free enterprise and voluntary transactions never worked that way. The only thing that works that way is coercive force.  And government is, by definition, coercive force.

The conclusion is left as an exercise for the student.

Or maybe “Cities Bernie”.

Bernie campaign staffer on hidden cam:

Bill Whittle et al also talk about it:

“There’s a reason Joseph Stalin had gulags, right?  And actually, gulags were a lot better than what the CIA has told us…”

Yeah, because Solzhenitzen was totally a CIA operative, right?  Yeah, about that:

Let’s be clear here.  Bernie Sanders talks about “Democratic Socialism” as some kind of kinder, gentler form of socialism, but that’s a mask.  His policies are communist.  He honeymooned in the Soviet Union, back during the height of the cold war.  He’s a communist, pure and simple.  He sees himself as America’s Lenin.  The only difference is that he knows he doesn’t have the support for an armed overthrow of the Constitution so he’s trying to do it via the ballot.  That’s the only place where “Democratic” comes in.  The end game is the same.  He just hopes to get there by a different rout.

When I was in the Air Force, the military sent me to the Defense Language Institute to learn Russian. (It’s been a long time and I’ve forgotten most of it, but that’s beside the point.) One of my instructors, a Soviet ex-pat as most of them were, said that Lenin was “the most evil man who ever lived.”

One of my classmates challenged that assertion, pointing to the atrocities committed under Stalin (like those gulags that the Bernie staffer thought weren’t so bad), the holodomor, military purges, and so on.

The instructor’s response, “Lenin just didn’t have time.”

That’s the true face that hides behind the smokescreen of “Democratic Socialism.” That’s where he will take America if given the chance.

Don’t give him that chance.

 

There has been whining, in part in response to Mike Resnick’s recent death (Mike was one of the most respected editor’s in Science Fiction and had been for decades), about the need for “diversity” in publishing.  Apparently, somehow “people of color” were being excluded and we needed a publishing form of affirmative action to create opportunity for these marginalized individual.

Excuse me, but can someone gag me with a backhoe?  This is so patently wrong as to be beyond absurd.

I made my first professional sales in 1990 for stories and articles published in 1991.  I had fantasy, science fiction, and non-fiction sales practically on the heels of each other.  Indeed, close enough that while I made the science fiction sale first, the fantasy sale reached print first. And Analog, the magazine I’d sold that Science Fiction story to, was not one to sit for a long time on stories that they’d already paid for.

They way things worked back then, and had for long before that, (and did for may years afterward as well), the only thing an editor knew about the writer in most cases was the words on the paper, the content of the story–plus whatever the writer might say in a cover letter and there was no guarantee that was at all accurate–was all the editor knew about the writer. That’s it. That’s all the editor had to go on to make the decision.

Oh, and conventional wisdom (which, unlike much “conventional wisdom” actually was wise) was that “less was best” in the cover letter.  Title of the story you’re submitting.  Genre.  Approximate length.  A listing of previous publication credits if you have some (or a brief summary of relevant credits if your list is long).  Maybe some relevant personal experience related to the story–more relevant for non-fiction than fiction.  That’s it.  Your cover letter was never going to convince an editor to buy your story, but it might well convince him or her to not even look at it.  Less was best.

If you didn’t sell it wasn’t because of your skin’s melanin content, the texture and curliness of your hair, the shape of your facial features, whether you’re an “innie” or an “outie”, or how you prefer to connect up various protrusions and orifices. It was the story and only the story.  Who you are might have some modest effect if your name was known (to the publisher if you’d sold stories before or to the public if you were a celebrity).

There was no “I’m not going to give this person a chance because they’re black” (or a woman, or gay, or trans, or from Mars for that matter) because the editor would not know.  All the editor had to go on was the story itself and their assessment on whether or not it would please their readers.  Who or what the author was, someone they did not know and had not met, simply did not matter.

Online interaction was just starting to become a thing back then (with SFWA’s–Science Fiction Writers of America’s–then official presence on the GEnie online service) and even that was limited to text so we still didn’t know what people looked like for the most part.  And, again, people had no idea what you looked like or any of that other stuff.  The readers certainly didn’t.  The readers certainly didn’t.

So if there’s any bias against authors, particularly new authors (for non-new authors the primary bias is always “do you sell to the readers” although the “push” model chan affect that, but that’s beyond the scope of today’s post), for those physical features or what not, it has to be recent, with the rise of “social media” making it not only possible but convenient for people, including editors, to see the “person” behind the submissions.

There’s just one problem with that.  I can’t speak to other fields but in science fiction and fantasy publishing was strongly left wing when I was getting my start back then.  It was patently obvious in those early forerunners to social media.  It was even more so in the “back channels” of SFWA (why, yes, I used to be a member).  Exceptions like the late Jim Baen and the late Jerry Pournelle were just that, exceptions and represented only a small fraction of the field.  So if there was any “bias” based on who or what the author was rather than the words they strung together on the page it was by folk on the Left.

Personally, I never really cared much about who or what the author was.  Left, right, man, woman, gay, straight, whatever.  I’ve bought and enjoyed stories by all of them.  Tell me a gripping story.  That’s all I ask.

The words on the page. That was pretty much it.

I don’t usually do back to back “blasts from the past” like this, but, well, I just saw an article on one of the Chinese “news” agencies talking about how private gun ownership in the US was a problem and should be ended.

The true irony in the article is this line:

Massacres and shootings should be deemed a serious violation of human rights.

Ironic because China slaughtered more than 45 million of its own people, whether “persecuted to death” or outright executed, in the 20th century for daring to speak out against the government.  It’s China that brutally put down the Tiannamen Square protests.  And it’s China that just got through massacring protesters in Hong Kong.  For China to talk about human rights violations is truly risible.

And these human rights violations, real human rights violations, are exactly why an armed population is so important.  As Mao said, “Every Communist must grasp the truth, ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.’ Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party.”

That, of course, is why they do not want anyone but those controlled by the Communist Party to have guns.

So, on to the blast from the past:

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It has been said that if you permit the citizenry to be armed, you will have tragedies, but if you don’t you will have genocides.

In the US, out of a population of over 300 million, there are about 13,286 homicides by gun per year (2015 figures).  Some will tell you that’s an appalling figure, but you know what else is an appalling figure?  In the 20th century more than 100 million people were killed by their own governments.

Even assuming you could make all the homicides that are committed using guns go away by removing guns from private hands (you can’t, but let’s assume it for argument’s sake) it would take over 7500 years for the US gun homicide figures to add up to the number of people killed by their own governments in the 20th century alone.  Let’s take a look at what that means.  7500 years.

7500 years ago we had the Samarra culture in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq).  They were just beginning to use farming and irrigation.  In Europe we had the Danubian culture, also just starting to learn farming.  Likewise in China with the Xinle culture.  The earliest known writing is still 2000 years in the future.

During that time the longest any government has maintained any kind of continuity is possibly the Roman Empire (although an argument can be made for ancient Egypt), giving every benefit of every doubt, it stretches from it’s founding in the 8th century BC to the fall of Constantinople (the Byzantine Empire being simply the name given by historians to the Eastern Roman Empire) in the 15th AD.  That’s about a 2200 year existence.  But even with that “continuity” the remnants of the Roman Empire in the 15th century bore little resemblance to the Rome of Cicero, let alone that of Brave Horatius (of “at the gate” fame).  And even so, Rome is an exceptional case (as is Egypt).  Most governments have only lasted a few centuries at best without being overthrown, conquered, or otherwise replaced.

Going forward, how many changes can one expect over the next 7500 years?  How certain are you that at no time will it be necessary for the citizenry to resist a government turned malignant?  If you strip from the people the ability to resist, and that means having personal arms that are at least in the same ballpark as those issued to military troops then you are gambling that the lives “saved” by said restriction (which itself I dispute, but will allow for sake of argument here) will not be outweighed by the lives lost because an unresisted government turned malignant.

Now, I have so far only looked at the number of homicides in the US.  What about in the world?  Well, even though most of the world has more severe restrictions on owning firearms than does the US, the total number of homicides annually worldwide (2015 numbers) is estimated at about 160,000.  That’s more than 10 times as many as the US numbers.  But even so, we’re talking 625 years of criminal homicides to match the number of people killed by their own governments in the 20th century.  For comparison, that’s a period that stretches from 1394 to the present day.  In 1394, the vestiges of the Roman Empire (i.e. the Byzantine Empire) still existed.  There were still Viking settlements in Greenland.  The English Civil War, the Glorious Revolution, and other upheavals were still to come.  The Hundred Years War was merrily percolating along.  Martin Luther and the Protestant movement were more than a century in the future.  Monarchy was the government of the day, with the Dutch Republic still almost two centuries in the future.  And so on.

Can you even gamble a mere 625 years that there will be no need for a citizenry to forcibly resist a government turned malignant?

I can’t.

Some years back, I watched the deCappuccino version of The Man in the Iron Mask.  The movie was okay, but one line caught me.  It’s near the end, the second in command of the palace guard points to a dying d’Artagnon (it’s not a spoiler at this late date, is it?) and says, “All my life, all I wanted to be . . . was him.”

Damn . . . that moment.

You see, I grew up with heroes. I grew up with comics during the late Silver Age, Superman was the Big Blue Boyscout, when Batman wasn’t the cowled psychopath, when Robin was starting solo adventures with Batgirl (and while I knew I could never be Batman, I thought maybe Robin was achievable). I wanted to be the hero, dammit, or if not the hero, at least a competent sidekick.

Then I grew up and got “respectable”. But a part of me never quite grew out of that.

And so I like to write about heroes that are really heroes because I figure that there are other people out there, like me, who want to read about them.

I gave up on comic books, not because I outgrew them but because they “outgrew” (if you can call it that) me. In the interests of being “real” and “relevant” and “real” they wanted their heroes to be “flawed” by which they meant “scarcely better than the villains”.

I saw it in prose fiction as well. Bleah people living bleah lives with not a hero to be found.

When I saw the movie, I wrote out an anguished essay on the usenet group “rec.arts.comics” titled “Where have all the heroes gone.” The one line just struck so deeply to the core of my being.

I will never be that hero. I like to think that the dream, however, might make me a better person than I would have been.

And that’s why I love the idea of Human Wave.

And so I leave you with this musical interlude:

(Yes, the production values are cheesy but I love it for the pure unvarnished emotion.)

And pity Within Temptation doesn’t have an official video for this one.

There’s movie “Deathgasm” which I haven’t seen (but maybe I should) but which has been the source of more than one “meme.” One in particular has the metalhead guy (as in every pic I’ve seen him in has him all in black and heavily made up) explaining to his very non-metal girlfriend that when he feels sad he listens to metal music and it’s better because someone else knows the pain.

Whether someone else knows the pain or not is an open question.  The performers could simply be crafting the illusion that they actually “know the pain”. On the other hand, the illusion can be enough.

So when life seems too overwhelming.  When I can’t seem to cope.  I listen to metal (and I’ll add Goth to that too) and, yeah, it’s better because I’m not alone.  Even if that particular artist is just crafting an illusion and their own life is all sweetness and light, the fact that they’re able to craft that illusion shows that they’re drawing on sources that do share the pain.  And so I’m able to move on and, somehow, find the way to cope.

So here are some examples:

Evanescence has a number of songs that fit this theme–I could do this whole interlude just using their music, but I’ll try to limit myself to provide some variety today. 😉

Okay, I’ll do another Evanescence song here.  When I heard this one I thought it was about a love gone sour and it still works that way, but the video adds a whole new dimension to it which I very much like.  Both views work and both suit a mood.

The title hints at a “worst of times, best of times” situation.  There is some truth to that.

Midway through my first year of public school my family moved, not far, just a mile or two up the street to a white single story house with a driveway and a covered porch on the side.  Thanks to the wonders of Google Maps and “Street View” I do believe that house in the picture is the very house.  If so, it has been modified since then, with the attic finished (as evidenced by the upper floor in front) and a raised section added in the back).

The tree in the middle of the front yard and the one visible to the right in back may well be the same trees I remember climbing as a kid.  Although, if so, the one in front had some lower limbs removed.

One of the first things Bruce did when we bought the house was have a garage built in the back yard.  It wasn’t for cars.  Oh, no.  There was no access to it at the time for a car (although you can see a second driveway to the left of the house here–other views show it leads to a garage in the back yard, right where Bruce had the one built–which I suspect was added sometime after we left).  The garage was Bruce’s ham radio station and lab.  It’s where he built his radios, some from Heathkit kits (the company “Heathkit” remains but is a pale shadow of its former self), and some from scratch.

While I was in First Grade I walked from this house down to the old school, a distance of about one and a half miles.  To school in the morning, from school in the afternoon.

I actually enjoyed that time.  The only real “downside” was that Bruce was a strict disciplinarian.  A very strict disciplinarian.  He believed in corporal punishment with a heavy hand.  While I’m not opposed to a moderate ration of corporal punishment where needed, looking back I do think that Bruce’s use of it rose to the level of abuse–particularly given things I learned about him later–but, at least at first, it wasn’t considered so at the time.

So, I finished first grade and moved on to second.  This was at the school that was much closer to our new house, and, indeed, I’d walked right past it every day going to and from the old school.  The new school was Highland Biltmore Elementary School.  The school at that location now is called Victory Elementary School.

At Highland Biltmore I had a teacher that I hated–and the feeling was apparently mutual–Mrs. Faircloth.  About this time I was having trouble with math.  It wasn’t until many years later that I learned that I had a perceptual problem–not “dyslexia” but akin.  I’d see letters and numbers reversed and I’d sometimes see a “-” as a “+”.  In reading, context and the fact that I read avidly anything I could get my hands on allowed me to develop coping and compensating skills completely unconsciously.  Math, however, proved to be a different challenge.

This was also the time that I became aware of the space program and things related to outer space.  One of those things was a children’s book by Mae and Ira Freeman “You Will Go to the Moon”, which was based on illustrations for von Braun’s articles for Collier’s magazine (a later edition was based on the actual Apollo hardware).  It is literally nearly if not the very first book I can remember reading (Dr. Seuss’s “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish” is the other candidate).

My parents had friends who lived in a house in what today would be a fairly nice neighborhood (and so was downright palatial back then) and they would, from time to time “watch” my sister and I while my parents were off doing other things.  However, it turned out that they weren’t particularly nice people.  One day my mother came home and found that my sister and I were playing outside while the other people’s children were all inside.  When asked why the other children were inside the other family’s mother said “It’s too hot for them to be outside.”

My mother threw a fit.  Too hot for her children but not too hot for us? (Later when it was “too hot” my sister and I were relegated to the garage which, I suppose, was a modest improvement–we got some bleed over from the house air conditioning, which was a major luxury back then, and an indicator of just how well-to-do these folk were.)

However one time when we were actually in the house, the TV was showing the reentry and landing of the Apollo 9 mission.  I was captivated although I didn’t really understand it at that time.  However, I got the Freeman book soon after that and the things connected.  My parents followed the Apollo 10 mission and so, therefore, did I.

I was hooked.

The rocket in “You Will Go to the Moon” was black.  Therefore, I declared, my favorite color was black.  This caused some sneering from Mrs. Faircloth.  In class we were to draw an underwater scene and I colored all the fish black.  When she commented on it one of the other kids said “his favorite color is black” which led to her saying “he must see everything in a black light.”

Another factor was that in that school second grade science was taught via a television broadcast.  They’d set up a television at the front of the class and we’d watch while the person on the screen went over various elementary science concepts.  When they got to the section on the planets, the gimmick they used was that the instructor went around to the different planets in a spaceship (okay, it was a cardboard cutout of a flying saucer propped up in front of her but it worked for eight year old me).

Oh, I was so done.  Space was what I wanted.   Space was what I lived and breathed for.

Bruce, it turned out, was a Star Trek fan.  And that was it.  I wanted, with every fiber of my being, to go into space.  It was all I could think about. (Okay, I also wanted to be a superhero thanks to comic books and the Superman and Batman TV shows then in syndication but even there–Green Lantern and Superman went into space a lot so I could do both, right?)

It was then that the bullying started.  My interest in science (wanting to go into space) made me stand out from other kids.  I also tended to be smaller and weaker (which would plague me through most of my youth) which made me an inviting target.  I got beat up with some regularity.

Then there was Mrs. Faircloth, the “Bitch” of the title.  She was the “he sees things through a black light” teacher.  One day for some reason or other she had us all put our heads down on our desks (a common punishment for minor classroom infractions back then–usually, I think, for the class being overly noisy).  I yawned.  Apparently this displeased her and I was told to go out and stand in the hall (another common punishment).

The part about that that I hated most was that I missed the science lesson for the day which…well, see above.  I loved those lessons.

At one point she sent home a “paddling” permission slip to be signed by my parents and returned.  The schools used corporal punishment back then but at least in that district they required specific parental permission.  I, not really understanding what that was about, forged signatures (only I had a problem with “George Bruce Savage, III” so I just wrote “GBS” in the space–I could read fine; writing, however, was a whole other ballgame–still is when it comes to handwriting).  Very bad idea on my part anyway but they caught me at it and contacted my parents directly.  My mother was basically “not only ‘no’, but ‘hell no.'” Nobody was going to paddle my behind, should I need it, but my parents.

Another time she called me up in front of the class and asked me why I wasn’t wearing a belt.  For some reason I just didn’t bother to put on belts in the morning back then.  I have no idea why, I just didn’t.  However, this was Mrs. Faircloth and I knew she hated me and the feeling was mutual, so I had to come up with some excuse so I told her I didn’t have any.  A few days later she had several of the other students bring in extra belts they had and called me up in front of the class once more to hand them to me so now I didn’t have an excuse.

Yes, it was as humiliating as it sounds.  Okay, partly my own fault for lying about it in the first place but still I really think that could have been handled better.

My mother told a version of the story some years later to her friends that I overheard.  She said that the teacher had come to her about the belt issue asking why I didn’t have any belts.  She told her that I did have belts but just wouldn’t wear them.  It seemed that the teacher and my mother had a conflict of personalities and at least part of what I encountered in school was blowback from that.

Those incidents were typical of my first time through second grade.  And the reason it was “first time through” was that at the end of the year I had failed math and English.  My mother was certain that most of that was the teacher getting back at her over the belt incident.   Maybe.  The math may have been entirely legit given my undiagnosed perceptual disorder, but English?  Which was mostly reading?  Again, whole. other. ball. game.

First makeup opportunity was “summer school.” This was an intensive period where I spent the first half of the day in “English” and the second in “Math.” I don’t remember much about the English except that we were reading a story that was somewhat interesting (far better than stupid Dick and his insipid sister Jane). Math, however, was basically just sitting at your desk solving arithmetic problems in a workbook.  Hundreds and hundreds of problems one after the other.

Now, something particularly special happened during Summer School.

Sunday, July 20, 1969.

Yep.  Apollo 11 landed on the Moon.

From about 3 in the Afternoon, I was glued to the TV set, waiting, watching as Lunar Excursion Module landed on the Moon and then Armstrong and Aldrin spent the next several hours securing the LEM and preparing to make their exit onto the lunar surface.

At one point the commentator (Cronkite, I believe, may he rot in…Why no, I do not like the so-called “most trusted man in America”, but that’s for other things, not this) said “They are on the moon” and I jumped up and ran to tell my mother thinking this meant that they had finally gotten out of the LEM and were walking on the surface.  My mother simply said “They have been for some time now” with which I knew he meant the space ship was on the moon, not that the astronauts were walking on it yet.

There were a lot of “simulations” (pictures of models to illustrate what was going on) and those were confusing to eight-year-old me since I didn’t have a good grasp on that idea at the time.

During the preparations one of the equipment bays in the LEM was opened letting a TV camera, which they also activated remotely basically fall out.  This provided the images of Neil Armstrong taking the first steps on the moon.

Watching all this kept me up well past my bedtime on a school night but my mother allowed it given the historic nature of this literally once ever event.  This will never be another “first time men from planet Earth walked on another world”.  And I got to watch it via live broadcast.

The following Thursday, the Apollo astronauts re-entered Earth’s atmosphere, splashed down, and were recovered.  To give you some idea of how rapt I was with the whole thing, I actually stayed. after. summer. school to  watch on the school TV and not risk missing any of it.

I ended up failing summer school too.  I don’t remember whether it was just the math portion or whether I failed both (possibly as a result of penmanship in English). But whichever was the case that meant I had to repeat second grade.

The second time through went much better but we’ll pick that up next time.