Category: Uncategorized

UPDATE: turns out I was wrong and double vision is side to side not up down (it just made me notice the up down again.)  It’s probably the result of severe inner ear infection still being treated.  Will do follow up in a week.)  I TOLD you not to worry.

Long story, but I woke up with double vision up and down.  Okay, I have that normally, part of the thingy in the brainy, but this was way worse than “normal” and my prescription feels “off.”

This means reading or writing is a problem unless I close an eye.  It might have something to do with the sinus/ear thing still going on, who knows?  I have an appointment in a couple of hours, so this is just the post to tell you not to worry.

I’m planning to bring out A Fatal Stain, the third Dyce Dare Mystery on Thursday, unless act of Amazon delays it.  I have a great cover by Jack Wylder:

Also, support wrong-think authors, get free books.

ALSO, my friend Kevin J. Anderson is trying something new and different. Go give his page a look.

I promise a real post tomorrow, when hopefully this double vision thing will have resolved.  And I’m sure it’s just the sinus infection, or the antibiotic or something, honestly.

In societies with slaves, at least since Rome, at some point there evolved a rule that said something like “Such the womb, such the child’s condition” meaning that — because humans are promiscuous apes, and the legal “condition” of the father (or his identity) was often hard to ascertain — if you were born to a free mother you were free.  If you were born to a slave mother, you were a slave.  This applied regardless of color of skin and any qualities of the child.  You were born to a slave mother, you were a slave.  In fact much the same applied to all “classes” that were inherent at birth, in European systems that required nobility (or serfdom) at birth.

It was the inherent injustice of this system, to a great extent, that propelled the enlightenment and more just laws of the “condition” of humans.

It is actually fascinating to read Dumas, and catch the idea of inherent nobility (of character) or baseness (of same character) depending on your station at birth.  You also catch that if you read any historically accurate books, particularly those set before the 18th century.

Part of this of course was the “technology change” changing people’s perceptions.  You see, while it is obvious how the class structure of Europe evolved, (insecure times, Lords being those who fought, etc.  Yeah, I know it wasn’t universally applicable.  No, I don’t want Suburbanshee to hit me over the head with an history book) but it’s not obvious how it evolved into the idea that everyone should be born with equal rights.

There are theories, of course.  Those who believe that all of humanity is shaped by words and ideas, think it was because literacy and books, both, were widespread, and so–  And those who think it’s all economics think it was the industrial revolution.

It is both, of course.  the industrial revolution, and before it, the start of the bureaucratic state (which was better than the whimsical “word of the local lord” state, trust me, needed people of ability to make it work.  People of ability, human genetics being the crazy thing they are (I NEED to get older son to write a post), capable, intelligent people could be born to any class.  And the injustice of geniuses being considered menials while morons were Lords became a turning point for systems of thought, which in turn — informed by a lot of things, mostly Christianity — largely ended the class system and definitely slavery.

Mostly because Europe still largely thinks in “Classes” — I know, I was born and raised there — and those of us in whose mind it doesn’t fit easily always felt weird about it.

Guys, we’re starting to feel weird about what the US is doing too.

Because this whole “social justice” thing and various set asides sound EXACTLY like “such the womb such the condition”.

Yeah, I know it’s all dressed up, all purty-like in “addressing historical injustices” and “making people more equal.”  With due respect (which is known) that is the greatest load of twaddle I’ve ever heard.

Yes, sure, you want to make sure people get a fair start in life so they can all have a chance.  Again, with due respect “Who are you to judge who has a fair start and who doesn’t?”

Of course there is no way to look at a person and figure out what history they have; whether they came from a home that prepared them for life, or one that handicapped them.  There is no way to tell, either, whether their ancestors were discriminated against or not (nor should it matter.  More on that later.)  I mean, people of dusky skin who immigrated to this country only one generation ago get the same “set asides” as descendants of slaves, even though in the places they come from they might never have met any real discrimination, since everyone was about that color.

So in actuality, what the preferences and punishments of society are about are superficial characteristics like skin and look.

The problem with this is that it hooks in with a very ancient and dysfunctional part of the human brain, to evaluate things on “such the womb, such the child.”  We start assuming that, because some people get more benes and more fawning upon, they MUST be better.  The corollary to this is that some people are worse.  This is all back of the brain stuff, and why we see otherwise decent or at least not overtly criminal people call for the death or detention of all white males, without even stopping to think that some of those white males had considerably harder beginnings in life than the “women and minorities” whose “victimhood” is getting redressed.

Let’s speak with no obfuscation: Mala Obama or a young boy growing up with a drug-addicted mother in the Appalachians?  Which needs more help and bringing up to speed to make something of her/himself in life?  And yet, by our laws, right now, she’s assumed to need more than him.

Things have gotten so crazy that people talk of the “privilege” of concentration camp survivors.

On the same path, but a different league, middle-class parents are entreated not to read to their kids, lest they give them privilege (cooties) i.e. a head start on other kids.  As though this were bad; as though it meant they’re holding someone down by encouraging their KIDS to make the best they can of their circumstances.

Then there is the fact that any minority who actually either makes it on their own or denies the received (Marxist) wisdom of those who set and enforce preference rules is immediately declared a class/gender/race traitor and lectured on “privilege.”

Let’s not forget that hilarious time when an upper middle class, white American woman who’s never done a days hard work in her life came over to lecture me — a first generation immigrant who started from nothing and is writing professionally in her third language about “sensitivity to the downtrodden and racism.”  Yeah, that was a bucket of fun.

All of this insanity descends directly from the idea that people are BORN with privilege or victimhood, and that they should either be mollycoddled or shunned according to their PHYSICAL characteristics at birth, and the race of their ancestors.

Let’s be real, okay?  The only real slavery subsisting is in Arab countries and they take slaves of every race, including their own.  The only real sexism is also in Arab countries.  At this point, people are being compensated for things that they’ve never endured, and don’t even have a very clear idea of.  (Most American people think white people INVENTED slavery to enslave black people, and not that it’s an old and persistent sin of mankind, affecting every race and every culture until the industrial revolution.  This backfires and is actually very bad for black people in America because it gives them the sense they’re uniquely weak, for this to have happened to them.)  As for the so called oppression of women in America, most American women could benefit a great deal from living six months in working class anywhere in the world.  Maybe that would stop them going to war with philology and would get them to give thanks fasting for living in what is ultimately genuinely a matriarchy.

People are supposedly being compensated for things that happened to their great grandparents.

Now, yes, inequalities subsist, but at this point they subsist BECAUSE of the set asides, encouragement and molly coddling and also, because, frankly anything Government and/or progressives do tends to come out bass awkwards.

So, you know, their war to end all wars GUARANTEED world war II and, by extension, the cold war.  And their programs to end poverty have institutionalized it.

In the same way programs to push women into STEM and not to discourage girls (And WHY STEM?  I have the greatest respect for the sciences, but society is not a vast laboratory.  If you wanted to be wealthy, I’d recommend financial planning/stock trading, which end up having a lot more power than lab monkeys.) mean that every teacher is terrified of telling a girl/woman she needs to work harder, or she’s just no good at whatever.  And so these women get to college having done NO work, and usually drop out of STEM degrees within the first year, for something easier like business.

And programs to hire or promote minorities means that those genuinely capable minorities who make it up the ladder on their own have to face scoffing and remarks about their ability because people assume they’re “affirmative action successes.”  This in turn leads to real discrimination because they’re not treated seriously.  And that in turn leads to resentment and more calls for government intervention.

If you’re saying a vicious cycle of crazy, you’re right.

It’s sort of like re-creating aristocracy.  Oh, and you know how the absolute kings got aristocracy to obey them?  They fomented wars and discontent between noblemen, so that the king was the only arbiter of right and wrong in the country.

Remove “king” and put in “Centralized Government” and the picture will become clear.

This is why the end result of any “progressive” (communist) society is hereditary monarchy and feudalism beneath.  It is in fact an eschewing of the gifts of prosperity and equality of the enlightenment.

And now you know why all the representatives of the old “good” families in Europe are communists or at least ardent Marxists.

Social justice is feudalism dressed in pretty clothes.  It is slavery and I say to hell with it.

Each human should be born equal before the laws.  Any tampering with that legal equality is the establishment of nobility and slavery and classes neverending.  Sure, not all start in the actual same place, so not all end up doing as well.  Equality of results is unenforceable because not all humans WANT the same things.  Give them equality before the law.  Individually help those who need it and want it.  Over time this will result in the most equitable society.

All the rest is just the old beast wearing a prettier costume.

We won’t get fooled again.

I understand there is pleasure in idleness.  I understand because OTHER PEOPLE tell me so.

Maybe it is something like sleeping.  I used to hear there was pleasure in sleeping, but I never fully believed it.  Sleeping is what happened when I ran out of energy, and it was done reluctantly.  Ever since I was a little kid, I felt when I slept, a portion of my life was stolen.  So I hated it.

Then I had kids.  The times I could lie down and JUST sleep were like gifts from the gods, and the greatest pleasure known to men.  Forget chocolate, all I needed was a bed.

Maybe idleness is that way too.  Maybe at some point I will enjoy it, cherish it, realize why other people love it.

Today is not that day.

I’ve been convinced — okay, Amanda Green yelled at me — that I need to take one and maybe two weeks between books.  I’m not fully convinced that this is why I got ill, but I sort of understand it.  Creating things is HARD and if you just go go go you hit a flat spot, and things that should be easy take twice as long.

So, having finished the second book of the year two months late (mostly because of the flat spot/autoimmune/massive ear infection) I am TRYING to take a week off.  The problem is that my brain doesn’t BEND that way.  I can wake up, think I am too tired and roll over, but the guilt of it won’t let me sleep.

I’m trying to keep the guilt quiet by doing Spring cleaning.  Where I came from, we did a huge cleaning Fall and Spring, the equivalent of turning the house upside down and giving it a good shake.  This meant if you slipped one or two weeks and didn’t clean, it wasn’t the end of the world, and the house was still effectively pretty clean.  It’s still hard.  I had to stomp pretty hard on the idea that keeps recurring that “short stories aren’t REALLY writing.”

I really seem to having nothing between stopped and going full force.  It’s a skill I’m trying to acquire.

Anyway, having decided to take a week off, I’m trying not to brain too hard on these posts too.  I hope you guys are okay with that.

There will still be posts.  Some of them might be odder than usual though.

And meanwhile, reward wrong thinkers, get free books!

Io9 gets it wrong again. – William Lehman

In this ever-changing world in which we live, it’s nice that there are a few absolutes.  Like Walmart is always vilified, Starbucks coffee is always over roasted, and io9 can’t get it right to save their ass.  In the Navy, we had a scale for questions and answers. From 4.0 knows and explains answer when asked, on down…2.5 if I remember right, was recognizes right answer when prompted.

Poor little io9 can’t even score that.  In an article based on an interview of David Gabriel (Marvel’s VP of sales) http://io9.gizmodo.com/marvel-vp-blames-women-and-diversity-for-sales-slump-1793921500, David explained that one of the primary reasons Marvel is in a sales slump, according to their customers is that people are tired of all the diversity BS.  Well, these clowns (I’m sorry Pennywise, I realize that’s an insult to clowns everywhere.) demand to argue with David, and insist that it’s not that, it’s the abundance of crossovers, and events, and … then they throw in the screwing over of beloved characters, as if that isn’t part of the very “diversity” bullshit people are tired of.  Making Thor a woman? Oh no, that’s not about diversity, and that’s not what people are bitching about, David, you’re lying to us!

These guys are the gang that couldn’t shoot straight…No, that’s not fair, they’re more like a gang made up completely of Cuntsman clones, that can’t shoot at all for fear of developing PTSD.  They throw out the red herring of “it costs more”, (Yeah it costs more, everything costs more.  The only place that hasn’t seen inflation, is the federal economic index) they throw out the loss of talent, well, it could just be, that the artists are tired of the diversity train too!

Then, just to put the cherry on top of the sundae of silliness, they claim that “Shelving the blame onto diversity ignores all the aforementioned internal problems in favor of one they have no control over.” As if the owners of the comic book empire can’t control whether they try to push diversity at the cost of story or not.

Ya know, all of this seems REAL familiar… Where have we… Oh, yeah, the Hugos, the wooden assholes and the publishing empires… Which of course io9 is also on the wrong side of, thinking that story needs to be driven by message.  This seems to be a common theme.  Well, if you’re going to be wrong and a fool, I suppose it’s best to be consistently wrong and a fool in the same manor.

People, here’s the thing.  If I want to be educated, I’ll read a news source (I just wish I could find one without bias, instead of having to read 4 and fair the results based on which way the publisher leans) or I would read a nonfiction work.  If I’m reading fiction, or watching fiction, or looking at fiction, I want to be ENTERTAINED.  If you want to educate me too, you better do it in a way that I find entertaining, or you’re not going to get my hard-earned dollars.  It’s that simple.

I was a greedy child.  No, seriously.  Looking at the pictures of me as a little kid, all legs, teeth and eyes, you wouldn’t know I had to have a lot of lectures on not taking the better portion of (whatever) when we had guests.

Last time I was back in Portugal, I was talking to my dad and he got into his early years of marriage.  Dad is an enlightened male, particularly for his time and Portugal.  (Yes, he still has weird stuff, like it’s not manly to carry plastic bags, but that’s because he’s human.)  He got mom from a far more traditional family, so he told me with some indignation that when he first married her she insisted on giving the bigger portion or the best portion to him, while she and my brother took the rest.  He thought this was upside down, because d*mn it, his wife and kid should have the best.  He cited this as “the bad habits I had to get her over.”

I did not tell him his attempts had failed.  Long before I was marriageable age, mom had instructed me in “let your dad have the biggest or better portion.  Men need this.”

Yes, I hear feminists in the audience pull their hair out, so let me say right now: mom was wrong.  She was also right.

She was wrong in thinking MEN needed this.  There is after all a reason that dad thought women and children should have the best (and it’s a good reason, evolutionarily speaking.)

She was right if you just put it as “let your spouse/friend/relative” have the best part/the decision/the thing he/she really enjoys doing.

Look, I put it up above that I was a greedy child.  I’m also an incredibly self-centered person.  Part of this is being driven.  I have so much to do, I want to have my break the way I want it.  I want to enjoy my meals the way I like them.  I want to–

The problem with that is that if you do that, you’re not only going to end up divorced, you’re going to end up alone.

My first year of marriage, I often felt as though the inner child were throwing a massive tantrum.  “But I wanted that food/amusement/time.”  But I had had early training.  “Give him the best part.”  And the training helped.  I did.

After a while, I found that he did too.  I.e. he was doing things/not doing things because he knew my tastes and was seeking to accommodate them.

I know this sounds horrible.  “But then neither of you were doing what he/she likes.”  Ah.  but it doesn’t work that way.  The way it works is more that you find things you both like to do, or you learn to take pleasure in what the other likes.

I’m fairly sure 90% of our museum thing is me (I think.)  Watching silly movies is Dan (and yea I do it too, when I’m not infernally busy.)  As is finding goofy restaurants and having long talky meals.  Or finding cool new music.  I’d never listen to any music without Dan.

Eventually, by both of us trying to cater to the other, we’ve forged several things we like doing together, as well as giving each other enough time alone to pursue what each needs to pursue.

And we’re still married.

But this is not for spouses only.  Robert, for instance, has this thing with elephants.  When he was really working very hard in undergrad, I started forcing sudden holidays to “go look at elephants” because it always cheered him up.

Would I have preferred the Natural History Museum?  Sure I would.  That’s my thing.  But elephants are HIS thing, and I learned to enjoy it, just because it made him so happy.  And we developed other, joint, favorites.  Secretary birds, for instance.  Or the red pandas.  And just walking in the zoo in the rain.

Then there’s my friends.  Sometimes what they like is goofy, but I’m so cheered by seeing them enjoying themselves that I’m willing to cooperate.

The thing is, if you insist on keeping the better portion/bigger portion/the “right” thing in any relationship, it won’t last long.  You’ll end up in a desert of your own making.

So mom was right.  Give him the best portion.  She was wrong too.  Give her the better portion too.

And you’ll find it comes back to you a hundred fold.

A Little Bit of Promo in your Life by Free Range Oyster

Pam Uphoff

First Posting

The Directorate Book 4

That difficult first job! Sometimes it’s what you wanted, sometimes it’s not. But with a willing attitude maybe it won’t be disastrous… maybe.

Ra’d, Ebsa, and Paer have graduated, and they are determined to get Across, to explore new parallel worlds, just a step through a transdimensional gate away. Unfortunately they’ve pissed off just about everyone, so they’ll have to take what they are offered.

Surveillance

The Directorate Book 5

Paer is assigned to a secret project as the camp medic. But everyone is healthy so why not help the Helios Surveillance Mission?

David L. Burkhead

Rainy Days and Moon Days

FutureTech Industries

Jeff Bannock, while working his after school job at a construction outpost on the moon, merely wants to graduate and head to college. But a casual find of an obsolete memory chip leads to more danger than he ever bargained for.

Vignettes by Luke, ‘Nother Mike and Mary Catelli

There is a story by Ray Bradbury called “Almost the End of the World” and it’s one of my favorites for two reasons.  The first is that it ends in the line “Chicago, Pearl of the Orient, here I come.”  The second is that the posited reason for the world “ending” was the end of television transmission.  Or, given the mechanism and updating, internet too.

No, neither of those would be a good thing, but it amused me A LOT because of what he implied: that if you removed TV and by extension internet, people would have time for ALL sorts of other things that no one does anymore.

He’s right and wrong, of course.  I grew up in a world without tv or internet, and I don’t remember — as in the story — people taking to cleaning EVERYTHING or painting everything that would stand still long enough.

Oh, sure a lot more things got done.  Did I mention that for Easter women would pick flowers, sort them by color and make elaborate “tapestries” down the main street of the village?

But what Ray Bradbury missed is that in the days before electronic entertainment, there was also a lot more to do.  Because we were missing a lot of other technology that makes our life MUCH easier.  So, you know, my mom and grandmother, when I was little, ironed clothes, including dad’s white work shirts using coal-filled irons, and home mixed startch.  Sure they didn’t spend mindless time in front of the TV, but they also didn’t have much time to spend in front of the TV.

Also, assuming people would do something constructive even with the time they did have is kind of giving humans too much credit.  I think there is something in our brain that needs x time mindless entertainment per such and such time of work.

Now, mindless entertainment varies, of course.  Today you can spend a lazy afternoon reading crazy stuff on the net.  In my childhood people would spend lazy afternoons sitting on the stoop watching neighbors walk by.  And before you say that this was more sociable or whatever, uh…  A lot of the watching was like browsing facebook.  “So and so is wearing a funny hat.  He’s a poopy head.”  “Oh, look, those two changed their relationship status” etc.  It was just slower, more boring, and more personal because your neighbors knew you were watching ALL the time.

My mindless entertainment was often reading my cousins magazines or even my brother’s school books.  Sure, I sometimes — inadvertently — learned something, but so do I on the net, where the type of links I tend to follow is something geeky and often historical stuff.  Look, my mindless entertainment is just crazier than most people’s.

All of which brings us to — in my case, I know when I need brainless entertainment.  It’s usually when I’m too sick/out of it to do something that requires more thought, like reading a book I’ve never read before or even writing.

The cycle goes something like this: Get very ill.  Get bored while ill.  Still be unable to do anything productive.  Spend time reading FB or following crazy cryptozoology links.  Get habituated so that even when I feel better, I’m addicted to mindless.  Fight like crazy to stop the addiction.  Write.  Read.  Get sick.

Yeah, I’m now on the part of the cycle where I’m fighting like crazy, so you might see less of me in comments and on FB.  More importantly, I’m  trying to manage my health to at least extend the “well part” of the cycle.  And there are improvements, but they’re alas gradual.

No part of this involves my washing public structures and/or painting park benches.  That might be a loss for everyone concerned.  But I posit that if all electronic entertainment failed tomorrow, we would just find other, mindless things to do.

Right now, though, I need to leave the mindless behind and go write.  Because if I don’t?  It’s the end of the world.

Some of you might be wondering why I get so worked up over relatively unpopular or strange cases and why I invariably take the position of defending incredibly flawed individuals.

I was thinking about it myself yesterday.

I can’t remember, and I’m too lazy to look it up, whether I defended the guy who made the movie “The Innocence of Muslims” — I can’t remember his name now — you know the guy that our entire government decided, apropos nothing to blame for the Benghazi attacks, arrest, drag to jail.

I might not have written about him, since that was kind of close to when I came out of the political closet, so it might have been in the “in the closet time.”

However, I remember being horrified and anguished over his arrest, even in the middle of the horrors perpetrated on our people in Benghazi, with our government’s supine lack of action if not cooperation.

Days later Dan was talking to his sister about whom to vote for.  His sister, for reasons I won’t go into, is inclined to the left.  Dan pointed out the atrocious injustice of blaming this man for an attack that OBJECTIVELY couldn’t be his fault, the injustice of arresting him in the middle of the night.

My SIL’s answer was breathtaking (not in a good way.)  “Ah, well, he’s a bad man, and had been forbidden from being on the computer and making movies anyway.”

All this ignoring the fact that if the government hadn’t needed a scapegoat, no one would have dreamed of picking him up.

In that moment I realized this impulse to say “Oh, yeah, he got hit with something that was completely unfair and concocted for someone else’s purposes, but it it was totally his fault because he’s done this or that that is just objectively wrong” is both a mechanism of self-protection — we need to convince ourselves that this would never happen to us because we’d never do “whatever percipitating incident or excuse was” AND we can then feel safe again.

It is also the primary seed of tyranny, and the primary aid and abettor of it.  Otherwise decent people, scared by things that happen to people in circumstances in which they might find themselves, grasp at straws of excuses for why it happened to that person, and not them.  Because if they admit it could happen to them or their loved ones, then they lose faith in the institutions, and they HAVE to do something about it.  It disrupts their cozy ordained life.

It is this mental mechanism that allowed people downwind from the camps to say “well, but it’s only Jews and other degenerates, and you know they’ve done something to deserve it.  It would never happen to us, Helga.”  It is what allowed people under Stalin, hearing the secret police kick down their neighbors’ door in the middle of the night, to roll over in bed and go “Well, but they’re enemies of the regime; saboteurs and spies.  The police would never be after them if they weren’t.  We’re perfectly safe, Ivan.”  It is even what allowed people in the terror to denounce other people for saying words that they might or might not have misheard (like the woman who swore that she’d said spindle, not king which apparently sounded the same in local patois, and she said they needed one.) and watch them guillotined with perfect calm because “it could never happen to us, Marie.  Vive la revolution!”

Sure.  We’re not there yet.  Though it could be argued when authority figures beat the crap out of someone for the crime of wanting to sit on the airplane seat he legally purchased and not doing what the “authorities” told him to, and people try to justify the authorities’ actions with “Well, he was breaking the rules by not obeying the order to leave, so they were allowed to remove him” the mentality is already here.  And where the mentality is, the de-facto abuse will follow.

I even had a cartoon character on my facebook page tell me “He said they’d have to drag him, so they dragged him.  It’s his fault if he got injured.”
Okay, there is no proof he said ANY such thing, but let’s suppose he did.  If he’d said “Just shoot me” would that mean they weren’t guilty of murder?  People making these excuses for blatant abuse of power are just grasping at straws as to why he deserved it and THEY never would.

Which means they are severely delusional.  Once authorities — and yes, airline employees, reinforced with the power of government to “keep us safe from terrorists” are in a way government agents right now — get license to do this it will happen again and again.  It will happen randomly.  In fact, in this case it happened randomly, despite attempts to smear the doctor’s character all over the media.  He was picked because they wanted his seat.  And possibly because he was a small, older man with glasses and not, say, a hulking six foot some football player.  (Only a crazy person would randomly pick, say, Larry Correia, to forcibly remove from an airplane. )  It had zero to do with his moral character or well… anything else, really.

It brought to mind the Milo Yannopoulus kerfuffle, when even conservatives lined up to take a hit at the successful speaker the left wanted to remove.  Not all of them were motivated by fear that if they didn’t distance fast enough they’d be accused of thinking pedophilia was fine.  No.  Quite a few of them were motivated by this crappy weasel idea that if you justify in your head why someone deserves the bad, biased treatment and you don’t, you’ll be safe from it.

Hence, the person who, HERE argued that Milo deserved everything coming to him because he’d been mean to people on twitter.  Or the person I didn’t approve who said he deserved it all because he WAS a “cuckservative”.  Or the people who, on a respected news site I have sometimes worked for, thought he “deserved” it for being a transvestite.  (Which he isn’t.  Heaven deliver us from crazy conservatives.)

None of these people, note, was saying that Milo was a pedophile, which was, ostensibly, what the left was trying to crucify him for (on contrived evidence) or even that he approved in any way of pedophilia (even if he’d made jokes about a circumstance in which he, himself, was the child being abused.)  No.  They were saying he deserved this completely crazy and unfair hit, contrived by splicing bits of recorded image and sound together, because “he was a bad person, and he had it coming.”

Our constitution protects not the rights of angels, but the rights of normal human beings, who are supposed to be secure in their possessions and in their persons, safe from random attacks, safe from libel, safe from theft.

Angels don’t need to be defended from anything.  They’re angels.  looking at their wonderful purity, everyone would realize it would be wrong to attack them.

The problem is there are no angels in our workaday world.  We’re all human.  Yes, even you, sitting on that chair, thinking your sins are of a much lower degree than any of the three people mentioned in this article.  Surely, if you were treated like the three of them were people would defend you.  Even better, no one would ever treat you that way, because they’d find no excuse.

Would you care to place a small bet?

First, as a wise rabbi once said, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”  If people will shrug and accept your being financially injured because you were very rude to someone once, in this age of the internet, which of us, particularly those of us who are hotheaded, has never been unwarrantedly mean, insulting or unforgivably rude to someone who didn’t deserve it?  And fine, we might not be on probation for something related to fraud and films, but which of us hasn’t penned or filmed or said something that the government might decide to blame a terrorist attack on?  And which of us, flying home, with appointments the next day, has NOT felt like saying “no, just no.  I want to go HOME.”  If that’s enough to justify beating someone and putting him in the hospital with severe injuries, which of us will escape a beating?

No.  People with authority must be restrained, and the side of the individual taken, even though every individual is flawed and even though all of us can find excuses for the abuses of the authorities.  Why?  Because if authority isn’t restrained it will become tyranny and then no one will be safe.  And because no one will be pure (ever) authority will continue being abused.

It is justly said that free speech must protect unpopular speech, because no one ever tries to restrain popular speech.

In the same way, it is the shady, the loopy, the Odd among us who must be kept safe in their dignity, in their persons, in their possessions and in their reputations.  Because if they are safe, then all of us will be safe.

And if they aren’t, soon enough, no one will be.

One of the recurring themes of this blog is “how companies, particularly those used to having control over their customers adapt/not to the new world of communications, the new world of technology that empowers the individual.”

Yes, you do know exactly where this is going.

My name is Sarah A. Hoyt, and I fly.  I don’t fly often — anymore — and I don’t fly with much degree of enjoyment because I was always rather afraid of flying.  (Afraid is not the right term.  I hate not being in control.)

But there was a time I flew more and with greater enjoyment.  This was around 99 to 2000 when for various reasons, we and the boys flew (tourism, mostly) about six times a year, return trips.  (So, twelve times a year.)

I don’t know if you remember those days?  You checked your luggage in, the planes were on time more often than not.  If not on time, they tried to compensate and be nice to you.

Unfortunately 9/11 changed that.  But I think the change was deeper than we think.  It wasn’t just that the airlines, suddenly faced with multiple delays and fewer passengers took the exactly wrong tactic to make themselves profitable again: charge for ALL the things, make the seats so small that when someone reclines, they’re in the lap of the people behind, etc.  No.  It was that this change was aided, abetted, directed by an authoritarian type of mentality.

I can’t prove it, but I think part of it was all the bail outs from government to the airlines.  The other part was that well… the entire flying experience became more authoritarian.  You have to submit to being checked from head to toe to even get aboard (and yet, as usual, I flew with both liquids and blades I didn’t know I was carrying last week.  It’s kabuki.)

Along with this came the airlines ability to remove/accuse of interference or threats or terrorism anyone who argues too loudly with any of its employees.  We’ve all heard stories of people removed/locked up/etc simply because they wouldn’t or couldn’t obey instructions.

I remember the woman handcuffed to the airport bench who died through lack of meds, the same lack that was causing her to act psychotic.

I think the ability to get away with mistreating passengers (and call the police on passengers if they complain) and getting away with some egregious abuses that people tolerate because “well, who knows, next time it could be a threat” has corrupted airline culture.

I think what happened to the United Passenger was not only predictable, but inevitable.  Once airlines get used to the idea that you’re “cattle” to be herded and told what to do, arbitrarily, and that if you refuse to pay for extras you’re negligible, you have set up the conditions in which a passenger, sooner or later will get abused and the abuse will get filmed.

As with publishing, we have an industry that has a monopoly and is told by the government it is “vital” and given subsidies to prove it.  (Well, publishing hasn’t been, I think, but you get the point.)

Because the employees have full authority and can back it up by accusing their passengers of terrorism/denying them boarding/creating trouble, they’ve got into this mentality where the passenger is NOT their customer, but simply widgets to be moved around, ordered about and treated, generally, like things of no account.

Which explains why our airline travel is rapidly coming to mimic the qualities of Soviet travel in its hey day.

I rarely fly these days.  In the last 9 years, we’ve retrenched our financial position so often we’re now out of trenchers.  Also, frankly, I hate flying these days.  You have to get there an hour and a half ahead of time, and half the time the flight will be changed/delayed/strange.  The strange part usually involves distributing my family around the airplane like a kid’s thrown marbles, seemingly for fun.  (Like last week, when Dan and I were separated and another couple were equally separated for no reason either of us could figure out. — we traded.)  This is a problem for me, because I have severe mid-range deafness.  Yes, at a noisy con, if I smile and nod when you tell me that you just grilled your neighbor with garlic, it’s because I have no idea what you said.  So, in a noisy plane?  I have no idea what the attendants are telling me at any given time.  I have no idea what the announcements are.  Usually I look at Dan/Robert/Marshall and they translate.  And yes, there have been one or two situations in which flight attendants thought I was being obtuse on purpose, but fortunately not escalating to violence, as I rarely travel alone.

So, it’s not a pleasurable experience.  The reasons I do it these days are to attend cons; to accompany Dan on a business trip; to see our aging/ailing relatives (yes, we know eventually we’ll arrive too late.  We’re too far away.  But we try.

And every time I travel, the flight is overbooked and they ask for volunteers.  Sometimes I’m really tempted, because, say, a voucher for 1k would pay a trip to see my parents.  BUT what good does it do me to arrive, say, at Liberty con on Sunday, then turn around and come back.

I swear until yesterday I did not know you could get INVOLUNTARILY bumped, and the idea fills me with dread.  The reasons I travel, I’ll still have to travel, but it has the potential of nullifying the entire reason I am even there.

More on this later.

For now, everyone who is reporting on the UAL incident is saying the “doctor involved” has a shady past.  This is TO AN EXTENT TRUE.  Kind of.  He had some problems, some of them apparently resulting from PTSD (his treatment at the hands of the airline must REALLY have helped that) that led him into shady behavior AFTER which he did everything in his power to clean up his act.

The interesting thing here is where the Louisville newspaper reporting on him found his name to do the background check.  It wasn’t in early reports, and it was only in possession of the airline.

Did the airline give the name to the newspaper?  I don’t know.  I wish I could say it was unthinkable.

However, the behavior of various people coming out at the same time to defend United and to tarnish in any way the reputation of the man they were caught abusing, reminded me of the incident when I posted Frontiers of Insanity post.

This was a time when my blog got on a good day about 100 hits, but within hours of my putting up a post critical of Frontier, we had a bonafide Frontier apologist, casting aspersions on my character and acting like I was crazy and “entitled.” (BTW if you want a glimpse into how crazy and authoritarian airlines have got, that experience is a good example.  And it’s not even the worst we’ve had.  The absolute worst was 9? years ago when flying back from Chattanooga took us on a tour of the US, including overnight in Chicago and bringing us home too late to go through the mandatory parent interview to get #2 son into a dual college/high school program.  Fortunately Older Son ably filled in for us, and we just had to go in and sign papers after.)

This same comment about being “entitled” was left by a United Employee on a post of mine on FB yesterday.  He said I didn’t understand the trouble with trying to subdue a planeful of entitled and unruly people.

I don’t like the term “entitled.”  It is too often used by people who think they have authority over you to tell you to fall in place.  Yes, I know, you do get “entitled” people, who demand safe spaces and think life should be “fair” like an eternal kindergarten.  But there are better terms for them, like “infantile” and “full of hubris.”

In the context of the airline, let’s dissect “entitled.”  You’re d*mn right I’m entitled.  When you pay for a service, you are entitled to that service.  It is known as “contract”.  And I don’t really care if the government says it’s legal for them to drop people involuntarily.  The government is no arbiter of morals.  The truth is that in any other industry, if I pay for something I’m ENTITLED to it.  And if people revoke it after payment, it’s called fraud and there are all kinds of ugly consequences.

Just because the government thinks airlines are “essential” and enables ugly behavior, it doesn’t make it RIGHT.

Entitled?  Damn right I’m entitled.  When I pay for something, I bought it, and it’s mine, whether it’s a service or a physical thing.  This is known as property rights, and — as such — is the cornerstone of the civilized society we used to be.

Again, I didn’t know until this week that airlines could just refuse boarding at will.  I still need to fly, but the idea that it can be arbitrarily denied because of someone else’s priority or someone else’s fuck up does not make me love it more.  I always assumed they just offered more and more money until SOMEONE took it.

Yeah, yeah, I know “overbooking is why flights are so cheap.”  Is it?  Is it really?  I don’t know what the rate of missing/not being there for flights is.  I’ve missed ONE flight in my entire life.  It would seem to me that having passengers on standby would take care of that.  SURELY if you’re actually compensating people for giving up their seats — and playing fair with compensation.  I’ve heard rumors United Airlines vouchers are useless — it costs you more than one or two empty seats.

The only time another … ah… company denied me the right to a service I paid for, it was the post office, who told me I couldn’t have the mailbox where the previous owners had had it, under the porch, but must have it down seventeen steps, at street level, because their UNION didn’t want them to have to climb that many steps.

In both cases, both institutions were heavily subsidized and protected by government.  In both cases, service is/was lousy.  In both cases the person being served wasn’t viewed as the CUSTOMER or the person who actually kept them in business.

I fully expect airlines to say that passengers must “build in” days to their travel, to insure they get there in time.  I mean, the post office told me — when I pointed out having the box on the street, in a street with pedestrian traffic was asking for theft — that I should have anything important and certainly not checks sent to me.  (Which explains why they’re increasingly Spam Mail.)

What I say is that if I need to build in hotels for an extra night at each end, then their flights must be WAY cheaper.

In the end this is the problem with the game of authoritanism and subtraction of services the airlines play.  Sooner or later, you’ve subtracted everything, and frankly Greyhound starts sounding good.

And then, perhaps, government decides you’re not essential anymore and stops subsidizing you.  Or you have to learn to subsist on package-carrying only.  OR — and it’s already happening — an airline that actually believes their customers are their customers and deserve to be treated as human beings comes into being and sends you into bankruptcy.

What I know is that right now, where we are, United COMPLETELY misunderstands their position.  From their half-hearted excuses, to the letter their CEO sent to employees telling them they had done nothing wrong and the passenger was a poopy head, they completely fail to understand that the public in whose court of opinion they’re being tried are those same widgets they’ve been pushing around and mistreating for YEARS.

Frankly, just in terms of how closely packed together we were last week, I have enough of a hate-in for them to last me for years.

United has been very close to my “no, not even if it’s half the price” list.  Now they’re firmly on it.  I’m sure I’m not alone.

And that in the end is what happens when you forget who actually PAYS you and who you’re SUPPOSED to serve.  At some point, you subtract enough — like, assuring them you’ll actually transport them for money — that you find you no longer have customers.

It’s a great way to go out of business.  And all for lack of understanding that they’re selling SOMETHING and not in charge of ordering people around to suit the airline’s convenience.

NO ONE is entitled to your business.  NO ONE is entitled to play bait and switch with you. And companies who think they are and can will eventually be “rewarded” with disappearance.  It might take some time, but it’s inevitable.

The way to stay in business is to offer what your customers want and to be nice to them while providing it.

An idea so crazy it might just work out.