Sean O'Brien - Blog

What Will it Take?

3/25/2025

Serious question: what will it take?

I know that tribalism–the idea that you have a political “team” and want to be loyal to that team, especially if you identify as a member of that team–is a powerful force. I also understand the sunk cost fallacy and how it applies to emotional investment.

In other words, I get it: if you are a Trump supporter and a MAGA member, you are predisposed to like him. And if you build your identity around being MAGA, then you will defend him. Furthermore, the longer you’ve been MAGA, the harder it is to leave it. In that sense, it’s cult like.

But surely, as strong of these forces are (tribalism, sunk cost fallacy, and cult programming) they must have a limit, right? They are strong, but surely, they’re not ultimately unbreakable, yes? Please, please tell me that there is a line, there is a limit, there is a moment when even the most tribal and brainwashed person must agree that what’s happening isn’t good, right?

I say that fully aware that there are MAGA folk who have lost family members because of their views, such as their wives or husbands deported and who still support Trump. Or people who have been capriciously fired without cause and who still consider themselves MAGA. Or families who are watching their already stretched budgets fail them due to Trump’s decisions but maintain their belief in him. Despite this, I simply cannot believe the hold this flim-flam man has on them is unbreakable.

So, then, what will it be? Completely crashing the economy? No, there will be both others to blame and lies to spin. Losing a war? Same answer. A personal scandal, then. But what’s left? He’s a convicted felon and for all reasonable meanings of the word, a rapist. What could he do that’s worse?

My wife and I used to discuss this. The only parameters on our discussions were that our imaginary events had to be within the realm of realism: him revealing himself to be a lizard alien or finding out we’re in the Matrix were out of bounds. What could he do that MAGA would turn on him–or at least admit that his presidency (his SECOND presidency) is a failure?

I don’t have an answer, but if you do, Dear Reader, please let me know. I’d be curious.

Be seeing you!

Lifelong Dream

1/8/2025

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated with bookstores and libraries.

First, I was enthralled as a reader. Look at all these stories! (I hadn’t yet found the excitement of nonfiction) This place, this library–you’re telling me all these books I can just…take? Go home, read them as many times as I want, bring ‘em back, and get more? I remember getting my first library card and feeling two contradictory things simultaneously: I remember feeling that getting a library card was just the natural thing to do: surely, everyone did this, right? This was just one of those Adult Things that one does, and now that I’ve done it, I’m a little bit closer to being an adult. But I also felt like I was enting some very exclusive club, that I held a membership card to some secret grotto where stories lived between brightly colored pasteboard covers.

Bookstores held a similar mystique, with the added idea that I could actually OWN these books–put them on my shelf and reach for them whenever I wanted. Books represented possibilities, and to go into a bookstore and see so many, so many…well. It was as if someone had told me, “don’t worry, Sean…you’ll never ever run out of things to read.”

Somewhere in my childhood, I thought about writing my own stories (I distinctly remember one of my primary school assignments–I think it was third grade–we were tasked with writing a Christmas story. I was so engrossed in this assignment that I asked my teacher for an extension so I could complete this opus. Later, in sixth grade, my wonderful teacher, Ms. Kraatz, had us write longer stories which she then taught us how to bind in a little book of our very own.

That was it, I think. That was the true beginning. I was hooked. I could go into a library and borrow a book whenever I wanted, or I could save up my allowance and go into a bookstore and buy a book and have it forever, sure. But now…I could WRITE MY OWN BOOKS!

Somewhere in there, during my preteen years, I started to dream. Of writing my own books. If having others read them and have the same magic bestowed upon them as I had on myself.

And of walking into a bookstore and seeing my name on the shelf.

Some dreams never happen, and that’s okay. Not everyone hits the game-winning home run in Game 7 of the World Series. Not everyone wins the Nobel Prize for their breakthrough discovery in cancer research. And not everyone thanks the Academy while accepting the award for Best Actor.

Me? I walked into my local Barnes and Noble and saw that little writer from almost fifty years ago achieve something he’s always wanted.

Be seeing you!

This Turbulent Priest

12/31/2024

On December 29, 1170, four knights loyal to King Henry II murdered the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket.

A few weeks prior to this, Becket had excommunicated some folks who were involved in the crowning of Henry II’s son as heir apparent. Becket felt that the coronation was an affront to the Church’s power of coronation–in essence, that the crown had usurped some of the power delegated to the Church.

Upon hearing that Becket had done this, Henry II became angry and, according to oral tradition, said, “will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” (accounts of the exact words of his utterance vary–a contemporary biographer claims it was “What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric?”)

The four knights–Reginald FitzUrse, Hugh de Morville, William de Tracy and Richard le Breton–confronted and then murdered Becket in the cathedral at Canterbury. They had taken Henry’s utterance as a tacit command, and acted upon it.

Stochastic Terrorism is a fairly modern term that has resonance today. In brief, it has to do with demonization of a person or persons so that they will become targets of violence. It’s the Henry/Becket thing one more step removed. Let’s say I’m speaking to an audience in which I repeatedly emphasize that my enemy is a monster, inhuman, unworthy of basic rights and dignity, and is furthermore evil, a scourge, a disease to be eradicated. If this speech is given enough, and to enough people, I can be reasonably sure that someone in my audience will be so moved by this invective as to take violent action against my enemy.

In this way, I can achieve my ends of violence without ever getting my own hands dirty. I can claim that I didn’t do anything, and that I am not responsible for what some crazed, “lone wolf” actor might have done.

I can call the press “the enemy of the people.” I can say that my political opponents are “the enemy within.” I can advocate for “one really violent day” to put an end to crime. These are all things Donald Trump has said on camera. He himself doesn’t need to issue a Presidential order to cause harm on those he dislikes. He knows–either through his understanding of mob psychology or through some animal cunning–that if he speaks this way for long enough, loudly enough, and frequently enough, someone in his following will do his work for him.

December 4, 2016. Edgar Maddison Welch enters the Comet Ping Pong pizza parlor and opened fire. He had become convinced through QAnon conspiracy theories that the restaurant was the headquarters for some child sex slave ring. Welch is now out of prison.

October 28, 2020. David DePape attacks and severely injures Paul Pelosi, husband of then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. After his arrest, he admitted to believing in various conspiracy theories, including the “stolen” 2020 election. In May of 2024, DePape was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

January 6, 2021. Thousands of Trump supporters–having been encouraged by Trump himself–stormed the U.S. Capitol, breaking past Capitol Police and entering the building. The mob chanted “Hang Mike Pence” and erected a gallows. Congress was evacuated to safety as the mob broke into the Senate chamber. Over 1,200 people have been charged with various crimes, and the arrests, trials, and sentencing continues to this day.

I could go on, but I think the point’s been made.

Be seeing you!

The Death of Truth, Redux

12/15/2024

I have a slight modification, or addendum to my earlier post about the Death of Truth that I believe is coming.

My earlier post posited that Trump will not actually solve many of the problems he claims he will because solving them will be hard. It will be easier to do something performative and then claim the problem is solved. For instance, one of his news outlets (and make no mistake, there will be several news outlets that will be even more one of his propaganda dispensers) will use a mobile unit to cover an ICE raid where a few dozen undocumented immigrants will be rounded up and put in vans, and then Trump will claim, “We got all the bad evil immigrants out. You’re welcome, America!” and his followers will say, “I notice there are no more bad immigrants around here! Another victory for Trump!” even if NONE of that is true.

Duplicate this for other things, too, and you get the idea.

I have an addendum to that.

Trump will ALSO claim to have solved problems that NEVER EXISTED IN THE FIRST PLACE. For example, I think he will rapidly take credit for stopping schools from performing sex change surgeries on children, or for stopping the eating of pets by monster immigrant people, or maybe even will claim to have finally busted up the ring of cannibal Satanists who eat children.

In other words, he won’t just claim to have solved problems that exist, despite not even coming close to doing so (inflation, immigration, etc.) but will also claim to have solved problems that NEVER existed.

The beauty of this plan is that he can point to the total absence of elementary schools putting litter boxes in schools for those kids who identify as cats as evidence that he’s fixed it.

In that vein, I’d like to claim some credit for things right now.

For the past six months, I’ve been broadcasting–at great personal expense–a radio beam to deter space aliens from Epsilon Eridani from invading Earth. I am proud to announce that this Earth Defense Shield has worked perfectly. To prove that it works, I will simply ask you to look around. Do you see any alien fleets invading? No, you don’t. So it works. Likewise my anti-Flying Shark Aerosol Spray (100% effective), my Murderous Leprechaun Repellent Poncho (ZERO attacks from the Little Folk!) and most importantly, I have personally ended that horrible practice where no one was ever allowed to say “Merry Christmas.” Remember when there used to be an eight-month jail sentence and a $10,000 fine for saying that? Well, it’s gone now, all thanks to me.

Be seeing you!

The "Trans Issue" Pt. 1

11/23/2024

I am as unbothered by trans folk existing as I am by left-handed folks existing. I hereby offer the following to assist those of you who are not yourself trans but who struggle with acceptance of trans folk.

Let us start with an analogy.

If a fully grown adult person who stood three feet from head to toe told me they identify as “tall,” I would accept that. I myself would probably say to myself, “Huh. I wouldn’t have said that, but I suppose they are using different criteria to define “tallness” than I am. Perhaps they mean it metaphorically, because they have achieved so much. Perhaps they mean they are tall compared to other little people, or to children. We’re just using the word ‘tall’ differently.”

Now, if that same person were to claim they are six feet in height and demand I agree that this is so, I would have to politely but firmly deny that. There’s a difference between “I define a term differently than you do” and “I am not living in reality.”

And now, let us get to the real issue.

If a person who was born as a man (with male genitals, an XY chromosome set, and the other biological markers we have come to associate with maleness) told me they identify as a woman (or, for that matter, simply said they were a woman) I would be back where I was with the “tall” example. I’d just simply accept that they are using the word “woman” differently than I do, and then we’d go for lunch or go to the art museum or the monster truck rally or do whatever it was we were going to do in the first place.

See, it seems to me that If our born-male human adult with all the characteristics I laid out earlier identifies as a woman, think of ALL the characteristics they share with being a woman: they have arms, legs, toenails, a four-chambered heart, an all-but-useless appendix and tailbone, a spleen, two kidneys, were born live (not from an egg), have 23 pairs of chromosomes, are warm-blooded, have a central nervous system, a spine, they fart, and so on and so on and so on. Virtually ALL the characteristics you could list about a human adult female would be present. The disagreement–if there is one–has to do with a tiny percentage of factors. In the overall scheme of things, the “checklist” of what we traditionally consider a woman is, for all practical purposes, full.

(This is why, by the way, the asinine and bad faith “argument” of “well, then–I identify as an attack helicopter” doesn’t work. The imbecile who uses this argument forgets that they share almost none of the same characteristics with their Apache and their claim can therefore be dismissed.)

To those of you who demand a set list of rigid, concrete, measurable characteristics to define “woman” (as so many right wing pundits seem to demand), I can’t help but notice that none of you, NONE OF YOU, have asked to define “human.” Surely, if Matt Walsh demanded of me I define “woman,” he means “human woman,” right? So, then, we should probably define “human” first. I wonder what he’d say?

Would he fixate on the physical characteristics? Like saying a human has two arms? If so, right away there are a huge number of people we’d have to classify as “nonhuman.” Babies born without one or both arms, folks who have lost one of both arms in the course of their lives, and I suppose a very small number of people who have more than two arms (the clinical term for this is polymelia, by the way). And yet, I don’t think any of us would dare to tell one of those folks they are not human. The same would be said for legs, or organs in the body, or senses, or just about any physical characteristics we normally associate with being human.

All right, then–perhaps being human isn’t about physical characteristics but of behavior. What behaviors would qualify a person as being human? Speech? Animals use language. Complex speech? Infants cannot speak–are they not human yet? Walking upright? Many animals do this, and again, infants do not. In fact, I would challenge anyone to come up with a list of behaviors that ONLY humans do and indeed ALL humans do.

What’s left? Biochemical? Which part? DNA? We are around 99% identical to chimps in our respective DNA structure. So, in order to define “human,” we had to use microscopic data that no one other than a scientist who specializes in a very narrow field understands and can only be found by using precise, advanced equipment.

Seems to me that definition is pretty close to useless.

Why not go with, “an organism is a human when and if it declares itself to be.” Sounds good, right? Almost elegant in its simplicity. And it will function for us in 99% of cases when we need it to. There are no doubt some very technical cases when we’d need to go to the DNA test to see if something is indeed human, but for virtually every ordinary case, we can easily get by with the “humans are who they say they are” definition.

Why not use the same for women and men? Yes, yes…in some very rare cases, I can see that it might be necessary for a trans person to make a distinction (I can imagine a medical emergency that somehow would be treated differently depending on male or female physiology) but I would imagine those would be as rare as it would be for a person to declare they have only one kidney. In the vast majority of interactions with others, it simply is a non-issue.
So, if you are the sort of person who struggles to accept the existence of trans folk, and demands people have strict, rigid definitions of what “man” is and what “woman” is, consider what I’ve said here. I hope it helps you come to an understanding that you are making a demand that you simply do not make in regard to virtually any other aspect of human interaction. You do not make the same demand to know if someone is a human–you simply take their word for it and move on.

I know that many of you will say, “but…but…there are issues involving public spaces! Or sports!” and I don’t want to dismiss your issues. But this blog post has gone on long enough, so I will save my thoughts on that stuff for a later time.

Be seeing you!

The Death of Truth

11/14/2024

It should come as no surprise to anyone who reads me that I am, to put it incredibly mildly, saddened by the election results. Donald Trump will return to the White House as the 47th President of the United States.

There’s a lot I am sad and worried about. I can’t list everything here–the list would be far too long–but I want instead to focus on something that is perhaps overlooked in the deluge of issues his victory presents.

Truth.

The concept of an objective truth, where we can determine with certainty that something either happened or it didn’t, or a certain statistic is accurate or it is not, or that something exists or does not–that’s going to die. He’s already done this in so many ways when he was the 45th president (his inauguration was attended by more people than President Obama’s, to name one of the first lies) and when he was a candidate (Haitian migrants are eating the pets of residents in Ohio, to name one of his more recent ones) that I can say with complete certainty that he will lie again.

The thing is…if Truth was wounded last time he was in office, I fear he will finish the job this time and kill it entirely.

For example…

As of this writing, inflation sits at 2.6% (this is from the consumer price index in October of 2024). Its recent highest point was in June of 2022, when it was at a whopping 9.1%. Inflation did indeed spike under President Biden, and remains higher now than it generally was under the previous Trump Presidency, when it averaged at 1.9%. So that’s true. Inflation has been coming down for years, but it did spike a year and a half ago, and Biden was president when it did.

Of course, the average inflation rate under President Obama, Trump’s predecessor, was 1.4%, so under Trump, the inflation rate crept upward slightly. I’m not making a claim that this means Trump allowed rampant inflation, because that would be silly. I am, however, heaping scorn on Trump’s claim that he made at the time that he “inherited a mess” from Obama. He did not. He is lying when he says that.

Another example…

In a direct quote from a Trump post, he claims that Vice President Harris “allowed almost 14,000 MURDERERS to freely and openly roam our Country.” This is a lie. The data he is quoting covers 40 years. It also includes people who are incarcerated.

This is quite simply a lie. It is not a reinterpretation of facts, it is not an opinion, it is not a perspective. It is a lie. It is not true. He lied about this to try to smear Harris. It is a lie.

I could go on for quite some time (a Washington Post fact checker estimates Trump told over 30,000 lies over a four years period) but the point I am making is not just that Trump lies.

It is that the concept of truth–that there is a knowable, objective truth in the world–is under attack. His supporters do not care that what he says is not, cannot be true (how could the U.S. passing tariffs POSSIBLY compel another country to pay us money? I mean, HOW could that even remotely be true?) because the idea of truth no longer matters. There is no truth other than what Dear Leader says, even if what he says today contradicts what he said yesterday. TikTok is a scourge that needs to be banned–no, it’s a good thing and I’m going to protect it. Cryptocurrency is a scam–no, it’s the future of money and you should all invest in it. Nothing is true because there is no such thing.

But wait. There may be a hidden benefit to all this.

If Trump’s followers (and let’s be honest…there are millions upon millions) believe what he says as truth, then consider the following:

Trump has promised to mass deport fifteen million people from the U.S. He ran on that promise, he had supporters wave signs saying “Mass Deportation Now,” he built a coalition on that promise.

But doing that will be hard. Oh, it will also be horribly immoral and unethical, and also probably illegal, but none of those things have ever stopped him or even given him pause. No, the fact that it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to carry out this promise is one to remember.

So…he won’t. Because he doesn’t need to.

He simply needs to have a few dozen poor, wretched souls rounded up, their pictures taken by Fox news correspondents, their tattooed bodies loaded onto vans while breathless coverage by a white anchor explains “Trump rids the country of these illegal criminals!”

And then he claims he’s fixed it. The bad people are all gone. He can tell his people to look around and notice how much safer their communities are, and they will nod their heads and agree it’s much better now ever since Trump cleaned house.

In short, he doesn’t NEED to deport 15 million people. He just needs to say he has.

Are you saying his supporters will call him out on this obvious lie when they can see with their own eyes how many illegals remain in their communities?

This man lied about a PHYSICAL WALL and his supporters believed him. This man lied about an ATTACK ON THE CAPITOL and his followers swallowed it. Things we have seen with our own eyes he has denied happening, and the MAGA universe has nodded with his pronouncements. Trump is the arbiter of what is true. So what need is there to actually DO the things he promised?

I know, it’s a strange defense. To say that he won’t need to be evil since he can just claim to be and that’s good enough is an odd comfort.

Trump can and will take credit for a recovering economy and a low crime rate which the country enjoys under Biden. He can claim to have fixed the immigration problem. And he can do so by doing precisely NOTHING. It will be a lie, but perhaps, in this case, the death of truth may be the only way our country lives.

Be seeing you!

Character

10/28/2024

Might get in trouble for this one.

As a public school teacher, although I still enjoy First Amendment protections when speaking privately, the line between private behavior and public behavior is blurry at best. If there are those seeking to discredit public school teachers, they will look at every act, every word, every affiliation to try and insinuate some nefarious, un-American, and insufficiently patriotic plot to destroy the country.

Nevertheless, here we go.

I’ve heard a lot recently about how the former president who is running to be the next president “speaks his mind” and you can’t fault him for that. Or how when multitudes of ex-colleagues come forward with reports of his fascist tendencies, those reports are brushed aside as ravings of disgruntled Marine Generals. Or how when he makes comments about immigrants eating cats and dogs he’s merely “reporting what he heard.” Or when he demeans women. Or says that Democrats are the enemy within and should be met with the military. And on and on and on.

Apologists for the ex-president like to pivot away from his words and explain that his POLICIES are what matter. “Sure,” they say, “you may not like the guy, but you love what he does for you and the country.”

In other words, character doesn’t matter. Actions do. Here’s why that falls on its face.

Character is the driver, the source, the fountainhead of action. We act in accordance with our character. If a person believes people who don’t look like you are lesser people, that person will act in accordance with that belief. A person who says “illegal immigrants are eating people’s pets” will enact policies based on that falsehood. To say such a thing reveals a mindset where the Other is subhuman, something evil to be eradicated, unworthy of basic human dignity. Such a mindset will play itself out in policy, like the inhumane border separation policy he enacted last time he was in office.

A person who speaks in praise of one of the cruelest and most infamous dictators in all of human history reveals a character that will duplicate those Nazi policies. A person who denigrates women will enact policies that strip away rights. He’s already boasted about the reversal of a woman’s right to body autonomy. His character tells us he will not stop there.

A person who lies constantly, with no regard for truth, will enact policies based on lies. Witness his COVID-19 ineptitude. He knew the seriousness of the epidemic even as he was lying to Americans that all was well.

A person who wallows in petty vindictiveness and who cares not for the nation but only for personal power and vengeance will not act with our best interests at heart. Witness his actions towards protesters, his words regarding Charlottesville, his orders to the Proud Boys and his invective urging his followers to attack the Capitol.

That is but a sampling of what he’s done already. His character has not improved–indeed, what few scruples he may have once had are utterly dissolved now, victims of either age, dementia or sheer mendacity. He is the man you see, and he will do what is in his character. He already has. He will again.

Lastly, there may be those who know all of this but believe that their own fortunes will rise with the ex-president. They know that he is not good for America and its people, but he is good for them personally. Let me remind you of President Kennedy’s words: “Those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.” A man who will betray his most trusted allies and friends–who will stand by while his right-hand man is threatened with hanging–will not hesitate to betray you.

The ex-president is quite fond of a song written in 1963 by Oscar Brown, a songwriter and civil rights activist. That song is “The Snake,” which was based on an Aesop fable called “The Farmer and the Viper.” The stories are the same–a person (in the song, a woman) takes in a snake after seeing it in distress. The snake is nursed to health, at which time it fatally bites its caretaker, saying “you knew I was a snake when you took me in.”

The moral of the story seems clear–evil will betray everyone. If you are wondering why the ex-president uses this story when it seems to match his own motives so well, it turns out he uses it in the context of immigration. Because of course he does.

This man–this snake–is being nursed to health by those who ought to know better. This snake cares not for us, nor for our nation, nor for our world. This snake is tempting many of us to betray our foundational principles, to eat the forbidden fruit of lawlessness, cruelty, and coldness.

I’ll let Ms. Angelou close for me. “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

–Be seeing you!

Fear

9/25/2024

I’m not writing. I give advice to people who ask me (had an ex-player from way, way back consult with me about his writing) about how to write and I say, “write every day” even though I myself do not. I can make all kinds of excuses–in fact I do–but how can I call myself a writer if I don’t actually write? Simple. I can’t.

I’ve been thinking about how fearful I am. See, my current book idea is what I’d consider a Good One. I love the Beltrunner series (or “saga,” as my publisher insists on calling it) but I wouldn’t say it’s idea-based. The idea is not particularly original. But the one I’ve been working on seems like forever is an IDEA. And those aren’t three-to-a-penny. So then, you’d think, I should be on fire writing this.

I think I’m afraid. Afraid of two things, really. First, that I won’t be able to execute the idea perfectly. As long as the idea remains in my mind unchained to actual words, it can remain unblemished. But when I go to write it, I might dirty it. So I think part it it’s that. But I think–hell, I KNOW–that the main fear is that I’ll write this good idea, and I’ll write it well, and it will go nowhere. No one will want it, no one will pick it up. I’ll have had my best shot and I came up short. With Betlrunner, I’ve got a secure publisher–the fine folks at EDGE. But as pleasant as they are, and as good as they’ve been to me, they’re still small press. If I want to truly make this writing thing work, I need to break into the big markets. And I’m scared that this idea, this Enclave 454 idea (Glenn’s title) simply won’t be good enough. And then what? I can’t pretend that I submitted a half-baked bad book. I’ll have done my best and my best won’t be enough. That’s what I am scared of. It’s like a weird perversion of that tired Gretzky quote–”you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Sure, but until I’ve taken that shot, I haven’t missed, right, Wayne?

So I use the excuse that I’m tired, or it’s late, or I have other things to do (which are all true, I suppose) to keep me from writing. But the simple truth is that I’m terrified.

Maybe I should try and use that. Writing from a position of terror and uncertainty might help me get into Toska’s mind. Because honestly–I haven’t “got” her yet. I have her backstory and history and stuff, but I don’t truly have her down. Is there such a thing as Method Writing?

I can also use simple shame on myself. Shame is a powerful motivator. I feel ashamed that I espouse these belching platitudes about how a writer works, but then I don’t actually do it.

Jesus, this was a rough blog post. Be seeing you.

Political Nihilism

7/13/2024

I am writing this on the day Donald Trump was shot during one of his rallies. Information is still sketchy and uncertain, but it looks like an assassination attempt. Tragically, reports are coming in about one attendee killed by presumably a stray bullet, with two others wounded.

I want to be on record saying this is awful. I think my views on Donald Trump are pretty clear, but in case they aren’t, I find him to be as close to an existential threat to America as any presidential candidate has ever been. I disagree in the strongest possible terms to his policies, his character, and his outlook on the country. But this is a man who should be voted down, not gunned down. As much as I don’t want to see him elected, I do not want to see him hurt or killed.

So this assassination attempt is a terrible, terrible thing. In every way I repudiate this action. I don’t think I can be any clearer on this.

I’m not going to write a “however,” essay, if that’s what you think is coming. There can be no justification for any “Trump should have been shot at, but,” sentence. What I am going to do is speculate on the fallout of this.

I hope I am wrong, but I wonder if today was the day Trump got elected again.

I can’t help but believe that those who approve of Donald Trump (his followers, media biased in his favor, etc.) will use this relentlessly as fodder for his campaign. Here’s what I think will happen.

Right-sided Media will, to varying degrees, cover this not just as a failed assassination attempt but as evidence of Trump’s vigor and vitality. They’ll praise how he rose from the wound and pumped his fist defiantly in the air. How he went back to the campaign trail. In some cases, there will be talk of how he got shot in the head (not quite–yes, the ear is on the head, but anyone shot in the fleshy part of the ear didn’t really get shot in the head) and shrugged it off. He’s the Man Who Can’t be Killed. He is so tough, he deflects bullets. There will be T-shirts of him rising, ear bloodied, defiantly screaming into the sky. He’ll be talked about as God’s special anointed, how God was looking out for Trump and kept him safe. In short, one of the things that will happen is this near-miss will be seen not as evidence of how close he came to death, but of how strong and godlike he is to rise above a head shot.

The second thing right sided media will do is paint this as a “hit” ordered by Joe Biden. This will be done in various ways–some will outright claim it, saying Joe Biden, emboldened by the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity (recall the absurd argument made by Trump’s own legal team that a president might be able to order the assassination of a rival and claim it as an “official act”) ordered a Deep State sharpshooter to kill his opponent. And even then Joe screwed it up. It will be seen as evidence of both Biden’s evil and of his incompetence. Mind you, not all media will say this overtly. Some of the more “responsible” right-sided media will merely “ask the question” or couch their coverage in ways to gently suggest this. “We don’t know yet what involvement, if any, the Biden administration had in this attack” sort of thing. No doubt the shooter will be identified as a left-wing nutjob, which may indeed be the case. But even if he or she isn’t, that won’t matter. In fact, nothing factual will matter about this.

And that’s the point of this essay.

The optics and preliminary information about the incident will become as fact. Spin will become as fact. Right side media–and the Trump team itself–will paint this as evidence of Trump’s demigod status and as evidence of the left-wing trying to silence him. He will speak at the convention about how the left is trying to shut him down, using the law, and now using guns. He’ll claim he took a bullet for all of us. It won’t matter if any of that is true. It will become true.

I really don’t like being this way. I don’t like having this nihilism about the state of political discourse in my country. But I can’t help it. I can’t help knowing what I know. Nothing that’s actually true matters. Only what people want to be true. And once a person has committed to the truth as they want it–as they need it to be, there can be no shaking it.

Trump is a god. Joe Biden tried to kill him. Those will become as true as any empirical fact about the universe. And if somewhere down the line, we discover something about the incident that casts doubt on either of those two truths, it won’t matter. Nothing will matter.

Again, I need to return to my original point. The assassination attempt (for it is becoming clearer and clearer that this is what happened–any lunatic left-wing fantasy about a “false flag” or “setup” is very likely as insane as those who would proclaim Trump to be a demigod) was a tragic and awful moment in American history, and it would appear only chance kept this from becoming an even more tragic moment. Donald Trump is, in my view, bad for America. But in no way does that justify what happened to him. It’s a stain on our country, and it should be and is being condemned by both sides of the political spectrum.

We shall see how this plays out.

Be seeing you!

The Careful Progressivism of Popular Science Fiction - Part I

6/7/2024

Since its origins, science fiction has defied easy categorization. Even the notion of “the origin” of science fiction is by no means settled. Some might say science fiction truly began with Hugo Gernsback (from whom the science fiction literary award “the Hugo” is named) when he coined the term “scientifiction” in 1916. Others, like Lester Del Rey, go back a bit further to around 2000 BCE with the epic of Gilgamesh.
Whenever this genre truly started, it has been a boundary-pushing one. All fiction does at some level concern itself with not what is but what could be: science fiction, however, takes this notion and extrapolates it much further. Because of this, much science-fiction tends towards progressivism. The genre is simply too expansive to reduce it to merely a “left wing” phenomenon–there are many, many examples of more conservative texts that seek to reinforce more traditional and time-honored (or perhaps time-worn) values and ideologies. This essay will not attempt to argue that science fiction is ultimately this thing or that thing–rather, I’ll be looking at what I am going to call the careful progressivism of popular science fiction.
Like any literary genre that has reached popular acclaim, science fiction has a dizzying array of texts, films, and franchises ranging from the obscure to the culturally embedded. “May the Force be with you” and “Beam me up” have become common phrases in English parlance, and no matter where one stands on the continuum of science fiction geekdom, almost everyone in America knows who Darth Vader is or who Mr. Spock is. So let’s look at the latter example and how it has at once advanced progressive ideas while at the same time reinforced more conservative ones.
The Star Trek universe began humbly enough–in February of 1965, American television audiences saw for the first time the Starship Enterprise and met its intrepid crew, though only one of the original characters, the aforementioned Mr. Spock, would continue on to the second pilot.
Mr. Spock, the vaguely devilish alien-human hybrid, would immediately cause a clash with the network, as would the ship’s second-in-command, a female officer called simply “Number One.” (The actress playing Number One, Majel Barrett, was later recast as Nurse Chapel when the show was retooled and picked up) Here we have perhaps the first example of the careful progressivism of the show: the network passed on the pilot but made the unusual move of requesting a second pilot, though they demanded some changes. One of them involved both the Spock character and Number One. The network balked at having two controversial characters–Mr. Spock’s alien appearance and Number One’s, well, womanhood. They did not like Spock’s devilish look, nor did they like the idea of a woman being second in command. They essentially told the creator of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry, he had to choose between them. He chose Spock, and the notion of a strong woman, second in command on the starship Enterprise in the mid 1960’s, died.
Once the show was picked up and found its stride, Roddenberry made several casting choices that, on the surface, appeared to have been very progressive. George Takei was cast as helmsman Sulu, and the character was not played as a stereotypical Japanese man–Sulu was not an inscrutable Asian caricature who espoused homespun Confucian wisdom, nor did he speak with an affected Japanese accent. In fact, in one memorable scene, a foppish alien named Trelane bows to Sulu and calls him “honorable sir.” Sulu is clearly irritated by this and mutters sotto voce “is he kidding?” In another episoide, when Sulu goes mad due to some spaceborne poisoning, he charges around the ship shirtless wielding an epee while he’s pretending to be a musketeer. So, again, on the surface, this is a progressive bit of casting in the mid-1960’s, especially considering World War II had ended only twenty years ago and the U.S. was involved in Asiatic conflicts.
Before we congratulate Star Trek too much on how well it crafted the character of Sulu, however, bear in mind that in many hand-to-hand combat scenes involving the character he uses what I can only guess is karate or some other Asian martial arts style. So while the show took pains to scrub any conventional stereotypes from Sulu’s character, they felt that they had to have some nod to his Japanese background and make him karate-chop bad guys. This is what I mean by careful progressivism.
In another bold casting move, in the second season the show added the young navigator Pavel Chekov to the crew, played by Walter Koening. Chekov was added mainly because of the increasing popularity of young rock stars like the Beatles or the Monkees. Koening was even given a wig to make him look even more like Davy Jones, though this was abandoned later. The boldness of the move was not casting a young person on the show–rather, the officer was quite distinctly Russian in accent and national pride. Creating a Russian officer for the Enterprise in 1967, a mere five years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, was indeed a bold move. Again, though, this seemingly progressive posture was undermined by the characterization of Chekov as an almost comically prideful Russian whose revisionist history–which invariably favored Russia–was the butt of many jokes on the show.
One cannot speak of progressive casting on Star Trek without mentioning the chief communications officer, Lieutenant Uhura, played by Nichelle Nichols. Nichols was part of the cast from the beginning of the show proper, and her role was not insignificant. Her character’s African descent was frequently mentioned, most notably her fluency with Swahili. After a year on the show, Nichols was considering quitting the show after the first season in the late 1960’s, but was told someone wanted to meet her, claiming to be her biggest fan. That person convinced her to stay on the show, claiming she was a vital role model for all Black Americans.
That person was Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Whoopi Goldberg, who would join the Star Trek franchise as the supporting character Guinan on Star Trek: The Next Generation, remembers watching the original series and exclaiming to her mother, “I just saw a black woman on television and she ain’t no maid!”
In 2012, Nichols met with President Barack Obama in the White House’s Oval Office. He admitted not only was he a “trekkie” but that he had had a crush on her when he was younger.
Uhura, as much as any other supporting character, made important plot and character contributions to the show, but the most impactful moment for Uhura and Nichols was the famous “kiss.” In the episode “Plato’s Stepchildren,” broadcast on November 22, 1968, Captain Kirk, played by William Shatner, gives a passionate, fully-on-the-lips kiss to Uhura, in glorious extreme close-up with swelling music. The network originally had planned to shoot both a “kiss” and “non-kiss” version to see which one it preferred, but both Nichols and Shatner purposefully flubbed the “non-kiss” shots to force the network to use the kiss.
The thing is–despite all this groundbreaking stuff–according to the plot, both Kirk and Uhura were being controlled by cruel telekenetic humanoids who “forced” them to kiss. In order to get this black-and-white kiss on the air, the show had to make it something that Kirk would never, ever do under ordinary conditions. Once again, careful progressivism.
To be continued…

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