On The 2024 Election

We are days away from the 2024 election.  The good news is that we won't have to deal with all of the campaign advertising starting November 6th.

The harder to hear news is that what happens to America after that point is really up to us.  Who we elect is a secondary concern.

As an example, you may have heard of people on the left who are talking about leaving the US if Donald Trump wins.

And I get it.  His commitment to the Constitution is marginal at best.  He has a well-documented affinity for authoritarian leaders in other countries.  His behavior and incompetence in the wake of the 2020 election are a big part of why I cannot vote for him this year.

But if you are talking about leaving the US if Donald Trump wins, then please do the rest of us a favor.  Skip voting and move now.  He isn't the devil or a demon.  He isn't a fascist.

You clearly lack the Americanism needed to advocate for your preferred policies.  You lack the dedication to advocate for years and perhaps decades.  You lack a commitment to our Constitutional republic and obviously prefer some sort of left-wing dictatorship.  Please go there now so we can all be happier.

And you may have heard about people on the right who are talking about leaving if Kamala Harris is elected.

And I get it.  She cannot communicate even the simplest of ideas.  She spews out word salads that obfuscate and delay rather than directly responding to issues and questions.  Her demonstrated performance in public office makes her barely qualified to run for county commissioner.  Her failure in the 2020 election primaries and the fact that she did not face any credible form of primary in 2024 suggest that she isn't up to the task of being President of the US.  And quite frankly her cover-up of President Biden's obvious inability to be anything more than a warm body in the Oval Office suggests a lack of concern for America's national security and a lack of support for the Constitution.  She was ineligible for my vote in 2020 and absolutely nothing about her actions has caused that to change.

But if you are talking about leaving the US if Kamala Harris wins, then please do the rest of us a favor.  Skip voting and move now.  She isn't the end of America.

You clearly lack the Americanism needed to advocate for your preferred policies.  You lack the dedication to advocate for years and perhaps decades.  You lack a commitment to our Constitutional republic and obviously prefer some sort of right-wing dictatorship.  Please go there now so we can all be happier.

For everyone else, 2025 is a new year.  We will have a new President.  They will get the support and condemnation they deserve.  They will get support and condemnation that they don't deserve as well.  That's American politics.

Maybe we could try something new next year and reach for a little more civility.  Instead of calling one another morons...and much worse...maybe we could just simply say "I disagree".  

We don't need a unifying leader.  We need a unified populace; one that can disagree civilly as well as passionately.

Let's try being that instead.

A brief coda.

To my Republican-leaning friends, don't blame me if Donald Trump loses.  The GOP had plenty of better options on the table.  Both Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis come to mind.  There were others.  Worshipping a person rather than advancing ideas comes at a price.  A Trump loss is the price.

To my Democrat-leaning friends, don't blame me if Kamala Harris loses.  The Democrats had other options waiting to run.  I think Tulsi Gabbard would have been an interesting candidate, but y'all drove her out of the party.  Democrat politicians and functionaries have pushed so far to the left that they are pushing really bad ideas.  A Harris loss is the price of moving from being a liberal party to one that is progressive and/or socialist.

Review: Empire of the Vampire

Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a 4-star review. Some would rate it higher for good reasons.

If you are new to genre-fiction, then please go read this book. It is a good ride with great characters. Don't read my spoiler section...go read the book. The experience is worth the price of admission. The author has a lot of talent that is evident.

SPOILER
Now that it's just us, part of the reason for not giving this a full-throated (heh) 5-star review is that I've read a lot of genre fiction. I've seen a lot of movies.

This book uses many plot devices that have already been used.

The first one is the transmutation of Jesus Christ into a fictional redeemer broken on a wheel rather than on a cross. My first encounter with that technique was in Devil's Night Dawning by Damien Black. Another example is when a priest lacks the faith to face a vampire without being able to bear a religious symbol as a metaphysical shield. I first encountered that in Stephen King's ’Salem’s Lot. There are other examples, but you should get the point.

There are plot holes and omitted details. For example, the palebloods that fight to destroy the vampires are created by vampire fathers impregnating human mothers. Given that the palebloods are a significant threat to the vampires, one has to wonder why they continue getting human women pregnant. Also, what is the motivation for vampires to have sex with human women in the first place? It remains unexplored.

Other elements of the story remain unresolved at the end. How did Gabriel get his sword? How did he kill the Forever King? Unexplored. Unresolved.

And last, this book is not a complete story. It ends leaving plot threads unresolved and clearly intends more in the series. While I enjoy many genre series, I'm always disappointed when an author transparently announces the next book in the series.

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Review: Battle for the Wastelands

Battle for the Wastelands by Matthew W. Quinn
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a 3-star review which is a good estimate of my experience.

In a post-apocalyptic world, two opposing forces fight for dominance. One is an outright dictatorship that uses a variety of factions including one made up of cannibals and one that breeds genetic monsters.

The other is made up of people who seem to just want to be left alone. They are led by the remnants of a family, the Merrills. This side seems to be still a sort of monarchy rather than any sort of reconstituted democracy.

The common folks have to kneel to someone. Or so it seems.

The story is presented in a workmanlike fashion. Good spelling and grammar. Decent if somewhat pedestrian characters and plotting.

Several unexplained elements. It is inferred that the genetic monsters are related to some sort of nuclear radioactive location. There also seem to be several species of dinosaurs in the story - again, no explanation. And the cannibals are following some sort of "religion" for which there are no details.

I was reminded of the TV character Radar from MASH. In one episode, Radar begins correspondence courses to learn to write like Hemmingway and some other, allegedly, notable authors. In this case, it was Ethel Hemmingway.

The prose in this book similarly runs into the purple range.

Also, the guts of many characters clench on a regular basis. They must all have 6-pack abs.

Not a bad story, but I won't be continuing anything new in this series.

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Review: Dirty Water

Dirty Water by Tom Kratman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is a two-star, Dorothy-Parker-DNF review.

I've enjoyed some of this author's other works a great deal.

This one was boring. I made it 10% through the book before moving on to anything better.

Most of the early parts of the book were a generic old guy taking his grandkids on a tour of Boston and lamenting how things have changed. It was heavy on the geography of Boston and light on making the old guy or his grandkids into interesting characters.

The brief interludes with the alien were good but infrequent and brief.

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Review: Murder at Spindle Manor

Murder at Spindle Manor by Morgan Stang
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a 4-star review. Call it a weak 4.5-star review.

Murder at Spindle Manor is an entertaining melange of Agatha Christie, Lovecraft, and steam-punk seasoned with some bits of Monty Python-esque humor. Or "humour" as the whole thing has a decidedly late 19th-century British vibe.

This eclectic mixture of elements shouldn't work and yet it works almost perfectly. I don't read many murder mysteries as I find the big reveal less than satisfying. Perhaps that is something I bring to this experience.

Anyone who enjoys movies such as The Naked Gun or any Monty Python shows will find this delightful. The author has somehow managed to meld a pretentious, stuffed-shirt, murder mystery with the farcical version of the same tale.

This book won the Self Published Fantasy Blog Off in 2023. I have read most of the SPFBO winners and found them (with one exception) to be very rewarding experiences. Murder at Spindle Manor continues that trend.


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Review: Mirrored Heavens

Mirrored Heavens by Rebecca Roanhorse


This is a review without stars. I DNF'd this book.

I dislike extensive chapters based on some character's internal monologue. This book has an early chapter featuring an internal monologue from/with a character that I don't care about. It got in the way of the narrative of the main characters that actually matter to the plot.

Life is too short to have reading be a chore.

I didn't think it was fair to provide a star rating based on a few chapters.

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A Brief Tour of Mastadonia

I opened up an account on Mastodon a while back to see how that environment has developed in the wake of the exodus of the "oppressed" from X (formerly known as Twitter).  I followed a few hashtags for topics in which I am naturally interested.  My account is on mastodon.social rather than part of one of the many personal fiefdoms created as part of that distributed network.

Many writers flounced out of X due to the alleged overwhelming presence of fascism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, commonsense, blah-blah, etc.  Any idea that slightly diverged from leftist opinions of the moment was called intolerable.  Mastodon was one popular destination.

My exploration began with topics of personal interest that were mostly related to genre fiction.  I explored some political topics as well.

My first impression is that there wasn’t much activity related to Worldcon or the Hugo Awards.  There also wasn’t a lot of activity related to several genre-associated hashtags.  Given the number of genre authors doing their Dorian Grey impression, I would have expected more activity related to those topics.  There was precious little activity related to those hashtags.  [I eventually identified some other genre-related hashtags that are more active.]

Later on, we had the misfortune of the attempted #assassination attempt on #donaldtrump.  For clarity, it was fortunate and good that he survived.  Political violence is always a bad idea.

A check of the hashtags #trump and #assassination in the days following the attempt suggests to me that the Mastodon admins are purposefully censoring or otherwise throttling which topics are allowed to trend on that platform.  The hashtag stats suggested that few were talking about the event.  A review of the search results of posts on Mastodon indicated that many people WERE talking about that event.  The hashtags were included in the text of various posts, but a hashtag search didn’t correlate well with a post-based search. 

Conversely, both tags were quite active on X.  I cannot say that the tag search and the post search accurately reflected each other on X.  Only that both were active.

There is also evidence of censorship/down-platforming/throttling of certain Mastodon accounts.  Doing topical searches, I found several accounts that Mastodon admins had purposefully muted.  You could still click through to read what they have posted, but you do get a notification that the account has been muted.

None of the accounts I found (roughly 5, so not a big sample) had posted anything overtly offensive unless one holds that moderate disagreement with leftist positions is ipso facto proof of offense.  Comrade Stalin would be proud.

It would be unsurprising if I learned that my account had already been deprecated or otherwise throttled.

Individually, Mastodon users generally (exceptions to everything) appear to lack any interest in critically engaging with diverse viewpoints.  One recent example was a discussion in the wake of the tableau from the opening ceremonies of the Paris Olympics that was designed to invoke da Vinci’s Last Supper.

My interlocutor responded at some point with “artistic license”.  I pointed out that the artists were appropriating another culture and that I am reliably informed that cultural appropriation is an unacceptable behavior.  Having nothing to offer in response, they blocked me.

Casual accusations of racism, sexism, blah-blah, etc. are routine.  I’ve already been called racist despite not once offering any opinion that relates to race in any reasonable manner.  Again, Comrade Stalin would be proud.

Before Elon Musk purchased Twitter/X the platform was infamous for quietly throttling accounts expressing opinions that were modestly right-of-center.  There was a two-tiered system of moderation in which the slightest of infractions by someone right-of-center would engender suspensions, throttling, and bans while identical (if politically inverted) behavior from left-of-center accounts would be overlooked.  [I came across a recent thread on Mastadon about abuse on that platform.  So leaving Twitter didn't really solve any problems, eh?]

After purchasing the site, Elon revealed exactly how biased the prior administrative efforts had been.  Many normal reasonably centrist and modestly right-of-center accounts were restored.

It appears that the Mastodon user base prefers to live in a mutually affirming silo.  The platform is distributed so that people may create private chatrooms where they can police ideas into conformance.  And that choice is their absolute right!

Yet they still are tolerating extreme forms of authoritarianism in their midst.  I found many profiles using Che Guevarra and communist Hammer-and-Sickle images as profile icons.  Other accounts will readily endorse socialism and/or communism as viable alternatives to liberal democratic capitalism.

Most informed people will recognize that socialism/communism continues to have a higher body count than fascism.  Socialism/communism also continues to foster higher rates of poverty and murder by state actors.  Ask the citizens of Venezuela about it.

While Mastadonians have cleared Hitler, the Nazi cross, and real fascism from their social media environment, they have left far more offensive, destructive, and murderous opinions untouched.

None of this is particularly surprising.  Nor is it unique to left-leaning folks.  People on the right (with some obvious exceptions) have seemingly lost the ability to participate in good-faith engagement with people who hold different opinions.  The number of right-leaning accounts that are comfortable with using helicopter memes to address communists is quite…well…deplorable.

People in all corners of the political pool only seem to want to assuage their emotions by participating in the vibe.  Labels matter more than substance.

Me, too…from time to time.  But I try to be aware of the problem.

Mastodonia isn’t a solution.  It is a reflection of the problem of reacting to conflict by shutting out contrary perspectives.  Siloed communities are not a solution.  Good faith engagement is the only solution.  I don’t see it coming back in fashion anytime soon.