Getting Back to Writing

Feb11

2016 ended up being a crazy year for me.  I became addicted to following the 2016 Presidential campaign and watched in awe as Trump took down one political foe after another.  Never had it really hit home to me just how opposed our government, both parties, and especially the mainstream media had become to the interests of the American citizens who actually live in this country.  I, like so many, were “red-pilled” as they call it, and became supports for Donald J. Trump’s candidacy and all he stood for, which boils down to: America first.  A country acting in the best interests of its citizens shouldn’t be a novel concept, but in this day and age, so many have yet to wake up to the lie that is Globalism.  That “false song,” as Trump calls it has done much damage over the years, and like the Tower of Babel before it, was always doomed to fail.

So I followed politics obsessively and Trolls for Dust, Season 2 ended up on the back burner and still needs finishing.  I also got sick a few times, moved, and was in a sort of shell shock from all the red-pilling and also the downright ill will from family and friends alike due to my support of Trump.  That mean-spiritedness, I don’t think I will ever forget.  The only way to explain it is that even good people are terrified of actual, real change, and maybe precisely because it will be in their benefit.  Now that Trump is President we’ll get to see what actual change looks like and if the U.S. Government putting Americans’ interests first is the right thing to do.

I’m not proud that I let my writing mojo fall to the wayside, but I’d like to begin again, finish this story and start new ones.  The good thing is, as so much time has gone by, I have gotten some feedback on the story as it stands and I know what needs fixing.  I know where to go, but it’s how I get there that’s the problem.  This month I am reassessing TfD2, this blog, and also trollsfordust.com.  I want to get back to writing and posting regularly and this is my month to make a plan and then put that plan into action.

On more of a note for long-term writing:  For once in my life I have an entire room set aside for writing.  I have a desk that lets me sit or stand as I choose, a cushy, but not too comfortable bar chair to sit on, and an area free from distraction.  Speaking of changes good for one being terrifying, this is!  As a writer I have all I could ask for a distraction-free writing space.  That means this is where the rubber hits the road and there can be no more excuses.  Either I make this work, or I have to acknowledge to myself that maybe I don’t really want to write.  It’s scary, this big desk and this quiet room, but it’s exciting, too.  With effort, great stories are just ahead, just waiting to be sprung on the world.  I cannot, I must not, let such a wonderful opportunity go to waste.

 

–P. Beldona

A Corner Called Home

Sep25

In my neighborhood there’s a certain corner that always feels like home. Little more than a bend in the road, this corner becomes a special place in the evenings, though I doubt the home owners realize it. The corner can’t properly be called a cul-de-sac, and if the road were a river, it’s as if that river took a lazy pause to pool a little before continuing on its way.

During the day, this corner is quite ordinary, consisting of three houses all with front porches and front yards landscaped and dotted with plants. The house in the center looks slightly churchy with brick and decorated windows evoking the thought of stained glass. In the evening, the corner becomes magical, a refuge of light in a sea of darkness.

Often on my evening walks, I’ve wondering at the feeble streetlights in this part of town and amazed at the three houses that never seem to worry about their electricity bills. I round the bend and am welcomed by light piercing the darkness. Each of the three houses has their outside and inside lights on, illuminating their porches and the well cared for yards. It’s as if suddenly the neighborhood has life in it brash and bold and wafting out into the world instead of being kept behind closed doors. The churchy windows of the middle house give the corner a hallowed atmosphere, but it’s hallowed because its home.

The essential part of “home” for me is that one is welcome. One is welcome to come over, to laugh, to share food, to watch movies, to argue, to debate, to hug, to sing, to dance, to share joys together. In the natural world light is the ultimate sign of welcome, a magnet in the dark. I hope and pray that everyone may have a corner of the world of the world that they can call home.

Long-Nose-Hiccups-Pants-on-Fire: Kdrama Pinocchio’s media redemption fairytale.

Aug21

What is a journalist?

Pinocchio_(Korean_Drama)-p1

Pinocchio

Pinocchio, a Korean TV drama from 2014-15, seeks to answer this question. It follows the story of a boy whose family has been irrevocably wronged by reporters, and a girl who has an unusual syndrome called “Pinocchio” syndrome. The fictional syndrome doesn’t refer to a wooden puppet with a long nose, but a person who is unable to lie without hiccuping. Tailor-made for a show about reporters, being a “Pinocchio” means one also hiccups when withholding the truth and even when one merely has doubts. In the real world, a person plagued with Pinocchio syndrome would be hiccuping nonstop. In the show, Park Shin-Hye and the writers make it fairly believable.

Choi Dal-Po is the main character and played by Lee Jong-Suk. Lee adds such heart to his acting, making it easy to connect with his character, who balances between being the scared and angry little boy that he was, and the brave and thoughtful young man he has become. Park Shin-Hye plays his best friend Choi In-Ha. The first few episodes deal with a lot of back story and their time in high school and then the show launches into high gear when both decide to be reporters, In-Ha because her estranged mother is a famous reporter, and Dal-Po, because he wants to answer the question of what a journalist is.

Pinocchio is real and surreal at the same time. It’s a story attempting to get at real truths while highlighting its own fairytale aspects, from the slightly exaggerated characters to the episode titles, to the magical winter setting. As a person who has read countless books and watched an embarrassingly large number of movies and TV shows, I can tell you that in my view it is a near-perfect story. If there is a misstep it is only in the beginning episodes in which it first appears to be a high school knock off of Slumdog Millionaire. The cast is huge, due to the number of reporters and journalists from the fictional broadcasting stations, MSC and YGN, but a few of the smaller players manage to steal all of their scenes, especially Lee Yoo-Bi as feisty rookie Yoon Yoo-Rae, and Min Sung-Wook (No Tears for the Dead) as veteran “stick-it-to-the-man” reporter Jang Hyun-Gyu. Other standouts are Lee Joo-Seung, who rocks as a young world-worn police detective, Kim Hae-Sook (The Thieves) as business chaebol Park Ro-Sa, and especially Jin Kyung, whose deadpanned expression is vital to reporter Song Cha-Ok.

Pinocchio is not so much the story of all reporters, but that of reporter Song Cha-Ok. Song is a successful reporter who has sold her soul to get where she is. Throughout the show, the question changes from, “What is a journalist?” to “Can dishonest journalist Song Cha-Ok be redeemed?” The Pinocchio angle comes into play when Song’s estranged daughter, In-Ha, a Pinocchio, decides she wants to be a reporter. This is not possible, in Song’s opinion, because the very nature of the job requires her to lie from time to time, even if the lies are lily white (as in needing to be undercover for a story).

Choi Dal-Po, who has been very, very wronged by Song’s irresponsible past reporting and by another “Pinocchio,” has a more scathing view of not only journalists, but also Pinocchios unable to lie: In one early scene he excoriates both as not comprehending the enormous duty they have to the public. By default people will always assume that both are telling them the truth, and that is not a status to be flippant about. Throughout the series both Dal-Po and In-Ha learn just how complicated it can be to tell the truth with no agenda.

Although the show delves only shallowly into the full political ramifications of what the News media’s lies do to society, it is a relevant story in our time of constant media spin, obfuscation, and outright falsehood. These days more and more people are waking up to the fact that the media as a whole has its own agendas apart from just giving us the truth or facts. They exaggerate and make false claims in order to get more viewers or readers, they outright campaign for certain candidates while at the same time proclaiming that they are not biased, they insert themselves into the story where it is not pertinent, and so on and so forth.

My Take on the Media

The second time I watch Pinocchio, this time in order to review it, it struck me how timely the stories is in this age of news media, mass media, social media and new media.  Truth and lies are simultaneously rampant.

Sometimes I wish I could go back to being a kid when I thought the reporters I saw on TV every night were giving me facts and truth. I wish I could go back to a time when I had no idea I was being lied to, but I can’t. Once you see the media’s lies and bias, you can’t un-see them. I now know that a lot of the American news media not-so-secretly (anymore) detests the regular, hardworking people of this country. I now know that many, if not most, reporters are in it for the fame or the money or to further an agenda, but not in it for sharing the truth. The news sources I read and listen to now, openly share their biases and their agendas. I like that honesty and I think its better than media pretending a false neutrality they do not possess.

This U.S. Presidential Election cycle has been interesting largely due to Donald Trump. Had he not run, it would have been same old-same old, and the Republicans would have folded to the media’s lies as usual. He’s done a great service highlighting (for those who have eyes to see) just how untruthful and agenda driven most of our news is. In addition, he brilliantly decided to run as a Republican, effectively showcasing those who claim to care about conservative ideals and the country, but really are only concerned with their own power and sphere of influence. He’s also laid a death blow to political correctness, the media’s biggest weapon in their agenda against anyone who, well, disagrees with them.

Over the years I’ve found some news sources or interesting perspectives that cover a different view of the world than the MSM, or mainstream media. More importantly, these sources point out the inherent, usually Leftist bias in most of the MSM. The sources I go to are biased, but openly so, and I respect them for that. They don’t pretend objectivity, like CNN, or Fox News, or any of the other major cable networks. The truth is that all news sources and all reporters and journalists have bias. A good consumer of the news should gauge to what degree bias affects what stories the news source covers and how the story is related or “spun.” Each person has to decide for themselves whether a news source is trustworthy—and often this takes time to tell—and whether the spin is helping to accurately understand the stories shared, or whether it is promoting a narrative (Hillary must be elected! for example) only.

Today, because of political correctness, the greatest danger in any reporting is what people have coined as “virtue signaling,” that is claiming to care about something only for the sake of those in earshot. It’s a quick ego boost that we are all guilty of from time to time, but lately, is running rampant, especially in the news media. We can see it everywhere from the push to continue bad, expensive programs to “save the poor!” or “save the planet!” despite factual evidence that the programs are not realistic and often harm those they intend to help. Pushing on despite the reality is virtue signaling, not actual virtue. This is a big reason the current presidential campaign has been so torn and bitter. People care more about a “nice” tone than the facts a candidate is presenting. Vice-versa, if a candidate is well-mannered, for many that covers over any multitude of sins and I can’t help but think of all those people who knew serial killers and say, “Oh, but he was such a nice young man.” What does it take to wake up from this?  How do we get back to substance?

Here’s my story:

In 2006 I was living and teaching English in China and went to friend’s house in Hong Kong for a few days. They had cable, which I hadn’t watched in a few years. During breakfast Headline News (at least I think it was that) was on with a guy named Glenn Beck. I always assumed (because of past experience) that any MSM outlet was liberal or Leftist in bias (thought I still didn’t know how much it affected their reporting), so I was surprised to find him saying and talking bout things that I was interested in and agreed with. Beck became a hit on talk radio and eventually landed a show on Fox News. His popularity largely stemmed from discussions and facts on history, things that put into perspective the upheavals in tradition that still are being overthrown in America and around the world. The great political struggle of the world was presented not so much as Right vs. Left, but Liberty vs. Tyranny.

For the first time, I really contemplated that the Nazis were national socialists, what that meant, and, why for so many years they had been painted as right wingers. And then I couldn’t stop seeing it, I, and many others. We couldn’t stop seeing the obvious Leftist bias in nearly all of the mainstream media’s reporting. This is something we intrinsically knew, but had never really faced head-on. I give Beck much credit for sharing a lot of these things and also promoting the American ideal, the American dream, and so on. For the first time, I understood why everyone in college was obsessed with Che Guevara, why by default, most college student were perceived Socialism as good, why everyone had a desire to show how “multicultural” they were, and why everyone seemed so concerned with the sins of America, their own country. I finally understood that all of the media was lying every single day, and that their lies slanted sharply to the Left because that’s where the power is.

The kicker was, it wouldn’t have been such an big failing if the media had simply been willing to self-evaluate and be honest about their views and how it affected their reporting. I also saw a bigger issue behind that: culture. American pop culture is now almost always for big government and always, again, slanted to the Left.

If the news media has a problem with virtue signaling, don’t get me started on pop singers, Hollywood stars, artists, and the like. (So many Christians in the early 00’s near-worshipped U2’s Bono due to cultural virtue signaling. I was floored to find out that he’s only give 1% – one percent!! – to charity.  This, for me, is Leftism in a nutshell, it sounds so moral, so virtuous, but in the end, it’s just a cash grab not much different than selling indulgences for a ticket to heaven.

Back to Beck. I don’t listen to Beck now, and it’s same for a lot of former listeners. It wasn’t just that he betrayed his message, he fell prey to virtue signaling of the worst kind. And I’m left having to consider that he never really cared at all. People who never liked him to begin with will probably snicker and say, “see, told ya,” but they likely never listened to him anyway, only swallowed the articles and stories biased against him. I don’t say this to be mean or bitter, I say it because it’s the truth. Few people (largely on the Left, some on the Right) who disliked Beck and his message a few years ago actually took the time to listen to him and to understand why people thought his show was appealing. Many who did like him found his show informative and entertaining. I can’t go back in time, to see, knowing what I know now, if I would have that same opinion. I have to say his constant crying first started to turn me off. It’s not that men should never cry, it’s just rare that anyone, male or female, would regularly cry on a cable news TV show. I had hoped the tears were evidence of his sincerity. That hope proved false.

So how did Beck fall? I, along with many of his former listeners, would say it was back in 2014, the summer we had the big crisis of children arriving at our Southern border from Central America. They came by the thousands and it was at this same time that I began to see friends and acquaintances post that they cared so much about those kids. They cared more for those kids than their own families and countrymen, more than their neighbors’ welfare and safety, more than the rule of law, and more than our national sovereignty. It was a great time of PC rearing its ugly head. If any of us had forgotten that PC dictated our daily lives, bleeding-heart virtue signaling brought us back to remembrance with a jolt. It was surreal to see people I thought I knew fail to critically consider our open border situation. I think they just wanted to sound like nice, caring people, the trouble is, it was just a veneer, but they couldn’t seem to see it, and were untroubled by their flippant disregard for the very real and serious safety concerns of their fellows citizens.  And anyone who called them out on it was not playing “nice.” I began to recall that the original meaning of “nice” was “foolish,” and since then have become increasingly suspicious of calls for “niceness” or criticisms that people who are telling truths people don’t want to hear are not “nice” enough in manner or tone.

At first Beck stuck to his previous line. America’s sovereignty and the safety of its citizens is more important than letting anyone and everyone in across the border.  He indicated to have disregard for our borders was not kindness, but reckless both regarding our safety and the safety of those trying to get in illegally. And then something switched and he was all of a sudden concerned that he was encouraging all of his viewers to hate these kids, or something. Maybe he read too many troll internet comments? Who knows. At any rate, it became his mission to show that conservatives were not heartless (giving in to Leftist claims that we were heartless), that we cared about these kids, and that caring meant letting them stay at the border instead of sending them home.

This was such an about-face it left people baffled. Just a few weeks, perhaps even a few days earlier (I don’t really remember) he’d been proclaiming that we needed to have a realistic view of the situation. That simply letting the kids in would only mean more would come, etc., and so on. That we shouldn’t let our emotions overcome the facts in the situation. Then he jumpstarted a plan to bring soccer balls and teddy bears to the kids being held at the detention centers along the border. This was to show the Left that, see, conservatives care. Although the detention centers were a bit overwhelmed, none of the kids or people held there were being treated inhumanely, yet suddenly Beck seemed to think they were. Even more troubling was that he started to turn on his listeners, saying that those who disagreed with what he was doing didn’t care about the children. He started using Leftist arguments against his own followers and even crowed about those Leftist celebrities and journalists who gave him a shoutout for appearing so nice and caring (I stress “appearing”).

Beck had stepped up into the self-labeled cool club and, I think, never looked back. Even more alarming, was the fact that Ted Cruz joined him on his gift-giving trip. This was a big judgement fail on the part of Cruz, and it was the first time I questioned how smart of a politician he really was.  It also made Beck’s early professions early in the 2015 primaries that he hadn’t yet chosen a candidate to back, ring a bit hollow. I doubt few were surprised that he ended up becoming a spokesperson for Cruz. That Cruz allowed him to become so despite his increasingly erratic behavior, was another glaring error in judgement. After that incident, I didn’t listen to Beck quite as much, though I did still follow him on Facebook and also read his news site The Blaze from time to time, because they often had stories no one else did.

Enter Donald J. Trump. Still mostly a fan of Cruz, I rolled my eyes when I heard Trump was running. But, what I knew of Trump up to that point, was what the MSM had told me. He wasn’t something the more right-sided news sources I’d started listening to had covered much, save for his strange quest to weed out Obama’s long-form birth certificate. Even today, I’m not really sure what was going on there. Was Trump already beginning to run for president at that point? Did he truly have insider information the rest of us did not? It ended with no revelation from Trump, but in Obama releasing a document some say is forged. Who knows? It was strange, and that was my opinion of Trump. He was strange.

And then I listened to his speech on the border and immigration, and I was fascinated that he seemed to get it. That he seemed to get that something was really wrong with the U.S. not securing their southern border. And he also offended Mexicans and virtue signalers, most of whom did not take the time to examine what he actually said or why he said it. Suddenly Trump wasn’t “nice” and that was the same (for many) as being Adolf Hitler. Trump also, interestingly, refused to go on Glenn Beck’s show, and thus began months and months and months of Beck tearing down Trump every chance he got. For some reason, Trump made him lose his mind. Beck lost any and all objectivity when it came to Trump, as did many, many others.  And it lost them readers, viewers, and followers in droves.

Their anger of those against Trump seemed not fact-based so much as it was virtue signaling. People who had, say, a basic understanding of business, seemed to lose that understanding when Trump’s bankruptcies were mentioned. It was as if no one in business had ever failed, and one failure was a terminal failure of a person for the rest of their life. Okay, not “a person,” Trump. Beck began to bleed, and bleed, and bleed viewers, and in response he doubled and tripled down on how nasty Trump was.

At this time Beck and others, formerly pretty decent to their fellow man, turned with an onslaught of hate, spite, and anger directed not at Trump, but at his supporters. This was because Trump supporters were not being good little children and doing as they were told, to support Cruz or Rubio or anyone on the ticket but Trump. That Trump was fulfilling all of their hopes and dreams at bringing more people to the Right, that for the first time someone running actually seemed to care about the country and its citizens, vs. the rest of the world, didn’t seem to matter. And suddenly, for a lot people, figurative scales fell from their eyes.

The conservatives nearly spitting mad didn’t really care about their country, and they had no respect for someone choosing a different candidate, instead painting them as “angry” and “crazy,” not necessarily in that order. These Never Trumpers preferred virtue signaling and pretending that everything would continue as normal when our country was hurting and wounded on multiple fronts. That people didn’t agree on Trump being a candidate wasn’t really a problem (that happens all the time in politics), what was unusual is the outright anger against those who supported him. Gone was the previous “nice” ideal that even though people supported different candidates for the Republican ticket, they were generally on the same side as far as concern for the country. For some baffling reason it became important to many not only that Trump say the right things, but that he say it a certain way. A “nice” spin was wanted where brutal truth is what we needed.

And Beck could not be trusted.

These days he’s spending his time still targeting Trump and encouraging people to “vote their conscience” (code for not-Trump) in a race where if Clinton wins, it really could be the end of liberty in this country. We’ve seen fact after fact after fact of her dishonesty, her treason, and her disregard for anything but her own power and wealth. But we mustn’t vote for the man who could stop her, oh no, we must vote for “nice” people, people who will continue to sell out this country’s wealth and sovereignty for political correctness and money for themselves. I now doubt Beck’s sincerity. I doubt his trustworthiness, and I really doubt his claims to moral superiority (being “nicer” than Trump) because in the next moment he plasters Cheetos on his face trying to turn his skin as orange as Trump’s. Because that’s what “nice” people do, I guess.

The relaying of this is not to bash Beck, but to show how extreme bias prevented him from looking at Trump critically, but fairly. I tell it also as a way of explaining how trust in a media source is lost. It happens in a variety of ways and is different for everyone, but that’s one way it happened for me. The rest of the media lost me largely during the Bush years when I realized they just didn’t care about the truth. They cared about putting Democrats in power. No quarter was shown to Bush, while people on the Democrat side were given endless benefits of the doubt. All while the media pretended it was objective.

Bush himself didn’t impress me in the fact that he seemed to think if he never addressed their attacks, they would just go away. He did this even when it gave the Left more and more fuel for the next presidential race. McCain and Romney ran, neither of them putting up much of a fight, though, making sure to appear “nice.”

This, I think, is the big reason Trump ran as a Republican. A lot of people knew that something was wrong with the party, we just didn’t know what. It took Trump to show us what we couldn’t see: Many Republican politicians will not fight even with the country’s welfare at stake. They are too happy to go along to get along, too happy to think that the gravy train will never end for them, too happy to continue to believe their fellow Republicans are suckers, too happy to believe that nothing is worth rocking the boat for, too happy to believe that nothing is worth ticking off the media for, and too happy to believe that “nice” lies are more important than the “offensive” truth. Trump is a fighter and he knows that America is something worth fighting for and that is why he is winning the support of millions of his fellow citizens.

If you’ve read this far, my hat’s off to you, and if you’ve read this far and are not a Trump supporter, double thumbs up for at least reading a different perspective. I can’t ultimately tell you who to trust, either in the media or in politics. I can, however, tell you with certainty that both the media and politicians lie to you all the time, and they do it on purpose. Pinocchio plumbs some of the depths of deception, but not all. It considers that news reporting can be redeemed, but the reality is, it can only be redeemed if reporters and journalists are dedicated to telling the truth, and first and foremost, the truth of their own biases and agendas. It can only be redeemed if journalists begin to consider that the truth is more important than the political correctness of the day. It can only be redeemed if journalists consider the real power allotted to them. By default, people believe journalists and reporters are presenting them with facts and truth. The internet is rapidly shattering this default, as insta-news from fellow citizens now showcases the constant spin and obfuscation the media puts on everything. People are getting new narratives, and starting to question the old ones, like why, CNN, for example, should have any claim on their trust at all.

To end, here is a list of some of the sources I follow. They are nearly all Right Wing and/or Libertarian, but they give different perspectives on things than the MSM, and can be a good place to start in comparing sources. I trust them for the time being, but it’s always possible they will do something to break that trust. Some I used to trust, like Beck, lost me because they couldn’t report fairly on Trump. Their anger against him clouded their judgement. If they are critical, but fair, they are still on my list. The general media is, by default, on the side of the Left. I don’t know if this is because Leftists are currently in power or if it has always been so. I think the best shift for news media would be for both sides to be represented more equally. This shift is happening, not by force of government, but by the blessings (and curses) of the internet, by Youtube channels, and blogs. Because New Media threatens government power, be on the lookout for calls to suppress many of these people and the views they hold.

One final rule of thumb in deciding who to trust: Follow the money. Monetary gain is the first order of business in the news business.

In no particular order:

drudgereport.com

breitbart.com – One of their heads has now joined Trump’s campaign, so I will be checking to see that their bias for Trump doesn’t take over in holding him account if he does become president.

Breitbart writers I like:
Milo Yiannopolous
Raheem Kassam
James Delingpole
Allum Bokhari
Brandon Darby
Lee Stranahan
Ildefonso Ortiz

Rush Limbaugh – Great at highlighting MSM bias, has been more or less fair to Trump, even though he doesn’t appear to be a huge supporter. Realizes it’s more important to defeat Clinton.

Michelle Malkin – Twitchy

Thomas Sowell – Okay, he lost his mind a bit over Trump, too, but is still good on other matters.

Charlotte Iserbyt – Eye-opening research into government-run education — see YouTube

Dennis Prager – Prager University – thought-provoking videos.

Stefan Molyneux – “Not an Argument!” – Educating on how to debate – big on the facts.

Sargon of Akkad – This Week in Stupid

Paul Joseph Watson – Infowars

Alex Jones – Infowars

Vox Day – Alt-right – also, fantasy writer

Rebel Media – Canadians! – free speech!
Lauren Southern
Ezra Levant
Gavin McInnes

Gad Saad

Adam Carolla

Dave Rubin – The Rubin Report

Tommy Sotomayor

American Thinker – offers a variety of articles from different writers. Pro-Tump or Anti-Trump depending on the day

The Conservative Treehouse – This site is unabashedly for Trump, thus they have very enlightening articles on media bias against him and for Clinton.

Political Correctness and the Ministry of Magic

Dec5

Since that awful day on September 11th, 2001, I have watched in perplexity as politically correct Progressivism has tied itself into knots to deny that we are in a war against Islam. Some will want to chastise me for saying that, but it’s true. Islam is the enemy, not radical Islam, but Islam itself, for no one can be a radical Islamist without first being a follower of Islam. Islam is a religion, an ideology, a governmental system, and a way of life that is completely incompatible with the West and our freedoms. In Islam there is no freedom of religion, no freedom of speech, no freedom for women, and no freedom for those of other faiths and lifestyles.

Never have I seen such a passion as I have in the past couple of weeks by fellow Americans to assure me that Islam is a “religion of peace.” If only they had a tenth of that passion for defending their own country and their own religion (some of these defenders are Christians), what a different world that might be. Instead, fellow Americans, including those in our government are much like the Ministry of Magic in the Harry Potter series in their increasingly ridiculous attempts to deny that Voldemort has return—I mean that radical Islamists are causing terror around the world. Forget Islam in general, even calling the radicals terrorists is a bridge too far for some, and I have to wonder, is that reason fear? Are Islamists “they who must not be named?”

If you’ve read Harry Potter, you know that as the hero and his friends try to thwart the evil magician’s plans that they are continually hampered at every turn by the very politically correct Ministry of Magic, the UK magical world’s government. The Ministry refuses at times to even acknowledge there’s a threat. They chastise Harry for every un-PC action and are not even willing to give him a chance to explain himself. They put him on trial for breaking a law without wanting to listen to the reason he broke it. Harry illegally uses magic to ward off soul-sucking creatures that are attacking him and and his non-magical cousin (a cousin he thoroughly detests, yet chooses to save, btw). Instead of investigating why these dangerous Dementors who are supposed to be guarding a magical high-security prison are instead attacking teens, the Ministry chooses to try and strip Harry of using magic, maliciously attempting to leave him defenseless.

Farther into the series, Ministry official Dolores Umbridge (love that name) refuses to even let the Hogwarts students continue learning Defense Against the Darks Arts. No need for self-defense, government’s got it, right? Gun control, anyone? Watch or read Order of the Phoenix and tell me that Umbridge’s whole schtick isn’t a mirror image of the current “safe spaces” movement where one doesn’t want to hear anything unpleasant, un-PC, or anything resembling the truth. Tell me it doesn’t illustrate a perfect picture of an inept government unable to protect its citizens, while at the same time dismissing their very real fears and experiences, and even worse, denying them the right to defend themselves.

The prankster Weasley twins, Fred and George, represent the best of Libertarianism as they tease Umbridge at every turn, bringing laughter and joy to students as she tries to suck it out of them with rule after politically correct rule. Adding even more insult, Fred and George drop out of school to start a thriving, creative business that in no way needs the Ministry’s help to succeed. They are the very picture of Entrepreneurship and Capitalism.

The most disturbing part in comparing PC puritans with the Ministry of Magic is that in the end it was discovered that the Ministry itself was infiltrated by Voldemort’s supporters. Just why is it so neccessary for our government to deny Islam as the root cause for most of the terrorism going on in the world? What’s really at stake here? Bad enough if it’s merely fear worrying them (As an aside, defending Islam won’t save one if Islamists do take over. One’s house, like the Voldy-loyal Malfoy family, will be the first to be occupied. One’s safety will be constantly in question as one must cave to increasingly more uncomfortable demands, the final demand which may even be one’s life or the lives of those one holds dear), what if the motivation is more because they share commonalities with the Islamists or are even supporters of jihad themselves? At this stage in the game, is seems a reasonable question to ask.  Anyone remember good old Andrew McCarthy? He called out numerous people in the U.S. government for being Communists and Communist sympathizers (another ideology incompatible with our freedoms). They don’t bother to tell one in school today, but turns out Andrew McCarthy was right.

We can debate all day long over what to do about terrorism, both foreign and domestic, but we cannot even have that discussion if we don’t acknowledge what it is we’re up against. Islam is at the center of terrorism today. The first step in defeating the extremists is in acknowledging this fact. So interested are we in puffing ourselves up in “tolerance” (we’re just so awesome and special and PC) that we are putting ourselves and our countries in very real danger. How many more people must be slaughtered before we wake up? Let me also add, this denial has been an issue for the U.S. before, namely in not recognizing the great threat that Hitler and his Nazis presented to the free world. J.K. Rowling’s depiction of the Ministry of Magic echoes the very real history that we are dooming ourselves to repeat. Our current government is threatening those who would speak any ill against Islam. Is this a direction that will keep a free society free? Is this a direction that will help in the fight against terrorism?

Let’s take note from Harry and Co. and press on despite the idiocy of political correctness. Let us take on the threat calmly and firmly, forgiving those like Malfoy, who will eventually realize they are fighting for the wrong side and will wish to come back to the right one. Let us accept them back with open arms. Let us join together with those who love freedom. More than that, let us speak up for love, goodness, and faith. Let us speak up for America and for the West and the good they have done for the world. Let us speak up for freedom of speech and for freedom of religion, both of which are so important to the sharing of the Christian gospel that Christ died for our sins so we could live (ok, shameless plug, but it’s honestly the best news in the world).

Let us speak up for self-defense and against the lies that we are mere children who should have no say in our own security. Let us speak up for the fact that although most Muslims may be peaceful, their religion is not. Let us speak up for the fact that a Republic and a Democracy are better than Sharia. Let us speak up for the fact that both men and women are worthy sexes, that both play key roles in society, roles which should be cherished, not reduced to a burka. Let us speak up for the truth and let us not allow lies to flourish. Let us be free in the truth, even when the truth is painful or difficult to hear. Politically correct lies are cancerous tumors that can only be exorcised with the sword of truth. Let us ridicule PC-dom with so much truth and joy that like Umbridge against the Weasley twins it is left exhausted and maybe even a little impressed by our living  so brazenly without it.

(This post has been updated to fix some typos.)

Shows That Need to Happen: Red John (Part 2 of 2)

Nov8

Part 2: What would a Red John show look like?

You know you really a like show if you fantacize about ways to continue it. I thoroughly enjoyed The Mentalist, especially Seasons 1-5.5 – basically up until Red John was executed by the Patrick Jane.  The character of Patrick Jane played by Simon Baker is pretty awesome and well-rounded, and he had a great team to work with.

Here’s my vision of what a continuation of the story would look like:

  • It would be called Red John, not The Mentalist. As I’ve stated in Part 1 of these posts, the appeals and uniqueness of The Mentalist had a lot to do with Red John. Without the hunt for him, the series petered out quickly and did not work as a normal procedural drama.
  • It would consist of a limited number of episdes. 24 to comprise one “season” or “series.” Much more than that would compromise the “chase” of Red John that should be the focus.
  • Red John doesn’t have to be the “Red John” of The Mentalist. That is, the Red John caught and killed can stay dead. It’s not necessary to go back and make it look like Patrick Jane killed the wrong man. However, this would be a good ploy for the first couple of episodes, highlighting the doubt that may still be in Jane and the audience. Also, no bureau infiltration. That just got ridiculous after awhile. More of a straight chess match this time.
  • Put the California Bureau of Investigation back together. Since Cho has moved up in the FBI, a good plot could be to have “Red John” murders start springing up in California again ideally resulting in an FBI task force that combines with the local police force and the old CBI gang, all with Cho as the head. It could be even a reestablished CBI under the FBI’s jurisdiction.
  • Red John, whoever he is, needs to be a mentalist in a similar vein as Patrick Jane. In The Mentalist series, this element wasn’t pushed enough when it came to the villain. His powers of persuasion were alluded to on sporadic occasion but not shown in a definitive manner, like the tricks Patrick Jane uses to con people into confessing. It’s why Sheriff McAllistar didn’t work. He was never shown to have an almost supernaturnal ability over other people in which Jane could illustrate that there are no real psychics. This was somewhat attempted with the list of seven suspects, but never came to fruition, in my opinion, and the list itself seemed a let down.
  • Keep the awesome other villains. When it wasn’t about Red John, The Mentalist had some pretty good villains and absolutely chilling episodes. My favorite episode is when Jane comes across a serial killer who pretends to be investigating the murder of a girl he killed. Jane takes him down on TV by getting him to arrogantly denounce Red John, with the knowledge that Red John can’t take criticism and will kill him. Villains that could definitely get a couple more episodes are temptress and dating expert Erika Flynn (Firefly’s Morena Baccarin) and sociopath power broker Tommy Volker (LOST’s Henry Ian Cusick). These villains could be in cahoots with the new Red John or just red herrings and/or informants.
  • A romance for Cho. He and Summer were so awesome and had great chemistry. It was sad they couldn’t be together and it would be fun to watch him try again with another unlikely lady.
  • Let Van Pelt and Rigsby show off all their new spy skills and gear. It would be interesting to have Red John target their kids (and the adults terrified) only to have him be one-upped by these future agents and well-trained munchkins. The Rigsby’s would totally be Spy Kids.
  • Let Lisbon and Patrick Jane fall for each other all over again doing what they do best: hunting and catching killers. The show should highlight how it is the best line of work for them to be in. And altough Jane is generally hands off to the “action” part of the investigation and police game, it would be fun to see him be more physically active, perhaps in an effort to show how invested he is in beating the villain not for revenge, but to protect those around him. And perhaps to highlight how getting his revenge in the previous series has changed him – as has fixing up that run-down cabin he bought. He would have built up muscle and dexterity doing so.
  • Jane vs. John. Not that the team can’t deal with other mysteries/cases at the same time, but the hunt for this new Red John, should be the focus. The use of both Jane’s brain and skills should be combined with everything he taught the original CBI team. His quirky ways can be introduced to new members as well, just not in the boring FBI building/setting in which The Mentalist ended.
  • A wham bam ending not dependant on the guessing of Red John’s identity. The long-term arc in The Mentalist worked so well because it played into our love of psycological thrill. This could be the ultimate in that genre. Is Patrick Jane really good at what he does, or was it just because he was out for revenge? Will he work within the law this time around to catch the killer? How would he deal with a Red John copycat who knows everything about the case, is far better at manipulating people?
  • Sign on the original cast and add local precinct detectives who first run across this new Red John. Ideally these newbies would be played by Christian Bale (I’m a little biased, as he’s my favorite actor) and Zoe Saldana, both of whom would be excellent at playing detectives and have awesome onscreen chemistry.

So how would it all start?

Since this musing is pretty much fan fiction, let me describe how I would open a Red John show. Please excuse my self-indulgence, but I just couldn’t help it. The Mentalist was such a good show and got my imagination going.:

I’d work with a slow burn kind of storytelling instead of opting for the newer tradition of starting with an action scene straight away, or a thrilling scene from the middle of the episode and then going back to the beginning. Sometimes it’s just a breath of fresh air to start at the begining.

First scene: A pretty twenty-something woman waiting at a busy L.A. precinct to see a detective. She has a tip and looks as if she could be a journalist or a journalism student. She has a fresh, peaceful air reminiscent of Lorelai Martens’ first scene where she talks about comfort in her faith in Red John. She first interacts with a senior woman homicide detective – let’s call her X (I would cast Saldana) who offers to help her. The woman insists she wants the detective’s partner (Y) (who I would cast as Christian Bale). Detective X tells her it’s going to be awhile, and with a laugh in her voice yells to her partner that he has a new crush who wants to see him. Detective Y is dealing with a precinst disturbance, unruly criminals or something like that. The journalist puts a small snarl on her face after the female detectie leaves the desk and sits down to wait. In her lap is a sheaf of paper notes along with photos. We see she has scribbled serial killer? Trademark? and other questions in the margins of the papers.

Cut back to Y who is now finished with his crisis, but the young woman is gone. He shrugs and gets called to an emergency/crime scene (perhaps one that tantalizingly appears to be the work of Tommy Volker (though he’s still in prison – or he could be out for good behavior, has pulled strings or whatever). In the early morning when he gets off shift, the journalist surprises Y just as he’s unlocking his car. She asks if he has some time to discuss information she has. Y agrees, noting she’s pretty, and suggests they go for coffee.

Cut to a college or university on the East Coast, where a ciminial profiling or psychology class is beginning. The professor briefly introduces the Red John serial killer and notes that they had invited Patrick Jane to speak, but who declines for personal reasons. In his place is agent Kimball Cho of the FBI. Cho, looking very important indeed, steps up and gives his talk with the students asking questions. A few of the students ask questions designed to unsettled Cho, such as “could Red John be still alive?” and so on. Many students are too insterested in the killer, clearly living in the “ghoul” factor of Brett Patridge from episode one of The Mentalist. A couple stand out as possible Red John acolytes (one could actually be the new Red John if one wants to go that route). Cho’s expression shows disappointment and a little bit of worry.

Open the next scene on a birthday party at the Jane household’s mostly remodeled cabin. Patrick Jane looks sublimely happy as he does magic tricks for his one year old’s birthday party. Rigby and Van Pelt are in attendance, also looking happy, as are their kids. Lisbon serves snacks and asks Rigsby if Cho was able to get away for the party. Rigsby says he had a thing out East, but caught an early flight that should have him landing soon. When Jane is done with the magic show he comes over to hug Lisbon, and also asks about Cho, though his expression is grim. The friends joke around for a bit and then the doorbell rings. Cho has arrived and looks exhausted. Jane offers to get him a drink, and, all smiles, asks him how it went in a soft voice. He doesn’t want Lisbon or any of the others overhearing. Cho says it’s the same as always, same questions, disturbing interest in Red John. Jane states crisply that Red John was a nobody. Cho agrees and Jane says he’s glad the killer is dead. Cho asks how much more family leave the Jane’s have. Jane says only a couple of more weeks and back to the grindstone. Cho comments how they have been missed and how cases aren’t getting closed. He says he misses the old CBI. Jane says nothing, reluctant to talk about the subject. He steers Cho away into a party trick and getting all the kids excited about a pony or whatever.

Back to the L.A. detective meeting at a dinner with the woman who tells him she’s a journalist for on online magazine that discuss local crime trends. A couple of murders in the L.A. area caught her attention and she started digging into the past and other cases that to her seem similar. The detective humors her as she goes through the facts, but clearly does not believe her, saying they get tips like this all the time. He tells her people like to look for patterns to make sense of death and adds that no sense to it, just murder and chaos. The journalist says she thinks she knows where another murder is going to take place, though doesn’t know who. She asks the detective to follow up on this. He looks at the location, saying it’s a bad or remote part of town. She asks again and he takes the papers and says he’ll think about it. She looks relieved and tells him she’ll bring more information. To her and to the viewers it’s obvious he doesn’t intend to pursue the tip.

Cut to scenes involving Cho’s current work with the FBI, how they are struggling without Patrick Jane, but were struggling with him before he and Lisbon went on leave. Cho and his boss discuss the fac that the FBI isn’t the right place for Jane, but that the government still wants to use his abilities and are still obligating him to work for them in some capacities to keep murder charges at bay. Cho remarks that this cage would be better if it was some place Jane wanted to be. Cho’s boss says that Jane is a born detective and that he’ll get there. Cho says he hates to say it, but Jane was at his best going after Red John. “Then we need another Red John,” the FBI boss says. Cho’s expression sinks and he says he would rather Jane risk a murder charge by failing to fulfill his obligation to the government.

Back at the L.A. precinct, Detective X asks her partner how his night was. Y says he talked to that crush and it’s another silly tip on a serial killer. X remarks that serial killers are coming out of the woodwork these days and sighs, saying everyone wants to be a detective. They discuss the previous day’s crime scene in detail, bouncing ideas off of each other and flirting in the process.

Cut to the Jane residence where it’s a Sunday afternoon, but instead of doing the newspaper crossword, Jane is actually solving each and every unknown crime listed in the articles, even noting in the margins that a woman writing to Ann Landers is obviously having an affair. Lisbon catches him in the act and when he shrugs she holds up a detective novel she’s reading on which she’s made her own notes detailing the mistakes made and who dunnit. They smile at each other and lean in for a kiss only to be interrupted by their cute-as-a-button offspring who’s markered all over himself — or something to that effect. Cut to cleaning/house remodeling scenes and then them sitting on the porch and night where they both declare they are happy, so happy. Their eyes tell a different story, however, with looks of boredom and dissatisfaction.

Show a scene where the young journalist prepares to go out at night. She looks at her notes and takes a deep breath in the mirror. In her bag, she included a taser, gun, or weapon of some kind. She is made up to look her best, almost for a date. Cut to her again walking into the same L.A. precinct that is chaotic as usual. She asks for the male detective, but he is out. She nervously leaves an envelope for him at the front desk, saying it’s another tip. She appears scared and says goodbye to the sargeant at the desk as if she is heading to her death.

The next scene shows the harried Detective Y coming back from a suspect interview or what have you (could even show the interview scene). He gets stopped by the desk sargeant who gives him the envelope. Y smiles and shakes his head. He heads to the office he and his partner Detective X share. She is finishing yelling at someone on the phone. Y asks whose heart X’s mother has broken this week. X states that her mother never stops looking for true love. “That pretty much sums up humanity.” He jokes back. He settles into his desk and looks through some paperwork and emails, finally settling on the envelope left by the journalist. His partner asks what it is. “You know that crush from last week? She left me another love note.” “Like you said, we’re all looking for true love,” X says back. When Y opens the envelope and starts to read the contents his expression becomes one of dread. X, who has started munching at her takeout dinner, asks what’s wrong. “This isn’t a tip,” Y says, “it’s a murder in progress.” He throws his badge (maybe he wears it around his neck) and/or coat and stormes out the door with the X in his wake asking him what’s going on.

Action scene with them both racing to get to the location the journalist previously showed Y. They shoult questions and answers back and forth and from their conversation Y thinks that either the journalist is committing the murder or going to be murdered. (To up the thrill factor could intercut this scene and the scene before with shots of the journalist nervously waiting for someone in a dark and remote part of the city). They make it to the location and find the journalist daed, with her body slashed up and Red John’s smiley face on the wall. The music gets louder as their eyes fasten on the smiley face with both horror and curiosity.

That would be the big climax of the episode, then it would go into the detectives trying to figure this out, and their superiors assuming it is Red John and informing the FBI. Cho meets with X and Y and all three hit it off and it’s obvious to him that the two work well together and are whip-smart. Jane is mentioned and Y states how he used to do magic tricks as a kid. Cho remarks that mentalist work is a little more advanced than that. At first, Cho and his FBI team work on the case with the L.A. detectives, but a couple of the FBI team members end of dead and it is then when the FBI boss says they have to bring Jane in. He or she (whoever is cast or kept on from the previous show) apologizes to Cho, saying they wish they’d never said anything about Red John.

Cho takes on the task of breaking the news to Jane and Lisbon. He is so worked up and spends so long hesitating that Detective X, having sympathy and compassion for him, says she’ll do it. The last scene of the episode could be her waiting at the Jane residence (perhaps she can see them happily cooking together or something through the windows) and knocking on the door. Patrick Jane answers, and being who he is, knows instantly why she is there. His expression says it all: Knowledge that there’s no way Red John could be resurrected. Fear that he is wrong in that and fear for his family. A spark of excitement at the thought of a new worthy opponent. Dun, dun, dun! Credits.

Whew!  You made it!

So that’s how I would begin, but I’m sure professional TV writers could do much better and also fill in more of the details. Thanks for reading.

Shows That Need to Happen: Red John (Part 1 of 2)

Nov4

The Mentalist

Part 1: The Case for Another Season  *Spoilers abound*

Anyone who has watched The Mentalist knows that the driving force behind the show was Red John, or more precisely, Patrick Jane’s pursuit of Red John. Other shows are crime/detective procedurals, other shows have quirky consultants, other shows use alternative methods of solving the crimes, and The Mentalist had all of that and more: A serial killer that didn’t get caught for 5.5 seasons and was hunted by a man so permanently damaged that not even a happy wedding ending could shake the feeling of melancholy surrounding his character.

Despite being a con artist who pretends to contact the dead and read minds for money, Patrick Jane (Simon Baker) was picked to help figure out the identity of a serial killer named Red John whose calling card was a giant smiley face painted on a wall with his victim’s blood. After publicly insulting this unknown killer, said killer murdered Patrick Jane’s wife and daughter for revenge. After suffering a mental breakdown, Jane made it his mission in life to hunt down and kill Red John. He joined the California Bureau of Investigation to work with the team assigned to the case.

As great as The Mentalist was, I think it could handle another season, and one centered around Red John at that.

First of all, the catching and klling of Sheriff Mcallister (Xander Berkeley – did a great job, by the way) should have been either the last or second to last episode of the entire show. It was painful to watch Patrick Jane limping on two years later, forced to either work for the FBI or have to face prosecution for taking the law into his own hands. And although I was happy to see him and agent Teresa Lisbon (Robin Tunney) get together, I thought they deserved better than an overdone rom-com airport confession and a following relationship that carried little of the closeness that had come before.

Marriage and a baby on the way both point to a good future for the couple, but there are things that show that Patrick Jane is still very damaged. Take the scene in South America (don’t remember which country he’s in) where Jane wakes up in deja vu to an undercover FBI officer cooking him breakfast at the stove, eerily like Lorelei Martins (Emmanuelle Chriqui) did before she revealed she was a follower of Red John. The lighting, the slow motion, everything about that scene recalls the one that came, in on-show time, two years before it. Patrick Jane is also much subdued after finally killing Red John, something that may be realistic, but is hardly exciting to watch.  Although he initially welcomes working for the FBI to see Lisbon again, he grates against the job in a way that is disconnected from the Patrick Jane we’ve come to know. He grates against the work more than he does against the FBIs rigid way of operating.  He proposes to Lisbon with his dead wife’s wedding ring. He wants to spend his life fixing up a shack.  He buys a RV caravan thing eerily reminiscent of the carny culture he so wished to escape as a young man. These things don’t signal “happy ending” for either him or Lisbon. This is a man still very much in crisis. This a man who stll has a sliver of doubt about himself, perhaps because Jane was at his best when hunting Red John. He had a purpose and a calling.  Revenge is a tragic way to make a living, but for his character and for the show, it worked.

Make no mistake: I want a happy ending for the characters. I want a wham bam, wow of an ending that makes sense of all of the seasons that came before. The choice of Sheriff McAllistar as Red John didn’t work for me. The Captain Hook phrase “worthy opponent” comes to mind. Why the sheriff was not that opponent has a lot to do with screen time, but also due to the fact that he was a random choice. He was only in one episode previously to being added to the list of seven suspects, but so were others like Brett Partridge (Jack Plotnick). Brett with his greasy hair would have been a better choice, actually. His first scene in episode one of the entire show is chilling. Partridge describes what Red John does to his victims not in the clinical tones his job calls for, but in an excited and almost reverant fashion. Patrick Jane immediately names him as a ghoul, and the entire scene crackles with foreshadowing. Had Brett Partridge been chosen as Red John, I would have thought, “Ah, that makes sense. It fits.” His fanaticism and downright creepiness make him a worthy opponent. Vizualize cult leader Bret Stiles  (Malcolm McDowell) (why are all of these guys named Bret(t)?) would have also been a worthy Red John, as he mentally spars with Jane throughout almost all of the seasons of the show. Even the fake out choice of CBI director Gale Bertram (Michael Gaston) was better. He at least had several previous episodes to give the audience reason to suspect him either to be Red John or to be working with him.

The biggest problem with McAllistar is that he was suddenly added to a list of 7 suspects of people with whom Jane had met and shaken hands since…really? Really, writers? If the list itself had been a bluff for a different person they had in mind, that would have been awesome. How it turned out, not so much. The Vizualize guy would have been a better choice. Heck, Cho (Tim Kang) would have been a better choice. Who would have seen that coming? I mean, he’s got a brain. Have you seen the classic tomes he reads? And he likes the bad-good girls.  His romance with Summer (Samaire Armstrong) was epic.  What about Van Pelt (Amanda Righetti)? What about Lisbon? Rigsby (Owain Yeoman)?

I have to ask, is it really that big of a deal if some or even all of the audience guesses the answer before the end of the story? I guessed who Johnny Depp was in The Tourist and I still enjoyed the ending. Writing a twist that almost no one guesses (i.e, The Sixth Sense) is next to impossible. And once someone does, every thriller after the audience is hunting for the twist and it becomes a headache for the writers because same audience decides that the story lives or dies on whether they guess the twist. Too easy to figure out, the writing is crap. Too hard to figure out, audience feels cheated (i.e., my own wish that there had been a different ending).

Did fears of the audience guessing “who dunnit” play into the strange choice of McAllistar and the even worse choice to try out The Mentalist as a straight procedural? I don’t know, but as a viewer, I felt it didn’t work. The show never sold me on being a procedural at the cold and clinical FBI, although it worked ok at the CBI as long as they were also chasing Red John. The Mentalist deserves another season to remedy these mistakes. Patrick Jane deserves another season to revel in the chase. He can be happily married, and a father, and still revel in the chase. He can be happy in all of these things and still be a tragic character, but one true to the episodes that came before. Patrick Jane does not build cabins in the woods. He does not buy RVs. Patrick Jane enjoys detecting and the con, especially conning evil. And he’s damaged and always will be  Patrick Jane is still very much in need of therapy, and that therapy involves catching killers.

Up Next Time: Part 2 – What a Red John Show would look like.

If Not Now, When?

Jul10

Hey blogging world, I’m back again and with a perhaps controversial musing to kick things off.  Well, what’s not controversial today, right?  As I’ve finally wrestled most of my procrastination into submission, I am finally done with a good, clean first draft of Trolls for Dust, Season Two.  It will still be a few months before I publish and I have to fix some things, proofread, get a few critiques, etc., but to those of you who have been waiting for what may seem like forever to learn the fate of Harmony, Hezzy, Eva, and crew — I’ve not forgotten either about you or the story!

Ok, on with the musing:

The world is marching towards Totalitarianism which is a governmental system requiring complete and total submission to the State.  If you’ve never read 1984, now would be a really good time.  In that book, citizens not only have to do what the government says, they have to love doing it.  This march is being accomplished largely by Progressivism which embraces the State as a god and disregards morality, human life, religion, common sense, and the family all in a long grand march Forward for power.  And it is power for themselves the Progressives want, not “equality” or whatever compassionate word of the day they spout.  The most frightening thing about all of this is that few appear to see it happening and some that do just want to stick their heads in the sand and hope it will all go away.

Ever watch the cartoon Pinky and the Brain?  In each episode Pinky asks “What are we gonna do tonight, Brain?”  And Brain always responds, “We’re going to try and take over the world,” or a similar response.  The world is a lot like that cartoon in the sense that someone, some Totalitarian, some tyrant or tyrants are always trying to take over the world.  Totalitarians go under different names such as Communists, Fascists, Islamists, Progressives and the like, but they all have one thing in common:  All these ideologies require compliance down to our very thoughts, if possible.

I am writing this post today to encourage people to speak out against what’s happening, because if not now, when?  Do we do it when the thought police, yes, thought police, invade our homes in the middle of the night? (Already happened — I’m looking at you, Wisconsin).  Until our freedom of speech is threatened? (Already happening, just look up the latest weekly outrage on either the Left or the Right)  Until our freedom of religion is threatened? (Already happening)  Until we have a literal gun of the State to our heads?  I think speaking up for the truth and our beliefs (whatever those may be) is the least we can do.  The world may march onward into darkness, but we don’t have to lie down and make that march an easy one.

Don’t be afraid to speak up and speak boldly, especially with your family and friends.  You may find you disagree on more than you realized, and that’s ok.  When the proverbial you-know-what hits the fan, where the people closest to you are going to stand could be important.  It’s also important to find out why others believe what they do.  Do both sides have logical reasoning, or are both being carried only on emotion?  You may also pleasantly find that you agree on a lot, and maybe even on key things like liberty and the idea that the common man can generally rule himself and his own life.  It’s a sad world indeed we are making if two friends or family members can’t sit down and have a discussion or debate without getting ridiculously upset.  If we can discuss things with people we know, all the better for discussing and debating those we don’t know.  And, boy, do we need practice in debate.

I am a self-confessed comments junky.  I love reading online comments, especially on political articles or whatever the offensive thing of the day is.  In the comments, sure there’s sometimes a lot of meanness, but more often there’s quite a bit of humor, some good reasoning on both sides, and the comforting fact that people care enough about an issue to comment.  People do care and almost all of them have an opinion one way or another.  There’s people who see the big picture and some who see the details.  Having those people connect online is awesome.  Yeah, there’s trolls, but there’s always going to be trolls.  The biggest thing that stands out in the comments, though (and I am as guilty as the next person), is that there is often no logical argument being built, though the people arguing both think they are using logic.  I firmly believe that when it comes to making and enacting laws and/or policy, common sense and logic need to prevail.  This is especially important when challenging an unreasonable law.   Common sense (which isn’t so common anymore) is the common man’s weapon against the forces of ideological tyranny.  And tyranny most often comes from governments, so we’d be best focusing on liberty for all, worrying less about what government can do for us and more about what it’s doing to us, worrying less about the wrongs of the past and more about the ones going on right now.  (Incidentally, the U.S. Constitution is all about what the government can’t do to the citizens).

More on the subject of free speech:  It’s a terrible world we are building if we think that saying the wrong thing should mean a person be automatically fired, their name dragged through the mud, their family be terrorized by protestors on the lawn, and that they should be bankrupted, publicly shamed and humiliated all by the force of government.  That sounds more like a Maoist China than it does a free America, and it’s the environment in which Totalitarians thrive.  These days discussion and debate are being tossed on the altar of lock-step PC Progressivism which knows no forgiveness and will not stop its march even after it has won.

 Isn’t it alarming that no one can give a speech anymore without protestors trying to shout them down, not even the President?  Freedom of speech should mean that a person can at least give their speech and have their say.  It doesn’t mean they are free from criticism and negative reactions, but they should at least have the freedom to speak, don’t you think? And people may not always word things well, but can’t we get off our continual motion machine of offense long enough to see the truth of what they are trying to say?  None of us have perfect grammar, spelling, and/or eloquence, not one.

The biggest thing people are afraid of hearing is the Truth.  The Truth cuts to the heart like nothing else and can be hard to take (think anything Donald Trump said recently).  The Truth is that the world, but specifically America and the West, is barreling down a dangerous path to tyranny.  If we don’t speak up now, then when?  Do we hold our comforts, safety, and security so dear that we can barely find a voice to defend them?  Do we have such low self-esteem that being called “bigot” or “racist” when we are merely stating the truth, silences us?  And for the Christians:  Is our faith, is our God, that fragile that simply mounting a defense for freedom of religion will shatter it or Him?

Today is the day to speak up for Truth and Freedom, for tomorrow we may be silenced or worse.  All Totalitarian systems have a knack for eliminating anyone who disagrees with them.  The body count is terribly high.  For the sake of our families and children, for the sake of our fellow man, we must find the courage to at least speak out.

The good news is that more and more people are speaking out every day.  And the more people speak out, the more people speak out, making tyranny’s foothold all the more unstable, and making total power of the Progressives all the more elusive.

Blogging vacation

Mar16

Hello, Readers!

I am taking a vacation from blogging for a bit to work on Trolls for Dust, book 2, to be out later this year.  Also, the show Castle is pretty good and I’m enjoying finally watching it.  Do you know they have actually books written by “Richard Castle?”  Sandra Vale from TfD would lo–ve that marketing idea.

Happy Spring! (well, almost–it’s a bit chilly tonight in MN) –Pixie

The Lifeboat: Can You Trust Yourself?

Feb25

Few stories are more fascinating than those written through the viewpoint of an unreliable narrator.  This is one of the reasons why the book Atonement proved to be so good–that, and the setting.  The Lifeboat by first time author Charlotte Rogan has both elements, as well, the setting being the initial draw for those who like a good sea yarn and are interested in the ocean liner era in which the Titanic sank.  It is also a book that will keep you up all night.

First things first:  The cover art is amazing, showing a lone, half-full lifeboat as a bright spot in the midst of a gloomy blue sea and sky.  The picture is at once beautiful and haunting, immediately capturing the tale in the mind of the reader as one that will be highly affecting, both mentally and emotionally.

thelifeboat

That the main character and narrator of the story, Grace Winter, is unreliable, becomes evident from the first page of the prologue in which Grace, out to lunch with her lawyers, shocks them by standing in a downpour.  She states that they must think her crazy and from how she puts things, Grace herself seems to share their opinion.

Her tale begins similarly to that of the movie Titanic.  Grace is a young, formerly penniless woman who has won the heart of a rich man and they are sailing on the Empress Alexander to New York, where the two are to announce their marriage to his friends and family.  The difference in this story is that Grace loves the rich young man.  The ocean liner sinks, there aren’t enough lifeboats, and those that are filled are not all filled to capacity.  Men, women, and children, drown in the icy waters while the survivors look on helpless to save them, lest they too sink and be drowned.

The biggest part of the novel takes place on the lifeboat where Grace has been saved along with thirty-odd women and a few men.  Grace captivates the reading by tales of treachery, of heroics, self-sacrifice, and spiteful gossip.  Over and over again, she states that what they were all going through makes it nearly impossible to know if some events occurred or not.  Memory is faulty in the best of circumstances.  Add in physical, mental, and spiritual trauma that lasts for weeks and you have a recipe for a break from reality.

Why is Grace Winter now in the company of lawyers?  She and two other women who survived on the lifeboat are on trial for murder.  It is in the final court scenes that we as readers realize how truly unreliable Grace is.  A faulty memory and trauma, we can forgive her for, and we can even forgive her for being manipulated by stronger personalities aboard the boat.  But then, the mask slips a bit, and we see a glimpse or two of the real Grace, the manipulative Grace, and then, just like in Atonement, the entire story is called into question.

Add to that the inexplicable inclusion of some kind of jewel heist to the plot and the book becomes unputdownable.  The hints throughout the story of what is actually going on, are so subtle, that I wasn’t able to peace it altogether.  A smarter reader probably would be able to distinguish by the end just who is manipulating whom (ha, I think I used it correctly there!).

The Lifeboat is a fascinating read precisely because the narrator is unreliable.  The big question we are left with at the end is: just how unreliable is Grace Winter?  The themes of uncertainty of memory, questions others’ intentions, and the tendency of gossip to elaborate upon itself make this a story in which we as readers question ourselves.  Most of us have probably never been stranded aboard a lifeboat at sea, wasting away after days of hunger, dehydration, and lack of sleep, but who of us has not ever questioned our own memory of an incident?  Who of us has not ever had someone else question our memory of an incident?  Police reports abound with witnesses who saw multiple different things at the same time.  Are they lying?  Is their memory faulty?  Or did they all just see different things?

Can you trust yourself?  That’s the question the book presents as we inwardly debate Grace Winter’s reliability.  Are we more or less reliable than her?  If so, why?  We think we know how we might act in such a situation as hers, but we really don’t know until we’re put in that situation.  We wonder if our own character has flaws that will be embarrassingly revealed under pressure.  We desire to be tried and tested, but are afraid we, too, will be found wanting.

The Lifeboat is a book to read in one sitting, if you have the time.  One sitting is the closest way to experience what the characters are experiencing, a situation that they cannot leave or put down to come back to.  One sitting allows the paranoia in the story to grow on a reader so that by the end you are questioning everything, yet have this nagging feeling that that’s just what the author wants, and that you’ve fallen into the trap.  You have been manipulated, but not by Grace.  I look forward to reading further work by Ms. Rogan.  She has talent, and perhaps most importantly, genuine storytelling ability.

Finnish Folk Group Aallotar

Feb14

This past Tuesday, I had the privilege of hearing a wonderful folk concert by the Finnish group Aallotar at Bethany Lutheran College in Mankato, MN.  As an alumnus, I have long appreciated and made use of the great acoustics in the chapel, from listening to world class violin concerts to singing church Christmas music to a packed house.  With this concert, though, it really struck me just how amazing the acoustics are in Trinity Chapel.

I blame it on the accordion – in a good way!  Ok, I was a bit skeptical about listening to an accordion and violin duo, as I’ve only associated accordions with polka, often really bad polka, but Aallotar showed me a different side to the instrument.  The accordion added the “band” to the performance.  It was the waves, wind, and water of each heartbreaking song, and the acoustics added such breathtaking depth that it almost felt at times as if the whole chapel were adrift at sea or on a lonely point overlooking the Baltic Sea.

Aallotar has a unique style, including original songs and altered tunes from the duo’s childhood.  The two women, violinist Sara Pajunen, and accordionist Teija Niku grew up in Finland not far from each other.  Since one is now in America, they collaborate via modern technology, and tour together periodically.  They both have superb vocals in addition to their instrumental expertise, and it’s a pleasure to listen to them.  The songs were nearly all about the tortures of the heart, of missing loved ones and knowing you may never see them again.  Every piece was filled with such atmosphere and emotion and given another dimension again by those wonderful acoustics.  If you enjoy folk and/or chamber music, check out Aallotar.