God morgon, Sverige! Välkommen till The Wifely Person Speaks!
Förra veckan hade jag tusentals (ja, tusentals) träffar från Sverige. Någon som vill berätta för mig varför jag plötsligt är så populär? Jag klagar inte, jag är glad, men bara nyfiken på att veta varför. Om du vet, vänligen skriv en kommentar eller skicka mig ett mejl. Oavsett anledning, jag är glad att du är här. (Tack Google Translate!)
That was a not-so-secret message to my readers in Sweden. For the last week or so, the hit-o-meter was spinning at a furious pace, with over 3,000 hits from Sweden alone. I am so not complaining about that. Viewing the stats, it appears people are reading the whole opus, not just the last few episodes. Why? Was it something I said? Did someone share me? I am dying of curiosity here.
Truth be told, I have regular readers on every continent except Antarctica. And I get my fair share of emails from readers who ask questions, or just wanna say hi. And if you've written to me, you've gotten an answer. Ziggy always said, rightfully so, if someone takes the time to write, you should have the courtesy to respond, even if it's hate mail. And for the record, the writer of a rather vitriolic tirade was, for quite a few years, one of my favorite correspondents until he passed away. We never agreed on anything except Jay Leno not being funny.
Which kinda brings me around to this week's soapbox: creative writing for the masses.
Last week, THE POMEGRANATE finally got ISBN numbers....those pesky numbers that all published works have on the back cover. You gotta pay for those, one per medium, so The Pom, as it is known around here, has two: one for the paperback and one for the ebook. Almost exactly 5 years ago, I bought the ISBN numbers for DREAM DANCER, and 3.5 years ago, the ISBNS for LINGUA GALACTICA. So, this is the third novel. Each one is very different from the others. All three are fiction. That means I made up the stories. They are not real. The people in them, except in the case of The Pom which is about the period of the Third Crusade has historical real people in it. But that's allowed. And the historical fiction real people pretty much act the way the actual real people acted based on biographies and assorted primary, secondary, and tertiary documentation.
Yesterday, in honor of my birthday (just kidding) Feckless Loser was on Fox's Sunday Futures with Maria Bartiromo and once again described the invasion of the US Capitol as a loving expression of patriotism. So Feckless went to town on the broadcast:
So, there was a big rally called. And, actually, when I say big, who knew? But there was a rally called.And a tremendous number of people, the largest one I have ever spoken before, is called by people, by patriots. And they asked me if I'd speak. And I did. And it was a very mild-mannered speech, as I think has been -- in fact, they just came out with a report in Congress, and they didn't mention my name, literally.But what they were complaining about and the reason, in my opinion, you had over a million people there, which the press doesn't like to report at all, because it shows too much -- too much activity, too much -- too much spirit and faith and love. There was such love at that rally.You had over a million people there. They were there for one reason, the rigged election. They felt the election was rigged. That's why they were there. And they were peaceful people. These were great people.The crowd was unbelievable. And I mentioned the word love. The love -- the love in the air, I have never seen anything like it.And that's why they went to Washington.
Read the whole interview. Keep a barf bucket nearby.
The fictionalization of such recent history is disturbing. That a major network continues to promote that fantasy is problematic on a number of levels, not the least of which is the First Amendment. Fox has the right AND the obligation to present dissenting opinions. This is a huge part of the integrity of journalism, something that is lacking in most of the networks. News lacking integrity is little more than infotainment, and with few exceptions, that's what's broadcast to the masses, and depending on where you sit on the political spectrum, chances are you believe whatever newscast you're watching.
Believe what you will, the quest for spin-less journalism is fading. More and more people are giving up the fight for news sources that tell an unvarnished truth. I'm getting ready after being a life-long New York Times reader (literally) to end my subscription. Their coverage of world events is no longer trustworthy, especially when it comes to the Middle East. Their national news is iffy at best, and the op ed page is populist at best and lacking substance. What passes for opinion on that page stymies me. I miss the old substantiated opinions even when I vociferously disagreed with them. At least there was a discussion taking place. Maureen Dowd's recent column on Bernie Sanders was just plain insulting. She wanted gossip, he gave her the needs of We, the People. Really? They cannot do better than Maureen Dowd? Even Ross Douhat has more integrity than that and I cannot stand the man.
Whether it's politics or climate change, facts are facts, science is science, and lies are lies. This is pretty much immutable. You can argue politics and climate change. You can argue about the merits of Reaganomics versus Obamanomics. You can argue about lots of stuff in science based on process, theory, even theorem on occasion...like, the world isn't really round, it's more of an oblate spheroid. But saying that the world is flat is pretty much a non-starter. And going on the Sunday morning chat shows to push the idea of the world is flat is just as ridiculous as saying the assault on the capitol was a love-fest.
The recent increase in hate crimes, the very fact there was a nationwide rally against antiSemitism yesterday, is not the direct result of hate, these are the fruits of fear. Fear of the other, fear of change, fear of loss of power. There are seismic shifts happening in this country, and the MAGA people are terrified. Their imagined grasp on power in this country is slipping. Feckless plays on those fears like a Boggart. He revs them up with images of an imagined America when the white middle class was upwardly mobile while the foreigners were not. He feeds the fear, stoking them with images that look on the surface to be "normal," when they are not reflections of reality. They are only wishful thinking.
The really sad part is that he has slavish thralls following him even in the halls of government. The constituency that voted them in continues to drink their poisonous Kool-Aid even when they know it will cost them access to health care and other support programs. They want to live in a world where they can "take care of their own" without understanding what that means in the light of day-to-day caregiving. Guys like Feckless, Graetz, Greene, Cruz, and De Santis feed that fantasy not to help their people, but to consolidate what fading power they have.
Only when disease and death arrive at the doorstep and there is no doctor or hospital to which to turn will those folks understand what it means not to have accessible health care. When one wage-earner has to stay home to care for mom or dad, and the other wage-earner is bringing home almost minimum wage, will they understand there is no safety net for them. At some point, someone will have to explain this was a choice they made with their vote, and they are not victims of a liberal plot....because no one will have those things.
The bottom line is you cannot, should not, must not be writing fiction as news, then putting it on the air as fact. People will actually believe you because fear-mongering is an emerging art form in this country. Peddling fear at any level is just plain wrong.
Some people will blame social media for the rise in gullibility. Sure, it owns a big piece of it. But the news media owns a bigger piece for putting this bullshit on the table and serving it up as steak.
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