And now from Rob, a long-time correspondent:
On Nov 22, 2007, at 9:52 AM, Rob Suder wrote:
Hey Matt, I always appreciate you taking the time to answer emails and such. So thank you, especially considering how busy you probably are with you current works. I have a mixture of questions, a few about writing and a few observations mostly about the Caine novels. I’ve been rereading Blade of Tyshalle and I’m about three-fourths the way through it, at the point where Caine has been moved from the Pit to the Shaft. Something I’m just not sure if I caught onto the first time or not regarding Tan’elkoth, Ma’elkoth, and Hannto the Scythe is how they could be viewed as a split-personality disorder. They way there’s countless personalities, but some are more dominant than others each believing they need to be in control, rather than Ma’elkoth truly being a God it throws an interesting view into Heroes Die when Caine first meets Ma’elkoth and wonders. It also parallels Deliann’s argument to Caine, that Hari is merely a mask so Caine could get by on Earth as a parapalegic. At any rate I know you do an enormous amount of research on the background sources for your novels, and I wondered if you did any into psychiatric disorders? Of course Overwold magic is still more…traditional…than it is on Earth in the novels, and sometimes the simplest answer is correct. But with a lot of the philosophy in the story, I’ve been trying to think (and hopefully not over-think) aspects from a different point of view. In regards to the philosphies, especially in Blade of Tyshalle, I was wondering which ones much of Caine’s, Duncan’s, and Tan’elkoth’s musing are based on? Tao for example? Or Hindu beliefs? I’ll admit my knowledge of them is pretty small, but I’ve tried to research them in the past and most of the books in stores or libraries don’t seem very accessible to the average person. Okay…now I have a few writing questions I was hoping to I could pester you with. I’ve been working on an outline for a story, and I have an overall plot but I find myself constantly stuck on the catalyst at the beginning of the story. I have my main character, where he’s at emotionally/personally and where I want him to go. I know the basics of the overall journey, but I’m having trouble finding an event that starts or prompts him to move through the story. So I guess I’m hoping you would be willing to give me a different perspective, when you hit a tought spot while working on a story? Did you skip past the trouble spot, and come back to it later? Have you found it more difficult to jump around when writing in such a manner? I haven’t really tried writing later events, because I’m inclined to try to write the story from start to finish. Regardless I’m grateful for any advice you might be able to give. With that I’ll wrap this up with one last, probably always asked question: How are things going with Caine Black Knife? Any news you’re allowed to mention? Thanks again for taking the time to write!
------
Hey, Rob.
I didn't do any research specifically into psychiatric disorders, though I have read any number of the novelized case histories (THE THREE FACES OF EVE, SIBYL, etc) that were popular in the second half of the last century, and I do keep up, more or less, with developments in the field.
The theory of personality that underlies HD and BLADE is largely my own, cribbed from my own experience as an actor -- how a character played with sufficient conviction becomes a secondary (sometimes primary) personality. It's not so much a question of MPD as it is that personality, in my view, is a perceptual framework one uses to filter experience. Personality is not a discrete feature of life, but rather an aggregate of certain habits of mind. Tan'elKoth's view of art is specifically a metaphor for this, for example. (It's also my personal view of art, but let that go.)
Duncan's political philosophy is grounded in John Locke, by way of Abraham Lincoln . . . though its primary basis is in the works of mid-period Robert Heinlein, specifically THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS. There are ways HEROES DIE, specifically, can be read as a critical reply to Heinlein's political theories, but that's a side issue.
The theory of consciousness that underlies Deliann's discussions with Caine (and, for that matter, the metaphysics of Ma'elKoth), is mostly mine . . . though I have seen a few references in neuroscience journals in support of the premise, which is that the human nervous system is not the producer of the mind, but merely its receiver, tuned to a specific frequency of a greater "field of mind," which -- you will note -- neatly explains the results of "identical twin separated at birth" studies, as well as the occasional flashes of telepathy and insights one experiences while under the influence of certain "mind-altering drugs" -- as well as the personality and cognitive changes that proceed from traumatic brain injury . . . it also explains the physical changes in the wiring of the brain that we naturally produce when we learn . . . we're re-tuning our nervous systems. It also explains the effects of differing styles of religio-mystic training, everything from yoga to Zen to Catholic mass -- each of these is designed to tune the nervous system to certain frequencies that eventually result in a specific type of mental experience . . . and the type of experience depends on the type of training, if you follow me. The inspiration for that came from the Western mystic traditions (i.e. the Greek mystery religions, druidic lore, and some of the Native American shamanic traditions, as well as the works of Teilhard de Chardin).
The conceptual framework of Cainism is an outgrowth of Nieztschean perspectivism, leavened with a dash of chaos theory.
As far as the writing problem goes, it sounds to me like you're trying to start the story too early in the plot. The genesis of any good story is in the initial problem: you need to make sure than when we first meet your protagonist, he's ALREADY in so much trouble that he MUST act . . . and then his action produces a counter-action from his antagonists (whether they be villains, society, or an uncaring universe) so that it escalates the tension rather than relieving it. If you're just writing a short, then you need to start at the climax, and fill in the plot that led there as you go along; if you're writing a longer piece -- novella-length on up -- then you want at least a couple of escalations in there before you hit the climax.
Let me know if this helps.
--Oh, and can I post this correspondence on my blog? It seems to be a good way to keep the thing going, and some of these questions are worth sharing.
Matt
Matthew Woodring Stover
numquam desisto
Wednesday, November 28
Thursday, November 22
More from Peter:
On Nov 20, 2007, at 3:46 PM, Peter wrote:
Yeah, you definitely answered the question I was trying to ask, whether you felt there was an implied moral imperative in publishing your writing. Good to know there's someone out there not trying to force me to be like their characters.
The pre-moral stance bit is interesting. I find that I have a liking for science fiction (and truth that approaches it) for a reason which is beyond approval for the perspectives embodied in the work. I just like reading what happens when people draw lines into the future of science, or philosophy, or morality through fantasy.
I'm curious, did you choose your genre, or did it choose you?
I've had discussions with my friends over whether your writing is sci-fi, fantasy, or philosophy, and we figured it's sort of a gray area in the middle of genre. Did you set out to create a world where that was possible, or just tell what you wanted to and place it where it fit?
-----
I don't think of my work as philosophy at all . . . unless you take the word philosophy to its etymologic roots, in which case any form of narrative can be considered to fall under that rubric; all narrative reflects the internal metaphysic of its creator(s) willy-nilly, even something as grossly pandering as a night-time soap or Robyn Williams film. The philosophy, it seems to me, arises of the act of interpretation; what I'm putting into the work is less philosophy than it is perspective. I write the world as I see the world--even when I'm writing about someone else's world, like Mr Lucas's, for example.
As far as "my genre" goes, what I really wanted to write was comic books -- specifically superhero books; I've always loved the stew of unrestrained imagineering that goes into the best comics. Which are always a mix of fantasy, SF, and psychological honesty. My favorite comics often deal directly with many of the themes that I seem to keep coming back to: the role of performance in the nature of identity, the responsibilities of power, the consequences of imposing one's will upon one's world, and the consequences of refusing to do so . . . all that stuff, and more.
I specifically chose to work in heroic fantasy because when I was starting out, HF was considered the lowest kind of trash-reading, with only very few exceptions (Donaldson, late Moorcock, Vonnegut, a few others) -- but from my reading, grounded in Greek and Roman myth, it could (and should) be the HIGHEST form of literature. It's the one where Everything's on the Table. Nothing's off-limits. But sadly, very very few writers can make a decent living at it, and I don't seem to be one of the few. I started strong, but (due to issues with my health) my average income from writing has been been static over the course of my career. Money that looks pretty good when you're thirty-three isn't so swell when you're forty-five . . . especially when it's not even keeping up with inflation.
The "tell what you want to tell" thing is great in theory, but when your work doesn't fall squarely into a pre-defined publishing category, a publisher has no idea how to market it, and such works tend to fell through the cracks. Kind of like HEROES DIE and BLADE did. I suspect that Del Rey has a better idea how to handle CBK, though. We'll see.
Matthew Woodring Stover
numquam desisto
On Nov 20, 2007, at 3:46 PM, Peter wrote:
Yeah, you definitely answered the question I was trying to ask, whether you felt there was an implied moral imperative in publishing your writing. Good to know there's someone out there not trying to force me to be like their characters.
The pre-moral stance bit is interesting. I find that I have a liking for science fiction (and truth that approaches it) for a reason which is beyond approval for the perspectives embodied in the work. I just like reading what happens when people draw lines into the future of science, or philosophy, or morality through fantasy.
I'm curious, did you choose your genre, or did it choose you?
I've had discussions with my friends over whether your writing is sci-fi, fantasy, or philosophy, and we figured it's sort of a gray area in the middle of genre. Did you set out to create a world where that was possible, or just tell what you wanted to and place it where it fit?
-----
I don't think of my work as philosophy at all . . . unless you take the word philosophy to its etymologic roots, in which case any form of narrative can be considered to fall under that rubric; all narrative reflects the internal metaphysic of its creator(s) willy-nilly, even something as grossly pandering as a night-time soap or Robyn Williams film. The philosophy, it seems to me, arises of the act of interpretation; what I'm putting into the work is less philosophy than it is perspective. I write the world as I see the world--even when I'm writing about someone else's world, like Mr Lucas's, for example.
As far as "my genre" goes, what I really wanted to write was comic books -- specifically superhero books; I've always loved the stew of unrestrained imagineering that goes into the best comics. Which are always a mix of fantasy, SF, and psychological honesty. My favorite comics often deal directly with many of the themes that I seem to keep coming back to: the role of performance in the nature of identity, the responsibilities of power, the consequences of imposing one's will upon one's world, and the consequences of refusing to do so . . . all that stuff, and more.
I specifically chose to work in heroic fantasy because when I was starting out, HF was considered the lowest kind of trash-reading, with only very few exceptions (Donaldson, late Moorcock, Vonnegut, a few others) -- but from my reading, grounded in Greek and Roman myth, it could (and should) be the HIGHEST form of literature. It's the one where Everything's on the Table. Nothing's off-limits. But sadly, very very few writers can make a decent living at it, and I don't seem to be one of the few. I started strong, but (due to issues with my health) my average income from writing has been been static over the course of my career. Money that looks pretty good when you're thirty-three isn't so swell when you're forty-five . . . especially when it's not even keeping up with inflation.
The "tell what you want to tell" thing is great in theory, but when your work doesn't fall squarely into a pre-defined publishing category, a publisher has no idea how to market it, and such works tend to fell through the cracks. Kind of like HEROES DIE and BLADE did. I suspect that Del Rey has a better idea how to handle CBK, though. We'll see.
Matthew Woodring Stover
numquam desisto
Tuesday, November 20
Hey. I have risen. Or something.
Got the following e-mail from some thoughtful fellow upon finishing BLADE, and it's led to some correspondence that I think fans of the Acts of Caine might find interesting. So I'm putting it up here.
------
Hey, I finished Blade of Tyshalle and am rereading Heroes Die. I'm finding that the philosophies of Cainism resonate with the perspectives I use to act and am a bit curious as to whether you're planning on releasing a Cainist Philosophy book. Sort of seeing you as an Ayn Rand, with a book that shows your philosophies through characters and the potential for a more clear statement.
I don't know if that sort of thing would appeal to you, but I'm curious, so sue me.
-Peter.
------
Hey.
No, BLADE OF TYSHALLE is itself my Cainist Philosophy book. Unlike Ms Rand, Cainism is descriptive, not prescriptive. It's not about how people should live, it's about how they do live, whether they want to or not. Caine's just the most extreme case . . . if you see what I mean.
And my philosophy isn't really my philosophy; it's (roughly speaking) a blend of Nietzschean perspectivism with classical Taoism, leavened with chaos theory. In other words (as some critics have pointed out), there's nothing particularly original about it. Which is okay with me, because I don't actually care about being original. I care about telling the truth as I see it, and about writing novels that people will want to read more than once . . . not necessarily in that order.
Thanks for your interest, and thanks for writing.
Matthew Woodring Stover
numquam desisto
------
I think that's why I like it so much, it's a more real philosophy than most stuff I get smacked around with. More true to life instead of how things should be.
Aren't all philosophies just blends of ideas from before? Methinks you give yourself too little credit... or maybe this is the 'be humble in front of my fans' act. Either way, I like the ideas a lot. The chaos theory bit in particular.
Question; if your books aren't meant to be prescriptive, why do you pick a cast of characters? Heroes Die was all Caine, but showing a cast leads me to assume the people have something in common worth noting in your story. I know assumption is the first step into a shallow grave (or something like that), but how is it possible to write without being prescriptive while using more than one character?
------
Hmm. Some readers might take the story as prescriptive: "You should act like Caine, and you'll always win," or "If you act like Caine, your victories will always cost more than they're worth," or whatever (gods help them if they do . . .). That's a factor of interpretation, which is not my business. My business is telling a story as honestly as I can, given the limitations of my subject matter and the limitations of my personal insight and authorial skill. I don't approach my characters from a moral stance, but from an esthetic one; in other words, I don't much care whether they're Good or Bad, only whether I Like 'Em or I Don't. My bias in that regard might be read as an implicit moral endorsement or moral condemnation of their behavior, but it is not intended that way. The things BLADE's characters have in common are not moral factors, but mythological ones.
As I implied in BLADE -- and stated explicitly in STAR WARS ON TRIAL -- interpretation is subjective. What anything means, as Caine says, depends on how you tell the story. It also depends on who's hearing/reading/watching it. A book, as I've said elsewhere, is nothing but words on a page. The actual novel is what happens inside your head when you read that book. If there's something you can take away from that experience that you feel deepens your understanding of your own life, then that's a bonus -- but it's not necessarily thanks to me; people can find things in books that the author had no intention of putting there. A novel (a good one, anyway) is like a shovel you can use to excavate your own mind . . . find the treasures buried in there, polish 'em a bit, then hold 'em up to see how much they sparkle . . .
Hey, would you mind very much if I posted this correspondence on my blog? I only update the damned thing every three or four months, and I think it's due.
Matthew Woodring Stover
numquam desisto
------
I would be honored to be on your blog. Just high-fived my roommate at the very thought.
One more question. For now. :)
If you're telling a story that you like and I like it too, i assume we have something in common. Some sort of shared perspective or common sense of entertainment which gives us that commonality.
If we both like Caine because he does what we've always wanted to do (true or not) or at least wanted to see done, and you put it there, are you pulling a sort of Studio shield? I just give the people, myself included, what they say they want, and how they take it isn't what I did it for. I'm in it for the money, so to speak.
Not saying that the Studio is wrong, I can often empathize with the idea of wanting a shield, saying that when you write a story the way you do, true to life's inner forms, it's more likely to cater to the people who don't want a shield. They're the ones looking for sparkly things in their heads, instead of in their bodies. Dunno if you know what i mean by that.
The question of this mini-rant is; are the 'moral factors' what makes a story prescriptive (more likely to be insubstantial), or is the knowledge of the idea of potentially prescriptive elements in the mind of the reader a sort of lens which causes stories which could lead to the sort of digging we both like to lose their potency.
Basically, do we make 'superficial' stories that way because we've got a heuristic for it, or do they perpetuate their own demise?
Your fault, or mine?
If it's my fault, do you think that the people looking for jewels do so out of a trained impulse, like others looking for prescriptions, or out of a desire to find what really entertains them?
wow. lotsa questions there. Running on no sleep... sorry.
------
I confess to not being entirely clear on the question. I'll do my best to answer what I THINK you're asking . . . then if I'm wrong, we can work it out from there.
The question, it seems to me, proceeds from a flawed premise: that our shared affection for the character of Caine proceeds from approval of his actions, and that this (presumed) approval translates into some sort of Kantian categorical imperative (which is something Cainism explicitly rejects -- see t'Passe's observation on sheep and wolves). I just don't see it that way. My affection for Caine (and that of most of his fans, I think) proceeds from what I would call a pre-moral stance, or even an anti-moral stance. It's a largely visceral reaction -- a hormone-driven one, I believe, with the dominant hormone being adrenaline, closely followed by testosterone. We like him because he gets us charged up . . . a reaction that takes place without regard to our moral sensibilities, whatever they may be.
Which is not to say he's without intellectual virtues or admirable qualities, but that's another discussion.
For the record, I DON'T give the people what they want. I give the people what I want. What the hypothetical people make of it, however, is inherently beyond my control. And I don't do it for the money (God knows!). I do it because I want to tell you a story that will keep you up at night . . . and maybe get you to spend some time, now and then, just thinking about your reaction to it.
I don't disavow responsibility for my readers' reactions, because much of what I write is intended to provoke reaction. I just can't control what that reaction will be, you follow? It's very much like Cainism itself: I control what I can control, and let the rest go. Because I have to; it's out of my hands.
In fact, I tend to disapprove of artists who insist on controlling your reaction to their work; that strikes me as crossing the line from art to propaganda. Ayn Rand would be a prime example, as would Steven Spielberg. We tend to find such things less objectionable when the points being hammered home are ones we already agree with . . . but I'm no great fan of the concept. I mean, when was the last time you re-read Aesop's Fables and found yourself thinking that "Geez, now that I'm older, I find myself kind of LIKING King Stork . . ."
I do think that readers who are looking for prescriptive elements in fiction are going to inherently miss some of the simple pleasures of reading -- because they're adding a layer of intellectual filtering that keeps them that much more removed from the immersive experience that good fiction should be.
I hope that no one's looking for jewels . . . because of that intellectual filtering thing, see? Besides, jewels sparkle all the more when you come upon them unexpectedly.
Again: I hope you find this response pertinent. If it isn't, please feel free to clarify your question.
Matthew Woodring Stover
numquam desisto
Got the following e-mail from some thoughtful fellow upon finishing BLADE, and it's led to some correspondence that I think fans of the Acts of Caine might find interesting. So I'm putting it up here.
------
Hey, I finished Blade of Tyshalle and am rereading Heroes Die. I'm finding that the philosophies of Cainism resonate with the perspectives I use to act and am a bit curious as to whether you're planning on releasing a Cainist Philosophy book. Sort of seeing you as an Ayn Rand, with a book that shows your philosophies through characters and the potential for a more clear statement.
I don't know if that sort of thing would appeal to you, but I'm curious, so sue me.
-Peter.
------
Hey.
No, BLADE OF TYSHALLE is itself my Cainist Philosophy book. Unlike Ms Rand, Cainism is descriptive, not prescriptive. It's not about how people should live, it's about how they do live, whether they want to or not. Caine's just the most extreme case . . . if you see what I mean.
And my philosophy isn't really my philosophy; it's (roughly speaking) a blend of Nietzschean perspectivism with classical Taoism, leavened with chaos theory. In other words (as some critics have pointed out), there's nothing particularly original about it. Which is okay with me, because I don't actually care about being original. I care about telling the truth as I see it, and about writing novels that people will want to read more than once . . . not necessarily in that order.
Thanks for your interest, and thanks for writing.
Matthew Woodring Stover
numquam desisto
------
I think that's why I like it so much, it's a more real philosophy than most stuff I get smacked around with. More true to life instead of how things should be.
Aren't all philosophies just blends of ideas from before? Methinks you give yourself too little credit... or maybe this is the 'be humble in front of my fans' act. Either way, I like the ideas a lot. The chaos theory bit in particular.
Question; if your books aren't meant to be prescriptive, why do you pick a cast of characters? Heroes Die was all Caine, but showing a cast leads me to assume the people have something in common worth noting in your story. I know assumption is the first step into a shallow grave (or something like that), but how is it possible to write without being prescriptive while using more than one character?
------
Hmm. Some readers might take the story as prescriptive: "You should act like Caine, and you'll always win," or "If you act like Caine, your victories will always cost more than they're worth," or whatever (gods help them if they do . . .). That's a factor of interpretation, which is not my business. My business is telling a story as honestly as I can, given the limitations of my subject matter and the limitations of my personal insight and authorial skill. I don't approach my characters from a moral stance, but from an esthetic one; in other words, I don't much care whether they're Good or Bad, only whether I Like 'Em or I Don't. My bias in that regard might be read as an implicit moral endorsement or moral condemnation of their behavior, but it is not intended that way. The things BLADE's characters have in common are not moral factors, but mythological ones.
As I implied in BLADE -- and stated explicitly in STAR WARS ON TRIAL -- interpretation is subjective. What anything means, as Caine says, depends on how you tell the story. It also depends on who's hearing/reading/watching it. A book, as I've said elsewhere, is nothing but words on a page. The actual novel is what happens inside your head when you read that book. If there's something you can take away from that experience that you feel deepens your understanding of your own life, then that's a bonus -- but it's not necessarily thanks to me; people can find things in books that the author had no intention of putting there. A novel (a good one, anyway) is like a shovel you can use to excavate your own mind . . . find the treasures buried in there, polish 'em a bit, then hold 'em up to see how much they sparkle . . .
Hey, would you mind very much if I posted this correspondence on my blog? I only update the damned thing every three or four months, and I think it's due.
Matthew Woodring Stover
numquam desisto
------
I would be honored to be on your blog. Just high-fived my roommate at the very thought.
One more question. For now. :)
If you're telling a story that you like and I like it too, i assume we have something in common. Some sort of shared perspective or common sense of entertainment which gives us that commonality.
If we both like Caine because he does what we've always wanted to do (true or not) or at least wanted to see done, and you put it there, are you pulling a sort of Studio shield? I just give the people, myself included, what they say they want, and how they take it isn't what I did it for. I'm in it for the money, so to speak.
Not saying that the Studio is wrong, I can often empathize with the idea of wanting a shield, saying that when you write a story the way you do, true to life's inner forms, it's more likely to cater to the people who don't want a shield. They're the ones looking for sparkly things in their heads, instead of in their bodies. Dunno if you know what i mean by that.
The question of this mini-rant is; are the 'moral factors' what makes a story prescriptive (more likely to be insubstantial), or is the knowledge of the idea of potentially prescriptive elements in the mind of the reader a sort of lens which causes stories which could lead to the sort of digging we both like to lose their potency.
Basically, do we make 'superficial' stories that way because we've got a heuristic for it, or do they perpetuate their own demise?
Your fault, or mine?
If it's my fault, do you think that the people looking for jewels do so out of a trained impulse, like others looking for prescriptions, or out of a desire to find what really entertains them?
wow. lotsa questions there. Running on no sleep... sorry.
------
I confess to not being entirely clear on the question. I'll do my best to answer what I THINK you're asking . . . then if I'm wrong, we can work it out from there.
The question, it seems to me, proceeds from a flawed premise: that our shared affection for the character of Caine proceeds from approval of his actions, and that this (presumed) approval translates into some sort of Kantian categorical imperative (which is something Cainism explicitly rejects -- see t'Passe's observation on sheep and wolves). I just don't see it that way. My affection for Caine (and that of most of his fans, I think) proceeds from what I would call a pre-moral stance, or even an anti-moral stance. It's a largely visceral reaction -- a hormone-driven one, I believe, with the dominant hormone being adrenaline, closely followed by testosterone. We like him because he gets us charged up . . . a reaction that takes place without regard to our moral sensibilities, whatever they may be.
Which is not to say he's without intellectual virtues or admirable qualities, but that's another discussion.
For the record, I DON'T give the people what they want. I give the people what I want. What the hypothetical people make of it, however, is inherently beyond my control. And I don't do it for the money (God knows!). I do it because I want to tell you a story that will keep you up at night . . . and maybe get you to spend some time, now and then, just thinking about your reaction to it.
I don't disavow responsibility for my readers' reactions, because much of what I write is intended to provoke reaction. I just can't control what that reaction will be, you follow? It's very much like Cainism itself: I control what I can control, and let the rest go. Because I have to; it's out of my hands.
In fact, I tend to disapprove of artists who insist on controlling your reaction to their work; that strikes me as crossing the line from art to propaganda. Ayn Rand would be a prime example, as would Steven Spielberg. We tend to find such things less objectionable when the points being hammered home are ones we already agree with . . . but I'm no great fan of the concept. I mean, when was the last time you re-read Aesop's Fables and found yourself thinking that "Geez, now that I'm older, I find myself kind of LIKING King Stork . . ."
I do think that readers who are looking for prescriptive elements in fiction are going to inherently miss some of the simple pleasures of reading -- because they're adding a layer of intellectual filtering that keeps them that much more removed from the immersive experience that good fiction should be.
I hope that no one's looking for jewels . . . because of that intellectual filtering thing, see? Besides, jewels sparkle all the more when you come upon them unexpectedly.
Again: I hope you find this response pertinent. If it isn't, please feel free to clarify your question.
Matthew Woodring Stover
numquam desisto
Saturday, June 30
Surrendering to the pressure . . .
Yeah, I know: I'm never here. Partly it's because I really don't care for writing about myself directly (of course, all my books are about myself--specifically, how I see the world--at least indirectly, but still . . .).
I've never forgotten a general social maxim from my dissipated youth:
Great minds discuss ideas.
Average minds discuss events.
Small minds discuss people.
This, like so many bits of Received Wisdom, is less an observation than an ideal . . . and one that seems more honor'd in the breach than th' observance, as Hamlet might say.
Here's the Business Part:
CAINE BLACK KNIFE is grinding its way through the editorial process, somewhere in Purgatory--erm, that is, in the literary void between Del Rey (which is the contractee for publication) and Ballantine, Bertlesmann AG's local corporate viceroy, which is currently the employer of Caine's editor. It appears to be tentatively slated for publication in mid-2008, roughly the same time-frame as LUKE SKYWALKER AND THE SHADOWS OF MINDOR. Which seems like a long time to wait, but, y'know, right now I'm just grateful it's coming out at all.
Also:
I've been corresponding once more with Dan Moran (Daniel Keys Moran, for those heretics among you who don't know him--you can buy his books on Amazon, and you should). He did me the favor of looking over CBK for me with a semi-critical eye. I say "semi-critical" because he's also a long-time Caine fan . . . in fact, he's married to Amy Stout (now Stout-Moran), who was the editor who bought HEROES DIE for Del Rey.
Anyway, here's the point: Just for fun, I thought I'd send him a copy of the late, lamented REAL FLASH GORDON. But when I opened the file, some of the formatting was corrupted, so I've been cleaning it up, and in the process discovering how much I really like my own writing. I always say I write the kind of books I like to read. Well, I'm telling the truth. Even my lightweight crap. Especially my lightweight crap. I guess because I was writing to exactly my own sense of humor, this book tickles the hell out of me.
I just wish I could find a concept for a book or two of my own that is as much flat-out fun as FLASH.
I must have been in a REALLY good mood while I was writing that.
That's all.
Yeah, I know: I'm never here. Partly it's because I really don't care for writing about myself directly (of course, all my books are about myself--specifically, how I see the world--at least indirectly, but still . . .).
I've never forgotten a general social maxim from my dissipated youth:
Great minds discuss ideas.
Average minds discuss events.
Small minds discuss people.
This, like so many bits of Received Wisdom, is less an observation than an ideal . . . and one that seems more honor'd in the breach than th' observance, as Hamlet might say.
Here's the Business Part:
CAINE BLACK KNIFE is grinding its way through the editorial process, somewhere in Purgatory--erm, that is, in the literary void between Del Rey (which is the contractee for publication) and Ballantine, Bertlesmann AG's local corporate viceroy, which is currently the employer of Caine's editor. It appears to be tentatively slated for publication in mid-2008, roughly the same time-frame as LUKE SKYWALKER AND THE SHADOWS OF MINDOR. Which seems like a long time to wait, but, y'know, right now I'm just grateful it's coming out at all.
Also:
I've been corresponding once more with Dan Moran (Daniel Keys Moran, for those heretics among you who don't know him--you can buy his books on Amazon, and you should). He did me the favor of looking over CBK for me with a semi-critical eye. I say "semi-critical" because he's also a long-time Caine fan . . . in fact, he's married to Amy Stout (now Stout-Moran), who was the editor who bought HEROES DIE for Del Rey.
Anyway, here's the point: Just for fun, I thought I'd send him a copy of the late, lamented REAL FLASH GORDON. But when I opened the file, some of the formatting was corrupted, so I've been cleaning it up, and in the process discovering how much I really like my own writing. I always say I write the kind of books I like to read. Well, I'm telling the truth. Even my lightweight crap. Especially my lightweight crap. I guess because I was writing to exactly my own sense of humor, this book tickles the hell out of me.
I just wish I could find a concept for a book or two of my own that is as much flat-out fun as FLASH.
I must have been in a REALLY good mood while I was writing that.
That's all.
Friday, April 27
Sick. Sick sick and more sick.
Here's the point: too sick to do my own research. To any and all available netmonkeys who still bother to show up here:
Who's the guy who wrote that book about his interviews with Osama bin Laden? I seem to recall it's titled something like "Talking to Osama." Along those lines, anyway.
I heard him talking about the book on the radio (late last year, I suspect); the salient point o the book was that in it, bin Laden specifically states that al Qaeda's long-term goal was to draw the United States into a endless guerrilla war in Afghanistan, where the mujahedeen could whip up on our military and break us the way they broke the Soviets.
This is pertinent because Our Glorious Bush cleverly avoided this trap (well, almost), and then -- perhaps out of a sort of professional courtesy, one nutjob fanatic to another -- created an all-new, improved version of Afghanistan out of a previously stable state (this being Iraq). Where we promptly locked outselves into an endless guerrilla war that is breaking our military, and our republic's will to fight.
I bring this up because it suddenly occurred to me that the Bush Administration could actually be correct (gods forbid!) in one thing: that the war in Iraq actually HAS been the reason there have been no further attacks here in the continental US. They haven't attacked us because they don't need to -- we're already doing exactly what they WANT.
This would be the al Qaeda version of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Which means that if we do pull out, there really IS an increased chance of a new attack. It also means that as long as we stay in, we're automatically losing. No matter how many people we kill. Because keeping us in is exactly bin Laden's strategic objective. Which Bush is intent on doing, which (from my limited political perspective) sounds a hell of a lot like giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
Does anyone out there know the phrase "monkey trap"?
Well, we're the fucking monkey.
Here's the point: too sick to do my own research. To any and all available netmonkeys who still bother to show up here:
Who's the guy who wrote that book about his interviews with Osama bin Laden? I seem to recall it's titled something like "Talking to Osama." Along those lines, anyway.
I heard him talking about the book on the radio (late last year, I suspect); the salient point o the book was that in it, bin Laden specifically states that al Qaeda's long-term goal was to draw the United States into a endless guerrilla war in Afghanistan, where the mujahedeen could whip up on our military and break us the way they broke the Soviets.
This is pertinent because Our Glorious Bush cleverly avoided this trap (well, almost), and then -- perhaps out of a sort of professional courtesy, one nutjob fanatic to another -- created an all-new, improved version of Afghanistan out of a previously stable state (this being Iraq). Where we promptly locked outselves into an endless guerrilla war that is breaking our military, and our republic's will to fight.
I bring this up because it suddenly occurred to me that the Bush Administration could actually be correct (gods forbid!) in one thing: that the war in Iraq actually HAS been the reason there have been no further attacks here in the continental US. They haven't attacked us because they don't need to -- we're already doing exactly what they WANT.
This would be the al Qaeda version of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Which means that if we do pull out, there really IS an increased chance of a new attack. It also means that as long as we stay in, we're automatically losing. No matter how many people we kill. Because keeping us in is exactly bin Laden's strategic objective. Which Bush is intent on doing, which (from my limited political perspective) sounds a hell of a lot like giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
Does anyone out there know the phrase "monkey trap"?
Well, we're the fucking monkey.
Thursday, April 12
Kurt Vonnegut died last night.
God damn it.
Never met him. Never wrote to him. The year I was born, he was writing his fourth novel. When it was published the next year, it sold 500 copies. It was called CAT'S CRADLE.
I don't feel bad for him. I feel bad for me. I feel like I've lost family.
The last lines of "Requiem," the final poem of his last book:
When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
"It is done."
People did not like it here.
God damn it.
God damn it.
Never met him. Never wrote to him. The year I was born, he was writing his fourth novel. When it was published the next year, it sold 500 copies. It was called CAT'S CRADLE.
I don't feel bad for him. I feel bad for me. I feel like I've lost family.
The last lines of "Requiem," the final poem of his last book:
When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
"It is done."
People did not like it here.
God damn it.
Friday, March 2
Every Language Snob in the English-speaking world is now cordially invited to kiss my ass.
Remember all those stuck-up horsebutts who've told you, over the years, that there is no English rhyme for "orange"?
The next time some dumbass pulls that, look hiim straight in the eye and say --
"Door-hinge."
Then tell him you stole it from me.
And send me a dollar.
If they want to pretend it's actually pronounced "or-raynj," say:
"Short-range."
And send me a dollar.
And if they insist on pronouncing in the French mode -- "or-rahnj" -- say:
"Melange."
And tell them to shut the fuck up.
And, of course, send me a dollar.
Don't forget to inform them that every time THEY use this to embarrass some know-it-less-than-all, they have to send me a dollar, too. And so forth.
No rhyme for orange, my ginger-haired butthole.
Or whatever.
Remember all those stuck-up horsebutts who've told you, over the years, that there is no English rhyme for "orange"?
The next time some dumbass pulls that, look hiim straight in the eye and say --
"Door-hinge."
Then tell him you stole it from me.
And send me a dollar.
If they want to pretend it's actually pronounced "or-raynj," say:
"Short-range."
And send me a dollar.
And if they insist on pronouncing in the French mode -- "or-rahnj" -- say:
"Melange."
And tell them to shut the fuck up.
And, of course, send me a dollar.
Don't forget to inform them that every time THEY use this to embarrass some know-it-less-than-all, they have to send me a dollar, too. And so forth.
No rhyme for orange, my ginger-haired butthole.
Or whatever.
Back on moral clarity . . .
I just read over the final line of my previous post, and I was powerfully struck by the possibility that my insistence on nuance and uncertainty has a great deal to do with boredom.
It is an unavoidable fact that moral clarity in an unambiguous world just isn't very interesting. Or interesting at all.
Oy. Double oy.
As one of the villains in Crowley's MOONCHILD once memorably put it (with an exhausted sigh): "Consciousness is a burden . . ."
On the other hand, i just read an account of a testimonial lunch given in honor of the (now departed) Arthur Schlesinger Jr, the great historian. On that occasion, last December, Schlesinger remarked -- with his customary to-the-bone quotability -- "The future outwits all our certitudes."
Which I'm likely to insert under the title of the next Caine book.
I just read over the final line of my previous post, and I was powerfully struck by the possibility that my insistence on nuance and uncertainty has a great deal to do with boredom.
It is an unavoidable fact that moral clarity in an unambiguous world just isn't very interesting. Or interesting at all.
Oy. Double oy.
As one of the villains in Crowley's MOONCHILD once memorably put it (with an exhausted sigh): "Consciousness is a burden . . ."
On the other hand, i just read an account of a testimonial lunch given in honor of the (now departed) Arthur Schlesinger Jr, the great historian. On that occasion, last December, Schlesinger remarked -- with his customary to-the-bone quotability -- "The future outwits all our certitudes."
Which I'm likely to insert under the title of the next Caine book.
Sunday, February 25
Hey.
I'm still alive, but buried in work. And play. And generally happy about it, which is a switch.
Tip for the aspiring writer: write things that make your [gender-appropriate portions of anatomy] hard, and fuck the rest. Don't try to be like somebody else. Tell it your way, and be as honest as you can with exactly why it warms your shorts, both with yourself and in the tale itself.
Remember: not all honest writing is good, but all good writing is honest.
And post your own version of the Frameshift Oath somewhere you can see it, so you never forget.
[The Frameshift Oath, for those of you who don't hang at the forums I hang at, runs like this:
I Swear by the Power of All Dark Gods that I Will Write Every Fucking Word Balls-Out for Glory.]
Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor is my attempt to get the EU back to its pre-Zahn roots -- specifically, to evoke memories of my all-time favorite Star Wars books, Brian Daley's Han Solo novels. Sure, it'll be violent and somewhat broody and all (it's the Popeye Thing: I yam what I yam) but generally it's gonna be -- in the words of My Favorite Writer -- a pop-top can of 100% pure Grade-A whipass.
Sorry I never got back with the Siren Call of Moral Clarity thing . . . but I realized (though I do have things to say on this particular lust, as I suffer from it myself) that fundamentally, moral clarity bores the shit out of me.
I'm still alive, but buried in work. And play. And generally happy about it, which is a switch.
Tip for the aspiring writer: write things that make your [gender-appropriate portions of anatomy] hard, and fuck the rest. Don't try to be like somebody else. Tell it your way, and be as honest as you can with exactly why it warms your shorts, both with yourself and in the tale itself.
Remember: not all honest writing is good, but all good writing is honest.
And post your own version of the Frameshift Oath somewhere you can see it, so you never forget.
[The Frameshift Oath, for those of you who don't hang at the forums I hang at, runs like this:
I Swear by the Power of All Dark Gods that I Will Write Every Fucking Word Balls-Out for Glory.]
Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor is my attempt to get the EU back to its pre-Zahn roots -- specifically, to evoke memories of my all-time favorite Star Wars books, Brian Daley's Han Solo novels. Sure, it'll be violent and somewhat broody and all (it's the Popeye Thing: I yam what I yam) but generally it's gonna be -- in the words of My Favorite Writer -- a pop-top can of 100% pure Grade-A whipass.
Sorry I never got back with the Siren Call of Moral Clarity thing . . . but I realized (though I do have things to say on this particular lust, as I suffer from it myself) that fundamentally, moral clarity bores the shit out of me.
Wednesday, January 24
Hmm.
A deafening silence from the Moral Certainty tubthumpers. How about that?
Y'know, Nicholas Kristof of the NYTimes had a nicely turned phrase in his column comparing Bush to Ahab of MOBY-DICK fame:
"The siren call of moral clarity."
Which got me thinking about just exactly what seems to be so seductive about it, and what kind of people are so easily seduced that they will cheerfully ignore reality.
More on that later; I have to get to work.
As for the couple of folks who claim that firefighters, cops and soldiers risk their lives out of moral conviction, I say: Pshaw.
Love, compassion and courage are related only peripherally to moral conviction, clarity or certainty. I don't need moral certainty to dive into freezing water or dodge among speeding traffic to save an endangered child (or even some drunken asshole who staggered the wrong direction). Shit, I'd do the same for a dog or a cat. But not for a squirrel or a raccoon. Well, maybe a raccoon. Or a coyote. But not for squirrels, opossums, or deer.
That's not a moral distinction; it's just a matter of taste.
Hmp. On reflection: it srikes me that many of our Tubthumper Moral Clarity Elite are really only trying to elevate their tastes to the status of Laws of God. More on that later, too.
A deafening silence from the Moral Certainty tubthumpers. How about that?
Y'know, Nicholas Kristof of the NYTimes had a nicely turned phrase in his column comparing Bush to Ahab of MOBY-DICK fame:
"The siren call of moral clarity."
Which got me thinking about just exactly what seems to be so seductive about it, and what kind of people are so easily seduced that they will cheerfully ignore reality.
More on that later; I have to get to work.
As for the couple of folks who claim that firefighters, cops and soldiers risk their lives out of moral conviction, I say: Pshaw.
Love, compassion and courage are related only peripherally to moral conviction, clarity or certainty. I don't need moral certainty to dive into freezing water or dodge among speeding traffic to save an endangered child (or even some drunken asshole who staggered the wrong direction). Shit, I'd do the same for a dog or a cat. But not for a squirrel or a raccoon. Well, maybe a raccoon. Or a coyote. But not for squirrels, opossums, or deer.
That's not a moral distinction; it's just a matter of taste.
Hmp. On reflection: it srikes me that many of our Tubthumper Moral Clarity Elite are really only trying to elevate their tastes to the status of Laws of God. More on that later, too.
Saturday, January 20
Goldberg responds:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YWY1MzdjMDk3ZWVmNTg5NGYwYjQ0ZWViNGI0M2VlMDI=
A few quick points (well, okay, neither few nor quick -- but I hope you might find them worth reading nonetheless):
1.) Notice how his first, and only, idea is to attempt to denigrate and devalue me and my position without addressing any single argument. Without answering a single question, or even attempting to defend, say, his preposterous characterization of Socrates. ("I am the wisest of men, for I know that I know nothing.")
2.) I never accused him of believing, or even suggesting, that all moral certainty is always right; I accused him of shoddy scholarship in his examples, of using cheap straw men to pretend he's answering a real objection, and (by implication, anyway) of displaying, in a single column, nearly every negative intellectual characteristic of "moral certainty" short of advocating actual political oppression or violence.
3.) I do not feel threatened by any defense of moral certainty. I feel that our nation, and the world, is threatened by ignoramuses who act out of moral certainty. My objection to Mr. Goldberg's article was not that it was in defense of "moral certainty," though I find the whole concept intellectually bankrupt. My objection was to his misrepresentation of fact, and his substitution of slogan for argument, and his smears of anyone who might take issue with him (exactly, by the way, what he accuses his opponents of doing).
Breathtaking arrogance, indeed.
4.) The anonymous example of his "lot of email like this" is unfortunate, but hardly unexpected. My skill (or lack thereof) as a writer, which he takes care to insult, is actually irrelevant to any point in my original email. Nothing I said was predicated on my being anything other than the author of the Episode III novelization. My objections are based on the flaws in his positions, not on any presumed Authority as a Great Writer. Which flaws, I cannot resist pointing out once more, he apparently can't be troubled to explain away, or defend in any manner beyond a variation of the schoolyard classic: "Oh, what do you know anyway, you four-eyed dork?"
As for the opinion of the anonymous "fan," my vanity demands I point out that every major publication which reviewed my book disagrees with this anonymous person's assessment.
All is vanity, y'know. The Bible says so.
5.) If he (and his nameless supposed "email correspondent") knew half as much about my business as I know about theirs, they both would have realized that the scripts he has linked linked to his blog actually underwent considerable editing and redaction in the shooting process. Those may be shooting scripts; they are not transcripts of the actual film.
6.) As for the idea that I am misrepresenting what Obi-wan and Yoda trained Luke to do:
LUKE
There's still good in him.
BEN
I also thought he could be turned back to the
good side. It couldn't be done. He is more
machine now than man. Twisted and evil.
LUKE
I can't do it, Ben.
BEN
You cannot escape your destiny.
The anonymous fan may very well find some contorted way to pretend that Obi-Wan isn't telling Luke to kill him . . . but if that's the case, why would Obi-Wan not correct Luke's obvious misperception?
Especially, for example, a few lines later:
LUKE
I can't kill my own father.
BEN
Then the Emperor has already won. You were
our only hope.
I am forced to wonder if Mr. Goldberg presented his supposed point in an "anonymous email" because he knew the "point" is a conscious, fully intentional and malicious lie. This is, at the very least, another example of Mr. Goldberg refusing to do the most minimal homework to support any of his positions.
But then, he doesn't have to have a reason to hold a position, does he? Fact is irrelevant in the face of his "moral certainty."
7.) The contention that Mr. Lucas had been, even in the Original Trilogy, a staunch advocate of moral certainty can be disposed of with reference to that exact scene, viz.:
BEN
Luke, you're going to find that many of the
truths we cling to depend greatly on our own
point of view.
Now, I confess I can't actually remember if that line ever appeared in the film; however, it does indeed appear in the script to which Mr. Goldberg has posted a link. Which seems to reinforce my suspicion that Mr. Goldberg must be too intellectually lazy to spend five minutes on the Internet to make sure he has his facts straight. Or to discover if he has any facts at all.
8.) Please observe that I am devoting this post to answering his points, and highlighting the misrepresentation and general shoddiness of his "response." It's unfortunate that he has not seen fit to respond in a dignified fashion, but perhaps that was inevitable; when one can't attack the argument, all one has left is to attack the arguer.
9.) If my response to his response leaves anyone (including Mr. Goldberg) with an impression I am attacking him ad hominem, they are mistaken; any unflattering characterization of him in the post above is simply the result of reasoning from available evidence.
Moving on:
I would like to point out a couple of really offensive rhetorical tactics that cropped up in the comments section below that original post.
I'm not going to worry about the ones from people too gutless to sign them; I've deleted those posts already. However, there are others, which I am leaving above their byline, because I think they're indicative of the disease of "moral certainty."
"Ah, I think I begin to see. Another anti-Semite and seeing the name Goldberg set you aflame."
This is possibly the most insulting thing anyone has ever written about me on this blog (which is really saying something, as frequent readers will already know). If the author of this post as any evidence to support this incredibly stupid and inflammatory assertion, I invite him or her to post it. Otherwise, I invite him or her to apologize.
The poster goes on:
"I think you would prefer that Israel did nothing and allowed innocent civilians be killed because somehow in your twisted mind they deserve it.
You probably think the US deserved 9/11 don't you?"
Again: post evidence that supports this opinion, suspicion, or whatever you want to call it. Or apologize. Or future posts will be deleted without comment.
It's tempting to speculate why this poster uses a handle; I have noticed it's easier to be an asshole when you're pretending to be somebody else.
Me, I can be an asshole under my own name. Because I'm not a fucking coward.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YWY1MzdjMDk3ZWVmNTg5NGYwYjQ0ZWViNGI0M2VlMDI=
A few quick points (well, okay, neither few nor quick -- but I hope you might find them worth reading nonetheless):
1.) Notice how his first, and only, idea is to attempt to denigrate and devalue me and my position without addressing any single argument. Without answering a single question, or even attempting to defend, say, his preposterous characterization of Socrates. ("I am the wisest of men, for I know that I know nothing.")
2.) I never accused him of believing, or even suggesting, that all moral certainty is always right; I accused him of shoddy scholarship in his examples, of using cheap straw men to pretend he's answering a real objection, and (by implication, anyway) of displaying, in a single column, nearly every negative intellectual characteristic of "moral certainty" short of advocating actual political oppression or violence.
3.) I do not feel threatened by any defense of moral certainty. I feel that our nation, and the world, is threatened by ignoramuses who act out of moral certainty. My objection to Mr. Goldberg's article was not that it was in defense of "moral certainty," though I find the whole concept intellectually bankrupt. My objection was to his misrepresentation of fact, and his substitution of slogan for argument, and his smears of anyone who might take issue with him (exactly, by the way, what he accuses his opponents of doing).
Breathtaking arrogance, indeed.
4.) The anonymous example of his "lot of email like this" is unfortunate, but hardly unexpected. My skill (or lack thereof) as a writer, which he takes care to insult, is actually irrelevant to any point in my original email. Nothing I said was predicated on my being anything other than the author of the Episode III novelization. My objections are based on the flaws in his positions, not on any presumed Authority as a Great Writer. Which flaws, I cannot resist pointing out once more, he apparently can't be troubled to explain away, or defend in any manner beyond a variation of the schoolyard classic: "Oh, what do you know anyway, you four-eyed dork?"
As for the opinion of the anonymous "fan," my vanity demands I point out that every major publication which reviewed my book disagrees with this anonymous person's assessment.
All is vanity, y'know. The Bible says so.
5.) If he (and his nameless supposed "email correspondent") knew half as much about my business as I know about theirs, they both would have realized that the scripts he has linked linked to his blog actually underwent considerable editing and redaction in the shooting process. Those may be shooting scripts; they are not transcripts of the actual film.
6.) As for the idea that I am misrepresenting what Obi-wan and Yoda trained Luke to do:
LUKE
There's still good in him.
BEN
I also thought he could be turned back to the
good side. It couldn't be done. He is more
machine now than man. Twisted and evil.
LUKE
I can't do it, Ben.
BEN
You cannot escape your destiny.
The anonymous fan may very well find some contorted way to pretend that Obi-Wan isn't telling Luke to kill him . . . but if that's the case, why would Obi-Wan not correct Luke's obvious misperception?
Especially, for example, a few lines later:
LUKE
I can't kill my own father.
BEN
Then the Emperor has already won. You were
our only hope.
I am forced to wonder if Mr. Goldberg presented his supposed point in an "anonymous email" because he knew the "point" is a conscious, fully intentional and malicious lie. This is, at the very least, another example of Mr. Goldberg refusing to do the most minimal homework to support any of his positions.
But then, he doesn't have to have a reason to hold a position, does he? Fact is irrelevant in the face of his "moral certainty."
7.) The contention that Mr. Lucas had been, even in the Original Trilogy, a staunch advocate of moral certainty can be disposed of with reference to that exact scene, viz.:
BEN
Luke, you're going to find that many of the
truths we cling to depend greatly on our own
point of view.
Now, I confess I can't actually remember if that line ever appeared in the film; however, it does indeed appear in the script to which Mr. Goldberg has posted a link. Which seems to reinforce my suspicion that Mr. Goldberg must be too intellectually lazy to spend five minutes on the Internet to make sure he has his facts straight. Or to discover if he has any facts at all.
8.) Please observe that I am devoting this post to answering his points, and highlighting the misrepresentation and general shoddiness of his "response." It's unfortunate that he has not seen fit to respond in a dignified fashion, but perhaps that was inevitable; when one can't attack the argument, all one has left is to attack the arguer.
9.) If my response to his response leaves anyone (including Mr. Goldberg) with an impression I am attacking him ad hominem, they are mistaken; any unflattering characterization of him in the post above is simply the result of reasoning from available evidence.
Moving on:
I would like to point out a couple of really offensive rhetorical tactics that cropped up in the comments section below that original post.
I'm not going to worry about the ones from people too gutless to sign them; I've deleted those posts already. However, there are others, which I am leaving above their byline, because I think they're indicative of the disease of "moral certainty."
"Ah, I think I begin to see. Another anti-Semite and seeing the name Goldberg set you aflame."
This is possibly the most insulting thing anyone has ever written about me on this blog (which is really saying something, as frequent readers will already know). If the author of this post as any evidence to support this incredibly stupid and inflammatory assertion, I invite him or her to post it. Otherwise, I invite him or her to apologize.
The poster goes on:
"I think you would prefer that Israel did nothing and allowed innocent civilians be killed because somehow in your twisted mind they deserve it.
You probably think the US deserved 9/11 don't you?"
Again: post evidence that supports this opinion, suspicion, or whatever you want to call it. Or apologize. Or future posts will be deleted without comment.
It's tempting to speculate why this poster uses a handle; I have noticed it's easier to be an asshole when you're pretending to be somebody else.
Me, I can be an asshole under my own name. Because I'm not a fucking coward.
Hi, everybody.
Just so you can't say you heard it somewhere else first:
I delivered a draft of CAINE BLACK KNIFE the week before Christmas. I've been keeping a lid on it because I still haven't heard an official reaction from my editor.
But my agent liked it.
I'm not thrilled with this story, as it stands. The individual scenes are better, I think, than anything else I've done, and the structure is ambitious, to say the least . . . but the ambitious structure has necessitated some internal compromises that I'm unhappy about. Which I know means fuck all to any of you, but the point is that this particular delivery is not yet cause for celebration. Once my editor, the estimable Chris Schleup, has had a chance to help me whip it into shape, I'll be considerably more cheerful.
Meanwhile: [a subdued] woo-hoo . . .
Just so you can't say you heard it somewhere else first:
I delivered a draft of CAINE BLACK KNIFE the week before Christmas. I've been keeping a lid on it because I still haven't heard an official reaction from my editor.
But my agent liked it.
I'm not thrilled with this story, as it stands. The individual scenes are better, I think, than anything else I've done, and the structure is ambitious, to say the least . . . but the ambitious structure has necessitated some internal compromises that I'm unhappy about. Which I know means fuck all to any of you, but the point is that this particular delivery is not yet cause for celebration. Once my editor, the estimable Chris Schleup, has had a chance to help me whip it into shape, I'll be considerably more cheerful.
Meanwhile: [a subdued] woo-hoo . . .
Saturday, January 6
This is where I sprain my arm patting myself on the back . . .
From the comments a couple posts ago:
............................
Matt, I thought that these things might interest you:
My final project in English this semester is an essay centered around "Getting Away From it All." We could choose any novel we saw fit. I chose Blade of Tyshalle and developed the argument about how most of the novel is Caine's struggle to free himself from the limitations he had set for himself as Hari.
I earned an A. I might add it was the only A anyone received on the paper. And I feel quite confident in asserting that it was not my because of my writing that I got an A...it was the book. So I owe you some thanks.
Also, I have lent my copy of Heroes Die to 9 people, all of whom are promptly going out to buy Blade. Just thought you'd be interested to know that your fan-base is ever growing and that you've shaped and changed many people's lives.
Including mine.
-Ryan Anningson
# posted by r.e.anningson : 2:33 PM
.............................................
In the interests of full disclosure, I should point out that Ryan and I have corresponded a few times, and that I have always found him to be brilliant, scholarly, highly literate and in possession of impeccable taste.
But you knew that.
Here's the actual point: I really do try to change the world, one reader at a time. This is why, as the estimable Bob Urell trenchantly observed, my books don't hold your hand and drag you toward my point (or even my point of view); I really do try to just tell a story, and let each reader decide for himself (or herself -- Jenn, put down that knife!) what it means, or if it means anything at all. Because, try as I might to change the world, I can't control what it changes into, you follow? And trying to impose control on the world is the real path to the dark side.
Look at Darth Cheney, for example.
The coolest thing about my participation in STAR WARS ON TRIAL was that it gave me a chance to state baldly my fundamental beliefs about the nature of good storytelling (along with ruthlessly needling David Brin for a couple hundred pages).
Like here:
In all his talk of examining premises, and all the things that SF and fantasy and Literature in General Should Do For You, it seems to me that Opposing Counsel has been dragging around an unexamined premise of his own, a somewhat Puritan hand-me-down that needs to be dragged from the closet and shaken out in the sunlight every once in a while, because the mold that grows on it can choke art to death.
It's this notion that art has to be Good For You. That beauty is insufficient, and truth irrelevant, unless there's also some Crunchy Whole-Grain Goodness that's gonna Improve Your Psychic Bowel-Function along the way.
Opposing Counsel's view seems -- from my admittedly only semi-educated perspective -- to be a more limited case of this notion: that art should somehow serve as a comforting social glue. That it should shore up the values of our culture. Or -- as he likes to put it -- our civilization. That any work of art which does not do this -- which presents any other way of living one's life, or which might even, all gods forbid, actually criticize one or more of Our Mutual Sacred Values -- is . . . well, somehow wrong. Bad. Or, as the Soviets used to say, decadent.
Now, I'm not gonna claim he's wrong. There's an argument to be made there. I just think he oughta make it, instead of simply assuming everybody agrees with him.
Because I don't. And I'm pretty sure I'm not alone.
And here:
I avoid stating the "core lessons" of any work of art, for two reasons. The first is that I don't believe the function of art is to teach me a lesson; the second is that such pursuits always result in gross oversimplification. As I advise young writers (advice I once received from a writer older and far wiser than myself): "If you can state your theme in a sentence, don't write a story. Rent a billboard."
And, finally, here:
Now, I have to tell you something about what I mean by Truth, too. I'm not talking about engineer's truth, here: the kind of truth that is visible by microscope, measurable by laser balance, or quantifiable by any contortion of mathematics. That kind of truth is commonly referred to as fact, and as such has no need for the upper case T. There is another, dicier aspect of reality also commonly referred to as truth, and that is the kind that we turn to courts and juries to decide. These are truths that are still describable in plain language, but about which there may be legitimate disagreement, because they can't be reduced to straightforward observation, or measurement. Guilt or innocence, proportional blame -- these are what we call decidable questions. Ones that have more-or-less final answers. That's what we're pretending we're up to here. But we're just pretending.
Because that's still lower-case truth.
When you get to Truth, in the upper case, you face questions of meaning. Maybe I should say Meaning. Upper-Case Truth deals with Who We Are, and What It All Means.
That's when direct language begins to fail. Closing in on that kind of Truth, direct statement falters on asymptotic approach -- the closer you get, the less useful it becomes. You need imagery to even get into the atmosphere, and metaphor for landing gear.
Which brings us back to Star Wars.
Because upper-case Truth is the real subject of Star Wars. Not who we might be, or what might happen someday, or what ought to happen or what we should worry about happening in the future. Star Wars isn't about the future.
There's a reason why the whole Saga takes place "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away . . ."
It's not anchored in time or place. It's not about some other galaxy. It's not about the future, or about 1977, or 1980, or '83, 1999, 2002 or 2005. It's about wherever is here, and whenever is now.
. . .
Star Wars is about Big Questions.
That's why we bother.
This is why it's worth your time to bother, too:
Because when you get to Truth, you don't get (pacé Regis Philbin) any final answers. You can't measure it, and you can't trust a jury of your peers to decide the question.
Only you can decide what it means, because in the end, what it means . . . is what it means to you.
If you substitute the phrase "my books" for the phrase "Star Wars," you can get a pretty good idea what I'm after. Which brings me back around (the long way -- call it the scenic route) to Ryan's essay.
Because what he got from it isn't what I put into it. It's what HE put into it.
In my mind, I wasn't writing on that subject -- but I was lucky enough to spark his imagination, so that he was participating in the creation of meaning and interpretation. So I get credit for his brains. See?
That means I win.
From the comments a couple posts ago:
............................
Matt, I thought that these things might interest you:
My final project in English this semester is an essay centered around "Getting Away From it All." We could choose any novel we saw fit. I chose Blade of Tyshalle and developed the argument about how most of the novel is Caine's struggle to free himself from the limitations he had set for himself as Hari.
I earned an A. I might add it was the only A anyone received on the paper. And I feel quite confident in asserting that it was not my because of my writing that I got an A...it was the book. So I owe you some thanks.
Also, I have lent my copy of Heroes Die to 9 people, all of whom are promptly going out to buy Blade. Just thought you'd be interested to know that your fan-base is ever growing and that you've shaped and changed many people's lives.
Including mine.
-Ryan Anningson
# posted by r.e.anningson : 2:33 PM
.............................................
In the interests of full disclosure, I should point out that Ryan and I have corresponded a few times, and that I have always found him to be brilliant, scholarly, highly literate and in possession of impeccable taste.
But you knew that.
Here's the actual point: I really do try to change the world, one reader at a time. This is why, as the estimable Bob Urell trenchantly observed, my books don't hold your hand and drag you toward my point (or even my point of view); I really do try to just tell a story, and let each reader decide for himself (or herself -- Jenn, put down that knife!) what it means, or if it means anything at all. Because, try as I might to change the world, I can't control what it changes into, you follow? And trying to impose control on the world is the real path to the dark side.
Look at Darth Cheney, for example.
The coolest thing about my participation in STAR WARS ON TRIAL was that it gave me a chance to state baldly my fundamental beliefs about the nature of good storytelling (along with ruthlessly needling David Brin for a couple hundred pages).
Like here:
In all his talk of examining premises, and all the things that SF and fantasy and Literature in General Should Do For You, it seems to me that Opposing Counsel has been dragging around an unexamined premise of his own, a somewhat Puritan hand-me-down that needs to be dragged from the closet and shaken out in the sunlight every once in a while, because the mold that grows on it can choke art to death.
It's this notion that art has to be Good For You. That beauty is insufficient, and truth irrelevant, unless there's also some Crunchy Whole-Grain Goodness that's gonna Improve Your Psychic Bowel-Function along the way.
Opposing Counsel's view seems -- from my admittedly only semi-educated perspective -- to be a more limited case of this notion: that art should somehow serve as a comforting social glue. That it should shore up the values of our culture. Or -- as he likes to put it -- our civilization. That any work of art which does not do this -- which presents any other way of living one's life, or which might even, all gods forbid, actually criticize one or more of Our Mutual Sacred Values -- is . . . well, somehow wrong. Bad. Or, as the Soviets used to say, decadent.
Now, I'm not gonna claim he's wrong. There's an argument to be made there. I just think he oughta make it, instead of simply assuming everybody agrees with him.
Because I don't. And I'm pretty sure I'm not alone.
And here:
I avoid stating the "core lessons" of any work of art, for two reasons. The first is that I don't believe the function of art is to teach me a lesson; the second is that such pursuits always result in gross oversimplification. As I advise young writers (advice I once received from a writer older and far wiser than myself): "If you can state your theme in a sentence, don't write a story. Rent a billboard."
And, finally, here:
Now, I have to tell you something about what I mean by Truth, too. I'm not talking about engineer's truth, here: the kind of truth that is visible by microscope, measurable by laser balance, or quantifiable by any contortion of mathematics. That kind of truth is commonly referred to as fact, and as such has no need for the upper case T. There is another, dicier aspect of reality also commonly referred to as truth, and that is the kind that we turn to courts and juries to decide. These are truths that are still describable in plain language, but about which there may be legitimate disagreement, because they can't be reduced to straightforward observation, or measurement. Guilt or innocence, proportional blame -- these are what we call decidable questions. Ones that have more-or-less final answers. That's what we're pretending we're up to here. But we're just pretending.
Because that's still lower-case truth.
When you get to Truth, in the upper case, you face questions of meaning. Maybe I should say Meaning. Upper-Case Truth deals with Who We Are, and What It All Means.
That's when direct language begins to fail. Closing in on that kind of Truth, direct statement falters on asymptotic approach -- the closer you get, the less useful it becomes. You need imagery to even get into the atmosphere, and metaphor for landing gear.
Which brings us back to Star Wars.
Because upper-case Truth is the real subject of Star Wars. Not who we might be, or what might happen someday, or what ought to happen or what we should worry about happening in the future. Star Wars isn't about the future.
There's a reason why the whole Saga takes place "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away . . ."
It's not anchored in time or place. It's not about some other galaxy. It's not about the future, or about 1977, or 1980, or '83, 1999, 2002 or 2005. It's about wherever is here, and whenever is now.
. . .
Star Wars is about Big Questions.
That's why we bother.
This is why it's worth your time to bother, too:
Because when you get to Truth, you don't get (pacé Regis Philbin) any final answers. You can't measure it, and you can't trust a jury of your peers to decide the question.
Only you can decide what it means, because in the end, what it means . . . is what it means to you.
If you substitute the phrase "my books" for the phrase "Star Wars," you can get a pretty good idea what I'm after. Which brings me back around (the long way -- call it the scenic route) to Ryan's essay.
Because what he got from it isn't what I put into it. It's what HE put into it.
In my mind, I wasn't writing on that subject -- but I was lucky enough to spark his imagination, so that he was participating in the creation of meaning and interpretation. So I get credit for his brains. See?
That means I win.
Thursday, January 4
On learning that Keith Ellison, D-Minn, the United States' first Muslim Congressman, will take his oath of office on a Koran once owned by Thomas Jefferson, I am put in mind of one of the inscriptions within the rotunda of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington D.C.:
Taken from a letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, September 23, 1800 --
Almighty God hath created the mind free . . . All attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens . . . are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion . . . No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship or ministry or shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion. I know but one code of morality for men whether acting singly or collectively.
I believe that pretty well sums it up.
Taken from a letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, September 23, 1800 --
Almighty God hath created the mind free . . . All attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens . . . are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion . . . No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship or ministry or shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion. I know but one code of morality for men whether acting singly or collectively.
I believe that pretty well sums it up.
Wednesday, January 3
I guess I'm feeling better.
Dear Mr. Goldberg:
Please excuse the late arrival of this email in response to your column on "Certainty" that apparently appeared in the Chicago Tribune on Dec. 28th of last year. I don't read the Tribune (and I'd be unlikely to read your column if I did), but my mother sent me your column as a clipping, since you bring up STAR WARS EPISODE III: REVENGE OF THE SITH. My own connection to that project is well-known, by those with any knowledge of the subject whatsoever; since you are apparently not one of these, it may profit you to Google my name.
I say you are apparently not one of these, because if you were you would know that neither Mr. Lucas, nor any of the films did, in fact, maintain "that the entire Universe is divided into light and dark sides." A somewhat more sophisticated commentator might remember that no one in the films speak of any such thing as "a light side," and that the dual-valued moral certainty whose loss you bemoan was never in fact present at all; this moral conviction was exclusively the province of the Jedi, who, even in the original trilogy, are portrayed as being consistently wrong. A simple example (among many possible such) is that the young hero's mentors both insist his sole purpose in life is to slay his father; but (as all Star Wars fans and most everyone else who was alive in a Western nation during the 80s can tell you) it was Luke Skywalker's rejection of Obi-Wan and Yoda's flawed moral certainty that saves the day. Instead of killing his father, he forgives him -- he offers human understanding and love to the icon of Evil -- and thus triumphs. Insidious moral relativism, no doubt, but the only hackery on display here is that of a columnist too lazy to do his homework.
However, though it was Star Wars that brought your column to my attention, your offhand misrepresentation of Mr. Lucas's work is not my main objection to your column. It is the succession of mistakes, misstatements and what seem to be outright lies. Your assertion of intellectual dishonesty in the critics of absolutism is an insult to whatever intelligence might remain in regular readers of your column; did you actually ask Anthony Lewis that question, and get that response? Have you asked Andrew Sullivan? Barack Obama? Me? (Well, okay, I'll let you slide on that last one.)
Before bringing Socrates into a discussion, for example, you might consider actually reading Plato (or at least Wikipedia); your characterization of Socrates as a man of absolute moral conviction is, quite frankly, entirely false. Thomas More is only a hero to some; to others, he's a dangerous anti-Protestant polemicist and an advocate of Papal control over affairs of sovereign nations. Your speculation as to FDR's motivations is similarly ill-informed. Men of great conviction tend to be more monster than hero, beginning with Joshua ben Nun and running by way of Pericles up to John Brown, Kaiser Wilhem, Rasputin, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao tse Tung . . . You can count heroes of conviction on one hand. Monsters of conviction you couldn't count using all the hairs on your head. I strongly advise you to read more and write less -- unless you are wholly incapable of shame.
"The fact is that unless you know where you stand, it's unlikely you'll have the courage to understand where someone else is coming from."
Leaving aside your misuse of the word "fact" (something else you might try looking up), is there any conceivable support for this preposterous assertion? Did you even read this inanity before allowing it to slip into print under your byline?
As to our supposed certainty that murder is wrong, does that certainty extend to, say, Osama bin Laden? Would you fight to save his life against US Special Forces bent on finding and killing him? How about Saddam Hussein? (And don't try to pretend Hussein wasn't murder; there was nothing lawful about either his trial or his execution.) Have you written a number of columns blasting Israel's use of targeted assinations? If racism is always bad, then why aren't you writing column after column insisting that Israel return all the land stolen from the Palestinians? Is it your position that all Palestinians should be made full citizens of Israel? If you don't advocate these things, how is that not racist? Should Ted Kaczynski's parents have loved him unconditionally (in fact, I believe they did, which is a strong argument against the absolute moral value of unconditional parental love)? If, say, Osama bin Laden's father was shielding and supporting his son out of unconditional love, would you applaud his moral uprightness?
Bear in mind that I am not "dismissing your ideas out of hand." I'm simply trying to elucidate a few of your false assertions, to illuminate your army of straw men, and to castigate the intellectual bankruptcy of your "arguments."
"Close-minded" does not, and has never, meant "people who disagree with me." "Close-minded" refers to people who are so smug in their self-righteous ignorance that they simply can't be bothered about facts.
Does that sound like anyone you know personally?
Best,
Matthew Woodring Stover
numquam desisto
Dear Mr. Goldberg:
Please excuse the late arrival of this email in response to your column on "Certainty" that apparently appeared in the Chicago Tribune on Dec. 28th of last year. I don't read the Tribune (and I'd be unlikely to read your column if I did), but my mother sent me your column as a clipping, since you bring up STAR WARS EPISODE III: REVENGE OF THE SITH. My own connection to that project is well-known, by those with any knowledge of the subject whatsoever; since you are apparently not one of these, it may profit you to Google my name.
I say you are apparently not one of these, because if you were you would know that neither Mr. Lucas, nor any of the films did, in fact, maintain "that the entire Universe is divided into light and dark sides." A somewhat more sophisticated commentator might remember that no one in the films speak of any such thing as "a light side," and that the dual-valued moral certainty whose loss you bemoan was never in fact present at all; this moral conviction was exclusively the province of the Jedi, who, even in the original trilogy, are portrayed as being consistently wrong. A simple example (among many possible such) is that the young hero's mentors both insist his sole purpose in life is to slay his father; but (as all Star Wars fans and most everyone else who was alive in a Western nation during the 80s can tell you) it was Luke Skywalker's rejection of Obi-Wan and Yoda's flawed moral certainty that saves the day. Instead of killing his father, he forgives him -- he offers human understanding and love to the icon of Evil -- and thus triumphs. Insidious moral relativism, no doubt, but the only hackery on display here is that of a columnist too lazy to do his homework.
However, though it was Star Wars that brought your column to my attention, your offhand misrepresentation of Mr. Lucas's work is not my main objection to your column. It is the succession of mistakes, misstatements and what seem to be outright lies. Your assertion of intellectual dishonesty in the critics of absolutism is an insult to whatever intelligence might remain in regular readers of your column; did you actually ask Anthony Lewis that question, and get that response? Have you asked Andrew Sullivan? Barack Obama? Me? (Well, okay, I'll let you slide on that last one.)
Before bringing Socrates into a discussion, for example, you might consider actually reading Plato (or at least Wikipedia); your characterization of Socrates as a man of absolute moral conviction is, quite frankly, entirely false. Thomas More is only a hero to some; to others, he's a dangerous anti-Protestant polemicist and an advocate of Papal control over affairs of sovereign nations. Your speculation as to FDR's motivations is similarly ill-informed. Men of great conviction tend to be more monster than hero, beginning with Joshua ben Nun and running by way of Pericles up to John Brown, Kaiser Wilhem, Rasputin, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao tse Tung . . . You can count heroes of conviction on one hand. Monsters of conviction you couldn't count using all the hairs on your head. I strongly advise you to read more and write less -- unless you are wholly incapable of shame.
"The fact is that unless you know where you stand, it's unlikely you'll have the courage to understand where someone else is coming from."
Leaving aside your misuse of the word "fact" (something else you might try looking up), is there any conceivable support for this preposterous assertion? Did you even read this inanity before allowing it to slip into print under your byline?
As to our supposed certainty that murder is wrong, does that certainty extend to, say, Osama bin Laden? Would you fight to save his life against US Special Forces bent on finding and killing him? How about Saddam Hussein? (And don't try to pretend Hussein wasn't murder; there was nothing lawful about either his trial or his execution.) Have you written a number of columns blasting Israel's use of targeted assinations? If racism is always bad, then why aren't you writing column after column insisting that Israel return all the land stolen from the Palestinians? Is it your position that all Palestinians should be made full citizens of Israel? If you don't advocate these things, how is that not racist? Should Ted Kaczynski's parents have loved him unconditionally (in fact, I believe they did, which is a strong argument against the absolute moral value of unconditional parental love)? If, say, Osama bin Laden's father was shielding and supporting his son out of unconditional love, would you applaud his moral uprightness?
Bear in mind that I am not "dismissing your ideas out of hand." I'm simply trying to elucidate a few of your false assertions, to illuminate your army of straw men, and to castigate the intellectual bankruptcy of your "arguments."
"Close-minded" does not, and has never, meant "people who disagree with me." "Close-minded" refers to people who are so smug in their self-righteous ignorance that they simply can't be bothered about facts.
Does that sound like anyone you know personally?
Best,
Matthew Woodring Stover
numquam desisto
Monday, August 14
Ladies and Gentlemen, and fans of mine (who very likely do not fall into either of the first categories), I present to you
Paul Stevenson, of Danville, Illinois, one of approximately three people (other than my older brothers) who can truthfully say he kicked my ass.
Would have been about third grade, I guess. Maybe fourth. It's important to note, here, that I was the biggest kid in my class. Strongest too, at the time. And Paul was just about the smallest. Though he was quick as a snake, which is also significant to the following story.
So we're in the door line at Roselawn Elementary (the doorline is where the neighborhood kids lined up to wait for the bell to ring and the front doors to open, and I notice Paul's lips are bright red. Now, I knew very well what was up: this was the result of a plaque-dye passed out at school the day before. It stains dental plaque red so you can judge how well you're brushing your teeth. Most of us -- myself included -- used them at night, and were able to scrub off the residue by the next morning.
Paul, apparently, used his in the morning. In my usual charming manner, I asked him if his mother had tried a dress on him while she was helping him with his lipstick.
Instead of taking a shot back -- which was what I'd been expecting -- he blitzed me.
Now, in those days I was also the fastest runner in the class (usually -- sometimes a kid named Chris Nelson could beat me, and sometimes a girl named Rhonda Drews. But I could also beat them.) so I scampered away, laughing, fully secure in the knowledge that there was no way Paul could catch me.
As has occasionally happened in my life, I overestimated my ability.
Before I entirely understood what was happening, he had tackled me and was proceeding to belabor me about the head and shoulders. He didn't actually hurt me -- don't think he was actually trying to; he was merely providing a public demonstration of the simple fact that I could easily get stomped by a guy wearing lipstick. More or less.
Which lesson I have never, by the way, forgotten.
Thanks for dropping by, Paul. I'll be in touch.
Paul Stevenson, of Danville, Illinois, one of approximately three people (other than my older brothers) who can truthfully say he kicked my ass.
Would have been about third grade, I guess. Maybe fourth. It's important to note, here, that I was the biggest kid in my class. Strongest too, at the time. And Paul was just about the smallest. Though he was quick as a snake, which is also significant to the following story.
So we're in the door line at Roselawn Elementary (the doorline is where the neighborhood kids lined up to wait for the bell to ring and the front doors to open, and I notice Paul's lips are bright red. Now, I knew very well what was up: this was the result of a plaque-dye passed out at school the day before. It stains dental plaque red so you can judge how well you're brushing your teeth. Most of us -- myself included -- used them at night, and were able to scrub off the residue by the next morning.
Paul, apparently, used his in the morning. In my usual charming manner, I asked him if his mother had tried a dress on him while she was helping him with his lipstick.
Instead of taking a shot back -- which was what I'd been expecting -- he blitzed me.
Now, in those days I was also the fastest runner in the class (usually -- sometimes a kid named Chris Nelson could beat me, and sometimes a girl named Rhonda Drews. But I could also beat them.) so I scampered away, laughing, fully secure in the knowledge that there was no way Paul could catch me.
As has occasionally happened in my life, I overestimated my ability.
Before I entirely understood what was happening, he had tackled me and was proceeding to belabor me about the head and shoulders. He didn't actually hurt me -- don't think he was actually trying to; he was merely providing a public demonstration of the simple fact that I could easily get stomped by a guy wearing lipstick. More or less.
Which lesson I have never, by the way, forgotten.
Thanks for dropping by, Paul. I'll be in touch.
Saturday, August 12
On the9/11 conspiracy thing --
Check out www.911myths.com.
They seem to have the healthiest attitude, to wit:
"This is what we found. Don't take our word for it. Check for yourself. Here are our sources."
On other fronts:
The surgery went fine, and according to my orthopedic surgeon, it was entirely successful. In fact, my rehab may be shorter than he originally predicted. Though I am currently in considerable discomfort, it's actually less painful than it was before the surgery.
Also, we closed on the house on Thursday. I am now an official grown-up.
Finally, I need to quit screwing with conspiracy shit and get back to work on CBK.
Check out www.911myths.com.
They seem to have the healthiest attitude, to wit:
"This is what we found. Don't take our word for it. Check for yourself. Here are our sources."
On other fronts:
The surgery went fine, and according to my orthopedic surgeon, it was entirely successful. In fact, my rehab may be shorter than he originally predicted. Though I am currently in considerable discomfort, it's actually less painful than it was before the surgery.
Also, we closed on the house on Thursday. I am now an official grown-up.
Finally, I need to quit screwing with conspiracy shit and get back to work on CBK.
Monday, August 7
The garage sale went well. The surgery comes up next week, and has been described as routine, though I have to take it under a general, which I hate . . . The Celebrex ain't workin' so much. There may be narcotics in my short-term future after all.
And in response to AzrofD, regarding TRAITOR and my style:
I don't think of myself as even HAVING a style.
I take every story as its own thing, and throw as much of my poor battered brain at each particular wall as I can make stick. In other words, I write balls-out for glory, and never think about whether something I'm putting down is "my style." I think about whether what I'm putting down is the STORY's style: if it suits the feel I'm trying to create.
This, I should add (to paraphrase Steve Stone) for all you Young Writers out there, is roughly how the great EB White recommended all writers should go about "their style." In his seminal book on elegant writing (which he co-authored with the legendary William Strunk), THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE, White recommended that a writer should aim for clarity above all else, and should never even THINK about His or Her Own Style, as your true style is an expression of your true self: it arises with no conscious thought on your part, because it is what you are.
Everything else is affectation.
" . . . brevity is the soul of wit, and tediousness its limbs and outward flourishes . . ."
Oh, and Jenn?
You're wrong. You don't want to seee her angry. At anyone.
Trust me on this.
And kiss the boyo for the LOCKE LAMORA aut'd edition, in case I can't deliver said kiss myself. I'm still hoping -- given good progress with the knee and moving into the new house -- that I and the Fabulous Robyn might be able to make it to the wedding . . .
And in response to AzrofD, regarding TRAITOR and my style:
I don't think of myself as even HAVING a style.
I take every story as its own thing, and throw as much of my poor battered brain at each particular wall as I can make stick. In other words, I write balls-out for glory, and never think about whether something I'm putting down is "my style." I think about whether what I'm putting down is the STORY's style: if it suits the feel I'm trying to create.
This, I should add (to paraphrase Steve Stone) for all you Young Writers out there, is roughly how the great EB White recommended all writers should go about "their style." In his seminal book on elegant writing (which he co-authored with the legendary William Strunk), THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE, White recommended that a writer should aim for clarity above all else, and should never even THINK about His or Her Own Style, as your true style is an expression of your true self: it arises with no conscious thought on your part, because it is what you are.
Everything else is affectation.
" . . . brevity is the soul of wit, and tediousness its limbs and outward flourishes . . ."
Oh, and Jenn?
You're wrong. You don't want to seee her angry. At anyone.
Trust me on this.
And kiss the boyo for the LOCKE LAMORA aut'd edition, in case I can't deliver said kiss myself. I'm still hoping -- given good progress with the knee and moving into the new house -- that I and the Fabulous Robyn might be able to make it to the wedding . . .
Saturday, August 5
Your sympathies are appreciated.
Good news on the narcotics front: turns out I can take Celebrex, one of the advanced Cox-2 inhibitors, and it works pretty well. And as Justin suggested below: it's a routine surgery these days, and I'm expected to recover fully.
Now I'm off to help with our garage sale today, before the Fabulous Robyn turns into her evil twin, the Velocirobyn.
You wouldn't liker her when she's angry . . .
Good news on the narcotics front: turns out I can take Celebrex, one of the advanced Cox-2 inhibitors, and it works pretty well. And as Justin suggested below: it's a routine surgery these days, and I'm expected to recover fully.
Now I'm off to help with our garage sale today, before the Fabulous Robyn turns into her evil twin, the Velocirobyn.
You wouldn't liker her when she's angry . . .
Thursday, August 3
Hey, kids.
Thanks to all who still stop by here once in a while, despite my absence for four and a half months.
Mostly working very hard. And struggling with my health. In these days of powerful psychoactive drugs that you have to gradually titrate, changing meds is a a lot like being boned up the ass with a razor-wire dildo.
CAINE BLACK KNIFE proceeds apace. It's gotten a little weird, but I, personally, think it'll -- eventually -- be really good.
The fact that I think so (today) means that this is a good day.
Other Stover news: I managed to destroy my right knee while at my night job about two-and-change weeks ago, and I'm still waiting for workman's comp to authorize the surgery that everyone knows I need. Since it's a day-to-day thing, I can't even take aspirin or ibuprofen (or any NSAID), so I'm popping Tylenol 3, a mild codeine-containing narcotic that works pretty damn well. The problem is that if W/C doesn't get off their collective butt, I'm going to end up with an opiate addiction.
Wee-HEE!
Also: the Fabulous Robyn and I are about to close on a house of our own -- next Monday, give or take. A four-bedroom Deco all-brick from 1930, with leaded glass windows, oak and maple woodwork and floors throughout, original cut-glass chandeliers and (I swear to all gods) an honest-to-shit front door of iron-bound oak.
God bless George Bush for fucking up the economy -- last year, we couldn't have TOUCHED this house . . . Hell, we still couldn't affordf it without the heroic effforts of Joshua Taylor at Charter Funding -- who is himself a character worthy of a full-length novel . . .
Another also: I'm gonna be a Guest of Honor at I-Con, which is a gaming convention in Springfield IL, from September 7-10. So anybody in the central Illinois area is welcome to drop by. Mostly I'll just be hanging out and being my genial (*hack-aff*) self.
And finally: though most of the people who ever read this blog already know, Scott Lynch's brilliant debut novel, THE LIES OF LOCKE LAMORA was released in the US just over a month ago. All you folks who are tired of waiting for a new book from me should go pick this up. He writes like I do, only better. This is a terrific novel, and there will be plenty more to come.
And that's the news. I'm outta here.
Thanks to all who still stop by here once in a while, despite my absence for four and a half months.
Mostly working very hard. And struggling with my health. In these days of powerful psychoactive drugs that you have to gradually titrate, changing meds is a a lot like being boned up the ass with a razor-wire dildo.
CAINE BLACK KNIFE proceeds apace. It's gotten a little weird, but I, personally, think it'll -- eventually -- be really good.
The fact that I think so (today) means that this is a good day.
Other Stover news: I managed to destroy my right knee while at my night job about two-and-change weeks ago, and I'm still waiting for workman's comp to authorize the surgery that everyone knows I need. Since it's a day-to-day thing, I can't even take aspirin or ibuprofen (or any NSAID), so I'm popping Tylenol 3, a mild codeine-containing narcotic that works pretty damn well. The problem is that if W/C doesn't get off their collective butt, I'm going to end up with an opiate addiction.
Wee-HEE!
Also: the Fabulous Robyn and I are about to close on a house of our own -- next Monday, give or take. A four-bedroom Deco all-brick from 1930, with leaded glass windows, oak and maple woodwork and floors throughout, original cut-glass chandeliers and (I swear to all gods) an honest-to-shit front door of iron-bound oak.
God bless George Bush for fucking up the economy -- last year, we couldn't have TOUCHED this house . . . Hell, we still couldn't affordf it without the heroic effforts of Joshua Taylor at Charter Funding -- who is himself a character worthy of a full-length novel . . .
Another also: I'm gonna be a Guest of Honor at I-Con, which is a gaming convention in Springfield IL, from September 7-10. So anybody in the central Illinois area is welcome to drop by. Mostly I'll just be hanging out and being my genial (*hack-aff*) self.
And finally: though most of the people who ever read this blog already know, Scott Lynch's brilliant debut novel, THE LIES OF LOCKE LAMORA was released in the US just over a month ago. All you folks who are tired of waiting for a new book from me should go pick this up. He writes like I do, only better. This is a terrific novel, and there will be plenty more to come.
And that's the news. I'm outta here.
Tuesday, March 14
So . . .
Yesterday, Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI) introduced a Motion of Censure on the floor of the US Senate, to formally take Our Commander in Cheat to task for violating the Constitution and the law in his illegal domestic wiretapping program. Astonishingly enough, the main response from the Republican leadership (specifically, Dr. Bill "I've seen the videotape and in my medical opinion she's conscious" Frist) was they they couldn't support the motion on the grounds that -- and this is a direct quote -- "it would send the wrong signal around the world."
This is the man, by the way, who wants to be the next Republican President of the United States.
None of these idiots seems to comprehend that invading a nation which has not attacked us, killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians (the current best estimate, which our Pentagon continues to suppress, is 25-30,000 Iraqi civilians died in the actual fighting, and the bump in overall death rate from all factors, comparing pre- and post-invasion, suggests that the invasion of Iraq was responsible, by the end of 2004, for 130,000 Iraqi civilian deaths. And we wonder why they hate us . . .), kidnapping innocent citizens of friendly nations and shipping them off without trial or even the faintest shred of evidentiary review to be tortured -- not to mention maintaining our own officially-sanctioned torture chambers in Cuba, Iraq and Afghanistan, and having an executive banch of government (Constitutionally charged with enforcing the our nation's laws) openly declaring that our nation's law does not apply to them . . .
I mean, how much more wrong can our fucking signals get?
Ahhh, anyway.
Anyone still wondering about the actual legality of the domestic wiretap program might want to check out the details here:
www.nybooks.com/articles/18650
All this goes toward a problem I've been facing with my work lately (in addition to the recent space-monkey attack). All of you who've stuck with me this long know that I'm not interested in merely producing entertainment. Not that I frown upon "mere entertainment" -- in fact, I admire it, and enjoy it immensely when it's produced by others. I just don't do it myself. Because, I guess, I have adult ADD, and I just can't keep myself interested in something unless I'm grinding away at something resembling truth.
The problem I had during this last attack was that the space-monkeys kept whispering in my ears "Look! Look at the world around you! Look at the country you live in! Don't you get it? Truth is irrelevant . . ."
Nietzsche wrote, in one of the early passages of BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL, that a philosopher makes a leap of faith as profound as any priest's, when he decides to believe that truth is worth more than a useful lie.
There is no evidence for the intrinsic value of truth.
In fact, as Mr Bush & Co. have shown, the opposite has become the case.
This makes it very hard to believe in what I do. However, having escaped the space-monkeys for the nonce, I do have at least the answer sergeants have been giving to uncomfortable questions since before there were sergeants.
"Soldier, shut up and soldier!"
I am not, never have been and never will be a soldier. But I know how to shut up and soldier nonetheless.
Yesterday, Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI) introduced a Motion of Censure on the floor of the US Senate, to formally take Our Commander in Cheat to task for violating the Constitution and the law in his illegal domestic wiretapping program. Astonishingly enough, the main response from the Republican leadership (specifically, Dr. Bill "I've seen the videotape and in my medical opinion she's conscious" Frist) was they they couldn't support the motion on the grounds that -- and this is a direct quote -- "it would send the wrong signal around the world."
This is the man, by the way, who wants to be the next Republican President of the United States.
None of these idiots seems to comprehend that invading a nation which has not attacked us, killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians (the current best estimate, which our Pentagon continues to suppress, is 25-30,000 Iraqi civilians died in the actual fighting, and the bump in overall death rate from all factors, comparing pre- and post-invasion, suggests that the invasion of Iraq was responsible, by the end of 2004, for 130,000 Iraqi civilian deaths. And we wonder why they hate us . . .), kidnapping innocent citizens of friendly nations and shipping them off without trial or even the faintest shred of evidentiary review to be tortured -- not to mention maintaining our own officially-sanctioned torture chambers in Cuba, Iraq and Afghanistan, and having an executive banch of government (Constitutionally charged with enforcing the our nation's laws) openly declaring that our nation's law does not apply to them . . .
I mean, how much more wrong can our fucking signals get?
Ahhh, anyway.
Anyone still wondering about the actual legality of the domestic wiretap program might want to check out the details here:
www.nybooks.com/articles/18650
All this goes toward a problem I've been facing with my work lately (in addition to the recent space-monkey attack). All of you who've stuck with me this long know that I'm not interested in merely producing entertainment. Not that I frown upon "mere entertainment" -- in fact, I admire it, and enjoy it immensely when it's produced by others. I just don't do it myself. Because, I guess, I have adult ADD, and I just can't keep myself interested in something unless I'm grinding away at something resembling truth.
The problem I had during this last attack was that the space-monkeys kept whispering in my ears "Look! Look at the world around you! Look at the country you live in! Don't you get it? Truth is irrelevant . . ."
Nietzsche wrote, in one of the early passages of BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL, that a philosopher makes a leap of faith as profound as any priest's, when he decides to believe that truth is worth more than a useful lie.
There is no evidence for the intrinsic value of truth.
In fact, as Mr Bush & Co. have shown, the opposite has become the case.
This makes it very hard to believe in what I do. However, having escaped the space-monkeys for the nonce, I do have at least the answer sergeants have been giving to uncomfortable questions since before there were sergeants.
"Soldier, shut up and soldier!"
I am not, never have been and never will be a soldier. But I know how to shut up and soldier nonetheless.
Monday, February 20
I have hit my fucking limit.
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/02/20/opinion/20herbert.html
For this of you not subscribed to the TimeSelect service (the New York Times subscription upgrade) what Bob Herbert's writing about is the Maher Arar case -- the Syrian-born Canadian software engineer who was kidnapped at Kennedy Airport by the US government and flown to Syria, where he was held (and tortured) for 10 months in a rat-infested underground cell the size of a grave.
At which point he was released, because (even under torture) nobody could find any evidence he had any link to terrorists.
So Arar, as the resident of a Western democracy and a believer in due process, sought the kind of legal remedy a law-abiding citizen should: he went to court, seeking redress for the illegal and unconstitutional abuse of his person.
His lawsuit was dismissed yesterday.
Not because it was without merit. That's the thing. Exactly the opposite.
The judge who dismissed it threw the case out because discovery might have, for example, uncovered the Canadian Goverment's complicity in this illegal action, and thus precipitated an international incident . . .
Basically, the judge admits the US Government acted illegally. And that there's nothing the judicial branch can do about it, because revealing the details of this illegal activity might harm US international relations.
You get it?
This federal judge says THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION CAN DETAIN AND TORTURE INNOCENT PEOPLE OPENLY AND AT WILL, AND THERE'S NOTHING ANYONE CAN DO ABOUT IT.
Except whine.
And vote the cocksuckers out of office this year.
Yeah: I'm talking the 2006 Congressional election.
Because if the Democrats can take back Congress, we can impeach the fuckers.
Do it.
Now, finally, I'm a Democrat. Why?
BECAUSE THEY'RE NOT THE FUCKING REPUBLICANS.
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/02/20/opinion/20herbert.html
For this of you not subscribed to the TimeSelect service (the New York Times subscription upgrade) what Bob Herbert's writing about is the Maher Arar case -- the Syrian-born Canadian software engineer who was kidnapped at Kennedy Airport by the US government and flown to Syria, where he was held (and tortured) for 10 months in a rat-infested underground cell the size of a grave.
At which point he was released, because (even under torture) nobody could find any evidence he had any link to terrorists.
So Arar, as the resident of a Western democracy and a believer in due process, sought the kind of legal remedy a law-abiding citizen should: he went to court, seeking redress for the illegal and unconstitutional abuse of his person.
His lawsuit was dismissed yesterday.
Not because it was without merit. That's the thing. Exactly the opposite.
The judge who dismissed it threw the case out because discovery might have, for example, uncovered the Canadian Goverment's complicity in this illegal action, and thus precipitated an international incident . . .
Basically, the judge admits the US Government acted illegally. And that there's nothing the judicial branch can do about it, because revealing the details of this illegal activity might harm US international relations.
You get it?
This federal judge says THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION CAN DETAIN AND TORTURE INNOCENT PEOPLE OPENLY AND AT WILL, AND THERE'S NOTHING ANYONE CAN DO ABOUT IT.
Except whine.
And vote the cocksuckers out of office this year.
Yeah: I'm talking the 2006 Congressional election.
Because if the Democrats can take back Congress, we can impeach the fuckers.
Do it.
Now, finally, I'm a Democrat. Why?
BECAUSE THEY'RE NOT THE FUCKING REPUBLICANS.
Saturday, February 11
Friday, February 10
For those of you who might be wondering, STAR WARS ON TRIAL is a non-fiction (and un-LFL-authorized) collection of essays by prominent SFF writers on everything from he politics and ethics of The Saga to its effect on filmmaking and the effect its tie-ins have had on published SFF. David Brin for the Prosecution. Matthew Woodring Stover for the Defense.
Smack down.
But all in fun.
Mostly.
It's part of the SmartPop line from BenBella Books, which is wholly worth checking out -- they've done a bunch of middle-to-highbrow books of essays on everything from THE MATRIX to BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. Hell, they've even got a book out called FINDING SERENITY, the subject matter of which won't be much of a mystery to my fellow Whedonheads.
As far as Bush goes, well . . .
Not only is Heckuvajob Brownie back in the news, testifying before Congress that Bush lied about the Katrina response, Jack friggin' Abramoff is now saying "I've met Bush about a dozen times -- he jokes with me about my kids. Now he's saying he doesn't know me? I don't think so."
America, America, God shat this waste on thee . . .
Smack down.
But all in fun.
Mostly.
It's part of the SmartPop line from BenBella Books, which is wholly worth checking out -- they've done a bunch of middle-to-highbrow books of essays on everything from THE MATRIX to BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. Hell, they've even got a book out called FINDING SERENITY, the subject matter of which won't be much of a mystery to my fellow Whedonheads.
As far as Bush goes, well . . .
Not only is Heckuvajob Brownie back in the news, testifying before Congress that Bush lied about the Katrina response, Jack friggin' Abramoff is now saying "I've met Bush about a dozen times -- he jokes with me about my kids. Now he's saying he doesn't know me? I don't think so."
America, America, God shat this waste on thee . . .
Thursday, February 9
I'm not dead.
Nor am I gone.
I have been ill, however, but now I'm better. I have also been busy.
CAINE BLACK KNIFE is moving along. I have also completed (seemingly -- barring further news from the publisher) another project, STAR WARS ON TRIAL, on which I share co-editing credit with the justly-legendary David Brin, and which will be coming out from BenBella Books in June, and which is going to be a non-stop hoot from cover to cover.
The impeachment process requires a majority vote in the House of Representatives, to refer the impeachment to the Senate, where the actual trial is held.
Good fuckin' luck. At least until after the elections.
If the Good Guys can take back the House, though, watch out . . .
The real problem is that if we successfully impeach Bush, we'll end up with fucking Darth Cheney as President. Might as well just set fire to the Constitution before we even start.
Talk about job security.
Nor am I gone.
I have been ill, however, but now I'm better. I have also been busy.
CAINE BLACK KNIFE is moving along. I have also completed (seemingly -- barring further news from the publisher) another project, STAR WARS ON TRIAL, on which I share co-editing credit with the justly-legendary David Brin, and which will be coming out from BenBella Books in June, and which is going to be a non-stop hoot from cover to cover.
The impeachment process requires a majority vote in the House of Representatives, to refer the impeachment to the Senate, where the actual trial is held.
Good fuckin' luck. At least until after the elections.
If the Good Guys can take back the House, though, watch out . . .
The real problem is that if we successfully impeach Bush, we'll end up with fucking Darth Cheney as President. Might as well just set fire to the Constitution before we even start.
Talk about job security.
Wednesday, February 8
Statement of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold On the President’s Warrantless Wiretapping Program
February 7, 2006
As Prepared for Delivery from the Senate Floor
Mr. President, last week the President of the United States gave his State of the Union address, where he spoke of America’s leadership in the world, and called on all of us to “lead this world toward freedom.” Again and again, he invoked the principle of freedom, and how it can transform nations, and empower people around the world.
But, almost in the same breath, the President openly acknowledged that he has ordered the government to spy on Americans, on American soil, without the warrants required by law.
The President issued a call to spread freedom throughout the world, and then he admitted that he has deprived Americans of one of their most basic freedoms under the Fourth Amendment -- to be free from unjustified government intrusion.
The President was blunt. He said that he had authorized the NSA’s domestic spying program, and he made a number of misleading arguments to defend himself. His words got rousing applause from Republicans, and even some Democrats.
The President was blunt, so I will be blunt: This program is breaking the law, and this President is breaking the law. Not only that, he is misleading the American people in his efforts to justify this program.
How is that worthy of applause? Since when do we celebrate our commander in chief for violating our most basic freedoms, and misleading the American people in the process? When did we start to stand up and cheer for breaking the law? In that moment at the State of the Union, I felt ashamed.
Congress has lost its way if we don’t hold this President accountable for his actions.
The President suggests that anyone who criticizes his illegal wiretapping program doesn’t understand the threat we face. But we do. Every single one of us is committed to stopping the terrorists who threaten us and our families.
Defeating the terrorists should be our top national priority, and we all agree that we need to wiretap them to do it. In fact, it would be irresponsible not to wiretap terrorists. But we have yet to see any reason why we have to trample the laws of the United States to do it. The President’s decision that he can break the law says far more about his attitude toward the rule of law than it does about the laws themselves.
This goes way beyond party, and way beyond politics. What the President has done here is to break faith with the American people. In the State of the Union, he also said that “we must always be clear in our principles” to get support from friends and allies that we need to fight terrorism. So let’s be clear about a basic American principle: When someone breaks the law, when someone misleads the public in an attempt to justify his actions, he needs to be held accountable. The President of the United States has broken the law. The President of the United States is trying to mislead the American people. And he needs to be held accountable.
Unfortunately, the President refuses to provide any details about this domestic spying program. Not even the full Intelligence committees know the details, and they were specifically set up to review classified information and oversee the intelligence activities of our government. Instead, the President says – “Trust me.”
This is not the first time we’ve heard that. In the lead-up to the Iraq war, the Administration went on an offensive to get the American public, the Congress, and the international community to believe its theory that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction, and even that he had ties to Al Qaeda. The President painted a dire – and inaccurate – picture of Saddam Hussein’s capability and intent, and we invaded Iraq on that basis. To make matters worse, the Administration misled the country about what it would take to stabilize and reconstruct Iraq after the conflict. We were led to believe that this was going to be a short endeavor, and that our troops would be home soon.
We all recall the President’s “Mission Accomplished” banner on the aircraft carrier on May 1, 2003. In fact, the mission was not even close to being complete. More than 2100 total deaths have occurred after the President declared an end to major combat operations in May of 2003, and over 16,600 American troops have been wounded in Iraq. The President misled the American people and grossly miscalculated the true challenge of stabilizing and rebuilding Iraq.
In December, we found out that the President has authorized wiretaps of Americans without the court orders required by law. He says he is only wiretapping people with links to terrorists, but how do we know? We don’t. The President is unwilling to let a neutral judge make sure that is the case. He will not submit this program to an independent branch of government to make sure he’s not violating the rights of law-abiding Americans.
So I don’t want to hear again that this Administration has shown it can be trusted. It hasn’t. And that is exactly why the law requires a judge to review these wiretaps.
It is up to Congress to hold the President to account. We held a hearing on the domestic spying program in the Judiciary Committee yesterday, where Attorney General Gonzales was a witness. We expect there will be other hearings. That is a start, but it will take more than just hearings to get the job done.
We know that in part because the President’s Attorney General has already shown a willingness to mislead the Congress.
At the hearing yesterday, I reminded the Attorney General about his testimony during his confirmation hearings in January 2005, when I asked him whether the President had the power to authorize warrantless wiretaps in violation of the criminal law. We didn’t know it then, but the President had authorized the NSA program three years before, when the Attorney General was White House Counsel. At his confirmation hearing, the Attorney General first tried to dismiss my question as “hypothetical.” He then testified that “it’s not the policy or the agenda of this President to authorize actions that would be in contravention of our criminal statutes.”
Well, Mr. President, wiretapping American citizens on American soil without the required warrant is in direct contravention of our criminal statutes. The Attorney General knew that, and he knew about the NSA program when he sought the Senate’s approval for his nomination to be Attorney General. He wanted the Senate and the American people to think that the President had not acted on the extreme legal theory that the President has the power as Commander in Chief to disobey the criminal laws of this country. But he had. The Attorney General had some explaining to do, and he didn’t do it yesterday. Instead he parsed words, arguing that what he said was truthful because he didn’t believe that the President’s actions violated the law.
But he knew what I was asking, and he knew he was misleading the Committee in his response. If he had been straightforward, he would have told the committee that in his opinion, the President has the authority to authorize warrantless wiretaps. My question wasn’t about whether such illegal wiretapping was going on – like almost everyone in Congress, I didn’t know about the program then. It was a question about how the nominee to be Attorney General viewed the law. This nominee wanted to be confirmed, and so he let a misleading statement about one of the central issues of his confirmation – his view of executive power – stay on the record until the New York Times revealed the program.
The rest of the Attorney General’s performance at yesterday’s hearing certainly did not give me any comfort, either. He continued to push the Administration’s weak legal arguments, continued to insinuate that anyone who questions this program doesn’t want to fight terrorism, and refused to answer basic questions about what powers this Administration is claiming. We still need a lot of answers from this Administration.
But let’s put aside the Attorney General for now. The burden is not just on him to come clean -- the President has some explaining to do. The President’s defense of his actions is deeply cynical, deeply misleading, and deeply troubling.
To find out that the President of the United States has violated the basic rights of the American people is chilling. And then to see him publicly embrace his actions – and to see so many Members of Congress cheer him on – is appalling.
The President has broken the law, and he has made it clear that he will continue to do so. But the President is not a king. And the Congress is not a king’s court. Our job is not to stand up and cheer when the President breaks the law. Our job is to stand up and demand accountability, to stand up and check the power of an out-of-control executive branch.
That is one of the reasons that the framers put us here - to ensure balance between the branches of government, not to act as a professional cheering section.
We need answers. Because no one, not the President, not the Attorney General, and not any of their defenders in this body, has been able to explain why it is necessary to break the law to defend against terrorism. And I think that’s because they can’t explain it.
Instead, this administration reacts to anyone who questions this illegal program by saying that those of us who demand the truth and stand up for our rights and freedoms have a pre-9/11 view of the world.
In fact, the President has a pre-1776 view of the world.
Our Founders lived in dangerous times, and they risked everything for freedom. Patrick Henry said, "Give me liberty or give me death." The President's pre-1776 mentality is hurting America. It is fracturing the foundation on which our country has stood for 230 years. The President can't just bypass two branches of government, and obey only those laws he wants to obey. Deciding unilaterally which of our freedoms still apply in the fight against terrorism is unacceptable and needs to be stopped immediately.
Let’s examine for a moment some of the President’s attempts to defend his actions. His arguments have changed over time, of course. They have to – none of them hold up under even casual scrutiny, so he can’t rely on one single explanation. As each argument crumbles beneath him, he moves on to a new one, until that, too, is debunked, and on and on he goes.
In the State of the Union, the President referred to Presidents in American history who cited executive authority to order warrantless surveillance. But of course those past presidents – like Wilson and Roosevelt – were acting before the Supreme Court decided in 1967 that our communications are protected by the Fourth Amendment, and before Congress decided in 1978 that the executive branch can no longer unilaterally decide which Americans to wiretap. The Attorney General yesterday was unable to give me one example of a President who, since 1978 when FISA was passed, has authorized warrantless wiretaps outside of FISA.
So that argument is baseless, and it’s deeply troubling that the President of the United States would so obviously mislead the Congress and American public. That hardly honors the founders’ idea that the President should address the Congress on the state of our union.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was passed in 1978 to create a secret court, made up of judges who develop national security expertise, to issue warrants for surveillance of terrorists and spies. These are the judges from whom the Bush Administration has obtained thousands of warrants since 9/11. The Administration has almost never had a warrant request rejected by those judges. They have used the FISA Court thousands of times, but at the same time they assert that FISA is an “old law” or “out of date” and they can’t comply with it. Clearly they can and do comply with it – except when they don’t. Then they just arbitrarily decide to go around these judges, and around the law.
The Administration has said that it ignored FISA because it takes too long to get a warrant under that law. But we know that in an emergency, where the Attorney General believes that surveillance must begin before a court order can be obtained, FISA permits the wiretap to be executed immediately as long as the government goes to the court within 72 hours. The Attorney General has complained that the emergency provision does not give him enough flexibility, he has complained that getting a FISA application together or getting the necessary approvals takes too long. But the problems he has cited are bureaucratic barriers that the executive branch put in place, and could easily remove if it wanted.
FISA also permits the Attorney General to authorize unlimited warrantless electronic surveillance in the United States during the 15 days following a declaration of war, to allow time to consider any amendments to FISA required by a wartime emergency. That is the time period that Congress specified. Yet the President thinks that he can do this indefinitely.
In the State of the Union, the President also argued that federal courts had approved the use of presidential authority that he was invoking. But that turned out to be misleading as well. When I asked the Attorney General about this, he could point me to no court – not the Supreme Court or any other court – that has considered whether, after FISA was enacted, the President nonetheless had the authority to bypass it and authorize warrantless wiretaps. Not one court. The Administration’s effort to find support for what it has done in snippets of other court decisions would be laughable if this issue were not so serious.
The President knows that FISA makes it a crime to wiretap Americans in the United States without a warrant or a court order. Why else would he have assured the public, over and over again, that he was getting warrants before engaging in domestic surveillance?
Here’s what the President said on April 20, 2004: “Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires – a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so.”
And again, on July 14, 2004: “The government can’t move on wiretaps or roving wiretaps without getting a court order.”
The President was understandably eager in these speeches to make it clear that under his administration, law enforcement was using the FISA Court to obtain warrants before wiretapping. That is understandable, since wiretapping Americans on American soil without a warrant is against the law.
And listen to what the President said on June 9, 2005: “Law enforcement officers need a federal judge’s permission to wiretap a foreign terrorist’s phone, a federal judge’s permission to track his calls, or a federal judge’s permission to search his property. Officers must meet strict standards to use any of these tools. And these standards are fully consistent with the Constitution of the U.S.”
Now that the public knows about the domestic spying program, he has had to change course. He has looked around for arguments to cloak his actions. And all of them are completely threadbare.
The President has argued that Congress gave him authority to wiretap Americans on U.S. soil without a warrant when it passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force after September 11, 2001. Mr. President, that is ridiculous. Members of Congress did not think this resolution gave the President blanket authority to order these warrantless wiretaps. We all know that. Anyone in this body who would tell you otherwise either wasn’t here at the time or isn’t telling the truth. We authorized the President to use military force in Afghanistan, a necessary and justified response to September 11. We did not authorize him to wiretap American citizens on American soil without going through the process that was set up nearly three decades ago precisely to facilitate the domestic surveillance of terrorists – with the approval of a judge. That is why both Republicans and Democrats have questioned this theory.
This particular claim is further undermined by congressional approval of the Patriot Act just a few weeks after we passed the Authorization for the Use of Military Force. The Patriot Act made it easier for law enforcement to conduct surveillance on suspected terrorists and spies, while maintaining FISA’s baseline requirement of judicial approval for wiretaps of Americans in the U.S. It is ridiculous to think that Congress would have negotiated and enacted all the changes to FISA in the Patriot Act if it thought it had just authorized the President to ignore FISA in the AUMF.
In addition, in the intelligence authorization bill passed in December 2001, we extended the emergency authority in FISA, at the Administration’s request, from 24 to 72 hours. Why do that if the President has the power to ignore FISA? That makes no sense at all.
The President has also said that his inherent executive power gives him the power to approve this program. But here the President is acting in direct violation of a criminal statute. That means his power is, as Justice Jackson said in the steel seizure cases half a century ago, “at its lowest ebb.” A recent letter from a group of law professors and former executive branch officials points out that “every time the Supreme Court has confronted a statute limiting the Commander-in-Chief’s authority, it has upheld the statute.” The Senate reports issued when FISA was enacted confirm the understanding that FISA overrode any pre-existing inherent authority of the President. As the 1978 Senate Judiciary Committee report stated, FISA “recognizes no inherent power of the president in this area.” And “Congress has declared that this statute, not any claimed presidential power, controls.” Contrary to what the President told the country in the State of the Union, no court has ever approved warrantless surveillance in violation of FISA.
The President’s claims of inherent executive authority, and his assertions that the courts have approved this type of activity, are baseless.
The President has argued that periodic internal executive branch review provides an adequate check on the program. He has even characterized this periodic review as a safeguard for civil liberties. But we don’t know what this check involves. And we do know that Congress explicitly rejected this idea of unilateral executive decision-making in this area when it passed FISA.
Finally, the president has tried to claim that informing a handful of congressional leaders, the so-called Gang of Eight, somehow excuses breaking the law. Of course, several of these members said they weren’t given the full story. And all of them were prohibited from discussing what they were told. So the fact that they were informed under these extraordinary circumstances does not constitute congressional oversight, and it most certainly does not constitute congressional approval of the program. Indeed, it doesn’t even comply with the National Security Act, which requires the entire memberships of the House and Senate Intelligence Committee to be “fully and currently informed of the intelligence activities of the United States.”
In addition, we now know that some of these members expressed concern about the program. The Administration ignored their protests. Just last week, one of the eight members of Congress who has been briefed about the program, Congresswoman Jane Harman, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said she sees no reason why the Administration cannot accomplish its goals within the law as currently written.
None of the President’s arguments explains or excuses his conduct, or the NSA’s domestic spying program. Not one. It is hard to believe that the President has the audacity to claim that they do. It is a strategy that really hinges on the credibility of the office of the Presidency itself. If you just insist that you didn’t break the law, you haven’t broken the law. It reminds me of what Richard Nixon said after he had left office: “Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal.” But that is not how our constitutional democracy works. Making those kinds of arguments is damaging the credibility of the Presidency.
And what’s particularly disturbing is how many members of Congress have responded. They stood up and cheered. They stood up and cheered.
Justice Louis Brandeis once wrote: “Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
The President’s actions are indefensible. Freedom is an enduring principle. It is not something to celebrate in one breath, and ignore the next. Freedom is at the heart of who we are as a nation, and as a people. We cannot be a beacon of freedom for the world unless we protect our own freedoms here at home.
The President was right about one thing. In his address, he said “We love our freedom, and we will fight to keep it.”
Yes, Mr. President. We do love our freedom, and we will fight to keep it. We will fight to defeat the terrorists who threaten the safety and security of our families and loved ones. And we will fight to protect the rights of law-abiding Americans against intrusive government power.
As the President said, we must always be clear in our principles. So let us be clear: We cherish the great and noble principle of freedom, we will fight to keep it, and we will hold this President – and anyone who violates those freedoms – accountable for their actions. In a nation built on freedom, the President is not a king, and no one is above the law.
I yield the floor.
In the words of the Immortal One:
'Nuff Said.
February 7, 2006
As Prepared for Delivery from the Senate Floor
Mr. President, last week the President of the United States gave his State of the Union address, where he spoke of America’s leadership in the world, and called on all of us to “lead this world toward freedom.” Again and again, he invoked the principle of freedom, and how it can transform nations, and empower people around the world.
But, almost in the same breath, the President openly acknowledged that he has ordered the government to spy on Americans, on American soil, without the warrants required by law.
The President issued a call to spread freedom throughout the world, and then he admitted that he has deprived Americans of one of their most basic freedoms under the Fourth Amendment -- to be free from unjustified government intrusion.
The President was blunt. He said that he had authorized the NSA’s domestic spying program, and he made a number of misleading arguments to defend himself. His words got rousing applause from Republicans, and even some Democrats.
The President was blunt, so I will be blunt: This program is breaking the law, and this President is breaking the law. Not only that, he is misleading the American people in his efforts to justify this program.
How is that worthy of applause? Since when do we celebrate our commander in chief for violating our most basic freedoms, and misleading the American people in the process? When did we start to stand up and cheer for breaking the law? In that moment at the State of the Union, I felt ashamed.
Congress has lost its way if we don’t hold this President accountable for his actions.
The President suggests that anyone who criticizes his illegal wiretapping program doesn’t understand the threat we face. But we do. Every single one of us is committed to stopping the terrorists who threaten us and our families.
Defeating the terrorists should be our top national priority, and we all agree that we need to wiretap them to do it. In fact, it would be irresponsible not to wiretap terrorists. But we have yet to see any reason why we have to trample the laws of the United States to do it. The President’s decision that he can break the law says far more about his attitude toward the rule of law than it does about the laws themselves.
This goes way beyond party, and way beyond politics. What the President has done here is to break faith with the American people. In the State of the Union, he also said that “we must always be clear in our principles” to get support from friends and allies that we need to fight terrorism. So let’s be clear about a basic American principle: When someone breaks the law, when someone misleads the public in an attempt to justify his actions, he needs to be held accountable. The President of the United States has broken the law. The President of the United States is trying to mislead the American people. And he needs to be held accountable.
Unfortunately, the President refuses to provide any details about this domestic spying program. Not even the full Intelligence committees know the details, and they were specifically set up to review classified information and oversee the intelligence activities of our government. Instead, the President says – “Trust me.”
This is not the first time we’ve heard that. In the lead-up to the Iraq war, the Administration went on an offensive to get the American public, the Congress, and the international community to believe its theory that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction, and even that he had ties to Al Qaeda. The President painted a dire – and inaccurate – picture of Saddam Hussein’s capability and intent, and we invaded Iraq on that basis. To make matters worse, the Administration misled the country about what it would take to stabilize and reconstruct Iraq after the conflict. We were led to believe that this was going to be a short endeavor, and that our troops would be home soon.
We all recall the President’s “Mission Accomplished” banner on the aircraft carrier on May 1, 2003. In fact, the mission was not even close to being complete. More than 2100 total deaths have occurred after the President declared an end to major combat operations in May of 2003, and over 16,600 American troops have been wounded in Iraq. The President misled the American people and grossly miscalculated the true challenge of stabilizing and rebuilding Iraq.
In December, we found out that the President has authorized wiretaps of Americans without the court orders required by law. He says he is only wiretapping people with links to terrorists, but how do we know? We don’t. The President is unwilling to let a neutral judge make sure that is the case. He will not submit this program to an independent branch of government to make sure he’s not violating the rights of law-abiding Americans.
So I don’t want to hear again that this Administration has shown it can be trusted. It hasn’t. And that is exactly why the law requires a judge to review these wiretaps.
It is up to Congress to hold the President to account. We held a hearing on the domestic spying program in the Judiciary Committee yesterday, where Attorney General Gonzales was a witness. We expect there will be other hearings. That is a start, but it will take more than just hearings to get the job done.
We know that in part because the President’s Attorney General has already shown a willingness to mislead the Congress.
At the hearing yesterday, I reminded the Attorney General about his testimony during his confirmation hearings in January 2005, when I asked him whether the President had the power to authorize warrantless wiretaps in violation of the criminal law. We didn’t know it then, but the President had authorized the NSA program three years before, when the Attorney General was White House Counsel. At his confirmation hearing, the Attorney General first tried to dismiss my question as “hypothetical.” He then testified that “it’s not the policy or the agenda of this President to authorize actions that would be in contravention of our criminal statutes.”
Well, Mr. President, wiretapping American citizens on American soil without the required warrant is in direct contravention of our criminal statutes. The Attorney General knew that, and he knew about the NSA program when he sought the Senate’s approval for his nomination to be Attorney General. He wanted the Senate and the American people to think that the President had not acted on the extreme legal theory that the President has the power as Commander in Chief to disobey the criminal laws of this country. But he had. The Attorney General had some explaining to do, and he didn’t do it yesterday. Instead he parsed words, arguing that what he said was truthful because he didn’t believe that the President’s actions violated the law.
But he knew what I was asking, and he knew he was misleading the Committee in his response. If he had been straightforward, he would have told the committee that in his opinion, the President has the authority to authorize warrantless wiretaps. My question wasn’t about whether such illegal wiretapping was going on – like almost everyone in Congress, I didn’t know about the program then. It was a question about how the nominee to be Attorney General viewed the law. This nominee wanted to be confirmed, and so he let a misleading statement about one of the central issues of his confirmation – his view of executive power – stay on the record until the New York Times revealed the program.
The rest of the Attorney General’s performance at yesterday’s hearing certainly did not give me any comfort, either. He continued to push the Administration’s weak legal arguments, continued to insinuate that anyone who questions this program doesn’t want to fight terrorism, and refused to answer basic questions about what powers this Administration is claiming. We still need a lot of answers from this Administration.
But let’s put aside the Attorney General for now. The burden is not just on him to come clean -- the President has some explaining to do. The President’s defense of his actions is deeply cynical, deeply misleading, and deeply troubling.
To find out that the President of the United States has violated the basic rights of the American people is chilling. And then to see him publicly embrace his actions – and to see so many Members of Congress cheer him on – is appalling.
The President has broken the law, and he has made it clear that he will continue to do so. But the President is not a king. And the Congress is not a king’s court. Our job is not to stand up and cheer when the President breaks the law. Our job is to stand up and demand accountability, to stand up and check the power of an out-of-control executive branch.
That is one of the reasons that the framers put us here - to ensure balance between the branches of government, not to act as a professional cheering section.
We need answers. Because no one, not the President, not the Attorney General, and not any of their defenders in this body, has been able to explain why it is necessary to break the law to defend against terrorism. And I think that’s because they can’t explain it.
Instead, this administration reacts to anyone who questions this illegal program by saying that those of us who demand the truth and stand up for our rights and freedoms have a pre-9/11 view of the world.
In fact, the President has a pre-1776 view of the world.
Our Founders lived in dangerous times, and they risked everything for freedom. Patrick Henry said, "Give me liberty or give me death." The President's pre-1776 mentality is hurting America. It is fracturing the foundation on which our country has stood for 230 years. The President can't just bypass two branches of government, and obey only those laws he wants to obey. Deciding unilaterally which of our freedoms still apply in the fight against terrorism is unacceptable and needs to be stopped immediately.
Let’s examine for a moment some of the President’s attempts to defend his actions. His arguments have changed over time, of course. They have to – none of them hold up under even casual scrutiny, so he can’t rely on one single explanation. As each argument crumbles beneath him, he moves on to a new one, until that, too, is debunked, and on and on he goes.
In the State of the Union, the President referred to Presidents in American history who cited executive authority to order warrantless surveillance. But of course those past presidents – like Wilson and Roosevelt – were acting before the Supreme Court decided in 1967 that our communications are protected by the Fourth Amendment, and before Congress decided in 1978 that the executive branch can no longer unilaterally decide which Americans to wiretap. The Attorney General yesterday was unable to give me one example of a President who, since 1978 when FISA was passed, has authorized warrantless wiretaps outside of FISA.
So that argument is baseless, and it’s deeply troubling that the President of the United States would so obviously mislead the Congress and American public. That hardly honors the founders’ idea that the President should address the Congress on the state of our union.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was passed in 1978 to create a secret court, made up of judges who develop national security expertise, to issue warrants for surveillance of terrorists and spies. These are the judges from whom the Bush Administration has obtained thousands of warrants since 9/11. The Administration has almost never had a warrant request rejected by those judges. They have used the FISA Court thousands of times, but at the same time they assert that FISA is an “old law” or “out of date” and they can’t comply with it. Clearly they can and do comply with it – except when they don’t. Then they just arbitrarily decide to go around these judges, and around the law.
The Administration has said that it ignored FISA because it takes too long to get a warrant under that law. But we know that in an emergency, where the Attorney General believes that surveillance must begin before a court order can be obtained, FISA permits the wiretap to be executed immediately as long as the government goes to the court within 72 hours. The Attorney General has complained that the emergency provision does not give him enough flexibility, he has complained that getting a FISA application together or getting the necessary approvals takes too long. But the problems he has cited are bureaucratic barriers that the executive branch put in place, and could easily remove if it wanted.
FISA also permits the Attorney General to authorize unlimited warrantless electronic surveillance in the United States during the 15 days following a declaration of war, to allow time to consider any amendments to FISA required by a wartime emergency. That is the time period that Congress specified. Yet the President thinks that he can do this indefinitely.
In the State of the Union, the President also argued that federal courts had approved the use of presidential authority that he was invoking. But that turned out to be misleading as well. When I asked the Attorney General about this, he could point me to no court – not the Supreme Court or any other court – that has considered whether, after FISA was enacted, the President nonetheless had the authority to bypass it and authorize warrantless wiretaps. Not one court. The Administration’s effort to find support for what it has done in snippets of other court decisions would be laughable if this issue were not so serious.
The President knows that FISA makes it a crime to wiretap Americans in the United States without a warrant or a court order. Why else would he have assured the public, over and over again, that he was getting warrants before engaging in domestic surveillance?
Here’s what the President said on April 20, 2004: “Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires – a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so.”
And again, on July 14, 2004: “The government can’t move on wiretaps or roving wiretaps without getting a court order.”
The President was understandably eager in these speeches to make it clear that under his administration, law enforcement was using the FISA Court to obtain warrants before wiretapping. That is understandable, since wiretapping Americans on American soil without a warrant is against the law.
And listen to what the President said on June 9, 2005: “Law enforcement officers need a federal judge’s permission to wiretap a foreign terrorist’s phone, a federal judge’s permission to track his calls, or a federal judge’s permission to search his property. Officers must meet strict standards to use any of these tools. And these standards are fully consistent with the Constitution of the U.S.”
Now that the public knows about the domestic spying program, he has had to change course. He has looked around for arguments to cloak his actions. And all of them are completely threadbare.
The President has argued that Congress gave him authority to wiretap Americans on U.S. soil without a warrant when it passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force after September 11, 2001. Mr. President, that is ridiculous. Members of Congress did not think this resolution gave the President blanket authority to order these warrantless wiretaps. We all know that. Anyone in this body who would tell you otherwise either wasn’t here at the time or isn’t telling the truth. We authorized the President to use military force in Afghanistan, a necessary and justified response to September 11. We did not authorize him to wiretap American citizens on American soil without going through the process that was set up nearly three decades ago precisely to facilitate the domestic surveillance of terrorists – with the approval of a judge. That is why both Republicans and Democrats have questioned this theory.
This particular claim is further undermined by congressional approval of the Patriot Act just a few weeks after we passed the Authorization for the Use of Military Force. The Patriot Act made it easier for law enforcement to conduct surveillance on suspected terrorists and spies, while maintaining FISA’s baseline requirement of judicial approval for wiretaps of Americans in the U.S. It is ridiculous to think that Congress would have negotiated and enacted all the changes to FISA in the Patriot Act if it thought it had just authorized the President to ignore FISA in the AUMF.
In addition, in the intelligence authorization bill passed in December 2001, we extended the emergency authority in FISA, at the Administration’s request, from 24 to 72 hours. Why do that if the President has the power to ignore FISA? That makes no sense at all.
The President has also said that his inherent executive power gives him the power to approve this program. But here the President is acting in direct violation of a criminal statute. That means his power is, as Justice Jackson said in the steel seizure cases half a century ago, “at its lowest ebb.” A recent letter from a group of law professors and former executive branch officials points out that “every time the Supreme Court has confronted a statute limiting the Commander-in-Chief’s authority, it has upheld the statute.” The Senate reports issued when FISA was enacted confirm the understanding that FISA overrode any pre-existing inherent authority of the President. As the 1978 Senate Judiciary Committee report stated, FISA “recognizes no inherent power of the president in this area.” And “Congress has declared that this statute, not any claimed presidential power, controls.” Contrary to what the President told the country in the State of the Union, no court has ever approved warrantless surveillance in violation of FISA.
The President’s claims of inherent executive authority, and his assertions that the courts have approved this type of activity, are baseless.
The President has argued that periodic internal executive branch review provides an adequate check on the program. He has even characterized this periodic review as a safeguard for civil liberties. But we don’t know what this check involves. And we do know that Congress explicitly rejected this idea of unilateral executive decision-making in this area when it passed FISA.
Finally, the president has tried to claim that informing a handful of congressional leaders, the so-called Gang of Eight, somehow excuses breaking the law. Of course, several of these members said they weren’t given the full story. And all of them were prohibited from discussing what they were told. So the fact that they were informed under these extraordinary circumstances does not constitute congressional oversight, and it most certainly does not constitute congressional approval of the program. Indeed, it doesn’t even comply with the National Security Act, which requires the entire memberships of the House and Senate Intelligence Committee to be “fully and currently informed of the intelligence activities of the United States.”
In addition, we now know that some of these members expressed concern about the program. The Administration ignored their protests. Just last week, one of the eight members of Congress who has been briefed about the program, Congresswoman Jane Harman, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said she sees no reason why the Administration cannot accomplish its goals within the law as currently written.
None of the President’s arguments explains or excuses his conduct, or the NSA’s domestic spying program. Not one. It is hard to believe that the President has the audacity to claim that they do. It is a strategy that really hinges on the credibility of the office of the Presidency itself. If you just insist that you didn’t break the law, you haven’t broken the law. It reminds me of what Richard Nixon said after he had left office: “Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal.” But that is not how our constitutional democracy works. Making those kinds of arguments is damaging the credibility of the Presidency.
And what’s particularly disturbing is how many members of Congress have responded. They stood up and cheered. They stood up and cheered.
Justice Louis Brandeis once wrote: “Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
The President’s actions are indefensible. Freedom is an enduring principle. It is not something to celebrate in one breath, and ignore the next. Freedom is at the heart of who we are as a nation, and as a people. We cannot be a beacon of freedom for the world unless we protect our own freedoms here at home.
The President was right about one thing. In his address, he said “We love our freedom, and we will fight to keep it.”
Yes, Mr. President. We do love our freedom, and we will fight to keep it. We will fight to defeat the terrorists who threaten the safety and security of our families and loved ones. And we will fight to protect the rights of law-abiding Americans against intrusive government power.
As the President said, we must always be clear in our principles. So let us be clear: We cherish the great and noble principle of freedom, we will fight to keep it, and we will hold this President – and anyone who violates those freedoms – accountable for their actions. In a nation built on freedom, the President is not a king, and no one is above the law.
I yield the floor.
In the words of the Immortal One:
'Nuff Said.
Saturday, November 19
Hey, I'm back again.
Yes, I have been thoroughly engrossed in CAINE BLACK KNIFE, as well as in recovering from a nasty flu bug I picked up at WFC. I fought off the space monkeys (I have managed to adapt kali and jujitsu into the art of the Double Quantum Banana -- don't ask -- and I'm pretty sure the fuckers will never dare to trouble me again).
WFC was a treat. I spent most of the weekend hanging out in the hotel bar with R. Scott Bakker, Gary Wassner, Robert Urell and my wife, the Fabulous Robyn Drake. Getting drunk with four people who are all smarter than me (and all like to talk pretty much non-stop, just like me) is an endlessly entertaining experience. It's a good thing the convention only lasts one weekend. We'd probably still be there.
I also got the chance to spend a couple hours chatting with one of my personal heroes, Stephen Donaldson . . . and got to watch him (entirely metaphorically, and in a very gentle, good-humored way) bitchslap Joe Haldeman and Gene Wolfe on a con panel . . . which made him even more a personal hero.
I've also been enjoying watching Our Commander in Cheat pile on the lies as he desperately tries to salvage the tattered reputation of his mafioso Administration.
There, that should bring the trolls out from under their bridges, huh?
On CAINE BLACK KNIFE:
I swear by the power of All Dark Gods that I will Never Ever Ever start another novel until I HAVE COMPLETED THE FUCKING OUTLINE.
Not that it helped me much with BLADE OF TYSHALLE. But I have to have something to blame it on.
On the other hand, I have finally figured out just exactly what the hell I'm writing about, and am suddenly more interested in my own work than I have been at any time since I signed my first Star Wars contract.
Go figure.
Yes, I have been thoroughly engrossed in CAINE BLACK KNIFE, as well as in recovering from a nasty flu bug I picked up at WFC. I fought off the space monkeys (I have managed to adapt kali and jujitsu into the art of the Double Quantum Banana -- don't ask -- and I'm pretty sure the fuckers will never dare to trouble me again).
WFC was a treat. I spent most of the weekend hanging out in the hotel bar with R. Scott Bakker, Gary Wassner, Robert Urell and my wife, the Fabulous Robyn Drake. Getting drunk with four people who are all smarter than me (and all like to talk pretty much non-stop, just like me) is an endlessly entertaining experience. It's a good thing the convention only lasts one weekend. We'd probably still be there.
I also got the chance to spend a couple hours chatting with one of my personal heroes, Stephen Donaldson . . . and got to watch him (entirely metaphorically, and in a very gentle, good-humored way) bitchslap Joe Haldeman and Gene Wolfe on a con panel . . . which made him even more a personal hero.
I've also been enjoying watching Our Commander in Cheat pile on the lies as he desperately tries to salvage the tattered reputation of his mafioso Administration.
There, that should bring the trolls out from under their bridges, huh?
On CAINE BLACK KNIFE:
I swear by the power of All Dark Gods that I will Never Ever Ever start another novel until I HAVE COMPLETED THE FUCKING OUTLINE.
Not that it helped me much with BLADE OF TYSHALLE. But I have to have something to blame it on.
On the other hand, I have finally figured out just exactly what the hell I'm writing about, and am suddenly more interested in my own work than I have been at any time since I signed my first Star Wars contract.
Go figure.
Monday, October 17
Jeez, it's been so long Blogger forgot who I am . . .
In response to a couple requests for CAINE BLACK KNIFE updates . . .
I have been wandering in the wilderness of the dead zones.
This is also why I've left off the politcal bitching 'roung these parts -- too much of my brain consumed with trying to pierce the Veil of the Blind God, as it were.
But I seem to have found my way back into the light, and work proceeds apace.
There is asskicking in plenty. There is some (very little, actually) rumination on the nature of reality. There is, well . . .
The Adventure depicted in this recording has received a rating of
UV/X
from the Studio Ratings Advisory Board, for full-sensory experiences of:
TORTURE
SEXUAL PERVERSION
EXTREME GRAPHIC VIOLENCE
and
ADULT LANGUAGE
In the words of the immortal Stan Lee:
'nuff said.
In response to a couple requests for CAINE BLACK KNIFE updates . . .
I have been wandering in the wilderness of the dead zones.
This is also why I've left off the politcal bitching 'roung these parts -- too much of my brain consumed with trying to pierce the Veil of the Blind God, as it were.
But I seem to have found my way back into the light, and work proceeds apace.
There is asskicking in plenty. There is some (very little, actually) rumination on the nature of reality. There is, well . . .
The Adventure depicted in this recording has received a rating of
UV/X
from the Studio Ratings Advisory Board, for full-sensory experiences of:
TORTURE
SEXUAL PERVERSION
EXTREME GRAPHIC VIOLENCE
and
ADULT LANGUAGE
In the words of the immortal Stan Lee:
'nuff said.
Thursday, September 29
So I've been thinking about this constitutional law thing. I've been thinking --
What's the point?
Witness the following case study:
In June, 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Bush Administration's policy of detaining foreign nationals without legal process at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station was illegal. The Court determined that the prisoners could not be held in a prison beyond the law, and were entitled to basic legal rights. MacArthur Justice Center attorney Joseph Margulies is the lead counsel for petitioners in Rasul v. Bush.
I recently heard Mr. Margulies interviewed. He described the "legal process" the Bush Administration had established in response to the Supreme Court's decision in Rasul.
The detainees are examined by a military tribunal (not a federal court, as required under Rasul) without access to counsel (also unconstitional, under Rasul) and without even access to the evidence against them (do I need to repeat the U-word? How many times?).
You get it?
They are expected to rebut evidence they're not even allowed to see. Evidence that they face under the presumption of guilt.
This is not American justice. It's Kafka's worst nightmare.
These people have been disappeared. And they'll stay that way until somebody decides, arbitrarily, to let them go.
Fuck constitutional law. The Bush Administration already has.
The truly scary thing is: Under current Administration policies, they can do the same thing to American citizens.
They can do the same thing to you.
They can do the same thing to me.
Anybody out there taking bets if Hurricane Katrina might end up being the American version of the Reichstag fire?
All the people gathered in Washington last weekend to protest the war in Iraq, the War on Terror, the war on whatever the fuck -- you just don't get it.
The war is just an excuse.
What's the point?
Witness the following case study:
In June, 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Bush Administration's policy of detaining foreign nationals without legal process at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station was illegal. The Court determined that the prisoners could not be held in a prison beyond the law, and were entitled to basic legal rights. MacArthur Justice Center attorney Joseph Margulies is the lead counsel for petitioners in Rasul v. Bush.
I recently heard Mr. Margulies interviewed. He described the "legal process" the Bush Administration had established in response to the Supreme Court's decision in Rasul.
The detainees are examined by a military tribunal (not a federal court, as required under Rasul) without access to counsel (also unconstitional, under Rasul) and without even access to the evidence against them (do I need to repeat the U-word? How many times?).
You get it?
They are expected to rebut evidence they're not even allowed to see. Evidence that they face under the presumption of guilt.
This is not American justice. It's Kafka's worst nightmare.
These people have been disappeared. And they'll stay that way until somebody decides, arbitrarily, to let them go.
Fuck constitutional law. The Bush Administration already has.
The truly scary thing is: Under current Administration policies, they can do the same thing to American citizens.
They can do the same thing to you.
They can do the same thing to me.
Anybody out there taking bets if Hurricane Katrina might end up being the American version of the Reichstag fire?
All the people gathered in Washington last weekend to protest the war in Iraq, the War on Terror, the war on whatever the fuck -- you just don't get it.
The war is just an excuse.
Thursday, September 22
My gods, how I hate these bastards.
Hate is not a word I use lightly.
This is unconscionable.
Read it and scream:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/22/opinion/22thur3.html
It does show, however, that Republicans are not all of a stripe: John McCain, at least, is doing his level best to cauterize these festering open sores upon the body politic.
I have, however, little hope for his success. Because I have no doubt that many Democrats will cooperate, Russ Feingold notwithstanding.
As Supreme Chancellor Palpatine so memorably put it: "All those who gain power are afraid to lose it."
Or you can simply quote Stover's Rule of Politics: "Politics is the science of human nature, and so it is governed by the three fundamental principles of human behavior: Greed, Stupidity, and Fear."
Hate is not a word I use lightly.
This is unconscionable.
Read it and scream:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/22/opinion/22thur3.html
It does show, however, that Republicans are not all of a stripe: John McCain, at least, is doing his level best to cauterize these festering open sores upon the body politic.
I have, however, little hope for his success. Because I have no doubt that many Democrats will cooperate, Russ Feingold notwithstanding.
As Supreme Chancellor Palpatine so memorably put it: "All those who gain power are afraid to lose it."
Or you can simply quote Stover's Rule of Politics: "Politics is the science of human nature, and so it is governed by the three fundamental principles of human behavior: Greed, Stupidity, and Fear."
Wednesday, September 21
Here's one for all you Unclear-on-the-Concept whiners who kept whingeing on and on about Kelo v. New London:
http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20050920154609990003
Get it, now?
All the Supreme Court did was state that the Constitution does not bar state and local governments from using eminent domain in whimsical ways. This is what the Supreme Court does: interpret the constitutionality of law or legal action. That's all. Sadly, they don't actually rule on whether something is fair, or right (O'Connor's dissent notwistanding -- though I haven't read it in detail, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was based in the first paragraph of the Fourteenth Amendment); though disagreement is possible, this is the current Law of the Land.
The decision, as is noted in the article above, specifically noted that the state, local and federal governments were free to re-write their eminent domain laws to prevent such seizure.
Thus: If you don't like the eminent domain laws where you live, you'd better fucking get busy to elect a local and state government that will write eminent domain laws you're more comfortable with.
Tangential issue:
I got an email this morning from my regular correspondent who goes (on this blog, and on some other forums 'round the 'net) by the handle Shevchyk, concerning some stuff in the Village Voice about the Republicans using the Katrina furor to quietly snuff any Congressional investigation of the Valerie Plame affair without drawing attention from the national press. He closed the email by mumbling in passing something about looking into the idea of becoming a constitutional lawyer.
More power to him.
Canadian or not.
My beloved wife, the Fabulous Robyn, happened to glimpse that over my shoulder this morning. She said, "Shit. You should be a constitutional lawyer."
I said, "Are you fucking kidding me?"
She said, "This country's in a lot of trouble. This is what you care about. It's half of what you write about in your books, and most of what you write about on your blog. Maybe you could do this country a lot more good with a degree in constitutional law."
I said, "I'd be FIFTY YEARS OLD, for Christ's sake."
She said, "So what? At least then the next time you're in DC, you might be able to stand in the Lincoln Memorial without tears in your eyes."
Which is a salient point.
http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20050920154609990003
Get it, now?
All the Supreme Court did was state that the Constitution does not bar state and local governments from using eminent domain in whimsical ways. This is what the Supreme Court does: interpret the constitutionality of law or legal action. That's all. Sadly, they don't actually rule on whether something is fair, or right (O'Connor's dissent notwistanding -- though I haven't read it in detail, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was based in the first paragraph of the Fourteenth Amendment); though disagreement is possible, this is the current Law of the Land.
The decision, as is noted in the article above, specifically noted that the state, local and federal governments were free to re-write their eminent domain laws to prevent such seizure.
Thus: If you don't like the eminent domain laws where you live, you'd better fucking get busy to elect a local and state government that will write eminent domain laws you're more comfortable with.
Tangential issue:
I got an email this morning from my regular correspondent who goes (on this blog, and on some other forums 'round the 'net) by the handle Shevchyk, concerning some stuff in the Village Voice about the Republicans using the Katrina furor to quietly snuff any Congressional investigation of the Valerie Plame affair without drawing attention from the national press. He closed the email by mumbling in passing something about looking into the idea of becoming a constitutional lawyer.
More power to him.
Canadian or not.
My beloved wife, the Fabulous Robyn, happened to glimpse that over my shoulder this morning. She said, "Shit. You should be a constitutional lawyer."
I said, "Are you fucking kidding me?"
She said, "This country's in a lot of trouble. This is what you care about. It's half of what you write about in your books, and most of what you write about on your blog. Maybe you could do this country a lot more good with a degree in constitutional law."
I said, "I'd be FIFTY YEARS OLD, for Christ's sake."
She said, "So what? At least then the next time you're in DC, you might be able to stand in the Lincoln Memorial without tears in your eyes."
Which is a salient point.
Sunday, September 18
Friday, September 16
Another Victory For Limited Government!
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/16/politics/16blackout.html
A pertinent quote:
"The most serious mistake we can make is pretending that markets do things that they do not do," said Kellan Fluckiger, executive director of the electricity division at the Alberta Department of Energy. "Markets allocate risk, they allocate capital, they provide price signals. Markets do not have a conscience, they do not provide social policy, and they do not do things they are not paid to do."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/16/politics/16blackout.html
A pertinent quote:
"The most serious mistake we can make is pretending that markets do things that they do not do," said Kellan Fluckiger, executive director of the electricity division at the Alberta Department of Energy. "Markets allocate risk, they allocate capital, they provide price signals. Markets do not have a conscience, they do not provide social policy, and they do not do things they are not paid to do."
Thursday, September 15
And for those of you too busy, too apathetic or too disgusted to listen to the Roberts Supreme Court confirmation hearings, here is a useful summary from David Brooks, the brighter of the two house conservatives from the NYTimes OpEd page:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/15/opinion/15brooks.html
It is, in fact, the most incisive column he's ever written.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/15/opinion/15brooks.html
It is, in fact, the most incisive column he's ever written.
Sunday, September 11
Can the crooked fucking politico change his morals in the face of a deepening national crisis?
The answer, reprinted from Reuters:
--
WASHINGTON (Sept. 10) - Companies with ties to the Bush White House and the former head of FEMA are clinching some of the administration's first disaster relief and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
At least two major corporate clients of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, President George W. Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have already been tapped to start recovery work along the battered Gulf Coast.
One is Shaw Group Inc. and the other is Halliburton Co. subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root. Vice President Dick Cheney is a former head of Halliburton.
Bechtel National Inc., a unit of San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp., has also been selected by FEMA to provide short-term housing for people displaced by the hurricane. Bush named Bechtel's CEO to his Export Council and put the former CEO of Bechtel Energy in charge of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.
--
There is more, of course. The article goes on to mention the more than one billion dollars in fraudulent billing KB&R submitted on their sweetheart no-bid contract to provide essential services for Our Proudly Supported (As Long As It Doesn't Cost Us Too Much Money) Troops in Iraq, and that sort of thing.
The slugline was:
FIRMS WITH BUSH TIES SNAG FIRST KATRINA CONTRACTS.
I would say something along the lines of "Fuck me like a goat," but the Administration, apparently, has that part covered. So to speak.
Jesus stinking bloody Christ on a stick.
The answer, reprinted from Reuters:
--
WASHINGTON (Sept. 10) - Companies with ties to the Bush White House and the former head of FEMA are clinching some of the administration's first disaster relief and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
At least two major corporate clients of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, President George W. Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have already been tapped to start recovery work along the battered Gulf Coast.
One is Shaw Group Inc. and the other is Halliburton Co. subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root. Vice President Dick Cheney is a former head of Halliburton.
Bechtel National Inc., a unit of San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp., has also been selected by FEMA to provide short-term housing for people displaced by the hurricane. Bush named Bechtel's CEO to his Export Council and put the former CEO of Bechtel Energy in charge of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.
--
There is more, of course. The article goes on to mention the more than one billion dollars in fraudulent billing KB&R submitted on their sweetheart no-bid contract to provide essential services for Our Proudly Supported (As Long As It Doesn't Cost Us Too Much Money) Troops in Iraq, and that sort of thing.
The slugline was:
FIRMS WITH BUSH TIES SNAG FIRST KATRINA CONTRACTS.
I would say something along the lines of "Fuck me like a goat," but the Administration, apparently, has that part covered. So to speak.
Jesus stinking bloody Christ on a stick.
Saturday, September 10
As much as it pains me to write anything that may be construed as in any way defending our multiply-criminal Bush Administration, when the Hurricane Katrina accusations fly thick and fast, it will be worthwhile for the cognoscenti to bear in mind the first corollary to Caine's Law:
Whenever somebody tells you things are simple, they're trying to sell you something.
And that, my friends, is about as far as I'm gonna go into the Who's At Fault business, too.
Whenever somebody tells you things are simple, they're trying to sell you something.
And that, my friends, is about as far as I'm gonna go into the Who's At Fault business, too.
Friday, September 9
And another thing
Bill Moyers has the right of it.
As usual.
Read, and shudder:
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050909/911_and_the_sport_of_god.php
Those of you who have read JERICHO MOON, of course, are already familiar with his Old Testament exegesis. The rest, however, is pertinent.
Ahh, fuck.
Why didn't *I* "preserve my political viability"?
As usual.
Read, and shudder:
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050909/911_and_the_sport_of_god.php
Those of you who have read JERICHO MOON, of course, are already familiar with his Old Testament exegesis. The rest, however, is pertinent.
Ahh, fuck.
Why didn't *I* "preserve my political viability"?
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