Republicans admit “We’re blackmailed!” – Plus quick/partial fixes for the Electoral College

There's not a lot of time left, so let’s go for the carotid on a couple of major political points that could benefit from a little ‘judo.’

== Republicans denouncing the subornation ==

Remember Madison Cawthorn, the rising young Republican star Congressmember, who was suddenly dumped by the GOP, for revealing ‘orgies’ amid upper ranks of the party? That huge over-reaction - destroying him for offhand (and likely stoned) remarks on shock radio - reflected almost-certain desperation to silence truth; otherwise he'd a got a slap on the wrist. 

But was it true? I've long posited that the behavior of so many top GOPpers – e.g. Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz – can only be explained by blackmail. Mere corruption is insufficient, because any merely-corrupt official can say ‘that’s enough bribery for this year; if I keep saying more shit, I’ll look suspicious or insane.’ 

Blackmail, on the other hand, is insatiable. You simply keep doing whatever the blackmailer demands, even if it makes you look like an idiot, or hypocrite, or both, as in the multiple times when Graham tried to say "I'm done with Trump!" hoping that it would end his ongoing humiliation... followed the next day by utter groveling. 

I mean, do you have an even remotely plausible alternate theory?

This isn't new. Russian secret services have been expert at ‘honeypot traps’ ever since the czars.  Look up the Moscow US embassy Marine guards (1980s) as just one example.

Now, yet another Republican Rep has spoken out, even more explicitly than Cawthorn. Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett warns that fellow Republicans in the House of Representatives have been lured into honeytraps with sex workers and drugs. 

"Republicans aren’t backing important efforts, such as Rep. Marsha Blackburn’s crusade for Jeffrey Epstein’s flight logs, under orders by big backers and Russians."

Seriously read this.  It’s not getting the attention it deserves and this fellow is at least partially a hero. Or watch this. 

== It’s the Republican defectors who will make the biggest difference, stupid ==

Above, I showed how an honest and decent conservative Congressmember has stepped up to denounce the blackmail subornation of his party. Others recently used insane rhetoric and mad conspiracy theories about hurricanes as their own excuse to step up and partially reject the madness.  

Not as much courage as we need from them. But we'll take what we can get.

Then of course there's the long list of former Trump officials – his ‘adults in the room’ during Trump v1.0 – who have nearly all denounced him. From Tillerson & McMaster to Kames Mattis and John Kelly, to even far-right schmucks like John Bolton and Bill Barr. As many as a hundred have said "even I can't stomach the insanity and treason."

To which Tump's answer is that in Trump2.0 there will be NO adults in the room. Total brownshirt time. 

Which is why I urge the zillionaire oligarchs, murder sheiks and "ex" commissars who have pulled Trump's puppet strings for decades to watch the movie Cabaret, especially the last 5 minutes. Because if he does get back into office on a MAGA sig-heil-wave, none of those masters will ever again ‘control him.’ Not with blackmail or anything else.

In fact, you oligarchs and Kremlin guys need yet another film... watch Angela Lansbury’s chilling soliloquy near the end of The Manchurian Candidate to see what Don will likely do to his former masters, once the strings are cut.

But let’s add yet more pertinent movie overlaps! This interview with former Trump Communications Director Scaramucci is interesting. “Scaramucci on Trump: "He's going to lose because he's getting boring."

 

Dig a little, and you'll see that the Mooch is describing the "Howard Beale Scenario." (Watch the last 10' of Network and get truly scared!) 

Still, the part of his interview that I resent - because if it does happen, Mooch will get all the prediction points - is when he gives 40% that odds ol' Two Scoops won't even make it to the election or inauguration. 

While I was there lots earlier - with lower odds - I hedged it with the election that actually matters - the Electoral College. Which is where the fix may be in.

== It’s the Electoral College, dummy ==

Okay, three big points about the Electoral College, America’s weird (insane) but unchangeable Constitutionally gerrymandered gimmick favoring Red America.

Make that four points. The first? Um why are there two Dakotas? And shouldn’t just one state – Ida-Wyo-Mont – span the northern Rockies?

But no, let’s get practical. The core aim of the Trumpists has been openly declared… for GOP governors and others in some Harris-won states to refuse to certify enough electors, so that the count for president will be invalid, so that the choice will be ‘thrown to the House.’ Hence, even if Dems win a sweeping, crushing victory in November, you might still see Trump get in! 

Because at that stage - in another insanely dumb Constitutional provision - the House votes by delegations – one vote per – and Republicans have 26 delegations vs 24 for dems.

Now, that nightmare assumes there won’t be brave and patriotic Republican Congresswomen or men in some of those reddish delegations, who decide to put country first, the way Alexander Hamilton (bravely) swung the 1800 election to Jefferson, instead of Aaron Burr. That might happen. 

Or else some of YOU will be heroes who help swing just one or two of those delegations blue. In some cases it could come down to just one Congressional race. Look around. There may be some tight races you can help with. And that's where $100 could make a lot more difference than donating to Kamala.

== More Electoral College partial fixes within reach! ==

Okay, two more. I have elsewhere ruminated on the Wyoming Rule. If the dems get real power in Congress, they should pass it, so that all Americans get at least roughly equal representation in the lower house, as was intended. And if that happens, not only will blue states get more representation in the larger (~560 members) House, but the coloration of the Electoral College will change forever.

Only let’s swing to another of my proposals, One which no one else has broached, but that could (well, maybe) make a real difference this year.

In Polemical Judo I mentioned a possible action by one hyper rich person (say a Mark Cuban?) A bold yet totally legal move that could (possibly) get us past whatever tricks the Project 2025 schemers have in mind, to screw up certifications and throw it to the House. 

Briefly: rent a whole mountaintop luxury hotel with minimal - highly vetted - staff. Then announce that for two weeks ...

"Only certified Electors may come as guests. Upon arrival from their home states, they can just stroll and enjoy the views and meals and discuss with each other anything they like. Or else they could - at their own volition - convene the first actual Electoral College in U.S. history. As would be their prerogative! And this year, such a gathering just might be one more bulwark against shenanigens." 

Again, no coercion or persuasion. Just show up by individual choice, eat, stroll and chat with others who just happen to be there at the same time, without any of those others being anyone but fellow electors (and minimal staff of trusted cooks). And if you just happen to decide to convene a meeting - formal or informal - well…

Suppose this happened. Watch how quickly the stalling states would rush to certify! 

Though note. No matter how carefully Trumpists have ensured the GOP elector slates are party hacks – and most dem electors would likely be loyalists as well – some would likely talk it over, suddenly moved by the genuine (not ceremonial) power in their hands. 

Moreover, as one of the candidates (you-know-who) fulminates volcanically against this "trickery!!" just enough of them might listen to their conscience and reason…

… and act to save the Republic.

The dangerous chimera called 'scientism'

The crusade to discredit all fact-using professions is an existential threat to us all -- a deliberate effort to lobotomize-away any influence by folks who actually know stuff.  

One of the core elements of this campaign is to deride modern science as a 'mere religion'. A religion called "scientism'. That cult incantation - aiming to cancel out all nerds and every kind of 'expert' - is promoted in this article.

One raver, denouncing Scientific America's endorsement of pro-fact candidates, said: 

"...worshippers at this new altar seem determined to usher in a new post-modern utopia in which science and religion are fused once again. In that light, they cannot help but endorse Kamala Harris because their consciences won’t allow them to do otherwise. It’s not a choice dictated by science, but by theology."

Parse it. The fundamental goal is to demean fact-professions by their own standards, by calling them (without any hint of evidence, or irony) mere boffin-lemmings, yelping in unison as they worship the current paradigm and repress dissenting views.

Of course this is the masturbation-incantation of morons who know nothing about how science works, but desperately seek to justify their war against it. To which I routinely reply:

"Step up now with $$$ wager stakes.

Let's start by forming an eclectic group to visit the research university nearest to you. 

There we'll knock on twenty random doors, to see if even one person matches your egregiously dumb and insulting slander toward those who strive to advance understanding of the universe.*

"If you knew any scientists at all, you'd know we are the most COMPETITIVE beings that this species - that this planet - ever produced. A young scientist only gets anywhere by finding some corner of a standard model and poking at it until something gives. And thus the model improves... or else gets replaced.

"In fact RIGHT NOW I demand that you name a fact-based profession that is not warred upon by Fox n' pals. Go on, name one. One fact profession whose members aren't mass-fleeing your mad cult. (I can name one, but can you?)

"Not just science but also medicine and law and civil service, ranging all the way to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror. *

"The latter, mostly lifelong republicans, can now see that the Republican Party has become a Kremlin-serving treason cult. Few of those current and former officers have become committed Democrats! But almost all have left the GOP madness in disgust and taken long showers."

*(And yes, as we enter the danger days of October surprises, even possible Reichstag fires and McVeighsions, we need to pray for the skilled dedication and good work of 80,000 fine men and women heroes in the F... B...I...)

== The underlying narrative of the 'scientism' schtick ==

The entire premise of this campaign to discredit every center of influence other than oligarchy is simple. It boils down to smart people are stupid. 

Parse it. Sure, we all know that:

"High intelligence and knowledge don't automatically make you wise." 

That's a truth we all understand. 

But today's Kremlin-led, foxite cult to sabotage the West has converted that truth into the following lie: 

"High intelligence and knowledge automatically make you unwise."

When it is parsed that purely, they always shrink back and deny it. But they also know that psychotically rephrased version is exactly the campaign pushed by the entire Fox-o-Sphere cult, in their war vs. all fact using professions. 

In their relentless yammer campaigns against universities! The flawed jewels built by the GI Bill generation, that have been responsible for most of the wonders that - for 80 years - truly made America great..

== The current U.S. struggle ==

 

Again, want super-strong evidence that the Republican Party has changed and been hijacked? Well, there are the Cheneys… and hundreds of former GOP officials, including almost every high ‘adult in the room’ during Trump’s Presidency, who have issued public denunciations with signature pages ten or more pages long. 

(There will be NO such 'adults in the room,' during any Trump II.)

And then there’s this…

…showing how likely it is that Ronald Reagan would despise today’s Republican love affair with the same ‘evil empire’ - (slightly relabeled) - that he fought against.  I show jpegs of Reagan’s own 1970 re-election flyer. Only jeepers, look at how progressive and liberal he was on so many issues, compared to today’s open Confederates. Golly.

== And finally, pictures are more persuasive! ==

 

I worked hard on this image, which encapsulates in one montage a partial panoply of deplorables who are best buds with Donald Trump. It has so much content, you may need to copy and expand, before you share it around. But in this case the sheer number makes it hard for residually sane Republicans (and we all know a couple) to shrug off. 

And peeling away just half a million such residual decents is really all we need. So use this!

Get them to look at the gloating faces of Trump & Lavrov & Kisliak in January 2017, when they were DT's first and most-beloved guests in the Oval Office, long before any ally, giggling that the USA had fallen to them so perfectly.

 Look at the faces up close and read the caption. And remember Trump raving that he "fell in love' with Kim Jong Un. 

 This is why almost all of DT's former national security folks, from Defense and State to intel agencies to serving officers have called him a direct threat to the nation. But that won't last if he's elected. Those folks will all be arrested and silenced. There will be no further 'adults in the room."

 But we proved resilient.  And we will, yet again. This renaissance is just beginning.

Reflecting on AI accountability for misinformation - and solar powering the revolution

The Great Big AI Crisis of 2024 will likely wreak its worst harm via political misinformation and manipulation this year (next month!) But it’s swamping its way into science, as well. 

“It is not always so easy to spot the use of AI. But one clue is that ChatGPT tends to favor certain words… such as meticulous, intricate or commendable.” 

Of course all such detection cues are temporary.  Even when we point them out to each other (as I just did), that only helps train the systems to avoid overusing them.

So, is it hopeless to dream of escaping the Age of Tsunamis of Lies? 

None of the palliatives proposed by the geniuses and mavens of AI - ranging from 'moratoriums' to EU style regulations to 'privacy rules' stand any chance of helping much. Only one thing will even possibly work and that is siccing AI programs onto each other, competitively, with incentives for them to tattle on misinformation, as I describe here in Wired: Give Every AI a Soul - or Else.

And more vividly detailed? My keynote at the May 2024 RSA Conference in San Francisco – is now available online.   “Anticipation, Resilience and Reliability: Three ways that AI will change us… if we do it right.”  

Let's dive in to how that could work.

== AI, Ai Ai!!! ==

In all of those places, I've pointed out that we already developed one fairly effective method for detecting and deterring liars, foiling harm doers and preventing a return to 6000 years of lobotomizing feudalism. Imperfectly, by far! But light years better than any prior culture.

Was it carefully-deliberated and designed laws? Those can help, but no. Paternalistic protection by the state? Ditto, and dangerous. The method I'm talking about – the one innovation that gave us everything – has been to flatten the playing field and empower a wide enough diversity of citizen-players, so that we can pit elites and potential predators against each other. 

It's called reciprocal accountability.

Lawyer vs. lawyer, for example. And the one area where we’ve made the greatest advances? The most effective reciprocal accountability system of all: science.

Scientists are the most competitive creatures our species ever produced. Young scientists are like top guns roaming Main Street, looking for a paradigm or pompous theory-pusher to topple with the six-gun of evidence. They make their mark by finding at least a small chink in the current standard model to critique. 

(And yes, this is diametrically opposite to the slanderous image of wimpy consensus-hugging eggheads that's pushed by anti-science cult media.)

The results are very often positive sum. Negatives and falsehoods get canceled out by competition, while positives can combine through better-tested models, new alliances, and cooperation. 

In other words, a healthy market.

(Politics is supposed to be like that, by the way. And it was, overall, till a mad cult waged open war against the very concept of negotiation, turning our political institutions zero-sum and now negative sum.)

All of which leads back to my notion about Artificial Intelligence. That we should try emulating, in this new ecosystem, the one and only method that ever reduced misinformation and predation among organic humans. Again, I am calling for reciprocal accountability on cyber beings, applied by cyber beings.

While I may be alone in offering institutional innovations to achieve this, some groups have lately been coming up with practical methods.

“To pinpoint when a language model might be confabulating, the new method involves asking a question multiple times to produce several AI-generated answers. Then a second LLM (Large Language Model) groups these answers according to their meaning; for instance, “John drove his car to the store” and “John went to the store in his car” would be clustered together.” Leading to a new metric “semantic entropy.”

“Other anti-hallucination methods have used LLMs to evaluate generated answers, through approaches such as asking a single model to double-check its own work. But the paired system improves on this...” 

So, yeah. The idea is starting to gain (a little) traction. Sic em on each other. But with incentives that reward those who do us all - and Truth - the most good.

When did I speak of a 'new ecosystem'? Here's an earlier posting where I talk about that...

Are we making new kinds of 'ecosystems'? 

... and how we organic humans (orgs) will still control - maybe for another decade or two - the new ecosystem's 'sun.' 

And if we handle this power wisely, it may shine upon the fabled 'soft landing' alongside our new cyber children.

And speaking of the sun...

== The solar revolution is here ==

This article in the Economist discusses how solar power's recent huge boom may be only the beginning. 70 years after first introduced by Bell Labs... and frequently sabotaged by filth merchants:

"Today solar power is long past the toy phase. Panels now occupy an area around half that of Wales, and this year they will provide the world with about 6% of its electricity—which is almost three times as much electrical energy as America consumed back in 1954. Yet this historic growth is only the second-most-remarkable thing about the rise of solar power. The most remarkable is that it is nowhere near over..."

...Much as I portrayed in EARTH in 1990. Though by now the question is why are the lords of carbon still backing the Denialist Movement, when this revolution can't be delayed any longer? And when denying all the heat waves and tumbling glaciers and acidifying oceans and super storms only makes you look like a jibbering loony?

Economies of scale have taken over now and batteries and methane and new nuclear will handle surge capacity, so why do they continue to back a cult bent on wrecking the planet that they must live on, too?

Well, the Russians and Saudis are still utterly fossils (and fossil-dependent) and plausibly they are the ones holding blackmail on almost all high Republicans. And unlike mere corruption (which can sometimes think long term), blackmail is always imminent and near term. It is only about satisfying the blackmailer today.

THAT - fundamentally - is what the Ukraine war is about and it is why the GOP is slavishly devoted to a Kremlin and slightly-relabeled KGB that they once despised. And it is why Ronald Reagan would spit in their eyes. 

== Future Tech ==

An interesting report - The Battery Mineral Loop - suggests that we may be recycling precious battery elements much more efficiently pretty soon, and that the race to mine them may be a temporary thing, lasting as little as 1.5 decades. Which is still a bridge we need to accomplish with careful management, good politics and lots of science. 

Australians have developed night vision optics so thin they might be barely noticeably different from your normal glasses.

Great news that soon computer chips will be able to store the energy they need for rapid operations right on the chip, itself, through new micro-capacitors. 

Oh, is it possible to find something positive, even lightening, from a Trump action? I have long demanded examples where a Republican U.S. administration had major, palpable comparative positive outcomes for the nation and world as a whole, and not just benefiting narrow, conniving cabals. Certainly, when the Trump guys sold off the U.S. Helium Reserve to buddies, for almost nothing, those pals immediately jacked up prices for the element that’s utterly necessary for many medical uses, such as supercooled imaging systems. And quantum computers.  

Only now the deal might (accidentally and unintentionally) benefit us, as a major new source of Helium has been found deep under Minnesota. Like the recent phosphate discoveries in Norway, it may be good news for civilization… and bad for market-cornering cheaters…

…till we get the mother lodes from asteroids, that is.

So... what now?

Now YOU do your bit for the Enlightenment, for science and civilization. 

Check your voter registration and those of friends! Give or volunteer if you can. Wear this. And remember that earlier victories in the recurring U.S. Civil War always led to golden eras. 

Imperfectly!  But we moved forward, correcting errors made by every prior generation. Making new ones for the next to correct! But moving ahead.

Toward the stars.

Sci Fi Updates: Sailing space and sci fi stories that might save us all! (Plus a micro-rant.)

I've been mentioning that the TASAT Project is now up and running! A way that the very nerdiest readers of sci fi tales from the last 100 years might someday use their story-citing powers to save the world!  Drop by to learn how. Or see my blip about it at-bottom.

Just updated and re-released: Project Solar Sail: 21st Century Edition: A collection of stories and essays about the next step in interstellar exploration: Lightships and Sails propelled by lasers or sunlight! Classic stories by Clarke, Asimov, Anderson, Bradbury and Jack Vance, along with new/updated articles by JPL scientists and others, exploring present technologies and future possibilities for sailing the light fantastic. Edited by David Brin and Stephen W. Potts and - originally - Arthur C. Clarke. 

And another classic updated and refreshed. Not genre, but akin.....John Perlin’s newly re-issued tome is a classic. A Forest Journey: The Role of Trees in the Fate of Civilization* is a deeply-moving and persuasive elegy to the vital importance of the natural world - the groves and prairies and seas. Not as alternatives to civilization, but as the lungs and sinews and beating heart that allow us - especially our glittering cities - to stand and gaze upward.

*I cited this one in Earth.

== Sci fi updates ==

SF epic poetry! Homer may be dead but not his spirit, as the mighty literary form of poetical epics lives on. The greatest such living bard would be Frederick Turner, whose topics include Genesis: the terraforming of Mars, or the rise of Artificial Intelligence, or the genetic engineering of our organic successors.

Another: Epoch: A Poetic Psy-Phi Saga, by Dave Jilk, is science fiction in the form of an epic poem, with the first fully human-level artificial intelligence telling its own story as a sort of memoir. The book turns much of current thinking on existential AI risk on its head, and raises some uncomfortable questions about humanity even as it lauds our accomplishments. 

(Another mini epic poem by Ray Bradbury and J.V. Post is in Project Solar Sail!)

And there are updated movies. Oooh. The original is fine, but... I'm okay with plans afoot to remake the fine 80s sci fi flick Enemy Mine, based on Barry Longyear’s exquisite, Hugo-winning novella, which you can find on Amazon. (What I absolutely rebel against is the remake of perfect films. I mean carumba, leave Lawrence of Arabia alone!)

Flash fiction is a lovely exercise in rapid creation on the fly. I am pleased to recommend an allegorical fairy tale about a witch and a gargoyle.

== Sci Fi Roundup! ==

The mighty Kay Kenyon has finished her wonderfully entertaining series. Now available for pre-order, book 4, Keeper of the Mythos Gate, the exciting and moving conclusion to The Arisen Worlds. Publication, September 3. If you haven't checked out the series yet, dip in with this excerpt from Book 1.

Bruce Golden’s Evergreen centers around a mysterious artifact + themes of obsession, revenge, and redemption amid timber jockeys, uncouth frontier towns, and into the heart of an awareness so alien it defies common notions of "intelligent life."

One of the fine authors I’ve mentored in my Out of Time YA series (only teens can teleport through space and time!) is Torion Oey. His latest, a fantasy novel, is The Disgraced Mage. 

Tales of the United States Space Force is a new combination of science fiction stories and fact articles about – or related to - America's newest military service branch. Space is critical to the economy and our whole modern way of life, and that makes it a target. Let this volume open some eyes. And one of my classics is included.

 

Winter 1962. A child is discovered in the frozen Oregon woods. Mute and feral, wandering lost, naked and near death… and not entirely human. Nonesuch Man: an illustrated novel  by Steven Elkins.

Two of my out-of-print novels are now re-issued with fine new covers and fresh editing. Earth came in second for a Hugo and is on every “Top Ten Predictive Novels” list you can find. (See below!)

Also Glory Season is a Silverberg/Norton-style adventure on a world where human reproduction has been channeled down wholly new paths… with one of my favorite protagonists, plucky Maia!  The trade paperbacks are luscious. 

Terrific covers and Open Road allowed me to insert about 80 page breaks in Earth that give this edition a really classy look and feel.  Don’t miss free chapters and trailers on my website.

== Stories that predicted well? ==

I mentioned predictive tales? Well, whenever exploring new territory, you might ask the natives? What profession spends a lot of time seeking and extrapolating on 'signals from the future?" 

The top 10% of near future science fiction novels generally contain riffs to portray answers to the questions: "If this goes on..." or What if...?" From John Brunner's astonishingly prophetic 1968 books Stand on Zanzibar and The Shockwave Rider to Frederik Pohl and Ursula LeGuin and Nancy Kress... to my own Earth and Existence... to Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry of the Future, which has proved so influential that the UN is pondering naming a new agency after it.

 

Start here? 8 Books That Eerily Predicted the Future.   

Which circles us back around to TASAT or There's A Story About That.  

The idea cropped up well over a decade ago. In those days, whenever I was in DC for NASA meetings, I would always stop - on my way to Dulles Airport - at a little agency in McLean Virginia, to give a talk on 'future threats', some of which (alas) have come true. At the third of these talks to the Protector Caste, it occurred to me that these people - mostly super smart and sincere public servants - had very little clue about the vast number of thought-experiments in science fiction that have spun out dramatically dangerous possibilities. Very often about unexpected dangers that loom suddenly, when the present speeds into the future.

I blurted: "Suppose someday you encounter something strange - maybe very strange. You form a committee to look into it and give advice." (I have been on several such 'consultant rolladexes'.) "Shouldn't that committee have access to past ruminations that might have already explored similar ground? Tales that maybe poked at the first assumptions that you might mistakenly make, if you ever face a similar situation?"

The purpose of TASAT is to enroll folks who have read a lot of sci fi tales and who might be able to provide that very service!  See the full explanation at TASAT.org!

Lately, the first beta testers have been citing past tales about tech-sabotage, that eerily foresaw the recent "pager caper" wherein explosives got inveigled into an adversary's unsuspecting hands. Citations included Eric Frank Russells's Wasp and Harry Harrison's The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You, but it goes back even a century!

The TASAT project has stumbled many times. Turns out we needed Mr. Todd Zimmerman, expert programmer, to finally make it happen. (Thank you, Todd!)

And now we're hoping many of you will try out TASAT in the current beta and give feedback... because who knows? You may be the one to cite a story that shakes a false assumption, and maybe thusly save us all!

== A final grumble ==

Okay, it still kinda hurts. But my tribute to the recently-late Vernor Vinge... my friend and one of the greats of science fiction - can be found here.

So, what’s my grumble? The travesty - also raised by Harry Turtledove - that one of the best and most visionary SF authors of all time – Vernor – was never named Grand Master of SFWA - the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.  

(Hey, changing SFWA's name from the parochial 'of America' was long overdue.) 

But as for neglecting Vernor - despite many campaigns on his behalf?  No writhing excuse for this dismal spurning is anything other than masturbatory justification of pure bigotry, of the kind that George Orwell described in Homage to Catalonia. The same righteous circular firing squad behavior that demolished the left in the 1930s Spanish Civil War, opening up a path for Hitler & Mussolini. Or frippy fads like Nader and Stein, that led to the destructive presidencies of George W. Bush and Donald Trump, and could do it to us, again. 

Likewise, it is – today – the very essence of self-destruction, narrowing, cauterizing and neutering what should be an inspiring and multi-directional literature of progress.

Was that a Heinlein-like, old man shouting-at-clouds grumble rant? Sure, but prove me wrong, in comments? 

Or how about maybe let's try a gesture that will both re-establish some justice in our field and broaden -- rather than narrow-down -- a progressive, future-seeking coalition? It could begin with a simple act to honor one of the greatest science fiction authors of all time.

Nancy Kress for Grand Master of SF. 

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Rant mode off, now.  But always on standby mode. ;-)

Have a great weekend. And check your voter registration.